Hey. I noticed this hasn't been done yet so I took the liberty of summarising the recent developer AMA we had here on Reddit for Living Story Season 3 Episode 5: Flashpoint. Enjoy!
Living Story & Expansion
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ArenaJon
GaileGray
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angelmccoy
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Miscellaneous
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Living Story & Expansion
Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet 1
- Living Story Season 3 is 6 episodes long, with the expansion planned afterwards.
- They will roughly follow the 2~3 months release cadence of Living Story episodes for the new expansion, with some leeway.
- The expansion will be announced after Living Story Season 3 episode 6.
- Mike O'Brien urges people to be careful with spoilers/leaks and help spread the word for the game.
Anet-TylerB 1
- It is unlikely, but not impossible, for us to see the new Oakheart Essence mastery in other maps.
- Josh Foreman designed Draconis Mons' jumping puzzle.
- Tyler Bearce implemented checkpoints in the new jumping puzzle and the new mastery.
- They prefer to implement verticality in open world maps when it comes paired with masteries that can make use of that verticality.
PaulElla 1
- Hovering backpieces are there to remove clipping.
- Tail-clipping on legendary medium armour will be corrected.
- Dyeing issues on heavy legendary armour will be looked into.
- Ears/horns and fully-enclosed headpieces will always cause issues with each in the future due to the level of customisation players are given on the location of their ears/horns.
- The only method of properly circumventing this is having the tech to determine the ear/horn location/size/shape and adjust the headpiece accordingly.
- There are no plans to release another set of legendary armour in the future. They think one set is sufficient.
- Gen2 Legendary weapons will be released alongside episodes one-by-one (bleeding into Living Story Season 4).
- These weapons will not require the new expansion to be accessible.
- The original intention was to have sigil swapping on legendary weapons too, but, due to economy-related reasons, they're holding that off while they investigate potential risks.
- Juggernaut's armour-coating effect not working with legendary armour is a bug.
- They are going to look into allowing players to automatically unlock Experimental Envoy Armour skins of a certain weight if they obtain the Refined Envoy Armour skins of that weight.
anet_ianim
- There are no plans to adjust the balance of previous raids.
- Balance for raids and fractals is still an ongoing assessment.
- Spirit Quest Tonic was intended to be a cool collectible item and nothing more.
- Easter eggs for it are on the table but there aren't any currently in the game.
Anet_Ben 1
- They'll look into Fractal Avengers' possibly bugged stomping.
- The Anguished Tear of Alba potion was intended to be a temporary way to play in higher scales, not a permanent boost.
- Therefore, there are no plans for an endless version of the potion.
anet_ianim 1
- There are no plans to disable racial skills in any areas of the game where they are currently enabled.
- Take Root will see some adjustments in the near future.
ANet_Grant
- WvW Skirmishes may have rewards integrated with them.
- Rewards, including ascended gear rewards, are WvW team's priority.
- WvW changes will be implemented sometime this year.
- They are developing a system for competitive PvP modes inspired by Guild Wars 1's automated tournaments.
- There is an ongoing sigil update for PvP.
- There are plans to reinforce group sPvP.
- Other things are in the works that they can't give hints about.
ArenaJon
- Mac Client is in alpha testing. It's coming soon.
- An upcoming hotfix will fix issues with lighting.
- Koda's Blessing will be removed as a requirement for the story journal's Living Story Season 3 Episode 3 achievement icon.
GaileGray
- Xera can choose her own hair colour.
- Envoy armour is called in this way because the player channels the power of the envoys by creating the armour.
- Raids are part of the 'in-world' story of Tyria.
- Fractals are chunks of Tyria's history that can be experienced again and again.
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angelmccoy
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LinkHughes 2
Miscellaneous
ANET_Laevateinn 1
- Laevateinn is currently doing sidework on advanced interaction with in-game cats.
- They are hesitant to add an achievement for collecting home instance cats, since they don't want to put off achievement hunters who don't want cats running around their home.
- Introducing dogs to counter the Tyria cat invasion is a hot topic in ArenaNet HQ.
- Home instance node locations are specifically chosen to avoid overlapping and out-of-place locations.
- They are looking at potentially adding stat-swapping functionality (for a price of unbound magic, similar to Blood Rubies) to other Living World maps.
- They will look into adding the Turai Ossa and Mushroom Stomper minis in the game or gemstore.
GaileGray
- A good number of developers have played Guild Wars 1, along with a handful that developed it.
- Several developers talk about their inspiration behind developing MMORPGs.
- The developers, whom Mike congratulates, had a tough time getting the episode right and even went back to the studio to re-record and re-implement a scene.
- The new map, Draconis Mons, ended up much bigger than they originally envisioned.
- The name of the new map was originally Mantlerock Scald, but they eventually renamed it Draconis Mons, inspired by the largest volcano on Mars, Olympus Mons.
- The new mastery underwent various iterations.
- The first was a timed buff with unlimited charges.
- The second was a single charge with unlimited duration.
- They also tried a distance-based metric where you could fire a hook whenever you were near an Oakheart's Essence.
- Another hurdle was making character animations look smooth and polished. For instance, firing the hook while gliding used to mess with the glider's orientation.
- Testing on the new map took around 200 hours (double the usual amount).
- Chris Cleary talks about his job in game security.