Guild Wars 2

You’ve got a great point to make. There’s also a nicer way of saying it that doesn’t refer to women who wear such clothes as what you’ve said in your topic title.

The issue of clothing options per gender is a pretty big discussion point across the forums here. The imbalance between males and females needs to be corrected, and this game has the potential to be a leader in this area.

There’s an amazing video I saw last night that was so well made and spoken:
http://youtu.be/j68VtAJWQtA

Also a great blogger I like to follow named Anita Sarkeesian will be doing a project on women in video games. Her awesome blogs are at https://www.youtube.com/user/feministfrequency

Edit: Here’s a summary of what I believe about the issue. I’m adding this here after two pages of discussion and communication:

• Male avatars should have the options for as much freedom of expression as female avatars have in the costumes available.
• This freedom, which is great for both genders, encourages role play, creativity, ownership, and investment in ones characters.
• Such freedom sends the message from the developers that they are conscious of and welcoming to a wide and diverse community and playerbase.
• There exists an imbalance in GW2 in the ways players can express themselves through their avatars and their gear appearance options, primarily that males have far fewer options than females to wear revealing clothes.
• This imbalance is even clearer when some outfits are quite identical between males and females but others are very needlessly different.
• Maintaining this imbalance sends an implicit message that the game’s creators sees men and women as different, and that men and women should have different rights or freedoms (these differences in rights and freedoms should be mostly irrelevant in 2013).
• Individual staff at Arena Net may not believe these things, but this is the message implicit in the options given to players.
• I want Arena Net to give players these freedoms to express themselves through male avatars as easily and in the same number of ways they can with female avatars
• I’ve been trying to make my point in the wrong thread! :\

Mungrul.9358:

Just to be clear and to illustrate what I am talking about, the attached is Masquerade armor.

This argument is much clearer when you look through the armour and find the revealing female armours. Then look at the male equivalent, and notice what skin isn’t showing.
Some examples attached. Mouse over for the armour names, you’ll see they are in pairs.

This discussion is about the clear argument that a chainmail on a female should be identical to a that of a male, with space for breasts. There’s no magical reason for it to become a bikini.

The exact same goes for weapons. If weapons had different skins based on the gender of the character then these forums would be on fire and the producers would be slammed up and down the blog’o’sphere.

Unfortunately, chainmail bikinis were established in a few games, then the wrong/irrationality/immorality was repeated and it becomes accepted both to a majority of the playerbase and the producers who permit their marketing departments to sell the sex of women in images.

The issue of magical bikinis would not be a problem to me personally if there were as many platemail corsets that became magical speedos for men. We could then look at the GW2 armour gallery and see as many revealing male armours as female, even if they weren’t always in the same pairs. We would laugh at this crazy magic and see that it has nothing to do with men and women but instead is about us as adults and teens.
But that is not the case. It is women who are clearly sexualised more than men here.

Note: The Medium and Heavy armours are actually fantastic for not having the chainmail bikini phenomenon (in most cases, not all). It’s really quite remarkable how well the armours are mirrored between the genders again and again. Even Norn heavy armors do not show this “body heat” argument given above.
It seems this issue is clearest and strongest in the Light armour category (which has some excellent mirroring, but still begs the question why why why? We have a costume slot that could be used for skimpy outfits for both males and females equally (because someone says it’s important to have skimpiness in the game). Have you seen the “Temple” armour??? And yet they were so good with the other two armour types!)

I’m interested in discussing ideas to help this game get better at making a living, breathing fantasy world like the devs really want it to be.

There’s a great post here about making night activities for city NPCs reflect real day/night cycles. It also talks about tweaking lighting to make night have a better appearance and effects for players.

Some things that would make this world stand out as living and breathing are:
- Making the neutral wild animals more skittish. Make them run away from foes, and scatter in a radius away from any player or other NPC.
- Make wild animals and aggressive NPCs do more than walk around a spawn spot. I love seeing cats/tigers stretch like a real cat would, but other than that they don’t seem to act or behave in any way that might make you think it has an existence beyond being a combat target. I occasionally see NPCs attack animals or each other, which is fantastic, but there’s much more to do here.
- Ensure most, if not all ally npcs are willing to revive their fallen npc comrades. It feels a bit silly to have a group of npcs stand around their fallen leader, not doing anything or without dialogue explaining why they don’t care. This seems to be an AI issue rather than a plot point. Stop fallen allies being the stinky dead elephant in the room that everyone knows about but no-one is saying or doing anything about!
- Make each profession have a great presence in the world. What’s it like being a Necromancer in Tyria? Do the Elementalists get together for any reason? Do Guardians have a guildhall or citadel where they further their cause? What are these professionals doing when they’re not on the frontline or when there’s no wars to fight? When no fighting skills are needed what makes them be their “profession” and in what ways do other Tyrians need them?

I’m not typically a dramatic Role Player when it comes to MMOs, and yet I would love my emotes to be used more.
Across games the emote system seems to me to be vastly under-used and forgotten about outside RP Servers. It’s a shame because they are flavourful and create a richer social environment.
I would suggest two possible methods of players being able to optionally have emotes trigger automatically:

1) A general schema is created for each of the three personality traits used in the game: Ferocity, Charm, and Dignity. The player auto-emotes to particular triggers in ways that are relevant to the trait they are strongest in. For example, a charming player near-always cheers when a nearby player levels up, a dignity player bows to nearly all NPCs they interact with, and ferocity players taunt a small percentage of all creatures they engage with (these are singular examples among many possibilities).
To change your auto-emote schema means shaping your dignity/charm/ferocity interactions.

2) Auto-emoting becomes a player-managed interface. Through various achievements in game players unlock specific auto-emotes which are triggered by specific actions. For example, each dynamic-event in the game awards all players with an unlocked auto-emote.
One event unlocks “Occasionally cry when selling items”, while another event unlocks “Occasionally cry when an ally falls in combat”. One unlocks “Occasionally cheer when leaving combat” and another could be “Always Laugh Out Loud when you type ‘lol’”.
Players could then manage which emotes matched the kind of character they wanted to show the world, and could pursue the auto-emotes they want from around the world.

Of course, players can opt-out of auto-emoting, and possibly also opt-out of seeing other people’s auto-emotes if they get annoyed of them (not all emotes, just those tagged as triggered by the auto-emotes).

Not sure I’ve seen an MMO forum where this good point hasn’t be made about the gender imbalance in character costumes. Mebbe the EQs and Vanguard aren’t shabby on it, but of the sexy-vs-practical/realistic spectrum I think GW has always edged on the sexy end.

I’m always in favour of seeing balance on these issues (with a similar number of options on both sides), as well as balance on these scales between genders. Having skirts/robes and pants for both males and females would probably satisfy a lot of people and help players feel better connected with their toons and Tyria overall.

It could be argued some things are just not culturally appropriate for the landscape the game is set in, and that is very true for many ideas, but the designers are willing to invite us to suspend disbelief in some of the things we do have available.
I’d respect them all the more if they examined some of the things they’ve omitted (consciously or not) and include them for the sake of fairness or balance.

I’ve played my Mesmer up to 55 without realising how awesome and valuable Sharper Images is: “Illusions inflict bleeding on critical hits”.
With this trait a pair or trio of clones can take down a trash foe. Posters here have said how fundamental this trait is to many builds, or life as a mesmer generally.

Clones do the #1 weapon skill you have when you summon them, but they do none of the damage you can do with the skill. They do, however, apply whatever condition that the number 1 skill does. The weapons that have conditions caused by #1 are:
a) Staff (randomly bleeding, burning, or vulnerability).
b) Sword (Vulnerability on the first and second of three chain skill)
c) Trident (Currently clones cause Confusion, although the skill doesn’t cause confusion, it only gives does might, swiftness, vigor to allies)

Weapons that don’t apply a condition are:
a) Scepter (though the wiki says third of three does confusion?)
b) Greatsword
c) Spear

So without Sharper images trait (15 points in on the Precision trait line), only Staff and Trident clones can hurt foes and contribute to your damage outlay before you shatter them.
Even then, the Trident is bugged to do this, so eventually only the Staff will be capable of causing condition damage from clone attacks. Sadly, the Mesmer is the only class I enjoy getting into the water with because of the Trident bug.

I’ve read a lot of comments, and experienced for myself, how tough and boring a Mesmer can be up until higher levels. It doesn’t really get good until about two Master Traits are possible.

So I wonder if clones should always be able to apply a damaging condition? Two possibilities for this are:
1) Make Sharper Images standard for all Mesmers. It makes sense that when an illusion crits, it doesn’t literally stab the foe in the heart or eye or brain, but instead crits in a way that makes sense as an illusion. A critical hit of 0 damage clearly is no crit at all.
2) Give all Mesmer #1 skills a condition that clones can apply, mostly all damage-dealing conditions hopefully, and not necessarily on every hit.

If clones become known for applying conditions, the 1-70 levelling experience for players would no longer be a laborious trek of newbies asking “Why do these clones seem so impotent?”. Players would learn faster the value of putting clones on multiple enemies, and would have a greater sense of contribution to groups and large events.

Even if a condition on every hit is too overpowered, then there are ways of balancing it that don’t require 15 points in one trait line, and everyone can still benefit from it.
Could clone conditions become standard to make it a more effective class for the whole journey?

I’m trying to find some sexy male light armour that shows some skin. Do you remember how it used to be in GW1? They showed arms, midrifts, legs, chests, etc.
Anyone seen some in GW2? Certainly point out cultural armour, though I’m hoping for Human.

[Moderator note: title edited for clarity]

Yea, I miss some of the theatrical elements of the mesmer’s background. Currently I see them more as a sword-dancer with illusions, even with staff/scepter. Because of that, and their lore, I question why mesmers weren’t put as adventurers and engineers put as scholars. Mesmers are by far mid/frontline fighters compared to engineers, and engineers are a clear profession ascribed to academia, study, theory, and (explosive) research.

Anywho, I agree with sentiments that the Mesmer is a very indirect support class, and in many ways that matter, uncontrolled. I guess it fits the chaos theme very well, but not the way I would like to play a class. I’d like more control of how and when the support happens.

I also wonder whatever happened to the inspiration third of the mesmer? It’s a little surprising we’re not capable of generating illusions that target allies and provide ongoing bonuses or simply cloning for them (doubt they should be able to target the caster). Mebbe ally-targeted illusions will be in a future update.

Zonzai.2341:

No, just no. There are qualities of masculinity and femininity that do not translate well when the gender donning them is inverted. I don’t think ANet wants guys running around in halter tops and skirts. They want people to let their children play this game.

If you’re making the appeal (secretly) due to what you see as sexism, that’s a different issue. But I would rather have all skirts and halter tops removed from the game in that case. And as much as you may hate it, that’s what would happen.

My suggestion is this: Allow for alternate versions of certain revealing armors that cover more skin. You can then select which you want to view in the game menu. That way, prudes and nudes will be able to walk hand-in-hand throughout Tyria mutilating myriads of helpless foes (which is totally fine by the way).

You seem to be suggesting that allowing people to explore different identities through a game is something that should be avoided or is harmful? If that is true, I would recommend you play the videogame Facebook, and ensure you never tell a lie, misrepresent, or obscure parts of your personality. Otherwise, we have Role Playing Games that you and others might like to play.

Also, are you suggeting that giving people the option to do this will hurt them? Or that giving the option to do this is an obligation to take it? Will YOU feel obliged to wear a skirt on your male avatar? Do you feel obliged to wear a skirt when you get up in the morning, when you have the choice to do so? I don’t think so.

You’ve hinted at worry about what people will think and feel if they saw someone doing this in game. Your suggestion says give people the option to wear covered and less-covered clothing rather than the OP’s suggestion. What is the difference here? All I can think of is that covered/less-covered options would be controversial in the 1940s/1950s. Pants or skirts would be controversial in the 1970s (excluding kilts and music videos).

It’s now 2013. Let’s make controversy about things that actually harm people, and make peace with including people from many backgrounds, societies, genders, ages, and identities.

Afterall, what would Jesus/MacGyver do?

Great thread and discussion, Eddard! It seems to show:
- What “Endgame” is can be very individual
- It’s hard for any developer to create it for everyone.
- It can be difficult to distinguish from any other stage in the game in terms of mechanics, content, and motivations.

I believe frustrations at “Endgame” can come from people wanting the game to keep giving them something they’ve already gotten. Other games, single player games, have done this before for us. For single player games, when we get what we need from them we put them down and call them “clocked”.
Some MMOs have managed to extend out the time it takes to feel “clocked” for years for us, but because we know developers add new content we have built ideas that these games can keep feeding us.
Yet they are still games and we can still reach that point of getting all we need from them before all the content has been consumed.
I’d say this relationship of developers continuing to give content is “Endgame”, and because it doesn’t satisfy a need within us (it’s already satisfied), we still have expectations of getting satisfied by this relationship and become angry at it when it doesn’t.

I’d love to see the Canthans in Tyria celebrating. Not dress the town in decorations, but setting off the occasional firework when you’re near, and a dragon mask on their door or something would be wonderfully awesome.

I really like the idea of basing a LFG tool within the context of the game. For example, the difference between “Press V to open the Vendor Window” and having to actually find the Vendor NPC, see them, and interact with them seems vital to me in terms of a living, breathing world.
I really hope the path to the solution for players finding party members is:
- based within the world, with space and visibility, not just a UI Window
- accessible, and something ppl don’t feel hindered to use
- is sustainable and becomes established as the way for people to find others.

LFG Windows are a fantastic relief in the short-term, but in the long-term they quicken the sense the game is just numbers and variables. It’s like giving people a drug to make them hungrier than they really are so they care more about consuming than what they consume.
The Dungeon Lobbies in GW1 failed the last criteria as they became vacant ghost towns as the population moved forward through the released content. They also weren’t very accessible and often required the purchasing of special uncommon items to get to the entrance.

Here’s the word on Aggro from the official Wiki:

The aggro table of a hostile NPC changes dynamically depending on a number of factors, in order of importance [citation needed] :

1. closest target to them
2. who is dealing damage
3. top damage dealers
4. who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor
5. others (see Tanking tactics below)

As a consequence, to lose aggro, the player moves to be further from the NPC than other players or allies and ceases all attacks. A typically effective Guild Wars 2 technique to lose aggro is to roll away (dodge) from the hostile NPC. This is based on the fact that the distance travelled away from the hostile NPC by rolling is greater than the distance a player could run in the same amount of time. Lastly, a jump seems slower than a run – jumping away from the NPC will not help on a flat surface.

Some foes follow their own, unique rules, however.

I’ve been struggling to figure out how to write this post. I’ve been through the high and low of GW2 and am now figuring out why I’ve lost the motivation to play. I’ve got incredible respect for the GW2 Design team for their study of the visceral and psychological experience of people who play MMORPGs, and I feel a lot of love of what has been made here.

So now I’m at mid-game, the terrible 30s to 70s. Any time I think of loading up a character I feel like I’d be dragging my feet to it. The part of the game I want to play and enjoy the most is the regular Area Maps across Tyria, and yet I stall at answering the question “Why do I care about them?”.

I find that the Area Maps have little to no concern for my character. I may have one or two personal story instances per Area, but other than that no NPC or dynamic event cares that I’ve made an Asuran Female Necromancer or a Male Sylvari Elementalist. I don’t seem to meet any NPCs who need my specific Mesmer skills to solve their particular problem, and no-one raises a question that my Charr is, of course, an Engineer.

So I am suggesting that to make me care about the Area Maps, I need to see the Area Maps care about me.
Essentially a different way of creating Personal Story. (I write it here in the Personal Story thread as it’s related to Identity and the individual journey more than anything)

There’s a few ways here that this could be done, but they all depend on the fundamental variables all players make that are crucial to their character:
1) Their Race
2) Their Class
3) Their Gender
4) (Optional) Their Crafting Professions
5) The other Background Story choices

So my suggested methods of increasing character identity in the world, and upping motivation to play the Area Map are:

1) Character-Triggered Dynamic Events:
Create new Dynamic events that trigger when a player happens along that meets criteria based on the variables above. Write story and events that would focus on the presence of, say, a player Thief. Design an event where a Charr Mesmer is needed to help spy the tricks of an imposter Mesmer. Plot a short story where a Sylvari Engineer faces some stigmatism for their chosen class.

2) Character-Specific Personal Story Instances:
Using the character variables, create Personal Story instances that are not quest points on the map. You may see the instance entry point when you are nearby, and party members may join you, but you can’t plot it on the map and run at it.

3) Sharing Your Uniquness:
When a player completes an instance/event as above, give everyone on the map a small, hour-long boon named after the player. The boon is nice but the real effect is
a) showing there are others out there participating in events that are kinda unique to them, and
b) when you participate in them you let everyone know and give them a little buff.
My thoughts were that every Area Map has, say, 20 character-triggered instances, and completing an instance grants a +1% {random 1 of 4 Attributes} buff to all players across the map, max +5% buff to any one attribute.

4) Cause Gossip and Chat:
Have NPCs talk about you based on your character. Have some show love and some show hate, and most have commentary. Many dynamic events would start like this, but often NPCs will just make chat about you.

Events like this would create new and unique experiences for each of the characters you play through an area. It would create flavour and curiosity in the Area Map other than running from Heart to Heart or Instance to Instance. You would pay attention to the environment some more, and feel more immersed and special when it interacts uniquely with you.

Other players would run by and say “What’s this that’s happening? I haven’t seen this before!” and you’d say “It seems to be because I’m a Norn Guardian. I think they’ll want me to do some fighting/defending/bashing/dancing etc etc. Help if you’d like!”.
It’s like those good old times in other MMOs where you are given a quest or mission to do that no other class or race can cause but draws a lot of attention from others and makes you feel special for making the character you’ve made.

I admit that something this important and large would take quite a lot of resources. It’s not a hotfix issue, but something that would take a GW2.6 release, or an expansion to implement. Yet I feel the issue IS important and is worth looking at the factors and options.

I’m wondering what are the merits of kiting?

My main didn’t need to kite much at all. When I switch to an alt I find I need to do it to survive.
I’m not talking about the need to reposition for advantageous footing, but the need to keep running (usually in circles) from foes to keep 1 second out of reach while hitting them with whatever can target behind you.

There’s two things that bother me about kiting:
1) We have a dodge mechanic. Why do we also need to kite to survive? They both seem to serve separate but largely overlapping purposes. Note what I said above about the difference between finding a good, responsive spot on the battlefield and constantly repositioning 1 moment away from your foe.
2) If we ever saw real fighters doing this, they’d be a laughing stock. If the enemy did this to us (to our melee players), we’d be infuriated.
There’s a lot of merit for agility & nimbleness, but we see this in the class skills and dodge/endurance.
It’s also important to choose when to fight, but kiting is not making the choice to leave combat.
What is the logic in making this necessary so often?

I opened a discussion here to get ideas for what Altoholics would like to see in this game. Here are the compiled requests from players who love to play more than one character.

Features:
- View the hero page of any alt
- View the craftable recipes page of any alt
- View the inventory (including bag types) of alts
- Optional toggle to bring up the “currently equipped” tooltip for alts that can equip items that are moused over.
- Be able to easily share account-bound items and currencies across alts, including town clothes, minipets, weapons, armour, tonics, etc. Make this possible without visiting the bank for “swap overs”.
- Be able to view (but not transact with) the bank from anywhere
- Making dyes account wide, or having the means to upgrade a dye to account-wide
- Allowing your alts to appear in your player housing instance, and interacting with their info, skills, and inventory there
- Ability to remove soulbinding from items, or upgrade items to account-wide
- Ability to access the Karma of alts (a high trade rate maybe?)
- Account-bound Gear with stats that scale with level, possibly rewarded from personal story

Improvements:
- Better incentives to play in any area for equal or higher level characters, attracting players back to all areas of the world
- Wider variety of stat combinations (likely through special runes from holiday events, etc?)
- Make Personal Stories more unique than they are, keep them unique and relevant from 1-80.
- Add more unique “factions” per race, and keep these relevant from 1-80
- Add more uniqueness to dynamic events across areas and level-strata
- Add more standard cultural armors for level <80 so each race can keep wearing culturally appropriate level all the way up
- Allow cross-cultural wearing of cultural armours (I’m sure any tailor worth their salt can remeasure and custom make their culture’s clothes for whoever turns up! Extra fee perhaps?)
- Turn tokens into currency that doesn’t take up bank space
- Streamline the character select screen for reviewing your characters easier (option for all on one screen, etc)

What’s new or great already for GW2:
- Making every area replayable regardless of level.
- No limits on number of crafting professions per character, with no waste of progress
- Biography and motivation choices

I’m not very experienced with dungeons, but when I have I have tried to run my support Nec. That’s Well of Blood, Suffering, Corruption, and Power. Lich for when everything seems to be on cooldown.
Traits are
0/
20/ 4. Cast enfeebling blood when entering ds. 9. Wells use ground targeting.
20/ 4. Wells apply protection. 2. Marks are bigger and unblockable
30/ 6. Life Transfer heals allies. 7. Wells recharge in <36 sec (-20% time) 9. AOH Leaving DS
0

With this I can:
- do substantial AODOTs (wells, life transfer, locust swarm, lich),
- remove boons (well),
- remove conditions (well and staff),
- AOH with blood,
- AOH with life transfer,
- AOH when leaving ds,
- steal life (dagger),
- stun/interrupt (horn),
- dark fields x3 w/ protection,
- light field x 1 w/ protection,
- and enter ds when endurance is empty (causing weakness and poison AOE, and gaining fury 5s).

It’s not perfect or unkillable, but it feels very versatile, active, and helpful across the battlefield.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQNBmQDbESrSPTzTjhPBIpA7nne094bHp44hB
(this build editor doesn’t seem to properly show all the effect with the icons at the bottom, but it gives a great trait summary by mousing over the traits button)

kenshinakh.3672:

FacesOfMu, there’s some points I agree with you, but there’s also a lot of things I want to point out.

To me, wearing clothes (The ones in GW2 are creative/stylish from an art perspective) is an expression of freedom. Now, you might say it is pressure from media forcing women to dress this way… but from where I am from (California), it’s not as you think. From my own family’s Asian culture, women have to cover up properly and cannot be out-going or you’ll be considered “bad”. In this case, women dressing up as men too is just another way for men to put control over women. It’s a bit like how it is for some of the cultures in the Middle East where women have to cover up their faces. I may have grown up in California, but here media influenced me to see clothes as freedom of expression, and it still battles to this day with the culture I grew up with. So I have a pretty good understanding from various point of views.

Of course, you’re arguing that the amount of “sexy” clothes should be equal for both genders. However, that actually goes into another area… Instead of arguing for less of these revealing clothes, why not argue for more clothes type for male characters? Now we start stepping into other territories such as representation of homosexual characters in games and etc. I’d say female characters have a lot more clothes variety than male characters by just looking at the images, so isn’t it in favor of what females can pick?

Now back to GW2, transmuting your gear is entirely possible, and Anet did give us more clothes that cover your body. More gear clothes are always great though, but we know those will come someday with later patches, so why not wait?

Thanks Kenshinakh for bring the discussion back to reason! Your feelings and experiences about clothes as an expression of freedom is really understandable. I’d like people to keep having that.

I think the error I have made is making my argument in the OP’s post. He/she has asked for something I don’t agree with (that is, less revealing clothes for women).

I have been arguing for exactly as you said, that there should be more, or similar types, of armours for males. My main reason for this is much like you said, greater freedom of expression for all. I’ve been fighting a lot of misunderstandings here.

My hope was quickly forgotten in the arguments about the negative depictions of women as compared to men in GW2 (which is still a valid argument) and many responders have mistaken me for wanting to take away the freedoms of women (which I don’t want to do).

Perhaps my argument can be summed very loosely like this:

• Male avatars should have the options for as much freedom of expression as female avatars have in the costumes available.
• This freedom, which is great for both genders, encourages role play, creativity, ownership, and investment in ones characters.
• Such freedom sends the message from the developers that they are conscious of and welcoming to a wide and diverse community and playerbase.
• There exists an imbalance in GW2 in the ways players can express themselves through their avatars and their gear appearance options, primarily that males have far fewer options than females to wear revealing clothes.
• This imbalance is even clearer when some outfits are quite identical between males and females but others are very needlessly different.
• Maintaining this imbalance sends an implicit message that the game’s creators sees men and women as different, and that men and women should have different rights or freedoms (these differences in rights and freedoms should be mostly irrelevant in 2013).
• Individual staff at Arena Net may not believe these things, but this is the message implicit in the options given to players.
• I want Arena Net to give players these freedoms to express themselves through male avatars as easily and in the same number of ways they can with female avatars.
• I’ve been trying to make my point in the wrong thread! :\

I’ve taken quite a break from GW2 these past few months. It seems there’s been a lot of great content come and go through the living stories, and a lot of daily events and currencies to collect over the weeks. I haven’t actually finished Guild Wars2 yet, it seems my steam for it dried up before I got there.

I look over my shoulder occasionally and see my boyfriend giving his old toons a try. I love the sweetly smooth graphics and wonderful art styles I see. It gives me an itch to jump in, dodge, dodge, dodge, then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 my way through critters.

Yet, I don’t have a class that’d be exciting to play and inventive to develop. I’m waiting for new classes being added or new ways to grow the combat abilities of my characters. I watch the GW2 news to hear about the great new branches of combat we can explore, but I don’t see any hints of anything coming up.

Will we be waiting a long time before we can become enthralled again in the ways we can play our characters?

I’ve been waiting for an MMO to implement a dungeon similar to the Ancient Cave from Lufia., an awesome RPG from 1995.

The gist is:

• There are nearly 100 small levels, all randomly generated so every time you enter it is never the same. You can travel down into the dungeon but not back up.
• Starting the dungeon resets everyone’s characters down to level 1. You have no traits, no unlocked skills, and only starter gear (or no gear for more hardcore).
• Experience is accelerated so you gain nearly 1 character level per level of the dungeon. Creatures are of the same level, but of course are randomly picked from all the creatures in the game. You can run ahead in the dungeon and skip creatures, but you’ll lose out on valuable experience.
• Gear drops from creatures and chests. There is some awesome gear to be found in the depths.
• You can’t take anything back out of the dungeon except gear of a certain quality or category. This gear you can actually bring into the dungeon with you on future runs so that you don’t start from scratch (although in this game that might increase the incidence of “LFG, must have full gear set”. Not too different with the way fractals will become perhaps).
• Any time the party wipes they get an instant ejection from the dungeon.

The mechanics of this means that:

• You get to experience group teamwork and combat from character level 1 through to x.
• You have to work with what you’ve got, gear-wise and skills-wise. You don’t know what situations you are going to come across, so resilience as well as team synergy is very important.
• All gear becomes valuable to the team as you are rapidly trying to upgrade what you’ve got, even with whites. Success means players sharing, trading, and negotiating gear (the trash gear) so everyone gets stronger.
• It’s a dungeon of survival, where all the big and small decisions count.

The foibles of an idea like this for GW2 are that:

• Something like this might not work until trait builds can be saved. That way there can be a UI that helps you pre-plot your trait points and skill point use so that players wouldn’t get halted by having to spec.
• I also have my doubts about the special gear category for a dungeon like this. It’d be incredibly controversial and would have very strange social and economic effects. It’d almost need to be account bound only so that you acquire what you have first hand rather than from the market, and so there’s no peer pressure to give this gear you can’t use to teammates.

Knowing that earth is divided into multiple time-zones, I wonder the merit of giving every server a dedicated time in which annual and once-off events will start.

For example, if Anvil Rock is decided to always have events start at 9am PST, and each Server down the list starts 1 hour later, then players can shift to the servers that they think would suit their lifestyle and schedules.
Doing this won’t solve the problems for everyone or prevent all obstacles for people participating in events, but when it comes to Server selection players would have more information guiding them. This decision may also help players find more people in similar time zones playing at roughly the same time.

Of course it’s hard for Anet to decide how every event in the future will be released, but allowing players better opportunities to be on the right server ahead of time might increase participation quite a lot.

Even if there are no player responses, the devs are still reading your posts.

Anywho, I struggled to read wall’o’text. Any chance you could revise it into something easier to read? You’ve done great with the paragraphs. There’s some more possibilities here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/A-Suggestion-On-How-To-make-Suggestions

I saw a forum somewhere where you could click a link at the top of the page that takes you straight to the next dev post. Then at the dev post there was a forwards/backwards button for dev posts (for when there’s more than one in the thread).
I don’t use the dev tracker much because it seems mostly ticket based. Might be nice to have a dev tracker per forum group?

I love that elementalists can pick up a boulder and cast meteor with it. It’s a great synergy between class and context.

I wonder why there are not more options like these for the other professions? I play a scholar main and am disappointed I can’t do more with boulders and sticks and broken bottles.

What stops there being a profession-specific option for most of the environmental weapons? (not all, that may not make sense). I remember this improvisation being advertised in the demo videos as something special about these weapons.

Lane.3410:

FacesOfMu.3561:

Yes, women do dress the same as men in real life, it has become very acceptable in western cultures since about the 70s.

Not 100% of the time. I see more skirts and dresses at the office than I do pantsuits and the women dress like that by choice. I’m fairly certain if a dress code were implemented that said all women must wear suits the same as men that they wouldn’t be too happy about it. Even in that scenario the men would still opt for the usual greys/blues/blacks while the women would opt for colors men would rarely wear, like pastels. So, no, the genders are not and will never be the same.

What you seem to be advocating is uniformity among the sexes and I don’t believe either gender would find that appealing.

I agree that women still wear skirts and dresses. You haven’t weakened the point by pointing that out. Men and women have some different genitals, some different amounts of hormones, and may see different doctors. No social construct needs further differentiation, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO WHAT CLOTHES ARE MADE AVAILABLE FOR MEN AND WOMEN TO WEAR.

I am advocating for the ability and choice for both genders to wear what they want, and wear equally skimpy clothing amongst their choices, and have an equal number of choices across the genders.

When female avatars have a disproportionate amount of skimpy clothing, and an outfit on a male becomes a skimpy version for the female, then this is a sexist and over-sexualising depiction of women.

Making it:
a) equal across the genders
b) same number of options
c) each outfit showing the same amount of skin for either males or females
then the issue of sexism is diminished.

Are you arguing for this to be refused?
Are you arguing against equality?
Are you arguing against choice?

There’s another thread in the suggestions forums requesting that male and female avatars be able to wear any outfit regardless of gender so that the choice is possible.
Here I am advocating for the same frequency and degree of covering/uncovering across the genders (whether that’s mini-skirts and short shorts, bikinis and loincloths).

I’m really hoping with Player Houses/Guildhalls that if they have to go instanced, that it appears as little instanced as possible. Two main things come to mind for this:

1) Ensure Map chat for the city/zone is still accessible from within the instance

2) Make it so that when you are in the instance you can still see the true zone outside. This means if you are in your instance and any other player runs by the building outside, you can see them do this. Essentially standing in your instance should appear (from the inside) no different to not standing in an instance.

3) Find ways to make the inside of homes/guildhalls truly visible from outside the instance (including players, trophies, etc), eg:
a) Load the inside for for owners/members only so that everyone can see inside their own instance from the city zone. It’d make running up to your home a personal “drawing back the curtain”.
b) Showcase player’s buildings for others to see from the outside. Eg, a random player/guild’s building is selected daily or hourly to be able to be seen from outside the instance; allow players to spend gems to make their building a showcase for a hour/day/week; make it a reward for player/guild accomplishments. This would be only through an opt-in privacy setting for the building.

This suggestion is made in the view that if the Devs go ahead with the lesser of all evils, then I hope they still try to reduce the visible appearance of it.

To the OP: I read Whiteside’s “better tying it into the overall sense of player progression within Guild Wars 2” to mean the way in which players consume content. This is as much to do with what there is to consume as to what players want and expect to consume.

I personally don’t like seeing players as “Pac Men/Women” just mindlessly eating what the devs give us (these forums prove to an extent that we don’t), but I feel Whiteside was getting at the idea of better matching the game to how we hope or want to move forward through it, whether it’s PvE, PvP, WvW, Guilding, Crafting, etc etc.

Halanna.3927:

Oh. My. God.

You understand the characters in the game aren’t actual women right? They are pixels on a screen in a fictional game that you have chosen to play.

To you and all the posters who argue “It’s just media”, I hope you will become more aware of the influence of media, images, non-verbal communication, and expectations of any group or sub-group. It affects you and me.
I already linked the video at http://www.missrepresentation.org/ (skip the pledge thing, see the video, or see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5pM1fW6hNs).
I expect you already understand what a Stereotype is and how it can harm a group.

Halanna.3927:

Where on earth do you live where the women are being told they are only worth something if they buy the most expensive clothes, perfume etc. and have to be sexually alluring to be successful?

That is just plain stupid and insulting to all the women who work and strive every day in their chosen profession, the glass ceiling having been shattered long ago.

I, personally, live in a Western Culture (Australia) where these messages, though not explicitly saying “women are being told they are only worth something if they buy the most expensive clothes, perfume etc. and have to be sexually alluring to be successful!”, are implicitly and non-verbally communicating at very concerning levels.
That you say the glass ceiling wkittentered long ago is incorrect. The glass ceiling exists and men currently have more power and money than women. It’s not right, it doesn’t seem logical, there’s plenty of positive media messages saying women are as capable as men, but the glass ceiling still exists and still needs to be fought. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Average_earnings_of_workers_by_education_and_sex_-_2006.png

Halanna.3927:

I am a woman. I am a female gamer. I take huge exception to the pedestal you’ve built for yourself. Get down. We can take care of ourselves. Are you stuck in the 18th century?

It doesn’t take being a child to argue for children’s rights, it doesn’t take being an animal to fight for animal rights, it doesn’t take being LGBT to fight for LGBT rights, and it doesn’t take being a woman to fight for women’s rights. All these groups can fight for themselves, and as a white man I will be there fighting, too.

Halanna.3927:

I want more skimpy armor! I want my character to look nice and pretty. I don’t want her trussed up like a nun. I don’t want her looking like she lives in an igloo. (not that there’s anything wrong with living in an igloo).

Give me dresses, show skin, make it sexy, pretty and lots of areas to dye different colors so we can be creative.

Give us all the S’s. Skimpy, Sexy, Sassy, Skitteny, Snazzy, Stylish, Saucy, Spunky.

But do not give us prudish.

Yes!! And give it to me, too!

Firelysm.4967:

If your country culture doesn’t appropriate this kind of style don’t wear it, simple as that, i like it because i like next female characters, and i don’t find anything wrong with their clothing.

See above re: choice for all, balance between genders.

Ross Biddle.2367:

As my friend say: GW2 has largely a male populated community.

So what will change that? How will we attract more players from other demographics? There’s a study here that posits an 80/20 split. What can we ask the devs, the market, the community to do to bring that to 50/50? How can ArenaNet sell GW2 to all the male players it gets, and get more sales from females?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games
http://www.girlgamer.com/
http://female-gamer.com/
http://www.igda.org/women/

Not only that, but how can we do this in a way that strengthens the playerbase, and respects the integrity and capabilities of women:
http://www.thefrisky.com/2012-08-15/girl-gamer-dont-patronize-me-with-your-video-games-girlfriend-mode/

Firelysm.4967:

FacesOfMu.3561:

You’ve got a great point to make. There’s also a nicer way of saying it that doesn’t refer to women who wear such clothes as what you’ve said in your topic title.

The issue of clothing options per gender is a pretty big discussion point across the forums here. The imbalance between males and females needs to be corrected, and this game has the potential to be a leader in this area.

There’s an amazing video I saw last night that was so well made and spoken:
http://youtu.be/j68VtAJWQtA

Also a great blogger I like to follow named Anita Sarkeesian will be doing a project on women in video games. Her awesome blogs are at https://www.youtube.com/user/feministfrequency

Why are accessories and lipstick less sexist than a sexy dress? Both are media products and both aren’t needed but people still use them.

Maybe accessories and lipstick are sexist? Or maybe it is sexist to say men can’t wear and use them, or to treat men who do differently.

Firelysm.4967:

… i don’t giva a ’’F’’, wear what u want. Be what u want.. just stop beeing a ’’D’’K’’

I’ve never seen apathy appear so active and emotional! You do seem to give a “F” because you post here.
I’m motivated to fight a social injustice. I’m using clear arguments, respectful language, and trying to name and solve a problem. I don’t think there’s anything "D"K" about that.

This is now just going around in circles with the same issues being brought up and addressed. Is there a new argument to be discussed?

I love it, it’d make the game incredibly inclusive!
So many people would flock here to be a part of it, so many blogs and reporters would make mention of it.
So many people would resist under some fear that they will be forced to wear a dress or sleep with the same gender. They will throw the baby out with the bathwater by leaving, and they will be wrong.

So many times in the future of MMOs this game would be referred to as the first major MMO to take equality and inclusiveness seriously. I want to acknowledge the amazing step they took in creating the Sylvari race who are pansexual, and I think I remember a Charr who is lesbian. I will be waiting to see evidence of variation in sexualities for humans, too (so it’s not just the “other”).
SWTOR will go down in history for their efforts, but they are yet to fully implement their inclusiveness across the whole game (rather than an expansion). Guild Wars 2 is still young and there’s a lot of improvements that people are calling for to the appearance systems and interface, so plenty of opportunity (sooner rather than later) to implement this and get it accepted as ok and non-threatening.