Guild Wars 2

With the expansion, and it’s major assets announced is there any hope to see changes/developments with Underwater content?

My hope is yes, and for a few of these reasons:

ANET has announced and showcased some new camera technology which could be a huge asset to Underwater combat and mobility.

Professions new and old are being worked on to adjust for the new defiant, taunt, and slow conditions. Thus allowing an opportunity to make adjustments for Uw content

A focus on vertical maps is being pushed for HoT. allowing map developers to explore the Z axis more, an axis previously unique to Uw content alone.

Land spears? why not new Uw weapons as well (possibly daggers)

New challenging mechanics which could be transferred over into a potential Uw world boss, or event chain.

Mastery systems, additional benefits to Uw content.

Where HoT will have gliders for traversing the Z axis, why not an inverse where Uw content has “iron boots” for sea floor movement.

A hopeful return of Uw maps to PvP, aiding in the new gametype, partial Uw sections or even a Full Uw map (custom arena choice only)

These are my thoughts/hopes on the subject. Unfortunately underwater content is and has been caught in a catch 22 of development hell. Its not developed upon because nobody plays it, and nobody plays it because its not developed upon enough.

Well, since the current way players deal with the awfulness of underwater content is by trying to avoid it as much as possible, I don’t think it would be a very good use of the devs’ time trying to improve something that most people want to never see again. Like you said, it’s a catch 22, but I, for one, certainly don’t feel like I’m missing anything.

Also, what are you on about land spears? That’s not a thing.

Andred.1087:

Well, since the current way players deal with the awfulness of underwater content is by trying to avoid it as much as possible, I don’t think it would be a very good use of the devs’ time trying to improve something that most people want to never see again. Like you said, it’s a catch 22, but I, for one, certainly don’t feel like I’m missing anything.

Also, what are you on about land spears? That’s not a thing.

Yeah sorry about the land spears thing, I had forgotten that they were not doing those.

No. If you pay attention to the way ANet works, you’ll notice that they usually test things in temporary content before promoting it to permanent. The general success of two iterations of aspect crystals, for example, gave them what they needed to know to develop the much more permanent glider and mushroom masteries. If ANet was considering underwater content, it wouldn’t just suddenly drop as a major part of the expansion—we’d get one area at a time to play with until they’d actually figured it out to their satisfaction.

I doubt we will see it in HoT. I see UW content getting overhauled or maybe with a mastery line either in the far Shiverpeaks or if we go to fight the UW dragon. Which although I think is unlikely, might happen with a massive overhaul of how underwater operates.

Gralo.7230:

With the expansion, and it’s major assets announced is there any hope to see changes/developments with Underwater content?

I hope not. I wish ArenaNet would remove underwater combat from the game. It’s extremely buggy, boring, and basically a waste of resources (I would rather have more land skills for the Revenant than have underwater skills). Keep the exploration and remove the ability to fight in the water.

I enjoy underwater segments of the game, and find the combat to be enjoyable and interesting. I’d like to see more underwater sections in the future, and I’d be fine with a return of underwater sections to PvP.

All signs say no. You can’t use a glider underwater. There’s your answer.