Guild Wars 2

Okay, i am a bit confused by a lot of racial abilities, since i think some of them arent really making sense, to the point where i believe “usefullness” went before actual lore.

- Asura

Apearently the war efforts against the dragons allows asura not to be creative themselves, since every golem they are able to get out are appearently mass produced.

All get the same golems and golem suits to summon, with the same abilities, design and stats.
Thats something i didnt expect from the tinkering race we call asura. As far as i know they love to give their personal touch to everything they create to show off that they are special. having these run of the mill “tools” at their disposal isnt feeling right…

Wouldnt there a “customizable” option be more fitting? (maybe in the future, choose parts and color of your golem/suite, to fit your taste)

- Humans

So i am choosing a god at the beginning of the game. However this has no influence on my character. it is not reflected in the story, priests dont recognize me as their own and overall nothing reacts to the fact. So it is only roleplaying material?

My racial skills are all over the place, delving into every god, even allowing me to become their avatar. why? while i might believe in them it doesnt make sense to become their incarnation. this should be something only followers should be able to do (and dervish. they are blocked in the future now, since this was their stick).

I get the utility skills, since these are simple prayers. Some elite work, because they are simple, however going into every god, while actually choosing only one at the beginning is a bit too much. Wouldnt a specified elite based on your chosen god make more sense?
(and yes i know, designwise its about choice and balance, but lorewise it just confuses me. choices are meaningless in this regard)

- Norn

Ability to choose every Transformation, while in the story you choose one to follow. Did i miss something in the lore that made them multitransformer? Wasnt this an ability granted by the animal they are following, not by choice? It feels kinda weird, even if we go by the “multiple” god theory. Follwing wolf and then having to run, aksing snow leopard for speed.
I know they honor all their nature gods, however by relying on the other, dont they dishonor their chosen one?

That there arent any others, aside from the transformation isnt helping though…

- Sylvari

Well, They are.. feesable. They have their uses, binding roots are nice. However i expected a “battle” form, like the big hunking walking tree… unfortunatly this is with the humans and melandrus avatar transformation (which we had actully seen in GW1 as a Derwish, so i sadly blame lazyness here, by reusing an old model)

- Chaar

These are great. Fitting the race perfectly. however hey could have used your own warband you get inside the story here, in the warband summon skill. It would make them actually significant

Well, it is stated by NPC’s that it’s cheaper to buy a golem than make your own.

Asura: Golems have already been mostly perfected, and thusly they are more like a tool at this point than worthy inventions. This gives room for creating many other, more inovative things. Why waste time on something pretty much already perfected? I am sure thereis specially disignated krewe that works on the designs though.

Humans: You actually choose which god others said you were blessed by. Not the god you chose to follow. You could have grown up to find out that they were wrong and you felt more like following another god. Perhaps with the time gone by and the gods essentially leaving, the power of the gods have dimished and thus the effort of using these skills. Otherwise just choose not to use those that do not fit. Bw dervish was excluded by the fact that only humans have the gods and all professions must fit all races.

Norn: I think the only issue here is to choose to not use those that you did not choose to follow. One thing is the lore another the players freedom and whatnot. Anet did not want your choices to exclude you from something like skills.

Sylvari: Why on Tyria would they have a battleform? That is not their niche.

Charr: Yes, yes they are pretty awesome.

@Humans: Being blessed by a God and only worshipping that God are two different things (as Zeefa already pointed out). Humans often pick a favourite deity from their Pantheon, but that doesn’t mean you those who love Grenth above the others stop praying to Dwayna and Melandru.

@Norn: This goes along the same line as the Human thing. Following a Spirit doesn’t exclude the others from you. The ability to ‘Become the Bear’ isn’t something relegated to Shaman of Bear. The Norn revere all spirits of the Wild (save for Sons of Svanir who seem to be the only ones that solely revere Dragon), and so they draw on them all for strength. It just so happens that many follow one Spirit more fervently than others. This doesn’t mean that those who follow Bear’s teachings suddenly forget everything about Wolf and Wolf’s teaching.

@Sylvari: There’s nothing to suggest the Sylvari would have any transformative power in the Lore (before GW2 release and after). Mind you that doesn’t mean much considering just how much of the Sylvari’s creation is still a mystery, but I would argue that their tendency to wanting peace above all else doesn’t make turning into a jolly green giant very lore friendly.

@Charr: Getting to summon the Charr Warband you pull together in the Personal Story would be snazzy indeed. To play devil’s advocate though, you can technically get that elite without having finished your personal story so I can understand where complications would arise in implementing it. I’m no programmer, but it sounds like it’d be a complicated task indeed.

yeah, following one doesnt exclude the others. i just think it is kinda weird going for the “highest form” of blessing with other gods or spirit in such a way.
its like every choice you have made has no impact at all.

however i guess it is just to acomidate to gameplay.

In case of the asura… well sure. Golems are mostly perfected, buying one is much cheaper etc.
However, they are Asura. i can`t imagine them not wanting to show of that theirs is much better then any other Golem on the market. Even if it`s just by 0,00001%.
Well, its a missed oportunity in my opinion. wouldnt mind an golem creation play set (which actually would work lorewise knowing the asura)

Sylvari.
Well they came from the Maguma Jungle and around that area wie see these giants going around. In GW1 this area was also harboring creatures like these.
Sylvari are adapting a human like form, to the point they even grow hair and clothes on their body.
So, while their form is mostly an imitation of an human, it is questionable if thats their real form.
It is just a little weird that they havent played with this concept and went for… effective but rather boring abilities (in compairson with others, there is nothing standiing out. however, everyone like a good root).
(well also the fact that the humans transform in this big woody form for melandru as an avatar, sorry i cant get over it. the concept art showed her in the GW1 form. it is just weird)

Gameplay conflicts with lore here somehow. creating a flexible choice, instead of a set one.

I can’t really comment on the Asura as I have extremely little interest in them (I find them annoying to be perfectly honest) so that’s why I avoided touching on that point. Just don’t have enough info on them to make any statement so I won’t.

As as the Sylvari go, It’s not questionable whether it’s their ‘real’ form at all, it is their real form and nothing in Lore suggests that it would/could/should be otherwise. Even the Nightmare Court bear the same resemblance, with the only difference being Philisophical with the nature of the Dream. Also we do not fully understand why the Pale Tree created the Sylvari in humanoid shape, but she did. There are theories that their form was effected by Ronan’s grave and the settlement made by him and Ventari, but there’s nothing certain about any of this.

Secondly there’s no solid link between the Pale Tree and the Oakhearts or the Druids for that matter (I’m assuming you’re referencing the Druids from GW1). If there is a link between the Druids and the Pale Tree, it makes all the more sense for them to take humanoid shape because the Druids were originally a tribe of Humans who forsook their humanoid shape for something closer a kin to nature before abandoning their bodies altogether.

Anyways yes, things tend to be more loosely set up and open in MMO formats because of the amount of people playing. This often leads to stories getting more watered down and abilities being more widespread to allow for more options while playing. The choices at the beginning give you RP options, but at the same time, don’t limit you in case you wanted to play or change those options later in the game. And the fact that Racial Skills are all weak in comparison to the Class Skills it’s not gamebreaking to have access to them all. There are pros and cons by making such a system, and having less impactful decision making is unfortunately one of them. If anything, I’m guessing some of these decisions are reflected in that neglected little instance that is called the Home Instance.

Jaken.6801:

In case of the asura… well sure. Golems are mostly perfected, buying one is much cheaper etc.
However, they are Asura. i can`t imagine them not wanting to show of that theirs is much better then any other Golem on the market. Even if it`s just by 0,00001%.
Well, its a missed oportunity in my opinion. wouldnt mind an golem creation play set (which actually would work lorewise knowing the asura)

Considering how fail golems are, I’d prefer my Asura use golems from someone else and blame their failing on their creators because mine wouldn’t have failed (so utterly).

It also presents a reason to hate Kudu, because his golems are stupid overpowered and my Asura would never admit Kudu was better at anything than them.

Sylvari.
Well they came from the Maguma Jungle and around that area wie see these giants going around. In GW1 this area was also harboring creatures like these.
Sylvari are adapting a human like form, to the point they even grow hair and clothes on their body.

Well, those nature giants are everywhere, not just the Jungle…sort of. I don’t think there are any in Orr and if we ever get to the desert, I wouldn’t expect to see any there…but you can find them in the snowy mountainous areas too.

Gameplay conflicts with lore here somehow. creating a flexible choice, instead of a set one.

All things considered, if it were inflexible, you’d likely have more flack for something so minor. If players didn’t know Become the Snow Leopard had stealth and turned out somehow cooler than the Raven, people start bickering that one need a nerf or the other a buff when the actual difference is minor and pointless. Min/maxers make it a point to nit-pick little things like that that have very little difference while RPers wouldn’t care.

Make it so anyone can choose and swap around their racial skill and suddenly whatever differences there are don’t matter because you can just change it. RPers can still artificially limit what form they can use and the only people you have to get annoyed about are min/maxers that swap depending on game situation.

Arguably, these two types should rarely ever cross (min/maxers and RPers) so the only issue brought up is the one you create yourself. To me, since my character choose Balthazar, she’ll not use the other two elites for that reason. I may pay for it in some specific situation where I need Avatar of Grenth or something, but I’m not that big a min/maxer (who would probably be using their profession elite anyway) to care.

Sylvari are as Ratphink pointed out already in their real form. Just because they come from the same area as certain other creatures does not make them like those. They personally are not imitating human anatomy, the Pale Tree created them that, imitating the physiology of the humanform.

Say you form an animal, a dog, out of clay, in as much detail as possible. You don’t really know exactly how the dog works so it is on mere observation of dogs passing by. The clay “dog” comes to life. Now you got a creature imitating a dog in function, but it is not a dog. However it itself did not choose to imitate the dog. It had no choice at all in the matter of the form it was “born” into. You did. The same the Pale Tree created the sylvari.

The sylvari have no more choice in their form or function than we do as humans in rl.

On asura mass producing golems:

This is likely an issue of resources. In the fluff, it’s quite likely that each asura does make their own alterations to the golems at their disposal, even if they started out as stock golems – but, however much each asura claims that their modifications make their golems inherently superior, in game terms the difference is so small as to not be worth worrying about.

There’s also the consideration that there may well be plenty of asura that are in fact quite happy just to buy golems ‘off the shelf’ – why reinvent the wheel when you can be spending your time working on something that’s going to amaze the world?

I don’t know if you were surprised to find that usefulness and coolness were the main factors behind racial skills, but I certainly wasn’t. I don’t think any of them really go against the lore, except perhaps the Avatar of Melandru being a bit odd. The level of customisation suggested by the OP would be unnecessarily complicated for such specific skills, and also any differences make balance more difficult. What if you picked Raven for your totem for rp reasons, but it turns out the Wolf shapeshift is totally awesome and the Raven one sucks? Too bad for you, you will be weaker for roleplay reasons? That kind of scenario is exactly what ArenaNet tried to avoid.

I think that all asura being good at everything is a bit overstated, despite the quintessential examples put forward by ArenaNet (Zojja and Kudu) being like that. The significant majority of asura in the world have some focus or specialization, and may not even be successful within that specialization.

Regarding the asura golems, and inventions on a whole: one thing people seem to forget is that designs tend to die with the inventor. The asura are very narcissistic, egotistical, and most of all: paranoid. They tend to use their own ciphers for notes, and put not just their labs but their inventions within those labs under multiple defensive protocalls. We can see this in multiple old labs in Metrica Province and the statistics storyline.

This is the reason why most golems don’t have heads in GW2, but did in GW1 – the design we saw in GW1 was Oola’s, and it died with her. Snaff tried to resurrect the have-heads golems, and Zojja continued it as we can see in the later storyline and with Mr. Sparkles.

So the one thing that the asura are good with is reinventing the wheel. Because they have to. The asura DO create their own golem – some do buy from others and alter it to the point where they claim its their own (like Zojja does with Mr. Sparkles).

There may be some mass production – like for the peacemakers and Inquest – but overall, while they share the same in-game model, they’re different golems.

And this whole “they lose knowledge and inventions often” is the entire basis behind the Inquest’s second goal. They want to prevent that from happening.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Regarding the asura golems, and inventions on a whole: one thing people seem to forget is that designs tend to die with the inventor. The asura are very narcissistic, egotistical, and most of all: paranoid.

This is true. One of the great benefits of science (in our world) is that it’s cumulative: everyone’s work builds on the work of the scientists before them, so that we can develop more than anyone could in one lifetime. One person’s half-finished work can be continued for as many generations as it takes to yield results. If all scientists were severe egotists (as most asura geniuses are), and no one was willing to share information or credit in case they got ripped off, this cumulative effect is hindered if not negated altogether.

In the long term, the Inquest are going to be able to advance further and faster than any other krewe because any individual scientist’s work belongs to the Inquest as a whole, and can be passed down to future Inquest scientists. Their work is cumulative. It is, unfortunately, a smart way to go about it! If only they didn’t use their powers for evil.

Dustfinger.9510:

Well, it is stated by NPC’s that it’s cheaper to buy a golem than make your own.

Hmmm… My economics class tells me that they are manufactured using skritt-slave labor. That is the only way the price to purchase is cheaper than the price to produce.

To the human thing… My guess is that it might be for something later, like if there is a Return/Rescue/Search of the Gods expansion at one point if they extend the personal stories, Humans may be sent to rescue the gods they chose.

Kain Francois.4328:

Dustfinger.9510:

Well, it is stated by NPC’s that it’s cheaper to buy a golem than make your own.

Hmmm… My economics class tells me that they are manufactured using skritt-slave labor. That is the only way the price to purchase is cheaper than the price to produce.

Not necessarily. Someone who’s specialised in making golems could still be more efficient at making them than someone tinkering in the asura equivalent of a garage. The latter may still be able to spend less money than it would cost to buy, but it’s also costing them time that might be more valuable than the savings.

Dondagora.9645:

To the human thing… My guess is that it might be for something later, like if there is a Return/Rescue/Search of the Gods expansion at one point if they extend the personal stories, Humans may be sent to rescue the gods they chose.

That would be great! when i made my character, being a mesmer, i have naturally decided to be a follower of Lyssa; however once in game, i was so disappointed to realize that it didn’t have any kind of incidence;
So yeah i hope that Anet hides such surprises in its bag for us

draxynnic.3719:

Not necessarily. Someone who’s specialised in making golems could still be more efficient at making them than someone tinkering in the asura equivalent of a garage. The latter may still be able to spend less money than it would cost to buy, but it’s also costing them time that might be more valuable than the savings.

This is a good point. Think of it like making a car. On top of the time spent, the garage tinkerer may also need to buy the machines or parts for machines that help produce a golem where as the golem makers would already have machines that had been paid for through previous sales.

saintange.5816:

Dondagora.9645:

To the human thing… My guess is that it might be for something later, like if there is a Return/Rescue/Search of the Gods expansion at one point if they extend the personal stories, Humans may be sent to rescue the gods they chose.

That would be great! when i made my character, being a mesmer, i have naturally decided to be a follower of Lyssa; however once in game, i was so disappointed to realize that it didn’t have any kind of incidence;
So yeah i hope that Anet hides such surprises in its bag for us

If a God can’t handle it you are pretty much kittend up btw . :P

Gandarel.5091:

saintange.5816:

Dondagora.9645:

To the human thing… My guess is that it might be for something later, like if there is a Return/Rescue/Search of the Gods expansion at one point if they extend the personal stories, Humans may be sent to rescue the gods they chose.

That would be great! when i made my character, being a mesmer, i have naturally decided to be a follower of Lyssa; however once in game, i was so disappointed to realize that it didn’t have any kind of incidence;
So yeah i hope that Anet hides such surprises in its bag for us

If a God can’t handle it you are pretty much kittend up btw . :P

even if a god cant handle it you might still be able to handle it given the gods are not all mighty and a diffrent way we can also be the perons changeing the odds making it so the god can win;) both are valid ways to go

Kain Francois.4328:

Dustfinger.9510:

Well, it is stated by NPC’s that it’s cheaper to buy a golem than make your own.

Hmmm… My economics class tells me that they are manufactured using skritt-slave labor. That is the only way the price to purchase is cheaper than the price to produce.

To messy. A giant workshop of skritt would be too intelligent to be caged up.