Thoughts on Rebuilding Lion’s Arch, Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 over the past couple weeks to the point where I’ve got into the mentality of pre-expansion clear-up.  This generally means finishing up on little things you want to clear (gear, certain achievements, living story) before you’re hit with a large amount of content.  Because of this, I haven’t really been that engaged with Tyria recently, but a recent change to the city of Lion’s Arch perked my interest enough to talk about it. 

The lighthouse has seen its fair share of damage over the past couple years.  Screenshot taken 23/5/2015

Lion’s Arch has seen its fair share of damage over the 2-3 years of playtime with its most significant attack coming at the end of season one of the Living World.  It’s been left somewhat scattered and broken for over a year now and there has been a decent discussion about whether it should be rebuilt; with some believing it would undermine the factor of destruction and the toll it took on those who chose to defend the city.  Regardless, there has been some stirrings in Lion’s Arch recently and the Consortium (a corporation involved in Southsun Cove and the Fractals of the Mist) have footed the bill to rebuild the city and reignite some prestige into it.  It’s an interesting story with the potential for it to backfire but for now I want to look at what they’re doing from an architectural point of view. 

Construction slowly starts above the WvW portals.  Screenshot taken 23/5/2015

On the surface, one could say that there isn’t a great deal to look at when it comes to the current level of construction.  There are a great deal of scaffolding up with a wooden frame against a metal mesh and masonry that are focused in at 2-3 sites around the city.  These sites are quite tall, using airships to move in large curved formations giving the impression of a large rounded tower to be built overlooking the current Asuran portal gates to the major cities of each race.  Reading the blog post, one sees why these structures are being put into place as follows:

“The plan of the city leaders is not to attempt to fully restore the landmark as it once was, but rather to implement an enhanced design that will more realistically serve the Tyria of today. In light of the lessons learned from the Scarlet Briar and her massive airship drill, the Breachmaker, the city will be a more fortified city, with a design intended to protect citizen and visitor alike.”

The airship brings in a large piece of wall for the construction of a tower-like building.  Screenshot taken 23/5/2015

A tower of such height of course gives the city the ability to see threats from afar and the structures being curved diminish the potential weak spots of a square or flat frontage building.  That being said, having tall, imposing structures give the potential for them to impose onto the city itself disrupting the original feel of Lion’s Arch in Guild Wars 2 being this pirate run city and not a capital with a standing army.  The events of the Living Story may have changed this, but I still think it’s important to make sure these potential structures don’t stand out beyond the rest (A bit like Brutalism and how some structures are considered concrete monstrosities). 

Artist impression of what the new Lion's Arch could look like.  From https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/lions-arch-construction-nears-completion-new-player-poll-announced/ accessed 23/5/2015

Looking at the blog, they did show a couple impressions of what could be going on in Lion’s Arch but I don’t really feel connected with them for a couple reasons.  First of all, I’m not too sure where this picture would fit into Lion’s Arch at the moment.  I think I would need a couple perspective / axonometric shots to truly come to terms with what they’re looking to do.  Second of all, I don’t feel a sense of centralisation which is a bit harder to pin-point when it could it said that Lion’s wasn’t centralised in the past.  What I’m looking for with this rebuild is a means of people to connect through either a route or an action; like the forge square previously where people would pass through to access their bank, TP or crafting professions while also being a route for people to go beyond the city into the world.  Because of the setting, aesthetics and previous interactions with other organisations in the world of Tyria, I do feel there’s a way to do this well through the creation of a bazaar or market-like square akin to the Mediterranean / North African settlements that trade from its docks to its markets. 

Souk of Marrakech.  Image from http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ accessed 25/5/2015

Places like the Souk in Marrakech are a melting point of culture, art, food trade and social interactions that creates its own mini-settlement for all to enjoy.  The basis of the land may be calm, but the stalls are awash with colour across the spectrum to delight the eye and inspire the mind.  The act of trading is not just a matter of transaction, but a social event through introductions, haggling and the purchase which sums up the level of interactions one experiences in such a place.  This is what I would love to see come into the more pedestrian areas of Lion’s Arch; creating an environment that gets people to interact with from a sociable point of view as well as movement.  The city is kinda half way there when it comes to the current mystic forge spot, but I feel that if Lion’s Arch is going to have a remake I’d love to see an injection of mercantile chaos into this fray.  Whether players would warm to such an idea is of course something that is unknown before implementation, but much like my previous post on player housing, we can create architecture through more than just bricks and mortar. 

The pirate council of Lion’s arch have given the city a great sense of character to me coming to Guild Wars 2 as someone not involved with the series previously.  Its reconstruction led by the consortium showcases a great deal of potential for the city; I just hope that the character from its pirate / mercantile backgrounds shines through against the fortifications in progress. 

Time of course will tell.

Returning to Path of Exile: Hardcore League, Knowledge and Architecture

So my last couple weeks have been a bit all over the place….

I originally planned to continue my Building in Starbound mini-series but I’ve come up against a couple things that I feel are important.  First of all, I don’t have that many resources available to me, especially with the recent update I’ve had to get back to my Homebase to work from my foundations.  It’s been a bit all over the place so I felt that I couldn’t really do something to the quality I was looking for with it.  I did look into using my older Terraria save, but there are a couple functions that I much prefer in Starbound such as augmenting existing blocks into something else e.g. glass block with frame for a window. 

There has also been the factor of some things I’ve found quite interesting recently and of course it’s much easier to write about something you’re enjoying rather than half-arsing it.  I do want to return to it in the future but I think I should spend some time re-educating myself about the practice of drawing building features before trying to replicate it in a virtual world.  In the mean-time, I have topics outline for the next couple weeks so should get back on schedule quickly. 

Without further to do, let’s talk about Path of Exile….

My first character from PoE.  Rather under-powered in comparison to my current play-through.  Screenshot taken 17/5/2015

I originally played PoE early 2013 coming off of playing Torchlight and getting a lot of enjoyment out of it.  ARPG’s had never been a genre I had played in the past, but by this point it was becoming a genre I could see myself playing for years to come.  I played a Templar which is a character that can naturally fit between the physical strength and magical caster to which I took a tanky ‘sword and board’ approach with elemental melee attacks.  I got a lot of enjoyment out of it, but it lost my interest in the later levels as it started to take a decent amount of time to clear mobs and I kinda wasn’t as tanky as I once thought.  Since then, I have become more aware of the game’s mechanics and with the announcement of the expansion the game has perked my interest once again.  This time however, I wanted to take a different approach. 

My current Templar with much higher dps while still keeping similar hp.  Screenshot taken 17/5/2015

I watched videos on the game from YouTubers such as ZiggyD, trawled the wiki and used the PoEBuilder to see how one can tailor a character and after playing through a couple new characters in ‘softcore’ I decided to go for it and make a character in the ongoing (or previous depending when you read this) Hardcore 1 month league.  I made a Templar again, but this time I looked to use projectile magic with buffs and totem summon with a nice mixture of stats for both defence and offense.  I was aware of the resistance reduction during the difficulties so planned accordingly, focused strongly on a core set of skills rather than lots of different ones and built regeneration to make sure that I wouldn’t be held back too often in terms of efficiency.  At the time of writing this, I’m half way into act 2 on Cruel difficulty and although I’ve had a couple close calls (~5% hp or less) I’m still holding on.  To the well versed PoE player, this isn’t anything special, but for me this means a lot as it took something to want to play in a mode where everything’s on the line.  Being cautious in the hardcore league has made my take on certain situations a bit slower, but as a by-product of this I have been able to take in the surroundings and see how much is going on as you traverse the landscape.  One such place was the Lunaris Temple with particular mention of level 3. 

Gold detail, smooth decor and sewers of blood throughout the lower Lunaris Temple.  Screenshot taken 17/5/2015

Lunaris is a place of contrast at heart within the bleakness of Wraeclast.  With grand walkways and golden motifs wrapped in quality cloths accenting the bold colours it gives the impression of a once powerful empire holding residence.  As you descend thou, you see Piety’s work (the boss of this location) created from a swarm of bodies and the blood runs dark red throughout its sewer system that perfectly back-up the array of miscreated beings that look to attack you as you progress through the area.  The gold and cloth are still there, it’s just being saturated by the blood creating a contrast that makes a piece of architecture seem so bleak and disgraceful have its own beauty.  This contrast is a narrative of architecture that has taken the building materials, the cladding and the décor and made something new of it.  Darkness, grit and grey can seem boring in many games but in the right hands (like with architecture) so much can still be done with its aesthetic.

Finer things in life within the Lunaris Temple.  Screenshot taken 17/5/2015

Being someone who finds Brutalism a fascinating time of architectural design, I very much hold this opinion that this bleakness can inspire and morph into something special.  Brutalism is often regarded as concrete monstrosities due to their concrete construction and greyish look, but through human interaction it has its own appeal.  Places like the Barbican Centre in London encapsulate this by being grey and concrete while adding different levels of high-rise, gardens, water and larger form walkways than your average tower block. 

Barbican Centre, London.  Photograph taken 14/02/2010

That being said, I wanted to find a piece of real-world architecture that encapsulates the Lunaris level 3 map and I feel that this does it…

A bone chandelier at the Sedlec Ossuary.  Image from Wikipedia 18/5/2015

The Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic is a piece of architecture that makes bleakness and morbidity beautiful as it creates art through its bone collection.  Its chandelier, candelabra’s fixtures and various other items are all made from bones of the dead to around 40,000 remains (if Wikipedia is to be believed, unfortunately I’m not sure on the number myself I thought it was closer to 20,000).  On the surface, this place may seem outrageous or morbid, but its architecture has gone beyond its walls and created a narrative from it, much like Lunaris.  It’s in the nature of the ARPG to focus on the mob pulls and skill affects, but if you find yourself running through PoE anytime soon, take a second to look at the environment and think about what it portrays about what you’re doing and where you may be going.  I hope you found this interesting and good luck to those who choose to take the jump into a hardcore mode for the first time.

Let’s hope my Templar stays alive up to the end of Cruel at least.  -60% resistances is gonna be a bit of a bastard to deal with….

Retrospective RTS: Warzone 2100

So another week has passed and I have found myself without a time period to play Starbound for the purpose of this blog.  For you see, I usually look do organise content for this blog over the weekend ready for Monday, but this weekend I found myself blindsided by a hangover from not a great deal of beer which probably shows how long it’s been since I've ‘properly’ drank.  Just like with anything, it’s all good then one time it’s just awful =/.

Anyway, enough about that because I would like to talk about something I have been doing this past week and that’s playing the campaign of an old RTS game called Warzone 2100. 

RTS games have always been a staple of my gaming interests with titles such as Warcraft, Command and Conquer and Total Annihilation.  When I only had a PSX thou, there were only a few titles I could play outside of going to a friend’s house to use their PC but I battled through the awkward controls to find some great titles.  It was on that old PSX I first encountered Command and Conquer as well as its follow-up Red Alert, but one month there was a demo in the Official PlayStation Magazine for a little game called Warzone 2100 that kept me playing way beyond its perceived time-length.  Warzone 2100 was special to me because of what it did.  It had this expansive tech tree I had only previously encountered in a game like Civilisation and a highly customisable set of tanks using a relativity simple body/propulsion/turret manufacturing tool giving me the ability to make lots of different kinds of vehicles of offensive and defensive properties.  Around this time in my life, I had a large number of constructional toys like K’nex and Lego in which I would make custom objects like cars and bipedal robots so it’s natural to see how I could be enthralled by a system such as this. 

Warzone 2100 features a mix of vehicles, cyborgs, VTOL and Hovercrafts alongside a whole host of structures.  Screenshot taken 13/4/2015

Warzone 2100 originally came out in 1999/2000 depending on where you lived, but for me it wasn't until a couple years later when I had a PC to use myself and a good friend who let me borrow it over a period of a couple weeks.  This was a great time for me, because I got to see how far the customisation went and experienced things like VTOL crafts and cyborg manufacturing plants filling my mind with even more possibilities.  I would play skirmishes just to build lots of different kinds of vehicles and compare them to each other not really thinking about the AI or what affect my decisions made on the battlefield.  RTS’s like Command and Conquer were always great, but Warzone 2100 just had this unique selling point (to the best of my knowledge) where I feel the only thing that gets close is the wide range of units a game like Total Annihilation has (and continues to create via community support).  That being said, after my two weeks of playing I had greatly enjoyed my time doing this one thing but it would be many years until I saw this game again. 

The start of Alpha mission 1 starts the player on a small map where they progress throughout the initial campaign.  screenshot taken 5/5/2015

I originally found out about the wz2100 project during my time at university in the year 2009.  I had been discussing old games with a housemate and I could not for the life of me remember the name of this game.  I knew of its customisable tanks and nuclear war scenario but the name had completely eluded me.  Out of some sheer determination (or luck) I found out what it was from random YouTube video watching and quickly found out that it was still being updated as an open source program.  Since this day, I have played it ever so often (a bit like DK2 in reference to this post) but only recently have I actually played the campaign which has allowed me to have a new appreciation for this title. 

A couple missions later, the base has grow from your own construction and the map has greatly increased.  Screenshot taken 5/5/2015

In your typical RTS campaign, you will have a mission that features a map and you carry out the objectives in an appropriate manner to reach the end goal.  After doing this, you will most likely move onto a new map with new objectives and only have a rare chance to return to the previous map (e.g. early CnC Red Alert Allies missions).  What Warzone 2100 does is that during each of its main campaigns, it has a core map which gets built upon with the addition of ‘away missions’ to bring in a new map ever so often.  The core map keeps all your buildings, units and defensive structures where they were even in away missions where your base continues to manufacture vehicles, generate resources and gather research.  When you start the campaign you have a relativity small map of a few valleys and a single clear movement path, but by the 9th mission the map is around 4 times bigger where you've built multiple outposts across the zone signalling past victories.  It also keeps these earlier sections relevant, as in later missions the enemy retaliates with unit drops across the map requiring the player to bolster their previous defenses or position units accordingly. 

The manufacturing features a 3 point design with many different combinations.  Screenshot taken 5/5/2015

The away missions create an interesting twist on the ‘no base’ mission type with the addition of a transport that can carry up to 10 units every couple minutes to the away mission spot.  Add on top of this the continuation of production while away and you can (in a simple format in comparison to modern titles such as Planetary Annihilation) management 2 maps at the same time which I find thoroughly enjoyable.  In these missions, you don’t just grab a load of turreted vehicles, but mix in a building truck, commander node or repair tool to give your LZ a defensible position and increase your map awareness with sensory towers.  I've never been too keen on ‘no base’ missions in titles like CnC, but this feels great for the setting because it keeps that link of my available resources while still requiring me to make decisions regarding my troop movement. 

Starting off in a away mission, the LZ is being protected while the units scour the nearby landscape.  Screenshot taken 5/52015

So, in a rough assessment that’s what my previous week has come up with.  Warzone 2100 will always hold a positive memory for me and going back to playing it again recently has showed me how much a game such as this still has to offer to the player.  Of course, the great work of the wz2100 project has allowed this game to continue working with updates but I hope that in the future we can see a modern interpretation of this game.  Maybe we already have in some light (I kinda gave reference to Planetary Annihilation earlier) which if you know of please comment, but I just don’t feel I've all its components come together quite like it.