Guild Wars 2

Good day! I come from Piken Square, Europe, a server which is known for the RP (Roleplay). For those that do not know what it is, it basically represents the ability to immerse oneself with the character and live the world through the character that we play.

After a few years of Guild Wars 2 and some GW1 experience, I came to a difficult question. What makes Humans, in GW, good. Or on par with the other races.

In another forum, I have asked the following questions:

"
Hello! I can’t help but notice that all of the other races seem to have something unique about them.

Look at the Norn might, as we know from GW1, an “army” for them is literally 3 people. They are not just “big humans” but rather strong, resilient creatures which are literally raised on fights, shamanism and hunting.

Asura, no words needed. They are the epitome of technology and craft. They are inventive, creative masterminds.

Charr have the ferocity of a norn and technology knack of the asura. They have superior strength than a human and given how they’re felines, possibly better senses. On top of that, clearly superior technology, as seen in game.

Sylvari are imbued with magic, they gather so much knowledge and information from the Dream, they are experts in their craft as they rise, they learn fast and have an unparalleled curiosity and ability to learn. Not to mention they are so unique in terms of physique and design, as well as culture.

Humans are… bland. Boring. Lacking. They used to at least have the presence of Gods, avatars and manifestations of their power. Nowadays, they are … nothing. They don’t do anything better than any race and they don’t seem to stand out in any shape or form. From my point of view, literally any race can do it better.

My question is, is there anything that makes Humans unique other than the most boring argument, versatility? I am kinda tired of the ol’ “human spirit” and “high hopes, hope dies last!” side of things. I’d like to know exactly what the humans exceed at over the other races.

If at all possible, please point out with lore from game/books. I’d like to know if there’s anything that a human does better than any other race. "

The forum can be found here: http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com/home/page/1/m/2737230/viewthread/28414821-question-about-human-lore-vs-other-races

I would like the opinion of other people, not just roleplayers. It seems that humans are good at agriculture and architecture, but they don’t have any trait that sticks out and Arena Net portraits them as yet another typical Human race who only perseveres in face of struggles and barely hangs in there. They got blad and boring, the lore is lack luster and in Guild Wars 2, it feels like Sylvari stole the show on numerous occasions.

/Discuss ?

Maybe humans excel at sociability and pulling groups together. Charr are separated into warbands and Asura into krewes. Norn are solitary at heart. Sylvari are everywhere but they are poking around and looking at things as single Sylvari, not groups of Sylvari.

As a society, Humans seem to have the ability to form larger, homogenous groups more. The other races form groups, but they are smaller groups. The central governments of the other races seems more fragmented. The Sylvari have the Pale Tree, but she is one and not a group of people working together. The Norn don’t have a central government. The Asura have the Arcane council, but it seems weaker than the humsn government which is backed up by the Seraphs and the Shining Blade. The Charr have imperators, but lack the over rule by one person, the Khan-Ur. They have a military chain of command government, not a ruler with a council and army government.

Originally, in gw1, the strength of the humans was in their numbers, and in their relation with the gods (for example, Charr, physically stronger and more militiant, were defeated, because they couldn’t match god-given magic wielded by human invaders).

From that time, the numbers have dwindled, the magical advantage has been retconned away, and importance of the human gods has been diminished (partially by them going into seclusion, partially by the way of retcons).

That’s of course in Tyria. As far as we know, current Cantha is a military juggernaut that would crush any other opposition it would come into a direct conflict with (something that is being prevented by their isolationism). Of course Cantha is the map region we’re least likely to ever see in this game.

So yeah, in general, when devs adapted GW2 into a game with more than one playable race, they kept leveling field and emphasising advantages of other 4 races so much, that humans ended up well behind. In some instances it was really overdone – Sylvari importance in the game for example is way, way bigger compared to what it should be.

And by now, i seriously don’t know what could be done to fix that (barring the possible return of the 6 gods).

At least mechanically they are all equal.

This is a common issue in fantasy and sci-fi, not just in Guild Wars 2, and not an easy one to resolve because it originates in reality.

In brief the problem is that in real life we are all human and the only “highly evolved”, “sentient” or whatever you want to call it race we know of is our own. Therefore we can only imagine what other similar races might be like, and the starting point for that is humanity. As a result humans tend to end up as a sort of generic ‘default’ race with all others being “like humans but with X” or “like humans if Y happened”.

I suppose it could be possible to create a world where all the other races are smaller than humans, or weaker but more intelligent or whatever so that humans are in some way exceptional, but I suspect it would come across as unrealistic.

Because the truth is we are generalists. At the risk of lapsing into biologist mode (which I especially don’t want to do now as I’m on my lunch break!) a big part of the reason humans have become the dominant species on Earth is because we aren’t really exceptional at anything but we’re good enough at a lot of things.

We’re not the fastest animal (or even the fastest medium sized land mammal), we can’t jump or climb the highest or swim the furthest, or lift the most or fly at all. But we can run and jump and climb and swim and lift and carry heavy objects…and in a round about way we’ve covered flying too.

We’re omnivores capable of eating a huge variety of different foods and when necessary surviving on a relatively small subset of those. We can survive a wide range of temperature, humidity etc. unaided and with the use of tools (something we do excel at) we can survive even more – from antarctic winters to the hottest deserts in midsummer. We’ve even managed to survive in space for relatively short periods of time. We can see in both extremely low light and bright light and can learn to navigate by sound or touch. I’m sure there’s others missing as well.

The problem when you shift into a fantasy world is that to create other races readers/watchers/players can relate to (and which writers can write interesting stories about) you have to carry over at least some of the tool-use and problem solving skills which I’d argue are our only exceptional traits in real life. I don’t imagine there would be much interest in playing charr if they had no cities, no weapons except their claws and teeth and no clothes. Or if the asura just cast magic and didn’t build anything with it (and were also naked and used no weapons). So humans become even more the generalists.

(There are exceptions – Watership Down is a prime example, although not technically sci-fi or fantasy. The characters are all animals and aside from a comprehensive language and an understanding of history and with it some folklore don’t copy anything from humans. But those kinds of stories are rare.)

But I’d argue that on it’s own can be an exceptional trait. In Tyria I think this comes across mainly as resilience. Of course all the races have suffered recently as a result of the Elder Dragons rising, and humanity is in a bad place at the moment (in Tyria at least, we don’t know what’s happening in Cantha and very little about Elona) but I think if they weren’t all designed to be about equal Divinity’s Reach would be the biggest, most populous city and Lion’s Arch still has more than it’s fair share of human influence. They’re generally seen as the race that can most believably be any profession and are often at the forefront of new developments. For example they’re credited equally with the charr and asura in the creation of the airships.

Ok it’s not as obvious as norn being bigger and stronger than everyone else or the asura being the best at magitech, but I think in the long-run it will come in a lot more useful.

JesterJacks.9207:

It seems that humans are good at agriculture and architecture, but they don’t have any trait that sticks out and Arena Net portraits them as yet another typical Human race who only perseveres in face of struggles and barely hangs in there. They got blad and boring, the lore is lack luster and in Guild Wars 2, it feels like Sylvari stole the show on numerous occasions.

/Discuss ?

I completely agree here. It’s sad too, because most of my toons are humans. I’ve felt for a long time that ANet dropped the ball on the races. Sylvari stole the show far too quickly, and all the others got forgotten (particularly humans).

I’d love to see the choice of one’s in-game race actually matter, and not just be limited to some crappy race skills ANet was so afraid of disrupting the balance with that no one uses them due to said crappiness. I only dabbled in Tera for a bit, but I loved their means of approaching race in game. Particular races had random buffs, like a Castanic having a faster gathering speed on ore nodes, or another race having a slightly faster movement speed. If gw2 could draw some inspiration from ideas like this, I feel it could really give the races a flavor of their own and, in turn, give humans something that would make them stand out from the others.

To mention a few race ideas gw2 could make use of:

• Norn: Movement buff lasting maybe 5 minutes with a 7 minute cooldown. This would be due to their size (giants), making complete sense for them to move faster than other, significantly smaller races. Increased resistance to knockdowns, etc. Again, they’re giants – it should be harder to cc them. This would have a more significant cd (maybe an hour).
• Human: Endurance regeneration. All I can really think of when I think “human” is resiliency, etc. as mentioned in other posts on this thread. It might be cool to give humans increased endurance regen based off of this. Reduced damage received when under a certain health percentage (maybe 10%?). This would have a longer cd once activated, but would tie in to human resiliency again.
• Sylvari: Casting speed buff (I guess similar to quickness) for magical spells/mantras, etc. This would only affect the individual player, and make sense due to the nature of sylvari’s attunement with magic and the Dream. I’m not sure what an appropriate cd on this would be to prevent overbalancing. Health restoration, similar to the mistlock singularity in fractals, but for straight PvE. It would have a 1-2 hr cd as well. Increased gathering speed of plants – speaks for itself.
• Asura: Decreased falling damage – Asura are the smallest of all the races, so I think they should take significantly less damage from falls based off of this size difference and their (assumed) increased agility. Increased crafting speed – based off of asura inventing, etc.
• Charr: Increased combat speed, based off of the charr affinity for war and their military government structure and training. Have to be careful to prevent overbalance, but I think it could be cool to treat it similar to the current “quickness” buff in game. It could have a longer cd on it since it’s racial, and would only affect weapon skills, not utility ones. Increased ore gathering speed. When I think of charr, I think of big, heavy metal weapons, so I think this would also make sense.

I think all of these suggested skills would be a mixture of passive or active powers. Passive would be continuous and uncontrolled by the player (like node gathering), while I think it would be important to add the active skills onto the F1, F2 toolbar and not the utility tool bar. This way, players could still make proper use of builds in game, without having to choose between “Call Owl” ([&BmMwAAA=]) or “Save Yourselves” ([&Bn0jAAA=]).

Oh and one last idea: Maybe a free tele to respective race capitals

Humans can outrun a centaur.

In seriousness… their gods are real. The same could be said about the Sylvari probably. None of the other races’ gods appear to be real in the same manner as the human gods and none have definitely played a part in the shaping of recent events in Tyria. While they’re not as active “today” they were very active in the past and could increase activity at any point in the near future.

I’d love to see more human god activity. It could even tie in as a racial skill, based off of which human god you chose on your character creation screen which, you know, they’ve never done anything with…

Grenth blessed you at birth? You can make use of our “Call on Grenth” racial skill now and freeze everyone around you for 1-2 seconds! Oh, was it actually Lyssa? Confound them!

I’d love it.

I think that humans seem boring because they are familiar. There are always going to be people who prefer to play a fantasy race in a game because it is new and different than what they are used to. But in addition to the fantasy races I always have at least one character that is human or “human-like” because that is what I actually identify with.

I think part of it is that ANet has deliberately stood a lot of standard fantasy things upside down. Eg the sylvari, the magical elven race, is not the wise, ancient dying race made de rigeur by Tolkien but super brand new and full of curiosity, low in numbers but spreading out through the world. Instead, the dying race is humanity. Humans aren’t everywhere, they aren’t dominant, they have lost most of their lands and population and concentrated in one major city. Their gods have departed.

It doesn’t feel that way in game because human characters are everywhere and DR is the most bustling city with the best design to suggest massive amounts of housing even if we can’t actually enter most of it (the city wall apartments). Heck, it doesn’t feel like sylvari are spread thin since there are so many of them as PCs too, even though they are supposed to be the least numerous race.

So there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance. The special thing about humans here is their lore situation, which isn’t terribly apparent in game play. Even the NPC emotes tend to be fairly cheerful; despite occasional comments about late caravans and war time scarcity, for the most part the DR humans come off as insulated, pampered sorts who feel themselves on top of the world.

Thank you all for the replies! After reading through, I came to realize that the only thing that Humans could have above the others, in terms of power and not just… “better at being social creatures”, is the god-given magical affinity.

Is there any part of lore which emphasizes that boon? I know that mages in GW2 are by far mostly portraited as humans (Kasmeer, Marjory, The Wizard Tower, etc) and they seem to be quite gifted in terms of magic, but is there any bit of lore that specifically states that, I wonder?

JesterJacks.9207:

Is there any part of lore which emphasizes that boon? I know that mages in GW2 are by far mostly portraited as humans (Kasmeer, Marjory, The Wizard Tower, etc) and they seem to be quite gifted in terms of magic, but is there any bit of lore that specifically states that, I wonder?

Not anymore. The case of Abaddon gifting magic to humans has been almost completely retconned away from GW2. The only remaining piece of that original version is the fact that Charr are able to use magic as a result of their contact with Titans (so, in truth, as a result of Abaddon’s intervention as well). And it remains most likely because someone forgot to remove it.

(while there is a mention that every human is capable of using magic in some form, it is not said that it doesn’t hold true for all other races as well, so it can hardly be considered currently as something special)

Can you tell me where it states that the gods did not give the Tyrian races magic? I’d like to read more about this retcon. I knew that the gods gave everyone magic…

In many places, but you can start at wiki, with the “Bloodstone” entry. Generally, current version is that Bloodstone was a creation of seers that used it to seal the magic long ago. Abaddon merely unsealed it. And since the gods were not the source of magic in this version, it’s really not clear why Charr had to deal with titans (Abaddon) in order to obtain it.

Astralporing.1957:

In many places, but you can start at wiki, with the “Bloodstone” entry. Generally, current version is that Bloodstone was a creation of seers that used it to seal the magic long ago. Abaddon merely unsealed it. And since the gods were not the source of magic in this version, it’s really not clear why Charr had to deal with titans (Abaddon) in order to obtain it.

We still don’t know what actually happened when Abaddon “gave magic to the races of Tyria”, except that it somehow involved the bloodstone, which at the time was all one piece. (Quick note to save me time later: this happened in 1BE – Before Exodus, years since then are counted as AE – After Exodus.)

I think he must have done something fairly major though, which involved dramatically increasing the amount of magic in the world.

We know that when the dragons last rose they consumed almost all the magic except that in the bloodstone, and that it’s been slowly escaping from them ever since they went to sleep (suspected by NPCs in game to be about 10,000 BE – based on the assumption that the dragons wiped out Giganticus lupicus – but I don’t know how they know when it happened or that the two are connected).

Just before the Exodus of the Gods magic was only seen in very limited forms – ritualists could summon ancestor spirits and of course the gods had their own powers (which presumably aren’t originally part of Tyrian magic, since the gods and humans are from elsewhere) and could grant power to their followers, but that was about it.

Just over 1,000 years later during GW1 magic was wide-spread and had a whole range of uses, not just by the races but by almost every living thing on Tyria, and some which may not technically be alive. There were also “natural” magical effects like the floating islands near Rata Sum. It seems highly unlikely that so much magic was around before that and no one learned how to use it.

Incidentally it was also around the same time (within a year at most) that the Desolation was created, the Crystal Sea was turned into the Crystal Desert and the Bloodstone was split into 5 pieces. And Abaddon was banished by the other gods.

We’ve just seen the devastation caused by a controlled destruction of 1/5 of the original Bloodstone. This is pure speculation on my part but I suspect Abaddon may have been trying to extract the magic from the Bloodstone and split it into 5 in the process, causing the Desolation. Maybe the other gods controlled the explosion as much as they could but a lot of magic still got out and spread around the world.

(Although now I’m reading that back I’m thinking the most interesting part, for this topic, is that because the humans and their gods are originally from outside Tyria they may have brought forms of magic completely unique to this world with them. But I don’t think there’s any confirmation of that, unless you count humans being the first race to explore The Mists.)