Guild Chat - Episode 32

The following is an unofficial, player-written transcript of the episode. The accuracy of this transcription has not been verified by ArenaNet.
The 32nd episode of Guild Chat aired on February 19, 2016.
"Host Rubi Bayer is first joined by Game Designer Hugh Norfolk to talk about the upcoming changes for the PvP League season 2 and the Pro League Finals. In the second part of the show, Game Designer Crystal Reid and Visual Effect Artist Franco Galletta continue our deep dive into the Design behind the scenes for the next Raid Boss!"
Transcription[edit]

Below is the raw unformatted transcript from Youtube.
[Music]
happy friday guys welcome back to guild
chat
i'm your host ruby and if you're here
for the first time welcome
uh we are here to talk about a couple
things today first of all
the upcoming season two pvp leagues and
i thought it would be fun to bring hugh
on and
let him talk about this all right so i'm
out i'll be back in a half an hour all
right thanks i'll be taking over
just take a minute there's a pvp stream
now boys
let the salt flow ten seconds
ten seconds that's all we got all right
so let's start first because we have pvp
leagues and we have pro leagues yes
so the newer players explain what
pvp leagues specifically are and how
they differ
so pvp leagues are going to be in game
right
in game right now you can queue for
unranked arena and we have a ranked
arena
when seasons start the ranked arena
button becomes available
anyone can queue for that you know if
you're first time in as long as you're
ranked uh pvp rank 20 you can queue for
ranked arena
you'll start in the system is made for
everybody so it has different divisions
so not super great players have a little
lead way for some of the earlier
divisions to get some wins and progress
the system
and then pro league yeah and then pro
league is specifically for our top-end
competitive pro teams so you won't be
able to participate in those
per se you'd have to go through the
system and we have a couple different
outlets that you can participate in
ranked arena
and make it into pro leagues but for now
the regular league systems for everybody
awesome all right so we've finished up
season one and what's going on is that
season two
is about to start for this and season
two starts next tuesday the 23rd
man i can't wait it feels like a very
long time i'm just anxious to kind of
jump back in there
i didn't have time last season i mean i
like got in there and scrapped around a
little bit
and i didn't earn squat and everybody's
running around with these
great little gems over there yep that's
what i
i i got to diamond last last one i
it was a slog though man like so the
first few divisions were really nice and
easy and i felt good and as soon as i
hit to like
ruby division ironically uh i it got
super
oh that's the good one i know it was i
mean it's funny because ruby division is
pretty much what we say
most of our average competitive players
will probably reach in there when you
get to diamond and legendary
that's where our more outstanding pvp
players will
kind of end up in not saying about
outstanding but boy did i play
a lot and i i did really well i ran i
mean i played to win so i played a lot
of builds that were very strong
in in 1v1 and whatnot to get there but
that's what you have to do right if you
want to play and you want to be the best
you got to make sure you take it
all the advantages you can get believe
me i needed every advantage i could get
so i
i did yeah yeah but
so you can get up there and really you
know make progress high in the ranks
but if you just are kind of casually
playing around and just playing the game
for fun
you know you stay with me yeah you can
totally do the beginning
stuff yeah definitely like one of the
things is every there's multiple tiers
in these divisions right
and actually some of the season two
changes we did we're actually to help
the more casual pvp audience get there
so the first division it used to be just
three tiers in the first division
correct so and every tier there's a
reward
and one of the rewards on there is a
unidentified die
right it's one of the few places you can
get those still as well as
transportation charges and a little bit
of gold right a little bit a little bit
of that
so and now we've made it actually five
division or five tiers in that division
so essentially you have a chance to get
five unidentified dies
all for actually the same amount of work
it used to be 15 wins to get there still
15 wins but now it's split up into three
more steps three pips yeah just more
stuff exactly and there's no backwards
progress in that division so even if you
lose you don't lose anything all right
just keep right on playing
let's talk a little bit more about
rewards because unidentified dies
transmutation charges and a little bit
of gold
it's nice i like that stuff what else so
one of the big things in pvp is we we
announced the legendary backpack
yeah right and so with this you will
need to play the league system
every time you cross over division you
get some pvp league tickets
you use those pvp league tickets to
purchase the backpacks
there's four different backpacks one of
all the rarities you combine all four of
those guys together mystic forge you get
an ascended back piece
all these have choosy stats you can
choose all the stats you want you get
that that's the precursor
right then you go through and if you go
to the vendor himself he has a little
conversation def on there that will
actually explain
all the pieces you will need to be able
to craft the legendary back piece which
is new because that wasn't in season one
because i'm bad and forgot to put that
text in but it is in this one now it is
um so you'll be able to talk to him and
he'll really explain everything into to
you very very clearly
um and yeah once you you go through the
leagues you need about 125 league
tickets
if you participate every season even if
you only get to ruby division
you will be able to get everything you
need
to purchase the legendary legendary back
piece all right
probably what we're gonna do too is you
know if some people missed we may do
some
some things maybe the later the later
things to maybe boost up a little bit of
that stuff just in case because we want
to make sure everybody can get there
awesome and just people did ask this
question and i want to make sure to make
it clear
is if you don't get it this year because
every year we're going to have a new
legendary
right you will be able to get previous
legendary back pieces
so don't think that you came in like if
you come in now in season two like ah
there's no way i'll be able to get yeah
forget it forget it yeah i might as well
not play no i mean
i would definitely play because you'll
get you'll be able to get these things a
little faster
but even if you don't get it next year
you'll still be able to do it
a slightly different way but it will be
you'll still be able to obtain it all
right so they're not just gone forever
and if you've missed out
all all his laws exactly exactly right
so the current
round of legendaries these are wings yes
the legendary wings they actually have
it's really cool because
on the actual vendor himself i put the
back piece on there so you guys should
get a little preview it in game
um the thing that's really cool is it
has animation states
when you have your weapon stowed it
actually the wings are down and they're
kind of like they kind of move around a
little bit but when you go into combat
they fly up and they have like a little
a nice little trailing effect on them
it's pretty cool one of the only back
pieces that actually has really big
animations things like that based on
combat nice all right so if you're
new that's kind of how it works how you
get in and what you can get for it
if you've been around for a little while
on pvp leagues and you
participated last i just tried to say
last semester
somebody has kids somebody has kids and
the semester recently started last
season
um we've done some changes you mentioned
but i want to talk about those a little
bit more sure um you want to go into
what we've changed between season one
and season two yeah yeah definitely
so one of the things we did for season
one was or one of the biggest changes we
did for
from season one to season two was the
matchmaking so one of the things we did
in season one was we made everything was
based off mmr
right matchmaking rating as well just in
case people don't know mrs matchmaking
rating
um so what we did is we we took people
and we said okay you are let's say 2000
mmr we're going to try to find you a
good match
because we want you to have a good match
however what that turned into was
sometimes we got like in the beginning
of the season it was really hard because
you were facing people your skill level
at the beginning of the season
and then as you progressed you kind of
progressed with those players and really
didn't get a lot of
variation in your matchups depending on
your mmr if you had average mmr
your matchmaking was great because we
had there's tons of people who's
the top end guys and even some of the
bottom end guys were kind of finding
them
the same matches kind of over and over
again so we did away with that system
and we decided to go with a slightly
different system which i think
makes more sense for this we made it all
based on your pips
so every time you win you get a pip
every time you lose you lose a pimp
right very simple and then what we do is
we try to match make your team
based on your mmr so we try to find
people of your skill level to be
in your group and then we match make you
on your pip
range so if you're let's say 10 pips in
to
emerald right 10 pips and emerald we
will match in your 2000 mmr we will try
to find a group of 2000 mr players
and then we will match make you on the
10 pips so essentially you're always
fighting someone in the same spot in the
divisions you're in
but we're trying to match make you based
on your skill for your team not your
opponent
so it just means that in the beginning
good players
will probably find a little easier match
ups but as they get
as you go further and further you're
going to find harder and harder matchups
which makes
a little more sense as as the earliest
thing the challenge yes exactly but
before it was like
the beginning of the season was just as
hard as the end of the season
because you were fighting the same skill
level players
which you know it was it was a nice try
it was a good try to try those things
and see those things because it allowed
us to have access to other systems which
i'll kind of go over we removed one to
make some changes
it allowed us to do the partial progress
system because we could look to say if
your mmr does not match your opponent's
mmr we can say this is probably not a
great matchup and we know that
because if i'm three thousand or more
and i'm fighting a one thousand mmr
player team like
okay yeah i you're probably gonna win
that match up and if the other team
could get some amount of points hey you
know what we'll go ahead and give you
some bonus
we'll go ahead and throw a uh you know a
pip your way for getting 300 points or
400 points
the thing was is we saw it didn't really
affect
that many matches we ran a bunch of
metrics we watched metrics every week we
pulled the metrics down this season it
was only like eight percent of matches
we're really seeing this system
because our matchmaking was actually
matching people relatively
often in a good matchups okay so it
didn't make sense to have that system on
top of this system
right if we're just trying to match you
on your your pip range you know we don't
really need a match makeover mmr we
don't really need to have the system
it's making it a little more complicated
exactly at that point
and so one thing we really wanted to do
for season two is just simplify the
system
make it simple make it easy to
understand and also explain it
because trying to explain that you
are you have a high mmr and you're
facing a team that had low mmr
but they got some amount of points so
that gives them a bonus but you were in
a division that didn't lose progress
and one of your person left like this
was like a paragraph we had to put a
flowchart
yeah it was like i had to like literally
have like like a a video of me coming in
and being like all right guys
let me explain why you didn't use
anything this time like it was just it
was insanity
every match every match yeah a huge
video would pop up and be like i i
actually have no idea i have no idea
what happened there
um so we tried to make it we simplified
the whole system if you win
you get a pip you lose you lose a pip
very simple
right we also added in win streaks and
we added in
a comeback a comeback pip okay so if you
win
three games on your third game we will
go ahead and give you an additional pip
so as you win and you continue to win we
will kind of push you through the system
a little faster
so good players that just win a bunch
they'll push
out of the divisions where other players
are right
that way they're not they're not
muddying that that water right so
our our observeds our vermilions our 55
you know dragons
those guys will push out really fast
right they're going to win a whole bunch
of matches they're going to go into the
next divisions and they'll fight people
in those divisions and that'll be it
right our average guys will be fine
they'll continue
they'll get a win a little bit lose a
little bit here and there but they'll
push through the system
but then we added the comeback mechanic
the comeback pip system
also i like to call them the pity pips
rude
so we call those if you lose three
matches the next match you win will give
you an additional pip
i feel super judged right now when we
were coming up with the system
i was like we're going to give them the
pity pips and everyone's like no we
can't call that i was like
and he was like watch me but i will call
it no but
it is nice though because you do
sometimes go on those streaks where you
lose a bunch of matches you're like i
don't want to play anymore
but the fact that you can get that win
and get two pips for it right away
it might get you wet right back where
you want it helps it does
um i want to take a second and point out
we are actually calling them pips now
yes yes we are the p like all the memes
i think long time ago i called them a
pip like
i don't know when i called them that a
long time ago but then we were like well
we can't call them pips
like what is a pip we don't know we're
going to call them points because points
makes more sense
and then everybody and their mother
called them a pimp pip boys pippin ain't
easy
you know all these things like i i love
you guys the community for just coming
up with all these like
makes my heart makes my heart so salty
and i love it
here's my question was this an
incredibly long game so you could use
the phrase pity pips
yes this is pretty much this is pretty
much all i was i was on here
just so i could let just slide that in
and i'm out
you can't call them pity pips what are
you gonna do once i'm live
[Laughter]
you can't stop me no but uh yeah i mean
we just decided to go with it i mean a
lot everybody in the community is
calling them pips and like i said it's
it's just i don't know i have more fun
calling up hips i'm not
yeah the whole well what is the pit this
this is yeah it's a pip
question is answered yeah once you
figure it out
so as long as we're talking about you
know while you're queuing and
when you're in there do you want to take
a moment to brag on evan lesch and lower
queue times
uh yeah please do so first of all this
is i forgot to tell you by the way that
we're going to talk about this oh no no
that's fine
evan evan is a boss but ray also ray
the savior of this of the stucked match
people
right he comes down he descends into
your match
scoops you up you're like you're stuck
and he places you back thank you ray for
doing
finisher i know that should be that
should be our next ray comes down scoops
the body up it's like you were now out
of pvp
oh god right now but no evan and rey
especially what they were doing is they
were actually trying to do
create a tool for optimizing queue times
just to look at queue times because they
wanted to use it to get more data for us
for ranked
right just give us that kind of data and
as they did all this investigation and
looking at this tool and creating this
tool evan uragon
for creating this tool they were like
wow we're just adding a bunch of
time to matches that doesn't like it's
just completely arbitrary
and you didn't know why and so they're
like well let's do some simulations on
this by removing this
this arbitrary it was like three to four
minutes for some players
um let's just see what happens like they
did a bunch of simulations they ran it
through the tool they're like
matches of the exact same minus three to
four minutes
and how did he can you are you able to
go into some details on how he did that
because i know he lowered how often it
checks
yeah i i don't know he didn't i didn't
ask him too much i was more just like
dancing around my desk
lighting things on fire to sacrifice to
the effing god like just
you know we were all out on the street
yeah i'm sorry it was
it looked good on paper it looks so good
on paper until i started it and then it
was bad
but but yeah no i mean evan i mean it
was more of just like there was there
was something he did that he checked in
and it was like
a couple different spots they were just
adding a minute here and there
and it was really not affecting
matchmaking it wasn't finding any better
matches it was just kind of adding this
extra time
yeah and so like i said he just kind of
removed them and just did a bunch of
simulations just to make sure it wasn't
going to affect anything
yeah i do know that the one of the end
results was
it's checking for a match every 60
seconds and if you came in
and you missed that by just like two
seconds now you're just hanging out
yeah you're hanging out for a full
minute which doesn't sound like much but
when you want to just go play the game
yeah that's that's a lot so now it's
like every
five seconds and if you miss that then
you're hanging out by five seconds so it
shaved off
a noticeable amount of time yeah i mean
thank you guys we haven't we have
metrics that we saw like i i
pretty much every day i come in and
check all the metrics for pvp and like
we were seeing some matches or some
the average queue time was around four
to five to six minutes
all right so i'm sorry the average q
time was still pretty low like one to
two for the average player but as you
got to a little bit higher and more
and super low mmr it got to four to five
minutes
as soon as he made these changes we saw
a noticeable increase of almost zero
like
one minute less than one minute q times
like it almost doubled that time
right like double that amount of people
that were getting that and i was just
like
perfect you're a god yeah so thank you
evan
ray that was really really helpful all
right so that's
kind of a rundown of the changes i know
you and i talked yesterday
and there were some players expressing
concern over various things like
all right but this is going to i can see
people afking or rage quitting if
there's a bad match or just
yes taking off yeah so the big thing is
dc
the uh yeah the people were saying that
the new system will encourage
dc right to to save people from
losing pips that was the big specific
thing that everybody was talking about
which in the last we didn't change that
right in the last season that was
totally in right it's just more of like
i think people are one of the things
everybody says is like if i'm about to
lose i'll pay
this guy in my group to 10 gold to
decent i saw that yeah like
i would love someone to be like well you
need to take like yeah sure give me 10
goals yeah i i
i ain't going to dc obviously take your
gold
dc please this is like horrible on three
levels
i mean the big thing is it's like no i
won't ever say
that matches are truly lost until
they're lost there's there's a lot of
times where like i would be
100 winning and being like yep got it in
the bag and then all of a sudden
we team wipe and they come back to win
or
specifically legacy of the faux fire i
hate you so much i'll be winning
up a ton of points 490 to 350 almost i
look up they kill the lord they lost i'm
like are you kidding me
no one saw this coming um but hue salt
is the best salt
it makes me happy i'm i'm glad it's my
heart i'm glad
that sometimes when i'm doing this i'm
not streaming so i can't they don't see
that
because there's a lot of like fake table
flipping
salt shakers i'm just throwing them all
over the room
my girlfriend's look at me like what are
you doing why is there salt everywhere
i'm like this is my tears and then you
ask her
are you new yeah you didn't know this
was coming i'm playing leagues are you
serious
oh yeah so i don't i really don't think
that's
as much as an issues people think there
i think it's it's obviously it's we'll
we'll monitor it we'll keep an eye on it
but the dishonored system will take care
of a lot of this thing
if you dc for a certain amount of time
and you do a thing you get hit by
dishonor and it does
it is exponential so if you are a a a
constant offender of this thing it will
hit you really hard
right like i said we have a bunch of
tools in place to make sure we can
monitor these things and
match manipulation is obviously an
offense to get as well and if reported
can also
be awarded dishonor and stuff like that
so at your own risk if you want to make
it so you still take the loss and
everybody else gets it
first of all you have to not be on the
group right so you can't be grouped up
and then one of your guys just leaves
right because you all still get the loss
if if that's the case right so we take
we take that into account so it has to
be someone you're not grouped with
has to then accept the loss to let
everybody out like i don't know i don't
think that's
i don't think it's the thing honestly i
don't all right so that's
that's kind of addressing what some of
what people were worried about
and i noticed that you said if reported
yeah
well sorry well i'm not saying hey
report somebody because he beat you
because he's better
but report this stuff if it's happening
yeah that's the big thing like any time
verbal abuse any time any though any
kind of thing that would i mean
obviously i'm not saying like anytime
someone's like
i am not good at this game not reported
don't do don't go crazy with it but
obviously there's a line that should
never be crossed in any
any instance pvp pve anything any any
part of our game and
anytime you see that guys just report it
we have we've given cs the ability to do
things like give dishonor stuff like
that so they have that ability
to do that so watch yourself watch
yourself
nice all right one last thing as long as
we're on the pvp topic do you want to
talk about amulets a little bit
yeah we did we we removed one of the
amulets because we we're trying we're
going to be setting a new standard i
think this is something
i'll tell you the overall goal and then
why we made this change perfect
so the overall goal was we want to make
combat
more deadly right we had it we had the
first season and we had our bunker meta
and sure it was fun and we had a lot of
things but we wanted this meta
and probably future menace to be a more
deadly we don't want to take away the
the ability to bunker right we don't
want to take that away but we don't want
to have these
matches that are super super bunker
oriented we want to have
no amulet that has a main stat defensive
stat that is a four-stat
amulet right that is a four-state amulet
so we wanted we're like you know we saw
one i believe was vigilant is one we
talked about then we're like okay this
has
toughness is the main stat on this guy
right so we're going to go ahead and
remove this amulet out
we looked at it it wasn't being taken a
ton it wasn't like it was an offender
of a lot of things but we just kind of
wanted to set that thing somebody did
bring up in one of the forums that there
is another amulet out there that does
also have another main stat
uh defensive stat okay it was crusader
the reason why we didn't take that out
at first was it was new amulet that we
added
and we didn't want to remove it right
away but we will probably look into
actually removing that to keep the
consistency
all right so someone did bring that up
they bring up a good point and to
maintain that consistency we do need to
make that change
so we're going to look into making that
we don't i don't want to say when
because i don't know exactly when but it
is something we would definitely be
doing
when we can because we want to keep that
consistency okay
and it's not you're not just holding off
to be me and it's not like hey there's
no
there's a switch for remove that amulet
and all we have to do
yeah i mean the good thing is is it is
easy for us to make the change it does
require a build obviously but it is easy
for us to make the change
and you know going forward maybe for the
next season we may have a new goal for
that season right
this one is we wanted to have a more
deadly we made you know resin
less it doesn't affect it by slower
quickness so we we made like a more
risk reward version of uh stomping and
rezzing
whereas before the last season you could
quickness rez somebody you could
frenzy stomp somebody stuff like that so
there wasn't a lot of play for down it
was either europe
or your dead instead yeah right and so
that's why for this one we're like okay
let's make that a big risk reward and
let's try putting a little bit more
offensive ambulance in there remove some
of the defensive ambulance remove some
of the defensive runes
and let's see what happens let's let's
groom this
next meta this next uh season to be a
more offensive season
right different from the meta that we
had the last one awesome so
that's kind of our goals for this but
there it it there did you bring up a
good point there is one more ambulance
we probably need to look into for
consistency's sake
okay fair enough all right one last pvp
thing sure
something going on this weekend there is
and do not talk about the tournament
you're going to
because that's that's true no not my
street fighter tournament you've been
having a very street fighter week oh man
i love the game but this week's pro
league finals
in eu we got four teams
two n a two eu the best of the pro
leagues
top two of the pro leagues and the funny
thing is
one of the teams i know the other two
the other three teams
are not new to the scene but they're the
first time most of them are going to a
lan event i did not know this
yes really so we obviously have to have
jared
he didn't really mean it like that no no
seriously no i'm just the object
the object is a juggernaut they
are the n a juggernaut i love those guys
to death they've gone to every wts
they've won two of them
and hey what up um but but they're there
again and they i mean they're the team
to be
right they have the most land experience
they have the most they've been together
the longest right they are
the team honestly they're so scary
uh i love watching those guys but i hate
watching those guys at the same time
just lose
i just want you to lose um you know you
have you're gonna have to like be in the
same room with them i know at some point
i know choker's gonna grab me and just
break me and just throw them off well
yeah i mean it's choker he's pretty much
gonna do that to anyone that's true
talker's a beast i love you too
um don't hurt us i know and then we have
pz they're the other team and i'd like i
think i love
the story of this team as well because
they a lot of those guys took some time
off and they came back
for pro league the pro league
tournaments and they actually got in
and the first three matches they played
they lost right
and i had oh right i forgot about this i
had them going
to the pro league finals like i i i was
like there's no way these guys
on paper are amazing players i really
like their play style and i think
this this uh meta really made it for
them like i was like this is their meta
this is a really good meta for them
and they lost the first three games and
i was like that's it
like there's no way they can come back
but they wound up crushing
the last half right and getting in
to pro league finals i'm so excited to
see these guys and the best part well
the thing that's funny
is they're going against the number one
so the way the brackets worked is number
one n a versus number two eu and number
two
n a versus number one okay right so
these guys are gonna have to go against
55 dragons now this is some people don't
know this
55 dragons three of their members were
actually on tcg
for the last wts so three of those
members do have land experience so i
kind of lied in the beginning who's that
so i i don't i don't want to say that i
know i can't remember all their names
and he's totally put you on the side
i know all their real names i don't want
to use their real names but um
but three of those guys essentially they
they went to tcg because
55 dragons some of their members were
too young so they couldn't participate
so they went and joined tcg tcg won up
going to wts they wanted getting third
place last wts so they have some
experience right
they went back to finish to group up
with their regular team 55 dragons
went 7-0 geez so we have absurd
7-0 55 dragons 7-0
then we have the next team which is
vermillion vermilion
another team on paper i was like these
guys are pretty good i did i honestly
i'm not gonna lie i didn't expect them
to do as well as they did but they did
really well
like that makes it more gratifying like
they the average like
i was i forget there's a stat word like
the average team score that the other
opponent scored in them was like 200.
like
they are super good in this meta i
didn't expect them to be this good in
this meta specifically i hadn't really
followed them super closely until they
started winning everything and you still
and you perked up and said yeah
all right yeah i see you i see you i'll
go ahead and watch this
but uh but yeah they did really well but
here's the here's the thing
you know they got to adapt to this new
meta they got to come to this new meta
because
the meta has shifted since since when
they played in pro leagues
so they're going to have to adapt they
were really really good but a lot of
them are good multi-classers but they're
this meta is different it's much much
different so between absurd
having the juggernauts that they are i
know they have the ability to adapt and
necro is really strong so nasa's really
happy
they have uh pz which i they're all
dedicated
amazing multi-classiers but they're
going against 55 dragons
and those guys have been had land
experience those guys are good players
and they run a comp that's also they
have the ability to run a comp that's
really aggro
which is really good in this meta right
i can't wait that's going to be a great
matchup i am so excited for that match
up
but then you have vermilion which is
again this team that i didn't expect to
do super well
that did really well but they're going
against temperature
right so this is going to be both
matches are going to be amazing to watch
yeah
right like you have like the underdog
versus
the gods the object right but i think
they can do it like after what i saw
anything's possible right then you have
pz who again i had them winning
everything
right i had them number two and they had
to kind of scrape their way up there
but i think they're riding that high
right on the win
against 55 dragons who again i i would
argue before
you know we did wtx they may have been
one of the strongest teams if not the
strongest teams
that would have went to wts if their
team members weren't
were of age right so it's like
i can't wait i can't wait to see 55
dragons on the main stage
versus pz to see what that matchup is
going to be like and observed first of
all i can't wait
and then one of these teams these teams
are going to play whatever winner is
gonna have to play each other
right we could see a double everything u
double n a we could see another n a for
c i
don't know i can't wait i can't wait i'm
super hype it's i'm not saying this in a
bad way but it's kind of a weird bracket
setup yeah i mean i ca i can't wait it's
gonna be
so much fun to watch i can't wait to see
what that bring out because a lot of
these teams
if you've been following the scene at
all they haven't been streaming they
haven't been showing anything
they haven't been talking they haven't
been doing anything like this is they're
going in there
really with no information about each
other right
there's nothing like no one's been
streaming their builds no one's here's
how to beat us
yeah it's what we're gonna see it's
gonna be
way out there who knows all right so
where and when
do we see this amazing thing so tomorrow
yay nine pst a.m a.m 9 a.m pst i should
probably say that i'll tell you what
i've been yeah i'd be like where's my
story um
but yeah you missed it yeah tune in i
believe it's give me this channel it's
this channel right here that you're
watching now
9am i will be there and i will be
watching let me get a wake up nine
o'clock
i'm going to bed right now give me like
five minutes
and then you can just sleep over there
on the side of the road if you hear some
snoring
it's probably it's different we'll reach
over and poke you with our foot but yeah
guys be
be excited eu represent your eu guys n a
represent n a guys and if you don't like
either well you can represent me that's
fine i'm fine with that
represent hugh team hugh deep hugh all
right
all right thank you very very much for
coming on and talking about pro leagues
and pvp leagues both
i'm gonna let you go to sleep yeah
definitely please don't snore um
you guys stick around because last week
we had drew and jerry on and we talked
about this upcoming raid boss
and what he sounds like today we're
going to talk about
what he looks like and this i've heard
you said this is going to scare you so
oh yeah oh yeah i will this actually
plays into a fear of yours
definitely i didn't ask you if i could
say that on the show sorry i'm just
telling you man
this is if someone sees it they'll be
like i know i know
thank you thanks we'll be back in a
minute you guys
and we are back with crystal and franco
thank you guys for taking some time to
come talk to me
uh last week we gave you a foley teaser
of the boss thanks to drew and jerry and
i want to talk today about
the art behind this so why don't we
start crystal you've been
on quite a bit we all know you and love
you uh
franco is a first timer on guild chat
welcome thank you very very much
um let's have you introduce yourself for
those who are new to the show and talk
about what you do
uh my name is crystal reed and i am a
game designer on the rates team
and what i do is i come up with clever
and interesting ways to kill players
i love it thank you franco you gotta do
more than that
oh oh geez okay i said a bar
sorry um well i'm franco uh glitter um
in the
vfx team here at guild war uh at gabors
and i'm embedded with the rage team and
i work very closely with the designers
and
particularly crystal um and uh help uh
make magic happen yes yes that's that's
the right answer good job
you did before the show remember that
sweet earthquake effect you made on the
camera oh yeah yeah
thank you for that that was that's right
a girl next time so we know to throw
ourselves back and forth
in the chairs all right so tell me a
little bit about vfx
and what it is and why we like it well
vfx is is a pretty
large encompassing thing and you know
depending on what type of skill or what
type of effect you're creating it could
involve
anything from you know modeling
animation
particle simulations you know we have a
very talented vfx team here it's
not just myself there's there's other
vfx artists that do an amazing job
so and they uh each person brings
particular skill sets and
uh marries everything together to create
some really great you know
spells uh skills um everything so
there's a lot that goes into it but uh
it's not just one thing so yeah but it's
yeah it's a whole bunch all the stuff
that you see
you guys are helping to get in there so
it's not just a static
here's this dry thing with nothing going
on around it yeah well especially you
know with the bosses
and that crystal creates it really
allows us to have a solid foundation to
to build those those effects for some of
the great skills and attacks
and so it's really fun kind of immersive
experience
you know being able to actually see what
they're plotting out
and to to work with designers to you
know push
the envelope with the effects as well as
you know hearing uh you know how it's
received by the fans
yeah i just think i just like franco
it's just thing on the ground
i don't care what it looks like it hurts
players just make it look really
dangerous
and you will make it actually dangerous
you will make it match oh it's super
dangerous don't stand on that stuff
is this stuff you were talking about at
twitchcon last year like if they're
standing in the red they're bad
yeah no if you're standing in fire
that's your idiot beacon that guy
that guy is he needs to step it up or we
need to find a replacement look i ran
out of dodge juice i'm sorry okay
dodge juice i don't think that's
i wasn't going there you had to i'm not
making effects for dodge juice
yeah you're both terrible people all
right so
this guy we're going to see him in a
minute but first i want to
talk about how how you came up with a
slightly different
raid boss i mean what was the inception
for this guy
oh okay so um this is the first raid
boss
in salvation pass and it's actually
it's based on a really an old design
of mine that i had worked on a few years
ago
we had some down time i had worked on
the front the original fractals team and
so we had some downtime before i moved
over to
the next team uh and i had a lot of
ideas and i was just kind of throwing
them down on paper so
before we made we started working on
salvation pass
um i grabbed like bobby who's our writer
and tears uh who was filling in as a map
artist at the time
and uh we like we sat together in a room
we're like all right
what is this map about like how is this
narrative going to continue and i'm like
what would be a fun environment for you
to build
uh tierzo what would be um you know a
fun story for you to tell bobby so
we kind of planned out those things and
uh
you know the the artist had wanted
something that was kind of more
natural environment in a cave i'm like
we can totally do a cave uh and then so
we were like oh it'll be like some kind
of natural creature
i was like oh guys i have this the boss
is already done they're like what
happened and i was like i had this
design dock i wrote a couple of years
ago
i'm like we could totally just like i'll
i'll fix it because it was something i
did like a long time ago and it wasn't
really that great
but like it gave us kind of a framework
for what we wanted to do and then
everyone else on the team was on board
uh she's like all right let's do this uh
and so then we moved forward and so the
original boss
um it was like a giant grub yeah a
humongous grub just the biggest
the biggest grub ever uh so we had
sent the design dock over to the
creature guys and they looked at it and
they they liked the dock they really
liked a lot of the mechanics
and then they go well we we did we made
you something
but it's not a grub i'm like well then
what is it
what is it it's not a grub it's not a
girl all right are you guys ready for
your first look at this and this is like
big scary you make it look scary you
make it actually dangerous and
all right let's take a first look at
this big terrifying guy
ready oh my god it's not the magic thing
it's not the magic thing
and there he is so i can't help but
notice
salathosaur than i do
his name honest to god you guys is
slothasaur
i can't help but notice he's sleeping
well what else is sloth gonna do
i'm hoping more that i mean do is do we
have like a tiptoe elite where we just
get past him and i'd be parade
no i'm not gonna make you talk about the
mechanics but no no
so he will but he will wake up he will
wake up eventually
yes you must wake him up he's he doesn't
like being look i don't even like being
waked up
and there's a giant sloth creature
you're going to wake up like i don't
know what you think would happen but
nothing good
all right mark says that chat likes
sloths or
this name is amazing it was it was sloth
thesaurus because
unless it makes me laugh like i don't
stub those names i'm like slothasaurus
perfect and i put that in and then we
sent it over to bobby and bobby goes i
can't call it slaposaurus so he started
coming up with uh
we looked up like the latin name for
what sloths were i don't know it was
some weird crazy name i'm like i don't
know what that is
it doesn't sound like sloth asaurus i
had it i forgot the name again
but yeah so yeah so uh he had stubbed it
in
and then like within a day everyone who
had seen the name was like
what happened to sloth the source what
is what is this can we have slothosaurus
back
and he was like no no guys come on he's
like and they're like please we want
sloth thesaurus back and so
bobby goes okay okay and he goes
he can be slothasaur because the aorus
sounded too much like a dinosaur we're
like no
no he's not his dinosaur and i was like
all right fine
so he's sloth he's sloth did you want to
rip on bobby anymore for that i mean you
seem
excited about it i rip on bobby enough
every day okay so he's probably at home
watching he's sick today so
uh i don't know i don't have to go back
to my desk and bob would be like
disappointed why do you do that why
would you do that to me it's fine he'll
be on next week isn't he
uh he's on in two weeks because we're
going to keep talking about sloth
thesaur
yes um so
i just want him to do more okay now and
i know
we don't i don't want him to do anything
in this room because it'll spoil it
right i'm gonna be
paid off by getting my butt handed to me
by a gigantic sloth monster
i'm gonna jump out inverted brink yeah
i'm gonna spawn him in a location so we
can
see his adorable little face up and
close yes please all right so franco
while crystal's getting set up
um let's talk about the effects just
kind of in salvation pass because we
were talking about how like
there's this magic flowing along the
background and how do you how do you
even communicate
hey giant evil sloth well i mean
the the fruit i mean yeah it's kind of
an interesting kind of approach because
the thing is is like this
doesn't exist right so you have to kind
of figure out okay well
let's look at the anatomy of it right so
looking at the anatomy and what the you
know the the creature guys had done with
it and did an amazing job
kind of making it very unique um being
able to actually
look at some of the characteristics i
was able to kind of formulate okay well
you know based off of this particular
anatomy based off of his
his his weight everything so i figured
you know well
you know he has certain characteristics
of um
that have like mandibles like uh like
snakes right so
uh certain things where you know okay
well what does a snake do he spits the
venom right so that could act as an
igniter
right so there's certain things that
happen um
that you know i use those cues that
actually happen in anatomy
you know in nature and then create these
certain effects in certain attacks
marathons from discovery channel like
all day yes
yeah i approve of this thing this is
this is a good thing
this is research this is research it's
work research and now you can
deduct on your taxes whatever you're
getting comcast or whatever it's science
you know it's science it's it's it's you
know it's a lot of uh cool that's what
i love being an effects artist because
you know you're able to actually kind of
pull so many things in from
from science to you know just this
anatomy and
you know so it's a it's a fun fun thing
and then you can come back to work and
say okay now we have giant sloth
magic is really messed up i watch
discovery channel all weekend long
let's see what happens yes let's make
the magic happen
i want to see his face you want to see
his face can we show his face let's show
his face
show his face this is great this is
amazing
so this is sloth and all his towering
glory
i'll make myself he just wants a hug
we'll go stand next to him
this is how big he is compared to like a
human female size player he's pretty
large
it's quite big nice miniature there by
the way i know
i legit have that fyi yeah you don't
just have your mini course of all
no on the dev client all right no i
don't i don't just cheat with all my
hackery dev commands on the test clients
i mean sometimes sometimes play dress up
that's totally okay all right so we're
not going to
give away we're not going to teach you
how to beat this ray
from the side jugaboors just does not
even care he's just looking around like
yeah that's my buddy joe
he will care he will care if this guy
goes aggro all right so we've got
these are the mandibles like the little
fangs that you're just little teeth yeah
yeah so it's like very like
reptilian-esque you know in a way in
some ways
um so and you know obviously the the
the magic kind of really distorted
and contorted like a lot of his anatomy
too so yeah things that are
you know very sloth-like but still you
know
kind of different right so it's uh
that's where you know you mix the
science and a little bit of the
creativeness you know and seeing what
you come up with you know but you start
with that foundation of uh you know
basing in reality but then taking it
that step further
with uh being creative with it you know
and then hearing the narrative is a
really big
thing too just to seeing like why and
how this thing
exists so it's kind of cool it all comes
together yeah it's gonna be an
interesting story to come up
i didn't notice his eyes until those
scary red eyes
eyes scary eyes they're perfect they're
bloodshot because you woke them up i say
they're better david
obviously that's now that's not cannon
no
no you can do that buddy david's eyes
now yeah
it's stuck in my head thanks man all
right
i'm going to come hum that by your desk
for like six hours it was like get it
out of the song i heard in the car when
i pulled into the lot so you know you
always realize
the last song yeah now you just passed
along the pain thanks for that
all right so he's got little betty davis
eyes evidently
that are now bloodshot because you woke
him up yeah
i was so mean i came out in this map and
i was like get up for the people so they
can see you um
i meant to ask did you do the little z's
when he's sleeping the
z's actually we the rotation they were
uh something that existed in
yeah there's something we already had
yeah something we had and then just uh
making sure it was uh
you know attached to the right point so
it actually feels like he's sleeping
yeah they used to like go into the
ground i was like this won't do
no we got to make him go up all right so
he has a little friend
he has a friend i guess i should have
spawned him ahead of time
i really love spawn his friend next to
him hey gorsev what's up
course fell's like don't forget me
did i do it did it work
yes this is a bobby name right yes
of course bobby named him i don't even
remember what i call them
i like him all right so tell me
oh glarious standing up looking around
he's honest to god cute
james smith one of our our producers he
didn't he didn't like it he was like
what is this
he was like don't send those photos out
to me anymore in email i don't want to
i don't want to see this in my inbox he
was very upset when he saw the concept
he was like duly noted thank you for
giving me that little piece of
information about
about james and like give me what i want
or i'll sing you a slumbling
yeah exactly right
i would buy the hell out of a plushie of
this little guy can we see him up close
uh yeah i have to do something like dev
hackery
there we go my camera in here a little
oh there he is so this is he has teensy
mandibles
too well they're just baby mandibles
because he's just a baby
they fall out with his little creepy
crab legs
he's like making little biscuits he is
all right so tell me about this guy
without spoiling too much
what can we say about the slow bling all
right
so can we show what he does
yeah let's show what this guy does
because there's actually
four of them there's four there's four
of them okay
but we can show one of them
um
so he spits at me he's spitting
different things spits a couple
different things that sounds like a free
face
yeah all the fire in my face
[Laughter]
well i started out as um you know
because there's a
fire and poison and um i just started it
with well he has acid reflux
so he's going to have a different type
of kind of
projectiles right so he's like this guy
needs an ass yeah
get him with tums um so you know the
thing is is uh poison does exist all
all over you know in the in the game and
in the world so i wanted to kind of give
it
a different spin um a different
perspective you know based on the type
of creature
uh that he is uh because this thing
really shouldn't exist
so um having a little fun with that
he just said this little cute thing was
a monstrosity of nature but he shouldn't
exist
[Laughter]
but yeah so i can't come back from that
i feel like he's going what is with this
one last hp what is this about why can't
you die
because i'm a big cheater that's like
i'm not gonna lie it's okay because now
he
just keeps doing it we get to keep
watching um so you talked a little bit
about the different color ranges that
you were using to
communicate this yeah that um you know
making sure there's a lot of
uh you know color variations in the
scene and being able to make sure that
we color match appropriately so it
stands out and you know that you're
being attacked because there's a lot of
you know
mackerel detail happening uh with you
know not only the environment
and the props but just color palette
wise so
making sure that it's distinguishable as
it's coming from him
uh was a big thing because you know
people are throwing down their skills
too and
there's a lot of things you know that
you know you want to make sure that it's
being communicated and you know you know
you're being attacked by this cute
little thing that should exist
thank you oh i feel better now
so uh so yeah just like working working
with that you know and
going back and forth based off you know
feedback from some of the uh
the people testing yeah yeah so and also
crystal and and the rest of the team too
because the one great thing is we we all
work together and we all kind of look at
things holistically
and you know we we communicate one
another uh you know very well and you
know we always go back and forth where
we need to make the adjustments and
you know feedback so it's really it's a
really uh you know immersive and
really um collaborative kind of process
he sits like five feet away when i need
his attention
you come sit with us if it gets too bad
we have cookies over there uh
yes that'll be a bad thing for me that's
my kid's heel
all right i kind of love this guy so
there's a little hint
again we don't want to give stuff away
oh god his head came off that was
horrible no what did you do
you just told me you you told me that
was a thing well surprise we thought
we'd be a little spontaneous in the show
today don't do it again all right
so that's the chance we'll go back to
looking at the adorable sloth a sore
yeah that's i think
did you know it did that well yeah i was
just making sure
because i feel like if you did know you
wouldn't have done that just now
people have nightmares i loved him that
was that was bob that was my friend
they're gonna get names now all right so
i'm gonna ask
i want to know one thing about
slothasaur since you've killed my friend
i have nothing left you have to give me
this
slots don't generally have the big spiky
thing oh and his elbow yeah i don't know
that's like his people's elbow i guess
off the top ropes it's when he goes to
like
it's when like there aren't any players
and raids and all the raid bosses hang
out after hours i guess
betting on each other awesome all right
i need to go cope with my grief over the
loss of bob this leveling
it's the best name i could come up with
on short notice and that's why i'm not
allowed to name things
see see this is why we have writers
that are awesome thank you writers who
are awesome all right we will see you
guys back on guild chat next week thank
you both
so much thank you thanks for having us
all right bye from us and sloths or
[Music]
Guild Chat - Episode 32

Transcription[edit]

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