Guild Wars 2

It’s been a while since I approached this subject and I tried around BETA time, I’m just curious how people feel about this now a couple of months after launch when all excitement everything being new and shiny has started to wear off.

So during the BETA I was looking forward to playing a Sylvari, I had imagined my main to be a Sylvari. I was rather disappointed when they finally made them available to try out. I’ve ended up making my main an Asura instead (Which I hadn’t expected at all).

The reason I was disappointed was that from what I had read from lore and imagined Sylvari to be was not the way they are in-game. I feel they are far too humanoid for a start. They are almost literal human copies but with different coloured skin and some leaves/twigs for hair with a couple of options for more plant like features.

But the most off-putting I found was the sheer size of them, How tall they are. I thought they would be wisp and dryad like. Smaller than humans (And not just smaller than the tallest human). I thought they would be between Asura and Humans in regards to size and on average a head smaller. They feel so chunky.

See the pictures below of what I had roughly imagined Female & Male Sylvari would be like.

With some humanoid features but less distinct, more plant like and smaller. When playing on my Sylvari thief I feel more like a norn equivalent of a Sylvari than a Sylvari. I feel more like a green giant than a petite race of plant people. It’s these reasons why I’m not playing a Sylvari even though I love their background/lore/city and artwork.

Does this bother anyone else or does anyone else feel this way?

Well, the Sylvari are literally based off of humans according to lore. Ronan planted the seed the Pale Tree grew from on the graves of his murdered family.

what Vv W said. But I do find the idea of a more dryad type race appealing.

Despite whats present, they have a very dryad feel to them. But, I suppose everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Despite how close to human they appear, I find them to be a rather interesting lot.

roll a female sylvari, give her:

-the roughest thinnest shape
-the smallest height
-a green and brown skin
-the asymetrical face
-the leafy branch hairdo
-play her naked until you can afford cultural armour

= dryad.

I personally love the way Sylvari look. After ANet’s redesign of the original Sylvari, they are exactly what I expected from ANet’s descriptions and art peeks at them.

I’m sorry that you aren’t happy with the current Sylvari, but Mimizu does make a good point on how to make them feel a bit more like a dryad.

Making them even more plant-like and alien would have been great. It would make the generic human-style armor look even more inane on them, though, and sadly MMOs are still way too gear-obsessed to allow a more “natural” look for this sort of alien species.

I disagree on the size. For one, it’s personal preference — I don’t like to have tiny or scrawny forced on me. Beside that, I don’t think anything ever pointed to the fact that the sylvari, or this sort of plant-or-tree-like-species in general, “have” to look like that.

With the thinnest build and shortest stature you can make them pretty tiny. My guardian looks like he could pass for a thirteen year old. They are smaller, on average, than a human, though I tend to push mine to either really tall or really short.

Making them more alien would have been cool but they are meant to be fairly human. You can still make them look pretty strange with the right combo of hair, face, skin, and colors.

I agree somewhat with what you say, OP. I kept Sylvari a secret for myself as something to look forward to at release, so I didn’t try them out in beta (and like you I found Asura to be surprisingly interesting as a race), right from the start Sylvari didn’t feel right to me but I stuck it out and now I kind of regret it. Being level 80 now, and a completionist, I cant bring myself to start an alt yet. But that is beside the point.

1) The Sylvari look too human I agree. I would have been fine with how Caithe looks in the concept art or something more plant like and alien. However the current character skins are too much of a compromise between the two, and in my opinion look weird. I hope Anet comes out with a paid makeover pack, because I have since fiddled around with the skins and found a couple combinations that look non-human enough for my taste.
2) As a race the Sylvari personality is too “grown up”. One thing I loved about the books, despite the horrible writing, was the childlike innocence the Sylvari had when it came to the world. Everything was new, and their morality was mostly neutral. But in the game, suddenly that innocence is gone (despite only being in the world 25 years), they have a drive to protect the world that doesn’t have any grounds in lore, and Ventenari’s Tablet is portrayed almost as a religion…. if you’ve played the Sylvaryi storyline you may understand what I mean.
3) Edit: Oh, and I hate the male sylvari dance. I hate with every fiber of my being.

In general the Sylvari seem to be the least fleshed out and shallow of the races. This could be for a number of reasons, seeing as they are only 25 years old… and that the other races had plenty of back story given to them in GW1. I really hope the devs give the Sylvari to extra love and attention as the game ages; the sylvari could really use it.

I like the way they look. My Sylvari is pretty tiny at smallest height. They just need some custom animations to set them apart personally from humans a bit more.

They came out more or less the way I expected them to, if anything, they look more plant-like now than they did in a few of the earlier trailers. If they look similar to humans its cause they’re meant to, just like fern hounds look like dogs (No one really complains about that though).

Not really a lore buff but I remember something about them being the Pale tree’s interpretation of a human and there being a large variety from the near human looking to more plant looking ones. In real world terms that means since everyone has their preferences, instead of limiting Sylvari aesthetics one way or the other and probably catching flak from a section of the fan base, they leave the choice up to the individual ( within the limits of their vision of a Sylvari ofcourse ;-) )

My only gripe is with the shortage of Sylvari themed armors (I mean other than cultural armor, couldn’t they atleast start you off in leafy armor?) but that’s more of a minor annoyance than anything, nothing major.

Lore wise, wait some months/years and you will see why Sylvari are so humanoid.
If all the theories regarding Sylvaris are proven to be true, I ensure you they are by far the most interesting race in the game, much more that typical dryads.

I like em. They’re new and refreshing. it was my understanding that their creator wanted to move away from common fanatasy “boxes”. She created something pretty new and i think expecting anything would have been the mistake. I actually expected them to be taller than human and was disappointed when i found out that tree people are smaller than people. But that was my mistake.

Considering by lore Sylvari are about “A HEAD” shorter than humans, I was very disappointed by their size.
I was hoping to be a short plant girl, not a medium plant lady. :I

I still love my Sylvari, but when a shorter race is made (between Human and Asura) I’ll probably reroll that race.

I admit I did expect sylvari to be a tiny bit shorter average than humans, than they are now. BUT everything else about them is perfect, a few more options for faces, hair, and bodytypes maybe. I do want more sylvari armors though… since sylvari just looks best in planty armor and I like to collect and change looks from time to time. Add new tier to cultural armor with an expansion? Would have to do the same for the other races though I guess… and if they add more races that would become quite a few new sets to design. Anyways, just a thought.

Small walking trees would just look weird.

And considering they are made to fight the Mother Tree’s enemies it wouldn’t make sense for them to be small.

I could understand and accept a small statured race which had no classes that would be a physical melee class but it wouldn’t make sense for the Mother Tree to create tiny melee fighters.

Perhaps the Mother Tree should have made some soldier Sylvari, some Gatherer Sylvari and some tiny nurse Sylvari.

Sylvari look too human I agree… my guildies only noticed that my character was sylvari when I did /dance after 5 dungeons or so. The only noticable difference is appearently the dance animation… this should say enough

I don’t really see the complaint about Sylvari being too humanlike. There are certainly faces that look more human, but there are also faces that look distinctly “alien”. The skin texture definately doesn’t look human, and skin color has so much variety that it definately doesn’t resemble humans at all. The hairstyles are almost completely plant-based, some may resemble human hairstyles but its obviously foliage and not hair.

The body shape is human certainly, but I don’t know what people were expecting for that. Were people expecting something like Ents, literal walking trees with hunched postures and different body proportions?

IMO, if you want your Sylvari to look distinctly plant-like there’s plenty of room for that. I don’t see how a dark green Sylvari with a bark face and branch hair could possibly be mistaken for a human. You can also make your Sylvari look more humanlike as well, but I’d assume the people complaining about that would obviously not do that. I see no reason to force one or the other, accomidate both and let people decide for themselves.

As for the TC and wanting Sylvari to be shorter… sounds more like you’re thinking of wood nymphs or something than dryads. Most of the dryads I can recall are human size or even larger, not smaller. Still, nothing wrong with wanting them to be shorter, just your own opinion on the matter. Personally I’m fine with the size they are, though I wouldn’t have been upset had they been a bit smaller for variety’s sake, since the gap between Asura and Human / Sylvari is pretty big, so something in between wouldn’t be bad.