Guild Wars 2

Okay, this may seem to be silly but why can’t we pick if our characters are left or right handed? Being left handed I’ve had to adapt my whole life (not whining, just stating fact) and I get into this game and every character is right handed even with left handed names, like southpaw.

What gives ANet, surely some of the devs are lefties?

Turn your monitor upside down. Boom, left handed.

Put your monitor next to a mirror.

Fluffball.8307:

Turn your monitor upside down. Boom, left handed.

SirMorgenStar.6721:

Put your monitor next to a mirror.

Typical righty response…..guess the map will have to be reflected twice.

As someone that loves to make my characters somewhat identifiable with myself I understand what you are saying and I actually never thought of that.
I think the problem is that the majority of people in the world is supposedly righthanded and such it was the natural choice to put things in like that. It may be seen as something only a minority would use or want and thus not been thought as worth adding.
Now I have no idea how things work, and just how difficult it would be to make it possible to make lefthanded characters, if it is too time consuming/costly for Anet with very few people wanting it, they may just keep things as it is.
But all in all I am in support of the possibility of lefthanded characters, as it would be a pretty intresting detail and add to the diversity in a way.

As left-handed person, i completly agree with the op.

I dont think it would be that difficult to implement. You only would have to mirror the character, if you are lazy.

On the technical level, they probably can’t do it. It’s not a matter of merely reflecting the animations, as some people might think.

Yeah i’d like this option and given the chance i’d have it for all my toons.

If game companies listened to their every single customer there would be no games. Period.

What happen to having GAMES be GAMES??

Now we got all this extra kitten like bollywood production story and cinematics, marriage and divorce along with full legal proceedings, adopt a pet/child/monster, or a house with a full family and a 9-5 job in games now….

Why are games replacing real life, instead of being just games???

How does this relevant to this thread?

Why does it matter? and do people even understand the problems and issues the devs have to deal with trying to iterate with the game as it is now It doesn’t add anything to the game. It’s a “nice gesture” but that’s about it!

Just what do people think games are these days???

As a left handed person…

I don’t particularly care about selecting the handedness of my characters; it’s not technically difficult (depending on format, assuming they’re using keyframe animation you can just take the xyz points of the frames, flip the x’s, and you’re done), but then you’re going to have to ask the UI designer to put in a new button somewhere, then have the backend guy/gal hook it up and test it to make sure no strange control bugs pop up, and then you have to test every single animation in the game because there may be animations where simply flipping x values isn’t enough (particularly animations that aren’t centered, imagine doing a sideways jump attack and having your character go the opposite direction of the camera), and then you’ll have to mirror and test all the weapon special effects as well.

So it’s easy to flip animation for lefties, but implementing it is a lot of tedious work and doubles the work on future animations/gfx; I’d much rather see them put that effort into making new emotes, weapon animations, or mob animations.

blakdoxa.7520:

How does this relevant to this thread?

Since it’s my thread, I find it very relevant and by your response you aren’t left handed. We can personalize almost every aspect of this game, dyes, hairstyles, weapon choices, sex of our toons, profession, what else can we do?

I am asking a rhetorical question as I know that technically it would be very difficult, you’d have to create 2 mappings for every configuration. Personalization is the basis for this game’s attraction AND if you aren’t interested, why did you bother to post in a thread you didn’t think was important?

Cassocaster.4576:

blakdoxa.7520:

How does this relevant to this thread?

Since it’s my thread, I find it very relevant and by your response you aren’t left handed. We can personalize almost every aspect of this game, dyes, hairstyles, weapon choices, sex of our toons, profession, what else can we do?

I am asking a rhetorical question as I know that technically it would be very difficult, you’d have to create 2 mappings for every configuration. Personalization is the basis for this game’s attraction AND if you aren’t interested, why did you bother to post in a thread you didn’t think was important?

I do think it is important as for why I posted in the first place.
Personalization…this isn’t some dress up doll game where we try to make our characters as close as to our imagined self as possible.
!!!!! What a great psychological study this could provoke!

But this a game BEFORE all of those nice QoL improvements.
So far this “game” has been more about looks than fixing any of the rampant issues or improving existing features. Hell!! Some things have been forgotten about all together!!

All this effort to make the game look and feel amazing but then you look under the hood and find nothing but a few loose screws and a missing engine.

Muchacho.2390:

As left-handed person, i completly agree with the op.

I dont think it would be that difficult to implement. You only would have to mirror the character, if you are lazy.

The internet, where if you don’t know how it works, it must be easy.

You cannot just replace R with L in a code line and mirror every animation. This would require new coding on how animations work with weapon abilities, how they work with armor, and how they work with emotes. And then, once that is done, going back and modifying or flat-out reanimating a great deal of the games content by hand. Just because animation is done by computer, doesn’t mean copy pasting is a viable option in all or even most cases.

Just to clarify, are you asking for the weapons you wield to be in your left hand or are you asking for the skill animations to be on your left?

For weapons, all Anet would have to do is allow main-hand weapons to go in either hand, which isn’t difficult at all.

Spell animations are entirely different, as they would have to go through and redo all of the actions, which is difficult.

Picture something like the ranger sword 3 skill or the dagger 4 skill, which both spin the ranger around to the side of the opponent. You can’t just mirror that animation.

Because it’s fluff that’s only relevant to like 6% of the world’s population, not to mention the game’s?
Does my character also need to have myopia because I do? No.

defently would like to make a Link cosplay character =p, Human warrior using sword/shield primary with bow secondary

left handed would make that even more accurate

Why isn’t there an option to have a mole on my character’s left butt cheek? Man, this game has some really limited options!

My warrior is left handed. But because the game engine discriminates against lefties, my war must be righthanded making combat just a little harder for him and NOT AS OP AS I WANT HIM TO BE!!!!

plz fix anet

I really support the idea of being able to change the hand orientation of a character.

I’m using my right; but I really get your problem.

I played Path of Exile for a while. I wanted to play the class ’’Templar’’ so much, but he was a lefty and I couldn’t stand seeing him swinging the mace with his left hand. It bothered me so much, I had to switch to another class.

Maybe it’s just me and my weird habits that it bothered me that much, but I’m just trying to say that; it can be really frustrating for some people. Just go try playing an FPS game with the gun in your left hand and you’ll see…

Cassocaster.4576:

Being left handed I’ve had to adapt my whole life (not whining, just stating fact) and I get into this game and every character is right handed even with left handed names, like southpaw.

Really? I’m a fellow lefty and I haven’t really had to do all that much adapting.
But anyway yeah this would be a nice feature. Don’t think it would take all that much work either.

I’m left handed and I couldn’t care less that the characters are not, because being left handed does not identify me as a person

blakdoxa.7520:

Personalization…this isn’t some dress up doll game where we try to make our characters as close as to our imagined self as possible.
!!!!! What a great psychological study this could provoke!

You’re saying personalization isn’t a part of why you like this game or that it isn’t important? EVERYTHING about character development is about how your toon looks, everything. Dyes, which armor set, etc. If you can honestly say that you don’t care how your toon looks, then okay, my question isn’t relevant. I asked a real question and for 10% of this game population, it may mean something.

I guess I set a spark down, thought I was making a camp fire but half the forest is burning….you’ll notice that I know the technological limitations are there. I seriously would be happy if my my Charr simply shouldered her rifle to the left or my necro actually led with the ascended dagger I put in her left paw/hand or what ever Asurans have.

At the end of the day though, I have played the game for well over a year and my game play is not impacted, obviously, it’s just a cosmetic thing.

They have to redo all their animations just so 2% of the player base can be happy.

Would be a terrible waste of time to implement.

Cyrrin.1230:

Would be a terrible waste of time to implement.

There are a lot more dire and urgent thinks to fix.

In addition, in which hand a weapon is wielded in this game makes it possible for others to determinate the wielders build and, of course, their 5 first skills.

There are no left-handed people in Tyria.

It’s an interesting topic – it’s something that would be cool to have, but it’s really not something that I would consider important, or that I miss having. It’s one of those nice to have little touches, but I don’t feel like it really affects anything.