Guild Wars 2

Now when I first saw Drytop and went about exploring it – I was astonished how good it looked, your team really raised the bar for the environment and generally the quality of the game’s art assets. The maps that followed, the ones from HoT and up to Ember bay were exceptionally well made, and the the winner here of course was, and still is, Bitterfrost Frontier which looked absolutely stunning with its dense towering pine trees and frozen landscape all around – it really brought my hopes up that this upcoming release would adhere to the same standarts.

But then I stepped in to the new Lake Doric map and boy was I disappointed .

First off, while I do really enjoy and love some of the new additions, like the bazaar, the waterfall cave, and the Temple of the six – The rest of the new areas look and feel absolutely artifical. The landscape does not look organic ,there are odd heightmap deformations and bumpy hills that make no sense if we’re to look at them from a geographical standpoint, the rock formations and the placement of trees doesn’t look natural, its as if someone copy pasted them through out the entire map in a hurry and called it a day without doing another pass to make them fit in with the environment.
It really stands out, especialy when you see jaggedy stuff like this:
http://i.imgur.com/hWKlwUa.jpg

If the whole area was suppose to resemble a warzone, . With all the jade cannons, constructs and explosions going left and right its hard to imagine the zone be this lush for long, the landscape should’ve reflected that, and break the monotone greens with an occasional rocky extrusion or a crevice, uneven rocky ledges or heck even some dirt here and there like it was done on previous maps.
Just a few quick examples:

1. http://i.imgur.com/7cxspzl.jpg
2. http://i.imgur.com/Wz5jkuW.jpg
3. http://i.imgur.com/DZINYpC.jpg
4. http://i.imgur.com/WtK5qVn.jpg

The art assets are starting to look dated, I get that you wanted to make it feel like an area that is close to Queensdale but…The whole feel of the zone just feels "off " and to me, it looks like a hastly put together mess – From the numerous blurry textures found on the upscaled walls and Krytan buildings to the absolutely horrendously old and blocky trees – which are especially apparant when the player tilts the camera towards the horizon where they can literally see through the planes of the pine leaves (Why couldn’t we have the pine trees from Bitterfrost frontier but reskinned to match the climate? Or some completely new replacement models for the current trees? They don’t look all that good by todays standarts).
It doesn’t help that the trees up in the north are taken straight from the Ascalonian area and the bark and moss around the base of its trunk doesn’t match the ground, making it seem even more like a mish-mash of old assets.

And if we’re already on the copying subject, something else relating to the environment that struck me as odd and took me out of the flow – the training area down south is a1-1 copy of the one from Claypool, same npcs, same mechanics, same dialoge – everything. Again It would’ve been nice to see some of those npcs react to what was happening around them – and those that DO react to whats happening are the same old npcs we’ve seen reused a hundred times – why make a crowd of duplicate npcs if there’s no real REASON to have them there in the first place other than take up space? They cheapen the whole experience and mood that you’re trying to portray with this new episode IMO, not to mention – the immersion, yes, that super important thing in storytelling thats at risk of breaking the moment a player sees the same npc four-five times in the same general area playing the same idle animation and same voice samples over and over again…I would’ve rather seen a fewer new npcs with new looks (like Noran! That guy is great!) , maybe a few new voice lines like those asura in Ember Bay instead of an army of dozens of clones walking about.

But to go back on track, and my point, I would love if the artists working on these episodes would take their time and really put the amount of love and effort we’ve seen in the other previous maps rather than getting something like this in future instalments.

Wouldn’t mind if we could get a dyeable version of it too, but yes, +1 for wizard hats.

An alternative would be CoF itself, the explorable has the front of the dungeon (the garden outside) relatively clear of npcs last time I checked. There’s also a couple of caves in Ascalon, one near the skillpoint would be a choice but it has hostile bats around that area.

The new hair styles are just way too big compared to the head, atleast on the males, not to mention its goofy looking, and the fact that the textures look low resolution even on highest settings doesn’t help one bit. (Don’t get me started on the whole mane-disappearing when a helm gets equipped and DOESN’T cover the neck part.)
Is it too much to ask more thinner and tamer hair styles for charr? Its as if Anet wants the charr turn in to a bigger confused mess in the game, more that they already are (both esthetic-wise and technically).

They do capture the atmosphere of the new zone rather well, and yea its a clear difference in the sound quality between the new and the old. Kinda excited for the rest of the new pieces to come !

And why is he dishing out free siege devourers ? Did the war on ascalonian ghosts become too stale?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Smodur_the_Unflinching

No but really, you could have generated a new model for the Champion Charr mechanic instead of using an already existing model that’s used for the Iron legion imperator, its like if you’d use and see Queen Jenna selling laurels or handing out commander tomes in each base.

I know its a small ’’issue’’ in an overall nice update, that alot of the players will overlook, but can we maybe get another, different charr mechanic model next time ? A new one please? It just feels like GW2 sank slightly deeper than it already was when it comes to re-using character models.