Lore: I loved Scarlet before I learned about her background. Her studying in all 3 Asura universities and in a short amount of time kind of killed the character for me. Was it really necessary to have her finish her studies in all three universities? How relevant do you consider it for the whole plot?
“Without too many spoilers, I can only say that yes this is an important part of the over-all plot. Everything that has happened ties into a bigger story that within will come clear with the final four releases of this current story arc in 2014, saying anything more would give away too much! I can say that we’ve learned a lot about how to try and better pace living world releases in the future, in particular from all the great feedback we’ve received this year, and from our recent collaborative development discussion.
For future stories after the current one is completed we’ll work to get a more of the core plot out earlier so folks can get engaged earlier on. We’re also going to try and shorten up stories into more easy to digest chunks that have clear starts and ends, and though there may be a larger plot behind them still we want to tie-up more smaller stories very neatly on a regular basis so it feels like the story has clear progression. Once our current story completes, I think people will realize everything that happened for the last year all suddenly ties together in a pretty awesome way, but waiting a year and a half to find out how anything ties together isn’t something we want to do with our future stories.” ~Colin Johanson
Features: What are you able to tell us about the new features coming in March?
”Right now, absolutely nothing! It’s worth noting, we’ve never said the features we’re bundling together will release in March as well, only that they will be released together after the first living world season has completed. Between china beta testing and the large amount of work we’re doing to better pace the progression and teaching of the game based on those tests, completing our current living world story arc, the big projects we’ve been working on in the background (shh!), and all the features in production we’ve got a lot on our plate currently. We don’t want to list any specific features or timing until we get closer to that point where we’re more sure of exactly what players will see. Once the current living world season is completed, we’ll do a “state of the game” update summarizing the major features under production for the big feature release, as well as where we’re headed beyond that feature release.“ ~Colin Johanson
Races: What about Dwarves as a playable race?
”Well they would have to be stone dwarves, since as far as we know all dwarves were turned into stone!….As far as we know, there are so few of them left alive in the world of Tyria after the battle against the minions of Primordus, there wouldn’t be enough to make a playable race. Poor Ogden is likely very lonely, make sure to visit him and give him a hug! That doesn’t rule them out from being a possibility many many years down the road, but there are a lot of races we’d like to pursue first.” ~Colin Johanson
Achievements: Are you going to change the Map Completion to remove the requirement of WvW?
”We currently have no plans to do this. We’ve been doing a lot of work lately to try and bring our three core game types: PvP, WvW, and PvE more together in their systems of progression, rewards, and unlocking to try and give the game more of a sense of everything you do ties back into the growth of your character. We feel like WvW is a really good middle-ground between PvE and PvP and want to encourage people to think of the mists as part of our world they should explore and experience, we might consider adding the PvP lobby to world exploration for future characters for example to help give more incentive to visit there as well.
That being said, we’re always looking at the systems and features we have in place, and as you’ve seen since we launched if we find something we think is better, we’re not shy about replacing a current system if we find something better for the players, but accomplishes our same goals. Our over-all goal is to encourage all players to experience WvW, to have goals that keep them there long enough they might fall in love with it and take that on as a separate game time; should we find other ways that are as effective as we’ve seen world complete is for encouraging play there to see the different maps, that is just as easy to understand and uses existing systems like world complete, we’ll certainly consider them. It’s something fun to brainstorm on our forums and see what kind of ideas players might!” ~Colin Johanson
WvW: We feel like WvW season 1 rewards were really disappointing. I am not talking about being rewarded with gold or great powerful items in-game but I feel like the work on finishers and titles could have been better. Is that a problem you consider relevant on your side?
”We’ve taken a hard look at all the rewards for season one and we feel like we’ve learned a great deal about how we can do a better job of providing rewards for the next season of WvW after reading the player feedback, and discussing our own experiences as players through season 1.” ~Devon Carver
WvW: Are there any upcoming changes or additions to WvW in 2014 that you can share with us at this time?
“We are really excited about the upcoming “Edge of the Mists” map which we are currently testing with selected guilds. There are a number of things in that map that we are looking forward to possibly using in WvW in the future. We are also getting ready to move WXP to be an account based system. There are more plans on the horizon that are not at a point where we are ready to discuss them to help address some of the core remaining concerns with WvW our player base has raised. That being said our current collaborative development threads on our forums in the WvW section are a great place to help give feedback and shape where these new features will go in the future!” ~Devon Carver
PvP: How do you feel the upcoming PvP changes (gold rewards, removing glory, etc) will contribute to making the game mode more fun and rewarding?
”The short term changes we are making are in large part to bring PvP closer to the rest of the game. Players have told us that when they enter into PvP they are essentially putting all of their game wide goals on hold while they do it. What we are doing now is telling players that they don’t have to do that anymore. So there is the direct impact of PvP contributing to a player’s individual goals of reaching level 80, levelling up an alt or saving up for that special weapon on the trading post.
The result so far has been a lot more players to play with and against in PvP and that is more fun for everyone. More players improve queue times, improved matchups via the ratings system and will give you more friends to meet.
We are also excited about our long term project of ladders and seasons because it will give players a chance to work their way up based on their skill and dedication. It will be fun to see players distinguish themselves from season to season and to know that each season is another opportunity to show that you are the best.” ~John Corpening
Fractals: Why did you feel that resetting everybody to fractal level 30 was the best course of action?
“We were changing the relative difficulties of those levels and really wanted to level the playing field and give everyone a fresh start. We know this devalued some of the work people did but we wanted everyone to have a common language as far as the progression in fractals and didn’t want confusion in terminology for example ’I’m a pre change level 50 fractal’. Now if someone says they are level 50 in fractals everyone understand what they did and what that progress means, this becomes very important as we increase the levels in fractals.” ~Isaiah Cartwright
PvE: Are there any plans to make condition builds more viable in PvE?
”Yes you should see some creatures targeted around weakness to condition in some of the early builds next year.” ~Isaiah Cartwright
Skill Balance ] Why is condition damage intentionally restricted?
”We don’t restriction condition damage in any intentional way there are limits to the number of stacks on a target and gadgets cannot be targeted with conditions both of these are more of a result of our tech. These are limitations that we often work around and we are always looking for more ways to make condition damage interesting across all game types.” ~Isaiah Cartwright
