Guild Wars 2

Riot.5210:

I would love to be able to have Caithe’s face – however, we would face the same issue of everyone looking alike then as well. I guarantee that the majority of people would switch in an instant, given the chance.

More hairstyles would be fine, even more good-looking faces (Though that’s up ot personal preference), but I wouldn’t want Caithe’s face made available, for obvious reasons. We can already have the same hair and armor and I think that characters like Caithe should keep at least some amount of uniqueness.

Cinder.4865:

Yes, that’s the problem: I don’t want to dye the cultural armour the same colours as my Sylvari in order to blend it in and make it look good. You shouldn’t have to.

Well, in that case you’re bound to work with kinda big color scheme (At least 4-5 colors for your Sylvari + at least another 3 colors for armor) which makes it harder to look well together.

But armor dyed in your Sylvari’s colors doesn’t necessarily have to blend in. Depends on which color(s) you choose as dominant (and of course on the colors of your Sylvari)

I’m using only my Sylvari’s colors and don’t think it looks too bad (could use a darker shade of purple though)

I never found dying of Sylvari armor a problem. The easiest way is to use the colors you used for your Sylvari during creation (skin, eyes, luminescence, hair) and their similar shades. Unles you even there picked colors that clash it should work just fine with the basic armor color.
Though I gotta admit it probably gets more complicated with T2 and T3 sets, T1 Heavy skin I’m still using is relatively clearly divided into coloring sections making it easy to decide where use which color.
A word of advice (worked at least for T1 heavy), use your bioluminescence color for outlines, they tend to glow too.

Shadow Phoenixz.6534:

Just recently i have discovered emotes…..ikr. Anyways i tryee out the /dance command and i laughed my head of! It is so riduculus, is it a dance anet made or is it real!! If its real tell me what its called….riduculus

Nah, I wouldn’t say that, maybe sligthly out of rythm, but it looks great, at least my Female Sylvari does + I love how she’s smiling while dancing, just super cute.
But gotta admit it looks kinda awkward on Male Sylvari.

PS: Lat time I checked it was “ridiculous” not “riduculus”. O:)

Kael.8960:

<snip>… ALSO, there is a dye-sorting option that allows for you to sort your dyes by the texture, iirc.

Funny, didn’t notice that, could have been useful.

thehunt.9315:

… I’ve found the Tier 1 Cloth for my character to be the hardest but the Tier 2 and Tier 3 have much more wiggle room, because the Gold Stems from my body colour aren’t as pronounced so I was limited what worked well (Dark Greens, Oranges, Reds).

Other than that, I really really like them. Formis you could probably use next to all the Midnight ____ dyes.

I looked through the other Tiers and most of them seemed kinda chaotic when it comes to distinction of the individual coloring parts. So I see why people would think they are hard to dye properly.

As for the Heavy Tier 1, which I still like the best, I think could use some darker shade of red and violet/purple for leggings and lighter ones for pauldrons.

PS: You can edit posts, and thanks.

Sentience, sapience, self-awareness, consciousness, all commonly used under this similar meaning.
But by all means, as long as you know what I mean be a pedant if it suits you,.

You know, it’s not really neccessary to create a new thread everytime you decide to make fun of Sylvari for being plants, regardless of how seriously you mean it. Just search for and use the ones already existing.

Sialor.7396:

I’m not sure you understand what cannibalism means – it is eating one’s own species. Not eating something that is sentient.

I’m well aware that cannibalism means just that.
However I’m not sure if there’s any expression for eating sentient beings in general and not just humans. Since we are so far the only ones considered sentient (except some eastern cultures who consider animals as sentient beings too) there hasn’t been need for any (until we come across some alien civilization).
So I just extended/modified the meaning of cannibalism a bit for this case.

Regardless of the Nightmare Court’s motivation, what they try to accomplish is essentialy the moral opposite of what the Tree presents to the Sylvari (basically, acceptance and tolerance) and they do it forcefully unlike the Pale Tree who doesn’t force her children to do anything, only teaches and tells them what she believes is right. They still have free will, the Soundless being the proof of that.
And also regardless of their motivation, I don’t believe the end justifies the means.

Sialor.7396:

Formis Sage.2638:

It could be considered vegetarian from other races’ point of view, but generally it could just be considered as cannibalism.

Those two aren’t mutually exclusive.

In this case they aren’t, in real life I have yet to see sentient plant complaining about it being eaten.
And of course, them not being mutually exclusive does not make it any better.

That’s kinda relative.
It could be considered vegetarian from other races’ point of view, but generally it could just be considered as cannibalism.
Plus you gotta count murder since it’s a sentient species you’re talking about (Depending of course on which Sylvari you’d decided to kill and under what circumstances). :P

I disagree that the player doesn’t have any real horrible experiences while carrying the sword. The damage of mobs during the final Quest at 30lvl was traumatic, maybe not to me specificaly, but definitely to my items and money. :P
Of course depending on which Order you chose.

To be honest, I think humans are a bit oversued. Probably the very most overused thing in any and every kind of art, games included. Same goes for their locations, they just seem too… Well, human.
But Divinity’s Reach is at least epic and unlike Stormwind or Dalaran, in one very well-known game, it is an actual city.
The story doesn’t seem bad though, still have my thief ready and waiting. If possible though I’ll probably withdraw from most of my characters except my main to wait and see if the story interaction gets improved.

1)Well, first I want to adress the infamous problem with waypoint fees.

In the light of some complaints I saw here, about not being able to help friends on lower levels because it simply wasn’t worth it to use waypoint to the lower location for that price, I suggest to base the prices of Waypoints on the level range of the location.
Either set stable prices for each location based on its level range, or keep the scaling as it is now based on player’s level but stop it at each location’s maximal level.
That way for example 70lvl teleporting to starting location would be paying price 15lvl would pay from that distance.
As for cities, I suggest either make them free or set minimal lvl prices, people would be exploiting starting location prices anyway.

2) Next thing would be the personal story.

Like I said in my post in the Story Forum my main concern are the cutscenes and dialogues which then further affect other aspects of the personal storyline. Voice acting aside, my issue is with the inability to affect how my character reacts to other characters’ statements and opinions and how s/he talks.

At first I was hoping, and now I’m suggesting it for future patches or content, that the option to choose personality would at least affect what my characters say and how they say it to some degree, and also affect the voice my characters have. Feroucious characters should sound more brash while charming ones should really sound charming, captivating, etc. I feel the personality options were terribly underused especially in the story and for the most part didn’t make any difference whatsoever. Nevertheless that would still make my characters act the same way everytime depending on my chosen personality even if it would make them more unique.

Next thing to affect cutscenes would of course be simple dialoge options that could affect exactly what course of action would be taken or what our characters think about it, if they agree or not. Some of the current options we age given to determine the next quest could be changed so that we are offered one or two options and we can either agree with one of them or suggest one course of action for ourselves based on our chosen personality, or multiple options with different ways to suggest it and success determined by our personality level.
Other options could be reactions to characters themselves, their statements, opinions, all depends on the subject of the actual conversation. The options could be in “simple” positive/neutral/negative system slightly different for each personality but with basically the same meaning. Based on how often we choose which option for each character their relation to us could change in similar positive/neutral/negative system. That way the game would provide us with feedback to our actions.
I’d add this kind of dialogues not only to cutscenes but written conversations as well, only don’t make such conversations repeatable, wouldn’t make any sense. Speaking of which, I would suggest also making all personality options unrepeatable since some of them are and it does’t make much sense either to say something and 5 seconds later change our mind (and so on for 5 minutes).

Now I think I got tangled in my own thoughts enough so it’s time to end it here.

I agree that pure role-playing offers all this, however there is one thing it misses in video games and that is world’s or game’s reaction. It’s only in your head and your friends’ heads. Possibly custom emotes and what you write among each other as dialogues, but the game doesn’t provide you with any kind of feedback to this, nothing changes.
In GW2 you can incorporate dynamic events in it but even then you are limited within boundaries of said event.
I don’t like RPing much in games because of that element missing.

Anyway, since ANet decided to present us with implemented storyline in the first place I think it would be nice to help them improve it.

I agree completely. It’s the same problem like in Mass Effect 3 actually, where many if not most dialogues were mostly pre-set and you got to choose what to say once or at best twice per dialogue. Here your dialogue is pre-set completely even if you don’t agree with what comes out of you character’s mouth.

Generally, the cutscenes does the exact opposite of what RPG is supposed to do. I’m supposed to feel invested in what my character is doing like I’d be doing it myself. I have control (within boundaries of pre-set options the game offers) in written dialogues, but lose it comletely in the cutscenes. That not only makes my feel less invested in the story but also detaches my from the character, making it someone else’s story, not mine because the character does not act like me or like I want him/her to.

So yeah, there were many occasions during which I had to facepalm at the way my character is acting.

Now, I know that everyone is different so it’s impossible to create perfect match for every single player, but to limited degree it can still be achieved. That however belongs to the Suggestion forum so I’m posting it there.

PS: I think the link won’t properly because of how the topic opens, but whatever, it’s not like anyone’s gonna click on it anyway.

MotionBlue.9687:

It’d be nice if they gave it back to us, there is little visible difference between Sylvari and Human’s once they’re enclosed in armour.

Well, the same technically goes to Norn and human females if you make tall human or small Norn.
And all you have to do to distiquish Sylvari and humans at first glance is to either not display helmet or use Cultural Armor.
The pollen would nevertheless be nice (re-)addition.

Lorati.7361:

Yes, yes it would be. We’re 20% cooler than bronies here, we don’t make fun of disabled people.

No one is 20% or more cooler than Rainbow Dash. :P
And the name isn’t supposed to make fun of anyone, that’s what most people seem not to understand, in fact the character is one of the most popular in the fandom (in a good way).

Anyway, I’m getting off-topic so I’ll cut it here.

So, here’s my Cayline.

Red Jay.2516:

True. However, why should they have pollen then?

You could say the same about genitals and reproductive organs in general, primary and secondary sex characteristics both unnecessary in their case.

Though I doubt they even have the primary ones since they can’t reproduce like we do, or they have some equivalent but it’s naturally sterile. However there’s no reason to create it in the first place then.

Technically, but their gender doesn’t really have much meaning for them and neither serves any specific purpose because they’re all born from the Pale Tree and haven’t been able to reproduce otherwise. So I think it doesn’t matter much.

So no, in this case I don’t find it disturbing.

Illushia.3721:

In my opinion it’s entirely possible that they might even get ‘old’ and then ‘die’, going to sleep, and then ‘bloom’ again, refreshed and renewed, like perennial trees/flowers do.

I’d love seeing that.

That, would be awesome. Though I wonder how exactly that would look on them since they’re combination of both plants and trees.

imagines and considers possibilities

It was even stated somewhere directly that they have sap instead of blood, wasn’t it? No need to believe when it’s been confirmed.

Anyway, speaking of immortality, I wonder if we’ll ever find out how old can Sylvari naturally get of if it’ll remain a mystery. Even if the expansions will span across several years it’s unlikely that any Sylvari are going to die of old age unless they have very short life spans.

Illushia.3721:

Just doing a quick look of a few links I found a quote from Ree that speaks about it in some part:

snip

I’m still looking for the pitcher plant bit but I saw it somewhere.

It also just makes sense, because pitcher plants are omnivorous plants and there’s a ready-made solution for them having a stomach.

Interesting that quote.
And agreed, it would make sense to utilize, and if need be modify, already existing and working solution than to devise completely new way.

Furby.4761:

Tier 3 Heavy, honestly it’s probably because I don’t have a large collection of dyes but unlike other armours the Sylvari stuff tends to merge together more, rather than have solid defined lines.

Also some colours look strange on the leafy/wood textures so I’ve stuck with a fairly boring iron/blood scheme, trying to do something more exciting with it but there are so many dyes to get =/.

Well, like I said I saw ony previews of other Sylvari armors except for Tier 1 Heavy. I I think it has well defined outlines and two blending colors.
Right now I’m using two starter shades of red and purple and one common shade of yellow and I think it looks decent (visibility in this picture it terrible though, distorts the colors). Only the leggings are bit too light and shoulders go a bit into brown.

Anyway, considering your dark skin tone… What color do you have for hair, eyes and luminiscence?

Hilarious.
I just don’t know what went wrong.

Illushia.3721:

Their stomachs are like pitcher plants. Go look them up. It’s quite interesting.

Not sure where you found this piece of information, but I can’t seem to find it.
Though it’t interesting to imagine.

I haven’t tried the racial elite skills yet, saving up for the Tome of Courage.
I’ve been using the Healing Seed quite a lot tsince it’s the only AoE heal I have to help others a bit as well as myself, even if it’s sometimes quickly destroyed because the mobs are almost immediately drawn to kill it.
Also’d been using the Seed Turret for some time, especially because it draws mobs to attack it which sometimes saved my life. It’s useful at least for that since it does minimal damage.

Illushia.3721:

No, they do have to eat. It’s been mentioned that sunlight acts sort of like a cup of coffee to them, but they do still need to eat actual food.

Well, I guess it makes sesne. Unlike ordinary flowers Sylvari aren’t rooted in the earth to gain nutrients so they must receive energy from external source. Plus the ability to actively move, think and perform various other conscious and subconscious tasks like any other animal requires much more energy than usualy flowers require.

Furby.4761:

Christ yes, spent an hour today trying to dye it properly, was hard work, hopefully when I actually get some decent dyes it will be a bit easier.

Just to clariy, what kind of armor we’re talking about specifically? The only one I’ve had chance to dye so far is Tier 1 Heavy armor and I didn’t have the slightest trouble.
Truth be told I luckily had the dyes I needed even if perhaps not the perfect shade of them, but it really can’t be that bad, can it?

Zesbeer.8365:

I hated it, and hope it never comes back I would rather have us glow all day then have the sparkles come back.

I say let us glow all day + add the pollen. That’d be twice as awesome.

Yashimata.2986:

Speaking of looks, it’s incredibly hard to dye and not look ridiculous. Even slight changes in hue between, say, browns or greens, can have a huge impact. And of course they use your skin colour on parts of it, so it makes it even harder.

Just gotta find the right colors to mix, then it’s just the question of which color put where. The easiest way is to just take inspiraton from the colors you used for your Sylvari. The hair, the eyes, the luminiscence, the skin tone.
I’ve got for example red hair, with yellow/orange eyes and luminiscence, and beige skin going into purple.
So my armor is red with purple undertone and yellow outlines.
It’s as simple as that.

For me the greatest problem was that Sylvari generally don’t use surnames, and creating original one-word name that doesn’t use the typical fantasy process of combining two words can get kinda challenging .
But I didn’t really think about it, as my usually used Cayline sounded fine to me as Sylvari name, only it was already taken so I was forced to use a surname.

So I ended up with Cayline Myrinael. There wasn’t any complicated thought process behind it, just to find something suitable for the first name.

Considering the cultural armor is only Rare (at least I think), I think they expect people to transmute it. For me it’s the awesome skin that matters anyway.

I think it’s decent. It’s no Elder Scrolls, but still way way way better than WoW.
Plus, except adding things like new hairstyles and tattoos, I don’t think there’s much to improve. They could of course make Face Details editing more thorough, with more options, why not, but I’d rather not expand the existing ones.

For simple reason, now, even if you try really hard and go for all the extreme options your character still looks decent. If they expanded the scale too much, people would be able to create unspeakable monstrosities.

I don’t want to take people away their creativity, but some of the things you could create in Oblivion, or Aion… shudder

Perhaps, but like I said, I didn’t create that pretty face/head just to hide it behind some helmet. I think the physical part of character creation would kinda lost its meaning if I did.

I think that every race lacks variety in different parts of character creation, so it’s basically balanced. Sylvari stole entire light spectrum of colors for themselves so they lack somewhere else.
And I think ANet is possibly going expand these options in expansion packs if people will really want them.

Now that you mentioned eating other plants and cannibalism.
For Sylvari to be our equivalent of vegetarian, does s/he have to eat only meat?

Speaking of which, was anywhere mentioned if Sylvari have to eat, or is some water and sunlight enough for them to exist?

TrollinForNoobs.6831:

I have a lvl 80 Sylvari Warrior and i gotta say that Tier 1 – 3 look amazing! Some of the best looking armor by far imo.

Agreed, and they are bacially unique in the entire game as all other races use ordinary clothing/armor.
The only thing I don’t like is the helmet for Tier 3 Heavy armor. But that doesn’t matter much since I don’t dispay helmets anyway, I didn’t spend an hour creating that cute face just to hide it behind helmet.

I never noticed this in beta, but I’m genuinely interested.
Bioluminiscence is awesome and all, but it’s not enough now that I know this.

Well, originaly after the first glance at races in GW2 I was set to play as Asura because they simply looked cute. Plus at that time Sylvari still looked more like coloful humans than plants so first glance didn’t tell much.
Then I got a good look at some lore and stuff, found out Asurans are supposed to be kinda arrogant race which weakened my interest a bit and when I found out Sylvari are supposed to be actual plants I was hooked.
I mean, all the other races, Asurans included, were already used in many games in one form or another even if with different names, but I don’t remember playing for a plant anywhere so I was lamost 100% sure my first character would be Sylvari.

After their modification I was sure at 110%. I liked their looks, their philosophy, their curiosity and naivety, and I just could wait to create my cute Sylvari girl.

I don’t like the look of heavy armor in general, at least the mostly low level skins, like you said it looks just too plain.
As for it looking weird on Sylvari… To be honest I’d probably feel weird with any kind of armor or clothing, especially while running through Sylvari locations where every other Sylvari is in plant clothing/armor.

If it was just up to me I’d put in special plant starter armor for Sylvari, but Anet would then have to do the same thing for other races too so some of the players don’t think that Sylvari are getting special attention. It’s silly but I know some people would be able to get offended by this.

Nevertheless once we reach 35lvl there’s no need to wear ordinary armor ever again as even the Tier 1 Cultural sets look amazing.

So I’ve go several glitches this time.
First, in Sparkfly Fen, one flickering/disappearing texture.
Screen 01
And one low-res textured rock.
Screen 02
Screen 03

And then there’s glitch with female Sylvari skin while wearing Tier 1 Heavy Cultural armor leggings (Arborist Leggings)
It appears to be visible only in shadow, under direct light the reflection looks fine.
Didn’t/Couldn’t try it with other Tiers or kinds of Sylvari armor nor could I try male Sylvari version so I have no idea if it’s just this one item’s skin or more of them.
Screen 04

This isn’t really terrain disappearing, but I there’s a rock not displaying properly and/or missing entirely from certain angles in Sparkly Fen Northeast.
Screen01
Screen02
Screen03

Noctura.3908:

I usually avoid forums because I am somewhat of a book writer and not many people want to read a lot lol… but I wanted to say something about this. :P

Cool Post

hide spoiler

The entire game feels like end game to my friends and I. What ruins the game for a lot of people, in my opinion, is rushing to 80 and then having nothing to do. We started playing around Sep 2nd, and we have been in the norn area since starting. We decided to do all of our home cities, one by one, in order to learn, and see what there is to know about the fascinating worlds we come from.

I can honestly admit I have not had this much fun in a video game since I was a kid, and truly feel this is the game I have been waiting for. I feel the need to take it insanely slow, and I imagine I will still be in the starting areas when I hit 40 lol. I want to see all the events, meet the npcs, and drink ale with friends every night while laughing and talking about the events of the day.

I guess what I am trying to explain is that… if you order this high quality, amazing meal from a great chef, and then you walk into the kitchen 10 minutes later and you want to see the finished product, you aren’t going to be happy with it yet. Enjoy the anticipation of what is to come, savor it, let your imagination go wild with all the flavors and how wonderful of an experience it will be. Don’t let the fact that you can’t have the cake and eat it too stop you from the experience of enjoying it. It’s meant to be savored and taken slow.

I actually think end game could be something else besides grinding like everything else. I would enjoy making up an endgame where I wander the world and help people I see that are in trouble, and I am happy when I get a “thank you” and that is a nice quest reward for me. ^^ It makes things unpredictable, and you never know when you will be in the chilly icelands and see a fellow flower being beat up by a bunch of trolls. Rush in to save them and almost die yourself!! \>o</ Nyaah!!! If they say thanks then it makes me smile.
(To the flower I saved, whoever you were, thank you for the quest. My reward was an unidentified dye and your thanks. <3)

Slow down and look around at the world. It’s beautiful! I started a photo album, and have been having so much fun. I can’t wait to see what they have in store for this game, and I will patiently wait to see it, while I slowly crawl through this content with my friends.

Anyway that’s my opinion. Just have fun getting to 80. There is no carrot on a stick. There are carrots everywhere. O_O Muahahaha!

Have fun, my fellow GuildWarriors. ^-/

When quoting long posts spoiler tag is your friend, even though this post deserves to be seen.

As for the actual post I generaly agree. But I don’t like either of the extremes. “Carrot on a stick” like the usual MMOs are about long hours of boring grind to get to the carrot and even when I get to the supposed carrot I find out it’s a boring one because I prefer story-based carrots over raids, gear and PvP. “Carrots everywhere” means there is no motivation, no goal, no drive and soon I’m gonna get bored (or get carrot overdose).

Like I said, I’m the type of player that likes (and prefers) story-based RPGs, so GW2 presented interesting opportunity as it takes both of these extremes and combines them. I like to look at it as a path following pieces of a huge crunchy carrot (the main storyline) lined with all kinds of smaller carrots along the way (all the other stuff like vistas and events).
There is the drive forward, but instead of the carrot waiting at the end of the way, I get to eat it gradually while enjoying the small carrots when feeling like it, the big carrot is there, waiting to motivate me further when I get back from my detour.

Now I see carrots everywhere, so many carrots… O.o

Rock.7324:

Go hug a tree or something

Hugging trees? Hmmm… Why not, but it’s not really comfy, besides I’d have to get up from this chair and go find some tree. Nah I’d rather hug my cute, sentient plant in GW2 with cool-looking cultural armor, even if it cost me all my precious moneys.

Yes, the “s” was intended.

As for the prices, the seem a bit steep, but that’s the price for awesomeness.

Well, it can get expensive and it does look nice, but I think it also depends on the race you play as.
Probably makes the biggest difference and is most worth for Sylvari since I haven’t encountered (yet) any other way of aquiring their natural plant armor which is, in my opinion, the most distinctive piece of “clothing” in game. No one else can wear cool-looking protective plants.