Lay Lines and Waypoints
I saw that in the Gates of Maguuma forum. I can’t remember the exact thread, but I did see it.
I do have some sort of… general wondering…. if WayPoints are established by Asuras, and Dry Top is a rather obscure place that is just being re-explored, how can we find new WayPoints?
(Of course this is just a game mechanic, and most of the time Game Mechanics don’t have Lore justification)
Well by the time “we get there”, there are others as well, including other Asura, so its probable that they set them up. Or, they were set up by the Inquest and/or Scarlet in her early days.
I saw that in the Gates of Maguuma forum. I can’t remember the exact thread, but I did see it.
I do have some sort of… general wondering…. if WayPoints are established by Asuras, and Dry Top is a rather obscure place that is just being re-explored, how can we find new WayPoints?
(Of course this is just a game mechanic, and most of the time Game Mechanics don’t have Lore justification)
we aren’t the first to arrive. it’s implied that the asuras just throw waypoints everywhere and collect the ones that don’t work, so that’s what they’re doing. setting up more waypoints.
the problem is how leylines are being shoehorned into everything magical ever. last week, they were an obscure, “we don’t really understand it and have never really seen one, or know how to track them” thing. for asuras. the super geniuses.
and now, their magical gizmos work excellently only on specific locations with high incidence of magic, and none of those geniuses thought to research why. also lion’s arch was sitting on top of a big one.
so much for being scientists.
LegendaryMythril/Zihark Darshell
Asura only really care about if their things work, not why they do or do not work.
They aren’t scientists, they are geniuses. They build things based around magic and study magic to make better things. If their thing doesn’t work, they find out how to make it work, not why didn’t work.
But that’s getting off topic. Im looking for a physical relation between the entangled waypoints and the lay lines.
Asura only really care about if their things work, not why they do or do not work.
They aren’t scientists, they are geniuses. They build things based around magic and study magic to make better things. If their thing doesn’t work, they find out how to make it work, not why didn’t work.
But that’s getting off topic. Im looking for a physical relation between the entangled waypoints and the lay lines.
that’s wrong, to which i raise you Synergetics
LegendaryMythril/Zihark Darshell
that’s wrong, to which i raise you Synergetics
The reason for waypoints not working on some places and work in others is not among their points of study. The “why” they don’t work is irrelevant to them. It was only the discovery of the ley lines did it begin to click why the waypoints work here and not there.
Synergetics wants to know how it works, not how it doesn’t work. Seemingly similar, but very different concepts.
But again, off topic.
They ley line / waypoint lore is really spotty. As players we know the only reason for the placement of ley lines is map travel convenience, not because of ley lines. Waypoints exist where developers think will be convenient for players, I suspect ley lines didn’t even exist when the game launched and the majority of waypoints were created, ley line lore seems fabricated to support the story (create the story?) being told with Scarlet and Mordremoth.
Moving past that you have the issue that waypoints are not actually placed on ley lines, they are placed at convenient to access locations. All waypoints function the same regardless of ley line proximity, the only factor (until now?) that determined waypoint functionality was a gameplay one – are you in combat (no waypoints work for you), is your party in combat (only in dungeons) or is there an event occurring at the waypoint location or do hostile NPCs “control” the location of the waypoint. This doesn’t fit with the newly created ley line lore because an event can contest a waypoint in any location regardless of whether it’s right on top of a ley line or a great distance from one. From a player experience, all waypoints are equal and that can’t change because waypoints need to exist as a gameplay mechanic.
To get back to the OP’s question, there was a map on reddit which shows (using the vine locations) what some people have suggested can determine the location of waypoints. I’ll link it, but be warned, it’s arguably a big spoiler because the method of determining the ley line locations uses a graphical bug in the game which allows a player to see the vines (which are said to travel along ley lines and “strangle” waypoints) when loading the waypoint from a long way away, even if it’s not supposed to be visible yet (at the time anyway, it may be finished now – I haven’t checked).
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2agwtg/we_discovered_where_the_vines_are_heading_heres/
So it seems like the vines run from near the Cavern of Lights in Dry Top, heads east to Kessex hills where they fork, the southern path travels through Lion’s Arch, through Concordia down towards the krait tower in Timberline Falls (just north of the Crucible of Eternity), the northern path travels north of Frostgorge Sound and finishes in Iron Marches.
One of the reasons why I don’t think this isn’t the exact location of the ley lines is because the path doesn’t pass directly under the Thaumanova Reactor. We know from the season one finale cinematic that the ley line underneath Lion’s Arch travels towards Maguuma (and presumably Mordremoth) and passes through the ley line under Thaumanova. The map linked doesn’t show the vines going through Thaumanova (although the flickering waypoints north of it could indicate the actual ley line location is south of them, which would be Thaumanova).
You could probably do some things overlaying the maps from Scarlet’s base beneath the Priory HQ, the maps found in the Breachmaker displays and player maps marking the probe locations, but it seems like a lot of work for what is ultimately just speculation.
They ley line / waypoint lore is really spotty. As players we know the only reason for the placement of ley lines is map travel convenience, not because of ley lines. Waypoints exist where developers think will be convenient for players, I suspect ley lines didn’t even exist when the game launched and the majority of waypoints were created, ley line lore seems fabricated to support the story (create the story?) being told with Scarlet and Mordremoth.
Moving past that you have the issue that waypoints are not actually placed on ley lines, they are placed at convenient to access locations. All waypoints function the same regardless of ley line proximity, the only factor (until now?) that determined waypoint functionality was a gameplay one – are you in combat (no waypoints work for you), is your party in combat (only in dungeons) or is there an event occurring at the waypoint location or do hostile NPCs “control” the location of the waypoint. This doesn’t fit with the newly created ley line lore because an event can contest a waypoint in any location regardless of whether it’s right on top of a ley line or a great distance from one. From a player experience, all waypoints are equal and that can’t change because waypoints need to exist as a gameplay mechanic.
to give them credit, they did explain (or at least imply) that the method for placing waypoints is basically “dump them everywhere, then collect the ones that don’t work”, so what we have are the waypoints that didn’t freak out after being placed on a luck system. so i imagine, for example, they kept putting waypoints around shaemoor until they managed to have the working ones for the town.
on one hand, i appreciate them trying to “lore-fy” every aspect of gameplay. on the other, i feel like some things (waypoints) could really be left out of the main plot, as it starts sounding iffy. how iffy? well, either the range for leylines affecting waypoints is huge, or tyrian civilization just so happened to build all their important things ever on top of leylines, which are absolutely everywhere and yet still managed to hide from asuras researching them for centuries.
LegendaryMythril/Zihark Darshell