Guild Wars 2

Actually, it’s an issue of animations being so small on Asura it makes more sense to play them.

If you simply improved the animations on the other classes, there wouldn’t be such a large reason to play an Asura.

I’m not talking about the advantages of playing one though, I’m talking about how they are not a good race for spectators to watch.

Allowing Asuras in a competitive gamemode is an horrible choice as much as allowing non-standardized character models’ dimension is, expecially if the game is that reliant on character animations.

Its kind of silly that everyone plays one race, it just kind of shows you literally how much of a real advantage they have.

Daecollo.9578:

Its kind of silly that everyone plays one race, it just kind of shows you literally how much of a real advantage they have.

It doesn’t matter, it’s ESPORTZ AND CASH TOURNAMENT!!!!111
Who care about obvious balance issues and horrible design choices?

When everyone is playing an asura the advantage minimises. But I just think the other races are much better to watch as a spectator which is the most important thing in esports.

this is a stupid request

a smarter option would be to default all asurans in spvp to their race’s max height, which is just as easy to read as the smallest human

Tharium.7325:

When everyone is playing an asura the advantage minimises. But I just think the other races are much better to watch as a spectator which is the most important thing in esports.

That is another issue who fall into the “horrible design choices” part.
The fact that Asuras are allowed in PvP is an issue both for balance and, of course, spectating,
Watching rats jumping all around swinging their tiny swords is kinda ridiculous.

Absolutely agree. Unfortunately ArenaNet still didn’t implement the option to see all players in SPVP as Humans. Banning Asura characters would be nice. I’m watching semi-finals right now and seeing 6 Asuras running and spamming AOEs is ugly and awful. My eyes are going to bleed…

Can you ban Sylvari as well? I confuse them with trees.

yeah its hard to see asuran animations through all AOE effects. I dont even bother trying to read their animations unless its 1 vs 1. I dont know why all characters aren’t the same size,
Changing this would benefit spvp tpvp and esports. Triple win! please ban/change asura pls.

It’s already taken for a fact that asura have the most unnoticeable animations, it doesn’t matter how “exaggerated” they are if they’re so extremely tiny.

I honestly can’t believe the devs haven’t done anything about it.

Long before the game was ever released, I read several comments from respected pvp players/developers alike make comments on how for the pvp to be balanced they would really need to keep it exclusive to just human as the pvp race (or human sylvari) to keep it simple and always balanced because everyone had the same animations size etc.

Ofc, like 90% of spvp’s major problems….this would not work due to the games synergy with the PVE side of the game, this would upset a large amount of players if they could not port over their pve character into SPVP. (or arenanet believes it would)

Much like how it should have its own traits, even skills in spvp among other things…it will never be this way. So, just gonna have to get used to the hard to watch matches of tiny people fighting each other.

Seriously, Arenanet shot themselves in the foot the moment they created all these massive complications with their stubbornness to believe players are too stupid to adjust to spvp, and even worst…..that the competitive spvp players do anything else but spvp and visa versa. Seriously majority of hardcore pvers never do anything more than WvW, most hardcore spvp players never even level pve characters (or leveled one to 80 then stopped playing pve).

ya know you have less than a month to learn each mini game right, with its all new abilities and game mechanics….why do you think people are too stupid to adjust to different mechanics in spvp…..smh arenanet. oh well, atleast future game developers can learn from these mistakes…though i’m not sure any seasoned game developer would make these mistakes in the first place.

“edit” if they woulda just stuck to one or two similar sized/shaped races for spvp….it would have been cheaper to launch spvp armor skins….thus why you RARELY see armor skins put into the game…..once again, this was pointed out as a problem before the game was launched…..not sure who they have as designers but they seem to suffer tunnel vision or too stubborn to listen to good feedback.

Tharium.7325:

I’m not talking about the advantages of playing one though, I’m talking about how they are not a good race for spectators to watch.

This, Asura + Particles + AoE Fields + more than 2 players fighting = what is even going on?

Asura: The Oddjob of GW2.

This is pretty much what anyone would expect in any competitive game that allows you to choose your character. It’s no different in a game like Counter Strike, you pick the character that is the most difficult to hit. This is an issue that you could see coming miles away.

A solution would be to make the animations and effects simply more clear, or to add visible cast bars for skills, like in GW1.

Wow Just…Wow 0.0 is this really a issue?? I see it now hey A-net nerf asura there too OP. Gezzus Kryst ppl will complain about anything. Alright this does sound fun though let me take a swing at this. I think Charrs should be banned from tpvp cause i was fighting a team of 5 charrs and they all were so big they were taking uo the entire node and i died dude to not being able to see where the enemy necro/rangers were throwing there wells/traps . Hows that does that sound legit or what!?

Abraxius.6429:

Wow Just…Wow 0.0 is this really a issue?? I see it now hey A-net nerf asura there too OP. Gezzus Kryst ppl will complain about anything. Alright this does sound fun though let me take a swing at this. I think Charrs should be banned from tpvp cause i was fighting a team of 5 charrs and they all were so big they were taking uo the entire node and i died dude to not being able to see where the enemy necro/rangers were throwing there wells/traps . Hows that does that sound legit or what!?

Do you watch tournaments? I guess not.
Because if you have watched any tournament, then you have seen that ALL players are Asura. And not because they like them, but because their movements are hard to read.
And by the way is VERY AWFUL to see a match of 4 Asuras and a Human vs. 4 Asuras and a Human.
Very.
Awful.

And they are also harder to select of course, which makes perfect sense with the dodgy targeting system.

Abraxius.6429:

Wow Just…Wow 0.0 is this really a issue?? I see it now hey A-net nerf asura there too OP. Gezzus Kryst ppl will complain about anything. Alright this does sound fun though let me take a swing at this. I think Charrs should be banned from tpvp cause i was fighting a team of 5 charrs and they all were so big they were taking uo the entire node and i died dude to not being able to see where the enemy necro/rangers were throwing there wells/traps . Hows that does that sound legit or what!?

Well, yeah that sounds totally legit, but you’re exaggerating, whereas the quality of the stream provided combined with all players using the smallest race causes the animations to be severly difficult to spot in comparison to if you were to have nothing but Charrs on the field. Add to this the massive amounts of particles present when players cast AoE spells, and you will be having a very hard time seeing what is actually going on.

Now if you struggle with seeing what happends during a fight, you’ll be less inclined to watch the tournaments, with less viewers the tournaments loses alot of its appeal and without that, there will be no aspiration to make further tournaments.

A simple fix to this would be to either have all players be restricted to a race with more clear animations(such as humans, charr or sylvari) or present an opportunity for the players to simply have the opponents appear as a “standardized” avatar.

But you know, your charr problem clearly is the same.

sigh -_- whatevs i watched that tourny today not one time did it cross my mind to be like man i wish these guys werent asura it shouldnt matter that much if it helps be strategic cause they cant read the movements props to them its not like everyone else cant do the same thing

Daecollo.9578:

Asura: The Oddjob of GW2.

Everyone knows if you play Oddjob you are scum and your friends hate you. (Same goes for asura?)

I’ve never had a problem with Asura. You people are strange.

my friend never played GW2 before and when she watched the tournament she asked: “..so Guild Wars is basically wars between midget guilds?”

…………

Reason why people play Asura:
1 Cute.
2 Hard to see animations.
3 Cute.
4 Small.
5 Cute.
6 Hard to see.
7 Cute.
8 Blends with the environment better.
9 Cute.
10 I love Asura.

Absolutely this is a huge problem. All characters should be normalised to humans in pvp should people want to see their enemies this way. It is a big issue but there are other things which need implementing first like map rotation

Daecollo.9578:

Reason why people play Asura:
1 Cute.
2 Hard to see animations.
3 Cute.
4 Small.
5 Cute.
6 Hard to see.
7 Cute.
8 Blends with the environment better.
9 Cute.
10 I love Asura.

You can also see more as an asura because the character model is taking up less of your screen. It really is a huge advantage

Hopefully the implement an option to display everyone as human on your side. That way everyone is on even ground but people can still be whatever race they want w/ out getting an advantage.

Some people protesting against this post are taking it way too far. I’m not saying that asura should be banned from all pvp even though I am aware of the slight advantage playing one gives you. I am only talking about for proper tournaments like this pax one where ensuring that the people watching have a good experience is incredibly important, especially at this early stage of competitive GW2 pvp. And only talking from the perspective of a viewer I find the asura horrible to watch because it’s so hard to see what they are actually doing. Over the weekend matches the few human players were far better to watch because they didn’t disappear in aoe particles so easily and all their movements were much more visible.

That’s why I think for these tournaments where streaming is going on players should not be allowed to play asura to give us viewers a better show. It wouldn’t be asking too much of the current asura players because there is go gear grind or tiered/locked gear in pvp that they would need to obtain first, it would litterally only take them five minutes to make a new character and be ready to go.

Completely agree with the graphics option to default everything to human, there is already a similar option in WvW to default everyone to male with generic armor.

Midget Wars is gonna get old very soon…

People use asuras on tpvp because you can’t tell what they are doing unless it’s something as telegraphed as Mighty Blow.

You can also hide A LOT better, and in more places if you use a asura. Prime example of this being used is when Hman plays his war, he is often hidden somewhere, waits until the right time then BAM. Out of no where 100b to the face. There are places where you can only hide with a asura and nothing taller.

Amaterasu.6280:

People use asuras on tpvp because you can’t tell what they are doing unless it’s something as telegraphed as Mighty Blow.

You can also hide A LOT better, and in more places if you use a asura. Prime example of this being used is when Hman plays his war, he is often hidden somewhere, waits until the right time then BAM. Out of no where 100b to the face. There are places where you can only hide with a asura and nothing taller.

Yea, inside your minons lol

They should at least restrict it to the larger races for professional tournies.

Taking the camera back on my human helps a lot to get the asuran view.

I used the makeover kit to shrink my Human male Warrior. I can see more of my screen, and my abilities are less telegraphed. Absolutely Asura gives you a huge advantage. You cannot see what they’re doing unless you zoom in, and you’re just screwing yourself by doing that. Their size should be limited in PvP, or their animations need to be much more obvious. Their is a reason everyone runs Asura in professional tournaments. I agree, it’s extremely bad from a viewer standpoint. This should be a high priority issue if Arena wants to succeed in the eSport scene. It’s gotten out of hand.

Pretty pleased by the support of this. There have been some good ideas, like having the option to view everyone as a human or maybe you could just set all races to the same height in pvp so big asura and smaller charr/norn. But of course I understand this stuff would take time to develop and implement so I would be interested in what someone at ANet thinks about just restricting asuras for the pax tournament and hopefully the NA qualifiers.

I support this. It’s already hard enough to tell what the opponent is doing, in between of all those aoe-effects flying at you.

Highlight was seeing that Asura Necromancer hiding under the small bridge. That was just priceless.

GTFO, most people play asuras cause they have “cooler” animations, sayings, and are just an all out cooler race. Humans and charr can kill me just as much as an asuran. Animations take the same amount of time. This is completely a perception issue.

Alkaholic.3875:

GTFO, most people play asuras cause they have “cooler” animations, sayings, and are just an all out cooler race. Humans and charr can kill me just as much as an asuran. Animations take the same amount of time. This is completely a perception issue.

When a whole pvp tournament team exists of nothing but Asura, they are not just picking that race because of the cool looks.

They are picking it for the obvious strategic advantages.

I’d be ok with rerolling to a Human or Sylvari for the sake of making the game easier on the viewers.

Even tho I’m overly attached to my from-launch Asura.

That’s great to hear Defektive, but I don’t think it would be fair for you to do that unless everyone else was doing the same thing because you would be handicapping yourself just for the sake of the viewers.

I would love to see some charr in these tournaments though.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be the only Norn player on a team of Asuras? Gee, I wonder who will be the easiest to target. It just isn’t entirely fair. But to exclude Asura from tournaments entirely would also be unfair to people who really like playing one.

JonPeters.5630:

We believe the majority of the issue is the effects spam. News on that front coming VERY soon. Once that is out of the way we can start to address other concerns.

Jon

Jon, I would love it if instead of using so many particle effects we instead used more weapon trails and .swh effects.

They are just as pretty (A lot of them in the game seem /hand painted/) and don’t clog up the entire screen with explosions.

I agree with the OP and the many others. The who cares what the participants what, if they want to make it an e-sport, they need to do what pleases the viewers the most. Maybe just do it for the main “televised” tournaments or something?

JonPeters.5630:

We believe the majority of the issue is the effects spam. News on that front coming VERY soon. Once that is out of the way we can start to address other concerns.

Jon

That’s probably a good first step. However, it’s fairly common for competitive games to have standardized avatar models.

Example: Unreal Tournament.

I wouldn’t put it past the community to request this as a feature since it does make sense in the scheme of things.

I’d really love to see some character model size normalizing, like in SAB. I know it seems like not a big deal, but it really would help.