Guild Wars 2

I feel ur feels ; _ ;
It hit me rite in the feels too T^T
All muh feels Q _ Q

draxynnic.3719:

@Shinjo: The problem is that there are times where the developers seem if anything to be going out of their way to downplay humanity. They haven’t just shifted the focus everywhere, they’ve been deliberately ignoring or actively taking away many of the things that made humanity special.

There’s also the very valid point that the norn have also been sidelined, and there they don’t have the fig leaf of GW1 being focused on them. In the broader picture, it feels as if spirituality in general is being sidelined – unless you count the dragons, it really has been feeling as if the Pale Tree is the only higher being of significance since the original Personal Story, and neither the gods nor the spirits got more than token play in that either outside of the early norn stuff.

Now, I’m agnostic in real life, but I do like a bit of that sort of thing in my fantasy, especially since norn and humans both have some interesting mythology that largely seems to have been swept under the rug. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m interested in sylvari stuff as well – but I can certainly see why people are getting upset that the Pale Tree seems to have taken over the role the gods did in GW1, and in a much more direct fashion.

Hmm… Well, lets look at this then, and my apologies if I meander a bit…

I don’t really see the Pale Tree taking over the role of the Gods from GW1. She fits more into the role of Glint, I think. Influential and predominate in the world, but not nearly as all powerful as some here on these forums try to make her out to be. And if you think about it from a certain perspective, this last LS chapter shows just how ‘mortal’ she is (I use the term ‘mortal’ here loosely, since I can think of no better term to use here.)
Now, it’s not really easy to judge different levels of power here in the GW universe, but I get the impression that, if the Pale Tree were replaced by Melandru, the Mordrem attack wouldn’t have even been an issue… Melandru would have backhanded the Shadow of the Dragon back to it’s master. The best the Pale Tree could do (admittedly after she had already been hurt) is wrestle the dragon and pin him in her branches long enough for us to hit him in the head repeatedly, bloody his nose and make him go away.

Now I’ll agree that the other races have some very interesting lore that I would absolutely love to see explored more… (Especially the norn… They are larger then life in more ways then just their physical stature. I figure they will become more predominate in the story (perhaps along with the Kodan as well) once we turn our eyes northward to take on Jormag and his forces.)

As for ‘deliberately ignoring or actively taking away many of the things that made humanity special’?
Well, it was unavoidable when humans became only one of five playable races that their importance would be (seemingly) diminished. It just can’t happen any other way and is especially noticeable when you go from a game that is all -about- them (GW1) to a game where they now have to share the spotlight (GW2.)
That being said, what have they really taken away from humanity, aside from their predominance in the first game? When you really come down to it, it’s all still there and I honestly don’t see where the writers have ‘deliberately’ gone out of their way to ignore or diminish them.
It only seems that way because the focus on the story right now is not solely on them anymore…

Speaking of that…
I’m not going to say that the story writing for the game thus far has been ‘ZOMG AMAZING!!1!’ It’s had its ups and downs, sure, and I think it could have been improved in some instances… But, I say that with the full understanding that -anything- can be improved. The story writing so far has been, at worst, adequate for an MMO. The operative words here being ‘for an MMO.’ If this sort of writing was done for a more static form of media, like a book or a TV show, then I would be more hesitant to let it pass.

As for the apparent dominance of sylvari in the story, realize two things…
One… sylvari are new. They never appeared anywhere before now, and the ‘mystery’ that surrounds them is an easy one to try and explore. You don’t have to worry about previous lore about them because, quite frankly, there is none.
Two… how can we realistically have the big enemy of the current plot be Modremoth… the Elder Dragon of nature and plants… and /not/ have the sylvari be a predominate fixture in it? That would be about as logical as having us go after Jormag and not having the norn basically take center stage for the story.

Anyway, that’s my take on it all. The general hyperbole that some present here about the sylvari dominating absolutely everything and ‘killing the lore’ is just that… Hyperbole.

Mental Paradox.3845:

Feels? For a tree? Considering the way the Sylvari killed the old GW lore and stole the spotlight from everybody else, I’m really disappointed she didn’t die in a fire – and all of her uptight holier-than-thou “children” along with her.

So true. I thought Sylvari were pretty cool, but they are just everywhere in the story now. It’s getting ridiculous.

Canach, Scarlet, Trahearne, Pale Tree, etc. I know they’re connected to Modremoth or whatever, but i’d rather see some GW1 lore on the Human/Charr past.

Regarding the Pale Tree: The Glint analogy also fits, although Glint only really played a major role in Prophecies and was replaced by a succession of other figures. The Pale Tree, on the other hand, has been the central ‘prophet’ figure all the way through – at the expense of other possible sources of information such as the Spirits and the gods (through the medium of priests and other representatives).

On the whole, the Pale Tree is somewhere between the two. She’s a prophetic figure and guide, but where GW1 had Glint, the Oracle of the Mists, Kuunavang, and a series of others, in GW2 it’s been basically all the Pale Tree outside of race-specific personal story steps (ie under 30 stuff) and the ‘finding the Source’ story step near the end of the personal story. With the gods and the Spirits of the Wild marginalised, the Pale Tree has also taken the role, formerly taken by the gods, as being the most powerful figure that’s on our side, including it ultimately being her power that cleansed Orr. Meanwhile, she’s taking a more active role than the gods ever did in GW1, with the possible exception of the very end of Nightfall depending on how you interpret that series of events.

Now, clearly GW2 could not be as human-centric as GW1 was, and the gods needed to be reduced in importance (although to tell the truth, all that really required was for the story not to be about them – they could have continued sending the occasional avatar and still been no more important than the Spirits of the Wild). However, humans have also been downplayed and trivialised in the following ways:

1) Human ingenuity, in-game, seems to have totally vanished. In GW1, humans had powerful magical artifacts (teleporters, obelisks, Stormcaller), cannons and animal husbandry (siege turtles), a few crude golem-like things (including Kurzick juggernauts) and binding of djinns to serve as a defensive army. In GW2-related printed material, we see more of this – the Foefire (calamity or desperate last stand, it’s still a significant act), the djinn-powered ship, the Orrian xebec things, and so on. We also have powerful acts of magic, such as Jennah’s illusion at the end of Edge of Destiny.

But we don’t see any of this in-game.

From what we see in-game, humans haven’t invented anything of any real significance since Sea of Sorrows. Everything important, magical or technological, is invented by charr, asura, Scarlet, Occam, or Beigarth, and at best humans might reverse-engineer something made by one of the above and adapt it to their specifications. Sure, a lot of knowledge was likely lost in the various disasters that humanity has suffered, but we have plenty of precedent from the past that humans can do impressive things without it being a blatant copy of someone else’s work.

2) A minor point, related to the above: In the past, humans had a set of magical academies that rivalled the asura colleges now, in terms of teaching hands-on magic if not in theory and magitech. Ascalon had at least three, Kryta had their own, Cantha had Shing Jea and possibly others, and so on. In GW2, there’s no trace of any collective training of magic anywhere among humanity, not even among the priesthood or the military. Again, stuff lost in the Great Tsunami and other disasters, but not re-establishing at least one in Divinity’s Reach is moronic. Maybe it was in the Great Collapse and that’s what the Queen’s Pavilion is being used for when not acting as an arena.

3) This is probably what gets most people’s proverbial goats the most:

Back in interviews before GW2 was released, one of the things we were told was a special contribution of humans among the races is that they have a greater grasp of the world’s history and of the deeper mysteries of the world. What humans ‘know’, however, has been progressively retconned and/or demonstrated to be false, and what hasn’t turned out to be wrong has instead turned out to be irrelevant (humans have experience of the elder races – dwarfs, seers, forgotten, mursaat – that the other races don’t, but when have any of those been referred to since Arah explorable?). The Priory leader turned out to be an asura, and pretty much every time we’ve had an exposition-dump, it’s been asura. When was the last time a human brought forth some piece of historical information that was actually relevant? Take that away, and what are we left that we’ve been told that humans have?

Resilience and tenacity. Basically, the ability to get knocked down and get up again. Well, I’ll tell you who else have that, and in spades? The charr. Who also get to be Tyria’s premier industrialists, soldiers, and in one individual’s case, the head of Tyria’s biggest trading company.

(5001 characters)

4) Related to number 3, but egregious enough to be worth special mention:

Orr.

First, there’s the taking of Orr. So, we have the ancient holy city of the human gods, now corrupted by Zhaitan, where one of the major challenges is that the old temples of the gods have been corrupted and are now radiating energies that assault the attacking forces. This would have been a perfect opportunity to allow humans to shine without taking the spotlight – while charr provide heavy equipment, asura provide teleporters and golems and giant plasma cannons, and sylvari provide scouts that are immune to corruption, humans provide their knowledge of the region from their old stories, while human priests of each god move to each cathedral to wrest control of its power from Zhaitan.

What do we get? The Cathedral of Secrets is simply a series of duels, while the Cathedral of Victory is a simple military assault. In PS Trahearne walks us through Lyssan funeral rites in the Cathedral of Lyssa, and in open world it’s Asuran and Charr technology that is used to take it. The Cathedral of Zephyrs actually uses human lore in the open world, but in PS it gets levelled by ghostfire (I guess that ultimately comes from human ghosts…) and/or captured by an asuran golem. Melandru is a simple military assault, aided in the PS by a Searing Cauldron.

The Cathedral of Silence, to be fair, does actually involve a ritual… but in the open world, this ritual is performed by a kittening atheistic charr. In the Personal Story, it’s actually a human performing the ritual… but no, she doesn’t know the rituals of her own god well enough to perform it herself, they had to put in asura magitech to show how it’s done! And then, when the priestess praises Grenth for giving them the information, said asura is rude enough to correct her and claim all the credit himself right in front of an emissary of Grenth… who fails to upbraid him for the implied insult.

To top it all off, once the various cathedrals are captured (apart from Abaddon’s), how are they shut down? By another piece of kittening Asura magitech!

Somehow, I don’t think we’re ever likely to go through the ruins of corrupted Quora Sum or even a large Inquest base where all of the malfunctioning asura magitech is disabled, not by an asura sorting it out, but by the prayer of human priests, sylvari calling roots from the ground to tear it apart, and norn invoking the Spirits of the Wild, but that’s what Orr feels like.

Not to mention that Arah is the basically the equivalent of flipping Jerusalem, and from what we’ve told neither Jennah nor anyone else has even bothered to do so much as to send a diplomatic message to the Pact inquiring as to what their intentions may be for the peninsula in the long term. Supposedly, this is because the queen is paying all of her attention to the charr truce. While that is certainly important, completely ignoring Arah for nearly two years is a pretty casual attitude to be taking for what is the holiest place in the world for your religion – a religion that is arguably where the royal mandate to rule comes from in the first place!

pauses, takes breath

As a mental exercise, consider if humans had been completely wiped out – say, by the Great Tsunami – and asura and charr had expanded their lands and population to compensate, or maybe the tengu or centaurs were destined to join the alliance instead of humans. Can you really say Tyria would be worse off under those circumstances? All humanity really seems to be providing is cannon fodder, and anyone else can do that. Again, the charr excel at it.

For bonus points, apply the same question to the norn.

Now, I’ve deliberately exaggerated a bit for effect here, but only from my perspective, there are people I know who, if anything, would put things even more strongly than I did above. But I hope this gives you an understanding, even if you don’t agree with it yourself, of why people feel humans are being devalued and marginalised. Sylvari, asura, and charr have definitely been getting a disproportionate amount of the spotlight, in roughly that order.

(Now, don’t get me wrong – everybody deserved some of the spotlight, and I’m interested in seeing the other race’s stories play out as well, particularly the sylvari. However, everybody deserves some of the spotlight. ArenaNet really seems to have overcompensated the other way with humans.)

(PS: Oh, and let’s not forget that at the moment it looks like the Foefire might be something that can be undone simply by bringing the right magical artifacts together and saying the right words, and the need for a (presumably human) true king of Ascalon is completely bogus. Of course, we haven’t seen how that ends yet.)

MASSIVE applause to Drax as well as a batch of freshly-baked, virtual-flavored internet cookies (I will try to make real ones sometime in the future.)

…there are people I know who, if anything, would put things even more strongly than I did above.

Ahai! Maybe I could put them more strongly, but nowhere near as eloquently and neatly as you did.

@draxynnic.3719

Oh wow, that must have been one of the best read I’ve had.

@draxynnic
A well thought out and written response.

/respect

I did have a rebuttal to continue this conversation, but thanks to my flipping internet, it decided to lose it all… ._.
I simply say for now, I agree with you on some parts of what you have stated. I disagree on some others.
If/when I have the time, I try and re-write what I was saying. But for now, I’m just rather miffed at Firefox and myself for not putting it all in a Word Document or something. >:o

i also remember how an asura turned us into an avatar of balthazar to fight off the undead in lion’s arch, i dunno, that’s another great opportunity wasted for humans to do… something? (granted that was the best transform in the game)

not only that but the game goes as far as making the only human in destiny’s edge the prime reason they failed at killing an ED (i suppose logan gets better when it saves you near the end of your personal story by recovering the second airship in arah but that’s a part a few will remember, the rest? uuuhhhh every single person in tyria knows about it)

I agree with Drax, I’ve been thinking it for a while too. Humans are just along for the ride. They don’t really matter anymore. And actually, the same goes for the Norns. They’re just… there.

adozu.6398:

i also remember how an asura turned us into an avatar of balthazar to fight off the undead in lion’s arch, i dunno, that’s another great opportunity wasted for humans to do… something? (granted that was the best transform in the game)

Though the ritual – while led by Gixx – was performed by four human “ritualists”.

Of course, one of them flubbed up killing herself and the others. Leaving only Gixx alive, because he didn’t mess up his end of the ritual – wait, what?

From memory, only a couple of the human ritualists were killed by the strain, and the others were able to finish it.

However, it is something that I consider another missed opportunity (but didn’t include in the above discussion because it’s small potatoes next to Orr, and that gave plenty of material). It’s a token case of human background being important – but there’s nothing in the instance showing that humans were needed for the ritual unless you happened to notice the ritualists were all human, and even then it could arguably have been a fluke. Then half of them couldn’t even get the ritual right, while Gixx, in typical asura fashion, gives them no credit while coming off as regarding them as expendable, while also showing disrespect bordering on blasphemy to the god whose power he’s invoking. One could even wonder if the backlash during the ritual might even have been a backlash for his disrespect.

And like the asura in the Cathedral of Silence, he gets away with it, without even the option for a human PC to make a token protest (‘hey, that’s one of our gods you’re grandstanding over, you know!’).

Essentially, they took what could have been a major ‘go team human!’ moment – like the more favoured races get all the time – and completely undermined it by means of arrogant asura.

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

@draxynnic
A well thought out and written response.

/respect

I did have a rebuttal to continue this conversation, but thanks to my flipping internet, it decided to lose it all… ._.
I simply say for now, I agree with you on some parts of what you have stated. I disagree on some others.
If/when I have the time, I try and re-write what I was saying. But for now, I’m just rather miffed at Firefox and myself for not putting it all in a Word Document or something. >:o

Yeah, I hate it when that sort of thing happens – I usually at least do a Ctrl-C over long posts on forums before giving the browser a chance to eat it nowadays. My sympathies.

I had recently done it and I recall all four humans dying, though I also got a bug where Thaddeus was visible – and allied – the entire time… and without voice alteration. My word was that voice actor monotone!

I do agree that humans need their “something” to bring to the table…
– like charr have their military ways
– asura have their magitech
– sylvari have their inside knowledge as dragon minions (:-P)
– and norn have their endless dumb courage.
But I think their love of heritage and history is much more appropriate than their knowledge of magic.
One thing you can see in Grenth’s temple (personal story) is that, while humans “pray” for the “Human Gods”, asura study to try to understand their power as part of the physics of their world.
It is the difference between alchemy and science. Or faith and science. That’s why there’s a lot of asura artifacts holding back the corruption in Orr: humans would be able to create those artifacts in a one-off fashion (and later venerate those artifacts for centuries on end), asura use science to be able to replicate their abilities. Replicability is a main necessity of science.
Now, there are some magic abilities that humans seem to understand better than even asura. Mesmer abilities, for example. Humans have 3 important characters as mesmers (Jennah, Kasmeer and Anise) and it may be that the “Great and Gorgeous Mesmer Collective” is human exclusive (and Kasmeer has been shown to do things that PC mesmers can’t).

This reminds me…

About The Cathedral of Silence and the personal story instance… draxynnic brings up an interesting point with that up above.

draxynnic.3719:

The Cathedral of Silence, to be fair, does actually involve a ritual… but in the open world, this ritual is performed by a kittening atheistic charr. In the Personal Story, it’s actually a human performing the ritual… but no, she doesn’t know the rituals of her own god well enough to perform it herself, they had to put in asura magitech to show how it’s done! And then, when the priestess praises Grenth for giving them the information, said asura is rude enough to correct her and claim all the credit himself right in front of an emissary of Grenth… who fails to upbraid him for the implied insult.

I’ve been giving this some thought…

In the open world, the ’ kittening atheistic charr' isn’t trying to commune with Grenth or his Reapers. He’s trying to clense the Temple of Zhaitans corruption. That’s a little different then what they were trying to do in the personal story…

In the personal story, the human priestess that performs the ritual /does/ know how it’s performed… in Kryta. That doesn’t mean those same rites and rituals would work in an Orrian temple…
As I recall, the human kingdoms had their own way of worshiping the Gods. Cantha, for example, had their own version for what the 5 gods looked like and their own rites by which they worshiped them.

(For an interesting look at this, look here… ftp://ftp.guildwars.com/downloads/gwf-manual.pdf)

So… what would happen if you tried to use, say… a Canthian ritual in an Orrian temple? Or a Krytan temple for that matter?
I’m going to guess that such a thing would probably be frowned upon. You are basically going into someone elses house, and as such, it’s (at the very least) polite to abide by their rules.
Further, why should she know a ritual from a temple that no living human has been in for at least 256 years?
So, not wanting to do something wrong (with who knows what possible consequences) she lets the asura use their magictech to see how it was done.

Lastly, when said asura ‘is rude enough to correct her and claim all the credit’… (An asura that has been rather condescending the entire time… like most asura…) He said it was his device that summoned the Seventh Reaper to begin with… (which is outright untrue.)
Yes, the Seventh Reaper doesn’t correct them. He doesn’t say anything to him. In fact, he pointedly /ignores/ him, showing him no recognition at all. Because to him, the little, loud-mouthed asura is not important.

Now, all this might be more personal perception then anything else, but since their is only so much you can do with the way cinematics were presented, it leaves a lot of things open to interpretation.
Simply put, it’s all in how you look at it. When Pokka (the asura) says what he says, for all we know, everyone else (including the Seventh Reaper) could have just shot him a withering glance that quickly shut him up.

No, it’s just not so engaging. There are games with much more personal feel and immersion. Just remember FFVII where Sephiroth killed off Aerith or the brutal world Joel and Ellie live in The Last of Us. Those are moving moments with very emotional scenes, music etc.

I like the Avatar of the Pale Tree, it’s a likeable character but there is no bond between the player character and her. At least no big bond. Guild Wars 2 is now better with certain scenes and moments – especially in Season 2. But there is still a lot of improvement.

Some personal story spoilers in this one. You have been warned.

I’ll be honest, I’m getting kind of sick of the sylvari focus by now. The personal story was great, with a nice blend of races and personalities, up until the point of your Order partner being killed off. Now that actually managed to get an emotional response out of me, particularly Mister Tibbles (best character so far) and to some degree Sieran (which, while sylvari, had a very vibrant personality).

Then Trahearne happened. I won’t go into detail about everything I felt was wrong with him as a character, as I’ve already talked about it at length in threads better suited for it, but let’s just say I’d consider that the worst character of the game to date. And sadly, we were stuck with him until the end of the personal story.

Moving over to the living story, where we discount seasonal events for Halloween, Christmas and the like, we first had Flame and Frost. That was eventually revealed as having been planned by Scarlet, a sylvari. Then there was the Southsun deal, which featured Canach, a sylvari, as the bad guy. Followed by Dragon Bash and Sky Pirates of Tyria, which again featured the work of Scarlet in the form of Aetherblade pirates. Bazaar of the Four Winds was a nice break that didn’t actually feature a major bad guy. Then the Queen’s Jubilee thing, where Scarlet was actually revealed for the first time, again featured as the primary bad guy. Twilight Assault, which was even more Scarlet nonsense. Tower of Nightmares, more Scarlet. Fractured, more Scarlet and the first mention of ley lines. Origins of Madness, even more Scarlet. Edge of the Mists, also Scarlet. Escape from Lion’s Arch and the following Battle for Lion’s Arch, also Scarlet. This is where Scarlet finally dies. And naturally, ever since we’ve been dealing with more Scarlet despite the fact she’s dead and buried.

The point is, ever since two years ago, every new piece of story in the game has been about “look at this sylvari”. And that’s even AFTER most of the personal story being about “look at this sylvari”. And now I’m supposed to actually care about the leader of the sylvari, some big tree that not even my sylvari character knows anything about?

Sorry, but the only way for me to actually care about the well-being of a character is to first know the characteristics of that character, being able to identify myself with it, and then follows sympathy for it. Tybalt did it great. So did Zojja. Taimi as well, to a point. Sadly I haven’t even been presented with the characteristics of the Pale Tree – I quite literally only know it’s a tree, it leads the sylvari, and somehow it has something to do with a dream. That’s all. I cannot relate to any of that.

Sorry to say, but I didn’t feel a scrap of concern about the avatar of the Pale Tree, and I didn’t waste any time leaving the Oompaloompa Chamber to check on the people with more character to them.

@DDCarvalho: Human heritage and history is something that was mentioned prerelease as something humans brought to the table, and I believe it’s something I’ve mentioned… but I believe I also mentioned the problem with that. The various revelations of falsehood (or just plain retcons, for people who prefer to look at it that way) have pretty much undermined any faith anyone who isn’t a human is going to have in their historical record. Between the Bloodstones being regarded as a ‘quaint human belief’, the History of Tyria from Prophecies being proven wrong on pretty much every particular prior to the Exodus, and various other errors in the record, at this stage I can’t really see a human being able to say “According to our histories…” without an asura or charr immediately interrupting with “Shut up about your superstitions, we’ve got science to do!”

The other half of your post is essentially matching my own headcanon (apart from the sylvari dragon minion part, which I’m giving the response and respect it deserves: none beyond excluding it from the previous statement) – it’s not that asura are explicitly better than humans at magic, it’s that humans are better suited to treating magic as an art while asura are better suited to treating magic as a science, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. However, while there have been a lot of hints dropped that this is the case, there’s nothing concrete enough to really point at and say ‘yes, this is something that humans bring to the table’. Pretty much the only magical item of significance that humans seem to have made since the time of GW1 (or well before…) is the mesmeric enchantments on the Watchknights, and, well… Plotwise, they only existed so Scarlet could steal them, so that was more of a gutpunch to people wanting to see humans bring more to the table rather than a contribution.

@ShinjoNaomi: I see where you’re coming from regarding Keeper Jonez, but the point I’m making is that intuitively you’d expect the expert at cleansing a human artifact (which the Cathedral essentially is) to be a human. It’d be like having a malfunctioning asura device shut down by norn Bear shaman. Now, it’s okay to defy expectations every so often, but what we generally see is technomagical devices being handled by asura, pure technology being handled by charr, and so on… but when you might expect human religious artifacts being dealt with by humans, that’s not the case. Instead we see it overwhelmingly being done by asura and charr – even when a human is involved, they still need an asura to seal the deal (an asura interruptor is used at the Cathedral of Zephyrs in the open-world event chain, and the Cathedral of Silence story step is the next topic).

Regarding your interpretation of the Cathedral of Silence step: Yes, you can certainly come up with an explanation for it, but the point is that to many it feels like that explanation was shoehorned in so they could put in an asura to steal the limelight. Sure, the different nations have varying interpretations of the gods and different rituals… but since Arah was the center of human religion I would expect a high-ranking priest to at least know how things were done there even if they do something different. More importantly, though, she’s not performing the ritual for the benefit of Orrian priests, but to call the attention of Grenth (or, as it turns out, Grenth’s representative). The Seventh Reaper seems to be able to sense that Rhie is a true priestess, and he has a mission to fulfill for which he can use some assistance… if I was in the Seventh Reaper’s position, I really don’t think I’d be splitting hairs over whether the potential help uses an Orrian ritual to attract my attention or a Krytan one.

Plus, the ritual basically involves people kneeling and the leader reciting a well-known passage from the Scriptures of Grenth – namely, the first invocation ever used to gain the attention of Grenth. That’s probably pretty much the first thing that I’d expect someone to try even if they had no knowledge of specific rituals at all and were simply making a shot in the dark.

its funny hwo everyone is still debateing on what the avatr is good for, when ON PAGE ONE a mod/dev allready confirmed stuff.

ShroomOneUp.6913:

its funny hwo everyone is still debateing on what the avatr is good for, when ON PAGE ONE a mod/dev allready confirmed stuff.

Hmm, maybe if we give them a different analogy. Think of Cortana’s avatar from the Halo series. The AI itself is the programming and electricity coursing through a computer, but her avatar (the visible lady that is Cortana) is merely a visual representation that you can interact with to an extent. You can SHOOT THROUGH CORTANA and nothing will happen. The Pale Tree’s avatar could have been literally run through by one of those vines and it would have done nothing to the Pale Tree itself.

Until you see the entire physical, massive being that is the Pale Tree in a burning heap of ruins, the Pale Tree is okay. It’s damaged, is all, and it can be repaired/regenerated/it grows back.

Well it’s possible that the writers shared that sort of mentality that we’ve seen a few on the forums have: That creating a human character lacks depth and purpose compared to a brand new race.

I don’t really get that because humans are plenty deep in real life (some of them) and in other stories as well.

Of course we always have Countess Anise, unless she’s actually a sylvari in disguise.

ShroomOneUp.6913:

its funny hwo everyone is still debateing on what the avatr is good for, when ON PAGE ONE a mod/dev allready confirmed stuff.

If you actually read Angel’s post, she dodges the primary concern which is that the Avatar is not physical and thus should not “need mending”. She even agrees that it’s not physical, depending on how you read it, but doesn’t actually touch the topic of whether mending the avatar holds any affect on the Pale Tree, and likewise why the wardens go to the Avatar to check on the Pale Tree/try to mend the Avatar.

DarkWasp.7291:

Well it’s possible that the writers shared that sort of mentality that we’ve seen a few on the forums have: That creating a human character lacks depth and purpose compared to a brand new race.

I don’t really get that because humans are plenty deep in real life (some of them) and in other stories as well.

I agree – the vast majority of good writing thoughout history revolves around human characters. There’s nothing impossible, or even difficult, about writing a good character, and it’s not in any way easier or more difficult depending on the race of the character in question.

The problem is that for a character to be deep, or to go even further, to be likeable… you need to have the audience create some form of bond with it. Usually it’s a bond of sympathy or kinship. Occasionally it’s a liking brought on by the character being a badrear or simply hilarious. Base attraction is another trigger. This is what is required for anyone to care about anyone else, both in real life and in literature (which by default covers GW2’s scriptwriting). Call me a cynic if you want, but think about it long enough and you’ll find this is what it boils down to.

Now, let’s discuss the Avatar. Does it appeal to the base attraction? Not really. Don’t get me wrong, some people might find it attractive, and I can’t claim they’re wrong in doing so, but the Avatar doesn’t feature skimpy outfits, a huge bosom and a suggestive animation. Thus it clearly wasn’t designed to create a bond through attraction – at least not to the male audience. Maybe to the female audience? I don’t know.

Can we feel sympathy or kinship with it? I don’t see it. If we assume the player is not a sylvari, which should be a base 80% correct assumption (given that sylvari make out 20% of the race choices in the game), we will have met the Avatar once before in total. We learned these things from it at that point: One, it is the leader of the sylvari. Two, it can predict the future. Those are really the only two things we learn about it. Can we feel sympathy or kinship with either of those points? Not really.

Is the Avatar a badrear or funny? Not from what I’ve seen. Far as I, or my characters, know, all it does is hang around doing nothing at all.

The bottom line is, to make a character important to the audience, the procedure is always the same. Introduction, interaction, connection. The Avatar hasn’t done nearly enough of this to connect with me the way Tybalt, Sieran, Zojja or Taimi have done, just to name a few. And yes, not everyone will connect with every character, but I really do struggle to see how anyone could connect with the Avatar.

Apologies for the rant. As an author, it’s just really disheartening to see the character fall flat. And I’m not talking about physically.

I’m a straight male, and I consider neither skimpy outfits, a huge bosom, nor suggestive animations to be necessary for attractiveness. In fact, in the wrong context I can find all three to be a turnoff.

Wisdom, compassion, and a philosophical mindset are things I find more attractive, and the Pale Tree does have all those things (although admittedly this really isn’t clearly demonstrated ingame, particularly for players who haven’t played a sylvari character*). Of course, different people like different things – there are people who can’t stand Sieran, Zojja or Taimi.

*For the record, I do find your baseline 80% assumption to be off. People do have the opportunity to play multiple characters, after all, and we’re given five slots. If we assume no purchasing of extra slots, that every slot is filled, and that each character selection is random, then you’re looking at roughly a 67% chance of a hypothetical standard player having a sylvari character.

‘Course, this figure ignores relative popularity of races, people not using all their slots, people buying more slots, people having a sylvari character but not going anywhere with the personal story on that character, and so on – but I’d be willing to bet the proportion of the playerbase who is dedicated enough to be engages in the LS2 storyline who has played through the first three chapters of the Personal Story as a sylvari is much higher than your 20%.

First of all, you can’t argue that skimpy outfits, huge bosoms and suggestive animations sell to the male audience. Especially not with “I don’t like it”. By that same argument, we could determine that all bananas taste disgusting because someone once ate a rotten one, or that clothes always rip after exactly one week of use because it happened to someone, somewhere, sometime. The fact is that sales figures and scientific studies show that time and time again, the standard tropes of sex sells. Even though I agree with you completely about not finding it necessarily attractive, that’s just a personal opinion among a sea of others of our gender who thinks the exact opposite. That’s a proven fact.

Also, regarding statistics – baseline 80% is baseline. Baseline assumes that since the player has to be level 80 to do the Living Story, the player has one and only one level 80 character. Alternative characters are completely outside of the scope of the baseline statistic, and therefore outside of the baseline.

You’re talking about refined statistics, which is not baseline. Your refined statistic assumes that every player has five characters, which is pure speculation in comparison to the baseline statistic, which only goes by proven facts.

Summary: the baseline statistic says a character doing the Living Story needs to be level 80, thus it follows that the character doing it is level 80. That character can be an asura, a human, a norn, a charr, or a sylvari, therefore it follows that statistically, four out of five character should be non-sylvari. Thus baseline 80%. All other statistics are completely irrelevant, not to mention unmeasurable.

Finally, I do have a sylvari among my characters, level 80, personal story more or less completed, and I have not seen any measure of wisdom, compassion or philosophy from the Avatar.

The Avatar’s face is what is bugging me. The way I remember it (I have 5 characters who completed all the PS involving her with 2 being Sylvari) she has kind of a dumb naive look.

And I’m on Draxynnic’s side regarding “sex sells”.
My characters are dressed in skimpy outfits (or not) not to fantasize about it, but because they fit them well enough. My only desire for my necromancer was to level her up quickly enough to have access to something else than the micro skirt…too bad the second skirt fans out when you swim and the first craftable pants has two openings below the hips…

And while we’re at it, let’s at least get a laugh out of it http://www.cracked.com/article_19373_5-ridiculous-sex-myths-everyone-believes_p2.html

RedStar.4218:

And while we’re at it, let’s at least get a laugh out of it http://www.cracked.com/article_19373_5-ridiculous-sex-myths-everyone-believes_p2.html

I, too, can cite sources. Mine is more recent, much more detailed, and actually features those important things that make studies valid, such as, say, sample size, method, framework, hypothesis for study, and complete results. Here are some goodies from the study:

“Compared to cases with non-central, non-sexualized female characters, those with non-central, sexualized female characters were significantly and positively related to sales (?2 = 3.93, p < .05), increasing sales by a factor of .52, as predicted in Hypothesis 4.”

“Hypersexualized and objectified women, aggressive men, and signs relating to violence or war are effectively symptoms of a masculine-coded space or cultural object, not just content that this audience desires for its own sake; in other words, a masculine-coded space signals potential buyers that the game will meet the cultural norms for this type of game space.”

“Earlier research has shown that female characters are shown less frequently than male characters in video games, take a lead role in games less frequently than male characters, and are often portrayed as highly sexualized, especially in best-selling games (Williams et al., 2009).”

Finally, I will point out that I was paraphrasing when I was using the term “sex sells” earlier. While certainly true, I didn’t mean it in its literal form – rather, I meant that sexualized characters overall manage to get more attention from the average male than a non-sexualized character.

That is all.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

adozu.6398:

i also remember how an asura turned us into an avatar of balthazar to fight off the undead in lion’s arch, i dunno, that’s another great opportunity wasted for humans to do… something? (granted that was the best transform in the game)

Though the ritual – while led by Gixx – was performed by four human “ritualists”.

Of course, one of them flubbed up killing herself and the others. Leaving only Gixx alive, because he didn’t mess up his end of the ritual – wait, what?

Actually, Adozu is referring to the Personal Story step titled “The Ghost Rite” (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Ghost_Rite). In that story, the Priory PC has to wear a suit of armor that transforms him/her into an Avatar of Balthazar. The goal is to avenge Magister’s Seiran’s death. Of course, Gixx doesn’t tell the character about the ritual’s side effect until the end of this short story.

I swear, Steward Gixx runs the Priory as if it’s his own Asuran krewe.

I’m not too sure if I want to get in a social studies debate.

But there’s a difference between “sex sells” and “women are objectified in games”. I doubt Soul Calibur sells because of Ivy. Or that Mario is such a success because of Peach. Or that FFX is such a well remembered game because of Lulu’s breasts when she wins. Or that Bravely Default is all about the Bravo Bikini.

For a video game, “sex sells” can only get you so far. At best it gives a few chuckles here and there. But if the game is bad, no amount of kittenty armor and characters are going to save it.
People like Taimi and for the sake of humanity, I really hope that it’s not because they see even an ounce of sexuality from her.

I hope that Anet thinks “sex sells” is a stupid. But then again, the real climax of S1 wasn’t Scarlet revealing her master plan (nope, Braham made sure of that) but a lesbian kiss…

kta.6502:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

adozu.6398:

i also remember how an asura turned us into an avatar of balthazar to fight off the undead in lion’s arch, i dunno, that’s another great opportunity wasted for humans to do… something? (granted that was the best transform in the game)

Though the ritual – while led by Gixx – was performed by four human “ritualists”.

Of course, one of them flubbed up killing herself and the others. Leaving only Gixx alive, because he didn’t mess up his end of the ritual – wait, what?

Actually, Adozu is referring to the Personal Story step titled “The Ghost Rite” (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Ghost_Rite). In that story, the Priory PC has to wear a suit of armor that transforms him/her into an Avatar of Balthazar. The goal is to avenge Magister’s Seiran’s death. Of course, Gixx doesn’t tell the character about the ritual’s side effect until the end of this short story.

I swear, Steward Gixx runs the Priory as if it’s his own Asuran krewe.

“Actually,” so was I…

>.> It’s the only ritual Gixx performs in-game, and the only one involving an avatar of Balthazar. TYVM, I know what I’m talking about.

RedStar.4218:

But there’s a difference between “sex sells” and “women are objectified in games”. I doubt Soul Calibur sells because of Ivy. Or that Mario is such a success because of Peach. Or that FFX is such a well remembered game because of Lulu’s breasts when she wins. Or that Bravely Default is all about the Bravo Bikini.

For a video game, “sex sells” can only get you so far. At best it gives a few chuckles here and there. But if the game is bad, no amount of kittenty armor and characters are going to save it.
People like Taimi and for the sake of humanity, I really hope that it’s not because they see even an ounce of sexuality from her.

“Sex sells” is a paraphrase for “in highly successful games, women are often objectified”. There are exceptions to it, of course, and the ones you listed may be part of them.

RedStar.4218:

I’m not too sure if I want to get in a social studies debate.

[…]

I hope that Anet thinks “sex sells” is a stupid. But then again, the real climax of S1 wasn’t Scarlet revealing her master plan (nope, Braham made sure of that) but a lesbian kiss…

These two statements I can agree with. I’ve said everything I intended to say with my last post, and you’ve made your opinions clear as well, so if we cannot reach an amicable agreement it’s for the best that we agree to disagree, as it were.

And I do believe ANet, fortunately, do not go with the “sex sells” deal. Though they did have me considering to leave when I started seeing these all over town.

Jigain.8231:

First of all, you can’t argue that skimpy outfits, huge bosoms and suggestive animations sell to the male audience. Especially not with “I don’t like it”. By that same argument, we could determine that all bananas taste disgusting because someone once ate a rotten one, or that clothes always rip after exactly one week of use because it happened to someone, somewhere, sometime. The fact is that sales figures and scientific studies show that time and time again, the standard tropes of sex sells. Even though I agree with you completely about not finding it necessarily attractive, that’s just a personal opinion among a sea of others of our gender who thinks the exact opposite. That’s a proven fact.

The above is entirely true, but misses an extremely important point: skimpy outfits, oversized bosom, suggestive poses, and other forms of hypersexualisation are generally associated with objectification, which is pretty much exactly the opposite of what you want to do if you want players to view a character as a person to care about rather than window dressing. Yes, sex sells, but “non-central, sexualised female characters”, to quote your study, are typically background decoration rather than important characters in their own right. In fact, two of the attributes that you refer to – skimpy outfits and suggestive poses – code to many as “woman of the night”, which, however unjustified, typically results in less sympathy for the character or even a sense that she deserved whatever happens to her.

For a character in the Pale Tree’s position, any of this would be highly inappropriate. Her role is not that of a non-central sex object, but of a teacher, leader, and matron. The look of her avatar is feminine enough to provide a clear signal that the tree self-identifies as female, but apart from that, her role is not that of a sex object, and her attraction is (supposed to be) based on her personality rather than her visual sex appeal. If she’s failing to make that connection, the fault lies with the writing team for not giving her a sufficiently engaging personality, not with the art team for not sexing her up in an inappropriate manner.

Consider that in the same post where you suggested that the Pale Tree needed hypersexualised characteristics, you brought up four examples of characters that did make a connection. Three of those characters are female, and none of those characters are hypersexualised: two are asura that don’t have secondary sexual characteristics to accentuate, and Magister Sieran is moderately endowed, wears the standard Priory light uniform (which exposes skin unnecessarily at the hips and shoulders of female characters but is still a long way from ‘skimpy’) and to my memory does not behave in a suggestive manner.

Regarding the statistical discussion: You can define ‘baseline’ however narrowly you like, but it becomes a useless statistic. I’d be part of that 80% according to your baseline (my main and, as yet, only character to finish S2E4 is human) but I’ve played through sylvari 1-30 twice now. While both estimates make assumption, I’d dare to say that my estimate of how many people who’ve done S2E4 have also done the early sylvari PS at least once is a lot closer to yours: yours makes the assumption that every player has only one character, which is an assumption that falls a long way away from reality.

draxynnic.3719:

Consider that in the same post where you suggested that the Pale Tree needed hypersexualised characteristics

I’m not sure if you’re putting words in my mouth intentionally, unintentionally, or just to troll.

I said, quite specifically, that hypersexualized characteristics is one way to begin making a connection, specifically targeted towards the male audience, and that it is a very common and effective way. I did not say anything about the Avatar needing that. Feel free to quote the exact passage.

draxynnic.3719:

Regarding the statistical discussion: You can define ‘baseline’ however narrowly you like, but it becomes a useless statistic. I’d be part of that 80% according to your baseline (my main and, as yet, only character to finish S2E4 is human) but I’ve played through sylvari 1-30 twice now. While both estimates make assumption, I’d dare to say that my estimate of how many people who’ve done S2E4 have also done the early sylvari PS at least once is a lot closer to yours: yours makes the assumption that every player has only one character, which is an assumption that falls a long way away from reality.

The baseline statistic makes no assumptions whatsoever, that’s what makes it baseline. I’ve already outlined exactly which facts make up the 80% statistic, why, and how. I’ve also explained exactly why other variables aren’t included in the baseline statistic.

Do you want to hear me say the baseline statistic isn’t accurate? I’d gladly say that, though I’d have imagined that was obvious to anyone. The baseline statistic isn’t an accurate depiction of the actual statistic, for which we do need refined numbers and refined statistics. Based on facts, mind you, not just random guesses of “oh, I have several sylvari, therefore everyone else does as well”. And since it’s impossible to acquire specific numbers on who has a sylvari, at what level, having done the relevant personal story, AND found the Avatar an engaging character… the baseline statistic is the most accurate one currently available.

Sure:

Jigain.8231:

The problem is that for a character to be deep, or to go even further, to be likeable… you need to have the audience create some form of bond with it. Usually it’s a bond of sympathy or kinship. Occasionally it’s a liking brought on by the character being a badrear or simply hilarious. Base attraction is another trigger. This is what is required for anyone to care about anyone else, both in real life and in literature (which by default covers GW2’s scriptwriting). Call me a cynic if you want, but think about it long enough and you’ll find this is what it boils down to.

Now, let’s discuss the Avatar. Does it appeal to the base attraction? Not really. Don’t get me wrong, some people might find it attractive, and I can’t claim they’re wrong in doing so, but the Avatar doesn’t feature skimpy outfits, a huge bosom and a suggestive animation. Thus it clearly wasn’t designed to create a bond through attraction – at least not to the male audience. Maybe to the female audience? I don’t know.

The second paragraph is the important one, but I wanted to include the first quoted passage so as to provide the context. Whether you intended it to or not, it certainly comes across as implying you think she needs certain characteristics to be considered attractive (by the stereotypical male audience, anyway). Given your strong response and a second re-read, I think what you’re saying now is that sexual (or, as you seem to have put it, ‘base’) attraction is one possible avenue out of several. But it doesn’t come across very well even in the section I’ve quoted, let alone if the second paragraph was to be quoted out of context. (Particularly since the term ‘base attraction’ is easily misinterpreted.)

That said, I still think it’d backfire horribly if the form of sexualisation you suggest was to be employed. The virgin/harlot dichotomy means that while scanty outfits, big bosoms, and suggestive poses might make for good eye candy, they generally don’t inspire as much sympathy or investment in the character as a person by the player (or reader, viewer, or whatever) as less overtly sexualised female characters do.

Regarding the statistical discussion: You can justify your 80% as much as you like, but at the bottom line it’s ignoring so many factors that it’s a worthless statistic. Mine might seem to make more assumptions, but it acknowledges those assumptions, and does not ignore factors that will substantially change the real number like yours does. It’d be like trying to find out what the most popular vehicle is by polling everyone on what their first mode of independent transportation (apart from walking) was.

draxynnic.3719:

Whether you intended it to or not, it certainly comes across as implying you think she needs certain characteristics to be considered attractive (by the stereotypical male audience, anyway). Given your strong response and a second re-read, I think what you’re saying now is that sexual (or, as you seem to have put it, ‘base’) attraction is one possible avenue out of several. But it doesn’t come across very well even in the section I’ve quoted, let alone if the second paragraph was to be quoted out of context. (Particularly since the term ‘base attraction’ is easily misinterpreted.)

Wow. You got me. I’m sorry to have to admit, English is my tertiary language and not all terms are easily translateable. Clearly all my points are null and void because of this.

draxynnic.3719:

That said, I still think it’d backfire horribly if the form of sexualisation you suggest was to be employed. The virgin/harlot dichotomy means that while scanty outfits, big bosoms, and suggestive poses might make for good eye candy, they generally don’t inspire as much sympathy or investment in the character as a person by the player (or reader, viewer, or whatever) as less overtly sexualised female characters do.

An average male walks through a general zone. During this passing he encounters ten women. One of them is wearing, shall we say, clothing that brings out her “features”. The other nine wear common, everyday clothing. The average male will more easily notice the scantily clad woman, and be more inclined to interact with her than the others. This is part of the “introduction” phase I mentioned earlier in the thread; the first step towards making a connection with someone else. There has to be something that interests you in the other character – and sexualization can be that thing. It’s a cheap way to do it, but it does work. As a professional tip, if you’re going to be using this card, you’d better have a good transition in store and not let this rule the character.

draxynnic.3719:

Regarding the statistical discussion: You can justify your 80% as much as you like, but at the bottom line it’s ignoring so many factors that it’s a worthless statistic. Mine might seem to make more assumptions, but it acknowledges those assumptions, and does not ignore factors that will substantially change the real number like yours does. It’d be like trying to find out what the most popular vehicle is by polling everyone on what their first mode of independent transportation (apart from walking) was.

Unless you can point out exactly what “assumptions” the base statistic draws, the correct terminology is

draxynnic.3719:

You can justify your 80% as much as you like, but at the bottom line it’s ignoring so many factors that it’s a worthless statistic. Mine makes assumptions whereas the baseline does not, but it acknowledges those assumptions, and does not ignore factors that will substantially change the real number like yours does. It’d be like trying to find out what the most popular vehicle is by polling everyone on what their first mode of independent transportation (apart from walking) was.

I don’t see what’s left to say about the statistics, nor why you keep pushing it. I’ve already said that if we had actual facts and not just your guesswork to go by, your method would be more accurate. Until we do, your method is, using your own words, “like trying to find out what the most popular vehicle is by polling one person on what they drive and assume that’s representative of the entire world.”

I’m done with this discussion. If you’ve got more terminology you’d like to point out is incorrectly used, feel free to do so, but I’ve got better things to do than argue basic psychology and basic statistics on a thread that 1) was never made for it, and 2) won’t even be open for another 24 hours.

Putting everything else aside:

An average male walks through a general zone. During this passing he encounters ten women. One of them is wearing, shall we say, clothing that brings out her “features”. The other nine wear common, everyday clothing. The average male will more easily notice the scantily clad woman, and be more inclined to interact with her than the others. This is part of the “introduction” phase I mentioned earlier in the thread; the first step towards making a connection with someone else. There has to be something that interests you in the other character – and sexualization can be that thing. It’s a cheap way to do it, but it does work. As a professional tip, if you’re going to be using this card, you’d better have a good transition in store and not let this rule the character.

That’s an ‘odd person out’ scenario. Switch things around so you have nine women in scanty clothing and one more modestly dressed, and the attention is going to go the other way. Have half and half… and then you might get some interesting results.

The problem with using sexualisation to build a connection is that virgin-harlot dichotomy I mentioned above (I’m not using the ‘official’ term because it will get censored). Basically, this goes that for the ‘average’ male, the wilder girl – with sexualised clothing and suggestive poses – may be what they fantasise about having one-night stands with, but more ‘respectable’ women are the ones that are typically seen as a suitable partner to actually build an emotional connection with. How strong this is varies from person to person: in some men this becomes so extreme as to actually be a psychological complex that prevents them from having meaningful relationships – the women they want to have sex with they can’t form an emotional bond with, and the women they fall in love with they can’t think of as being sexual beings as well.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this sort of thing is a result of toxic cultural attitudes and is bad for both sexes – but at the bottom line, if you’re going to pander to the lowest common denominator, you have to recognise that while sexual objectification can be good for getting attention, it generally backfires when it comes to getting people emotionally invested in a character. It’s there in the terminology – objectification basically means treating someone as an object rather than a person, and people are less likely to react when bad things happen to an object.

(To be honest, outfits available to PCs aside, I think ArenaNet prefers to aim higher than that. There are people who view Kasmeer and Marjory as fanservice, but in the context of other things ArenaNet has done, I think what they’re really aiming to do is present a lesbian relationship as normal rather than to satisfy lesbian fetishes. It’s just unfortunate that it’s the only reasonably functional relationship that has more than a chapter of screentime. As I pointed out above, ArenaNet has succeeded in achieving female characters players can build a connection to without playing the ‘sexually provocative’ card.)