Guild Wars 2

I’ll re-post one here that I put in its own thread a few months ago.

Why is Orr the kinkiest place in Tyria?
…
Because it’s fifty shades of grey.

Sweet. Now, once I make a revenant, I can finally live the dream I’ve had since the first Guild Wars of playing a Canthan monk that fights with a staff (as in, actually FIGHTS, not hurls blobs of light). I was going to attempt it using the ancestral outfit, but this is even better.

Same here. The elixer gun and flamethrower packs, in particular, were great “steampunk” style packs, of which there aren’t nearly enough, that could potentially go well with a number of different outfits and armor sets. Every since the release of the mad scientist outfit, I’ve been experimenting with a sort of “dieselpunk rifleman” thing on my warrior, and several of these would be perfect.

I’m glad the backpack on my engineer no longer nonsensically changes every time I swap out a kit. That said, however, I really liked the appearance of some of the kit backpacks, and it seems a shame for them to go to waste. Would it be possible to get them as backpack skins that anyone could use? Maybe as inexpensive laurel purchases or something? The laurel merchant needs more good skins anyway, and there’s kind of a shortage of good “tech” backpacks that aren’t super rare as well.

I have to agree with the poster who said they wish the fan were a dagger skin. I think it makes sense as a focus, I just wish a dagger option were available. Thief + shadow outfit + sword/fan = Yeeeesssssssssss……

If they’re continuing to make outfits rather than armor sets, it’s because they sell. If armor skins sold better than outfits, they’d make those. If I had to take an educated guess at a major reason outfits sell better, I’d probably hazard that it’s because you don’t have to pay every time you want to put a different one on. Now, let’s see, how could we make armor skin sets sell just as well, if not better, than outfits…?

mtpelion.4562:

edgarallanpwn.8739:

That’s exactly my through process.

Sadly, too many people who are against change want to use subpar arguments such as “it used to be worse” or “it’s ok now”, all which hold no validity as to why it cannot be improved now.

No one is opposed to getting more transmutes. The realistic people are pointing out that any such unlimited use item WILL come with some kind of offset to make up for the lost revenue.

You can’t go to McDonald’s and demand free pickles, likewise you can’t go to ArenaNet and demand free transmutes.

This is what people are failing to understand. There would be no lost revenue. Revenue would increase, because many people who weren’t buying skins before would begin to do so. Introduce a way to save multiple skin sets that you can switch between, and charge people for additional skin set “slots”, and you’ve got a winner. A system like that would increase both player enjoyment and the amount of money they’d bring in from appearance-based items and services.

Charging people more often does not automatically lead to more money. That way of thinking is misguided and simplistic. Offer more value for money (an expanding selection of appearance options that have unlimited uses, and the option to pay to increase the number of appearance sets you can have saved at once) and you will win hearts and wallets. Telling someone to “crack open the wallet” every time they want to put on a new pair of pants just means they’ll go somewhere else to buy pants. I may play GW2, but currently, I get my virtual clothing fix in LoTRO, DCU, and The Secret World. I give each of those games money every month, and I don’t pay ArenaNet a cent. That would change if GW2 wasn’t charging me to use the dressing room. It blows my mind that people have such a difficult time understanding this.

Many.8419:

this is bullkitten
I’ve already posted about burst sales and constant income. You WANT transmutation to be free while this is only cosmetic service with 0 gameplay value. Additional services should be for additional money.

Nope, not bullkitten in the least. Charging players to change their clothing appearance is bad from both ends: It sucks as a user experience, and it cuts down on the money ArenaNet could be making from people who like to tinker with their appearances. Making changing clothes require a resource that has to be purchased from the cash shop prevents people who like buying clothes from spending money, because there’s no value in it. The whole “burst spending” thing is garbage. While a handful of people might be willing to do that, those same people will still spend money on things like more clothes and additional “set” slots, because they’re obviously going to buy clothes related stuff anyway, and meanwhile, you’ll have the business of all the people who would have bought clothes in the past but never did, because they’d have to continue paying to use what they’d already purchased. Providing players with clothes that are freely usable once obtained gets them to spend more. Simple. Elegant. 100% true. And most games with a cosmetic wardrobe system have realized this and are capitalizing on it beautifully. Until GW2 does, its cosmetic skin system is going to continue to be sub-par, both from a player enjoyment and from a profitability perspective.

Many.8419:

why shouldnt it exist?

Because it makes for a terrible cosmetic system in a game that’s supposed to place a heavy emphasis on cosmetics. Switching armor and weapons skins should be free. What we should be paying gems for are a) new skins, and b) additional skin set slots that would allow us to save multiple sets of skins as swappable “outfits”. And no, this would not result in less money for ArenaNet, it would result in more, because people see more value in a permanent purchase. Basing an appearance-altering system around a consumable cash shop resource is counterproductive, because it actually discourages people who like to change their appearance a lot from spending. I barely touch trans charge purchases and I’ve only every bought one skin because I know I’m going to have to shell out more in order to swap them out with others. If it was unlimited, I’d buy every skin that hits the shop, even if I may never use it, just to increase my options. This is the way costuming types tend to think.

You don’t make money off of us by charging us to change clothes, you make money by increasing our clothing options. We’re fine with paying for new clothes and more wardrobe space, but tell us we have to pump quarters into the dressing room every time we want to use it, and we’ll go elsewhere, and never buy clothes to begin with. Other games with cosmetic clothing systems, like LoTRO, Champions, The Secret World, and DC Universe, figured this out just fine. GW2 needs to as well.

The transmutation charge system shouldn’t exist at all but, considering it’s unlikely to go away, I think the option to purchase unlimited charges is a good compromise, and I think 2000 is a fair price.

I’ve wished more than once that there were a legit, non-invasive way for guilds to advertise themselves in game. Yeah, there are the recruitment forums, but as was stated previously, they’re a mess. I’d love to see guilds be able to build an in-game, taggable recruitment page that displays a logo, roster, information about the guild, has a contact button, etc. Players could access a guild browser in-game and browse based on whatever criteria they think best. No more perceived need to spam map chat.

Now that the new camera is in, I’m going to bring this one out again one more time, in the hope that a developer might see it and at least pass the thought along, even if it’s a long shot. I’d really like to have the option for the game to draw my character while in first person mode. It’d make actually playing in that mode fun, as opposed to simply using it for screenshots and video.

The main reason I like outfits is that they let me swap looks quickly and easily, without having to worry about transmutation charges. Personally, I think the system is bunk. We shouldn’t be paying to swap out armor skins. Transmutation charges need to go away, and anyone who thinks they need to exist in order for ArenaNet to make money hasn’t been paying attention to other successful cosmetic systems like the ones in Lord Of The Rings or DC Universe. They would make MORE money by ditching consumable charges and allowing us to purchase something like permanent extra appearance tabs instead.

Since that obviously isn’t going to happen, though, I’ve accepted that the only way to be able to swap looks for free is outfits, so I’ve learned to settle. The majority of them look nice, and I’ve learned to accept them for what they are.

Vayne.8563:

People are always leaving after patches because their profession was “nerfed” or because they don’t like a specific change.

People SAY they are leaving. Mostly, it’s hot air. If they were actually so sensitive that a single change to a minor aspect of game play would cause them to leave, they’d have done so a long time ago.

Pretty much what the previous people have said (sorry if some of this is a repeat, others replied while I was typing). You get experience (sometimes a significant amount) for doing things you might not expect, like gathering (a small amount, but it’s still experience) and crafting (a significantly larger amount. With enough money for materials, it’s actually possible to level a character almost entirely through crafting).

Also, you don’t need to worry about being too high level to play with any friends who might join later than you, and lower level content never becomes completely irrelevant. Zones are level capped, and if you’re over that cap, the game adjusts your stats downward. Additionally, you’ll get experience and loot drops appropriate to your real level, no matter where you are, so you can always level off any content in any zone. Another major benefit is that, if any friends join after you, you don’t need to make an alt to play with them.

Also, do not make the mistake some new people make of assuming that events are random. Many of them are triggered by players doing certain things, or by the outcome of previous events. While it’s usually the most fun to just go with the flow, see what’s happening around you, and participate in events as you see them, it’s also possible to look up what needs to happen to trigger specific event chains.

Test.8734:

Lunarhound.7324:

I want the option to hide silly hats

Already in the game.

Lunarhound.7324:

faces that I think are ugly

Already in the game.

Lunarhound.7324:

anyone wearing a trench coat

Already in the game.

Lunarhound.7324:

and any piece of equipment that uses any colors that I don’t like.

Everything that can be dyed can be hidden.

Sarcasm works better when you know more about what you’re talking about. There is an option to hide all those things and more. It’s mysteriously missing the ability of hiding backpacks and weapon skins. It’s only logical that it would be expanded to include those skins as well.

You know perfectly well that those specific features aren’t actually in the game. The fact that you can accomplish the things you listed is simply a side effect of a feature with a completely different intended purpose. Low-impact character models were added as a way to provide a performance boost for people who need or want it, and to ensure that there’s something the game can load quickly on zone-in, so that we don’t have the old problem of people being invisible for half a minute when you first go to a new area. What they were not put into the game for, is to shield people with sensitive eyes from things they think they’re too cool to look at. The fact that, simply as a result of how it works, you can use it for that purpose doesn’t mean that you are automatically owed everything that you see as a logical extension of that side effect, as if it were a deliberate feature. Now, if they’d actually created individual options for hiding specific things in the world or on other characters that you didn’t like looking at and had inexplicably left backpacks out of it, then it would be a logical extension of the feature for the reasons you state. But they didn’t. So it isn’t. Much like sarcasm, condescension works better when you know what you’re talking about.

As it happens, I do actually think backpacks should be hidden as a result of turning on the low-impact character models, for performance reasons. If someone’s using that option, resources are obviously at a premium, so anyone having to resort to simplifying models in that way shouldn’t be forced to see extras like packs. To be honest, I think it wouldn’t hurt to take it a step further and provide generic models for weapons (a sword, a greatsword, a staff, etc.) so that the game doesn’t have to load those either.

What, I don’t agree with is this ridiculous idea that people should be able to hide a bunch of individual, specific things on other characters, or anywhere else, simply because they don’t conform to their own personal taste. All this crying about wings reminds me of the people in a church I grew up in that thought they were crusading for good sense and decency by trying to ban the wearing of backward baseball caps in any of the places they could bully the town council and local police into trying to enforce it, completely failing to realize how petty childish they came across.

If you go to a party and several people are wearing hideous, glitter-encrusted Hawaiian shirts, you and your friends are perfectly free to agree that they’re ugly as Hell and the people wearing them should know better, and either go enjoy your drinks in a different room, or leave altogether. But the moment you start demanding of your hosts that special accommodations be made in order to ensure that you retain unlimited access to the party without having to look at shirts that displease you, then you’ve crossed the line from amateur fashion critic to obnoxious, entitled jerk.

Seriously, this whole “my taste is too refined to look at wings” thing is getting stupid. I’m a role player, for crying out loud. I dream up elaborate back stories and create characters based on new outfit ideas. I was one of the knuckleheads who lobbied for the walk toggle before the game was released. I use the term “immersion” non ironically. If I can deal with a few wannabe angels without flipping my lid, anyone can. Especially since they don’t even look the least bit out of place in this game. Far less so than some of the other absurdities that’ve come out of the gem store or the Mystic Forge.

I want the option to hide silly hats, faces that I think are ugly, real world endangered animals (I find it offensive that they can be hurt), chickens, statues of the gods, anyone wearing a trench coat, and any piece of equipment that uses any colors that I don’t like.

The crystal nomad shoulders frustrate me a lot, because I’ve wanted an outfit exactly like that one for a while, and when they finally made one, they decided they had to stick gigantic crystals all over it. I’m not sure I’ll even buy it now. It’s the same reason I haven’t sprung for the Imperial. Just looking at the shoulders makes me wince.

I think you may be misunderstanding the purpose of this, Belenus. It isn’t for taking screenshots of an avatar up close. The purpose is to make it so that when actually playing the game in first person, our avatar is not invisible. In other words, when we look down, we see ourselves, and when we attack, we may see glimpses of our hands and weapons. This should be disabled by default, of course, because most people will simply want to use the first person camera for screenshots and filming purposes. For those who’d like to play with it, though, this would be a simple way to allow them to see their character while doing so. Like this:

Now that we’re getting a first person camera, I’d just like to put out there that this option would be nice to have. No, I don’t mean a full-fledged FPS/Elder Scrolls first person mode with properly positioned arms and their own attack animations. I know that would take a lot of extra work. I’m just talking about a box we can check to have the game draw our character model while we’re in first person mode, and maybe to make sure that the camera is placed in a position that allows us to see the front of our own torsos when we look down, rather than seeing inside of them. A few other MMO’s, such as Everquest 2, have offered this in the past. I wouldn’t think providing this as an option would require much extra work, and it’d be nice for those of us who want a bit more immersion, as well as those who might want to use the Oculus Rift in the future.

Could we have the option to lose the giant crystals on the shoulders? I know, I know, by asking for this, I’m asking for a whole new feature (the option to turn off shoulders on some of the outfits) but, honestly, seeing that thing is so frustrating, because I’ve wanted a good desert nomad outfit for ages. Now, there finally is one, and it’s great except that it has gigantic crystals stuck all over it. Yeah, I get it, it’s probably supposed to be Crystal Desert themed, but those things are just a bit much, and if this were a normal armor skin, I could simply turn them off.

This sounds like a lot of fun. I never really bothered trying to contribute to defiance before, because I’m almost never part of a well-coordinated group when fighting world bosses. To avoid screwing up what other groups might be trying to do, I’d simply stay away from using control type stuff, and focus on dps and healing. With this, I feel like I’ll actually be able to make a meaningful contribution to crippling a boss without having to find an actual team to join first.

I don’t care about inspecting anyone’s gear, but I’ll tell you what I would like: the option to inspect their skins. When I see someone with awesome looking armor or weapon skins that I don’t recognize, it can be a pain to screenshot them, go to the bank, and try to sift through the previews there until I recognize what it was that they were wearing.

Edit: There, see, someone beat me to the punch. :P What Eggs said.

I think it’s funny that the Sylvari being influenced by Mordremoth are being called “corrupted” anyway. Technically, the ones not under his influence are the corrupted ones, seeing as he originally created them for his own purposes, and the influence of Ronan and Ventari on the Pale Tree turned them into what they are. I’d love to see that angle played up in the story of the expansion. The whole “nature of good and evil”, and all that.

I think it’s for reasons like this that the story of the jungle dragon has the potential to be more interesting than the Zhaitan arc. We’ve been told from the beginning that the dragons are essentially forces of nature, but it’s easy to forget that when it comes to something as seemingly unnatural as undead. Flora, on the other hand… That’s something different. While it’s difficult to know what a creature like Mordremoth’s true agenda really is (or if he even has one, beyond “I want to cover the world in plants because it’s my nature” or something), it’s easy to see, from a certain perspective, why humans and the other races of Tyria might be viewed as the actual corruption. These aren’t just great big evil monsters – at least, not if the admittedly vague descriptions of them we’ve been given are accurate – they’re primal aspects of the world itself, and the sapient races are attempting to beat them into submission. Their struggle against the dragons is a struggle to tame the planet, and nothing wild ever wants to be tamed.

Dasenthal.6520:

I know no queen. (LA has a captains council)
I would never pay taxes to feed Logan…

And we all know that’s where the taxes go. To support Thackeray’s beer and wings habit.

I’m almost entirely a PvE’er, and I love that use of stability will need to be a bit more strategic now. I think the changes to it sound like a lot of fun.

All the “rainbows and unicorns aren’t manly” nonsense aside, I actually agree that legendaries shouldn’t be joke weapons. I like the Dreamer, but I don’t think it should be a legendary weapon. Not, at least, with the way legendaries are currently acquired.

I think part of the problem is that what I think was their original intent behind legendaries appears to be outdated. Originally, I think some of them were made to be joke weapons because the idea of a weapon actually having unique sounds, attack effects, etc. was supposed to be a feature that was unique to legendaries. They sort of began to abandon that with some of the joke weapon skins that ended up being super cheap and easy to find, like the slingshot and the pop gun. They may be far less flashy, but they still sort of have features that originally seem to have been intended for legendaries only.

Now that joke weapons exist as their own thing, I think it’d be nice to move away from that with legendaries. I’d even like to see (though I REALLY doubt this would EVER happen) the ones that were intended to be silly, like Quip and The Dreamer, replaced with more serious sounds, appearance, and effects. You could make this fair to people who’ve already earned the ones with the old skins, by just giving them the new skins for free. Then, maybe turn the old ones into precursors, or even just make them simple joke skins, obtainable through some far easier method.

It’s the digital goodies, especially cosmetic stuff, that I really care about, so I’ll leave the suggestions for physical stuff to other people.

My top hopes, in order of preference, from most to least favorite:

1. Either an outfit, or a set of armor skins with 0 transmutation cost.
2. Weapon skins with 0 transmutation cost.
3. An alternate glider skin

If I get at least one of those things, I’ll be happy. Anything else is just icing.

I’m almost positive we’ll get some armor that looks as if it’s made for certain specializations. I seriously doubt they’d introduce something like a druid, and then not bother to create and medium armor that lets you dress like one.

What I’d specifically like to see, though, are specialization-themed outfits. One-piece cosmetic clothes meant to be used with the outfit system, that are granted to you when you unlock a specialization for the first time. They’d make great unlocks to aim for, and would allow us to instantly give ourselves the signature look of a particular specialization, even before we’ve been able to acquire any appropriate looking armor, without having to worry about using transmutation charges..

I really don’t understand why they didn’t do this in the first place. They apparently gathered the old town clothes into “one piece” ensembles anyway, in order to create the looks for the tonics. So, having done that, why didn’t they just convert them to outfits?

Even though you could mix and match the old ones, I prefer the outfit system to the town clothes system we had, because I like being able to fight in a cosmetic outfit if I choose to. But I never saw a reason for turning the old town clothes into tonics when they could simply have become outfits, and I still don’t.

Astral Projections.7320:

Wow. Your math is way off.

Oh yeah? Well, 92% of mirthematicians agree with at least 86% of the methods I use for calculating gender appropriateness.

Ashen.2907:

There is a place in Yosemite national park called Waterwheel falls. Its a waterfall where a jut of stone in the center is formed just right to cause water to be flipped back (like an overly curved ramp) to form a vertical continuous ring of water. A wheel of water if you will. The mist created by this spin fills the center of the wheel and at certain times of day during certain times of year will catch the sunlight just right to create a rainbow contained within the waterwheel.

My father, uncles, and I packed our way into waterwheel falls every year. Eating dessicated animal tissue, defecating in fhe woods, building camp fires the old fashioned way (matches), carrying (seemingly) half a ton of stuff on our backs, not bathing, all sorts of “manly” stuff…

To see a rainbow.

If there had been a unicorn there too we would probably have made the trip more offen.

Yes, but you counteracted the girliness of the rainbow with the manliness of starting fires, carrying heavy things, being stinky, devouring the flesh of the dead, and pooping it all over the woods.

Assuming you started at 100% manliness (I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, here), and the rainbow gave you -70% (I’m erring on the side of potency and estimating the ‘ring’ you describe to possess a value roughly equivalent to a double rainbow all the way across the sky), each of the activities you mentioned would be easily worth at least +10%. That leaves you with 80% manliness after the rainbow’s feminine influence, and even if you wiped after the pooping (hygiene is girly, and would be -5% to manliness), that still leaves you about 75% manly, which is enough to declare yourself masculine in any court of law. And that’s not even taking into account your mention of other possible manly activities that you didn’t list.

So, that’s why the rainbow didn’t have too much of an impact. Science!

Edit: I adjusted my calculations for the sake of accuracy. Gotta get this stuff right.

No, not in the gem store (although I guess I’d settle for that, just to have them). What I’d love to see is for them to be unlocks that you get, the first time you gain a specialization. Progression-related cosmetics that don’t require transmutation charges are a lot of fun, and I’d love to see more of them than just the Zenith weapons, tied to more systems than just achievements.

This is not some kind of anti-gem store thing. I’m fine with the gem store, and I buy all of the outfits that I like, which so far, has been most of them. I’d just like to see some that are tied to in-game activities and accomplishments as well. They’re the perfect collectible.

Astral Projections.7320:

Big Tower.5423:

Rainbows and unicorns are girlish, that’s a fact. You can’t deny it. Most boys and males are not feminine. Just because some boys think the bow’s pretty, doesn’t suddenly make it manly.

You should honor the majority, instead of trying to be progressive and stuff. 95% of the community are normal males.

I’m confused, so confused I had to come back to the thread. :O

Rainbows are the effects of light passing thru water droplets held in the atmosphere. Physics you know. When did that become girlish? Or are you saying that appreciation of natural beauty is something only girls do?

Yes. That sentence has the word “beauty” in it. “Beauty” is girly. You didn’t know that?

As for the rest… hoo, boy. We should “honor the majority”, huh? I’ll have to remember that line, next time I want a convenient way to get punched in the face by strangers. I won’t even bother commenting on your apparent ignorance of what the word “fact” means.

I’d also love to know where you got the idea that “95% of the community are normal males”. NORMAL males. As in, the nearly ALL of the population of an internationally best-selling online game are, not just males, but a very specific type of male, with very specific likes and dislikes, that one person has designated to be “normal”. Someone has a rather skewed vision of reality.

98% of people who whip out statistics in internet discussions are simply pulling an arbitrary number out of nowhere, in order to lend imaginary weight to an opinion.

Based on the way they described adventures, I’m not especially excited about them. Having seen the footage of the flamethrower thing, I’m even less so. It just looks like the same kind of tedious thing you’d do for a heart event, but repeatable, and with a leaderboard. I hope doing these aren’t necessary in order to max out mastery points.

I do understand what they’re trying to accomplish here, but I agree with the people who’ve said that “adventure” is really the wrong term for it. If you want a repeatable minigame that’s worthy of the term, how about (as some have suggested) something with a glider? Maybe even divorce it from the normal glider mechanics, and make it a bit on the cinematic side, partially on rails, where we have to glide through a canyon, dodging obstacles, grabbing some sort of tokens for points, and choosing from a few branching paths? Something that’s actually a fun distraction WHILE you’re playing it. I don’t feel motivated to top my best scores or beat my friends’ scores in an activity where the actual mechanics of the minigame aren’t fun to begin with.

Here are a few more suggestions:

Something like a “Temple Run” clone, where you auto-flee from something while having to jump, slide under, and dodge around obstacles. There could be lots of variations on this (the glider example above is one). Slide down a mountainside, hang from a copter, hell, maybe even drive a charr car.

Puzzles. There are plenty of puzzle games with mechanics that allow boards and such to be randomized, like that old PopCap game, Alchemy.

A Scorched Earth-style trajectory game (for those who don’t remember Scorched Earth, think Worms).

Don’t get me wrong, I know that it’s unlikely ANYTHING like these will happen. Altering the mechanics, camera behavior, etc. to create real minigames like this would take considerably more work than just swapping in a temporary weapon or maybe altering the UI a little. But, likely or not, I’m just telling you what would get ME to find the idea of attempting to climb leaderboards in minigames fun. I can’t speak for other players, but I have a feeling that if they saw something like I’m describing, you’d have more people excited than with a time trial vine burning contest using existing mechanics. It wasn’t fun in hearts, and I doubt trying to make it competitive will do much to change that.

Well, I’m glad there are at least a handful of people who seem to like the idea. I’m a little unsure if it’s something that’ll ever happen, but here’s hoping.

I always love to take this opportunity to point out that for a long time, pink was considered a manly color, and unicorns were a symbol of virility, among other things. This is the sort of “knowledge” you can get from Wikipedia and random Facebook shares these days, but it’s easy to confirm with only light research, and it’s always fun to trot out in these discussions.

That said, The Dreamer is pretty obviously intended as an over-the-top joke weapon and, while I think it looks bad-kitten (I’m a dude, by the way) I definitely agree that we need legendaries to stop being joke weapons. People complain a lot about the dreamer, but I think Quip’s one of the worst offenders. As an engineer who doesn’t really care for rifles, it leaves my only option for a legendary as a squeaky confetti gun until HoT drops.

Edit: I love the utter appropriateness of the language filter turning my descriptive phrase of The Dreamer to “bad-KITTEN”. That seriously cracked me up. :P

With the expansion on its way, people are starting to request things like new hairstyles and faces again, so I’d like to chime in for new body types (I really wish search were working, so I could confirm whether or not a similar request has been posted recently).

While new body types in general would be great, I feel like the human female models in particular could use some variety. My girlfriend was moderately frustrated, when she created her first character, that she couldn’t make a human that was closer to her own body type and had to go with a Norn.

Obviously, it isn’t going to be possible to represent every possible body type. I do, however, think that both human males and norn of both genders have a slightly wider range of possibilities when it comes to physique. Human females, on the other hand, are all some variation on slender. It’d be nice to see at least one or two who are heavier or more muscular, similar to some of the norn female builds. I don’t necessarily see this as being an issue with the Sylvari, since they aren’t human, and it could be written off as having a more alien physiology. I imagine some will differ on that point, though.

And before anyone says anything about body sliders, yes, I’d like them too, but adding that would be a lot more work and therefore less likely to happen, so I’m limiting myself to simply hoping for new human female body types for the time being.

I’ve wanted something like this for a while, but I imagine a lot of people would be against it, because it’d be an additional UI element.

While that would be nice, I doubt it will happen. I’d be happy enough just to see a rework of the way the wardrobe system works that actually makes transmutation charges a good investment.

I’m now determined to become a Master Failure.

Whatever the warrior gets, I sincerely hope it’s not magical. Out of the three soldier professions that’ll be available when the expansion launches, TWO of those already use magic. Keep the warrior a pure soldier, and employ a bit of creativity to branch out, thematically, while keeping to that general outline. Either melee staff or pistol would be nice to have. I’d also have advocated land spear, but we know at this point that’s not happening. I especially like the idea of pistol, since it’d make them more of a “complete” soldier. Even short bow would be better than giving them a magical weapon.

If they did want to have a mastery increase falling damage, they probably wouldn’t need a whole separate one for it. They could just roll it into the hang gliding mastery. Every level of hang gliding causes you to take x% less falling damage.

Beast Sos.1457:

I just made a post on how combat Masteries should work, imo. Things like the glider and learning new language should be gating but combat is something that should be skill based and not gear/mastery based.

Okay, that is definitely a valid concern. The wording of your post gave me the impression that you were criticizing the mastery system as a whole for gating any content at all.

What gives me hope that combat masteries won’t feel too much like gating is the fact that you actually have to progress them. That, by itself, allows for at least a glimmer of hope that it won’t be a simple matter of “buy this to be able to kill that”. What we want is the feeling of learning new abilities that give us an edge in combat. Preferably, an edge that has some sort of unique (and hopefully, visually impressive) utility, and isn’t just statistical.

What we do not want is the feeling of, “Hey, raptors used to be invincible, but I bought the Raptor Fighting mastery, and now I can fight them like a normal enemy”. Or, as the case may be, “Raptors used to be invincible, but I progressed to level 2 of Combat Mastery and now I can fight them like a normal enemy. Giant tree monsters are still invincible, but I’ll gain the ability to fight them like a normal enemy at Combat Mastery 3.” That doesn’t improve combat or make it more interesting, it simply acts as a Mastery Point sink in the guise of learning a new ability.

What I’m REALLY HOPING they do is something more like this: “Some types of foes have armored parts that negate or greatly reduce damage taken from the side the armor is on. Now that my Combat Mastery is at 2, I have the ability to knock pieces of armor off (knock that huge shield out of that guard’s hand, or blast off a chunk of that thing’s armored shell), which lets me do huge amounts of damage by attacking in the direction of the exposed area. At Combat Mastery 3, I’ll be able to disarm opponents that carry special weapons (knock that huge hammer out of that ogre’s hand, so he can’t keep knocking everyone down with it).”

In other words, don’t simply make it so that we have to spend points to buy the ability to fight certain enemies. Make all enemies able to be defeated, but allow us to train our combat mastery to affect them in ways that give us unique advantages over them, and also look really cool.

The fact that it’s “gated content” doesn’t bother me. Absolutely anything you don’t begin the game with is technically “gated”. Skills are gated. Story missions are gated. The very concept of progression – even so-called “horizontal progression” – requires that one begin with less, and progress toward more. Zelda, one of the series referenced in the inspiration for masteries, “gates” content behind completion of certain story segments, or acquisition of certain tools. You may want to play in Death Mountain, but it’s not happening until you’ve “unlocked” it by progressing through the required content. Even more non-linear games like Skyrim “gate” content. You can’t perform shouts until complete certain requirements. You can’t experience game play with a short sword until you find one.

This is not, in itself, negative. Complaining that something is “gated” or that you are “locked out” of using it does not actually illustrate a problem with the system, it just makes a very vague statement about how the system (and nearly any other progression system) works.

So, how should masteries work? How do you have a “progression system” (which we all knew this was) in which progress is satisfying and rewarding, but holds back absolutely nothing from those who haven’t yet reached a given point? How do you implement a way to progress that doesn’t require you to progress?

While I’d still love to see a pistol specialization that’d turn the warrior into a more “complete” modern Tyrian soldier, I also like the idea of the melee staff mentioned by a few. My gut tells me it’s unlikely that’d happen, but it would certainly be cool, and a bit different. With the right outfit (like ancestral) it might even be possible to imbue a character with an almost monkish vibe, if one so desired.

My girlfriend’s hoping for shortbows, but I have my doubts about that. It’d be similar enough to the longbow that a lot of people would probably find it uninteresting. Personally, I’m hoping for pistols. I’d love for my warrior to be a more well-rounded soldier when it comes to firearms.

What I hope not to see is something like staff or scepter. The ranger expanding further into magical territory doesn’t bother me, because they already have some spell-like abilities anyway. Plus, you know… druids. But with the introduction of the Revenant, we’ll have two magical soldiers to choose from, so I’m hoping whatever new weapon options the warrior ends up with will still be in keeping with the more down-to-earth Fighter theme.

Commando, anyone? :-D I mean, we’re going to be running around in a jungle…

Thanks. That was my only intention.

Why is Orr such a kinky place?

RIMSHOT

And now, I’d like to apologize for doing that, but I made the same stupid joke in-game in a voice chat last night while running around Orr and I guess it was so absurd that it came out the other side of ridiculous and cracked people up, for some reason.

Just a little something to lighten the mood. I’ll understand if the thread ends up locked for being spam, but please don’t kill me. :-P