Guild Wars 2

Hey A-Net.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 since release now and am a very active roleplayer in the community.

I will cut the pleasantries and get straight to the problem. The roleplaying community in Guild Wars feels vastly neglected and not cared about by the staff and developers of Guild wars. Yes – you do try and cater for all markets and peoples but by neglecting to see the potential in a community that cares deeply for your games lore, art, design. They make up a fairly large player base in Tarnished Coast and sporadically on other servers. These people and myself care for the game and want to nurture it to greatness .But as we have seen from the developers so far, is that everything they have promised us. Everything that made GW1 great – is being removed.

• Guild Halls – removed, until further notice. We have heard from the staff themselves that they have no intentions of working on them.
• Epic end game stories and expansions removed.
• No promise of new playable races or classes.
  *Denying new areas until ‘PVP’ is perfected.
• Removing important cultural aspects of GW from the game to create a more ‘unified’ and ‘Culturally sensitive’ community.
• Lore updated so slowly.
• No promise of an official RP server for the thousands of roleplayers.

Please, If anyone has anything to add. post away. I’d love to hear your opinions! <3

I am not sure what you mean by ‘removed’. Those things weren’t there, so how are they removed?

Guild halls will come at a later date, as will expansions, according to the Devs.

Not sure where you saw the quote about denying new areas, I’ve never seen them mention them either way.

I’d be really interested to read your sources, I like to keep up with what the Devs say. =)

Have you ever heard the expression storm in a teacup.

Guild Halls were not removed until further notice. They were never supposed to be in at launch and it was said they would be available eventually. That is still true. Nothing has changed with guild halls.

Epic end game stories and expansions were not removed. Anet said they’re not currently working on an expansion at the moment. They are, however, working on new content. I’m not sure why new content has to be held back for an expansion instead of being delivered month by month.

Anet has never promised new playable races or professions, nor is that a topic that is only of interest to RPers. Presumably they will have at least new races in the expansion when it comes out.

Where did you hear that they removed cultural aspects from Guild Wars 2 to remain more unified. I’ve seen this theory in a thread, but nothing from Anet about it at all.

The RP server point I agree with. I see no problem having an official RP server.

I don’t see discrimination in any of this.

TC works well enough as an RP server for me.

None of that was actually removed, it never existed. Furthermore, most of it is not rp-specific but concerns every player. I dont know what this topic is meant to accomplish really.

The biggest boon for RP would be officially acknowledging it and marking a server rp, maybe with a free move there open for a week to concentrate the rp community and give new players a heads up on which server to go to (especially now that moves arent free anymore).

discrimination is a big word thrown around at the slighest inconvience these days… no, you cannot be discriminated against for a certain playstyle in a video game. That being said, most of your points have nothing to do with roleplaying at all:

Guild Halls – only relevant to roleplay as being a private environment
Epic end game stories and expansions – as far as I understood, roleplaying in MMORPG is about acting your role together with other roleplayers, what has the PvE part of the game to do with that?
No promise of new playable races or classes – absolutely nothing to do with roleplay as that is about impersonating “real” individuals, not an assortment of stats.
Denying new areas until ‘PVP’ is perfected – so how many empty maps do you need as a stage to use the chatbox?
Removing important cultural aspects of GW from the game to create a more ‘unified’ and ‘Culturally sensitive’ community – like what?
Lore updated so slowly – no, lore is rich in GW2 and draws a lot from its predecessor, also, I was under the impression as a roleplayer you start creating your own lore.
No promise of an official RP server for the thousands of roleplayers – roleplay all you like anywhere, most people certainly don´t want an anet bad renaissance english-police controlling player dialogue – and I doubt anet employees are really eager to do this themselves.

Michikyou.9617:

*Denying new areas until ‘PVP’ is perfected.

I loled really hard.

The only valid complaint imho would have been the Super Adventure Box, since it breaks the immersion like a pink Charr singing Justin Bieber songs in the temple of Grenth.

I’m on Piken Square and I am noticing a steadily decreasing level of RP activity here.
A large amount of the people I know who came to GW2 mainly for RP have packed up and left (some even gone back to WoW) because like most MMORPGS, GW2 just isn’t really suited for RPing, and no matter how good of a RPer you are it feels like you are having to work against the parameters of the game.
We are such a small community that why should they care?

Seems like MMO developers in particular rarely seem to understand that the RPG bit in MMORPG means ‘ROLE-PLAYING GAME’. Just because a game has Dungeons and Dragons doesn’t make it a RPG.

GW2 is more of a fantasy action/adventure game than anything.

I could make a list of RPer specific issues but I doubt anyone would care.

Here’s to hoping ES:O and Neverwinter give us what we are looking for!

Algreg.3629:

no, you cannot be discriminated against for a certain playstyle in a video game.

You totally can be discriminated against for a certain playstyle in a video game. Just the other day somebody asked for RP in /map was was promptly called a kitten for it (just that kitten started with f). That is discrimination.

ANet not including (or not giving priority to) certain features that a minority (?) of players wish for is not discrimination. ANet doesn’t have to justify their economic or artistic decisions, really.

Interesting title OP and to be honest, the word “Discrimination” is a very sensitive word. It is obvious all you have written in your post has inflicted your sensitive emotions; you are entitled to feel this way.

All I can tell you, gw2 has barely anything to do with gw1; everything you mentioned is correct concerning the comparison between the community, designers, staff, developers etc..

“Everything that made GW1 great – is being removed”.

Gw2 has and will continue to separate itself from gw1 in every manner; what had worked well in gw1 is no longer in existence in gw2. The ideas, the passion and the mechanics are no longer viable in gw2, it’s quite obvious.

To be honest, I see gw2 as a New mmo in no relation to its ancestral roots.

Gw1 had never implemented ‘stealth’ mechanics, gw1 never practiced favoritism of certain classes, gw1 had never implemented a system of “Elitism”, the list goes on……….

And those made gw1 great and a fair player in the mmo world.

My encouragement to you OP is to see gw2 as a new mmo from ground-up and unfortunately accept it this way if you can.

As the saying goes, “There is no going back”

Burnfall.9573:

Interesting title OP.

All I can tell you, gw2 has barely anything to do with gw1; everything you mentioned is correct concerning the comparison to the community, staff, developers etc..

Everything that made GW1 great – is being removed.

Gw2 has and will continue to separate itself from gw1 in every manner; what had worked well in gw1 is no longer in existence in gw2. The ideas, the passion and the mechanics are no longer viable in gw2, it’s quite obvious.

To be honest, I see gw2 as a New mmo in no relation to its ancestral roots.

Gw1 had never implemented ‘stealth’ mechanics, gw1 never practiced favoritism of certain classes, gw1 had never implemented a system of “Elitism”, the list goes on……….

And those made gw1 great and a fair player in the mmo world.

My encouragement to you OP is to see gw2 as a new mmo from ground-up and unfortunately accept it this way if you can.

“There is no going back”

There was plenty of complaining on Guild Wars 1 forums about favoritism of certain professions. Maybe you missed it.

And much of what Guild Wars 1 great, was also what made Guild Wars 1 unsustainable.

To Vayne, I encourage you to reread my post

“There was plenty of complaining on Guild Wars 1 forums about favoritism of certain professions. Maybe you missed it”.

Obviously, with the introduction of ‘dual class system complaints of ’favoritism’. And ‘if you had missed it’- their interaction to the community helped them resolved it.

If gw2 were to introduce ‘dual-class’ system, wouldn’t people also complain of favoritism? Obviously yes. Imagine having a dual theif/ and a war/, a lot of people would certainly ‘raise hell’

And to your last comment of ‘And much of what Guild Wars 1 great, was also what made Guild Wars 1 unsustainable’.

What are you talking about?

Any former gw1 players will disclaim this.

By the way, I have a feeling you’re an Elitist, ‘Favorite’ class.

It’s obvious I didn’t ‘miss it’

‘In no means of disrespect’

Discrimination would be if it were forbidden for you to RP. However, as far as I can see, no rule specifically discriminates against RP in either letter or spirit.

Not catering to a group does not equate discrimination. BWM not making pink unicorn cars does not mean they discriminate against certain minorities. Now if they refused to sell cars to these minorities, that’d be discrimination.

You are allowed to RP on every server, and you have the right to group up in specific ones. I really don’t see where the word discrimination comes in.

Michikyou.9617:

Hey A-Net.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 since release now and am a very active roleplayer in the community.

I will cut the pleasantries and get straight to the problem. The roleplaying community in Guild Wars feels vastly neglected and not cared about by the staff and developers of Guild wars. Yes – you do try and cater for all markets and peoples but by neglecting to see the potential in a community that cares deeply for your games lore, art, design. They make up a fairly large player base in Tarnished Coast and sporadically on other servers. These people and myself care for the game and want to nurture it to greatness .But as we have seen from the developers so far, is that everything they have promised us. Everything that made GW1 great – is being removed.

• Guild Halls – removed, until further notice. We have heard from the staff themselves that they have no intentions of working on them.
• Epic end game stories and expansions removed.
• No promise of new playable races or classes.
  *Denying new areas until ‘PVP’ is perfected.
• Removing important cultural aspects of GW from the game to create a more ‘unified’ and ‘Culturally sensitive’ community.
• Lore updated so slowly.
• No promise of an official RP server for the thousands of roleplayers.

Please, If anyone has anything to add. post away. I’d love to hear your opinions! <3

Aside from the last point nothing has to do with your problem. In fact its just whining for new content. While these things might enhance the roleplay capabilities, it is mostly “i want new shinies” stuff.
Well, Guildhalls are an exception, since they would offer a isolated playing enviroment, however the way you convey your plead is not fitting your extravagant discrimination statement.

What do roleplayers need right now?
- More ways to express themselves. We got some townclothing, thats nice, and a highly customizable armor selection. Great stuff.
It is more the little things that are missing.
Foremost: Emotes.
The game is lacking them and some of the favourites that were in GW1 are missing.

Other then that a lot of roleplaying options are there.

As someone who has been playing pen and paper RP since Advanced D&D, I find this topic hilarious.
OP- when I was a kid in the 80’s I was told I am a Satanist and was excluded from many many things because I was considered a weird nerd and probably dangerous- I would not even call that discrimination, just an unfortunate side effect of my hobby.

Oh and we never played with grids- so the only tools we had was literally our minds and a piece of paper/pen if we remembered to bring one.

What you want has not much to do with role playing and more to do with I want stuff

Burnfall.9573:

To Vayne, I encourage you to reread my post

“There was plenty of complaining on Guild Wars 1 forums about favoritism of certain professions. Maybe you missed it”.

Obviously, with the introduction of ‘dual class system complaints of ’favoritism’. And ‘if you had missed it’- their interaction to the community helped them resolved it.

If gw2 were to introduce ‘dual-class’ system, wouldn’t people also complain of favoritism? Obviously yes. Imagine having a dual theif/ and a war/, a lot of people would certainly ‘raise hell’

And to your last comment of ‘And much of what Guild Wars 1 great, was also what made Guild Wars 1 unsustainable’.

What are you talking about?

Any former gw1 players will disclaim this.

By the way, I have a feeling you’re an Elitist, ‘Favorite’ class.

It’s obvious I didn’t ‘miss it’

‘In no means of disrespect’

I’m a former Guild Wars 1 player. I have 50/50 in my HoM and I have the GWAMM title. I played Guild Wars 1 for five years.

Some of what made Guild Wars 1 a great game was the build flexibility. This is also what made the game impossible to balance. It led to builds like sabway, dual 600 monks, discord builds, the ursan nonsense, perma-sins and several other debacles over the years, which then had to be nerfed. The addition of ritualists as a profession in the game made the game so easy, that most of the game, even in hard mode, could be easily done with heroes. My wife and I ran all of DOA with a six hero team. The very flexibility that made the game great, also caused a huge amount of problems.

There are several examples of how Guild Wars 1 was great, but for each great thing about it, someone else thought those things were crap. The addition of heroes is great for solo players, but group players endlessly complained about it, saying there was no reason for people to party anymore. Due to the introduction of heroes many people left the game.

Guild Wars 1 had a lot going for it but ultimately it was unsustainable because of some of the design decisions made by the devs. Why do you think they made different design decisions this time around?

A seperate channel for RPing would probably help too. You could make a Squad to Roleplay in, but that’s very Exclusive. Having a channel would be far easier for RPers to enter a zone and start Roleplaying with people in the zone, while not annoying non-RPers. Also people harassing RPers in a RP channel is far easier to police than in a map channel, where moaning about constant RP chatter might not be considered Harassing.

Burnfall.9573:

Gw1 had never implemented ‘stealth’ mechanics, gw1 never practiced favoritism of certain classes, gw1 had never implemented a system of “Elitism”, the list goes on……….

I agree that it never had stealth mechanic, but everything else is pure non-sense, GW1 had a LOT of Elitisism, even more than in GW2, I guess you never did DoA or UW or FoW in speedclear groups… There was tons and tons of elitisism in GW1, it was also FULL of favoritism for certain classes and obvious hatred towards other classes. I guess you weren’t a very active player in GW1 at the highest level of play -HM dungeons, GvG etc-

+1 to Morrigan – I remember those days too! To the OP, let’s pretend it’s Christmas morning, or your birthday and you’ve just gotten everything you could ever wish for. What would it look like? Aside from the points in your post about a dedicated server, Guild Hall, etc. (all of which would benefit more than just the RPer’s) what would the best RP environment you can think of look like in GW2?

…you are comparing, a fully completed game, and a game that has a multitude of updates and expansions to a new game. Yes, GW2 is still quite new. Update wise we havnt had much content added, that is a different discussion, for a different topic. Nothing was removed. Something that hasnt been added, doesn’t mean it was removed. GW2 was not just an add-on to GW1, they are completely different games, you shouldn’t compare them just straight away like that, if you wanted a better comparision compare GW2 to the first few months of GW1.

Could we please try to keep this on-topic and about the roleplaying aspect? The OP might have brought up suggestions that might not help the roleplay community, but are more of a game wide suggestion. However, what would you like to see for a better roleplaying experience?

I am not a roleplayer myself, but I do feel that emotes are lacking. Also I would like to see some town clothes available in the game and not limited to the gem store. And I did not understand why GW2 was not released with a roleplaying server. I am not sure if you need a strict policy on those with staff policing, but I do see the benefits of a roleplay server with a more strict naming policy where GMs can respond to reports on naming.

How about….

1: Chat box control please? /emote is DARK GREY for frak’s sake. Let us change colors.
2: Make /block actually block emotes, so we can control spam.
3: Make /say and /emote ranges actually make sense.
4: Give us real user-controlled culling sliders, so we don’t have people vanishing in the middle of big rp gatherings
5: Chat-logging functionality would be nice (also useful for combat logging, i guess)
6: User Channels for communities
7: Housing and/or more interactive spaces in towns.
8: Sitting poses that actually work on….you know, chairs.

Dude, like everything you listed was stuff that wasn’t added to GW1 until later updates… Nothing was removed, they just haven’t been added yet.

Contrary to popular nostalgia-bespectacled beliefs, GW1 didn’t launch with everything you see in it today.

I would hardly call your points evidence of “discrimination” but as a role-player I understand some peoples frustrations.

The thing you need to understand is – which many RPers don’t seem to get – is that MMOs are games (and products) first and immersive stories second. Lore is great and lore is dandy but lore isn’t the primary selling point of the game. It’s not what puts money on the developers table (though it might on the writers!).

What this essentially means is that anything that would benefit roleplayers has a low priority in terms of importance. New gameplay features, game balancing and bug fixing are much more important because Guild Wars 2 is a -game-, not an interactive story.

On a personal level I think most roleplayers should really get over it. No game has ever given us the tools to create a completely immersible experience and so we should work with the hand we’ve been dealt. I always have and, quite frankly, my enjoyment and role-playing experience isn’t lessened because my chosen race/class’ lore isn’t as developed as I might like.

Blanks were made to be filled. So I filled them.

Michikyou.9617:

• Guild Halls – removed, until further notice. We have heard from the staff themselves that they have no intentions of working on them.
• Epic end game stories and expansions removed.
• No promise of new playable races or classes.
  *Denying new areas until ‘PVP’ is perfected.
• Removing important cultural aspects of GW from the game to create a more ‘unified’ and ‘Culturally sensitive’ community.
• Lore updated so slowly.

How does the lack of any of these…
A) discriminate against anyone?
B) prevent roleplayers from roleplaying?

robocafaz.9017:

Dude, like everything you listed was stuff that wasn’t added to GW1 until later updates… Nothing was removed, they just haven’t been added yet.

Contrary to popular nostalgia-bespectacled beliefs, GW1 didn’t launch with everything you see in it today.

I’ve seen this argument a lot, even before launch. Of course GW1 didnt launch with all those features there. Anet learned a lot from GW1 launch and applied those lessons.

Where the argument falls down is that to make it true then every lesson learned from GW1 had been forgotten or discarded in between GW1 and GW2. I.e They learned no lessons (or decided to forget/defer them until later) and in effect threw every thing away.

As for RP servers etc. I’m not sure how you can ever do this unless the RP server is totally segregated from everyone else and some degree of moderation is performed. Otherwise it’ll become a troll magnet.

Custom chat channels, a more flexible UI etc are all features that any AAA MMO should have had from launch, but obviously did not have the priority at the time.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

robocafaz.9017:

Dude, like everything you listed was stuff that wasn’t added to GW1 until later updates… Nothing was removed, they just haven’t been added yet.

Contrary to popular nostalgia-bespectacled beliefs, GW1 didn’t launch with everything you see in it today.

I’ve seen this argument a lot, even before launch. Of course GW1 didnt launch with all those features there. Anet learned a lot from GW1 launch and applied those lessons.

Where the argument falls down is that to make it true then every lesson learned from GW1 had been forgotten or discarded in between GW1 and GW2. I.e They learned no lessons (or decided to forget/defer them until later) and in effect threw every thing away.

As for RP servers etc. I’m not sure how you can ever do this unless the RP server is totally segregated from everyone else and some degree of moderation is performed. Otherwise it’ll become a troll magnet.

Custom chat channels, a more flexible UI etc are all features that any AAA MMO should have had from launch, but obviously did not have the priority at the time.

I don’t buy this. Guild Wars 2, at launch was a FAR more ambitious game than Guild Wars 1. From experience, Guild Wars devs did learn stuff…but not the stuff you think they learned. They learned that people burn through content FAST, and there better be a lot of it. So they focused on making as much content as they could…knowing at some point they’d have to launch without some of the bells and whistles, even stuff they annouced like guesting.

It’s not that they don’t know this stuff is important, so much as they had X amount of time to do stuff before release. It’s the same with all MMOs. after release you play catch up. Then you try to get an LFG tool out, etc, etc.

Knowing something is very different than being able to do something about it.

Games like Rift launched with a very small world and a relatively small amount of content, but it was a very stable world. Until they started making updates and fixing skills and then it become a mess.

Guild Wars 2 launched sloppily (even the trading post didn’t work), but they kept working on stuff, and ironed out a lot of problems. This is what most MMOs end up having to do.

No one has enough time to program a big, working game with all the bells and whistles. You either have a perfectly working tiny game, a really big, buggy game without lots of bells and whistles, or a bunch of features, but no game.

I think Anet made the right choice.

…aaand the OP hasn’t responded. Me thinks he’s been scared away.

In any case, I agree with everyone else. This game doesn’t discriminate against RPers, it offers things like town clothes in the gem store, nothing has been removed as this isn’t GW1…this is a brand new game. The world is large and we’re less than a year into the game…expacs will come and more of the map will be revealed. I’m not sure why you’d expect otherwise. Not to mention that any argument about PvE aspects of the game (or PvP for that matter) have nothing to do with RP.

Michikyou.9617:

Hey A-Net.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 since release now and am a very active roleplayer in the community.

I will cut the pleasantries and get straight to the problem. The roleplaying community in Guild Wars feels vastly neglected and not cared about by the staff and developers of Guild wars. Yes – you do try and cater for all markets and peoples but by neglecting to see the potential in a community that cares deeply for your games lore, art, design. They make up a fairly large player base in Tarnished Coast and sporadically on other servers. These people and myself care for the game and want to nurture it to greatness .But as we have seen from the developers so far, is that everything they have promised us. Everything that made GW1 great – is being removed.

• Guild Halls – removed, until further notice. We have heard from the staff themselves that they have no intentions of working on them.
• Epic end game stories and expansions removed.
• No promise of new playable races or classes.
  *Denying new areas until ‘PVP’ is perfected.
• Removing important cultural aspects of GW from the game to create a more ‘unified’ and ‘Culturally sensitive’ community.
• Lore updated so slowly.
• No promise of an official RP server for the thousands of roleplayers.

Please, If anyone has anything to add. post away. I’d love to hear your opinions! <3

Except no one makes video games for roleplaying, so there’s no “discrimination”, people just expect too much.

I’m a roleplayer on Toast, been there since beta and Anet has not discriminated against us at all. The roleplay opportunities here are very sufficient for this kind of game. Bearing in mind this is a combat orientated game like most MMOs yet they continue to add non combat options like town clothes to please the inner roleplayer in all of us. I feel that you are being a slight bit picky, yes guild halls would be nice but just because they haven’t been added yet hardly means Anet is targeting you at all. Anet has done a great job appealing to many different types of players, trust me that is a hard balance to maintain and at any time the extremists from any group shout about feeling neglected but it is hardly true. In the end roleplay depends on you and your fellow roleplayers, of which there are many on Toast.

Thomanson.4765:

How about….

1: Chat box control please? /emote is DARK GREY for frak’s sake. Let us change colors.
2: Make /block actually block emotes, so we can control spam.
3: Make /say and /emote ranges actually make sense.
4: Give us real user-controlled culling sliders, so we don’t have people vanishing in the middle of big rp gatherings
5: Chat-logging functionality would be nice (also useful for combat logging, i guess)
6: User Channels for communities
7: Housing and/or more interactive spaces in towns.
8: Sitting poses that actually work on….you know, chairs.

Oh my god are you flippin’ serious? Go play Playstaion Home, or Kaneva.

Arcanorum Ignis.9218:

I’m on Piken Square and I am noticing a steadily decreasing level of RP activity here.
A large amount of the people I know who came to GW2 mainly for RP have packed up and left (some even gone back to WoW) because like most MMORPGS, GW2 just isn’t really suited for RPing, and no matter how good of a RPer you are it feels like you are having to work against the parameters of the game.
We are such a small community that why should they care?

Seems like MMO developers in particular rarely seem to understand that the RPG bit in MMORPG means ‘ROLE-PLAYING GAME’. Just because a game has Dungeons and Dragons doesn’t make it a RPG.

GW2 is more of a fantasy action/adventure game than anything.

I could make a list of RPer specific issues but I doubt anyone would care.

Here’s to hoping ES:O and Neverwinter give us what we are looking for!

Hey, did you know that RPGs and CRPGS are 2 different things? Computer games don’t owe anyone a “real roleplaying experience”

As an RP’er one thing that bothers me is the lack of RP clothing in the game. Even what they have in the store is lacking. At least, we should be able to wear armor that is below what our class natively wears, for RP.

I mean some vendors selling simple RP garments would be nice. Nothing that requires use to hop through hoops or visit the store for, just some simple clothing from a vendor to give a bit more depth to our RP.

MrTastix.6842:

I would hardly call your points evidence of “discrimination” but as a role-player I understand some peoples frustrations.

The thing you need to understand is – which many RPers don’t seem to get – is that MMOs are games (and products) first and immersive stories second. Lore is great and lore is dandy but lore isn’t the primary selling point of the game. It’s not what puts money on the developers table (though it might on the writers!).

What this essentially means is that anything that would benefit roleplayers has a low priority in terms of importance. New gameplay features, game balancing and bug fixing are much more important because Guild Wars 2 is a -game-, not an interactive story.

On a personal level I think most roleplayers should really get over it. No game has ever given us the tools to create a completely immersible experience and so we should work with the hand we’ve been dealt. I always have and, quite frankly, my enjoyment and role-playing experience isn’t lessened because my chosen race/class’ lore isn’t as developed as I might like.

Blanks were made to be filled. So I filled them.

Post of the month, well said.

The roleplay experience is what you make it to be. That’s why it’s called roleplaying. I really don’t understand the problem here, they already have a bunch of useless town clothes which is more than most games do for RP’ers.

Sounds like you are looking for Second Life or a sims online type deal.

Michikyou.9617:

*Denying new areas until ‘PVP’ is perfected.

So Anet neglects PvP players since launch and has only now just STARTED to update PvP and now PvE players are complaining? Give me a break.

If you take 3 seconds to look up Guild Wars 2 Rp online you’ll find out which servers are the acting RP servers – the we don’t really need a dedicated RP server now. Would one have been nice at launch? Sort of, but the RP community got itself organized pretty quick, so it wasn’t really necessary.

A lot of the things on this list aren’t really RP requirements anyway. I’d much rather see us able to sit in chairs, lay in beds, get more clothing, more emotes, add more reasons to be in cities, more clothing again, introducing playable instruments, introducing dance style “mini games”, have the day/night cycle more obviously affect cities, and I’m sure there are a few things I’m forgetting. Those things will improve the rp experience. An extra race or more end game content isn’t going to do that.

If you go looking for RP you will find it on TC; I’ve never had a problem finding it when I actively try and I usually play during weird hours.

With the exception of RP servers, none of the things listed are exclusive “wants” of RPers… which makes the accusation of discrimination seems a bit dramatic.

Jack of Tears.9458:

If you go looking for RP you will find it on TC; I’ve never had a problem finding it when I actively try and I usually play during weird hours.

Truth

Thomanson.4765:

How about….

1: Chat box control please? /emote is DARK GREY for frak’s sake. Let us change colors.
2: Make /block actually block emotes, so we can control spam.
3: Make /say and /emote ranges actually make sense.
4: Give us real user-controlled culling sliders, so we don’t have people vanishing in the middle of big rp gatherings
5: Chat-logging functionality would be nice (also useful for combat logging, i guess)
6: User Channels for communities
7: Housing and/or more interactive spaces in towns.
8: Sitting poses that actually work on….you know, chairs.

This. This is what Roleplayers actually need. These are the things that make the game less-RPer-friendly.

ophidic.1279:

Except no one makes video games for roleplaying, so there’s no “discrimination”, people just expect too much.

Really? I think you are delusional. LotRO caters HEAVILY to its RPers: Player housing with full neighborhoods, customizable chat colors/fonts, chat logging built in, emote size and range quite extensive, up to like 7-8 full outfit slots, an actual /rp tag that changes your name color to show you are roleplaying, a bio that people can click on you to read, the ability to have children and a parent linked to your character, etc etc. Coupled with that, people get banned for harrassing RPers and GMs have been known to roleplay with the playerbase.

Rhysati.4932:

ophidic.1279:

Except no one makes video games for roleplaying, so there’s no “discrimination”, people just expect too much.

Really? I think you are delusional. LotRO caters HEAVILY to its RPers: Player housing with full neighborhoods, customizable chat colors/fonts, chat logging built in, emote size and range quite extensive, up to like 7-8 full outfit slots, an actual /rp tag that changes your name color to show you are roleplaying, a bio that people can click on you to read, the ability to have children and a parent linked to your character, etc etc. Coupled with that, people get banned for harrassing RPers and GMs have been known to roleplay with the playerbase.

If LotRO is so great and amazing and the best at RP, why are you here complaining about something that is not even remotely acknowledged as GW2’s strong point?

I have no problem with giving RP’ers more tools to play around with each other, but if there are better options out there for RP and you know about it…well…It’s kind of your choice to be here!

I’m still angry that Queen Jennah and Logan Thackery don’t have matching quaggan backpacks!

danbuter.2314:

I’m still angry that Queen Jennah and Logan Thackery don’t have matching quaggan backpacks!

ANet doesn’t allow them to buy gems as it is a conflict of interest.

Michikyou.9617:

Hey A-Net.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 since release now and am a very active roleplayer in the community.

I will cut the pleasantries and get straight to the problem. The roleplaying community in Guild Wars feels vastly neglected and not cared about by the staff and developers of Guild wars. Yes – you do try and cater for all markets and peoples but by neglecting to see the potential in a community that cares deeply for your games lore, art, design. They make up a fairly large player base in Tarnished Coast and sporadically on other servers. These people and myself care for the game and want to nurture it to greatness .But as we have seen from the developers so far, is that everything they have promised us. Everything that made GW1 great – is being removed.

• Guild Halls – removed, until further notice. We have heard from the staff themselves that they have no intentions of working on them.
• Epic end game stories and expansions removed.
• No promise of new playable races or classes.
  *Denying new areas until ‘PVP’ is perfected.
• Removing important cultural aspects of GW from the game to create a more ‘unified’ and ‘Culturally sensitive’ community.
• Lore updated so slowly.
• No promise of an official RP server for the thousands of roleplayers.

Please, If anyone has anything to add. post away. I’d love to hear your opinions! <3

1. Don’t forget hardly any minigames
2. almost no cosmetics beyond what was at launch or in the store.
3. No housing with decorations to add to your home instance to show where you’ve been what you’ve achieved.

I don’t think that people realize that in PVE it’s the RP community that keeps PVE alive because they will go everywhere concerning their story and fill up the zones that are usually empty.

I’ve seen this myself, I’ve not see pve players alot but I’ve seen RPers everywhere on my server because it is the unofficial RP server, that’s why I think that people from my server might not realize just how empty the other servers look, because we at least have the luxury of having players standing around emoting/typing to one another.

tigirius.9014:

1. Don’t forget hardly any minigames
2. almost no cosmetics beyond what was at launch or in the store.
3. No housing with decorations to add to your home instance to show where you’ve been what you’ve achieved.

I don’t think that people realize that in PVE it’s the RP community that keeps PVE alive because they will go everywhere concerning their story and fill up the zones that are usually empty.

I’ve seen this myself, I’ve not see pve players alot but I’ve seen RPers everywhere on my server because it is the unofficial RP server, that’s why I think that people from my server might not realize just how empty the other servers look, because we at least have the luxury of having players standing around emoting/typing to one another.

really? So players like me, that love PVE, but don’t RP don’t count? Underworld is not an RPing server yet we have plenty of people here.
Coming from games like WoW, Perfect World, Tera, I would like to ask what’s the point of even having instanced homes? Sure, Runescape did it, but why is it important? It eats up server space and gives you nothing but a room to stand in.

Mirta.5029:

tigirius.9014:

1. Don’t forget hardly any minigames
2. almost no cosmetics beyond what was at launch or in the store.
3. No housing with decorations to add to your home instance to show where you’ve been what you’ve achieved.

I don’t think that people realize that in PVE it’s the RP community that keeps PVE alive because they will go everywhere concerning their story and fill up the zones that are usually empty.

I’ve seen this myself, I’ve not see pve players alot but I’ve seen RPers everywhere on my server because it is the unofficial RP server, that’s why I think that people from my server might not realize just how empty the other servers look, because we at least have the luxury of having players standing around emoting/typing to one another.

really? So players like me, that love PVE, but don’t RP don’t count? Underworld is not an RPing server yet we have plenty of people here.
Coming from games like WoW, Perfect World, Tera, I would like to ask what’s the point of even having instanced homes? Sure, Runescape did it, but why is it important? It eats up server space and gives you nothing but a room to stand in.

I do understand the wish for instanced homes, guildhalls or player-/guildmade towns though. It would give us a lot more situations to roleplay with. I do understand however that this isn’t always possible to achieve. As quite a fan of RP’ing in GW2, I think that it’s NOT LIKE WE CAN’T RP, but rather that we want some extra goodies to RP with. That being said, I do understand that Anet wishes to focus on bugfixing and expanding other areas first. All we can do is just wait and see what Anet has in store for us. If they wish to expand the roleplaying experience, good for us. If they don’t want to, so be it.

What I would like to see more though is some spontanious RP’ing on the (unofficial) RP-servers. I’m currently playing on Piken Square (EU), and it’s hard to RP outside of a RP-dedicated guild. But then again, I suppose it’s asking for the impossible.

Long story short, before we start whining about RP goodies, let’s wait untill the game has progressed further and see what happens then.

EDIT: typo

With the official RP stance on servers, I think it’s mainly due to the fact that WvW is part of GW2. The unofficial naming of a server might have unintended consequences to WvW combat, but it’s just a hunch. Other than that, most of the things you’ve outlined seems not just specific to RP, but for a nice sized portion of the gaming community.

It’s nice to see roleplayers, but:

-That people don’t role-play that much is just a reflection of the game’s population, and what every player prefers (which they are entitled to.) Nothing in the game is inhibiting the roleplaying community other than it being a niche community, and that’s fine. People that have no idea of what role-playing is shouldn’t be forced to role-play, of course-they are OK in playing the game with no role-playing elements whatsoever.

-Though I don’t mind role-playing servers per se, again, nothing prohibits players from role-playing their characters and their world, in whichever server they are (for instance, not every player on Tarnished Coast role-plays, and I am not on TC and like to role-play my characters.)

-Role-playing isn’t limited by what the game allows or doesn’t allow, but by your imagination. The game can currently stop being developed, and you can still role-play even with the supposedly limited current story arc or lore. Role-playing is more dependent on each individual player’s imagination, willingness and commitment to role-playing his/ her character, than the limits of the game.

In fact, the game offers a rich universe in which role-players can create their own characters and adventures, and many dynamic events could be used to foster your imagination and create adventures/quests with your RP friends. Truth to be told, one can role-play with zero graphics and no GW2, so saying the game “discriminates” against role-players is something I really can’t agree with-it’s just not solely for the role-players, and that’s OK too.

I mean no offense to role-players, I just think role-playing can’t be limited by the limits of a game universe, but rather our own.

-

Actually it’s a huge mistake for an MMO to neglect its roleplaying community as Socializers are usually amongst the most “sticky” players, along with the “hardcore” Achievers (raiders, etc.). It’s the Explorers and Player-Killers who tend to be fickle (I say that as an Explorer myself – once I’ve “done” a game’s “Environment”, it loses interest for me).

So although I’m only a small percent roleplayer, I think the OP is quite right to ask for more rp-friendly stuff in the game, it can only do the game long-term good, given the relatively low cost of making such stuff.

Observe the effort Wildstar is making to show off its rp-friendly side (its amazing-looking Housing system, and its whole path dedicated to rp – the Builder).

As to the argument “oh you can rp with any tools”, yes of course, but when a game is graphics oriented, lack of rp-friendly things in the graphics/world-building is a negative.