Guild Wars 2

In the recent ‘Points of Interest’ live-stream more of the first ‘Heart Of Thorns’ map (Verdant Brink) was revealed. While gliding, a large chasm was seen filled with giant Mordrem Vines, this area appears to be called the ‘Vine Filled Abyss’.

It appeared that this area has no ground floor, similar to the Heart of the Mists. While the player was gliding it looked like the map just vanished into nothing, and once the gliders endurance ran out the player fell to there death within the abyss.

This concerns me, endless abyss’s are not fun within environments such as these. This is NOT the Mists. This is the Maguuma Jungle, there must be a forest floor, and if these giant Mordrem Vines have ripped through that floor then we should be able to go beneath the land, not fall straight through it.

My complaint is perhaps premature however, as the player fell into the ‘Vine Filled Abyss’ a notification popped up warning that they were leaving the Beta area and would be teleported back to land. This could be a sign that there is no abyss, and this area is only temporary to restrict players from accessing the Forest Floor of the Jungle. The developers did say that HoT maps are composed of three different biomes, the canopy, the forest floor, and root systems. Perhaps the ‘Forest Floor’ and ‘Root System’ were not ready to be seen within this Beta build?

One other concern, that i assume will be fixed in a latter build, was the Giant Mordrem Vines within the Abyss had noclipping, passing straight through them while gliding removes the feeling that Mordremoth is a threat, and also takes away some of the games immersion.

Hopefully there will be no Abyss in the live version, it will ruin the map, ruin exploration, ruin immersion.

My personal thoughts on it is that it may just be there to restrict the demo, but removed on the full release.

It’s the beta/Demo version of the client, I believe the part of the map shown is the top layer of the map, there are two more layers below that, for the purposes of the Demo they are not present yet.

The reason she kept dying by flying there is that it was off limits to the demo. Text popped up giving a warning before killing her.

While the above are likely correct, it would make sense to me for there to be “death pits” here and there.

First off, gliding creates a huge boundary-avoiding mechanic. You can easily go “off the map”. This abyss is likely akin to the “strong water currents” that you can find which pushes you back into the map when you’re swimming along an ocean (seen easily in Bloodtide Coast, Sparkfly Fen, Southsun Cove, and the three Orr maps). The other alternative would be “strong wind currents”.

Second off, while we don’t see the bottom, doesn’t mean there isn’t one. You’re right, this isn’t the Mists. I see this “vine filled abyss” more akin to the bottom of the Skyhammer map – insta death boundaries that allow an appearance of a flat plain for some distance.

Both examples are the alternative to having mountainous boundaries that we see in so many maps, which result in a “boxed in Tyria” look that we have. These mountains won’t be very effective against gliding. And in fact, if ArenaNet wanted to this creates a precedent for how to remake those old maps.

Basically, as I see it, this Vine Filled Abyss is simply the map boundary – either for the demo alone, or permanently. The point is merely to create a non-boxed-in-mountain border for players in the zones. And in this scenario, the abyss is merely a “mordrem pit where falling in means there’s no hope for survival no matter how tough you may be”. Which only adds to the level of threat the Elder Dragons and their minions possess.

Not a case of “well, you’re falling a very long way that’s all.” Because we’ve been told that you’ll be able to jump from the higher levels and glide down to the lower levels of the multi-leveled maps.

I was also concerned over the bottomless pit.

I’m interested to see how they handle map boundaries in the final release. I hope that if they do employ the mechanic displayed in the demo that it at least looks more like a writhing mass of vines rather than a black bottomless pit.