Guild Wars 2

This isn’t a “cleverly” disguised criticism of why Charr armor is terrible but a real, honest-to-goodness question.

What is it about Charr armor that so many people dislike? I have a Charr character and despite that, I haven’t had armor that I thought looked ugly. I also don’t remember seeing characters in the world with armor that I considered terrible.

I’ve already tried searching for picture examples of why many people hate Charr armor, but I’ve come up empty. If possible, could someone give me photos that show the true flaws in Charr armor? Preferably with comparisons of similar armor on different races that’s pulled off well.

don’t have any pictures on me but it consist of armor stretching of the human version to fit the charr so it creates a few problems that takes away from the race when you notice them and are consistently looking it at easily noticeable giant floating pads for one the horn/ear issue[helmets are an issue for every race in some way but the neck of a charr just makes it seem worse] tail clipping issues for quite a bit of the armor[tier 3 light included] and I think the back pieces have an issue of floating a foot away from your back. they are minor things but with anets response to the question on this at pax+how the last few gemstore armors went people[my self included] feel like its not going to get any better leading to people feeling like they don’t matter due to there choice of race they play and depending on how extravagant the armor design gets in the future it could get worse I know you asked for pictures but those are pretty simple things to look out for in game if you want to see the problem people have[that and with some of the armors the clipping/floating shoulder pads is more prevalent in motion

Just to try to better explain myself: I’ve tried to avoid wasting people’s time, so I did my best to inspect Charr armor prior to posting. I honestly don’t think it looks so bad, which is why I asked for picture examples.

http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?weight=2&race=1&color=0&sex=0&armorSet=whipermi
http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?weight=2&race=1&color=0&sex=0&armorSet=highwaymani
http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?weight=2&race=1&color=0&sex=0&armorSet=jetami

Look at the rear shots. The tail clips through the armor. Worse, the textures appear stretched and lower res on a Charr because their not adjusted for the larger frame. All in all, the armor just looks bad compared to others. The Asura have the opposite problem, their textures look compressed and shrunken, which can look poor at lower resolutions on slower computers.

Using the high res texture pack doesn’t help because the problem with Charr isn’t the actual resolution, just the way it’s bloated around their bigger frame.

I love my Charr ranger. With that said if i could choose again i would have picked a human. I will see an armor and it doesn’t quite look right and think to myself this would be sweet on a human! I think the light and medium armors look the worst on the charr. Heavy armor can look good. I wear medium so im SOL. The tail clipping actually doesn’t bother me. The helms removing my horns does.

Speaking of which have they made an item where i can change race?

I sure hope you all aren’t expecting ANet’s handling of charr armor to get better by deleting your charr and making humans instead, because that reaction seems to be one of the core reasons fixes for charr armor are trickling in so slowly and, perhaps, are in danger of eventually stopping altogether. I’m in no position to tell people what race to play, but if you honestly care about the charr and how ANet treats them, ditching the “losing team” for the “winning team” isn’t how you turn things around.

I appreciate it, Drakkon. Those links were very useful.

How many helmets hide our horns bugs me a lot.

Drakkon.4782:

Using the high res texture pack doesn’t help because the problem with Charr isn’t the actual resolution, just the way it’s bloated around their bigger frame.

? This is the first time I’ve heard of this. What is this high-res texture pack and where can I find it?

It’s a toggle in the options menu. I believe it’s on the graphics tab.

My favourite example:

Vigil Armor

Theundersigned.4761:

Just to try to better explain myself: I’ve tried to avoid wasting people’s time, so I did my best to inspect Charr armor prior to posting. I honestly don’t think it looks so bad, which is why I asked for picture examples.

In my book, the fact that the vast majority of armors tail-clip is plenty bad. And that includes one of the stupidly expensive T3 cultural armors. Then you have the huge, floating shoulderpads, which are especially bad on a female charr. Again, that includes many of the cultural armors. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when even the few sets that are specifically designed for a species don’t actually fit.

Speaking of design, with the exception of the cultural sets and maybe a handful of others, all the gear in this game is designed for humans, making it really hard to have a non-human character who actually looks the part. Sylvari have it the worst, but light armor-wearing charr also get a crappy deal because all the fancy-frilly human stuff just looks “wrong” on them IMO. I’m levelling my second charr, a mesmer, and the only armor I’ve remotely liked on her so far is still the level 25 crafted Shadow set which I’ll keep transmuting onto higher-level items until I decide which of the cultural armors I want to pick up. And even so, I’m not using or showing the shoulders or gloves because they’re comically oversized. Needless to say, the outfit also tail-clips …

If I go for the T3 cultural with her, she’ll have to deal both with tail-clipping and hoverpad-shoulders. Light T2? Oops, the pauldrons aren’t even visible. My warrior on the other hand will have to go for T3 shoulders because they’re the only ones that actually fit. But at least she has that one option. If you wear medium armor, you won’t even get that — the cultural sets ALL have hover-shoulders. Some are more visibly so than others, but it’s mind-boggling and annoying in all cases because, again, if even the cultural gear does not fit, it does not bode well and is pretty telling as to what degree of attention and consideration the charr get: very little.

My main problem with Charr armor is in the light armor (the legging especially). The fabric seems to balloon out around the legs and tail and ends up looking like a Lolita dress (or like my Charr has a buttress on underneath of her robes). Charr have a unique shape to their legs and it is a huge shame that it gets lost in just about all of the armor. Why can’t the light armor hang better like the female Charr underwear?

Also the shoulder pads are always huge and way far away from my Charr’s body, it always ends up looking ridiculous on my light classes.

BlueSoda.6297:

Also the shoulder pads are always huge and way far away from my Charr’s body, it always ends up looking ridiculous on my light classes.

These are the Cm shoulders on a charr. Even with armour they’d be three feet away XD

Essentially, if it’s not made for charr, its stretched into weird shapes and doesn’t sit right. Medium armours make you fat, light armours just don’t work.

As a charr necro player, my biggest personal complaint is how many head pieces disable the horns when equipped, hoods in particular. They look so much better with the horns poking out, but there are currently a grand total of two hood models in the game that show the horns, and one of them is a pvp-only piece. (Technically, there are three hoods, but with the way it fits on a charr, the Durmand Priory hood is more of a turtleneck than an actual hood.)

How about the fact that it looks overly huge, even on a charr, inviting WoW levels of grotesquerie? And the fact that the armour both clips and leaves parts of the body exposed at the same time, despite no other race having this problem? Or that their only way of dealing with horns is to completely remove them?

That, along with the absolutely awful depictions of the beautiful concept art, and the nerfing of the intellect of the charr and their technology (going against the grain of revealed concept art and lore leading up to the game’s release) was what turned me off them as a race. And the charr were the only appealing feature, the rest of GW2 is just a very typical MMO with well-disguised quests.

Now, consider Everquest II, where every beast race has had the armour tailor-made for them, including tail flaps/holes, horn flaps/holes, and properly connecting at every joint no matter how strange the anatomy. So it’s not that hard, it’s just that ArenaNet tossed aside the charr in favour of more popular races, even kicking them when they were down.

Some people (in the lore/concept art departments) at ArenaNet clearly loved the charr. The people responsible for designing the game weren’t among them. As such, I feel like the charr are well-hated runts whom ArenaNet would prefer to see removed from the game, if they could. Likely refocusing on their beloved Mary Sue races (the sylvari and the asura), leaving everyone else by the wayside.

It’s just a badly managed game, and some of the design heads have had too much bias, egotism, and control. In a good company, they would have been fired, but not at ArenaNet. This means that the game has suffered, so some parts of the game have had way, way too much attention, whilst other parts only received barely, barely enough for it to be considere done.

I’ve seen better quality than this in indie games. Hell, the quality of the creatures in the Kickstarter game Churbles looks better than the charr. I can’t shake this feeling that the charr are just so reviled at ArenaNet, they work on them begrudgingly whilst wishing they could work on their Mary Sue races instead.

So, yeah.

On the other hand, SOE is releasing Everquest Next, soon, and that promises to give better attention to the beast races. That’s where I’m going. I once loved the charr, but the sheer hatred that ArenaNet have for them have just given me a massive distaste for GW2. Compare with this kerra from EQ Next. There’s no clipping, the armour looks like it was designed for the body, and it even has a tail flap. And EQ Next is in its alpha stages.

So whilst the charr are down and being kicked repeatedly in the teeth, the kerra are rising high. I’d rather play a game where the developer actually likes the race I play, rather than feeling like the runt that everyone hates.

(Same with the engineer, to be honest. An afterthought that ArenaNet would remove if they could.)

AuldWolf.7598:

On the other hand, SOE is releasing Everquest Next, soon, and that promises to give better attention to the beast races. That’s where I’m going. I once loved the charr, but the sheer hatred that ArenaNet have for them have just given me a massive distaste for GW2. Compare with this kerra from EQ Next. There’s no clipping, the armour looks like it was designed for the body, and it even has a tail flap. And EQ Next is in its alpha stages.

So whilst the charr are down and being kicked repeatedly in the teeth, the kerra are rising high. I’d rather play a game where the developer actually likes the race I play, rather than feeling like the runt that everyone hates.

(Same with the engineer, to be honest. An afterthought that ArenaNet would remove if they could.)

Sorry to burst your bubble but what you’re showing is just a Concept Art, and from what I’ve seen, we haven’t gotten a chance to closely inspect the armour like GW2, since the game is still in alpha stage. Who knows, you might find a lot of clipping issues when you actually zoom in close…

Now, since I see that you have a habit of linking Concept Arts and saying “yeah it looks perfectly fit”, here are some great Charr Armour that I’ve found, and they look absolutely stunning <3

http://images.vg247.com/current//2011/04/CharrDesigns.jpg
http://bestgamewallpapers.com/files/guild-wars-eye-of-the-north/charr-concept-art.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/c/c8/%22Charr_Group%22_concept_art_2.jpg

Kerran has only passable armour – it fits the body, but the design leaves a lot to be desired. And the creature itself is such an abortion it even makes female worgen look good.

As many have stated several times most armor when worn by a Charr character will have clearly visible clipping errors or be stretched to fit the model thus reducing the quality of the armor’s appearance. Also many portions of the armor are lost due to the shape of the Charr body, this is seen most commonly in the lower sections of chest plates and the upper portions of leggings, the designs are often sucked into the waistline and are not visible. Other examples are the designs in some of the helmets and the non-Cultural boots, the armor pieces in question often look twisted and distorted. There is of course the ever popular magically floating shoulder pads/ pauldrons.

This is an ongoing issue and affects most of the armor that exists in the game currently, and even is present in their Cultural sets. If you want screen shots I am sure you can dig through the older threads and find plenty of examples, sadly the game is/was down during the time that this post was typed up, so I am/was unable to take screen shots myself of examples. I apologize for my inability.

I don’t mind the helmets (don’t like to hide my head anyway) or shoulders, as you can turn those off (I almost never show them on any character, of any race). I do mind the tail clipping. And that limits the amount of armours you can wear to a very small selection. The fact that a cultural armour, which is made specifically for a charr, which has a tail, by default, has tail clipping is just non-excusable.