Guild Wars 2

So I can’t help but notice that while the human character creator has a really nice variety of skintones, the hairstyles are – well. There’s a bit of a problem, in that there are NO options for ‘natural hair’ in the female generator. No braids, no locs, no nothing. The male version has, IIRC, one or two hair options, but the females have NONE. Not even in the expanded hairstyle kit! I CHECKED.

You guys. You made Nightfall. You can do this. Use the asura hairstyles if you need to. Use the male human hairstyles.

My charranger gives her pets the worst names basically ever. ICly.

Juvenile Devourer – Smushface
Raven – Snickersnack
Jellyfish – Lacy
Armored Fish – Fluffy

I’d have more, but THE GAME DOESN’T SAVE THE PET NAMES, so I try to keep to my favs.

When I selected an ‘honorless gladium’ as my father figure, I was… well, I was expecting an honorless gladium as my father figure. Instead I get a mesmer (which: cool) in good standing, who may/may not be a traitor? And THEN he goes on to BECOME either a gladium or dead, either way. Still, definitely not as advertised!

Furthermore, the reason I let him go was because he hinted, strongly, that something treacherous was up, possibly with Emer, and things weren’t as they seemed. The fact that he was allowed no visitors, even family, seemed like a strong indication that something WAS up.

Then it suddenly became about loyalty to your warbandmate???? And I KILLED Emer??? And assaulted the Adamant Guard????? And MY tribune, who I would imagine is fond of me, seeing as I saved her bacon since I rolled Ash, isn't involved in this at all???? The Iron Legion tribune has nothing to say about me stealing the prison key from his office?????? And *I'm* not being tossed into the Bane barehanded????????

just… what? w h a t ?

This isn’t too hard to fix, either! Have Vallus give us a quest to go find that evidence he mentioned, rather than we go on and do a million unlawful things and get no punishment for it. Then we have the evidence, maybe kill Emer because she's been secretly evil the whole time or whatever, and we know WHY everything turns out OK.

I’ve been browsing the forums about storyline and so forth, and I see most people complaining about a lack of continuity – characters in one arc don’t know you in the next, and so forth. It sounds like one writing group has been assigned a set of events/arc, another for a different set, some more peeps for generic background NPC talk (to y’all: so many cookies, omg) and so forth. And people making sure everything probably mostly sounds right and fits together, of course. XD

But considering all the unhappiness about continuity and diversity of character dialogue, I wonder if a slightly different approach might be in order? For example, assigning Writer (or sub-group!) A to be in charge of, say, all the human storyline NPCs, Writer/Sub-group B focuses on all of Trahearne’s interactions, and so forth. It seems like NPCs get tossed in and out of arcs with nobody keeping an eye out for places they might contribute or comment on, or where their dialogue options might change.

I understand that for the most part, dialogue needs to be about the same. ESPECIALLY for voiced things! But it would be cool if there was, say, additional lines every so often that were appropriate for a given race/class/NPC. Trahearne has met the sylvari PC before, and should have a little more to say to them when first starting Act 3, even if the rest of his lines are the same for everyone else. Or someone to remember hey, a member of your warband might want to tease a Blood legion charr about joining Order of Whispers. (For that matter, remembering to alter some stuff in the Flame Legion storyline if you’ve got a female charr. Thaaaaat was weird.)

This also goes for PC dialogue – an Iron Legion charr might get a line like “I’ve /dreamed/ about rolling with the Gear warband!”, or a necromancer could remark, “When we have a moment, Trahearne, I’d like to talk about that [cool necromancer thing you did].”

I don’t know how it would be best to divide those tasks (I think asking one person to do them all would be cruel at least!), but I think that more resources need to be put in that direction, because most everything I’ve read indicates that it’s a huge problem thus far as far as storylines go.

I’m not sure how much extra coding this would be, or where y’all are planning to go with the ‘standard’ karma merchants (the ones who sell basil, etc), but I think it would be Very Useful if those merchants also sold account-bound karma foods as you unlock them out in the world. Right now, I’m all, “where are peaches again? I’m out of peaches…” and then googling where that merchant is in another window, and then going out to get them. This is unnecessarily convoluted! Adding a merchant whose only ‘job’ was to vend karma foods from elsewhere would have the same effect; it’s just that the existing city karma merchants puzzle me. XD

Ability to switch the gendered clothing for both genders would also be super appreciated from this person. I happen to love the idea of my charr in a dress,* but I really want to be able to put my asura necromancer in the male version!

• Here is a scenario: Ash Legion agent has heard about “feminine wiles” and wants to try them on Flame Legion. If nothing else, it’d confuse the hell out of them. Plus, you could fit a small artillery piece under all those ruffles! Perfect.

I’d appreciate it if you gave me a real apology, rather than claim that I’m the one with the problem. Just because your wife has Shoshone ancestry doesn’t absolve you from making really offensive statements, which you did and are continuing to do.

I’m going to drag this discussion over to a sidenote for a second. Your “IRL example” is racist and ignorant, and I wish you hadn’t used it. For one thing, illegal seizure of Indian lands happened much more recently than “hundreds of years ago” – there are ongoing court cases about seized land, after all. For another, you talk about Indian nations “rising up and massacring” people like a spaghetti Western, not-so-subtly implying that Indians are violent barbarians. Kindly leave your caricatures at the door in the future.

To address your post in general, I would like to point you towards the NPC Irena Airblade and her son; they’re at the entrance to the Imperator’s Core ground level. She’s a farmer, and she tells her son that the fahrar is supposed to help him discover what his talents are. (It’s also a really sweet conversation, but that’s beside the point.) I also found a group of asura NPCs who came to learn metallurgy from the charr – asura, who are about as likely as my cat to admit they don’t know better than everyone else. Yeaaaah.

Konus, I am very happy with my Priory member, who’s a Guardian and Iron Legion. The Legions matched up pretty well with our three choices of Order – sort of alarmingly so.

As a necro, I used staff for pseudo-traps and all-minion skills. Then I kited for my life, and just plain kept running until my minion cooldowns were up. Not sure how to duplicate that on thief, though. Best of luck!

Evil Neato — oh man, I really remember that Norn storyline bit, with the guy you don’t kill. It’s so much worse if you’re playing a female Norn, because he throws in some “get back in the kitchen” rhetoric, and I just. I have seldom wanted to slaughter an NPC more. Steelbane, maybe. Yet my Snow Leopard mesmer /lets the guy go,/ specifically so that he can tell the rest of them that I’m coming?! Insert shriek of fury here.

Maybe I was doing it wrong, but the difficulty level in the minotaur storyline was off the charts for me. I felt kind of like Sisyphus, flinging myself at mobs in hopes of whittling down their numbers before they killed me again. I’ve just barely started the rivalry storyline, partly because I’m afraid it’s going to turn out that difficult again for me.

Woah, Frosty, I think you don’t want to go there!

a) It devalues real-life human atheists by implying that we, too, are just ‘taking a break from faith’
b) It rejects the trust and belief that charr have in themselves and in the Legions. Charr are secular humanist-equivalents; they believe in the potential of charr.
c) It blithely counts asuran belief in the Eternal Alchemy (pantheistic more than anything else) as a religion, which is a dubious contention at best.

As long as you can boast about it afterwards, you’re all good, basically. It’s not about honor per se, it’s about your legacy, and how long you’ll be remembered after you die. (…For good things, hopefully, but better bad things than nothing.)

Wobels – whaaat, where are there gay asura? Are you talking about Doxa and Kazz, in the Dynamics storyline? If so, then you’re mistaken; Doxa’s female.

Nah, that’s still prejudice. Being so bothered by seeing two male-appearing Sylvari in love that you re-rolled paints a pretty clear picture about your views on real life gays, who have a right to exist and even be gay in public (!).

Let’s play a game. Let’s replace “PC” with ‘willingness to be gay where I can see them.’ That’s really what we’re talking about here, isn’t it? You having to see gay people. (Let me remind you that I have to see people being straight all the time. Even my own parents, the horror.)

“I have stated to Anet myself that they made me uncomfortable with how they have made [some[ Sylvari [be gay where I can see them]. I, like the OP, will not impose my life choices on others. I feel though that they have really over done the [willingness to be gay where I can see them] on this race.”

That sounds a lot like you’re imposing your life choices on others to me! Seeing two guys in love does not hurt you in any way. Homosexuality is not actually contagious. It is, therefore, really not your business to utter one word about it. I don’t go out of my way to tell you that your interpretation of Scripture is wrong, because it’s not my business. I don’t tell people to stop being visibly straight in my vicinity, either, although this thread kind of tempts me to start.

Put your faith in Iron, not false gods!!

And then I sprang for another slot because I heard the Blood storyline was fun. (It is) Someday, Ash, someday.

Xomic – that actually really annoyed me during character creation! I was like, “wait, scuse me, how about the mom? I think she has probably done some awesome stuff, why aren’t we hearing about HER? We may not have even met our dad.”

I’m gonna thow in an emphatic SECONDED here; I was also supremely disappointed at the lack of black hairstyles in human creation. That was one of my favorite things about GW1, especially in contrast to Certain Other MMOs. It wouldn’t be too hard to alter, say, that adorable asuran dreadlocks look for human females – change the hairband and you’re set.

I realize you may be wanting to preserve a lot of the Canthan/Elonian stuff for future expansions (may I put in a request for something akin to the Dervish class?) but I think having the respective districts echo their homelands would actually stir interest in those countries, not dampen it.

Synergetics are the “idea guys” – if you ask them, anyway. They study how the whole fabric of stuff is put together, not just the energy bits (Dynamics) or the solid bits (Statics). This means they do a lot of thinky things, and also asura gates and any weird odds and ends. Walk around Rata Sum and listen to various college members talk – you’ll get a pretty good idea of who goes where.

Oh man, that theory was shot down? That sucks. That seriously sucks. Still, Jennah KNEW they were going out to kill an Elder Dragon, but still chose to ask for help? I’m afraid she just doesn’t come off very well either way.

I’ve also had this problem, and I think I know WHY it’s a problem. The quests are worded as if you should go immediately from one to the next – I even have a ‘time limit’ on my next Norn quest segment!! And yet, that’s two levels away, so there’s no kittening way that I can go straight to it. That IS a writing flaw, I think, or at least an unfortunate combination. I get where they’re going, providing you a consistent path upwards, but the only times I feel like I can relax and just level are when I’ve completed a whole story segment.

Raven and Snow Leopard say that mesmer and thief are perfectly natural paths for Norn! Raven loves riddles, and solving problems (“with a gun; and if that don’t work… use more gun”) are what engineers are all about.

Just because your mesmer doesn’t use blades doesn’t mean they can’t; they can even equip a sword in main hand and off hand at the same time, and that’s a lot of swords! The right tool for the right situation seems to be what GW2 gameplay is geared for, what with the weapon-switching and vast array of weapon skills, so your rejection of blades is a little uncharacteristic. Perfectly possible, but not necessarily typical.

Also, I think that the best portrayal of Sylvari necromancers is in the first Guild Wars 2 book, ‘Ghosts of Ascalon.’ Killeen is the most adorable creepy deathmonger that I have ever seen, who makes it clear that death and decay are just as much a part of life as, well, life is. I think there’s a difference between a necromancer and a WoW warlock; I think necros don’t actually, like, pledge allegiance to demonic powers et cetera.

(Hey, now, let’s not stereotype our fellow girl players here, Ropihl! Internalized sexism still counts. :/ )

I love lore in general, and I love charr because I wanted to know more about them in GW1. They’ve done so much for themselves since then, and they’re determined to hang on to what they have, and SO stubborn they just might manage to do it. XD (Seriously, who takes over land haunted by respawning ghosts and says “don’t care, ours anyway”? The charr, that’s who.)

I also think feminine armor on the asura would look weird and un-asura. I do see the original poster’s point about that ridiculous barbarian-y one-shoulder armor, though. Honestly, I giggled when I first saw it, and thought “no cookie for whoever designed THAT!” It’s not like it’s a secret that charr and asura armor must be unisex; the artist KNEW that when they designed it.

Hi! I don’t know if this is the right forum, but I was in character creation, and was gonna make a character named Sedrel Snakebite, but apparently it contains words or partial words that aren’t permitted? I narrowed it down to “snakebite” being the prohibited word, and I’m confused as to how that’s inappropriate. Could someone either explain or alter the ruling?

Ozymandias – I agree, that was super annoying. I was all, what? My character is AGREEING to this? Why?! Thus far I haven’t seen the same kind of storyline variety for asura as the other races, and that really makes me sad. It wouldn't even be too hard to arrange, either. Just have our character say "lol nope" and then join Zojja when she shuts Shodd down.

Has nobody here heard the mesmer mind control theory? :O There is one! It goes: Logan didn’t care much about royalty et cetera until he met Queen Jennah face to face. His own brother asks if she mesmer-whammies him and she says no, but she did. So Logan’s choice wasn’t so much a choice as it was, well, a result of being mind-whammied.

I can’t buy anything at the TP at all. The Buy button remains grayed out for me, despite my having enough money to buy the items?