tldr: (This is just a thought post) More armor designs that fit the Charr and Asura models could potentially encourage more racial diversity in the game. Also, racial engineer kits at least for Asuras
I’m writing this up as I’ve been playing this game on and off after the first year and during those periods I’ve noticed a decline in in non-human races. I believe we can agree that people relate more to more human-like characters like Sylvari, Norns and you know… humans. Also those of us who have played GW1 are also more inclined to play human characters as well. I also believe that aesthetics contribute to this trend as most gear simply looks better on human-like races. For Asura there is the armor details issue and for the Charr there are very few armors that look aesthetically pleasing as compared to the human equivalent.
I understand that Anet kinda cornered themselves with some of the design aspects in the game (ehm…chairs…) by having races that are quite different model wise. I have a human guardian (main), revenant(main) and mesmer and one asura ele, norn warrior, sylvari ranger and charr engineer that I love to play, but can’t get around the lack of aesthetically pleasing charr gear and superman gliding animation. I’ve been rocking the rubicon set with the scrapper helm, tool kit backpiece and a giant wrench for the longest time because of this. I like the whole engineer look (screenshot) and practical looking gear in general that fits for a class (which is severely lacking).
It would be neat if more armors were introduced that worked better for the Asura and Charr races instead of stretching armor models to work for them. I noticed for Charr any coat that’s not full-length tends to look a bit silly like a skirt… Take the Mad Scientist outfit for example, it’s a longcoat on humans but a skirt on Charrs. This is true for nearly all armor pieces in that category.
On a side note it would be really neat if enigneer kits reflected the racial designs. Lets face it Asuras with wood and iron turrets etc instead of magi-tech like kits is a bit strange no? (Just a thought)
Anyway I believe that if armor designs were designed first with non-human races in mind to work better with them it could encourage more racial diversity in-game.
