Guild Wars 2

Ever since HoT came out, I’ve avoided getting the Pact Commander mastery. Fortunately I’ve not done much in Central Tyria since then, so I’ve been able to stay away from that particular mastery line. But now I’m slowly getting closer to that track, and I really don’t want a permanent swiftness effect on my character whenever I’m in a city.

I’m not a fan of buffs being forced on my character, especially when that buff has a visual effect. It’d be neat if we could have it as a toggle instead, so we could choose to turn it off if we so desire.

But Wubdor, you ask, why not just not spend the mastery point when you max out the track?

Well, dear reader, I’m glad you asked. Because the experience bar will continuously try to remind you that you have maxed out your xp bar and there are points to be spent. I fear this will become even more annoying than the small effect of swiftness. Ideally, I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this. I’d happily max out that mastery line if I didn’t have to walk around with a permanent swiftness effect. As it stands, I’m either going to have to stop playing in Central Tyria, or settle for the effect. Neither of these are desireable to me.

Now, I know you might wonder why it bothers me so much. Part of it is simply because, like I said, I’m not a fan of effects forced onto my character. But the main reason remains that I’m a roleplayer, so I spend a lot of time in cities, and it just seems a bit silly to see the constant effect on my character’s legs, even when I’m RP walking. Not only does it look silly, my character’s looks are important to me. I specifically chose the way my character looks because that’s the character I want to roleplay. Without that effect.

I’m not asking for special treatment because my friends and I are roleplayers. I’m asking for the freedom to get rid of this buff on our characters, or at least the visual effect. I’m not a programmer, but this doesn’t seem like particularly complicated feature to implement. It would impact quite a lot of people, though.

Is there a visual effect other than the buff on your boon bar?

The regular swiftness effect on your legs, yes. The golden swooshes.

Is there anyway you could roleplay around this? I’m not sure there’s enough attention on this matter to actually promote a change.

You are asking for special treatment, though. There are all sorts of special effects in the game — why is this one more important to customize than any other?

I’d be okay if they simply removed most of the effect altogether for everyone — if I need to know if someone has Pact Mastery (at any level), I can ask them or look at the buff bar.

Avarice.2791:

Is there anyway you could roleplay around this? I’m not sure there’s enough attention on this matter to actually promote a change.

It’s not the end of the world, but still enough for me to not get the mastery line. It bothers me because it basically means I’ll always have it on every character forever when I’m in a city. There are roleplayers who have the buff and ignore it, but I know for a fact that they’d prefer not to have the visual effect.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

You are asking for special treatment, though. There are all sorts of special effects in the game — why is this one more important to customize than any other?

Because this one is forced upon us without any way to get rid of it. They technically make our characters look different from what we envisioned. If it was a temporary effect like actual swiftness, fair enough, that’d be no problem. But this is a permanent effect you can’t get rid of whatsoever. I ask a toggle to turn off the buff entirely, not to remove the effect. Though if they simply remove the visual effect of this buff, I wouldn’t complain either.

I agree, I would really like a way to get rid of this.

I like having the option for swiftness, when I can control it, but it’s frustrating to have my movement speed changed simply because of the area I’m in with no way to turn it on or off.

Maybe if the boost applied everywhere I’d just get used to this as the new normal and it’d be fine, but having it only in cities makes it very jarring when I go from one kind of map to the other.

Unfortunately I didn’t realise it wasn’t possible to deactivate it until after I’d trained that mastery, but like Wubdor I’m now avoiding that line so I don’t get the higher tier that makes the boost even more drastic. If I had known it was permanent I wouldn’t have gotten it at all. (I actually submitted a bug report when I first realised because I was so sure they couldn’t have intended us to be stuck with this effect all the time.)

They added a check box to the options menu to allow us to turn the auto-looting from the last tier of Pact Mastery off, so it seems likely that it should be possible to do the same for the swiftness boost. That way players who want it on all the time can just leave it on and people who want a way to turn it off can do it.

I have no issue with the visual of it, but sometimes, on a new character doing the map completion in the city, the option to toggle swiftness off would be great - in particular, for certain vistas it’s not really needed and can complicate the jumps a smidge (although for other vistas, it’s excellent to have the "free" swiftness another char worked on).