Guild Wars 2

What new mechanics can we expect from these new creatures?
How will scaling impact/affect players experiences with these new creatures?

Rubi I absolutely adore you but we’ve been asking for feedback on about 20 other topics for months. I think this may be the only thing we currently don’t care about as the expansion is already released and it seems no new content is around the corner.

Again, you’re my princess of Tyria, but there’s other topics more pressing.

This is nice. I’ve been wondering if they’d ever thought about more flying creatures, or a few more at least. We have bats and harpies that sort of hover and wyverns that start on the ground (I’m not counting dragons) but maybe some creatures that start in trees or on cliff sides. Just as an example of something that’s gone through my head: some aerial pests like flying pocket raptors that come whizzing down at you from a place higher in the treetops.

Or something larger resting on a cliff ledge that could be neutral or aggressive depending on how hungry it is, that could roll off and swoop down when aggro or randomly roll off and soar up for a bit otherwise.

Edit: just to clarify (now that I’m up and been for a little run), is there a likelihood of the aerial z-axis being taken advantage of more?

Will there be Bristlebacks with better aim? Although I generally enjoy ignoring them as their machine gun completely flys over my head instead of killing me when I’m farming the impossible to obtain invisible boots. :s

Azure.8670:

Rubi I absolutely adore you but we’ve been asking for feedback on about 20 other topics for months. I think this may be the only thing we currently don’t care about as the expansion is already released and it seems no new content is around the corner.

While there’s some truth to that, I’d really love to hear what the design teams behind HoT have to say for themselves.

That may sound a bit harsh, so let me explain. There are a lot of changes in HoT, including the monsters. I want to know WHY they thought these changes were a good idea, and just where they see the fun in fighting these new creatures all over the place. Was there perhaps a disconnect between how the creatures were designed and how they were used/placed? Were they looking for a specific kind of engagement (not fight, interest type of engagement)? Are there any “lessons learned” from HoT? These will all be important to the future of the game.

There are things that need fixed right now, yes. But I’d personally like to know the thought processes behind what they’ve done, and if that’s going to be how they work going forward.

Questions about this Topic I have:

1) Will we ever see more creatures of Guild Wars 1 that are still missing until today return into the world of Tyria??

Just a quick list of alot of creatures that I want to see to return, or where I would love to get a reason from a lore viewpoint, why there creatures seem to exist not anymore at all in Tyria:

• HYDRAS (that are this time some serious nine headed ones, and not laughable 3 headed dinosaurs, take a look for that on Dragons Dogma, the only game I know that has some serious good looking and working mythological correct Hydras)
• Grentches & Humbugs (for Winterday)
• Dryders
• Behemoths (those large static enemies)
• Skeletons (in general simply undeads that aren’t Risen per se), but just undead due to other reasons that being dragon puppets)
• Gargoyles (that are actually gargoyles and not some weird four legged winged beasts for Halloween, you know, this design: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gargoyle)
• Phantoms/Wraiths/Ghost Riders
• Mursaat/Constructs/Titans(will they ever make a return somehow??)
• Seeds/Treants/ Thorn Stalkers
• Scarabs
• Zombies/Bone Dragons/Necrid Horsemens/Ghouls (again simply more undead variety, than just saying, the only undead stuf you will ever fitht are zhaitans puppets)

and that was just the core/prophecies stuff, not to meantion alot of nice creatures from Cantha/Elioan that id like to see makign their return somehow into GW2

2) How many Dragons must we slay more, before we can get please finally Tengus as playable race?

(I know, unfair question, but it counts basically to creature design, as they are also enemies in HoT (Quetzals), when it would have fitted so much for HoT to get Tengus playable to use them to convince the Quetzals to stop fightign us and become allies against Mordremoth as 4th racial allied faction alongside the Nuhoch, the Itzel and the Exalted as a wilder contra faction, that sees many things out of a different view point than the Itzel/Nuhoch maybe.

3) Will we see in a distant future from now on also more activities again from the other Elder Dragons and especialyl their minions all over the world from their minions, now that 2 Elder Dragons have been defeated?

With 2 dragons dead and there lesser competition in Tyria for the other dragosn and their minions, one should gues,s that we should see alot more activities now drom Destroyers, Branded and so on everywhere in Tyria…the minions of the other elder dragons are way too quite since years.
With so many minions of diverse Elder Dragons, one should guess that tyria should be alot more in constant danger and that the dragons minios also try to expand their reaches to invade other maps and change them in favor to their elder dragons.

I’d like for example a new world boss elder dragon champion of Primordus to appear.. (we have one for Zhaitan, Jormag and Kralkatorrik up.. but none for the others…when it would be so fittign for example to put into the Fireheart Rise Map as world boss a champion dragon world boss of similar quality as like tequatl/claw/shatterer in there to give that map some action and a good reason to revisit it constantly, a new champion, far more dangerous and powerful, than it was 250 years ago the Great Destroyer that was the origin with that everythign began!)

4) For the love of god, please stop this year long mystery around the Elder Sea Dragons name and show us maybe a creature design for one of its minions. I’d love to see, what the minions of the Deep Sea Dragon are

In general I’d love to hear more about what in hell are even at all so far anets plans at all with this Dragon and the overall underwater gameplay of this game and the creature designs that come along naturally with this kind of content

Is it actually something that is laying completely on ice at Anet right now, because its obvious that you will focus on all the other dragons first and most likely bring this onme as the very last one to postpone working on that kind of content as long as possible to eventually the point that everyone has forgotten that it is even part of this game, or more likely was it once, before you started to remove it more and more out of GW2 to nearly barely non existance state???

Show us perhaps as a kind of glimmer of hope with a sea dragons minion creature design, that there is still something back there alive around this games part of content , that we will see maybe one day in the future in this game

That would be nice

How about bringing back some of the many creatures that we encountered in GW1 that are not represented in GW2?

It amazes me that the designers had a rich history and many creatures to give an upgrade, yet they created new ones instead. It really does baffle me.

i.e.: Life Pods, Thorn Stalkers, Phantoms, Hydra (they were in Ascalon), Saurens that were already there instead of new ones, skeletons not in the maze, and gargoyles, to name a few.

I’d have to ask, what sort of discussion and reasoning was involved with certain enemies? Some regular mobs have break bars way too high for most players to break solo; while others can completely nullify certain builds (for example, the frogs evading all ranged attacks – what if your melee weapon has a ranged attack in the combo?). So many of them seem like cool ideas, but when you’re constantly under attack by a wide variety of enemies… it’s not viable to have counters to some of them.

On a side note, while it’s nice that you’re answering questions, this really isn’t the topic people want right now (even in a non-witch hunt sense, there’s some genuine curiosity in other aspects of the game).

In relation to creature design:
PvE has been boring for me for the longest time, but that’s because it usually involves me sitting there and pressing a skill button. Creatures don’t hurt in PvE and there’s no reason to dodge attacks in many attacks because (1)lack of indication of an incoming attack (2)incoming creature damage don’t hurt / some exceptions to this, (3) dodging becomes a dps loss. Are the new creatures going to be any more challenging?

Well actually that was more of a statement and a suggestion than a question. PvE just doesn’t feel engaging to me because each time I fight a creature in tyria or maguuma, it just doesn’t feel threatening. If anything, I wish the combat was more dynamic and engaging, requiring you to dodge or block visibly telegraphed attacks in order to mitigate massive damage. Unfortunately, massive damage only happens mostly in dungeons and raids.

Unrelated to PvE:
Gaile asked forum participants for feedback on the 01/26 patch. Could we get an update on the overall consensus? Is it positive or negative? What are some upcoming changes?

Are there any creatures where the idea of what they could do came before the idea of the creature itself? For example a “hey it’d be cool if we had something which did this” and then a creature is designed which can do that vs coming up with the look and idea of an arrowhead and then going “hey that creature would be awesome if it rolled”.

1) what, if any, other games did you look to when designing the new jungle enemies? Either in terms of combat mechanics or art design

2) what specific ai improvements came in HoT? was there anything you wished you could make the mobs/bosses do at the launch of the game that you are now able to?

I have a question regarding fractal of the mists.

We need more different types of fractals based on events in GW1 and Lore.
For example the rising of Orr has been heard of or the fall of abaddon?

Are there any plans to add new fractals this year regarding the old lore or new lore(could be short story’s about the races for example; death of Jora or Play as Destiny’s Edge and face a the destroyer harpy in the colosseum from the books )

I want to fight snakes.

No more spamming knockbacks, no more perma immobilises. Please.
If balance is made around pvp, give creatures similar skills and cooldowns as player’s.
Less cripple and cc, more well telegraphed fatal blows.
Less cheap tricks, more clean and fluid fights.
And keep in mind, you not always have a zerg around.

1) Will we see more enemies with more “specified” roles from here on?
I love the fact that there are so many different kinds of enemies in HoT that focus on different things, such as Floppers, Menders, Healers, Punishers etc.
I hope you keep going down this route, and maybe even split enemies up more to make them even deadlier in groups.

2) Will enemies get more Boon Hate and Boon Distribution?
Currently, AI enemies deal a lot with Conditions, CC and supporting eachother, however there are very few enemies that grant Boons to eachother or remove Boons from players. I’m hoping this will play in more as boon-stripping can be devastating for Players and thus add a challenge to encounters that doesn’t constitute More HP or Damage.

3) Are you actively working to improve AI of Core Tyria mobs? Will they be given similar behaviour as HoT enemies or remain as they are right now?
Core Tyria is supposed to be easier, yes. However, I don’t think an AI overhaul would hurt since the enemies won’t really get new stuff added to their kitten nals. It’d be a refreshing change, for sure.

4) What new, nefarious mechanics do you have in store for us for LS season 3?
Give us a sneak peak! There’s gotta be something new we haven’t seen before.

Do you intentionally dumb down AI for the playerbase, or is it actually really hard to design an npc to react effectively to most situations?

Just to make sure Brian has something to talk about…

What happened to make lip-syncing possible again? How much work is it to animate?

The old pet animations are often a little basic compared to the new creatures, pets included, in HoT. If you’re making a new pet, what do you have to keep in mind for gameplay considerations, and what do you like to do to give it character?

Speaking of giving things character, how do you work with traditional animation techniques to do that in this game? Anything you’ve developed that we might not see much elsewhere?

What technology might we see next in creature (and character) animation – and is there anything you’d like to do if the game was able to support it?

1. Are we going to see more AI improvements? Creatures still don’t scatter from AoE as well as they did in GW1

2. Do creatures have fields of vision or can they detect players 360 degrees? Can some creatures ‘see’ farther than others?

3. Will we ever see conditions and elements vary for different creature types? Dredge currently are immune to blinds but fire elementals can take fire damage, ice elementals ice damage, etc.

4. When an ettin swings a club at you, what is the size and shape of the damage ‘field’? Is it hewn tightly to the club? Is it a tube around the club? A moving box? Or a cone in front of the creature that simply activates when the ettin swings the club through it?

Q: What’s up with the Karka?

Can we see a GIANT T-REX Saurian stomping through the forest as an event in one of the jungle maps?

Actually out of curiosity can we have genuinely organized squads for enemies? I mean we have archetypes like “Shroom” and “Toad” and “Mordrem” but even though they are close together they are not acting as squads would in an organized fashion. They don’t particularly creates traps, properly think to aim to lay down distinct opportunities, and overall despite being there are kind of … “dumb”.

So many possibilities. So few snakes.

I would like to hear what sort of information devs look to convey about an enemy from their appearance/animation of monsters in the game world.

are specific colors used to try and give players information like mob strength or attack-type preference? are there animations on models that are unique to specific types of mobs? (looking an the Itzel and Nuhock and their mordrem replicants, what things did you do/want to do to distinguish the two aside from the slight color change?)

aside from ‘wow that looks powerful/cool/scary,’ what general information did you try to communicate about monsters to players without outright telling us. (such as combat info below the health bar of selected mobs, or name differences mordrem/adolescent wyverns)

Will the famous human female idle animations ever get their comeback?
(creature = human females. It’s right on point! )

Boottspurr.9184:

Can we see a GIANT T-REX Saurian stomping through the forest as an event in one of the jungle maps?

Yes! Please bring back the one and only!

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Alpha_Tyrannus

Can some of the regular trash mobs have boons so that I can use boonstripping skills and converting boons to conditions?

Can you make ’em fun?

unbelievable topic to answer questions about

what creatures are we gonna move out of wvw?
what creature habitats can we eliminate there as well?
will it really hurt the ecosystem that bad if we destroy all the cliffs and switchbacks?
how about the humans that use to sit behind computers that i use to fight in wvw, do they count as creatures? can we go on a hunt for them, put them on some kind of endangered list?

creature creation……..disbelief

Will Dragon Bash return? Is the wine from collection a sneak peek or totally unrelated?

1. Was there it anypoint an idea to tease the minions of the Deep Sea Dragon in the HoT story mission “City of Hope” (the one with the Forgotten trial), or was that dragon always supposed to be represented by puddles of salt water?

2. Were the Exalted purposely made to look kind of like Mursaat, or was that just coincidence since they seem to be based on the Enchanted Armors from GW1, which in turn looked a bit mursaat-ish?

3. Are the Vampire Beasts GW2’s version of the vampires found in GW1? Or are they unrelated and just share a thirst for blood?

As many have noted.
I would like to see the return of many Original Guild wars creatures from all campaigns, this is part of the flavor that made the world of Guild wars. Such as Hydra, Dryer, many of the common Tyrian Undead, Gargoyles, Forgotten, Constructs, The Mursaat, Rot and Fungal wallows, Siege Turtles, Kurzick Juggernauts, Oni, Wardens(Wardens so very much have a place of much lore in relation with sylvary,) ect. The Guild Wars 2 world is lacking in the richness of the different mobs that were not included. They were very much a core of the game and its heart and appeal.

Enemy AI , I would love to see revamped across the board., especially in the core regions and dungeons.

Enemies with intelligent groupings and designs, group builds able to focus down profession types ect, based in threat levels. Enemies who will retreat to other friendly enemy groupings for back up. Surprise spawn groups that spawn based on triggers.

Enemy based off of player group builds and designs such as we saw in EOTN. There is no reason the in game mobs should not benefit from the meta.

Very profession oriented enemies that actually represent the player classes and skills, but with their own mob skills.

HoT is a definite trend towards a better direction with mob designs.

Bring back the Queens Pavilion and incorporate the Mursaat, they should have been the centerpiece of the pavilion.

All core areas of the game need to have the mobs re skilled and balanced to take advantage of the new technology and make those areas challenging again. Include some of the new Mob types that were classic Guild wars creatures in their proper regions.

Over all I think you guys are on track and headed in the right direction design wise when it comes to mobs! Just get some more of what makes Guild wars Guild wars back in there.

*Added thoughts I missed:
Ice elmentals should be immune or even healed by cold damage
Fire elementals should take no damage or even be healed by fire damage
Cold damage should do bonus damage to Fire eles and vice versa, this would be true for many different mob types. Such as Vampiric type mobs should receive healing from bleeds but be weaker to "Light, type damages Such as Guardian Symbols retaliation ect.
The is a WHOLE MEGA BOAT of mechanics that have been missed straight away by this that could add so much more depth to the game, new modifiers or type of gear stats and addons, infusions ect. So much is missing here. There is so much depth that could be added to Riads, and future expansions this way through the means of ascended gear and modifiers.

Are there reasons this stuff is missing? Are these things we may ever see return to the game, design roadblocks to all of this stuff, or was it just deemed to difficult for new players?

In regards to creatures, have you given it any thought on possibly creating an in game bestiary? Something to let players have better control to look closer at the enemies you’ve made, learn some little facts we may or may not have known, and possibly give some more value to go to different places to ‘find-em-all’ so to speak.

When creating new monsters/ creatures that had some reference in GW1, how strict do you stick to how they looked, and how much freedom do you have to update them? A good example would be the Veteran Oakhearts than look much better in GW2.

Question: Who designed the creatures in LA and SW that keep endlessly preaching about violets and mordremoth attacking the mother tree? Can they explain why they thought it was a good idea to put them next to heavily frequented merchants/banks? And why we’re still subjected to them, years later? Enquiring minds want to know.

Why don’t more enemies give themselves boons? Any chance we’ll see more boon application on mobs in the future?

Do you plan to retrofit any of the creatures in old Tyria with any of the new mechanics (beyond what you did with Branded around the Shatterer, of course)?

When (if) you bring back the Queen’s Gauntlet, will you be incorporating any new creatures based around some of the new mechanics and abilities you have placed into the game?

Also – and this is probably more a bug than a feature request, but there are some creatures in old content that are now broken due to updated game mechanics – such as Half Baked Komali and Sotz the Scalliwag (both need to be knocked back or pulled in order to do more than minimal damage, but those ccs no longer work on champions due to the new break bar system). Are there plans to address those issues in the near future?

Something I love about HoT enemies is that they all have a “shtick.” Every enemy type has a distinct mechanic that requires a distinct approach to combat. Mordrem Snipers force you on the move and severely punish inattention. Rolling Devils are relentless until you poke them with CC. Itzel dodge, dodge, dodge, you’re dead now. All of the enemies require more interesting play than stand-and-auto-attack.

Can you talk about the relationship between these mechanics and creature design? How much of one informed the other? I’d love to know which creatures were designed around mechanics and which mechanics were designed around creatures.

I would really enjoy fighting more Npcs with profession skills.
Why doesn’t this happen. The funniest Npcs to fight are the ones in heart of the mist.
Also I would really like to see Npcs who are labeled as, for example, Mesmer using warrior skills.

Just something I was curious about. In the beta, ambient snakes existed in the world and they were removed before the game went live. I’ve always been curious why.

First off, will we see a push this year to fix less exciting legendaries/ improve skill effects when using legendaries? What about Charr tail effects for new armor/ legendary armor?

Secondly, will we ever get a bestiary with things like rotating models, short bio, stats/biological information?

Bestiary collection plz!

Hello, thanks for answering our questions. My Top 10 are:

1.- Capes in our characters.
Its a animation problem? Its possible with the tech of the gw2 engine, gliding with capes? Seeing many games with this (including gw1) and want this feature in gw2

2.- Chairs, and sit animation.
When our characters trying to sit in a chair, we see many problems. Chairs dont detect colision, bad animation to sit, and others. Any intention to revamp this animation system, and what are the work process to make this happen?

3.- New playable races.
For example think in tengus. What are the requirements to make a race playable, in terms of animation design for Guild Wars 2?

4.- New Dances and Emotes.
In gw1 we have many animations, for example profession dances. Its possible to export emote animations from gw1, to gw2?

5.- New Weapons.
If in the design process you decide to add a new type of weapon, for example Spears. What are the process to include them ingame?

6.- New Specializations or Professions
When we see the new specializations, new animations are included with them. Animations for new skills, or the use of weapons for example. Can be possible with this engine, make new type of animations and designs to increase options in combat?

7.- Playable creatures – Polymock
Near Rata Sum we see the Polymock Arena, a minigame included in gw1. Are the animations of creatures prepared for this game, or need a rework of the animation system to make the Polymock playble again?

8.- Suggestion – Mounts
In the hypothetical case we see montures in Guild Wars 2, what are the limitations of the engine to make them?

9.- Live Story/ Living World animations
In the Guild Wars franchise its very important the narrative and animations to tell the story. Are you preparing new features to increase the power of animations in the narrative, for example for Living World Season 3?

10.- How to dance Volume 2
The Gem store now have items to fly, items to upgrade the account and others. Any plans to add more items related directly with new animations, for example a new book of How to dance Volume 2?

RubiBayer.8134:

The February 5th episode of our Guild Chat livestream will be about designing creatures in Guild Wars 2 with dev guests Brian Walter (Animator) and Ben Phongluangtham (Game Designer). They’ll be talking about the work process of adding new creatures to the game, using creatures you’ve encountered in Heart of Thorns–Mushroom Bombers, Bristlebacks, and Mordrem Maggots, among others–as examples of how it’s done.

We’d like to answer a few of your questions about this topic, so post them here and we’ll select some to talk about the day of the show.

My questions:

• How much more difficult was it to make HoT enemies compared to release enemies in terms of how hard to make them?
• How much time would be needed to be spent to make most core enemies like HoT enemies – or if the only difference was changing their base attack speed up from the 3 second pause to 1 second pause (something done for The Shatterer) between attacks?
• ADDENDUM: It’s not question that PvE could be a bit more engaging, especially in Central Tyria’s middle and higher ranged zones. Would there be a chance of an overview of improving this? In a theoretical/white board drafting sense, what would you look at to make random mobs be more difficult to players?
• Typically how much effort goes into world bosses like the Octovine, Mouth of Mordremoth, Chak Gerent? Compared to story bosses or raid/fractal bosses, is this more or less? Compared to revamping old world bosses (like the effort put into Tequatl or Shatterer)?
• What’s the most time consuming part of making new monsters – figuring their looks, animating them, or finding the right difficulty for them?
• Now that there’s gliding, has there been considerations for making the old creatures that “fly” truly fly (i.e., glide without decline) in central Tyria? What about creatures who can attack gliders while gliding themselves?
• Is there any design choice over not bringing back the GW1 Saurians (e.g., Tyrannus, Angorodon, Ceratadon, and Ferothrax)?
• Could we expect to see more GW1 monsters make a return as we re-enter old territories (e.g., Hydras, Dryders, Abominations, Titans), or would such expectations be false hopes?
• How much work would have to be put in to make largos, tengu, or kodan a new playable race?
• When will you tire of keeping the deep sea dragon a secret? It’s not the Wizard’s Tower. After all the tauntings we get (City of Hope was the perfect time to add a true, weak, DSD minion), its mystery will stop being fun.

This concerns creature design interacting with encounter design.

Premise: Mob group composition and environmental factors play as much (or more) of a role in difficulty as mob/creature design. AoE that is relatively easy to avoid in an open area can be problematic if that same AoE is in a narrow space, or if the mob group includes multiple of the same mobs who fill an area, leaving nowhere to go. As examples: for the former, a Rolling Devil Champion in a passageway that is the width of two Charr characters; for the latter, a group of all Risen Nobles dropping their AoE on a player or NPC group.

Do the same devs that design the creatures also design the encounters?

• If so, what process do you go through to make sure that creature abilities match the encounter with regard to terrain and enemy group?
• If not, what collaborative process takes place with regard to the same issues, if any?

Titanium Argentum.1427:

8.- Suggestion – Montures
In the hypothetical case we see montures in Guild Wars 2, what are the limitations of the engine to make them?

Google tells me “monture” is French for “mount”. Uh oh. Here comes that picture.

I’ve seen this suggestion on reddit a few times, how would you feel about introducing some critters (or even townsfolk) to the guild halls as they get leveled up? It would be great to see some life in there, even if they were just friendly versions of wildlife we already see in the nearby zones.

Only 1 question from me.

I’m sure developing creatures for Heart of Thorn’s maps and the current and upcoming raid wings has become a a fruictful experience, where mechanics have gotten more diverse and deeper.

This has been a problem with balance in the past – relying too much on mechanic to defeat a monster nullifies the need for new builds, and relying too much on player builds nullifies the need to learn monster mechanics. Just how much you think each side (MechanicVSBuild) should vouch when designing monsters in order to keep them challenging for the years to come? Is it the mechanic what makes players create builds, or are the builds what are forcing the design of new monster mechanics?

Well, maybe that’s 2 questions.

Questions about creature design? Sure. Why is it ok that creatures take more than twice as much damage from some classes than from others?

1) Will those more interessting mobs show up in Fractals?
2) Yes, we have Raids now, but will we ever get another dungeon for the casual or non meta oriented player? There is a lot of potential with these non-cutscene storytelling you did in the expansion.
3)What is your favorite Enemys of the expansion?
4) What enemys you don’t like to fight of the expansion?

Animator? Sure.

• The animation in HoT is incredibly beautiful, but benefits the environment more than the players. When will we see the animating talent put more emotes into the game? They’re long overdue.

• How feasible would it be to see Tengu as a playable race? Barring issues like adjusting existing armor sets or adding a personal story, how difficult would they be to implement merely from a customization and model/animation standpoint?

Please don’t make anymore Mushroom pants. It makes me think Mordremoth took actual people and made them into mushrooms, and all they have left is their pants. Maybe that is why that make that horrible sound.