Guild Wars 2

I’m pretty excited by the end of the lil trailer. It seems we might finally see a more ‘mature’ area in the game. And with mature i mean an area that doesn’t necessarily feel like it could house droves of My Lil Ponies.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love the most of the areas in GW2 so far, but in their beauty (to me) they also feel like they were meant for 8-11y olds. Over lit, and no places that get a mature player to feel any bit of fear in their anticipation. Nights that are as bright as day, no weather that make you feel like you may not reach your destination after all…

But now we get, or at least in this teaser, the dry regions of Maguma. Sandstorms that block your view, hopefully with sound effects that make you doubt whether it may be wiser to waypoint out instead of proceed into the unknown… and hopefully these storms are somewhat dynamic weather patterns, linked hopefully with certain hard enemy types or even certain dynamic events (strategic troop movements obscured by the storm, etc.) … so that these sandstorms will stay an interesting feature, and not turn into ‘just an annoying reduction of sight’.

Anyways, I am really exited about this, and I hope that feedback on the area will be largely positive, so it may inspire Anet to make Tyria a bit more ‘serious’ and ‘mature’ in it’s atmosphere (mainly lighting and weather related, in my views) and in no means less beautiful. Yet hopefully with a bit more character…

i prefer the zones in gw2 to almost all of the other mmo zones i’ve seen. especially wow, where a lot of the zones have a very limited color palette. especially the end zones. it seems like their policy for end zones is “two colors and that’s it”. makes most of the zones look boring as hell. gw2 maybe has a bit too much color in some zones but it’s better than the alternative imho.

Yeah I fully agree, I mean don’t get me wrong, like I said, I like the beauty of GW2 zones a lot. But, in all it’s beauty (to me) it lacks character. To me this is mostly due to lighting and dynamic weather, mostly lighting tbh. the clear nights, the always overly lit caverns.

It’s sort of like some of the art made by Rembrant, see he isn’t so famous for what he painted, nor his brush strokes. His most renounced quality in this paintings is the use of light. Light sets the mood, or the lack of light, a bright day will make you happy, while I grey one makes you grumpy. A clear night with a full moon will feel fresh, while a poorly lit night will make it feel damp and cold. A cavern with some flickering torches gives a whole different mood than an overly lit subway entry.

Same things happen with weather, a heavy snowstorm will create a bit of claustrophobia, it feels like a struggle. A mild snow creates anticipation, and some what of a joy (for snowball fights, building snowballs, hot choco and a warm fire place).

These are things I would call ‘character’, as they are character building circumstances. So I have nothing against the beauty of Tyria as it is now, and I thoroughly enjoy it. What I do miss, is the icing on the cake, the character, those things that make a pixelated world (even in a painterly style) feel like almost real. Where the lack of light leaves room for the imagination, or where an abundance of light creates a true focus point (though I did see these).

With this new dust storm area (as long as they are dynamic), we do get an area that has more character. That does leave room for imagination, or at least anticipation. And thus, hopefully the responses will be overly positive, so that Anet will start to touch up Tyria with this in mind…

If by mature you mean desert, then yes. It will be the first desert map I suppose.

Apart from that there are plenty of dreary locations to be found in the game, including but not limited to haunted misty forests, snowstorm infested mountains and full out decayed undead lands.

Evans.6347:

If by mature you mean desert, then yes. It will be the first desert map I suppose.

Apart from that there are plenty of dreary locations to be found in the game, including but not limited to haunted misty forests, snowstorm infested mountains and full out decayed undead lands.

By “Mature” I don’t think he just means “dreary”. He means an environment that keeps you on edge, or even scared. Guild Wars 1 had a huge variety of landscapes, and as Guild Wars 2 develops and opens up it would be reasonable to assume we’ll be getting desert areas; it’s not to say that desert areas will be bad.

The scariest open world PvE I’ve played in GW2 so far was my first trip into Orr. Standing there at Fort Trinity looking over, just about seeing some land formations peeking out of the mist over the water, and then trudging through Orr, alone, in Blues/Greens…probably barely 10 people on the map at that time. The sounds of the dragons, the shadows as they passed over you, the knowledge that if you died you were back to the start of the zone all compounded to keep me on edge, and make me strive to play better. It was thrilling. Not any more, of course. All waypoints are open most of the time and with exotic or ascended gear the mobs are rather trivial.

Whilst I’d love to see some dynamic weather, sandstorms, and other features that made me feel like Orr did just after release I worry that the number of people trying to participate will completely trivialise it.

know the norn fractal with its dark kitten forest and its ice storm source thingy that literally blinds your (actual not condition wise meant) sight? I just hope the new area got some feeling like this. A sandstorm rolling in and you got no clue where the hell anything (thats not a few feet away from you) is… that would be more then amazing and bring a new level to fighting enemies. Imagine you fight a mob or something and the sandstorm makes you go like “oh kitten where the kitten are they?!”

Arghore.8340:

Yeah I fully agree, I mean don’t get me wrong, like I said, I like the beauty of GW2 zones a lot. But, in all it’s beauty (to me) it lacks character. To me this is mostly due to lighting and dynamic weather, mostly lighting tbh. the clear nights, the always overly lit caverns.

It’s sort of like some of the art made by Rembrant, see he isn’t so famous for what he painted, nor his brush strokes. His most renounced quality in this paintings is the use of light. Light sets the mood, or the lack of light, a bright day will make you happy, while I grey one makes you grumpy. A clear night with a full moon will feel fresh, while a poorly lit night will make it feel damp and cold. A cavern with some flickering torches gives a whole different mood than an overly lit subway entry.

Same things happen with weather, a heavy snowstorm will create a bit of claustrophobia, it feels like a struggle. A mild snow creates anticipation, and some what of a joy (for snowball fights, building snowballs, hot choco and a warm fire place).

These are things I would call ‘character’, as they are character building circumstances. So I have nothing against the beauty of Tyria as it is now, and I thoroughly enjoy it. What I do miss, is the icing on the cake, the character, those things that make a pixelated world (even in a painterly style) feel like almost real. Where the lack of light leaves room for the imagination, or where an abundance of light creates a true focus point (though I did see these).

With this new dust storm area (as long as they are dynamic), we do get an area that has more character. That does leave room for imagination, or at least anticipation. And thus, hopefully the responses will be overly positive, so that Anet will start to touch up Tyria with this in mind…

You can control lighting to an extent with gamma slider. I find some caves (particularly at night) quite dark and find myself having to adjust gamma to see where i’m going, this is mostly in case of JP’s and ofc it depends how deep in a cave I am. Perhaps your gamma is too high? I usually keep mine around 95 points. But really, they need add a lot more sliders to gw2 to control lighting such as background, ambient, brightness etc and not just rely on gamma. And yea nights need some adjustment too.

I would also have to agree about the dynamic weather. One of the biggest things i miss in this game is dramatic weather changes. I mean I play Lotro, an 8 year old game and it has an amazing weather effects. Lightning storms, thunderstorms, heavy rain that last for hours on end, soft rain with sunrays shining thru, snow storms/blizzards etc. So yea, i really hope Anet starts to add those aspects to gw2, it would make traveling thru Tyria so much more immersive. I know there’s snow falling in some parts of Shiverpeaks and some rain u see occasionally in other places, but it’s not enough.

Snowden Drifts and Dredgehaunt Cliffs have event based snowstorms that really hinder your vision. I always thought they were a nice touch.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

I mean I play Lotro, an 8 year old game and it has an amazing weather effects. Lightning storms, thunderstorms, heavy rain that last for hours on end, soft rain with sunrays shining thru, snow storms/blizzards etc.

I hated it most of the time since i simply got headaches after hours of rain, or fighting in a snowstorm where you barely saw an enemy even in melee range.

So i really hope they don’t get over the top with it.

Yea because Orr, the Brand and Fireheart Rise definitely look like areas ripped straight from a fairy tale….

I always wondered why MLP had so many doomsday landscapes riddled with death and destruction.

Some responses from my end now that the content can be experienced… and some more directly towards some comments made by others…

Sarie above here comes closest to what i meant, although I don’t necessarily mean scary. Perhaps ‘realistic’ or ‘character full’ is still more to what I’m after. A good example of what I mean is the new central crafting area in LA, it is hardly lit by ‘general lighting’ settings, but almost exclusively by torches. This gives a much more flavourful emersion, especially at night, although I noticed that the area doesn’t change much when daylight starts, likely due to shade, or some other lighting limitations.

Another good example is the northern mine in Dry Top, although personally I would have lit the a central ‘walkway’ with a few torches, which would have made the area not entirely dark, yet not entirely lit either, the shimmer of the torches would have made the area more than just dark, and more then just lit…

@Tiger, I know my computer is somewhat limited in it’s display of grafix options (mainly due to being stuck on DX10.1) but I never actually changed anything in my Gamma, and I will expect Anet to set the base gamma to the setting that will best display their creation…

I personally miss seasons in GW2, it was a feature of Saga of Ryzom that I greatly enjoyed, as it changed the scenery, and with it the visual experience of areas. With seasons also comes dynamic weather, and each season can have it’s own ‘chance table’ on certain weather types, as well as changes to foliage, possibly even creatures, and events. I have great hopes that one day Anet will install a ‘living world’ team, that is sanctioned to make this happen…

@Windu, in a sense they are, they are somewhat of a stereotype scary, due to a certain level of gore and fear of fire. The Brand hardly does it for me, and the only thing I find somewhat ‘pressing’ is the shade that looms from above (guess it explains why certain ground dwelling creatures IRL seem to always be on edge). But more over, this is not what I mean with ‘Mature’ or ‘Character’ or even ‘scary’.

For one: Both Orr and the Brand could have been made a lot more ‘scary’ or ‘pressing’ if they were to be ‘foggy’ (brand obviously purplish) to an extend where vision is obscured to a certain distance (the Dust storm in dry top seems to be doing fairly ok in this regard). If you ever read ‘The Fog’ then you will know that, besides from the horrors that emerge from it, the presence of the fog itself brings with it an atmosphere of the unknown, a certain claustrophobia settles in the mind that brings with it a certain irrational discomfort.

The same can be said from the dark, but in this regard the dark can be made more atmospheric by introducing a limited amount of light. This causes a certain duality in the mind between ‘safeness’ (of the light, the visible and identifiable) and ‘danger’ (of the dark, the invisible and unknown), if these places alternate at certain distance each traversal of the dark becomes a journey in itself filled with anticipation of the unknown in between. Fear of the dark isn’t so much fear of the lack of light, but fear of the unknown which lurks in the dark, in the right setting even a shade of the simplest thing can cause a fright or a scare.

Next to that it’s also the atmosphere that lighting brings, which has a lot to do with the ‘light/dark’ mental tension. In this regard I can point to the central crafting area in LA again, which has little to no ‘ambient’ light sources, and a lot of circumstantial ones (torches, firepits), the ‘play’ of shades on the walls, the creation of mental ‘safe zones’ around the lit places. I deem this location more ‘mature’ or ‘characterful’ than say the crafting zones any where else. (though I am sure there must be 1 or 2 more crafting zones that are equally characterful).

@Beldin, yes! that is the inherent danger, like I said in my earlier posts, these things can also become to much of an annoyance (mostly with vision impairing effects), and good use of these things is to alternate them. Similar to how I described the use of light as opposed to a totally dark area. Like the saying ‘a change of spices, increases the appetite’ (freely translated from my native language), the same applies to these effects. It’s not the enduring sand/water/snow storm that awakens mental discomfort (it will instil annoyance). But it’s the ones where you know that better things are ‘on the other side’ (be it in distance or time), they become a hurdle of the unknown. It’s the ‘I will just have to endure this and survive, safety is just on the other side’ feeling that is way more engaging, than the ‘will this annoyance ever end’ feeling…

The sandstorm is quite nice.

edit: I was out actually taking screenshots of my ranger (pictured) in the sandstorm. I got annoyed when players randomly ran past me and lured an enemy into attacking me (I know it wasn’t intended, and just randomly running place to place) :P. Though I guess it’d been nice if perhaps the sandstorm effect was closer to the player.

My two screenshots feel as if my character is walking INTO or AWAY from the sandstorm, instead of being in the middle of it. Maybe it’s the camera being zoomed out that does that as well.

Kalavier.1097:

The sandstorm is quite nice.

edit: I was out actually taking screenshots of my ranger (pictured) in the sandstorm. I got annoyed when players randomly ran past me and lured an enemy into attacking me (I know it wasn’t intended, and just randomly running place to place) :P. Though I guess it’d been nice if perhaps the sandstorm effect was closer to the player.

My two screenshots feel as if my character is walking INTO or AWAY from the sandstorm, instead of being in the middle of it. Maybe it’s the camera being zoomed out that does that as well.

i can agree to the point that you can’t see anything beyond your character but i think they did this so you can at least see your character, you would “complain” just as much if you could see absolutely nothing, not even your character.

If it’s supposed to be a blinding sandstorm/blizzard… not really. A small radius around my character for visibility yeah, but nothing major. I’ll go into drytop sometime later when I have free time to do more exploring on that front :P.

The dark room sections IMO are quite nice. My one complaint being that the mine has the platform the miners are on in the darkness, when they should be light with torches :P.

As far as the Duststorm goes in Dry Top, so far I am pleased. They don’t last to long, and not to short, they impair vision far enough where there is a feeling of discomfort, yet there is still enough sight to engage in battle and find your way.

What I don’t like is the fact that these storms are announced on a timer … as far as that goes there is no anticipation what so ever, the timer is there, you know it’s coming, when its coming and how long it’s going to take. :-/

How I would have done it is to have at least 3 stages in severity of a storm. A very mild one, that would announce the possible occurrence of a storm, a intermediate one, following the mild one, that tells you it’s fairly likely to get worse, and the current heavy storm. Then linked to this could be an (hidden) timer that rolls a script for the occurrences, something like:

at the end of (weather)-timer
- check occurrence:
- roll dice:

if occurrence is 0.
- 50% chance on a mild wind for 3min (start stormtimer), set occurrence 0
if occurrence is 1
- 60% chance on mild wind for 3 min (start stormtimer), set occurrence 0
if occurrence is 2
- 70% chance on mild wind for 2 min (start stormtimer), set severity to 1, set occurrence 0
if occurrence is 3
- 80% chance on mild wind for 1 min (start stormtimer), set severity to 2, set occurrence 0
…etc…
Else, set (weather)-timer to 5min, set occurrence +1

At the end of stormtimer:
- check severity
- roll dice

if severity is 0.
- 30% chance on end storm, set (weather)-timer to 5 min, set occurrence +1
- 40% chance on intermediate storm for 3 min (start stormtimer), set severity +1
- 30% chance on severe storm for 3 min (start stormtimer), set occurrence 0

if severity is 1.
- 20% chance on end storm, set (weather)-timer to 5 min, set occurrence +1
- 50% chance on intermediate storm for 3 min (start stormtimer), set severity +1
- 30% chance on severe storm for 2 min (start stormtimer), set occurrence 0

if severity is 2
- 10% chance on end storm, set (weather)-timer to 5 min, set occurrence +1
- 50% chance on intermediate storm for 2 min (start stormtimer)
- 40% chance on severe storm for 1 min (start stormtimer), set occurrence 0
…etc…

at the end of storm timer:
- check severity
- roll dice

if severity is 0
- 20% chance mild storm for 3 min, set occurrence +1, set (weather)-timer to 7 min
- 40% chance intermediate storm for 5 min, set (weather)-timer to 10 min
- 40% chance severe storm for 10 min, goto ‘set weather’, set (weather)-timer to 15 min

if severity is 1
- 20% chance mild storm for 3 min, set occurrence +1, set (weather)-timer to 7 min
- 30% chance intermediate storm for 5 min, set (weather)-timer to 10 min
- 50% chance severe storm for 10 min, goto ‘set weather’, set (weather)-timer to 15 min

if severity is 2
- 15% chance mild storm for 3 min, set occurrence +1, set (weather)-timer to 7 min
- 25% chance intermediate storm for 5 min, set (weather)-timer to 10 min
- 60% chance sever storm for 10 min, goto ‘set weather’, set (weather)-timer to 15 min

´set weather´
roll dice (0, 1, 2)
set ´occurrence´
roll dice (0, 1)
set ´severity’

ps. I am not a coder, and while I do understand code, it´s now more then clear to me that if you don´t keep practicing it you get worse at it… still though, a coder should be able to read this and somewhat understand how this would produce a fairly random occurrence of storms, with increasing chances for a storm if non was had last time. Obviously a last bit is missing where it sets some sort of ´end storm´ condition based upon what kind of storm it was, so that it has a nice flow…

obviously never going to happen, as the current ´want it now, and want it predictable´ gamers of today would not be able to deal with not knowing when to go do what, let alone wait for a random event to happen and unfold… can´t have it all I guess…

why does everything in modern fantasy has to be grimdark and edgy? I blame GoT for setting this trend.

mlp hate thread
i insist we rename prosperity to rarity now

for maturity

I thought the trend towards “mature gaming content lulz” was finally receding and we can release games again which don’t just look mushy brown everywhere?

Carighan.6758:

I thought the trend towards “mature gaming content lulz” was finally receding and we can release games again which don’t just look mushy brown everywhere?

Nah, that wasn’t “mature content”

That was “realistic graphics” IIRC :P.

Kalavier.1097:

Nah, that wasn’t “mature content”

That was “realistic graphics” IIRC :P.

Ah, fair enough. Now we need Bioware-style mature content where you can click-to-select between baby-cuddling good and baby-burning bad and nothing in-between, and get sex scenes as a win state for clicking the right answers.

I mean don’t get me wrong, I like “more mature” content, but not if I have to use those words for it. Developers managed to make them senseless and rather irritating in meaning.