Guild Wars 2

So I found this article that PC Gamer about how people have tended to flock towards playing has humans far more than any other race. Here is the link to the article:

http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2012/10/Guild-Wars-2-race-bias.jpg

I’ve noticed this as well, but I think it’s worth noting what causes this and what can be done to fix it. Because I don’t think that all of the bias towards humans is due to player choice, but that Anet and how they designed the game is partially responsible for this bias. I don’t think it’s really a huge terrible problem, but I think it’s worth discussing.

The first issue I’ve noticed is that there is an inherent bias built into the game by the developers, both in the world and in armor design, that favors humans. Aside from cultural armor and the few dungeon race-themed sets, most armor is clearly human in design. And even the few that aren’t, such as Dredge, fit humans, Charr and Norn more than Sylvari or Asura. This kind of bias towards humanoids, humans in specific, is set in place right from the start with every race wearing human clothing, which just looks silly on some races (Ex: Asura warrior in clumsy armor, Norn female light classes in stripper outfits in the cold north, Charr adventurer in a gentleman’s jacket, and Sylvari in every single set of beginner armor.)
The Sylvari have it the worst, I think, of all races. There are literally four sets of armor out of all sets that let you really feel like Sylvari, and none of these sets are available until late into the game, and most of them are kind of clumsy in design (there are a few good ones, but some of them seem a bit lazy in design when compared to each other) so you’ll spend most of your time dressed as a human. This really makes it difficult to really FEEL like a Sylvari, which is important if they want players to make a connection with their character.
Asura have it second worse. They are supposed to be technologically advanced, and yet I feel just as barbaric as any Norn on my Asura Guardian; I spend my time running around in crude metal armor swinging a hammer made stone and wood. Now I know you might just tell me to buy cultural armor and weapons, and I will, but I’m not going to spend that money until it’s going to be my final set (I’m level 77, so I’m almost there).
Charr have it third best, then Norn (since they’re so close to human anyways; you’ll notice they are the second largest chunk of the population) and then Humans. Humans are the best because most of the sets are tailored to a human form and style, so they can be anything you want them to be. So you can easily mix and match sets to get the look you want, while a Sylvari will have a harder time doing that because there are only four sets they can mix and match with, and most of those are so different in style that it wouldn’t look cohesive.

I actually deleted a Sylvari female warrior of mine and replaced it with a female human warrior. And it was only on the basis of poor armor choices for the Sylvari heavy class.

The second big issue that creates this bias are the starter zones for the races. It is clearly obvious that Divinity’s Reach and the surrounding lands has had much more love than the other starters. It just feels right, whereas some of the areas in, for example, The Black Citadel, feel a bit mismatched and thrown together (confusing layout, confusing map design, polygons intersection in obvious breaks). Some of the details are cool, but it’s just messy.
The third issue is bias in just the skills. GW1 defined that humans could be anything: warrior, ranger, elementalist, you name it. But some of the other races don’t feel like themselves based on the skills you use.
What does it mean to be Asuran? It means you are an inventor, right? But instead of using my inventions and intellect against my enemies, I use a hammer. I know that’s due to my profession choice, but why not let me summon a Golem? And not just some cookie-cutter Golem. Let me design a personal Golem that is MY invention to take on the battlefield.
I don’t want to ramble too much longer, so I’ll leave it there. I hope you see what I mean: there are inherent issues built into the game by the developers that will create a human bias. Granted, people choose humans more often in general just because (this is true in any game). But Anet could do more to help out a bit.

(Fun facts: I have 2 humans, 1 Asura, 1 Charr, 1 Sylvari, and I will have a Norn, another Sylvari, and another Asura.)

I’ve noticed something like that too when I was reaching 100% world completion. If you look at the asuran/sylvari lands, they both share a leval 15-25 zone (brisban wildlands).

They don’t have their own areas that reach level 25+ while the charr, norn, and humans all have those areas reaching up to the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

Oh, yeah. Sylvari and Asura also both share some cultural weapons. I forgot about that. I think they share the Glyphic and Verdant sets.

have you ever looked really closely at the charr armor?

Here’s a fun one. The charr light CoF pants turn the tail into a flame.
Let me try and explain that. There’s a set of armor that has an additional effect for charr and charr only. This armor piece was basically DESIGNED around that portion of the charr body.
It clips with the tail.
In fact, there’s not even hole in the robe, the tail just goes straight through it. Even some other armors attempt to put a little tailguard thing on there that sways.

You get the same kitten with the charr cultural armor (as in the one that only charr can wear, and thus had to be designed with the charr in mind 100% of the way)
Clips with the head and tail for about 90% of charr.

Even the charr armor seems like it was made to be worn by anyone but.

My biggest reason for rolling as human now is the running animations. Charr look awesome and their lore is great and they lope… and it looks like I’m running through molasses…

Edit: Yeah, yeah I know all about the run speed balancing thing. It’s still ugly.

I think there are two additional factors to consider related specifically to GW2:

1.) This is the sequel to a game where all the PCs were human. People who want to continue their legacy from the first game are more likely to gravitate toward humans, so they can play a descendant or the same character.

2.) Most of the nonhuman races have a very defined lore niche. Asura are inventors and intellectuals, Charr are warlike and regimented, Sylvari are naive and curious, etc. There’s nothing objectively wrong with that, but it does mean that someone who isn’t as interested in those niche flavours will find more diversity in the humans, who are less defined by racial background and thus can adapt to any roleplay setup.

There’s evidence that the preference for humans is common to most MMOs because players gravitate toward what is like them.

I think in GW2, though, there are some unique factors that can’t really be changed without either going back in time or completing rewriting the lore of the races.

I think you are reading too much into things. First off most people will select humans because we are all human ourselves, it’s what we identify with the most. Also humans are the common element to virtually every fantasy game, the majority of fantasy games have a human race in them so commonality makes them an easy selection. Also humans are a very safe race to select. Since we are humans we know for the most part how humans interact and the nuances to being human; you’re really not caught off guard by anything.

Finally I believe it is the quite the opposite and that Anet seems to be heavily pushing the Sylvari upon players, not that it is a bad things, I personally like the Sylvari. However, things such as Sylvari player characters fight a dragon in their tutorial sequence and get a Wyld Hunt to defeat Zhaiten, while other races sort of just stumble upon the Zhaiten and defeating him. I mean humans fight some centuar summoned earth elemental in their tutorial sequence that has no real correlation to the guild wars 2 story. The Risen are present in the Sylvari starting areas meaning they are most linked with the struggle against Zhaiten. Although humans seem to know about Zhaiten and the Risen we as the player when playing a human character only hear about Zhaiten and the risen during the orders of tyria personal story quest. Sylvari players hear about Zhaiten almost instantly after their prologue sequence. Also other things such as the inclusion of Trahearne and his inclusion in every races personal story as well as the picture of Caithe when loading up the Guild Wars 2 game client all point to Sylvari as being more important than humans. I guess it’s all perspective though, I mean the way we look at things it can be spun many different ways.

I think you have looked too deep into this, when it comes to armor it’s all based on opinion. Some armor I think looks cool on one race and others on other races and yes it sometimes does feel as if they designed it round the human figure and slightly changed it for other races.

The Charr areas are meant to be messy imo it shows there animal like nature, while human might have a more classy area (although that’s also based off how much wealth is in the area and such) I wouldn’t mind some of the armor to look better overall but we will have to wait and see.

The first game really never had anything compared to the different races you can play in this, so I find it silly for you to think that they are more Bias towards human.

The Asura are smart and very advance in the technology field, but having them use that intelligence in a combat scenario is hard to do without taking away all the skills they can learn form professions which again imo will be the better choice. To further elaborate on that, they wouldn’t fight at all, more on the line of making weapons and letting them do all the work while they sit back and check if there is any discrepancies within the system, and I find that hardly fun at all.

Like I said before the armor does need better fitting which I do agree on but everything else doesn’t seem to make me think that human is the better choice. Anyway are they bias, No, do they need better design in armor for all races and make them feel like it works with that race…maybe…I mean its really hard to say when people would disagree with you on what they would find the better look for their race.

It’s really the animations that sorta unbalance me. I hate it when I break into a run and then my charr gets on all fours and screw up my depth perception.

Not to mention some armors look absolutely hideous on asura and charr.

I’ll stick to my humanoids. In fact I prefer sylvari over Norn just because they look more proportionate and less musclebound.

I never really saw this as an issue except I don’t think there’s enough armor that fit Sylvari.

And to your thing about Norn not wearing alot of clothes, in lore they aren’t usually fully clothed, you see this in Guild Wars. Even the males. It’s because when they exert themselves their bodies produce alot of heat. At least I’m pretty sure thats how it goes

I have at least one of each profession and one of each race.

Yet I like the humans the best and the Charr the least.

Since I am not a Charr, I don’t really feel connected to their motivation or their idiom and what I have learned of it, I don’t really agree with.

Plus, they smell bad and look ugly.

Most games like this that have many different race types usually always have higher populations of humans. Why is that? Well I for one think that most of us like to create char’s as close to the real life us as possible. I see no problem with this. After all you can always use alts to create other races/versions of yourself.

Some games cough FF14 just make stupid 1 gender races which are totally ridiculous. Female only cat or huge Norn type male only thing. That’s just plain wrong atleast anet didn’t do that to us…….

I hate humans in Guild Wars series because of the lore, I cannot bring myself to have a human character.

Why? Their lore, the way they look, and the gods.

Lore: Humans are annoying and whiny pricks. They come in and take all this stuff from the Charr and other races that were around at the time. Then, come a long bit later after their gods abandon them and they start losing the land that they violently took from these races: They feel the need to COMPLAIN ABOUT EVERYTHING and then claim they are strong.

Gods: Gods are completely annoying ever since Nightfall. They stop talking to humans almost completely and then at the end of nightfall Kormir the blind, depressed woman (Who is responsible for herself being blind through bad decisions) goes off and commits suicide. Through committing suicide (In which she claims is the only way to kill/Push Abbadon back) she becomes a god.

I don’t like that, I don’t like it at all.

Way they look: They all look like anime crack kittens who need to be beaten with a bat for a little bit to make them a little more gruffy. Seriously, when all your male characters look feminine except for maybe two faces, there’s a problem.

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I’m a Charr and will only make Charr characters for this reason. The only human like characters I like are the Norn; since they don’t have a huge anime look to them, then again I’m not a huge fan of their “At one with nature” ideas; seeing most of everyone who ever did that in history were wiped out by disease or other more superior peoples.

Syktek.7912:

I hate humans in Guild Wars series because of the lore, I cannot bring myself to have a human character.

Why? Their lore, the way they look, and the gods.

Lore: Humans are annoying and whiny pricks. They come in and take all this stuff from the Charr and other races that were around at the time. Then, come a long bit later after their gods abandon them and they start losing the land that they violently took from these races: They feel the need to COMPLAIN ABOUT EVERYTHING and then claim they are strong.

Gods: Gods are completely annoying ever since Nightfall. They stop talking to humans almost completely and then at the end of nightfall Kormir the blind, depressed woman (Who is responsible for herself being blind through bad decisions) goes off and commits suicide. Through committing suicide (In which she claims is the only way to kill/Push Abbadon back) she becomes a god.

I don’t like that, I don’t like it at all.

Way they look: They all look like anime crack kittens who need to be beaten with a bat for a little bit to make them a little more gruffy. Seriously, when all your male characters look feminine except for maybe two faces, there’s a problem.

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I’m a Charr and will only make Charr characters for this reason. The only human like characters I like are the Norn; since they don’t have a huge anime look to them, then again I’m not a huge fan of their “At one with nature” ideas; seeing most of everyone who ever did that in history were wiped out by disease or other more superior peoples.

Lol, I like how you brought up Kormir, there has been more rage over this one topic than any other in Guild Wars 1 community. Discussions such as Kormir isn’t worthy of being a god, that all she did was detrimental to the whole story overall, and that Kormir is the definition of an in-game troll. It got to such a point that Anet released an April Fool’s quest where the player character says he or she will become the sixth human god someday.

I can’t speak to the armor designs of the various races but I have been through the starter zones of all them either in the game or the beta and I’ve been universally impressed with each one.

I did not get the feeling that any one race was being given preferential attention to content in their starting areas. I found each one to be unique and gave a specific feel when you played them.

The charr were all about warfare with plenty of explosions and cannon fire. The asura experience of busting down an Inquest lab and trashing the place was much different from the norn experience of aiding each of the different spirit shrines and building your reputation.

The human zones felt like I was spending my time helping farmers against bandits and centaurs which fit with their story (and running into the Lady in White which was cool and appropriate since humans seem to have the Tyrian ghost market cornered). I probably liked the sylvari the least but that’s just my personal taste, I’m not big on the whole serenity with nature thing. I do remember helping plant dogs which was certainly unique.

If you want an example of truly unfair disparity between humans and other races, you should have been there for vanilla WoW and compared the humans Elwynn Forest/Westfall with the Barrens

DanteZero.9736:

I’ve noticed something like that too when I was reaching 100% world completion. If you look at the asuran/sylvari lands, they both share a leval 15-25 zone (brisban wildlands).

They don’t have their own areas that reach level 25+ while the charr, norn, and humans all have those areas reaching up to the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

To be fair though, that probably wasn’t what was initially intended. I’d guess the combined zone is more a case of fiscal realities taking the beatstick to the concept of “when it’s ready”.

No question about the sylvari getting the short end of the armor stick. It was actually quite disappointing having to spend the first half of the game in human armor, rather than something more planty. And even when I bought that first set of Tier 1 armor, it still wasn’t that impressive. Never liked how it comes with pre-colored greenish elements that I simply couldn’t overwrite with custom dyes. Trying to work around that to get the look I wanted was a pain.

I don’t think it would be such a good idea to give Asura their own personal customizable golem. What would the other races get? They would have to get something equally custom built. Otherwise Asura would have an unfair advantage.

Back on the human thing. If in all other MMOs humans are the race chosen the most by players, wouldn’t it be wise as a company to spend a bit more effort on humans? Is it right? Not really. But it makes sense at least.

Zenyatoo.4059:

have you ever looked really closely at the charr armor?

Here’s a fun one. The charr light CoF pants turn the tail into a flame.
Let me try and explain that. There’s a set of armor that has an additional effect for charr and charr only. This armor piece was basically DESIGNED around that portion of the charr body.
It clips with the tail.
In fact, there’s not even hole in the robe, the tail just goes straight through it. Even some other armors attempt to put a little tailguard thing on there that sways.

You get the same kitten with the charr cultural armor (as in the one that only charr can wear, and thus had to be designed with the charr in mind 100% of the way)
Clips with the head and tail for about 90% of charr.

Even the charr armor seems like it was made to be worn by anyone but.

All races suffer from clipping issues, yes, humans as well.

This is a general problem with how armor is designed, not the race you play.
Materials bend that shouldn’t, armor clipping tru bodies, and armor parts heavily clipping with parts from other sets is something that needs a look in the future in general and has nothing to do with races.

My human T3 medium cultural clips heavily at the arm parts, literally tearing the armor apart. The shoulder part constantly “sinks” into the shoulders, especially when they are in motion, in which case the armor part nearly disappears into the shoulders, instead of being placed on top of them.
The chest piece has some sort of collar at the back, which just disappers when being watched from the side, or when you rotate around the character.

Additionally to that, parts like the daggers and the solid metal parts on the armor actually bend just like the cloth parts, which makes them look like their out of rubber.

Dye options are also very much lacking, so for example if you want to have a white coat, you will have to deal with white grips for the attached daggers as well and so on.

And again, this is T3 Human cultural.

So no, i don’t think humans have an edge in armors. They generally are problematic with the way they are designed, for all races.

Actually there is a Asuran bias! Best dodge animation, period! Best dialogues! Best / more efficient designed town. Most awesome overall race. Why would anyone roll anything aside from Asura is incomprehensible I know there’s no accounting for taste, but you all know even if you don’t admit it that I’m right. Now go out and roll Asura today!

Ooshi.8607:

Actually there is a Asuran bias! Best dodge animation, period! Best dialogues! Best / more efficient designed town. Most awesome overall race. Why would anyone roll anything aside from Asura is incomprehensible I know there’s no accounting for taste, but you all know even if you don’t admit it that I’m right. Now go out and roll Asura today!

lmao! Don’t forget the /laugh anaimation! Too cute. ;-) Their jump is pretty funny too; they look like they’re about to fall over.

I’ll second the post above about humans having clipping issues as well.

Try the panscopic monocle on a human engineer, and do anything significant with the head shape. If you change brow depth or head shape the monocle straps disappear into the head.

You’d think it’d be fairly straight forward to adapt those straps around the head geometry, but apparently not.

Human women also regularly bury their hands in any sort of skirt that has fullness to it.

There’re just a lot of clipping issues.

I honestly think the clipping issues with the charr tail is not that big a deal. If they designed some sort of hole in each armor set for the tail, then there would be additional physics for the tail and that would limit the fluidity of the tail animation or add extra problems that wouldn’t be worth it.

And just because one set of human armor has clipping issues does not negate the fact that most armor in reference to their STYLE are human in general. You start the game as any profession looking human, but you don’t start the game as any other race looking like you should. Then you have to wallow through human armor all game long until you get to the end, where you have a huge selection of human styled armor to choose from with a few racial ones thrown in here and there. That’s the issue.

Also, the customization options in the beginning are pretty lame for the Asura in some respects, mostly with their face and hair options. For the female Asura there is one cute looking face, one decent looking face, and then half a dozen mutant disgusting faces. I’m not sure about the males because I only have a female, but it was truly terrible. The hair options are also limited.

Compare that to the humans who have more face, hair, and body proportion options than they even really need. To say it’s not biased towards humans is a little silly. I mean, I guess you can come up with excuses for it (which I’m sure someone will) but those excuses still acknowledge the issue, which has Anet concerned.

I’m not overreacting to all of this. I’m just disappointed and I noticed that Anet was concern about the issue, so I thought I’d give my opinion on some reasons why it might exist. I’m not saying these are the only reasons (I ran out of room on the first post) but these are just some that I noticed.

But let’s be real; when Anet does things like making Sylvari and Asura share weapon sets while humans have their own weapon sets in addition to a myriad of other human-themed weapons, and then they complain that players tend to play humans it all just seems a little silly to me.

Personally, I don’t understand why humans would have the majority or why players would want to pick a human to play. I suppose you could make it look like yourself and kinda of project yourself into the fantasy world of the game. How I see it though is I’m a human, I deal with humans all day, I don’t want to be a human in a fantasy game and I always avoid humans in MMOs unless there is no other option.

Ashelotte.7195:

Personally, I don’t understand why humans would have the majority or why players would want to pick a human to play. I suppose you could make it look like yourself and kinda of project yourself into the fantasy world of the game. How I see it though is I’m a human, I deal with humans all day, I don’t want to be a human in a fantasy game and I always avoid humans in MMOs unless there is no other option.

My view is less about projection and more along the lines of the player as an author.

If I played myself in a game, I would get banned for being way too OP.

The characters I spend the most time with are Human and Norn, but that isn’t because I liked the other races less. It was because during the betas I tried all the races and professions and it happened that when I was trying Ranger I picked Human for that one. (Had a Norn Guardian, Sylvari Elementalist, Asura Thief, etc.) After playing them all my two favorite professions were Ranger and Guardian. When the game was released, I just stuck with the profession/race combos I had from the betas and thus the characters I’ve now spent the most time with are Human and Norn.

I have a Sylvari female warrior as my ‘main’ and it is true what the OP says about having very few armour sets that seem to work on our race. HOWEVER I have three sets that all seem to fit together well, but are made up of varying pieces all tied together with the cultural T2 shoulders that I have on all three sets.

The main theme for Sylvari is the ‘natural look’ but if you look at certain armour pieces you can see influence from nature. For example on two of my sets I have the Draconic Gauntlets because the metal, to me, looks like petal leaves. Green/purple/red dye and youre good to go. Also I think about what each set should look like with regards to the situation I use it in. For example my dungeon set is Knights and therefore should look stronger than my Berserker set. In my mind relying on leaves to protect you in dungeons is a stretch so my character bought stronger armour made of metal and then customised it (dyed it, used with T2 shoulders) to be ‘more Sylvari’.

I would LOVE to have more choice, dont get me wrong but youve got to make the most out of what youve got and im happy at the moment.

Beings will always flock to what is familiar and comfortable. It is nothing more, nothing further than this simplicity. The willingness and ability to associate.

The more alien something appears or acts, the further away it will be viewed from.

I am usually a player who goes for non human characters. I think playing human is boring most of the time. However, in this game I’ve only made human characters. Well, that’s not completely true. I’ve made other races, but they were all deleted some time after.

Why? Here’s my reasons (and yes, they’re personal reasons, I’m just stating my reasons for playing humans in GW2);

Charr and Norn; too big. The way they seem to move very slow irritates me. I’ve had this problem in other mmo’s too. So I usually tend to play smaller races.

Sylvari. I hate everything about this race. It’s the one race I would never roll. This is from a design standpoint (I simply don’t like how they look) as well as a flavor standpoint (they act too goody-two-shoes, their voices annoy me and I think they’re a lazy cop-out for getting an elf like race into the game).

Asura. The race I liked most before I got to play this game. My first character was an asura, but compared to humans they really lack in both meaningful customization options as well as nice looking armor options. They’re still my favorite non-human race and their areas were quite fun, but the above reasons just always made them come out (wait for it) … a little short. badabum-ching

The humans have the best customization options (not counting beards, norn have the upper hand there). They have the best armor options (bar a few notable exceptions) overal and imo they have the best starting zone.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible before I started playing, but as it stands now, all my characters are human.

Almost all armor, aside from cultural sets are designed for humans first and formost.

While human toon players have a wide assortment of awsome looking armor….both male and female versions while my Asura only gets a badly ported human male version.

Just look around in game, most people play humans. I love my Ausra immensely but I really dislike the armor options we are given and all the clipping problems. It is clear; instead of making unique versions of these sets for female/male other races, they cheaped out and used only human male version only to save cash?

Just look at all the human toons in game atm, it’s a testement to how much better clothing options they get. People flock to this in every game I have ever played. Yet, I rarely if ever see Asura lvl 80 mains, most are alts. I dare say, majority of peoples mains are a scantily clad chicks wearing just enough clothing to cover up the naughty bits.

Problem here is that anything not human seems to get less polygon count clothing with little selection and generally bad looks. It cost me 100g to buy the cultural set for my Asura ele just to make her look half decent. My human chars on other hand, has a massive selection of clothing options with extremely noticably superior detail/dyes options. This is wrong….but what can I do really, other races are last on the list for improvements after all. I can only guess that the armor designers work from human models only since almost every single armor piece I have seen usually has clipping problems on my asura.

And don’t get me started about tiny weapons. Humans get to see theirs, mine is buried under ill fitting clothes. I can barely even see my daggers while drawn too, I even picked the largest model I could.

Ashelotte.7195:

Personally, I don’t understand why humans would have the majority or why players would want to pick a human to play. I suppose you could make it look like yourself and kinda of project yourself into the fantasy world of the game. How I see it though is I’m a human, I deal with humans all day, I don’t want to be a human in a fantasy game and I always avoid humans in MMOs unless there is no other option.

This is my EXACT thoughts too, nice to know I’m not alone on this

This is a good thread. You raise a lot of solid points, and you mention some issues that I’ve also thought while playing the game. I think your strongest point is the armor bias – there is really not enough armor unique to the sylvari or asura. The norn get some good heavy armor options that make them look like vikings, but they could probably use more furs and pelts on medium and light armors. IMO, because the charr are more utilitarian, it makes sense that their aesthetic can overlap with humans’ a bit better than the other races – they took the humans’ land and weapons, why not their armor too? But it would still be nice if they had a more distinct aesthetic, so that you’d look at a set and know for sure it was charr armor. The best example of this that I can think of is their heavy cultural 3, it’s really mean looking and the spikes suit them well. I just realized that’s also the set Rytlock wears, lmao.

Anyways, I think the issue about human bias is more in the aesthetic than in technical issues like cutting. The human race just feels more fully developed than the others. I think the races with the least to show for themselves are asura and sylvari. They have very distinct aesthetics, yet there’s almost no armor outside of the cultural sets that really fits them. They also have the fewest maps. I remember being floored by Metrica Province when I started, but then when I looked at the world map for the first time, I was completely let down. I thought I was going to be able to do most of my levels in asuran territory, but it really only goes till, what, level 25 in Brisban? The poor sylvari only have Caledon. I get that they’re a new race, but still, you ought to be able to stretch the suspension of disbelief to give them more territory. It’s not nuts to think that in 25 years they could have expanded further than Caledon.

I’ve got an asura bias, myself, since I main one :P so I will just end by saying that I really want more outfits that were specifically designed for a 3 foot tall mad scientist.

ndrangles.5183:

I’ve got an asura bias, myself, since I main one :P so I will just end by saying that I really want more outfits that were specifically designed for a 3 foot tall mad scientist.

Exactly my thoughts on this.

Clothing designed specifically for Asura and not quickly ported HUMAN MALE versions.

Cultural armor don’t count here btw, there should be cheaper options period; not forced to blow 100g+ to look passable.

But but..i’m a human in real life

“But but..i’m a human in real life”

…wait, really? Me too!

Anyways…. my main in the game is actually the previously mentioned Asura Guardian. I purposefully made my main a non-human, mostly because I was a big GW1 fan and I wanted to expand beyond being human. I did recreated two characters (Male Human Elementalist and Female Human Warrior) but other than that I tried to do everything to experience everything in the game.

And that, in the end, is actually why Anet is concerned: they don’t want people to have only humans because they want people to experience more of what they created.

Another issue (I think I’ll just bring up an issue every time I post… why not, right?) is the weapon scaling on Asura. While playing WvW I saw this absolutely huge Norn dressed all in black mismatched armor, using some of the flaming pieces from CoF set, and wielding a gigantic Twilight greatsword. It was an awesome sight to behold.

But, as an Asura, when I wield a hammer the end of that thing is the size of a ping pong ball! There is nothing scary about that! I know that the weapons have to be limited in size due to the fact that it must be strapped to the back of the character while they run, but couldn’t the Asura use their technology to increase the size of their weapon when the draw it and shrink it when it goes on their back? Something? Please? Even humans and sylvari get unreasonably sized greatswords and hammers…

This issue also extends into armor as well as the weapons for the Asura. They don’t display the detailed design of most armor or weapons as well as the other races do. So that chest pieces or sword may look really cool, but it’ll be too small for anyone to even notice you dropped 100g on that weapon skin or armor set. So for my Guardian, I’m buying all of the biggest pieces armor so that you can see I’m wearing something (like named helm, manor shoulders, etc).

I like the idea of an MMO that simply doesn’t have the human race. Force players to choose something different. Imagine Guild wars two without the human race and only with the remaining races. I think visually that would be very interesting when you have a bunch of stories and alien creatures running around the world rather than seeing a generic human hero. The NPC’s themselves could be human but not player characters.

But if a publisher saw this, they were probably scream and frights and ours developers to include human race because that’s what the trend of MMO’s provides. If an MMO is made by some indie company then I doubt the quality of it would be that great because you need a lot of money to create a good MMO these days and have good infrastructure technically to support it. So for publishers would invest that much money in creating an MMO then they are definitely going to want to include the human race.

I hope in the expansion first Guild wars two weeks in a race that’s really different. Maybe something with like forearms or something that crawls on the ground. Definitely nothing humanoid. And nothing cute and gimmicky like a quaggan race.

The silvari in humans also share many skeletal animations so it saved them a lot of development time. I think the Norn share skeletal animations with humans and silvari as well well.

This is why we need Tier 0 Cultural armor.

Tier 0 Cultural armor will be available to all races at level 1 sold by armor shops and given at the tutorial.

This way, that Sylvari character you just created won’t look out of place in their starter clothes.

“This is why we need Tier 0 Cultural armor.
Tier 0 Cultural armor will be available to all races at level 1 sold by armor shops and given at the tutorial.
This way, that Sylvari character you just created won’t look out of place in their starter clothes.”

Yes. Exactly.

“I hope in the expansion first Guild wars two weeks in a race that’s really different. Maybe something with like forearms or something that crawls on the ground. Definitely nothing humanoid. And nothing cute and gimmicky like a quaggan race.”

I think in the first expansion they’ll probably open up Cantha (which would be amazing) and if they do add a new race, then it’ll probably be the Tengu. They already were considering the Tengu as a starter race in the initial release of GW2, and since the Tengu were big in Cantha I think that would be the logical decision. So… yeah, another humanoid race. But I’ve always loved the design of the Tengu and I’m an even bigger fan of their GW2 redesign. Hopefully since there would be fewer races to create and design at a time with an expansion they will receive a little more individual love than some of the starter races.

I find the psychology behind this tendency to roll humans fascinating. They have always been my least favorite race in practically any game, fantasy or sci-fi. I just find them intensely boring, plus they are always the sort of ‘neutral ground’ in every game.

With regards to being privileged by Arenanet, I just think it’s a lot easier for them to design for humans than the other classes, which are very particular. Humans can pull off just about any outfit, plus they share the same basic body structure as Norn so the models immediately work for both races. Sylvari get the short end of the stick because they just look awful in any human apparel.

Daemon.4295:

I find the psychology behind this tendency to roll humans fascinating. They have always been my least favorite race in practically any game, fantasy or sci-fi. I just find them intensely boring, plus they are always the sort of ‘neutral ground’ in every game.

With regards to being privileged by Arenanet, I just think it’s a lot easier for them to design for humans than the other classes, which are very particular. Humans can pull off just about any outfit, plus they share the same basic body structure as Norn so the models immediately work for both races. Sylvari get the short end of the stick because they just look awful in any human apparel.

I’m also one of those people that avoid Human models (more so, just the basic human race then the form) in fantasy games. If I have a choice to be something different then a human I will take it. I will also pick anything out of the ordinary class wise. Well, out of the ordinary as in, something that does not exist in reality (ie. magic, etc.). Personally I have one of everything, but I can barely stand playing my human alt out of, well, it feels too common. In GW1 you were human regardless obviously, but you were different races of human which actually was a pretty nice difference for once.

I would of loved to of seen low level armors 1 – 80 or at least as long as you are in their zones that was relatable to the races. I understand its hard to do such a thing and takes a lot of resources. But its pretty alienating to play something other then a human character if everything is clipping or looks clownish or just not right on your character. Main reason I gravitated so quickly to getting the Tier armor I loved for my Sylvari when I got 80. My Sylvari now looks comfortable and natural. xD

I can see why a ton of people prefer Humans/human forms though. Human and Norn are the easiest to associate with and all the psychology stuff. And a lot of people honestly don’t care for fancy stuff or cosmetics and will honestly gravitate towards Human races out of nature.

I guess I have a bias against the non human races. Have tried Asura, Charr and Sylvari and deleted them all in favor of Norn & Human. Asura and Sylvari are just ugly….Charr are quadrupeds and that gait (running on all fours) bugs me.