Guild Wars 2

I dunno. With its disjointed B-movie nonsense about darkness, fear, and terror, I felt that trailer was dripping with the same Saturday-morning cheese I’ve come to expect from the Living Story content, and the rest of the game in general on retrospect. Then again, I may have a different idea of what constitutes a “dark” and “serious” tone. (Usually synonymous with “trite” and “pretentious” in my experience.) If it’s grim, dark seriousness you’re after, you might have come to the wrong game. So I wouldn’t get my hopes up, if I were you.

Khisanth.2948:

That is very much a personal taste thing. I find many of the GS skins to be extremely ugly. The two Legendaries for example while not in the extreme category they are at least in the slightly unappealing category. Then there is the dragon’s jade GS. Lets not forget the crafted exotic GS. It is too bad GW2 doesn’t have the holy trinity because with that thing you are going around spanking enemies with that giant paddle.

Glad I’m not the only one. Every new GS skin to release gives me a good laugh simply due to the sheer silliness of them, but with this event’s GS skin, I literally couldn’t laugh just because of how stupid it looked. But then again, these weapons are designed with the target audience of people who think comically undersized glowing wings flopping around on armored warriors’ backs look appealing, so I guess I’ll not expect much of weapon designs in general in the future. Though who knows, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

This has been going on for a while and while I’ve seen many people complaining about it on the forums, I’ve little evidence of anyone trying to do anything about it.

While it’s a small step, I sent a couple of e-mails to Daniel Dociu, who I’m assuming essentially has the final say in whether or not charr get armor that is actually okay to look at and has thus far been saying “no”. If things don’t go favorably, I’m planning to draft a form letter for others to write their names on and send in en masse, as the voice of many unhappy customers weighs much more than that of just one.

I’ve been keeping track of charr armor fixes update-by-update and, while we got precisely one in the previous update, this most recent one does not appear to have improved things on that front. All armor with horrendous clipping and floating pauldrons, I bug report under Armor > Art/Visual because well…that’s exactly what they are. I do the same with the backwards footprints after every update until they’re fixed. I do wish more people would join in rather than throw in the towel.

Making a bunch of noise once or twice can be pretty much ignored by ANet, but it’s persistence that’ll make them so sick of hearing us that they eventually start fixing the armor just to shut us up.

So if I could make one humble request to everyone who cares even a little bit about the charr, or even just about the integrity of Guild Wars 2 in general, it would be to start gently poking ANet about the issues that concern you and don’t stop until they just can’t stand it anymore.

The best way to ensure that nothing is done is to do nothing yourself.

I sure hope you all aren’t expecting ANet’s handling of charr armor to get better by deleting your charr and making humans instead, because that reaction seems to be one of the core reasons fixes for charr armor are trickling in so slowly and, perhaps, are in danger of eventually stopping altogether. I’m in no position to tell people what race to play, but if you honestly care about the charr and how ANet treats them, ditching the “losing team” for the “winning team” isn’t how you turn things around.

Just had a look at it myself. Even though they supposedly made changes to that helm to accommodate charr features, the shape still pretty clearly suggests that it was designed for humans.

At least the pants are wearable now?

Drakkon.4782:

The Charr are being played by 13% of the playerbase. The race with the largest playerbase is roughly 10% more. Given the tiny margin between races, I still cannot fathom how they can legitimately justify saying that not enough people play Charr to care about the problems. The argument is sheer stupidity.

I know. It’s GW2’s armor design team that doesn’t seem to get it quite yet. What I’m suggesting is that they should be educated on the idiocy and inconsiderate nature of that kind of business philosophy.

But on the subject of percentages, I don’t believe that what John Smith’s infamous year 1 graph portrays is the actual percentages of the playerbase who play the different races, or all of the percentages would likely add up to far more than 100%. It’s more likely that it’s based on percentages of charr/sylvari/asura etc. characters out of all characters, and could only be representative of players who play those races if, say, all people who played one charr only played charr, or all people who had one sylvari had nothing but sylvari. While those kinds of players certainly exist, they’re also certainly in the minority. As big a fan of the charr as I am, they don’t completely dominate my character select screen.

The fact of the matter is that, assuming many players have just one or two charr, the percentage of the player base who play at least one charr is likely much higher than 13%. That’s assuming that John Smith’s information is correct in the first place. Given that he doesn’t give any information on how he obtains and interprets his data, we have little reason to assume that it is.

But what the designers at ANet need to understand is that none of that even matters. Regardless of arbitrary percentages, all racial variations of their armor designs should be made with equal amounts of care and attention to detail. It doesn’t matter if a player has nine humans and one charr. That charr is still a character who belongs to a player who (hopefully) payed for the game. Thus, that charr matters just as much as the nine humans.

Ben K.6238:

They might actually make more money if the cash shop skins looked good on charr. I’d certainly pay for them.

And I know you aren’t alone. Not to sound jaded, but bringing up a projected financial loss on their end (even if such a thing isn’t technically a “loss”) is a good detail to throw in when addressing a company about an issue.

A good start would be trying to explain it to them directly. There are a lot of forum threads about it, but given the few members of ANet staff who look at forums along with the very very low traffic of the charr forum subsection in general, it’s about as effective as walking into your closet and muttering “I’m angry”.

Daniel Dociu, art director, was the one who stated on that panel that charr are being neglected, and will continue to be, because there are a fewer number of them being played (even if only by a couple percent behind the sylvari) than other races. His contact information is on his personal website. Perhaps he’s the first person we should ask?

uri.6521:

Hello

I will be honest, i worked really hard to get my well earned ascalonian leather armor set, it was good when i equiped it (it looked good to me), but then i looked at my back and this is what i saw:

!http://i.imgur.com/SVBMXQx.jpg!

I dont know what you think, but to me this is an INSULT from the Anet´s armor designers to not check if such a important and hard to earn armor set is that badly implemented.

¿What do you guys think?

Ouch! And here I thought the Ascalonian Leather armor was one of the few that looked alright on charr. I’d definitely contact ANet themselves about this. I don’t know exactly who their armor design team is comprised of, but there are a number of bugs like that and just plain carelessness that need to be addressed and the forums aren’t going to get their attention.

Electro.4173:

Red Tree.1936:

Even though they are, albeit quite slowly. I’ve been looking through the PvP locker more lately, and have noticed no less than two issues of tail-clipping fixed in the last week, along with a few other fixes that may have likely happened before. This never should have been an issue in the first place, but at least something’s being done.

But the massive polygon collapse on a lot of charr medium pants puzzles me. The tail-clipping and other such things can be explained as a lack of effort from the design team, but actual geometry MISSING from models? I have to wonder if the armor designers even looked at what they were doing before the submitted it.

Maybe I’ll ask them myself.

Mind sharing which armors have had some tail clipping fixes lately? I’m definitely glad to hear its still being worked on, even slowly.

I’ll probably be checking update-by-update. Might even make an itemized list, at least based on armor skins that are readily available for viewing in the PvP locker, even though that’d take a while and my college is about to start up again.

As I said, it is nice to know that someone appears to be doing something, but Daniel Dociu’s response to the charr armor question at the anniversary event is still very worrying. The slow trickle of fixes may just come to a stop if that unprofessional business ethic, along with that rediculous catch-22 scenario, is allowed to continue.

Even though they are, albeit quite slowly. I’ve been looking through the PvP locker more lately, and have noticed no less than two issues of tail-clipping fixed in the last week, along with a few other fixes that may have likely happened before. This never should have been an issue in the first place, but at least something’s being done.

But the massive polygon collapse on a lot of charr medium pants puzzles me. The tail-clipping and other such things can be explained as a lack of effort from the design team, but actual geometry MISSING from models? I have to wonder if the armor designers even looked at what they were doing before the submitted it.

Maybe I’ll ask them myself.

Greyfur.1082:

Some of these are in game, I recognize some as NPC gear why not start off by giving us this that are already in game.

Agreed. I always look with jealousy upon the fine threads of the charr NPCs, helped along by the fact that the “cultural town clothes” charr players get for free are…not the best-looking. And the gem store stuff is both aesthetically and graphically designed exclusively for humans. I think there’s a thread suggesting something akin to cultural town clothes vendors elsewhere in the suggestion forums. If such a thing ever happens, let’s just hope ours don’t TAILCLIP.

If it’s any form of encouragement, I’ve scraped through the slim pickings in the PvP locker a couple times in the past week and noticed that the Assassin’s medium coat skin and the Heritage heavy leggings have both been altered to make accommodations for the tail, and recently too. On the former, the short “skirt-like” segment on the back now drapes over and is weighted to the tail in the same manner as the culturals excluding the T3 light armor. On the latter, the plating on the back was simply split to allow room for the tail; a simple fix but it’s better than the tail just shooting through the metal plating like a fluffy laser beam as it was not too long ago. The Wizard light armor skin now take the tail into account as well, but I don’t know how long ago that might have been fixed, or if it was one of the very few skins that actually worked in the first place. I know it isn’t “charr-looking” armor but…it’s a viable option now.

While Daniel’s response to the charr armor question at the Q&A gave me a distressing sense that the charr armor issue is just a symptom of a much deeper problem, it’s at least good to know that someone at ANet is putting in the time to do something about this, even if this should never have been an issue in the first place. If armor skin fixes continue to occur at this rate, we may eventually be able to make our characters look the way we want.

While more armor that actually looks like something a charr would wear would be a nice thing (though who knows? Maybe our charr is an eccentric and likes to dress all fancy?), tweaking the issues that have been plaguing us for a year+ , I think, should happen first. Baby steps. Meanwhile, I’d be interested to know if any measures are being taken for the asura as well.

Hang in there, comrades. We’ve still got a long fight ahead of us.

Namu.5712:

Joining a group and having them yell at you to stack or get kicked because you didn’t cheese a boss with them and make the content and encounter trivial, very annoying.

There needs to be a new skill on boss’s and mobs that promote playing normally.

Like if you stack up in a corner then you get a dot on you that does like 5k a tick, or perhaps the boss throws an attack at you that does so much damage that you can not stay in the corner stacked. Or the Boss detects the players are stacked and does x damage per person.

It’s a nice thought, but players who want to play cheap will play cheap. No matter what happens, people will always find exploits. It’s the natural order of MMOs. While it may be difficult, the only thing that can really be done is to find a guild or group of players who want to actually play the dungeons and actually fight bosses. I’m sure they exist, and likely in greater numbers than fashionable internet cynicism has taught us to think.

As a funny anecdote, I was with a group in AC, explorable. Three times we stacked for the spider queen, three times she annihilated us. Fourth time, group leader suggested “screw it, just fight her normally.” We beat her on the first try.

Black Teagan.9215:

Did someone say something about “Armor Issues” ?

Vigil-Armor

Hah. I saw that in the PvP locker when looking desperately for non-clipping armor for yet another new charr. I literally couldn’t believe my eyes.

Brumen.9720:

Personally very very very disappointed…

No one from the staff spent 30 seconds to write us something in months, and they opened a thread bout a new jellyfish… really.

Nothing.

Nothing…

Charr players count nothing…

I’m loosing the joy to play, i love my Charrs.

Exaggerated? Maybe i’m, but after months waitin….
Sorry for bad grammar.

Regards

Has anyone tried to contact ANet staff directly on the issue? More than once? Because it WILL take more than one try, I guarantee it. I’m trying to figure out the wording to a letter I’m writing to the art director, who said the infamous quote at that Q&A session himself. Forums are useful for communicating with other players, but they’re pretty much useless for talking to ANet themselves. I’m thinking personal messages to as many staff members as one can contact. I don’t live too far from Seattle either. If this continues, I may walk in personally and have a chat with some people. But it’s going to take more than one try. Making a lot of noise once or twice will pretty much do nothing. Silently poking them until they can’t stand it anymore may yield better results.

So. Do you care enough about the charr and their treatment by the armor design team to call them up until they can’t stand the sound of your voice?

I know I do.

It’s always really unfortunate to see threads like this pop up. I know that this is an internet forums, and internet forums are places intended to throw opinions around and act like they’re objective divine will, but there’s just something discouraging about thinly-veiled hate threads designed for spewing bile at a race option that (believe it or not) many people actually like. You just won’t see many of their responses here because the title alone pretty much exclaims “nothing positive or level-headed will be said here”. I’m not at all surprised, mind you. I just desperately hope ArenaNet isn’t stumbling on these threads and using them as a “general player opinion” justification to further distort their already twisted view of their fanbase.

I don’t wish to derail the thread, but the kind of hate that gets spewed here leads to a question that I feel deserves some consideration: Opinions are opinions, but do you believe people who have an opinion of the charr (or any other race) that differs from yours to be less worthy of enjoying Guild Wars 2 to the fullest, in spite of paying the same price and possibly investing more time and emotion into it? If your answer is an immediate and absolute yes, then don’t worry because that question wasn’t at all intended for you.

If that’s all meaningless to you, just go on with your day and continue to cringe every time you see a charr running on all fours. Just remember that some people cringe every time they see a Justin Bieber look-a-like with swishy boy band hair shouting “eat my dust”.

Drakkon.4782:

Given enough time the population of Charr players will get disgusted with the inaction of the devs and quit playing them altogether, or at least fall below a particular threshold, and the devs will writ them out of the game entirely.

I understand that you’re concerned about the treatment of charr, particularly by the armor design team, but I don’t think that’s a very realistic fear. It would have to depend on every single player abandoning their charr just so they can have access to more different armor skins, which I don’t feel people who REALLY love the charr for what they are will do, even given time. I’m sure many, like me, are so attached to their writing, their cultural identity, and their characterization and other things that we’d run through the game in our loincloths if we had to. The charr player base would have to literally be zero to justify even considering removing an entire playable race from the game.

Even if such an impossible thing were to happen, the sheer amount of time, money, resources, effort, and manpower required to completely disintegrate a playable race that is already woven deeply into the lore and story would be astronomical. It would actually be more efficient to completely redesign all of their armor skins from scratch.

The more realistic concern, and the one we’re facing now, is not that ANet will expunge the charr race from Guild Wars 2 altogether, but that ANet will simply not put any effort into their armor skins forever.

Sedoks.3576:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/We-Charr-Demand-More-Love/first#post2779832
Check out my topic if you want. I am complaining about the same thing :/

Thank you. I posted (yet another) lengthy reply on your thread. I hope some people see it before it gets shipped off to the charr forums to die.

azureai.9764:

I don’t think most charr players are demanding a redesign, but just some consideration. It doesn’t take that much thought by the artists to add ear and horn holes in new helmets for charr, or a tail hole for pants. It’s really not that hard, ANet.

If the video linked in the first thread linked by the original poster is to be believed (A Response To Charr Armor), it would appear even that is too much.

I’ve almost exclusively played charr for a year making do with the very scant armor choices I’ve had, but for ArenaNet’s own art director says out loud on a Q&A panel that the needs of charr players aren’t as valuable because fewer people play them makes me look at the whole game and the whole company in a different way. It ceases to be merely a matter of the armor for an entire race being lazily slapped together and becomes more a matter of a jaw-dropping lack of respect for the players in general.

And don’t ask that this thread be moved to the charr forums, as no one will see it there. People know life is rougher for charr players, but they need to know why. I’ve talked to players about this who exclusively play humans and even they this isn’t right. So if you have friends who don’t even play charr nor do they plan to, they should at least know that the issue with charr armor is just a symptom of ArenaNet considering their player base in the same way one would consider livestock. I know that’s par for the course for huge companies, but if ANet is going to pretend to value their customers, they should at least make a more convincing show of it.

Though it’s been stated and re-stated, what we want isn’t for charr to be treated like special snowflakes while everyone else gets neglected, (and if that IS what you want, that’s a bit unreasonable) because then we have the same problem, just reversed. But I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to want all players to have the same access to armor skins (amongst other things) regardless of what race they chose to play. Yup, that means doing something about asura helms and boots.

The worst thing is that they don’t seem to notice the loop they’re creating. By ignoring the charr, they make the race less appealing to those who might otherwise be interested in playing them, thus lowering the charr player population percentage and…using it as justification to ignore the charr further.

As said before, almost all of my characters are charr, but if, hypothetically, I found out that humans were getting short-changed and neglected because they have a smaller player base, I’d be very uncomfortable with that. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who thinks this way. More people need to know. And more people need to speak up.

Kain Francois.4328:

Relax. They also said we would get our day.

Until then, I will continue happily playing my precious kitty kat!

As much as I’d love to believe that was true, the statement regarding them “doing us justice, given the time and resources” struck me more as a move to placate the chunk of their fans they pretty much admitted to neglecting because of a lower population of players.

I’ve been enjoying this game in spite of the terribly limited armor choices for most of my characters for a year now, and would patiently wait for armor fixes bit by bit, as long as I knew they’d at least happen eventually. Even barring the fact that armor on all races should have been of equal graphical quality before launch, going back and modifying a lot of your work when many people seem to be shaking you down for new content can be time-consuming and stressful. But the fact that even brand-new armor skins on the trading post, ones that are intended to be bought with real money, don’t make accommodations for one of the playable races they designed in the first place raises some questions about how the designers regard a significant portion of their players (I consider 13% a large portion of the GW2 community). It turns out that the answer to those questions is unfortunate and kind of unprofessional one.

I still enjoy the game deeply and my character select screen is still crowded with charr I tried to make look as good as possible given what I have to work with, but the game definitely feels different when I know that ArenaNet themselves appear to favor one playable race option over others, rather than just the player base. And not for the better.

Is it possible that Daniel’s answer was a nervous slip of the tongue in response to a question he didn’t see (but really should have seen) coming, and that I’m worried about something that may not be the case? If so, that was an oddly specific and clear slip-up. If that’s really how things are working at ArenaNet, it needs to be addressed by the fans its affecting before this catch 22 situation of “need-more-charr-before-we-fix-their-armor/need-fixed-armor-before-we-play-charr” starts a vicious cycle that dwindles the charr population even more and, as an unfortunate consequence, lowers the significance of those charr’s players in the eyes of ArenaNet as compared to races with higher percents on a census graph.

The percents of asura and sylvari aren’t really that much higher, if that year one graph has any accuracy to it. Only a 3% and 2% difference, respectively. If asura and sylvari receive the same treatment as charr, by the same logic, this is roughly 45% of the characters who “don’t matter as much”. Not really the most admirable business practice.

But do continue playing your precious kitty kat. I’ll be doing the same.

Edit: Before I forget, in the above paragraph, I’m aware that asura and sylvari don’t have the problem with armor skins to the same magnitude as the charr. I was disregarding the quality of armor skins to focus on the practice of paying less attention to a portion of characters with a smaller percentage population than a larger one, as that disturbs me far more than struggling to find good armor skins for my favorite race.

SSGroguey.5841:

I’m curious if perhaps a survey of sorts could help make a statement as well? I know Anet has the chart with percentages for the races, but I’ve heard it’s the same chart from the start of the year (unless nothing has changed since then?).

Maybe a survey could answer some questions as to why those who main human or whatever don’t play charr. Or you could see if people had charr and deleted them, then ask why. I know forums would be a small sample size, but it may show that some people don’t play charr due to armor issues among other things and that there would be a bigger playerbase making charr alts if their armor/graphic issues are fixed. The survey could be linked on on the reddit/gw2guru as well perhaps?

Excellent idea. Every little bit helps. Presently, some friends and I have taken to reporting the really unforgivable charr armor clipping issues (that is to say, most of them) using the bug report function > Armor/Weapons > Visual/Art. It seems like that category is there for just that reason. Is anyone else thinking of contacting Daniel and asking him just what he was thinking in giving that response/who put him up to it? Likelihood of getting a satisfactory answer is slim, but likelihood is absolute zero if nothing is done and people are allowed to go on thinking that’s an okay way to think about your fans.

Greyfur.1082:

That’s a good idea Red Tree maybe we should have a topic on the Guild Wars 2 Discussion and try to keep it up front as much as possible since he basically said we are not loud enough to be heard.

That’s the spirit! Although, it should be noted that we don’t want to make this a “charr thread” or it just gets shipped back here, where no one will see it. It would need to be made clear that this isn’t about making the charr the kings and queens of Tyria to the detriment of the other races. It’s about all players getting opportunities to enjoy the same content (specifically armors, the acquisition of which make up a significant potion of post-80 game play) regardless of the personal taste that led to their choice in race.

If what race you pick is a multiple-choice question, there shouldn’t be a wrong answer!

But as strong as the temptation may be to weave our messages with profanity and put-downs in light of Daniel’s response, it’s of the utmost importance that we remain civil and level-headed. Posting in a thread on the forum is not going to be enough, but if ArenaNet sees that their fans can be more mature and considerate than it now appears they’re being, they’re like to weigh our thoughts more carefully than a thread that devolves into another fantasy racism flame-war.

Edit: The general discussion forums are on fire with drama about ascended weapons and SAB right now, but more people really should be mad about this.

If players are being treated as less than other players just because of a different choice of race, then the problem effects more than just people who prefer charr. Heck, show that Q&A to some people who play all humans by choice and the ones who aren’t totally selfish will probably be disturbed by the dismissive and disrespectful treatment of the player base as well. As such, I don’t think this topic should be limited to the charr forums, where NO ONE ever looks. While continuous lack of care for charr armor is a big part of the issue, to suggest that 57% of your players are more worthy of your time and attention than 13% of your players, I think, might have a pretty far-reaching impact, besides just being inexcusable.

The worst thing we could do at this point is stay quiet and let this continue to happen…though giving up and deleting our beloved charr to make humans just because the armor looks nicer on them is in a close second, as this just adds to the disparity between charr and humans that ArenaNet are using as a shabby justification to apply percentage values to their paying customers. It’s not my place to tell people how to enjoy the game they paid for and invested their time in. Just a thought.