Guild Chat - Episode 94
Guild Chat - Episode 94
- Title
- "Whisper in the Dark" Preview
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Justin Reilly
Clayton Kisko - Date
- November 15, 2019
- Official video
- YouTube
The 94th episode of Guild Chat aired on November 15, 2019. Rubi invites Justin and Clayton as they give a preview of Whisper in the Dark.
Summary
Transcription
Whisper in the Dark trailer (4:50)
"Almorra Soulkeeper": Commander, I need your help here at Jora's Keep.
Braham Eirsson: The gate is open.
Marjory Delaqua: And no one here to greet us.
Braham Eirsson: No, no. What happened? We need to fix this.
Jormag: They'll betray you.
Pact Commander: That voice, the one in the back of my head.
Braham Eirsson: You hear it too, don't you.
Jormag: You can't trust them. I can protect you.
Introductions (6:31)
Rubi Bayer: Oh no, my lipstick. Hi Tyria, happy Friday and welcome to Guild Chat. Thanks for coming in and spending some time with us. I'm your host Rubi and today we are going to give you a little preview of Whisper in the Dark. We are four days away from release and I have a couple of guys here who are working on Whisper in the Dark. I'll let you guys introduce yourselves. Just let us know what your name is, what you do here at ArenaNet and what you are working on for this episode.
Justin Reilly: I'm Justin Reilly. I'm team lead on the Encounters Design Team. We built the strike mission bosses for this episode.
Rubi: Awesome.
Clayton Kisko: Hi, I'm Clayton Kisko. I'm a team lead and senior game designer here at ArenaNet for episode one. And yeah! We...
Rubi: Yeah! Good show, good show!
Clayton: We made episode one! And we're working with these guys over here to make really cool, sweet bosses! So...
Rubi: Awesome. Justin, this is your first time on Guild Chat so thank you for taking some time and joining us.
Justin: You're welcome.
Rubi: I super appreciate it. So we're going to chat for a little while and if you have questions at the end of the episode, just drop them in chat and we'll try to answer as many as we have time to get to, right? Alright, so- And Clayton, thank you for joining again.
Clayton: Always. Always a pleasure.
Rubi: Alright, so let's just kind of run through what's new for this episode. We're not going to spoil everything, but we're going to give you a little look at what to expect. Justin, why don't we start with strike missions? And talk a little bit about what's new and what's coming.
Strike Missions (8:07)
Justin: So for this episode we have three strike mission bosses as opposed to the one that was in episode zero. They're on a rotating weekly schedule. Clayton can talk a little more about that if you want to, now or whenever.
Clayton: Yeah! Every Monday at 4:30pm I believe for Pacific Time? What is that? UTC 8 time is something like 23:30. So go ahead, go on like Google and hit UTC converter for whatever that means for you. But that will be the weekly reset. So yeah.
Rubi: So strike missions, you've kinda ramped up the difficulty a little bit on these, right?
Justin: Yep. We're trying to again use these as a stepping stone into more difficult group content for people that may not have engaged with that previously. So after the first one, you know, we kinda put it out there to gauge interest and, you know, see what players' comfort with that was. We got some feedback that it "could be harder", "give us more". So we're definitely trying ramp that up, add in some more mechanics to sort of teach the kind of things you might encounter in raids or higher level fractals, but still be accessible for a general audience.
Rubi: Okay. So we've got three strike mission bosses coming. Which one do you want to start with? Let's talk about them.
Justin: We'll go ahead and talk about them in the order that you'll see them. So the first one is the Fallen Voice and Claw. It's two kodan. I think you could see them a little bit in the trailer for just a second. So this is two bosses that you fight at the same time. I wish we could show a little bit more video of this cause it's really cool. Our animator, Brian, did a lot of great work on this. And so we sat down to kind of brainstorm the fight. We have two bosses at the same time and we wanted to find ways to make that more interesting and make it feel like it was really you're fighting two of them, who are fighting against you together, than just there's two in there at the same time.
Rubi: Oh, yay!
Justin: So one of the ideas, kind of the genesis of the whole thing, was Brian said, "I wanna see them like John Wick, like back to back with the guns!" And so we kind of built everything around that idea, where they'll periodically do these team up attacks where they kind of combo together and one of them actually is the stand back to back and attack opposite and do some cool flips and really neat animations in that, so...
Clayton: In the trailer, you can see polar bears jumping over each other, so it's awesome. Or kodan, rather. You know they're polar bears.
Justin: So one of the things we were trying to do with strike mission boss fights in general is, apart from just having interesting mechanics and making it a cool fight, is making it very visually interesting. Find new ways to push the art, make you feel more exciting that way.
Rubi: Yeah. Okay, so and this is the first one that's going to come up in the weekly rotation, so...
Justin: Right.
Rubi: You guys can see that coming up on Tuesday.
Clayton: Yeah. At the release, yeah.
Justin: Yes.
Rubi: Yes, it's Tuesday! It's so close to Tuesday.
Justin: Is it? Okay.
Clayton: It's coming up quick! And another thing like, I don't know if you mentioned it, was the AoE denial, I think, like some of those mechanics also focused on that you added in. Which is great, right? It will teach, in a very friendly way I think, relatively speaking to raids-
Rubi: "Friendly"!
Clayton: Don't stand in the fire? Don't stand in the fire?
Justin: Right. Don't stand in the lava. Don't stand in the lava.
Clayton: Yeah, yeah.
Rubi: Yes. If this was in question: do not, please, don't stand in the red. If you're standing in the red, you're not doing a good job.
Clayton: Exactly.
Rubi: Alright, so who's coming up after that?
Justin: After that is the Fraenir of Jormag. I don't want to spoil too much about the character. It's someone you'll encounter in the story.
Rubi: And he's gonna hurt you?
Justin: And he's gonna hurt you.
Clayton: Yeah.
Justin: So he's kind of in a shaman- Again, we wanted to get away from the idea of like, "Okay, it's a shaman so it's gonna be a caster guy with a staff." So this guy actually has daggers and fights a little bit more engaged that way than kinda just standing back and casting spells. You've seen the Ice Construct from the prologue episode. There was a strike mission boss at the end of that. This is the character that's actually controlling that, summoning that. So that guy makes a special guest appearance in this strike mission as well, but we've put a little twist on it, mechanically and again visually, to try and make it more exciting and something.
Rubi: Okay.
Justin: People will be excited when they see the reveal.
Rubi: I'm looking forward to it. With no small amount of fear, but that's okay. I feel like that's kind of what you were going for?
Justin: Yeah.
Rubi: Alright. And then the third one we've been talking about for awhile now. Do not pet the Boneskinner.
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Note: The text below hasn't yet been converted from raw subtitle text into pretty print like above. https://youtu.be/o9VzCkmBENs?t=752 |
Yeah, the man skinner stop you're gonna lose an arm What can you tell us about the bone skinner? So the bone skinner is a totally new creature for this episode. It's kind of mysterious and scary It shows up in the open world - a little bit and we have this strike mission version. It was bigger batter boneskinner Why didn't we call it that bigger batter bones? Triple B, yeah. So this is a fight again in trying to get people used to instance group content We're trying to introduce kind of like mechanics to the fight that you have to engage with but not at a level That you'd see in raids where it's kind of a pass fail where if you don't Successfully engage with the mechanic your party wipes or anything. So there's this fight has some mechanics in that you have to keep these torches lit to Keep the lights on and keep the bone skinner from becoming stronger in the darkness But it's something that it doesn't require a designated player to do anyone can kind of engage with it And it's not quite as punishing as something you'd find in raids or high-level fractals The bone skinner is though by far the hardest of the three so and I think oh, yeah In my personal opinion and some of the other people I hear screaming when playing That is their opinion to you as well like the bones Yeah, we save the best for last So you get some time to like work your way out, kind of ramp up the difficulty. Exactly. Alright, so the difficulty on these is gone up a little bit from the last one. And the other strike mission is still going to be available. That's right. Yeah, so that one's sticking around. How do players access these new strike missions? You go through the portal? The end. That's it. So the prologue was accessible after you completed the story. That is not the case for episode one. They can get to them right away. As soon as you go to the map, you can go right away. And there will be an icon on the mini map. It's a cool little portal. It'll have text over it. So there's also NPCs that point you to it. So it should be very easy to find and get to. But there's some pretty good reasons you might want to engage with this story and some of the open world content before you go into the strike mission, right? And what are those? Yeah, that might be-- That was actually very good. Yeah, great segue. So that is probably-- you're alluding to, the masteries of the essence manipulation. And so I could talk a little bit about that. The essence manipulation is three different masteries, as the blog post had stated, in that there is the vigilance, resilience, and valor. And each one corresponds to the different armies. Each one of the strike missions are-- those bosses are part of said army. And so what you would want to do to get that extra edge is by no means like an absolute hard gate or cap requirement in order to like-- what I'm trying to say is like you don't need to absolutely have these masteries in order to beat these bosses, someone with skill or a couple of good friends could absolutely beat them. But what we want to do is give that average player an extra edge and also just feel more powerful against those kind of enemies. Actually, let's pause for a second. Just in case if you didn't read the blog post yet, first of all, shame. But for those who have maybe not had time to read the blog post yet, why don't you outline kind of your philosophy on why we're doing these masteries the way we're doing them. Yeah. And how many there are. Yes, right. So, right. So I said in the blog post basically that we wanted to give players more progression than what they would normally have with masteries. Usually outside of mount masteries you have one single track without any extended tiers and we wanted to give the players more, more to feel progressing and more to do and more to work towards and give you rewards and a great feeling of accomplishment when you went through that. So yeah, so that was kind of like the philosophy behind that and then working with like kind of the rock-paper-scissors mechanic that has you know been used in other games and I'm fond of of you know giving you agency of okay, which which one do I want to choose to get better in first so I can go and then defeat the thing that's it's weak against? Yeah, so I think that's just like a fun added layer of mechanics and agency for the player Again, it's not like a hard gate money means it's really just that extra edge that the average player is going to get and It's kind of hard to describe verbally and it written but when you play it you're going to find yourself just it's intrinsically Exciting and fun to run around killing enemies, which is what our game is. That's our bread and butter, right? It's our combat system So you engage you with your combat system you're killing enemies you're picking up these bobbles and you're getting this like burst of like power and this burst of speed and so you're just picking up bottles picking up bottles and you get this like positive feedback loop of Just feeling really really powerful and great and so These enemies we made them like slightly tougher, but not too crazy tough because again It was about just adding that layer of power So a lot of the veterans in the champions are gonna feel the same like normal maps But now now you can actually feel like you're progressing and becoming even more powerful against these yeah, which is fun It's also extrinsically rewarding too, especially in the case of the strike missions because you do unlock bonus chests for finishing it If you have the mastery leveled up and again, there's also bonus rewards for beating the bosses Under certain amounts of time. So just as you become more powerful You'll be able to more easily defeat them in those time spans and get extra loot So these are linked and you can kind of bounce back and forth as you level up those masteries and get more and more rewards exactly I know I was reading some of the forums some people had questions like oh well if because I'm a weekly rotation Will I miss out on rewards if I don't play the bone scanner that week and the answer is no you won't these the rewards are all the same per strike mission But it you know you do obviously miss out on fighting that experience But that's okay because it will come back in a few weeks And I think that's really exciting and it helps to focus the players on the content that you know that is out So, yeah, so as you said there's like these catalysts or sorry these essence manipulation chests in there That you will get rewards from that are tied to the mastery But then we also have and those are daily bidded and then we also have similar to the prologue these These rewards that are based on how quickly you beat the boss Those are not daily gated and that's on purpose so that let's say you jumped in and you beat your strike for the day But your friends jump in a little bit later and they still want to play it Well, you have enough motivation incentive to go and help them not only because you're a good person, right? But also because there's a little bit something in there for you because you can you can defeat You know the bone skin or whatever strike mission and you could still get a nice chunk of rewards as well So the way the mastery track start out you start with the Raven basic Raven mastery, correct? Right, and you unlock that one and then the other three are all unlocked for you at once Yes, once so Raven the Raven mastery has two tiers once you complete the second tier You will get access to the essence manipulation all and they're all available all the tiers are available So you can just start choosing. Okay. This is where this is what I feel like going for first correct Okay. Yeah. All right, so you choose your path. Yes, you choose your path Yeah, and then you just start you start play the game And then you start getting XP and then you get mastery points as as all the other masteries kind of work, right? Okay, and Then in terms of the reward structure, I guess I can go into a little bit about that further in terms of like what we're Giving out like how those are connected right? Let's talk about the rewards because those are super fun. Yeah, okay so another like kind of goal of mine was to Have these systems you really tighten it together and like all talk to each other. I know that prologue had It didn't have a bunch of rewards We want to increase the amount of rewards that you would get and have them more connected We don't have anything like a random drop Drop chance like in prologue right like I think it was like that rare skin or helmet drops. That's that's not there But what we do have in its place is something I was talking about in other streams which extra life use some of this technology which was Achievement tier rewards, so we have achievement with a bunch of tier of rewards that as you Progress through that achievement you will get more and more rewards, right? We used to be able to do this with achievement points But now again, we can just kind of give out rewards and we have things like So we're giving in the reward track. Yeah, I know 20 slot bag the 24 stop bag the 28 slot bag and the 32 slot bag 32 slot bag Yeah, so these are recipes That we'll be giving out but within that we are also giving out a 20 and 24 slot bag straight up And they also are bags without conditions on them some bags only hold junk, right? You're like, okay, that's cool if I have a lot of junk, but it's becomes you know, just that roll this one You can use however you want. It's just a bag the end. Yeah the end We also have a lot of stuff that you would also find on a vendor like a guild decoration Atonic spoilers you can turn into a bone skinner. We have that tonic That's also in that reward track that we'll give for you and to progress to this reward track. You'll need to collect T2 weapons the we have this weapon set this upgrade or weapons that from as T1 T2 To progress through every two weapons of the T2 set you get you get a chunk of these rewards And you just have to collect them so they're exotic so you can craft them or they're tradable so you can buy them off the trading post These are the ancient boreal weapons. Yeah, they're the restored the tier two Oreo weapons and in order to craft them the materials One of the key materials each rating gets are found in those essence manipulation chests Those chests are in the open world, but the most efficient way to collect them are through the strike missions Okay, so there's it's a lot there and I'm sure what you did - The team is linked together. - Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, and then, okay, then you're like, all right, well, how do I get the recipes to get the T2 weapons, right? Well, you have to, then, you have to purchase the T1 skins from the vendor. And one thing I know that some people might hear, like, oh God, I have to craft weapons. Traditionally, that's taken a really long time for the player to do, and we know that, and we prepared for that, so we tried to make this experience a lot quicker to get into. So like, crafting, like getting the T2, the T1 skins is very quick. If you just played in the map, kind of just playing events, within a half hour you'll have enough map material to get a T1 skin. And as soon as you get that T1 skin, the corresponding T2 version of it, that's recipes available, right? And then we're using the same technology, right, that has the achievement tracks, as well in the T1 collection. And as you get more and more T1 weapons, we're giving you materials to help you craft a T2 weapon. It's something like two free T2 weapons of materials in that track. So we're trying to just give you a lot of rewards at a nice clip and a nice pace, and walk you through that experience. Until you get a hang of it and then you just go and just positive, positive, yeah. - So positive feedback and fun gameplay. - Yeah. - All of that good stuff. - Yeah, and of course a lot of the stuff, like I said, is still on the vendors. We're still giving out stuff for completing the story and are the meta achievements and stuff that you would normally find in an episode. - Which we are not spoiling. - I don't want to spoil that stuff, yeah. I know I'm like killing all of your fun today. I was like, not show them how those two bosses work and break your leg on the coffee table. - Yeah, I was originally gonna interpret dance show as Justin, yeah, that was spashed. - I'm ruining all of the fun. So if you guys, as you guys have your questions, go ahead and start throwing them in chat and we'll start getting those up there as I ask you guys a couple more questions that I have. - Let's do it. - I do want to know without spoiling the story, what are you most looking forward to players seeing content that you worked on? I just want people to see the strike mission stuff, especially like all the cool animation and artwork we did on it, because I think they're really visually appealing. It gives players reaction to that. I think we've done some cool things with bosses that we haven't really done before. Yeah, there's a lot of new stuff in there that you guys have just put in. You guys been working on this for a while. It's been a while. It feels like longer than it was. It's come a long way. Yeah. How about you, Clayton? Gosh, I think just all the creepy stuff like I can't like you know me I like to like hide little like no some cranny little scenes and stuff right like so I'm just excited for players to find this stuff I'm also really excited for the The lore fans like we've got some really great lore books And we've got like some as gear dragon render stuff that's going on there like that's all say like but you get to kind of like dig Into some of that it's there's a lot there to chew on and then okay And then the number one so that and then there's also a great code in collection that players can engage with that I'm super excited for them to gauge with and hear about their reactions. Alright, that's fair. Alright, we have questions and look at the first one. Speaking of chewing on. Yeah, I'll tell the episode to Bone Skinner Petting Zoo. Bone Skinner Petting Zoo, you guys we were talking about this before we went live. You guys were having to save the players from themselves so much they want to pet the bone skitter and we're gonna have like all of these one-armed people running around going I tried to pet the bone skinner. We could probably make like a one-arm transform. Okay here's the thing there's a bone skinner tonic coming. Yeah. And now you can turn into it. And then you have your friends pet you. And then your friends can pet you. Have you guys seen that Twitter account? Can you pet the dog? Yeah we know. Can you pet the bone skinner? Yeah does the bone skinner pet or does the bone skitter count as a pet and will that account call us out as if you competitive not I don't know we just need to get the bone skin okay alright brim star will the current strike mission be on rotation or will it be accessible whenever still it will still be accessible whenever all the time all the time okay will these use pathifier mastery points and incorrect They will be using their very own mastery points. So I have Ice Brute Saga mastery points. Ice Brute Saga mastery points, okay. Will there ever be challenge mode strike missions? Is that something you can talk about? That's a solid maybe. It's on the table. The answer is definitely either yes or no. Okay, that is fair. So that might be it for our questions unless Mark is going to give us some more. the wizard is going to find more the wizard is going to conjure more shirt no problem uh... we also are on a delay which always makes it super fun uh... okay so they can be about all my swearing yes we just in a slight just a constant font of bad words and we have we had to create a huge delay just to just to take care of that i don't know why you do that but it is a thing that you continue doing Do you want to talk a little bit about the change that we're making to the first strike mission? So when we launch this episode, the strike missions we have now will be featured strike missions, which will have access to both the public and squad versions. The episode, the prologue strike mission, will only have the squad version available, but it will be up all the time. You see most people are going in there with pre-made groups anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. Here's one more question. Oh, I'm sorry, I lied. There's two more questions. Perfect. I'll let either of you take that first one. Let's see. Players get really focused on rewards. Do you have any techniques that help them recognize the experience itself as the reward? That's a great question. I think it's an important consideration to always have when you're building rewards out is what is the player going to be doing to obtain them and to make sure that that journey is satisfying and fun. And I think speaking for episode one, we definitely tried to do that with the Strike Mission integration. But also, you know, the meta and the events, and by playing that content, how that feeds back into your ability to gain those rewards. So, technique-wise, I think... I think really making fun content, if it's fun, you know, the rewards are... Yeah, that's kind of what you're working towards and what you're ultimately looking to get out of it. But you know, you do this stuff to get it because it's fun. And you have to be cognizant of like what kind, like how long is the piece of content that they're playing? How repeatable is it? Right. Like if if we're wanting you to do something that is very either meticulous or or something that is done over and over again, you want to make sure that this thing, if it's done over and over again, you want to make sure that there's a lot of maybe more options to play ways and if it's very meticulous and there's one way maybe it maybe it rotates longer like we give a break of an hour before that event shows up again and they're more story specific and very unique those things maybe only rotate like every hour or two or an hour and a half right but something like perhaps a patrol of enemies that come through well people can approach that in many different ways so that thing could probably rotate a little bit more quicker. That's always an interesting question to me anyway because I feel like it's the eternal game design question because there's not just a okay now this is done go hit the make fun button. There's not a one and to an extent to a certain extent it's on. I hesitate because a lot of this is coming from my player brain to a certain extent I put that on myself as a player to keep my focus on what am I actually enjoying. And if I'm not enjoying the thing, I will stop doing the thing. But it's also on the designer to a certain extent to facilitate that. So it's interesting hearing, OK, yes, but how? Yeah. So hearing the actual nuts and bolts of, OK, what kind of what kind of spacing do we want to put in between these events? How do we how do we actually want to execute that is an interesting thing. But that is an ongoing question. How do you make it actually fun and not just a rewards grind? Very early on, uh, one of, like when we're pitching the episode, we have a list of events and we have, we create a timeline of when we think things should cycle and just even on paper, that gives us a really good kind of gut check of, will this feel paced out enough? Does this feel plentiful enough? Like, is there enough variety? Uh, and, and yeah, that then we usually just, you know, take notes or as it gets into game, we'll, we'll just, yeah. How does it, how to make it feel good? is turning that into something executable. Turning such a nebulous question. - Right. - It seems really difficult, and you guys seem to do it pretty regularly, really well. - It helps get feedback from the community and just data from the community, but also the play test that you are all part of, like that helps too internally. - Yeah. - And yeah, all this stuff helps. - Yeah. Okay, let's see. What else we got? Can you tell us anything about the giant ice construct? Talk about the giant ice construct. - The ice daddy? I'm calling it that it's ice daddy. It's cannon ice daddy Go to Ruby's Twitter Mark Got up and ran for the door No, no, no, no, no, Jesse can't come in to spoil the fun. So anyway about ice daddy Like just had mentioned He is being constructed by this is the thing that broke me Yeah. There is a character in our episode where you'll learn the origins of Ice Daddy and we have him featured in... Well, now you lost your pad. Yeah, that's great. So he's also featured in the Strike Mission, but we also have him in the open world. I don't want to spoil too much. I really love these previews, but I want to leave some stuff to be desired and found. He's real big and he's made of ice. He's real big. He's made of ice. You saw him be chained up in the trailer. I don't leave it at that, I guess. - Okay, that's fair. - Yeah, just see it in the trailer. It's kind of in the same vein of, you know, here's this thing you've seen before, but here's a new twist on it. What can we show now? It's previously, it's just from the waist up. This guy now gets up and walks around. - Yeah. - And goes to try to murder everybody in that keep. - Oh yeah, oh yeah. - All right, is... - Stop. - That first one. - You guys were just trying to, it's like don't touch the hot stove i'm just trying to save people from themselves can we pet the bone skinner can we hug it can we sprinkle it with love and attention you guys i care about you i don't want you be hurt yeah but you can well i mean you can't hug it uh... only one of it but you could you can share nice thoughts with it i guess before each you something you can do the bone skinner just wants to be loved right - Um, maybe I'll tell you, like, can you... - You can if you want. I mean, like, this is a question I would ask you. - Yeah. So, the question is, can you share anything about how you plan to design the map so it can be - It's just like no. - Expanded to episode two? A large way no, I can't answer that, because again, I don't want to, like, I'm not spoiling everything, but I can reiterate the things that we have shared in that we know that the map will expand. We know that we will be using the masteries that we've introduced in episode one. And we know we will expand on those masteries. Is Essence Manipulation limited to just the new map? So, kind of like... Sea question above. It is going to expand into the episode too. It's... It's... We're in that difficult period where we're so close to release, and there's so much more you guys are about to know, But it's so hard. Yeah, I would treat-- essence manipulation, I would treat as a regular mastery. And so let's say jumping mushrooms, for instance. Designers and other teams were able to use jumping mushrooms when appropriate in other maps that they felt that they wanted to. I know that now that Path of Fire and Hot are together in a package, we now have the ability, as designers in our new maps, to say, oh, cool, this requires Path of Fire. But that means that they also will have access to Hot masteries. So we can add things like gliding. we can add things like updrafts. So those same rules and considerations will apply to future maps. Yay. How would you rate the difficulty of this new map in comparison to the maps of Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire? Oh, that's a really good question. Give me a number. OK, so 12. OK, 12. No, that's not true. Oh, just a random number. Just a number. I'm just saying a number. Okay, if Hot is 10, because we know that that was probably the most difficult match. That was pretty hard, yeah. Okay. Path of Fire was probably somewhere like a...or a Tiri, a Core Tiri was probably like a zero, in terms of difficulty gradient, right? I think that's probably a little hard. I don't know. I've been thinking about this for a minute and a half. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Depends what's going on too. You're right. Are we in the middle of the Shatter or Tequil or something? That's a little harder than this. You're right. We're running Queen's Tale. Yeah, are we talking Queen's Tale or Orr? Okay. Look what you did! I know, now my brain's breaking. So Path of Fire is definitely a lot, I think, is less difficult in terms of what Heart of Thorns maps presented. And I think we are continuing the difficulty that Path of Fire had set and the Living World Season 4 had set. As I mentioned earlier, I think we cranked the difficulty just like the tiniest bit in this map, and we adjusted a lot of the creature's attacks and abilities to work with the essence manipulation. There's a lot of boon and condition play that comes from the essence manipulation. We want that represented in the armies themselves. So like the fall, and they do a lot of immobilize, they do a lot of confusion, right? Like, whereas like the aberrant will do torment, right? And put a lot of more conditions on you. So there's those things to consider, but I wouldn't say that things we did made it as difficult as Parthons at all. Okay. That was a long way to answer that. No, honestly, that's like a pretty good answer. OK. Love the new jumping puzzle. Will there be more jumping puzzles on the new maps to come in the saga? I mean, we can't guarantee anything. Yeah. But what we can say is that it's always on the table. And I know that there are-- What? Was that that good? I'm sorry. That was-- OK, OK. I guess, I mean, we're always interested in doing them. Yeah. And there's no reason why we wouldn't continue to do them in the future. Yeah. OK, that's a good answer. OK, great. Is there a Big Meta event on the map? There sure is. Yeah, we have a Meta event. There is a Big Meta event on the map. All right. It's pretty big. All right. It's pretty big. Oh, we have one more question. Is it can we pet the bone skinner? Because-- Yes. Please, I just want them safe. That's an interesting question. Yeah, it is a new rig. No, it's not a new rig. The question is, is the Bone Skinner rig new or reused rig? It is technically a reused rig. It's the same as the Vine Tooth, but we've added it. It's modified from that. It has a lot of new animations, too, and some of the scaling things, I think, were changed for that model. Interesting. New effects, and audio just went nuts with-- man, I don't want to steal any of this thunder. But Joseph just shared with me how the Bone Skinners, like creepy like almost like clicking noise was made and it was like Mike spokes it was like slow that down and add a bunch of other stuff onto it so like I love when Joseph and Chris like get their hands on something and get excited about it yeah yeah yeah oh so hopefully they could like this would be a good guild chat to like have like this you guys should I ask them oh oh man okay maybe we can like just get a bunch of questions for them up but not today yeah no when they're actually here cuz I think they're busy and I don't want to just like run down there and be like hey come here that's fair yeah guys we're live we got to do a thing come on yeah okay all right let's let you guys get back to work this was a good preview so and we will talk a whole lot more about it on Guild Chat next week so thank you guys we will see you in game on Tuesday the 19th for Whisper in the Dark it's gonna be spooky thanks guys we'll see you next week [music]
