I’ll keep this short because there is no reason to write an essay on the topic.
The race choices should not have an effect on sPvP.
Having every single player play a little Asura for the very real advantage of having far less visible animations in an animation based combat system is not ideal. The game would be far more enjoyable if both players and spectators were actually able to discern which animations were happening on screen.
Currently when multiple characters are fighting on screen there is a good chance that all or most of the characters on the screen are tiny Asuras that appear to be jumping around doing random indistinguishable things that end up having various effects on the battle. The exception is the Mesmer class where most players opt to have a giant Norn character so that they are able to spam enormous clones and phantasms to cause the opponent to have to deal with an outrageous amount of screen clutter.
One of the biggest issues with Guild Wars 2 sPvP has been the fact that combat tends to devolve into a cluster_____ of animations and visual overload and the race choice issue compounds this to the point where some classes are exponentially more powerful when played as a certain race because key animations become nearly impossible to spot(prime example: Warrior) or because they cause so much visual overload on the battlefield that they become a huge detriment to the concept of skilled play(prime example: Mesmer)
Please add an option for players to have all other character models in sPvP be switched to Human(or their choice of race if that isn’t too difficult to implement). I can’t imagine that this would be difficult since this is conceptually very similar to the enemy/friendly color options you introduced many months ago. This small and highly effective change would also help YOU balance the game better by properly taking into account the ability for players to spot certain animations and react accordingly. Currently some abilities that would be perfectly balanced end up being either extremely weak or extremely powerful based on race choice and this is detrimental to the competitive nature of sPvP.
Idiot Savants[iQ] | Anvil Rock