Guild Wars 2

Do you have a friend or relative that’s really scared of spiders? Yet they love to play video games with you? In some games this can be fun, one has to protect said arachnophobic person from even noticing or seeing the spiders.
Well, one of my friends are that and I doubt he’s the only one.

I hope it wouldn’t take much time or cost a lot but to be able to have a sort of “switch” to turn all the arachnid models into something else? Bears maybe? We’ve seen that done in Skyrim and that was pretty cool. Spider bears!

I was hoping someone would share my opinions and maybe help me in my cause.

PS: I tried looking for another thread and I couldn’t find one. The searching didn’t work for some reason so please excuse me for not wanting to check through the many pages. If however you know of another thread like this, please don’t hesitate to link it here since I gather it’d have more support and that is exactly what I’m here to do.

Sounds like they should just play another game.

I am afraid of water so can I replace it with piles of bunnys that is swim through. I know smoeone afraid of dead bodies so can he replace the zombies with flying monkeys? I also know there are people afraid to leave the home so can all areas become indoors for them?

Or maybe a mod for every phobia is a bit over the top.

It might sound a little harsh but: Who cares?

This game has bigger problems that need to be dealt with first. When this is done, in a couple of month, they can address the spider problem.

/facepalm…

What comes next, the people afraid of snakes, of worms, of panthers, of bears, etc?
Then the claustrophobic people who are scared of dungeons?

Whilst it is an unlikely change, the OP’s friend obviously has a legitimate ailment. Whilst I can’t get behind the idea itself, I can’t believe the tone of the above responses. Instantly on the attack, in the most juvenile way.

No wonder people say the community is bad here.

That would just hide their symptoms. On the contrary, I’d say if a person has arachnophobia, exposure in a game environment is good as it might actually help them get rid of the phobia.

Fiennes.9568:

Whilst it is an unlikely change, the OP’s friend obviously has a legitimate ailment. Whilst I can’t get behind the idea itself, I can’t believe the tone of the above responses. Instantly on the attack, in the most juvenile way.

No wonder people say the community is bad here.

Bad for stating the obvious, that a game can’t cater to all phobias, health problems, etc?

I’d personally like them to add an option to be able to change the color of the enemy AOE circles since I’m a bit colorblind, but I’ll adapt as usual.

Not to sound harsh or anything, but I really don’t think time, money and resources should be spent on making a game fit around people’s phobias. My advice would be to invest in some therapy instead. It’ll probably do the afflicted a world of good. I’m not good with heights and jumping puzzles make me nervous, but I recognise and accept that they’re part of the game and I wouldn’t want them changed. I’ve actually overcome my fear of heights slightly thanks to this game!

Korrigan.4837:

Fiennes.9568:

Whilst it is an unlikely change, the OP’s friend obviously has a legitimate ailment. Whilst I can’t get behind the idea itself, I can’t believe the tone of the above responses. Instantly on the attack, in the most juvenile way.

No wonder people say the community is bad here.

Bad for stating the obvious, that a game can’t cater to all phobias, health problems, etc?

I’d personally like them to add an option to be able to change the color of the enemy AOE circles since I’m a bit colorblind, but I’ll adapt as usual.

Not bad necessarily for stating the obvious, but there are ways in civilized society to conduct oneself. “/facepalm” and “Go and play another game” are pretty antagonistic responses and don’t add to it. How hard is it to go “This would create confusion with a part of people fighting different models, not to mention strange loot drops.”. And that’s just one item.

That said, your concern seems infinitely more fixable, being able to alter the colour of enemy AoE circles as it doesn’t affect anyone else in the slightest really. You just need to mentally convert when a party member says “Watch out for the red circles”, you actually look out for “yellow”

Wow people in this topic are being kittens. Arachnophobia is a hugely popular phobia, it’s not just a few people who have it. Being aquaphobic or claustrophobic has nothing to do with playing a videogame, so learn to at least mock people properly. Those two fears require you to physically be IN the thing you’re afraid of, where as just the sight of spiders can scare the crap out of people.

I know people who are arachnophobic, I’m one of them. The spiders in this game (aside from the black widow, and the undead ones) don’t feel as realistic as say, the ones in Diablo 3 did… I couldn’t do the spider cave in Diablo 3 without closing my eyes and hoping they died while i pressed all the buttons, or going in multiplayer to get my friends to kill them for me. However this game, they don’t bother me as much (except for the aforementioned breeds) but I can still see where those with severe arachnophobia are coming from.

No need to be kitten about it.

Having a reskin wouldn’t be a bad idea. I used the reskin option in Skyrim to make the spiders into mudcrabs. :P

Uh, no…you don’t need to physically be in water or in a tight space to be terrified of water or tight spaces. Way to shoot down reasonable points, eh? Confronting your fears or indulging in therapy is going to do much more good than hiding from them.

My sister HATES spiders. When she sees one, even a tiny one, you can hear her from miles away shout.
She plays video games for ages though, and she never had problems with VIRTUAL spiders in a MMORPG. She manages to make the difference between a real and a pixel spider. Maybe you should try that too? They aren’t real, they can’t bite you, they can’t crawl out of the screen

I have severe arachnophobia and the spiders in this game don’t scare me at all. In fact, I’m kind of glad to see them because nothing is more amusing than squishing a spider with a gigantic hammer. Same with Dredge, I love playing whack-a-dredge.

Spiders are really scary in DDO and I know people who freak iRL when they see one in the game.

I think some of the people here just need to get out, you obviously don’t care about this, the door is over there don’t come again.

And this is also one of the reasons why I think GW2 should be a bit of a mod friendly game. If you have some models or textures in your back pocket maybe one should be allowed to replace them the ones in-game?

I suggest that you encourage your friend to get help for his problem. Many phobias can be diminished or eliminated with treatment. I wish him luck in this endeavor.

My mother is afraid of heights to a crippling degree. She refuses to get treatment for her phobia and it has had severe and negative consequences for her – to the point of isolating her from her own children, other family members, and many of her friends.

It isn’t really viable to make a game like this cater to most phobias. Games that are mod-friendly, like Skyrim, are much easier to alter to fit the common phobias. I’m sure you agree that many games wouldn’t be very interesting if all the terrain were flat to cater to people with my mother’s height phobia. There are many such phobias – there are people will fears of fish, ducks, dogs, germs, and many other things. It’s simply not possible to make a game both interesting and devoid of all common phobia triggers.

If your friend can’t get treatment but wants to play this game, I suggest you scout out zones and regions where you two can play without encountering spiders. There are lots of areas without spiders. You could even start a page on the wiki to share your spider research with other arachnophobic gamers.

I’m going to just be honest.
This is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever read.

Someone who lets an MMO trigger his phobia with something that anyone knows is not real has some major psychological issues and it has nothing to do with the phobia.

On the matter, maybe all Dungeons and Crypts should become outdoor because of claustrophobic players…

LOL, I had to laugh pretty hard with this..

Allthough, I have to admit, back in WoW, I was completely and utterly disgusted by the big spider in that icy dungeon (WotLK).. I always turned my camera away from the spider when we had to kill her.. Safe to say it was one of my least favorite dungeons..

Nurvus.2891:

I’m going to just be honest.
This is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever read.

Someone who lets an MMO trigger his phobia with something that anyone knows is not real has some major psychological issues and it has nothing to do with the phobia.

On the matter, maybe all Dungeons and Crypts should become outdoor because of claustrophobic players…

I fully agree with you. Except for the dungeon part

I would like to know however, what happens to your friend when he/she sees a spiderish creature in-game?

Dudeio.6985:

I think some of the people here just need to get out, you obviously don’t care about this, the door is over there don’t come again.

And this is also one of the reasons why I think GW2 should be a bit of a mod friendly game. If you have some models or textures in your back pocket maybe one should be allowed to replace them the ones in-game?

First of all, if you can’t deal with different opinions don’t come post on a forum, second Arenanet devs are against any modifications to game files, so don’t expect any mod support.

Your friend could use this opportunity as some kind of therapy, killing in-game spiders could lower his/her fears.

Why all the kittening? Replacing a few sipder-models with something else is not that hard for the devs. (Although i agree they got bigger problems at the moment)

Just face it. Your friend doesn’t want to play GW2 with you. Stop forcing your friend to make up kittening excuses.

I suffer from ‘Panphobia’ yet GW2 is so cool I’m not phased at all.

When I’m at the windows desktop its a different story.

Well I can certainly see why your friend would like to have the option to have them re skinned, I doubt it will happen because there are far more issues that are being address, also I don’t mean to belittle your friend or his/her phobia, but this is a game nothing in it is real and if everyone with a phobia asked developers to cater to their needs we would have alot of boring games out there. I hope your friend can over come this fear perhaps the game can help with it by going on a spider killing rampage, ^^ I am afraid of heights and I am a painter and have fallen of a ladder a few times, Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. Other times You can just avoid it ^^

Maybe I’m not totally understanding the whole coding/etc. behind GW2… But when players are fighting spiders in zones, those spiders exist for every single player currently in the zone. How can one player change the “skin” of the spider without it affecting every other person? I don’t think that they could easily add a skin option for things like this that an individual player can adjust. One person will be fighting what looks like a bear, and someone else will be fighting what looks a spider. And yes, the loot…. A spider and a bear will not have the same “droppings”. A bear made drop a hide, while a spider may drop a leg (I know these existed in GW1, I don’t remember if they exist in GW2). That causes unbalance.

I agree with OP. BTW, Anet, I’d like a billion dollars everytime I login to play too!

Was this supposed to be a serious thread?

^
Don’t know about you, but I’m dead serious about wanting a billion dollars everytime I login to play.

I was afraid of any kind of monsters, I really hated monsters in games, even dark rooms were pretty hard for me to go into, they even made me see nightmares…

But AvP got me out of it, by playing as the monster I was afraid of…
It even marked the day when I completely stopped having nightmares, ever…

Afterwards I pretty much played any game that had monsters without being scared of playing it, tho I still feel abit nervous when dealing with zombies in FPS and Near FPS/TPS games.

On GW2 tho, zombies are not that threatening, as they’re more bound to thrall/servant mode than usual flesheating zombies, tho some of their skills point to flesheating, but it doesn’t scare me at all.

Nurvus makes a point tho.

And posters who suggest to get treatment also make good points…

It can be blunt, but to get help, admit that they have such fear and wish your friend good luck on over coming it.