Guild Chat - Episode 80
Guild Chat - Episode 80
- Title
- Siren's Reef
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Alex Kain
Tracey West
Travis Battig - Date
- January 18, 2019
- Official video
- YouTube
The 80th episode of Guild Chat aired on January 18, 2019. Join host Rubi Bayer along with Map Artist Tracey West, QA Embed Travis Battig, and Narrative Designer Alex Kain to learn all about the Siren’s Reef fractal on this episode of Guild Chat!
Transcription[edit]
Introduction [6:45][edit]
Rubi Bayer: Hi Tyria and happy Friday. Welcome to Guild Chat. I'm your host Rubi and today we're gonna be talking about the new Siren's Reef fractal. We've got a couple of devs here who worked on that. I know we've been talking about the story episode a lot over the past couple of weeks, but I want to make sure that we don't miss out on this awesome new fractal. So why don't we jump right in and I'll have you guys introduce yourselves, talk a little bit about what you do here at ArenaNet and what you did on this fractal.
Alex Kain: Oh, oh. Hi, I'm Alex Kain. I'm a narrative designer here at ArenaNet and I was the lead writer on the Siren's Reef Fractal.
Tracey West: I'm Tracey West and I was the environment artist for the fractal.
Travis Battig: I'm Travis Battig and I am the QA team for the well, I am the QA team for the fractal.
Rubi: You were, but you still are.
Travis Yes.
Rubi: It is a little bit of both. So a quick reminder as always. Our devs will be taking a couple of your questions at the end, so if you have questions, throw them in chat and we will see how many we have time to get to.
Alex: Cool.
Rubi: So, because you guys are feeling brave.
Alex: Yeah.
Rubi: So all right. Well, let's get started, because I'm actually kind of fascinated by the premise of this entire fractal. because Captain Weyandt. How did, how did we get from Weyandt's Revenge jumping puzzle to this should totally be a fractal?
Creative process [8:02][edit]
Alex: So, when we started the, the creative process for the,
Rubi: Yes.
Alex: for the fractal. Everyone on the team gets in a room and Jason Reynolds gets up in front of everyone and writes like you know on a whiteboard, you know
Rubi: just brainstorming, whiteboarding.
Alex: Yeah, you know, what, you know, just throw out some themes, throw out some ideas. What could that, you know, what's, the what's the tone of this fractal?
Rubi: Tone.
Alex: What's the theme of the fractal, what's the stuff that you want to see in this fractal and one of the very first things to go up on the whiteboard was just pirate ghosts and that was it. And there were some other things on the board too.
Rubi: Those don't matter.
Alex: But yeah, yeah pirate ghosts kind of stuck around and like a couple of things go on the board and then someone be like, you know back to pirate ghosts I really think it'd be cool we did this, like okay, okay. We do a little something over there.
Rubi: But we still have 38 minutes left in this meeting.
Alex: Yeah, it was one of those things. Yeah, it was like he was like an hour-long meeting, two minutes in is like all right, so pirate ghosts. Good like five minutes in and it's like I mean.
Tracey: I think we fleshed out a good chunk of it in just that one meeting.
Alex: Yeah.
Tracey: It kept being like, oh what if we did this for the setting?
Alex: And eventually yeah, I think it was like halfway through the meeting, where we like skipped to the next meeting. He's like okay, so all right and he just like circle pirate ghosts. I've created a new thing. I got, what stuff we could do with pirate ghosts and it was sort of, you know, it was one of the everyone latched onto it very quickly, yeah and then after that I, you know, I took that pirate ghost idea and I started brainstorming some ideas for how to tie it back into the lore.
Rubi: Sure.
Alex: I brought it to Bobby Stein who, you know, he reminded me that, you know, okay well, we normally we tie it into something.
Rubi: Sure.
Alex: It like, in the, in the lore of the Guild Wars universe because fractals take place in the past.
Rubi: Right.
Alex: So, what are various pirate related stories, that we could tell or we could tap into for this fractal and we have a lot of pirates.
Rubi: Yes.
Alex: In the Guild Wars universe that we could have that we could have dredged up.
Rubi: Is that a pun?
Alex: Not a very good one.
Rubi: Okay.
Alex: So.
Rubi: Carry on.
Alex: We, we, we looked at a bunch of different ideas for what we could do and ultimately I thought it would be very interesting, if the premise was okay, what if you have like a famous pirate from Guild Wars history, that is romanticized and you know everyone loves this pirate, but it turns out they were kind of a jerk, because they're a pirate and pirates, you know, have to be jerks to get stuff done.
Rubi: Sure.
Alex: And I thought about pirates that people have generally positive opinions about.
Rubi: Yeah.
Alex: in the Guild Wars universe and Captain Weyandt and his much-loved jumping puzzle came to mind. And that was, that, that was sort of the genesis of that idea.
Rubi: That is, I love that this came together like, in the first two, this whole idea spawned in the first two minutes of a meeting. I appreciate so much that you committed to brainstorming anyway,
Tracey: We tried.
Rubi: Just be sure. Is this the direction we want to go?
Alex: Yeah.
Tracey: Yeah.
Rubi: And what you got like halfway through, before everybody's like let's stop this farce brainstorming.
Alex: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, like Jason is very good at sussing out ideas from the room. If someone says anything, he'll like, oh that's a good, that's a good word. Let's put that word on the board and mindmap it a little bit.
Rubi: Sure.
Alex: Are there any ideas for that, but, you know, it was like okay so pirate ghosts, it's great um temple traps, great Indiana Jones, cool like all this stuff ended up like, oh wow all this sort of informs pirate ghosts, maybe we should just do pirate ghosts. But yeah it was, it was a good meeting in that we all determined very quickly that we wanted to do something with pirate ghosts.
Rubi: Fantastic and we have pirate ghosts. I love the one that you picked so Weyandt's background so we got, we got a little bit of his history.
Alex: Mhm yeah, he, uh you know, he had some tall tales that he would tell you in in the jumping puzzle.
Rubi: I love them.
Alex: Yeah, he, so yeah, the original Captain Weyandt played by the incredible George Coe who sadly, you know, he's sadly no longer with us.
Rubi: No longer with us.
Alex: But it's the, it's the most piratey of pirates that you've ever seen, you know, he's talking to like my mommy wives and
Rubi: Yes!
Alex: My treasures, you know, really great.
Rubi: That was really good by the way.
Alex: Thank you and you know, we loved it and everyone loves it and so we wanted to tap into, tap into that. Like he has all these crazy adventures. What was the first Captain Weyandt adventure? it was probably him. Spoiler alert!
Rubi: Yeah, hey guys, by the way my intent is like two weeks.
Alex: Yeah ,there is a statute of limitation but two weeks is still like. People are still kind of playing it, when I make sure they don't get spoiled on it. I like Captain Weyandt murdering the captain of his ship, when he's dead, you know that he serves as a cabin boy on and stealing that ship and then forcing the player crew into becoming his new pirate crew.
Rubi: And well, we'll talk about Dessa here in just a little bit, but I do like I, I kind of went on that journey with her at the beginning, like oh he's got the wrong berries. It's probably an accident.
Alex: Oh yeah.
Rubi: I was like, oh he didn't mean to.
Alex: Yeah, he absolutely did.
Rubi: So I would you go ahead tell us a little bit more about history, about what we found out in this fractal.
Alex: Yeah, so we wanted to explore the idea of the fractals, you know, Dessa using the fractals to explore history in new and interesting ways.
Rubi: Yeah.
Alex: She's introduced as a fan of Captain Weyandt. She read all his stories write all his books, but very similarly to real world, real world you know Golden Age of piracy pirates a lot of that is romanticized.
Rubi: Yeah.
Alex: You know, all of the grand adventures that he had started off with him kind of, you know, in a jerkish manner killing his captain, so she sees this sort of happening over the course of the fractal. Captain Weyandt or at that point cabin boy Weyandt is, uh you know, he, he wants to, he wants to help. He sees an opportunity and he takes it in classic pirate fashion.
Rubi: Sure.
Alex: He leads a one person coup on on the crew and kills the weakened captain and literally takes his hat and puts it on his head and then meets you at the end of the fractal, telling you like, oh you Captain Strohm isn't gonna be able to make it, but with his dying words he said Weyandt you will be the captain now and dead in like, yeah you've got Desa sort of in your ear, like that's not what happened. He actually murdered him. Don't believe him.
Rubi: Poor Dessa, I love, I like her so much and I love that she is just aghast that this is happening.
Alex: Yeah, she, it's a little, you know ,she, she's a scientist, you know. She probably should have had some idea that Weyandt's story didn't really kick off in the most romantic of ways, but seeing it firsthand I really feel like is, is an interesting way to tell that story. To actually see your hero, you know, commit these, these horrible, these horrible acts. It really, you know, it gives her a new perspective on how fractals work and how they can be used for the betterment of, you know, of historical recording.
Rubi: Yeah.
Alex: It was cool. It was a cool idea and I'm glad we got to explore it in the story. We got to reintroduce Captain Weyandt as a new character. This is like young captain Weyandt with a very questionable mustache, you know.
Rubi: I didn't say that many bad things about the mustache.
Alex: Well.
Rubi: I said, yes it is a questionable mustache.
Alex: He is at that point, you know, he's trying new things, you know. Like he wants to grow the pirate beard out a little bit, but you know still got a, yeah, still got to get there. It takes time it's a commitment, you know.
Rubi: Well, that's what we were talking about that yesterday that's a. Tracey you're saying he's like, he's just, he's just can't quite grow.
Tracey: He is at that teenage phase where you know they think that is a kinda cool that they can like grow it in, but it is not quite there yet.
Alex: Yeah.
Tracey: So.
Alex: Yeah.
Rubi: I appreciate the attention to detail.
Alex: That was me six months ago. So
Rubi: Really?
Alex: Yeah, so yeah.
Rubi: Can you do that again. I think I missed it.
Alex: Oh sorry. Can't make it happen. Not on cue anyway
Rubi: Well, so talking about Dessa.
Alex: um
Rubi: I appreciate, I appreciate her deromanticizing of her heroes. It's a word now, but I really like the way that we had her watching Weyandt on her monitor, because the player is doing the fractal, where we're going through and we're taking care of this treasure and we're moving things around, but you still want us to see Weyandt villain's journey.
Alex: Yeah and that was something that we explored a little bit. Like, we had this idea of what we wanted to do with Weyandt. We wanted to tell this story with him, but you know constantly we're thinking about, like okay well you know we, we don't necessarily want Weyandt with you all the time.
Rubi: Sure.
Alex: NPCs kind of like slow you down a little bit, you know unless unless you design it a certain way. And we were already making really good progress on how the fractal was going to play and so we pitched this idea that Weyandt was going to have his sort of inverse hero's journey off camera. And it's sort of like, Dessa is watching two television channels on a monitor and she's got you on one and she's got Weyandt on the other. She's like channel flipping between the two you know and she's got your, a really cool awesome heroic pirate fractal story going on here and then she's got this really, you know eye-opening, you know dramatic thing, you know like. Oh no, don't feed of the berries. The berries are poisonous thing happening over here and that's a, you know, really is kind of powerless to you know to manipulate that and she's sort of telling you. It's you know, the way I sort of wrote it was, it's like, it's like you've got a friend watching a television show and they're telling you all like all the stuff that's happening and that I think worked out pretty well. You got a pretty good idea of what Weyandt was doing. You didn't necessarily need to see him do it and then when he showed up at the end and he tells you, you know, oh the captain told me with his last words that I'm in control I'm in command. Having Dessa be able to say like no, I watched that episode. I know that you've betrayed so-and-so, was a lot of fun.
Rubi: That's awesome.
Alex: So I think it, I think it worked out in the end. I think it worked out okay.
Rubi: I feel like it did. So were there other considerations for communicating what was going on with Weyandt or was this: okay this is clearly how it's going to go down.
Alex: We talked a little bit about how we wanted to present it, but at the end of the day like, you know, like would you hear Weyandt speak or anything like that. At the end of the day we thought it was actually more interesting if, if you're getting an interpretation of what's going on.
Rubi: For sure.
Alex: You're getting like the third hand telephone style. Like alright, I'm watching this thing and I'm trying to explain what I'm seeing, but I'm also like reinterpreting it through what I think he's actually doing. So in the beginning, you know, you get that bit with the berries.
Rubi: Yeah.
Alex: And you know it's like oh well, it's a common mistake like those berries look the same. I didn't.
Rubi: I could see that.
Alex: Yeah, but then it did you know but then as time goes on it's like, yeah so he's just trying to murder him now. We thought that would be more interesting approach at the end of the day.
Time stamp: 19:12
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yeah that I can't actually make any more excuses for this it's not happening though so well I really I really feel like that turned out well and I feel like the response to that part has been pretty good I'm glad I'm really not it was it was weird and different and we haven't really tried to much stuff like it before so I'm glad people seem to seem to like it you know well let's talk about a little bit about the fractal itself and the map because once I took out the dinosaurs at the beginning that was a place that I just wanted to hang out it was so beautiful oh good well I mean part of the brainstorming thing too is that we have the option of kind of going wherever we want and you know we kind of got a sense both from internal artists and playerbase that hey maybe something that isn't covered in sand maybe something that isn't covered in brand would be nice to go to so you know it's kind of a perfect tropical vacation kind of spot and so especially when you first land in the fractal we really wanted to play up the you know it extreme extreme kind of cliched yes I cliches vibe of the tropical island you know we even made sure to get the little sharks in there kind of in the distance circling you know you have to have like but then yeah we got into it and then I started working on the maze and and Jeff Webber our prop artist for this map kind of saw me sticking in gargoyles and he was like you know hold the phone I've got you and then and then you know a few days later we all kind of turned around and he had this amazing you know face that would like open its jaw and he had all these weird extra guard girls that were like vomiting vibe and all these like oddball things and and it worked out great because even at the time we we weren't we didn't really want to specify you know what race or whatever these this maids kind of had an association with we want to kind of leave it like a mystery kind of deal which is historically a problem because most of our props have a specific you know race or location there are metaphor so you know I was I was staring down it you know the great wall prompt set or like the Dwarven Rio ruins and I was like uh you know our player base could probably even identify it right so like you know what are either of these things doing on a tropical island so I felt like Jeff's kind of props it kind of helped sell that you know it was really sure like this mystery of you know who created cool yeah who created this kind of thing that you're running through and it's yeah one of the other funny things to was it you know the progression of just the time when you're in there because you wanted to start happy and unassuming which kind of tied in with the story right like you thought oh this is going to be a fun little jaunt in the music sold it true this will be a fun little jaunt on it it's super I'm gonna get super dark by the time you know dramatic sunset and all that but I hadn't quite thought it through because I'd had several different environments zones along the way you know you passed through the maze and it gets dark and and dreary and everything else and so the the initial area was disconnected from the file area and then I realized we didn't actually shut any doors so if your next layer is backtrack they'd essentially be going backwards in time and so I had to frantically kind of ping elion and be like can we script this environment zone to change so I can have a sunset back at the start - for the Wanderers like me rework the back half just to make sure that and work showing the time passing with the Sun and accounting for that potential backtrack that was that was like a whole new thing to try to figure out yeah normally if we do any kind of time like that like in our in our open world maps you know we have a day and a night we kind of just do those separately and then it's all kind of handled by the engine like natural time transition and or you know thinking through it I would have just made it all one's own and then just had a life script it you know that oh they've reached the Pirates go ahead and have a sunset right but as you said we don't normally do it yeah this is like that so I hadn't really thought about it because any time that we have a time transition it's almost always handled just kind of by the engine yeah we very rarely do like plot weather yeah well and if we do weather changes it's usually on that day or night cycle so it's it's not something that or or that you would expect players to reliably see you know within a 15 minute window which is kind of what most fractals are kind of geared around you know like the 10-15 minutes so like making sure that they'd be able to see that light transition you know even if they're playing it yeah three or whatever something that I actually wanted to point to on that this speaks back to a Gill chat that we had a couple weeks back where we talked about one of the things that we do on Guild Wars 2 is constantly trying to make it better see what can we do that's new what can we do that's a little bit better how can we make this cooler and that's just it's a good example of all right we wanted we want to do this thing and we want to account for the cool environment effects that we want how come we make that work and the explorers that's what I tend to do in the game is you know all the people who run around on the edge of the map and see how high they can fly or where the you know if there's any caves hidden anywhere and Tracy's your people I'm your people and progressing Lee so because I have the two sides of me I have I have my player side who's like wouldn't it be cool if and then my internal artist side who's like an invisible wall to like block the edge of a map from somebody like my player self is screaming I like what I want to see you know the pretty clouds in the distance and then my other side it's like yeah but I don't want to put back facing on all those we have waterfall is there a waterfall on the map somewhere this one I don't know I'm notorious for putting in waterfalls but I don't believe so you seem like the kind of the kind of artist who would put caves behind waterfalls that's well I know I have of mine I am notorious for it for two things that sometimes drive people nuts waterfalls and giant spiral staircases okay and and that's why you saw a lot of that in the previous raid so did you work on ChromeOS library it's so beautiful it's alright even well even the sand falls Oh in the raid of course the Mithraic gambit also had a lot of waterfalls and this but the curved staircases leading up to that forage yeah your secret's out well I have another hallmark too that a few people know I tend to hide quail so there's a little tiny quail prop that designers for some reason designers can't use it I don't know why like it's not hooked up as an actual creature so it can't be used as just in an ambient right now but it has all the regular you know animation loops that you'd expect it's like you know little swinging boy and you know various artists have things that they do kind of say hey you know I spend a significant portion of time on this map and so you find it yeah I don't put them all in doesn't quite know matically make sense I couldn't be bothered to make a ghost quail for the domain of the lost piece of content I work on the lore revocations are you insane so but what this tells me you said it's not an ambien and that means it can't be killed correct so it's immortal quail yeah yeah and I know it does drive some players nuts or like why do you know these cranes why did these cats not have you know the little health indicators why can't I interact with them and that's because the environment artists put them in the designers so that they're essentially props that just happened to move I love it and it's kind of easier in a way except we know then that they're not gonna pass some weird way because especially if a lot of the ambient creatures you know they have little loose walking paths and loops and stuff and mainly when we we put something in there it's because we don't want it to like walk off a ledge or something like we tend to do them kind of you know in corners like the cats like well we'll put them on like a little rug or something we don't necessarily want like a like a real cat doesn't want to leave the yeah that's awesome I wouldn't well loop back to this later about things that are hidden in the mill yeah yes there's more thing a better hidden I do want to talk about you mentioned like Indiana Jones and all of these traps and everything and I want to talk about those because those were mostly fun and you guys were kind of laughing at me yesterday because when I played the dis fractal I went in and I was like okay I don't have a lot of time I will just solo this really quickly so that was that was interesting but I learned a lot from you about how exactly I was supposed to move this treasure around yeah we really wanted to make sure the players got a sense of community working with each other or teamwork to get through the fractal so we put in two very important mechanics to make sure that players are be able to do this the first one that you'll encounter is of course the the spectra or the swivel mounted spectral artillery or ghost and that was that's part of the the idea that some players need to really sometimes players get really annoyed when we take their skills away from them they like to be able to play with their skills their builds absolutely thing wrong with that um we obviously to play with our skills at our builds but sometimes it's fun to add in a little mechanic that needs special handling so in this case like for instance for the skeleton boss you need two men the ghost cannon to destroy the minds that he place on the ground while the other members of your team deal with the boss itself and then the other way we did that is with the treasure maze we created a game of hot potato where you would throw the chest from person to person and if you catch it you get a buff that actually allows you to move faster for a little bit longer so that way we could encourage players to want to toss and catch between themselves for a smoother and faster fractal experience that's awesome and there are there are similar sufficient ways you can do it yes yes and that was exactly that was devastating I had it was a good time I would throw it and then like run after it and well they're still 16 seconds left whatever I'll pick it up authority again oh look now I have another layer I mean like the designers for like baseball you know like like are one person like alright I'm gonna try this myself like I kind of need more people out there to make this work okay you know what I have some fun yes so yeah you can theoretically I don't personally recommend it yeah no yeah there's a lot of that teamwork a lot of those teamwork mechanics I I think the designers did a fantastic job of encouraging players to pass it between each other to between one another encouraging larger groups by having the cap on how many times you could catch the thing there's oh yeah so I I can't exactly remember how that works but it does it's there and it does something Travis can tell us so basically every time you catch it it will apply agony to you if you're on the higher levels and it will also do a little bit of damage to you except the third time you catch it after you catch it the third time it applies several stacks of agony to you and downs you instantly so you could only catch it you can catch it about three times if you have the right a guinea resistance but if you try to catch it any more than that you die instantly it's a very specific pirate curse yes it's very mechanically fair so that's actually a question I had how did you figure out okay let's make this challenging let's encourage the group interaction that we want to encourage without making this completely maddening just a fine line to walk yes it was a very fine line to walk yes please we would priests always a good number designers like to design around three it's a good number so one three and five those are good numbers ten also a good number stick around there so do you design numbers well then I don't just random members no no like design like design e numbers you know one of something again a three of something in a five of something you can attend of something but nothing else what you guys are going to the hundred your house oh so so yeah we basically did a bunch of play tests where we would just go in as players would play through it and toss it and see like how well we could get it through it we didn't have an internal testing group that kind of put a shame because they could do it like that they just zip right through tossing to one another five people just write down a line start the next one and go and you know it took us anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes just to clear the maze we'd always spawn all of that we'd toss them into places where the ads would catch it and start running it back to the spot you do that if they catch it curiosity about the play just group that I want to know later who that is yeah particularly yeah particularly great Jeff Jeff will run some weird like healer build that is my Hollow Smith is hits things and dies a lot I mean my neck grows all right but it usually means that I'm the one who gets to mop up all of the ads or guilt I turned into we're really bad all right so that's kind of how just running through it Aton yeah and ignoring the group that did it superfast yeah like the end the in early versions of the design the end siege on the on the captain o'hara captain ship originally we had its we had both sides so instead of defending first from the cell and then from the north and then just holding out you had to get a treasure from the south but both the North and the South were attacking you and then you had to go to the north but the north and south were attacking you and then you had to go get a treasure from the west but the north and south and west were attacking there were any made sense there were four swivel mounted artillery too and then one chest so you would have four people defending the cannon and the chest it does make sense I'm just like it sounds like it hurts I do want to note you mentioned the ads and I actually had fun maybe I'm just weird but I actually had fun dodging those little eyes on the floor yeah they've got um there's there's a it's pulsing so you can if you're really good at your time you can kind of click the edge of one and not set it off which feels really good cuz you feel very stealthy about it really um but the pulse is really short so like if you try to like walk like you know more than up this is like a dodging thing yeah if you if you try to walk like a cross say a third of it no you're gonna set that off that's fair and then you have to kill things yes all right well we have some questions I want to run down the line first and have you guys talk a little bit about what was your absolute favorite thing about bringing this fractal to life oh gosh I really loved writing Desa in a way where she's really uncomfortable with like the like she knows that it that like pirate ghosts are kind of an absurd like pirate curses or kind of an absurd thing so a lot of her dialogue is her trying to recontextualize various pirate tropes so you know pirate curse she's not comfortable calling it a pirate curse that's not a very scientific thing what if it was a persistent a negative persistent magical aura instead that was fantastic I love that yeah same with like swivel mounted spectral artillery and then she tries to say he's like guys ghost cannons we call him ghost cannons fine fire the ghost cannons and you know just the whole story is her kind of like loosening up a little bit about all this stuff over there and that was bringing that see like watching that go through the process and then having it recorded and listening to the actual voice acting was awesome so that was that was definitely one of my favorite parts it's fun every time I hear swivel mounted spectral artillery I hear her in my head yelling ghost cannons she's just done how about you Tracy well for me it was almost a break because a lot of the things I'd been working on were just enormous building like constructs it's like as you process like I I did the creepers library and then I was doing like what what does a mystic Forge look like you know it's like this huge kind of you know incredibly unique but almost big old monolithic buildings yeah there are monolithic buildings and there are things that had to be almost like over the top in how amazing they were just because there are locations that people either had been really waiting desperately to see or they were literally like of godly proportions you know to be told oh just make a fun tropical island was like oh yes okay no I don't have to come up with something like brand-new you know I can use fun references but I think from development my personal favorite thing was we were doing play tests and poor Anthony yes designers I don't think had encountered a whole lot of pocket Raptors before and he made the erroneous move of going ahead alone I just got swarmed it was a group just went down instantly you know he wasn't prepared for the danger ahead you know and and so I proceeded in horrible you know fashion his you told friend to needle him for you know the neck the fall all the following play tests you know Oh watch out for the puck or after with Anthony they're there they're there and and so I went ahead you know when it finally went live and gave him the little pocket Raptor meanie all this pocket Raptor trouble but I gave them a fair Madame everyone ever weight has pocket Raptor bad pocket after traumas so for all of you people that would rather fight 50 duck sized horses remember pocket that's why I'm kind of glad too that we even the trailer I think there was a little part where maze mouth open in the little pocket Raptors came out and there's a little nest in there there's little nests along kind of what I like to refer to as Pocket Raptor Ally justify their presence I mean I but I'm also a necromancer they've never been a huge threat super cute and I love their squeaks I love them but you also good to know that they were there before you all right so I have a secondary question for you is there anything else hidden on the map there is something I was almost wondering of wooden potatoes that find it because I wanted to see like his take I want to see his take on what it would imply has anybody found it yet I you know I don't know I didn't I didn't they're keeping it to themselves if they found nobody nobody pinged me if they were watching you know tea pot or or any of our regulars and said oh oh they looked in the right spot okay so tell us what it is they're the kharka hatchling hiding somewhere in that mass and you know I had to actually go ahead and ask our Lord folks if it was okay you know that you know fractals can always kind of imply differences anyway it's a matter of perspective yeah and let in the storyline you know could this could just be one one version but I thought it was kind of funny to imply that hey maybe way and it was you know part of a Kirk invasion problem you know it's like his fault that they traveled off this island or wherever not the definitive source but I told you well and I guess in general kind of a hidden thing to is look at your mini-map because yeah that's right the shape of the island shape of the eye oh yeah I had a lot of fun with it because we we weren't necessarily gonna use a whole lot of space like as soon as you go into me it's actually pretty compact and so it's kind of like hey what what could I do with the rest check your mini-map you see if it were suppose anything yep well how about you Travis uh I have to say that probably my favorite thing about this was how quick it was to test are the fractals designer Eli the fractal lead he did an amazing job with the first pass of this everything worked really nicely together there weren't a whole lot of issues as far as like it was all pretty simple scripting and we ran into a couple of issues where you could like duplicate chests or the curse wouldn't be removed and then of course there was the time when if more than one person was standing inside the mines for the skeleton bossed the start it would crash the entire fractal and everyone that was in it so I mean other than those I mean those were pretty simple that was about all that we were really ran into as far as issues which was really good because I was testing before I cam but at the time as well so that's awesome so well do you guys want to grab a couple questions see where in the world is sirens reef close to or mikuma we don't specify but it's a tropical island and it's out there somewhere it's a real place we don't know when and where this story takes place other than cuz I mean when you first meet captain way and he's a ghost already so he's been dead for a while yeah but but yeah that's I think believe it open that's part of the reason of kind of changing up even like the maze architecture just to leave it kind of wherever you want it to be yeah okay the real location is in your heart yeah yeah I see a question that I had to go for it which one that first one is Arabella crow related to the pirate Oracle Alsatian Alice out alas Tia ah I keep wanting to say do you want to pronounce TAS Elisha elasti a crow from the human personal story which she always intended to be the final boss of the fractal or were there other candidates for that role so hey funny development story dansant answered a question uh no not related but the original character's name was Arabella Craven and because because for some reason in my head I'd forgotten that Craven meant cowardly it was like I was like Craven that's a cool pirate name and then like fit like it was actually like it I put it in and then we did like a quick play test and then Mike Z actually was like you do realize that Craven is not a great pirate name right was like darn he's absolutely right yeah everyone kind of like turned to me was like like like shrugs like hey you know I'm just the writer on this thing yes exactly so ultimately you know I I sort of looked at it and did a little like just word association like okay so so it was originally Craven and then I was like Oh Raven let's find a different like like spooky and then that became crow and you know so yeah Arab arabela crow it seemed like a good pirate name so like it yeah but no not really but no not related happy coincidence is all right cool let me see are you guys working on a series of fractals that have an overarching story like shattered chaos and nightmare obviously we're not in the habit of talking about future content but you know the last fractal I worked on was the deep stone fractal and that is not lore related necessarily 2v2 the sirens refract 'el which is not related to the myth or a Gambia raid so yeah these are kind of stand-alone stories that explore parts of the Guild Wars universe that we I've wanted to explore and that's that's really it cool I don't racy what's that top one there so this is the yeah the question is in the maze whenever they look down from the top it gets all black and they can't see anything that sounds it'll it is kind of intentional actually because if you look up when you're on the ground you can see it's all kind of smoky oh yeah go into like some enclosed areas and they've been enclosed for a while yeah I mean I don't like that you can't that it completely blinds you zoom your camera in a little bit yet I definitely had scripted that environment zone to kind of get smokier and darker as you got up towards the ceiling just to kind of keep that kind of enclosed almost claustrophobic feel while you're in there yeah so interesting so yes no so I can go ahead and feel the the future fractals question kind of okay I'm very interested you can't prep for questions that's why they're so okay so one person was asking it that they're grateful for new fractals but they want to know if they'll ever get old reworks of old fractals and I can say that we have done reworks of old fact isles in the past and i cannot not say that we won't do them in the future [Laughter] instability is we went out with this so I can't say that we won't and I can't say that we will the team is always looking at like how do we improve you know what we have to so if you know if we feel like something isn't working for players you know will definitely be bringing it up and be like okay is there a way you know we can fit this into our timeline you know if there's a pain point sure any sense so I can say do you have other any other historical fractals that your work and I suppose I'll dovetail this into the the next question which is can we ever find the real Desa and Ark that's sort of I'm gonna wrap this up in two we don't like talking about unreleased future stuff spoiling stuff all fractals technically yes strange a strange place we like to use fractals as a tool to explore areas of Tyria that we might not normally explore in the main series content so that said we're not necessarily approaching these things from you know you know let's let's let's do a historical fractal it's like what's a cool thing that we haven't done yet yeah so that's the general sort of mindset that we're in when we do these things that's fair all right I think we we actually got anything questions yeah if there are any more questions please I did like I like seeing when people are interested in Desa because I have like I have like this little affection and sympathy for her ever since that one where she tried to leave yeah back and just broke my heart yeah so now I'm just like I want to take care of her and I want her to be happy and content yeah has been worked on both rates and fractals I take it always takes me a second to parse Glenna and Desa yes I was thinking the same thing yeah because they both have the double letter and I keep them like like like oh yeah it's the one like the one in the fractals is the one what is this or with the double letters wait so Glenna she's she's the crabby one she's the sassy one yes yeah yes and Desa is very very much the more down-to-earth you know let's get this done very scientifically minded yeah yeah yeah so they're they're both very fun to write in their own way you know it's a very different character and I very much enjoyed writing for both of them yeah I like them all right on that note I will tell you all thank you very much for coming to talk about sirens reef thank you this is this has been a really fun fractal I am I'm liking this one a lot that's been a good time so and I will tell you all thank you very much for spending some time with us and talking with us about sirens reef and asking some really good questions yeah those were great questions thank you all yeah thank you all we will see you next Friday bye-bye
