Guild Wars 2

The citadel…
It’s the coolest environment I’ve ever seen in a game. And I’ve played them all.
But it is impossible to navigate. Surely there is a way to streamline it or at least give the user an idea as to how the hell one finds their next quest waypoint. I have spent 10 minutes this morning trying to find the next waypoint for my Charr storyline. Those are 10 minutes I would rather have spent watching the cutscenes for the actual storyline! I have gone into and out of zones, back and forth looking for the correct level. I have no idea where to go.

Until you streamline it and make it more obvious as to the level / area you are currently on and how to get to your quest goal, you will continue to have a large portion of the users who avoid it like the plague.

If you want to have something to compare it to, simply look at the Drenai race’s central city that came out with wow’s Burning Crusade expansion. I bring up that inferior game (wow) for comparison purposes only. The new capital city was shiny, cool, and interesting with all of its huge glowing monuments. But it wasn’t intuitive as to how to find the correct level for your next quest. Or a crafting trainer. Or anything at all. Everything was a level up or down, hidden above or underneath each other. It was confusing to many people. It sure was for me. By the time I figured it out, i noticed that I was the ONLY person in the entire city. This was the focal point for the entire expansion as far as starting zones went. It was obvious that the developers spent a lot of time making it look cool.

But because it wasn’t streamlined, intuitive, or easy to navigate, people avoided it at all cost. If you only have an hour to play a game, and 20% of that is spent walking around trying to find your next quest giver, you’re going to get impatient.

I only bring this up to help you understand the true reason no one goes there. I want more people to enjoy this beautiful Charr capital. I also want to be able to find my current quest without youtubing, wiki-ing, or googling it.

I really doubt that’s the main reason, I find Divinity’s Reach and Rata Sum unbelievably hard to explore, however the Black Cit is as clear to me as the back of my hand, only because my first 2 toons were Charr.

Imo the real reason is, as unpopular as it is, people just want to look pretty, 80% of the population are human female.

Also: Charr armor clips everywhere.

I absolutely hate the way the map deals with upper/lower levels in general, but the citadel itself isn’t actually that complicated.

As confusing as the Citadel is to some, I can’t say I agree. Out of all the reasons I could possibly think of, the Citadel is nowhere near the top. There are plenty of other reasons why people may reject playing Charr.

“Imo the real reason is, as unpopular as it is, people just want to look pretty, 80% of the population are human female.”

Char are pretty

My solution to the citadel problem was take 30 minutes and dedicate it to getting every way point, picked up the vistas as i went now its a mater of point click im there.

Aside from one or two tricky POIs, I don’t consider the Citadel that hard to navigate — and those were mainly an issue of me not seeing what was right in front of me. The Grove had me confused for longer, partly because I played sylvari first and was still in a kind of “dazed by shiny new game” state of mind. :p The map could definitely be clearer as to which level something is actually on, though. The icons don’t always go transparent or solid as they should.

All the Black Citadel needs is a non-flattened map. Even Divinities Reach and Hoelbrak have multi-layer maps.

As for reasons people don’t play charr…

Many GW1 players in my guild hate the charr, and can’t bear to play one. I’m sure this is a case for others as well.

The aforementioned armour clipping.

The larger size that can make it more difficult to do jumping puzzles and some vistas, or see as well in tight quarters.

Charr, female especially, aren’t overly sexualized, which is a drawback to some people.

Some may simply not like felines.

[Edited by Moderator]

Well I would say firstly charr are underplayed because in GW1 you could only be human and people tend to go with what’s familiar. Jumping to norn or even sylvari isn’t much of a stretch since they are close to human. Many sylvari I see tend to look almost indistinguishable from humans with the more plant-like features being less popular. But I think further it goes into the process of how we make our characters in these games.

When people create characters, they typically create them in one of two ways:

• as a character they are going to play. A subject with which to interact with the world and narrative of the game.
• as an idealized avatar of themselves, through which they put themselves into the world and narrative.

You can see this in games outside MMOs as well. Traditionally, a game will provide a character already set in the narrative with their own character and motivations, though this caters primarily to the former type, in more recent years with the rise of the new gaming trends (saturation first person perspective and the blank slate protagonists characteristic of a western RPG) the player has been given much more ability to put themselves into the character. This tends to puts the former catagory into a minority position.

Now the former type, who sees their character as exactly that, would think of what protagonist they want in their story. Some might even look at humans or norn and think, “Yeah, I am a human in reality, lets try something different,” and jump on a more plant-like sylvari, asura, or charr, whichever lore or racial personality strikes their fancy.

But because of the player-centric trends in gaming more and more people put themselves into the character. It’s no surprise that the most played race in any MMO that gives you the choice is human, or human like. It’s just easier to make the connection. They aren’t a 7 foot tall kitty cat with spiky bits and a bad temper and might even feel awkward playing it. They’d always find something wrong, the armor doesn’t fit right, the proportions are wrong, etc. Basically, the less human features, the farther they get from that idealized self, and it become a bit of a splinter in their mind.

But of course, this isn’t cut and dry, you’re not really one or the other, but more of a varying degree of both. Though again because of the trends of the last decade, this tends to lead to the self-involving catatogry. Even the character based players will invest themselves into the game, gaming in it’s nature of self-gratification, escapism, and fantasy, invites us to do so. And the idealized self players at the same time engage with the story and take that into that avatar they created for themselves.

So as I see it the reason non-human races are always in a minorty is because it breaks more from the player’s sense of self that in the past decade they’ve been encouraged to place directly into the experience.

Have a cookie if you read this whole rambling wall of text…. Do it…. really do it…
—Edited to fix blaring typos. Also, have another cookie.

[Edited by Moderator]

The Black Citadel is not hard to navigate, the map of it is.

I think the main reason is because alot of armor sets looks ridiculous on a Charr and everyone in Guild Wars 1 was a human, id expect most of the players from Guild Wars 1 to continue playing humans.

vespers.1759:

playing a character with fur and being a furry are two very different things..

Some people can’t tell the difference sadly.

Playing Charr is like Norn strength. The more awesome it is, the less members you need to get the job done.

The Black Citadel is easier to navigate for me then say… Rata Sun.
The reason why more people won’t play Charr is because of how the armor sets looks on them.
Most if not all of the armor sets in game (save the cultural sets) looks horribily bad on a Charr. There is so much clipping & the armor looks kinda stretched just so it can fit a Charr rather then be designed to look good on a Charr as with every other races.

Rata Sum is like the navigation version of a rubik’s cube.

People don’t like playing monstrous characters generally speaking, which is why the two most played races are Human and Norn, there are twice as many humans as any other race, I guess people like identifying themselves with their characters, even physically, it’s got nothing to do with the black citadel since most people would just choose their race without even having visited the city previously when creating their first character.

Even in WoW, the two most played races were Humans and Blood Elves, ergo the most human-looking of all.

That’s weird, I always try to play races that are the least humanly looking possible, because hey I’m already a human and we’re a pretty boring race already.

I wonder why people like playing something so… similar to what they already are. Boring.

I have friends who are GW1 veterans who refuse to play Charr characters because of the Searing. Too much bad blood, they say. It’s kind of like your grandpa who fought in the Second World War who’s totally racist towards Japanese, even those who were born after the war was long over. You know it’s wrong, but you can understand why he feels that way.

I like playing ferals in most games if the option is available.

I have 12 rl friends in GW2. None of them play charr because of the clipping issues and not so great looking gear. Most of them love the race. Just hate how they look fully armored.

I like my Charr armor, Clipping doesn’t bother me.

When a norn’s starter shoulders clip through his actual shoulders, that annoys me.

And i actually like playing as humans, but i usually go for the race with the most prefered culture.

Playing a human is more about relation. I like to play physical classes in MMO’s, like warrior and engineer, because if i really trained and practiced, i could be a Warrior.

As a human warrior, and an RPer, i am able to immerse myself in this amazing world as an avatar of myself, if i see a Norn im like ‘kitten me he’s huge!’ but Asura are like ‘Woah he’s tiny!‘. When i see DR, though its big, its like ’human houses, human life’ when i see Rata Sum its like ‘Woah, this is really foreign!’

I take my fantasy to be in the adventure. Starting somewhere normal, and advancing outwards, experiencing something amazing. Others like to be something new and unique, while some like to be the same, but in new and unique situations.

Yet i play Charr because i feel like their unity, technical prowess and discipline are key features i can identify and respect. They are immense in combat, but they have the brains to back it up. They are smart, but they don’t techno babble you, they say it how it is.

I love the charr as a race, which got me wondering of the four characters i made, why wasnt a single one a charr. So i decided to play a charr mesmer and i have to say i’ve fallen in love with the charr even more. The military talk, their point of view of the world, i love it all. I may not like the fact that it’s ‘be military or be meat’ attitude, but it helps me shape my character in my mind. A more sympathetic charr who can shoulder the burden of every day life as they do walking or running and one who is more open to working with other races than normal but still holds a few grudges against humans, similar in ideal to those who are reluctant but willing to go through the treaty with ebonhawk.

As an RPer, i love it, i love everything charr and i love being a slight oddball. It just fits.

becuz they look like Tauren.

Daharahj.1325:

Imo the real reason is, as unpopular as it is, people just want to look pretty, 80% of the population are human female.

Quit spreading this unsubstantiated bullcrap.

http://www.gamerevolution.com/news/guild-wars-2-gender-profession-race-and-craft-statistics-released-15061

The VAST majority of characters are male. And while humans are common, they are still only 1/3rd of the population.

Reason people don’t play charr, the helms look like kitten, the design (except Cultural and a few others) are terrible on charrs.

Reason no one is at Black citadel: There is only 6 reasons to ever visit a city in this game;
Bank, TP, Mystic forge, Dungeon armor, Cultural Armor/weps and crafting.

Black Citadel; Bank, TP, Cultural Armor/weps (for charr only) and crafting. City located in the East.

LA; bank, tp, Culturals, crafting, MF and Dungeon armor/weps. City located in the middle of the map.

Now tell me, why would I want to travel to a city, “off-map” where I can only do a few thing? Instead of going to a Central City where I can do all of it?

The problem is not that BC is hard to navigate, the problem is the waypoint system; It’s much more convenient to just teleport to a Trader’s Forum in LA, since it’s next to the Bank, MF, TP and crafting. Then I have to use another waypoint to access the Dungeon armors/weps and cultural.

This problem does not only exist in BC, go to Rata sum and u only find a few people, go to hoelbrek and you only find a few people, same thing goes for the grove and Divinity’s reach.

Anet need to find a few to get people to the citys, but right now they are giving us tools to avoid the citys.
With the right items, we can open the mystic forge and bank from anywhere we want, Cursed shore have a TP, so the only reason to visit LA (if u get this items) is to craft and buy dungeon armor.

I love Charr but my two characters are both human. Reasons:

1. The big races feel sluggish. Logically I know they move and do everything at the exact same speed as humans, sylvari, and asura, but it doesn’t feel like it. I have a 70 Norn Guardian I’ve retired and rerolled after playing around with an Asura guardian in the starting zone for that reason. The smaller races mechanics just feel quicker, with more alacrity, even if they actually aren’t.

2. Teleports on the smaller races feel like you’re going a further distance than on the bigger races. Basically similar to #1, there’s no difference but there feels like there is.

3. Charr have by far the best story arcs, best lore, best leveling area (Ascalon), and best music theme (wistful, poignant, and epic all wrapped into one). However, I can watch the story on Youtube and level my humans through Ascalon to get the lore, environmental beauty, and music. After all that is said and done, all you’re left with is your character’s aesthetics and mechanics.

Hence, human. Asura too small except for warrior and guardian, for which small is fun. Sylvari are cool but I like armors better on human (at least for mesmer and thief). Charr and Norn too big.

And this is from someone who used to only play Orcs in WoW. I like the Noble Beast characterization, but at least Orcs were basically the same size as humans, felt the same mechanically. Not the case here with Charr and Norn, for better or worse.

Of course, once you’re used to their speed and size it just seems like the normal state. Added bonus: as a norn or charr, other players can actually see you and your appearance options.

For me the Black Citadel was the easiest to explore lol The human place? WAY too big and confusing. Asura? One bad step and you fall to your death. Norn? Everything is too far away (divided by all 5 lodges) and I still can’t find the leatherworking station today.. And Sylvary.. well that was just too confusing too. Too much green and too many vines. I was blinded in that place. Also, like in the asura place, one bad step and you fall to your death xD

I love Charr and love the city and everything they do. My only complaint with Charr is when doing jumping puzzles is hard for me to figure it out how or where to land due to jumping from a 4 legged position. I wish I could make the Charr walk bipedal all the time, is anyway to do that? In combat they fight bipedal and when hurt they walk bipedal, how come I cannot make them jump bipedal? Or am I doing something wrong?

Winterstrife.2865

The Black Citadel is easier to navigate for me then say… Rata Sun.
The reason why more people won’t play Charr is because of how the armor sets looks on them.
Most if not all of the armor sets in game (save the cultural sets) looks horribily bad on a Charr. There is so much clipping & the armor looks kinda stretched just so it can fit a Charr rather then be designed to look good on a Charr as with every other races.

This !

Light armor looks so awful on Charrs, heavy armor on the other hand looks great, and T3 heavy is the best looking helm in the game !

My Charr is an elementalist.

Only headpiece I’ve found that looks decent on a Charr so far is the reward from AC, and the various pieces that have the same design as it. Most caster headpieces look particularly ridiculous as they are tiny on that oversized melon that passes for a head.

Problem also with leggings since many look like the Charr is running around wearing underpants and socks. Not quite the look of a hero of legend most of us would like our characters to be.

Rata Sim gave me a headache, as well as Divinity’s Reach. The time it took for me to complete the Citidel was faster than Rata Sim.

Anyway my first character was a Charr and it is still my favorite. Only thing that bothers me is how slow they are. (I also play a class which has limited speed boosters). I always laugh at the irony of having jumping issues with the charr, considering its a big kitty xD.

@Conncept.7638 Lol, quit being so literal, I wasn’t stating anything I was just trying to get my point across.

kurtosis.9526:

I love Charr but my two characters are both human. Reasons:

1. The big races feel sluggish. Logically I know they move and do everything at the exact same speed as humans, sylvari, and asura, but it doesn’t feel like it. I have a 70 Norn Guardian I’ve retired and rerolled after playing around with an Asura guardian in the starting zone for that reason. The smaller races mechanics just feel quicker, with more alacrity, even if they actually aren’t.

2. Teleports on the smaller races feel like you’re going a further distance than on the bigger races. Basically similar to #1, there’s no difference but there feels like there is.

3. Charr have by far the best story arcs, best lore, best leveling area (Ascalon), and best music theme (wistful, poignant, and epic all wrapped into one). However, I can watch the story on Youtube and level my humans through Ascalon to get the lore, environmental beauty, and music. After all that is said and done, all you’re left with is your character’s aesthetics and mechanics.

Hence, human. Asura too small except for warrior and guardian, for which small is fun. Sylvari are cool but I like armors better on human (at least for mesmer and thief). Charr and Norn too big.

And this is from someone who used to only play Orcs in WoW. I like the Noble Beast characterization, but at least Orcs were basically the same size as humans, felt the same mechanically. Not the case here with Charr and Norn, for better or worse.

I agree. They do feel more sluggish than the smaller races. Tbh honest though (and this concerns the relationship between humans and charr) i think the choice boils down to two things:

1. GW1: humans were the one and only race in that game and because of it their lore was much more fleshed out and thoughtful. Enter GW2 and we have a wealth of players wishing to continue that spiritual legacy of their characters. Obviously not all, but I’m sure its a big factor. Plus, some new players will wish to see content from the eyes of a toon most likely to represent it in its purest form (i.e the helms aren’t warped due to horns or branches)

2. The gallop. Probably the one thing everyone overlooks when pondering the lack of charr players. The gallop is that one feature that can make or break the class for new players.

I play a charr myself. I love them and their t3 armor is what made me choose one over norn. I havent noticed any real clipping issues other than what happens naturally at the waist due to the hunch.

In the end it really just comes down to personal preference.

I just want to look like someone who WILL STAB YOU IN THE JUGULAR AND THEN BITE YOUR HEAD OFF……and then walk away passively.

a few things here. people will think what they will. that’s not your problem. it’s their’s. play what you enjoy.
2. the running on all fours does turn a few people off. personally i think it looks cool.
3. i don’t mind getting lost in BC. the city is such a visual feast that i kinda enjoy it actually.
4. times are changing. i dunno if it’s just my server (Tarnished Coast) or if it’s everywhere. but i see a lot more people playing Charr lately (and even more playing Sylvari but that’s kinda beside the point). and i wander all the areas.
5. the stigma against Charr from GW1 is going away. there are too many new people (like me) who never played GW1 for it not to.
and finally:
6. honestly i worry more about how few Norn i see. more variety makes it more fun for everyone (and gives me more big people to hide behind).

[Edited by Moderator]

I agree with a few posters. I find the Citadel to be one of the better zones to navigate. Divnity’s and Rata are awful. The Draenei city was the best… So easy to navigate. There were 3 areas everything in one section. I see a lot of Charr on my server too… so this post really confuses me…

I love the charr. I love the way they runs on all fours. Literally the only reason I don’t play one is because their armour looks terrible! The light and medium armours just look stupid! The heavy armours are passable, if it weren’t for the clipping. As well as this, playing a larger character inherently makes it feel slower. It slows down the pace of the game. I mean, come on, it’s running on all fours, why does it feel slower than a human!

The citadel has nothing to do with it. Heck that map is one of the easiest, and one of the smallest city maps to navigate. It honestly is your own fault for not wanting to be an explorer and find all the nooks and crannies. Divinities reach on the other hand, now there’s a map that’s agonizing.

The real reason why more people don’t play charr is the cultural stigma, its a monster race, and disappointing at that. A lot of people wanted to play the devilish looking charr from GW1, but you can’t even really make a charr close to looking like that in GW2. The males have been hit with fabric softener to abide to a larger audience. And females which are new to GW2, seeing how flame legion kept them all behind the battlefield – are baby fresh out of the can.

Females get a lot better customization then males who I feel in the game, charr males got shafted the shortest stick. First to be developed, last to be redeveloped, thrown into the book and left to get dusty. So many small things they need, like applying fur color to the tail regardless of pattern.

More GW1 type monstrous faces- A younger face that’s scarred up, a middle aged face with some dermal spikes, and for charr sake a real lion face(an actual lion mane would be nice too), and interesting horns like horns that are chipped or broken, and dermal spikes.
The body types are lacking as well, there needs to be a more extreme version of the 2nd type with a much more developed upper body, then a body type that’s really in-between the average and skinny.

People don’t play charr because it’s too wonky right now. Everything either looks too silly or ridiculous.

Charr armor is the reason I won’t play one, it clips horribly on them.

There’s 1 reason, and 1 reason alone I don’t play charr, and why I’ll probably never finish leveling my 31 Charr Ranger: the armor looks so horrible it’s disgusting. The only head piece I like on Charr is the T3 heavy cultural piece, the one that looks like a horn. Everything else looks pretty bad. Heavy CoF armor isn’t bad, friend has it, but Charr just aren’t aesthetically pleasing to me.

The armor. I play a female Charr guardian, and I’m not looking forward to the comical sword-length spikes that make me look like a hedgehog with inferiority issues.

It’s like the only idea the devs had was “Hey, lets make them all dwarven battleragers!”

I guess I don’t quite understand the resistance to the Charr being furries. They are anthropomorphic cat people who walk on two legs, talk, wear clothing, and have a culture. However, so what, it is not like you are a bad person because you are a furry lover. Charr are furries, however that does not make Charr bad, it just makes them furries.

The Charr are a furred race, not ‘Furries’. If you think that this:

http://www.creativeuncut.com/gallery-11/gw2-charr-cannon.html

is the same as this:

http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/violenthearts/A_new_day_starts_with_you_by_Pimp_S.jpg

Then the problem is not Charr. Its you.

Charr are furry. People who belong to the ‘furry fandom’ are furries (singular ‘a furry’). Subtle but important difference.

For the people who have issues finding good looking light armour: the Tier 1 cultural is fairly cheap and looks pretty decent. No tail clipping issues like the 3rd tier.

Heavy armour is a bit of a pain but I found Vigil stuff looks alright. Also, you know the fleet of female charr who all wear the same (helmetless) set of grey-brown heavy armour? You do, because they’re all over the place. I took a closer look at some and I’m pretty sure they’re just wearing draconic armour with a fairly natural colour scheme. There’s also loads of Iron Legion wearing Tier 2 cultural in greys and grey-blue, which don’t look entirely awful. And the karma set from Iron Marches isn’t too bad, though I despise the pauldrons, they look like something I’d be trying not to run over in Mario Kart.

I wonder if there’s a ‘rod of iron’ weapon skin…

I see this a lot on games. I played ff 11 for 6 years and gw1 for 1 while playing ff i had starting area bastok but most people didnt like it they prefered windhurst and i see with this game nothing has changed lol i like the citadel most dont i guess what it comes down to is you like it or you dont simple as that.

Maybe its because we have a glitch on our lvl4 story line time for a promotion quest. Im guessing its kinda rare and or alot of people are just skipping or somethin? That still means thousands of people have seen it, at least on google its known. I have it and Im trying to dl on a new comp,maybe that will fix it. If this does not work im going to just forget about charr and play another race as its not going to be any fun with no story line.

City layout is one of the least important issues for me.
It’s not like people ever use anything besides LA for much anyway.

in all honesty I find rata sum much more complicated than the black citadel.

The only major annoying thing about the Black Citadel is how the Trading Post and Bank are so far away from each other. (Hoelbrak has a similar problem.) I like being able to pick up my profits from the TP and just run over and dump it into my Bank, which is why Divinity’s Reach is my city of choice to do trading in. (Even better, the crafting stations are close enough that waypointing from there to your Bank doesn’t require a loading screen.)

Eh, it’s about the same as LA isn’t it?

I wonder what they thought the capitals would be used for…

I don’t think it’s the citadel. I personally don’t find it particularly hard to navigate though I did initially have some issues getting to the Bane

I think it’s
A) the fact that people often treat their mmo character as avatars of themselves and more human races are easier to “connect” with since we are human.

B) Massive clipping issues and most of the armour looks like it was designed for humans so it just looks horrible on Charr.

C) Note how many people are playing human or norn females in the….how to put this…“skimpiest” armour? Shouldn’t have to explain this one.

D) Many players from GW1 made their GW2 character to be a descendant of their GW1 character.

CompositeAwe.9463:

2. the running on all fours does turn a few people off. personally i think it looks cool.

All but one of my characters is a norn, and the last is a Charr. The driving force behind not being able to get steam with a Charr has been two things in total:

The above quoted is the first. My first Charr character, I literally logged him in, played him until he got down on all fours, and deleted him. It’s unbearable. After having some experience with the game my Charr wound up having to be an engineer because I can get perma-swiftness and entirely eliminate that horrible run.

The second is that my first character was a norn warrior. Since having another warrior seems redundant to me, finding a Charr class that “feels right” has been difficult. My heart isn’t into the thief and I don’t get a Charr feel when I try to make it a caster. Engineer seems to be working well enough, though all told the only true Charr feel would have come from a warrior, IMO.