GW2 Guild Chat Stronghold of the Faithful livestream notes.
Developers Present
Raid Story Accessibility
Developers Present
- Bobby Stein – Narrative Lead (Raids)
- Teddy Nguyen – Game Designer (Raids) – Worked on Twisted Castle Maze
- Jason Reynlolds – Game Designer (Raids)
- For the Phoenix Glider sound effect they have the audio guy swinging a torch tied on a rope.
Raid Story Accessibility
- Raids don’t and will never gate main story progress. We are also sensitive to players wanting to experience the story so that is where cleared instance exploration comes in.
- Bobby Steins have being in a few cleared instances and given out tours.
- If there is any story in the raid that will be continued elsewhere, we will make sure players are brought up to speed.
- We don’t want to gate key stories behind a raid but at the same time we want to tell an interesting story so it is a dedicate balance.
- The NPC at start of Wing 3 has a journal that records the events of previous wings and she has more to say once you beat the Twisted Castle maze.
- Used as a breather for players after beating the first boss.
- There is a lot of stuff on the side to explore the story. There is also an achievement in there if you find a way to stick it to the White Mantle. There is a statue in there you can destroy for an achievement.
- Devs are talking about watching streams and seeing people not paying attention to some of the big events and side stuff that they have designed (busy cleaning their inventory).
- Glenna was named after the grandmother of a family member of one of the developers.
- There is a madness meter that creeps up, it slowly builds up as you navigate through the maze. As madness builds up, you get debilitating effects – cripple, torment and talking to yourself. Eventually it builds up to a fear which can really bad in the maze. At 99 stacks you get a heart attack and die instantly.
- You can interact with the fountains if you have the mastery to remove some of the madness stacks.
- Xera is a powerful Mesmers and Mesmers are all about tricking you. You are going mad because Xera is tricking you with this maze.
- Teddy was watching multiple streams on release day and would crackle when people fall off the fake floors.
- Haunting Statues are constantly being referenced as Weeping Angels. The devs have not watched Dr.Who before designing the Twisted Castle. They used to just kill you when they touch you but Teddy saw an episode in Dr.Who where the Weeping Angels sent you back in time and changed it to send you back to the start of the maze.
- All 3 raid wings are have bosses, NPC and items that reference back to people on the Arenanet design team.
- At one point the design team talked about randomizing where the portals take you but they decided to not do it as they want players to feel mastery over the place as they get familiar with it.
- For the fake floors the fake floors shimmer and you can use your ground target skills to see where the fake floor is as the skill circle won’t drop on fake floors.
- Xera’s old name was Zera
- Xera is a prop boss – basically a huge boss. All the world bosses are prop bosses. When you fighting a prop boss, it sucks that you are just chirping at their toenails and they are dead. Instead, we made it so you had to bring the prop boss down to her size by destroying the bloodstones.