Guild Wars 2

I was initially torn. I think the level of detail is beautiful (so beautiful). But do the watchknights really need nipples? Really? Once I realized that, I realized the watchknights present not just a typical skin-tight-I-can-fight-in-heels fantasy female body, but a naked female body to gawk at. Not even an attempt to hide the objectification. Do they really need heels? I wish they would have been androgynous, or that the lace/engraving effect was more emblematic of clothing. Do the breasts and butt really need the extra attention drawn through the lace design? Was someone like “You know, that engraving on the genitalia isn’t eye-catching enough… let’s give the robots nipples, too”?

And if you think a single topless male NPC (Braham) is equivalent to a whole type of NPC that makes up an army that we see over and over again in the span of seconds in the case of the Jubilee events, supposedly commissioned by a strong female ruler, I… I don’t even know what to tell you other than to ask you to sit and think about it for a while. And yes, EDI from Mass Effect 3 was way less sexualized in design than this. The details of her breasts, for glaring example, were kept inside of her “suit”.

Some sort of equivalence that could ~make things even~ is to get some male watchknights up in there with their testes made into the bellybutton/nipple “bolts” and some embroidered codpieces.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Fluffy Ferocious.9807:

As soon as men are generalized into a sex obsessed group, the movement risks losing 50% of its would-be supporters.

Not to mention it’s also sexist.

… I’m not sure anyone has made that generalization here, though? Or at least, 90% of commenters haven’t and it wasn’t the point of the OP. What are you responding to? Pointing out that a design innately appeals to the sensuality of hetero males isn’t an accusation of ~all men~ being ~sex obsessed~. It’d be more like a privilege check, or a check on the internalization of paternal culture, in regards to this specific watchknight design (though the thread has occasionally tangented to include other design choices, like the grossly huge Norn bodies and the wide difference between them and their human counterparts, vs the smaller difference between female Norn bodies and human females, differences between female & male armor of the same name, etc).

To address recent posts to the thread, this is why the complaints wouldn’t be different if it turns out a woman did decide to add heels and nipple bolts. We all process and internalize the culture we’re in; it’s no different for women. An action/design/text is not automagically “okay” or free from critique in feminist criticism just because the author was a woman. There’s still a larger context at work.

Fluffy Ferocious.9807:

The problem feminism faces isn’t men. It’s jerks, ignorance, and at times, it’s own lazy speech. I’d fight them in that order.

I… feel like your whole post is trying to re-explain feminism in a thread full of people already in-depth applying/rebutting feminist terms/theory to watchknights (at least in the first six or so pages, heh). That’s probably why you got such a snarky response. It’s like coming into a physics classroom and explaining multiplication at the end of the session. No one has said that the problem is men. You brought someone’s direct, specific reply out into a generalized straw man (as relating to this thread, anyways) critique of feminism. They are all valid points, aside from my quibble with your “society” definition, but I’m not sure they needed to be made. We all know what society is, we’re a bit beyond that semantic point in the discussion, but you felt like you had to re-explain to us. Aforementioned quibble: Society does treat people in certain ways, because “society” is a pattern of relationships and, at least in academia, is characterized by the overall sum of those relationships. In ethnographies, we write, “Suchandsuch society acts this way toward this subgroup.” Obviously society is not a person. It is a generalization. We all, I assume, understand how personification operates in the English language. Earlier, some were careful to say “Western Culture/society” but I’ve dropped that because it seems pretty self-evident.

To address your first point, since I started up there with your second: Who are you responding to? No one in this thread is saying the design is going to offend all women. They are trying to critique it from a feminist theory perspective. These are not the same things (as you said: “some of those experiences would not offend every woman. Nor does it have to for feminism to be relevant.”). What offends someone and what harms someone/society are not necessarily the same thing.

I think the rub was that your points seemed to be 1) defining obvious terms (society, objectivity) in a thread that’s had relatively decent in-depth discussions on “objectification”, “sexual” vs “sexualization”, and “idealization” just off the top of my head, 2) stating the obvious problem with two supposedly common arguments that I have not seen being made/not responding to a specific argument for or against the watchknights, and to top it all off 3) claiming that our supposed ignorance of the first two points is what is alienating all men (“50% of [feminism’s] would-be supporters”) from supporting feminism. Which is all a response to feminism at large, anyways, and not pros/cons of the design of the watchknights or feminist analysis of such. So, not to say that your points are not vaguely valid in some hypothetical situation or well said, just that they aren’t super on point for this 11 page long thread about a specific issue.

I was talking with my dad about this phenomena the other day, but as it related to the Star Trek comic and how wonderfully strange it was to me to see the Enterprise with all girls and one guy instead of all guys and one girl. I couldn’t believe how weird it felt to see that, when a crew with all men was something I didn’t bat an eye at. Perhaps that’s what’s going on here. We’ve seen the opposite for so long that a female-driven cast is suddenly ~unbalanced~, where a male-driven cast is considered default.

I like that this game is aiming to give meaty arcs to traditionally under-represented portions of the real world population. And I definitely don’t think that male characters having flaws is somehow an insult to them. Rather, I think that their season 1 intros are a wonderful set-up to give them a character arc for season 2 that’s actually compelling and emotionally involving. Will Rox’s search for acceptance into a new warband (vs the “family she chose” in Braham and co) inspire Braham to try to repair the relationship he has with his mom? Does Canach mean what he says about repenting or is it just a slippery way to shrug off suspicion and fade into the background for more covertish shenanigans? Magnus is going to have to do something about his kittenty Captain’s Council and Evon’s set up to be some prime opposition to that goal, as well as influencing Heal-O-Tron in a probably negative way. If these men weren’t somehow flawed, if the women were just Strong Female Characters, I would care so much less about all of them.

I’m just excited to see how everyone’s semi-conflicting ideas end up clashing or merging through Season 2.

eta: And I’m amused at people who think that Kasmeer hasn’t had people calling her a vacuous airhead, or Marjory a terrible detective, or Kiel a useless paladin. Everyone sees these characters differently, I guess. I don’t see how Canach, Evon or Braham are idiots or fools. One is a crafty businessman, one is/was a crafty and caring anarchist, and one is brave warrior who stood basically alone to defend his home against terrible odds.

Sorry, OP, but I disagree, as well. This is like me asking for GW2 to change the necro effects because locusts with the green and black color combo are “boyish” and it off-puts my fancy pink lady sensibilities™. I mean, my female Asura necro is not only forced to wear boy versions of armor but also must endure the black and demony corpsified color scheme.

I actually really like that there’s no gender difference for the effects of Mesmers and Necros because, as someone upthread said, the “this color/thing is for boys”, “this color/thing is for girls” is being side-eyed, discussed and found inadequate lately in most academic circles. It pleases me greatly that video games are letting that mentality leak in.

I’m most annoyed at the vast differences between male and female armors of the same exact set tbh. My boy characters have nowhere near the amount of skin-showy armors that my light lady does and it’s a travesty.

The skimpy conversation is more one of taste. For example, I’d love rocking the t3 human medium if there was no underboob. I’d still say that’s pretty skimpy, but I like the style and detail of the design itself, as someone upthread said. I’d buy it for my male human mediums if it looked exactly the same on them and showed basically their entire torso and left breast. Hell, I’d buy it on my female human med at that point. As it is, it just seems like a shameless grab for T&A on ladies without the same shameless grab on men’s bodies. Equal opportunity skimpiness here.

My other problem with most skimpy armor is that they look ugly. Like wall sconces made into bra form (Flamekissed/Feathered) or half a bowling ball with a kindergartner’s art project on top (Conjurer’s) — or, heck, no support or detail at all just mystical blue paintjob boobs with afterthought accents (Light Zodiac).

Same with many of the covered-up designs, even. Light Ascended? Beautiful level of detail, but the pom-pom shoulders, gloves and pants are hideous while the actual construction of the top and boots are bland. The top is something I’m torn between because the detail is, like I said, wonderful but it’s basically a long sleeved shirt with none of the interestingness of the v similar Ascalon light top :\ The boots are detailed but somehow boring as well and look like heavy armor on top of all that, but that’s a quibble.

I want costume designs that are interested in various mixes of haute couture and armor (and maybe even cyberpunk/steampunk like the light male aetherblade and asura cultural sets) but :\ that’s not what I’m seeing so far as the majority in-game. And it’s a shame because I did see that in a lot of sets from GW1 and I do see it in a few sets that are not actually available to players at this time (Anise, I will start the first counterfeit clothing shop to knock off your dress, I swear to god. Then I’m coming for you, Norn shamans). I love the new ancestral costume, I just wish it looked basically the same on both men and women. Humanoid men really get the short end of the stick on the sleeves and gloves (one of the best constructed features on the design imo), while female charr totally lost out on the male charr’s dragon tail.

I love OP’s ideas so much because they tie into the lore mysteries that have kept me in love with the GW world. I don’t object to Scarlet so much as I object to the old lore being dropped like it’s hot and her being shoved in as some sort of calorie-dense but low-on-nutrition substitute. I want to know my character is actually researching things, is actually working hard to uncover things and actively make connections instead of just being called upon every two weeks by another NPC to play at being their silent sidekick while they do all that stuff. Where are the gods and why did the leave? Has no one tried to communicate with them? What’s up with pale tree 2.0? The bloodstones? Elona and the Sunspears?

OP’s first paragraph just really spoke to me, then they pulled out that magnificent chart at the end and… VigorousApplause.gif

phys.7689:

the problem with your theory is you want to apply the same type of ascetic to men and women, when it currently for most people is not the same.

… what. Skimpy is skimpy, whether it’s on a guy or girl. There’s no difference in aesthetic there. I mean, yeah I find guys in suits hot and girls in ballgowns hot too, but we are talking about skimpiness here. Gimme some kitten chaps or some low slung pants on a guy, some crotch pouches or barely there shirts. Show off those arms and muscled legs. I’d love to know what survey said people attracted to men don’t find men’s bodies sexy.

phys.7689:

Skimpy, you can define as how much flesh is covered, but what you are talking about has no definition, you just want to put men in the same thing as women to prove a point, but its not really proving anything but that men and women dress differently irrelevant to sexiness.

What they are talking about is equality in skimpiness, shorthanded in the thread down to “sexiness” sometimes. Yes, we do want to put men in the same thing as women (and vice versa! Phalanx armor, for example. Put the male phalanx armor on women). “It’s not really proving anything but that men and women dress differently irrelevant to sexiness” This is ridiculous. We’re not talking about how men and women dress themselves, we’re talking about how armor designers dress men and women video game characters. I don’t know many women who dress themselves in just panties and a bra to go to the office or grab starbucks (the beach or a pool is obviously different), or many soldiers who slap on a bikini and a gun, and yet here we are. For people who like to throw out the “it’s a fantasy, of course they’d wear underwear to battle” arguments, it’s funny how that line of thought just doesn’t apply to the male characters.

phys.7689:

look at this gw1 armor
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080827201205/gw_/images/1/17/Monk_Star_Armor_M_gray_front.jpg

almost all naked, and yet i dont think it even really comes across as sexy.
The reality is, its all in your head, my head, etc. What you dont really like is that people are dressing charachters in ways you find offensive, but thats impossible to police. They have a great number (more than they have skimpy) of armors that are fully clothed. People just like the skimpy ones on average. Blame the people, not the designers.

You’re right. They’re half naked and covered in tattoos but it’s not necessarily sexy or objectifying. You know what aids that line of thought? Showing the female version alongside it. They are both mostly nude but for thick cloth underwear – not just underwear but underwear with modesty loincloths over the form-fitting element. They are both equally skimpy and the armor looks like the same exact set. There is beautiful detail and intricate care taken in the tattoo portion of that armor (I love that and Labyrinthine armor from GW1, favorite sets of mine). That is a wonderful example of male and female skimpiness equality :)

What we don’t like is an armor set that is supposedly the same looking radically different on males and females, usually in favor of more skin on the females. I do blame the designers for that, not the players. I have skimpy armor on some of my ladies. I don’t understand why I can’t do the same for my men or why people are telling me no one finds it attractive when there are people here flat out telling you that they do.

Stark.1350:

Nevermind all the other rewards you got from opening all of those chests.

Sorry, this just screams entitlement to me.

That’s a shame, since OP even agrees with Shiren’s suggestion of being allowed to turn in some of those rewards to an NPC as an exchange system. Which means they are saying they literally want to be able to work for them. Beyond some cooking recipes, there’s not a lot that is unique to turn Geodes in for beyond these weapon recipes. So once you’ve got the recipe and you’re hunting for the fossils, what good are all those geodes to you?

Account bound fossils plus RNG status is a double-walled fortress of depressing. They could either keep the RNG and make them sellable or keep them account bound and earnable. Having both just feels like being punished.

That said, the Ambrite weapons are probably going to be the big draw for keeping people farming Geodes/sandstorms through the week/beyond if these events stay (which would be really nice to know ahead of time since I spent all my geodes last week thinking that they’d become useless and that I just wanted cooking recipes and now have to start again from zero for these new weapons. Silly me). So I think keeping the fossils account bound is their way of making sure people have to come and specifically farm this zone. Clever; we’ll see how it works out. Probably not in my favor since RNG gods hate me, but I’ll keep trying and see what happens.

Good luck, everyone :)

eta: Someone brought up magic find and yes! It would be nice if MF factored in to this somehow. I stopped working for MF past 110% because it was just like… why does this even matter. All the stuff I want are usually from chests and not drops. Again, it would be nice if something I worked for (MF %) was part of the equation.

Yup! Happened to my boyfriend last night in Blazeridge on Devona’s Rest. I’ve got some competition, looks like. -sharpens blades-

Jahroots.6791:

I’d argue that most women (and probably a few gay men as well) also think those Final Fantasy outfits look pretty ridiculous..

Okay? So some people would think those outfits on men are ridiculous. Some people think the t3 human medium female armor or the zodiac armor is ridiculous. All you’ve managed to point out is that people have varying opinions. I think boob armor is ridiculous and think that a similar look on a man would be this but I’m sure someone would claim that’s somehow more ridiculous. Yay, opinions.

Jahroots.6791:

‘Sexy’ simply does not work the same way for both genders. Yes – as a society we are far more comfortable with feminine expressions of sexuality – but you cannot force males to be equally sexualised. Our bodies are different and perceived differently. Would you also propose that female characters’ nipples should be displayed?Y’know…for equality, of course.

I disagree; I think sexy works very similarly. You’ve got the flesh factor, whatever’s left is form-fitting or loose but practically a scrap. Primarily we find it sexy when these are elements done to parts we cover with underwear. We’ve already had female breasts exposed with the Zodiac armor, and we get female pantyshots all the time in GW2 armor. There are armor sets where girls bend over and you can see their butt crack (human t3 light). I’d love armor that allows the same on men, with just some straps and tight-fitting fishnet. Like this or this.

For example, the female version of t3 med human on a male would look something like this. That’s pretty skimpy and sexy. It’s tight, the pants are super low-cut, you’ve got cut-outs along the leg and straps… it’s really not that hard to transfer the brand of sexiness usually reserved for females onto men. It’s exactly the same as the female version. I would def. buy that.

I don’t understand where the preoccupation with noting that differences in anatomy exist (never would have known…) or why you insist sexy is so different between the genders. Tell me then, since you obviously know more about lusting over males than I do: what does a guy have to wear to be considered sexy? Cause I’d consider those female armor on men images sexy and skimpy.

Jahroots.6791:

I can appreciate why you want to instigate change in society’s perception and attitude towards this issue. However for the time being, accept that it will take time for this to occur (if it ever does)

As for your dismissal at the end… sure. I think everyone who considers themselves any kind of advocate understands that change is slow. It would become even slower/nonexistent if you stop demanding it or critiquing the media that gets put out into the world and consumed en masse. It’s a little insulting to hear this at the end of every discussion on video game armor, because it’s insinuating that we don’t already understand that and that this fact somehow means we should be quiet. “Change is slow” doesn’t change any of the heart of the conversation, it’s just a sentence that tells me to sit down and be quiet.

You’re not the only one! It’s hands down my favorite thing about Wintersday :) I love music, I love bells, I love that no one has to fail for me to succeed. It’s a beautiful thing. Maybe I’ll see you there.

My biggest complaint is echoing what others have said: How am I supposed to know when temple events are going on? With the sub-complaint: The temple events never pop because there are too many people are in Orr defending. And the sub-sub complaint: I thought you guys were focusing on putting more info in the game, yet there are no boss timers to be found.

It’s become impossible to tell from looking at the map if the temples are contested. Last night, I camped in Straights of Devastation only to see so many people around now that the temple doesn’t fail. How am I supposed to get my new gm traits (across 8 lvl 80 characters) this way? I don’t have the time to sit around and hope an event starts. I thought one of the goals of GW2 was less “waiting to play” and my experience last night was… well, I waited and didn’t get to play. APIs help me to know how to efficiently spend my time in-game. Now that they’re gone, camping is king once again. Ain’t no one got time for that. I hope it dies off, and that this is just a side-effect from everyone rushing to get traits at once but I wouldn’t hold my breath because temple trains are (or were?) big draws on my server. I wouldn’t mind a less populated map tbh, or a removal of the megaserver from Orr. Let people guest if their servers are too low pop to handle the temples. Then if they get kicked into OF give ’em a megaserver shard.

As much as I was excited about the megaserver… I’m finding my lag has doubled to tripled in areas where I shouldn’t be getting lag (outside of meta events). I hope the city lag is due to everyone crowding there due to the update.

I am finding that I don’t like being mixed in with tons of other servers. I liked being at events and scoping people out, trying to get to know names, guilds and faces that I might see around again. This way… it’s just a sea of new people all the time, no one is familiar. It seemed like a complete hodgepodge of people. There’s nothing "Cheers"esque about it (“where everybody knows your name”). That is, I feel even less like I’m part of a community — it’s even more like I’m part of a herd/crowd — which is a shame because isn’t WvW centered around the idea of forming an identity with your server? I feel like PvE should reflect that as well, not that I’m against inter-server cooperation. I’m just concerned at driving such a wedge between WvW and PvE. It’s one thing to fight beside people you see around in maps, it’s another to be like “who are these unfamiliar people/guilds? Even though they’re from my server they feel unfamiliar”. I wonder if this is just a work around to avoiding server mergers and avoiding giving people selectable shards like GW1.

My guild tried to get into Fields of Ruin last night and we all ended up in different instances. Same for Karka Queen in Southsun and Mount Maelstrom’s metas (MM isn’t on the MS list but the map wasn’t marked overflow and people from 4+ different servers were there and insisted they weren’t guesting, so idk what to think).

I’ll have to give it some more time before solidifying my judgement, but my short-term judgement is that this has been the weak spot of the update so far. Good luck to the team in addressing these issues and thank you for trying to think outside the box in the first place :)

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Lishtenbird.2814:

My suggestions are:

• Introduce a required boss(es) that insta-kills you when you fail to dodge when NPC told you to.
• Introduce a required boss(es) that insta-kills you if you do not get a potion and nourishment from NPC which told you to, or a zone which kills you fast if you do not get a potion/nourishment “antidote”.

Those are terrible suggestions! Requiring players to use a consumable to beat content is bad and annoying. Insta kills are also bad and annoying.

What the game needs, is a tutorial, and slowly increasing difficulty. The game needs to teach players the required skills naturally as they play through PVE. Players aren’t lazy, but the game designers made a design mistake by not coming up with a decent way to teach players essential combat strategy.

Currently almost all of open world PVE makes zero requirement regarding skill, but doesn’t teach anything either. Then there’s dungeons, which are a very steep increase in difficulty and mechanics, without teaching those mechanics first. Fractals is a bit more gradual, but I think a lot of players falsely assume that since Fractals aren’t accessibly until halfway into the game, that they are there for at a higher difficulty tier than dungeons.

Ah, Malafide, I agree. Instakill only leads to frustration and doesn’t give you an opportunity to course-correct. I feel like that’s the academic equivalent of “we don’t need to teach these kids writing skills and techniques, we need to throw ‘em in to a 20 page essay that is pass/fail depending on criteria we won’t clearly communicate to them.” A good teacher knows that’s a terrible way for people to learn. This game absolutely needs a more in-depth tutorial system and a deeper explanation of its mechanics. Allow people to go into training instances with a boss that helps them hone one mechanic – dodge, condition removal, shields, effect fields, combo finishers – and let them practice. Heck, I’d do this on the classes/weapons I play less often just to get reacquainted with the skills in a stakes-free environment.

There’s a heart in Queensdale that lets you train timing shots through blocking, skills that utilize a “hold down the key” mechanic, etc. I thought there would be more places like this about because that sort of thing is incredibly useful for understanding mechanics while also being totally immersive within the game. Alas.

Someone upthread mentioned more audio cues from NPCs. I love this idea, too. NPCs were so well-utilized in the marionette battle, as far as offering relevant information. I wouldn’t have to constantly look at the UI and could focus on the combat in front of me. It made the event more fun, too, getting to hear their encouragement or bringing your attention to the boon they gave you. A gentle reminder about the potion would be good. Because, yes, I forget to drink! It lasts like 20 minutes and usually in that time frame I’m in the middle of trying to keep three separate objectives in my mind ankitten ot focused on consumables when I get jumped by a patrol. I especially forget to drink because I used to actively avoid potions due to the year-old bug that only recently got fixed.

I’d also add that there is a big inconsistency in enemy aoe fields. A red ring can mean “standing here is okay, but don’t hit the walls!” or “insta death” or “damage over time if you don’t scurry out of here”. The timing for the dodge is inconsistent; I mentioned this in a reply post about the LA Knights. You’re expected to dodge just after the red ring goes away. In what other part of the game is this the case? How would you know that without trial and error? You wouldn’t, and in this case it’s not the players’ skill levels or familiarity with mechanics that matters, it’s familiarity with a singular boss.

We’re at a point in the game’s lifespan where there’s a big gap between new players and experienced ones. Those of us here from the beginning who kept up with mechanics in each update have a huge advantage because we’ve been able to learn gradually and gather experience. These new players are thrown into an environment where there isn’t a lot of up-to-date in-game guidance. I had to find out myself how combo fields worked and how my builds could utilize them better by reading on the wiki for about an hour. Information like that should be more pronounced in-game.

Durzlla.6295:

Madora.9340:

Durzlla.6295:

Really Anet? We’re going down this road now? I mean kitten i thought with all the Bad kitten heavy armor skins in GW1 (for female) that at least -some- of the really awesome armors in GW2 would be the same for females…

Nope, looks like they get chain Bikinis instead of real armor… cause that makes sense….

That being said that trickster armor is sexy as hell, i must have it!

I can’t help but agree. Chain-mail bikinis are sexy the first time around, but I’m thinking they’re way overdone now. Give us something unique to look at, both as male and female!

Don’t get me wrong, they should have chain bikinis (i mean some people like playing that berserker character who is dressed in very small amounts of armor), but if they do that for an armor it should be for both male AND female, not Male being some knightly juggernaught armor where they’re clad head to toe in 12 inches of steel, and then the females are essentially dancers for jabba the hutt.

YES, THIS, THANK YOU. Why can’t I put my male sylvari in some skimpy armor that shows off his glow? There’s only one light piece that does this for a male (it has an open chest front, forget its name). Get us some male 1970s basketball short-shorts up in here because, as I’ve said in the past, I wouldn’t mind designs showing off the skin if it were an option for both sexes. The male and female phalanx shoulda been two separate designs. I don’t understand how the male armor wouldn’t translate easily to a female. I saw a picture of the male phalanx armor on tumblr and nearly lost my mind because it was so beautiful and then I saw the female version and was heartbroken. I guess I should be used to this by now.

ETA: I see people are saying they like the female phalanx. Which is fine! It is definitely nice looking and I love the detail. But looks totally different than the male. Again, I wish they would have been two sets with much similar aesthetics for male and female.

Shiren.9532:

… I suspect they are just consequences of a designer’s inspiration. Of all the possible sources of inspiration, I doubt it was ever intended to be disrespectful to women or suggestive of submissive women. I too wonder why they made the robots that way, but I don’t think it’s an issue.

“Consequences of a designer’s inspiration” In a field largely dominated by guys, I’m not surprised that this portrayal is the unthinking default. As someone who plays video games and reads comics, unthinking sexualization really is nothing new to me. I don’t think anyone would argue with what you’re saying. Whereas you can dismiss it as not being an issue because it was unintentional, imagine for a second that this is the background radiation of your life. The critiques being made in this thread are not diminished by intentionality (though I imagine they’d be more hurt and angry in tone if it became clear that it was intentionally done for the eye candy!). It’s a major thread in academic analysis that the author’s intended meaning is only part of the story: that imagery, history or cultural context that the author is unaware of can influence an audience’s reading.

I think I’m not far off base if I say that most here are just trying to make the devs aware of what messages they’re sending/culture they’re reinforcing, perhaps unintentionally, in certain choices. I suppose I will make it a personal critique of the overall devs involved, though, and say that being unaware of how using the skin of a naked woman in heels in the watchknights comes off seems mighty tone-deaf.

And for those of you saying that because they are “strong” that makes them not sexualized, I’m going to refer you to a series of comics that will hopefully help you come to terms with the flaws in your slippery-slope arguments: http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=311 and http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=336

Part 1

sorudo.9054:

foofad.5162:

Astral Projections.7320:

sorudo.9054:

you see ppl die, blown to pieces and even break legs in mid battle but a nipple is what you guy’s are panicking about?
what a bunch of sissies, grow a pair or go outside and see the world, a nipple is really nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about.

But, but the CHILDREN! Think about the CHILDREN! O.o

Jk. Lol.

There does seem to be a fair amount of ummmm…… excitement, if that the proper word to use here, over the mere possibility of the presence of female nipples. Multiple screenshots with closeups of the “offending” area with discussions whether or not those are nipples showing or graphic glitches. Idk. Maybe it’s cultural. Maybe it’s an age thing. But some people are getting pretty frothed up about it.

Did you know that the female Orrian heavy chestplate used to show flesh underneath the claws covering the breasts, rather than a metallic plate? They changed it in Beta Weekend 3 or for release, I forget which.

There were definitely complaints about it and it was changed AFTER release. People tend to get offended at things that just do not affect them.

Armor skins are basically the end game right now, so it’s no surprise people are excited to voice their opinions. I don’t think the criticism specifically regarding the bared breasts stems from ~protecting the children~, at least not on my end. I really couldn’t care less about keeping children “pure” or whatever (because spoiler if you don’t have them: they can be smart jerks). I don’t think 5 year olds are playing the game. I think 15 year olds are, and this whiffs of pandering to them.

On my part at least, my investment in the topic stems from: what kind of atmosphere are game elements promoting both within the GW2 world and the games industry at large? Whether it’s Living Story, armor design or playstyle, that’s a question that’s relevant to everyone and not just whoever chooses to wear the armor.

Female armor’s been a subject of high contention in video games from an academic lens. I don’t think that’s a shocking concept to any of us. So does this armor set contribute to supposed industry tropes of objectification or refute them? Or some blend of the two? There’s been some good discussion about how this set excels at being one of the most on-par between the sexes (in terms of skin shown) of all the sets. That’s great! But maybe the girls could get a breast covered, too? All of the male sets cover up at least one pectoral… why are females not allowed the same? And why is the little fabric that is there used in such an ugly and impractical form? I think parity might be buttless pants for guys with some glued on doily looking fabric “holding up” the cheeks. It’s not a sexual organ like the other set of orbs on a guy. But it’s a sexualized body part, I guess. No attention has been paid to the booty on any other sets, just female breasts. Which strikes me as weird. That’s been a lot of the argument, right? That those quirking an eyebrow at the bared breasts are somehow puritans covered from head to toe who quiver at the site of an exposed breast or buttock. Hahaha, noooo. Because I’d like to know why don’t sexualized male parts (dat Nightwing booty) western society labels “taboo” get any of the spotlight? Is it because that feels tasteless? Is it because they think less of their audience would be into that? What is it that makes breasts such a high priority to expose? Bigger questions than we can get at here, but I hope you can see my concern has nothing to do with fear mongering about our children’s morality and more about the message they’re sending about the male and female form in the GW2 world to the players, and how that contributes to the culture of gaming as a whole.

Part 2
Obviously I can vote with my wallet, and my own characters don’t have to wear zodiac. I’m fine with that! Really, I promise. I don’t care about taking anything away from anyone – this isn’t an issue of fairness the way Flamekissed was. But I still have to live in a game world where women’s breasts are bared under the veil of airbrushed particle effects, and supported by wishes and dreams — or literal groping hands in the case of the Arah heavy armor. Which they changed as if the problem was the slivers of exposed breast and not the inherent grossness of implying that women’s body parts are to be groped and ogled. Are there going to be more armor sets like this in the future? Is this where the armor design is going? That’s what I’m hoping the feedback influences.

Studies have shown that “dont buy it” protests are not effective because all you’re doing is erasing yourself, making it more likely in the future that the developers won’t even consider you as part of their audience. So I’m voicing my opinion. The bared breasts are only one of many factors — which I outline earlier in the thread — that are keeping me from purchasing the sets.

The people maintaining that “it’s a skin suit/leotard” must never have worn one, or understand the bulk body armor like Batman’s adds to your form. Where are the joint lines showing where pieces connect, like batman’s armor? Where are the padded details, like on Batgirl’s? And just because some comic artists can have a similarly atrocious grasp of anatomy and clothing does not mean it excuses the same mistakes in other media. That just seems to mark this out as an even bigger, more widespread problem than this singular instance, if anything.

I’m not, nor have I seen, any of the criticism ask for the armor to be taken away. Just to keep in mind the tone the game’s design gives off to members of its audience. I’d hate to be running around this game in 2015 and have it basically been a year of God of War female armor options for GW2 female characters. Because I won’t be back in 2016 if that happens.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• A lot of newer players had trouble with the interface. That doesn’t apply to you, you’re veterans who have been around the conversion block a time or two. But newer players will benefit from the updated system.

So make the main conversion page ~simple~ with an obvious link to the old page, which provided interesting and relevant data about the recent history of the market’s volatility (or lack of, depending), as well as allowing people to enter in custom amounts. Custom conversion amounts are a necessity due to the pricing of items on the gem store. Also, this new theoretically streamlined page is not any less confusing imo, but I am all for a redesign that does not remove features.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• The goal was to make the Gem Store more like other shopping experiences, and if you think about it, there is more of that feel to it now.

I genuinely don’t understand this. Oh god, maybe I’m a confused new player. The “Shopping Experience” is the gem store itself, not the conversion center. See, when I invest money or convert to foreign money, companies/banks usually show me available data on recent stock volatility/exchange rates and how the current rate compares. I’ve never been to a bureau de change/bank/portfolio provider that didn’t let me choose how much to convert/invest, outside of long term investments like bonds where I get a guaranteed return. The difference is that they take a percentage, which I’m sourly surprised GW2 hasn’t started doing.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• You may be surprised to know this (I know I was) but very few people bought gems at smaller denominations than the first one offered in the new system. That’s not to say they never did, nor that there wouldn’t be the desire to do so. But overall, the current options were selected based on player purchases in the past.

What about converting gems to gold? OP of this mashup thread has 1 lonely gem to convert. What you say may be the case for gold->gems, but removing the option for the rare occasions when you need it due to gem store pricing or are too poor to afford anything more feels insulting, like we’re being forced into higher and higher price tiers.

Ishtar.6457:

aerial.7021:

goodness, want to see a new post just press F5.

Just remember Gaile is a person.

so are we, but here we are and look at how they treated us. we are like a bunch of monkeys with no brain who have a lot of $$ to them. so what is your point?

The point is Gaile is not “they”, she is a third party going between the decision makers and the player base. Anyone who abuses her out of their anger at the decision is a scrub. People who flip out on customer service reps who have their hands tied by their superiors are only making themselves look bad and completely shutting down any potential input the player base has access to. You want them to treat you like an intelligent adult, then act like it.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The Feature Pack announcements will continue next week and some of them will definitely contain information that’s relevant to those of you who’ve been playing the game for long. We won’t tell you about them until the articles are live though, to keep the element of surprise!

Thank you, Stephane, it was nice of you to comment and reassure us. That said, I really feel that the three week parceling out of information like this sprinkled by dev posts telling us to be patient and that we’ll be excited is increasing the fandom kitten within the community. The blog posts feel a little fluff-y to get a length out of them that may not be warranted. I venture to guess that there would be a little less bitterness if the announcements were more compact and substantial. Of course, I can see how small nibbles of information is easier on the PR team when it comes to fan feedback; perhaps merely changing up the order, or two instead of three weeks would ease the feelings of being strung along. Hopefully you guys can see where the disappointment/antsiness from veterans stems from on this, the most glorious of birthday weeks, having nothing to do with us in the news department. Your fans hang on your every word, which is a double edged sword that I don’t envy, haha. It is demoralizing hearing that some of my favorite elements of leveling have been gated and at the same time seeing no news relating to my current in-game situation. Thanks again for the communication and all your hard work <3 Enjoy those cupcakes.

I absolutely agree. I know there are probably practical reasons to not do this (file size), but I’d rather not be able to speak to someone at all than have it feel like everything I’ve done doesn’t matter.

My other “this feels rather impersonal” quibble revolves around never getting to hear my characters speak or converse with the others. I know there is, yet again, a practical reason; for each line, they’d have to call in and pay their (semi high profile) 10 voice actors (one per gender per race). I almost wish they’d picked passionate fans to voice the player characters. I would do this stuff for free, buy legit recording equipment and honor an NDA. XD If there’s not going to be a Personal Story expansion, I’m just concerned that I will never ever hear my characters speak again. This makes me deeply sad because I love the character voices so much.

These two things are my most frequent reasons for feeling like my character is sort of… a dime a dozen. Voiceless and unknown.

Shiren.9532:

As my first post attempts to demonstrate, ArenaNet is doing fine when it comes to representing women imo. … I don’t dispute your quotes on the gaming industry, I just don’t think they are relevant when we are talking about Tyria.

Cut for length, sorry. I agree with your first sentence or two. But I want to take some time to defend the “broader context” discussions. Upthread, there are accusations of reverse sexism (~not being for equality~) slung at those who don’t see a problem with the balance of the group’s gender. I believe the contextual explanations that came after are specifically in defense of this line of thought, and were not a generic rebuttal to the thread. Context is important in a discussion about widespread issues like gender imbalance, issues of representation in popular media, and in getting at what exactly constitutes equality. GW2 doesn’t exist in a vacuum, as others have said, and neither does the concept of equality. To frame the discussion in this narrow way seems like a convenient method to avoid being called out on not upholding the same standards of equality in situations that are less self-promoting. It whiffs of hypocrisy from those already in positions of privilege and I think this “only focus on the single game” viewpoint is a way to avoid accusations of cutting the cheese. Are those pointing the finger at male inequality (and heterosexual inequality, as with another recent thread) as concerned with equality in any other form in this game? Do they discuss the main cast’s shortcomings at representing people of color? The “let’s just focus on this one game” approach would seem less suspiciously self-serving if those who cry reverse sexism were openly critiquing and starting dialogues with equal zest regarding all the problematic areas of GW2 (hello, armor set disparity). A broader context would lead to a discussion on whether “equality” is something they fight for in forums for other video games that have the more traditional “token girl”/white/straight inequality, or if the fight is only apparent/important to them in the games/specific elements of a game that happen to challenge the privileged main stream narrative that we are used to.

My point there is that if you (the general “you”, not you as in Shiren) want to get into a meaningful discussion on the nuances of equality, prepare to engage in some academic theory and macro discussion. There is no longer a simple definition of feminism or equality or social justice. There’s ~50 years of social theories, systems and context (history) to be knowledgeable about or at least aware of. And, as with all academic fields, the discussion is an ongoing one because the world is ever changing. I don’t think those accusing of reverse sexism actually want that macroscopic conversation because it’s too hard. It’s more than a two sentence reply and walking away from the keyboard. It’s a lifestyle of constant reflection. I think some people just want to use the word “equality” when it suits them, but I would love for the people championing male/heterosexual equality to prove me wrong and show that they’re passionate about other forms of inequality as well!

The Fresh Prince explanation upthread is a wonderful one regarding why such a micro-view is harmful in discussing equality. I’ve seen others in similar threads reference Tyler Perry and Sailor Moon, for more examples of media that provides a platform for primarily minority casts at the expense of equality on a micro scale.

Back on track. We know there are strong female characters in this series. I think we all began at least vaguely on-board with that premise, regardless of whether we quibble about males being equally represented in such a fashion in this single season of Living Story XD I can make a list of all the male characters to show that they have an equally strong presence in the series..?

For me, I think my curiosity at those responses in this thread comes down to: A party of 4 men and 1 woman has been the status quo for most media. A party of 4 women and 1 man upsets the status quo in a single game. The complaining that comes from that role reversal comes off as the sound and fury of privilege unable to cope with narrative elements that operate outside the status quo. It sounds like fighting for visibility and equality only when it is for characters that reflect their already privileged and visible self, not because there is a legitimate issue with the quality of writing of the male characters in comparison to the females, or because there is a character traditionally under-served in our society’s media that needs the spotlight.

To be happy, I need a mix of both. Zergs allow me to hang out with my fellow server players, while instanced content is usually more story-driven (I NEED THIS LIKE AIR) and allows me to get closer with guildies. IMO, the Tower of Nightmare releases were a great blend.

I love hand to hand monk types, so I’m all for this. I was actually hoping this is what Rev would be like, and that it might usher in more GW1 monk tattooish armor. All practical responses to OP have been covered, I think, so I’ll let my brain wander…

Weapons: You could have different “hand wraps”, though that verges a little close to glove armor territory. I agree knuckles of some kind would work pretty well, though they would be devalued for their small size (people like seeing the skins they put time and energy and sometimes money into). I think focus and torch might work well, as far as pre-existing weapons go. You could have them dual wield torch and use them like firey escrima sticks. Or they could dual wield foci for more unarmedish attacks. How cool would it be to dual wield The Anomaly? :) Maybe the attack animations involve channeling the energy through the focus before it disappears, the unarmed attack happens, and the weapon reappears (a bit like spears from GW1). Or the weapon could get a “spectral” effect during attacks and make the hands glow. There are definitely Things They Could Do. Warhorn might work as an offhand option, since they aren’t really animated as weapons and are usually about buffs.

Suspension of Disbelief: I think if my ele can run around with her breasts held up by what is basically an illogically structured free-floating wall sconce made of cloth (Flamekissed/Feathered) or my human ranger can have her breast half hanging out of cultural even in the midst of battle people can handle some magic-tinged hand to hand combat.

Adding my voice here, too. The official Soundcloud is a big deal for music lovers. I make playlists and create cover art for each episode’s tracks, I listen to them on the drive to work each day… I’m starting to worry that the Soundcloud involvement is going to be phased out :\

I would also buy any/all GW1 & GW2 & LW soundtracks if I could, hint hint.

Electro.4173:

Different strokes I suppose, but I actually ENJOY the fact that I’m not treated as some grand hero by everyone. We players actually are one in thousands of others, so being singled out as the one important person breaks immersion for me far more than not getting recognition. Knowing that every NPC tells every player they’re the hero, that’s worse than being a “faceless player in a sea of others” IMO.

Oh, for sure. There are absolutely reasons characters wouldn’t know you, especially out far away from the action. But when a Lionguard is like “Get out of here! We don’t need another looter!” I’d like the option to be all “Uhm, I don’t want to make a big deal of this but I kind of helped save this place hardcore. Did you not see me busting my butt to save people? I fought next to a bunch of Lionguard just like you and happened to be the one who slew the crazy that started this…” and maybe have them explain they were posted somewhere else or they don’t care who I am, I’m not lionguard so move the eff out of the way… something that they wouldn’t say to any other civilian roaming the city..

Also, we took down a dragon with Destiny’s Edge. Again, kind of a big deal. I feel like if they know the names of Desitny’s Edge people, they should at least be vaguely aware of Trahearne and my Player-Character. Or have dialogue that plays it off for laughs that they have no clue who I am.

Not sure how I feel about the “every player is special so I’m not” line of thought. I have thought about this on my alts, though; how it’s a little sad that they’re so easily interchangeable in a semi-RPG. I’ll have to mull it over…

inazuma.7021:

Besides, what’s Gnashblade gonna do? Bribe the Krait? Neckstab the Marionette? Those are pretty much his only skills. Fleabag is useless.

#TeamKiel

Boom. I’m so excited to fight by her side and see what she’s prepared for the invasion (see: her latest dialogue). She has tenacity and conviction, plus abilities to research and organize talent. “kittenes get stuff done” never felt more applicable. Can we recall the rest of the LA Council after this?

And… I think Gnashblade isn’t totally useless. Just not useful in this particular situation. He could hand out free supplies to the citizens, but we’ll see if he’ll let his empathy win out over his desire for coin. But of course that’s not the kind of nuanced argument the Kiel vs Gnashblade topics embrace so. Rawr, down with the opposition?

As a master’s in English who wrote their thesis around some game theory concepts, I have Opinions on this.

ETA: I think it’s important to note here that when GW players say “meta” they are usually shortening “meta build”.

The most pressing one is: words change, especially in context-specific situations. In video game culture, “meta” still maintains the root meaning of looking outside the in-game world, it just has the added flavor of prescribing what happens after you gain meta knowledge (use the optimal playstyle). “Metagaming” as a term means a few different things but generally video gamers mean using non-in-character knowledge to play most efficiently. The implication is that you would use this knowledge optimally instead of suboptimally (if a DM tells you your character can swim or take the coach to your quest’s final destination but the water is filled with invading water breathing aliens from another dimension waiting to surprise attack and you will die because you have 0 swimming skills, you’re going to take the coach unless you desire for some reason a suboptimal output which in a weird twist makes suboptimal optimal from your individual perspective – but still not the game as a whole).

I’m not going to get worked up over people using “meta” as a shorthand for “meta builds” which is GW shorthand for “part of a canon of known game elements that harmonize well together or utilize game mechanics optimally” because it’s a lot less wordy and, yes, I believe it still stays true to the spirit of the root term “metagaming”. Everything gets shortened online. Sometimes shortened then expanded then shortened again back to the original word.

eta: also, I usually have dibs on being pedantic, so I like the spirit of your post

Dante.1508:

A group who paid money on an item (Virtual or otherwise) should always out weigh a group that feels their prestige was ruined, no matter what the sizes of the groups are..

Honestly the Armor should stay in game and the prestige complainers should take a good long look at themselves, its a game you play for fun.

Money is real no matter what it buys, these people paid for a service that was systematically taken from them.

I personally feel they should take it to court, these companies cannot keep getting away with these illegal practices..immoral too.

The fact people continue to play after this really is a worry to me.

First of all, money should never make your opinion more or less valid than anyone else’s. That’s a disgusting concept to me. I say this as someone who paid for the skin and doesn’t have a light human character.

So you say “complainers should take a good long look at themselves, its a game you play for fun” and then go on to threaten legal recourse when you are complaining. Ugh.

I’ve tried to stay out of this thread and responding to posts like yours that I’m never going to agree with, but I work in customer service (not for ANet, alas) and what they did is fair and awesome. I’ve been on their side of being threatened by entitled customers who have been offered a reasonable solution to a crummy situation. ANet kittened up! I work for a manufacturing company, I know how that is. There are a ton of moving parts in a company and sometimes things don’t always mesh perfectly. It’s the cost of doing business. There are always some unavoidable losses.

Someone made a decision that completely wrecked cultural armor, a system which has affected people’s choices of race at character creation. A choice players can not undo. It is not whining to say that the implication of cultural armor being made universal and improved for far less money is alienating to the very code of their game. It’s just how it is, love or hate that code. I imagine anything that would change that system would be announced far in advance and fluffed with PR to be palatable, not snuck into a random gemstore skin. It’s not an exaggeration to say that it would be game-changing. That’s not what they meant to do here.

You may not think it was a mistake, but clearly ANet does. They are redesigning the skin. At that point, you can keep the redesigned skin, getting the content you paid for, or you can get a refund if the aesthetic is not to your taste. This is exactly what any ethical company dealing with its mistake would do at this point. Speaking as someone who has watched small potatoes people who don’t understand warranties and business try to sue companies for similar things, it is my opinion that you would be laughed out of a courtroom.

I do agree with people who are suggesting that the refund plus transmutation crystals would be nice, and that there are some inconsistencies in how support is refunding. That should obviously be ironed out ASAP. However, what is stopping someone from keeping the armor AND getting a refund? So, perhaps the best thing to do is ask that people transmute their armor before gaining a gem refund with courtesy crystals. The flamekissed purchase will be obvious on their account, though I’m not sure how they verify the skin has been properly overwritten. They’ve created quite the headache for themselves, but they’re taking steps to make it up to us. That’s wonderful. I’d be surprised if they didn’t throw us a courtesy bone of some kind on top of the armor, because that’s the quality of service and care I’ve been treated with from ANet over the last year+.

Just calm down, wait for the skin, enjoy the old version while we have it and by then they’ll probably have a procedure hammered out that’ll be consistent and satisfactory. OF COURSE support is sort of unequipped to deal with this; it’s unprecedented. Give them some time to make a policy. I think the transmutation feedback is helpful, but the people freaking out and threatening legal action when they’re going to get at LEAST a full refund just makes me roll my eyes. Again, the only word I can come up with is “entitled”.

“The fact people continue to play after this really is a worry to me.” lol, I don’t want a moderator giving me an infraction so I’ll just leave the sounds of me laughing here. There are way bigger fish to fry in terms of critiquing the game (armor parity between the sexes, fractal level reset, the impending balance update…) than some random skin. If people flounce over this of all things, the community is probably all the better for it.

Rabbi Rick.3194:

Having dealt with tragedy and death for years in one of my lines of work, some words from my other line of work seems always appropriate in these situations:

“And if I laugh at any mortal thing, ’Tis that I may not weep” – Don Juan
Canto IV – Byron

Just my two coppers worth,

This is how I think my Sylvari viewed the laughter. He picked the “like pulling a dandelion and getting the root” option, which was very much meant not as a joke in my mind, but a sad metaphor for what he had to do – kill a living piece of the garden to prevent it from killing the flowers and grass. And it wasn’t as messy as he thought (digging for the roots).

When everyone laughed I think it might have made my boy sylvari quite sad. He didn’t mean it to be funny. I was actually really angry. But Marjory had nearly died and Scarlet’s actions made it clear she’d kill them before giving them the time of day… plus recalling a string of life or death situations over drinks leads to a strange mix of sadness and laughter. And to be fair it was a really apt analogy and very fitting coming from a sylvari about a sylvari. So I think he’s made his peace with their lightheartedness. They had somehow come through all that with their lives, despite Scarlet’s best attempts at making it otherwise. They all deserve a laugh, especially Jory.

The other responses were semi-terrible. I would have liked something that said, “She was mentally ill, she was not herself. I don’t regret my actions but I don’t want to joke about murdering someone that could have been me in another life.”

If anything, being lauded for the murder is the worst thing to him, though, worse than admitting you feel something positive in the face of so much death. Instead of how he’s helped countless citizens, he’s known for one murder. Ugh that rubbed my little sylvari absolutely the wrong way when Magnus shouted that praise at Fort Marriner. Though, I think it’ll help him in the future; at least one person is willing to give that sylvari some “good PR” considering the swell in anti-sylvari sentiment that’s going around.

BrandonBandicoot.3968:

They’re cold and metallic sword wielding, shape shifting abominations that just happen to look like women when in their normal forms because they were DESIGNED by a woman.

Actually, they were designed by the devs. Who are, I assume, male or exist in a largely male atmosphere, though I admit I’m basing that on the statistics from elsewhere in the industry. So: Watchknights were made by an NPC woman who was made by men. So no, they were not designed by a woman in any sense. Even in-character, we have no idea to what extent she controlled the design. The lack of this being addressed in the game shows that it was unintentional on the devs’ parts. Please stop trying to make this into an empowering “Jennah did it to empower women!” thing because that’s nowhere near canon at this point.

BrandonBandicoot.3968:

If the mechapricks on the robots were done artistically like the Statue of David and went well with the style of Divinity’s Reach, then why not? The Watchknights are doing that fine with their roboboobs.

I’m going to assume from the context that the poster’s question wasn’t for you. I assume it was for rhetorical/for the devs. Why did they go with the trope of “robot with prominent breasts” instead of “robot with prominent kitten”? It’s to illustrate the difference with which we treat the female body as default oggle fodder and how this unthinkingly seems to perpetuate that. It’s seriously awesome that you’d support the male equivalent, though since my assumption is that there’d be a lot of homophobic comments about it in-game

Edit: And no one is trying to insult the art team! The watchknights are beautiful and complex in design, as many here have said previously in the thread. There are just a few elements of the design that sway this into ‘randomly objectified’ territory, so they stand out. /unintentional nipple joke

It’s still some of the best armor in the game (at least for my ele) due to its particle effects, and I wouldn’t be sad if they continued offering a ton of reskins to buy. It’s optional and seems like a smart way to use limited design resources by updating old looks. The more variety, the better tbh. Though if they offered no original pieces while focusing exclusively on reskins, that would sour me. I’m disappointed so I’m going to channel that into something constructive: What I look for in armor.

My main, the character I purchased Flamekissed for, is a Norn Ele. In a MUD I used to play, there was a class called Battlemage, and that’s exactly how I think of her. So I don’t exactly envision her wearing frilly feathery human noble-esque armor that looks super tiny on her, nor do I particularly like any of the light norn fem cultural armor (ugh those bottoms). As a Norn, I don’t shy away from showing her skin but it’d be nice if not everything was quite so cleavage-centric — you’re either baring your breast gap to the world or covered like a nun, there are few aesthetically pleasing/detailed in-between choices. Human fem t3 cultural was pretty much The Dream for this character. Here’s what I tend to look for in armor in general and how/if that plays into the difference between t3 human and feathered:

Part 1

1) Detail that doesn’t cover up the skin while not leaving her largely naked. I have a norn with tattoos. I love those tattoos. The feathered excels with respect to showing skin. It shows back; the thing is held together with basically two bikini strings, which I deeply dislike, and the pants in the back actually shows some butt crack. It shows your entire belly and upper-chest, but there’s almost too much white space. You’re bare from bottom of the breast to top of the lower lady bits. And instead of filling this space with ornaments like the cool body jewelry on human t3 (dat face mask. dat top. Swoon) someone instead opted to accent all this white space at… the throat? With a choker? dnw. I thought I was going to be tepid on the human t3 flamekissed pants for covering too much, but the front-most bit with the vertical lines is eye-catching, the overlapping layers let you glimpse just a bit of skin while making it feel like actual protection, and the detail of the piece is absolutely incredible.

2) Sleeves that don’t cover up gloves. Leggings that don’t cover up shoes. Top pieces that don’t cover up leggings. Headpieces that don’t cover up hair/the face. I paid money (gold, gem or real-world) for each of these pieces and I want to see them, along with the character I spent so much time messing with in creation/makeover kits. Flamekissed Feathered only commits one of these crimes (sleeves cover gloves), but it seems like the gloves were overall skimped on in the detail department and are so tiny anyways, that I guess it doesn’t matter. A pity, since if the gloves were larger I could mix them with a top I like more and still feel like whatever portion of my money was spent on the gloves was well-spent. I was using the feathered head piece before Flamekissed was released so I would like to emphasize my thumbs up here; I’m only sad the center jewel isn’t flaming/smoldering like the belly jewelry on Flamekissed 1.0.

3) Color channels that I can change. Norn light cultural commits the sin of forced color that may not blend well with your chosen pallet. As far as I’m aware, both Flamekissed have done a good job in this area (thank you).

…to be continued…

I doubt any change will come from all this, but I figured I’d get my voice in while I can Thanks for the reasoning, Jon. You guys probably know that anything you say will get flack, so it’s nice that you’ve even tried to communicate your reasoning.

1. Like many have said, all my characters are dragon hunters, so I find it difficult to support the name.

2. An additional problem for me is that witch hunters were religious zealots who murdered women and the elderly because of their religious delusions. I don’t like the implication that because my guard is going to use traps and/or a longbow that this means they’ll be burning sylvari alive. My guardian’s build should not be the determiner of how far they take their sense of justice. I understand that this was just the inspiration for the name, but… why? I mean, when we say someone is going on a “witch hunt” it’s not an action based on reality – it is the murderous equivalent of tilting at windmills. Others have gone into the cultural issues with likening them to big game hunters. I assume specializations aren’t getting plot to flesh out their namesakes – so I feel like it’s an unnecessary complication.

Someone suggested this title in the Reddit thread: Purifier (also fond of Arbiter). It contains the same “looking deep for rotten apples and pulling them out before they spoil the bunch” connotation mixed in with a potential for abuse of power while keeping in the guardian theme. Its lack of historical and cultural baggage helps it remain more neutral.

As for Arbiter, I like that it has a judicial/mediator feel without disclosing specifically what it is arbiting (like “Dragon Arbiter”). The traps seem to work with this because they’re indirect, a form of keeping an enemy in a liminal space and controlling them while their “sentence” is served (like a jail cell).

The word “Hunter” should be a buzzword that stays with Rangers, or maybe also Warriors imo.

I also have limited play time, and do not enjoy PvP (I get too angry in any competitive game) or much WvW (limited play time does not mesh well with waiting and scouting etc). My play time did not intersect with the Shaman popping. A generic “take down a world boss” would be much improved.

My play time is precious. I always go into it with an idea of what I want to do. Last night I decided to try out the new system and get my PvE dailies. I spent half an hour competing with a zerg for credit in events (thank god for those Mordrem events), mining ore I didn’t want or need and viewing a vista I’d already seen multiple times across multiple characters. I had to dedicate half my play time to the daily instead of getting them as I farm for geodes or play in the silverwastes – the content I actually wanted to play. The other half hour of play time I spent on wintersday events, which I prioritized despite wanting to play in Dry Top more. Thank you for the Wintesday dailies.

I do like the AP being a bundle for completing the overall daily instead of being doled out by individual task. I’m just disappointed that I have less freedom than before.

Part 2

4) Unified Detail. The Ascended armor does a nice job of this, but seems to sacrifice most of the other things I look for in an armor. I don’t want to be covered from head to toe, not even on my male characters. I appreciate that the option exists for light females and embrace this diversity but I feel like more armors need to find a balance. The half-circle cutouts on the feathered upper arms and legs do that fantastically (though I quibble about the frilly sleeve cuffs and the quality of the skirt). My main problem with the ascended is that it looks like detail for detail’s sake without any unifying theme or style. T3 human knocks it out of the park on this point. Also: Why can’t we just have pants? Why must pants on a female light character always have at least a half-skirt accompanying it? I wish I could get the male Ascalonian Catacombs pants on her (if only they were a bit more detailed), or maybe a shorts + high socks version, because I’m pretty tired of wanting to separate the cool leggings from the wonky skirt, which always clips with my weapons and juts out at weird angles. I like the sort of a-line 1/4 skirt that accompanies the fem light exalted armor and actually the feathered skirt isn’t the worst it just looks painfully plain but for the feather design on the back (far and away my favorite part of the feathered Flamekissed). The phoenix armor for females is another home run on this point, though I still think it’s a little frilly for my Norn Ele. The winged armor she was wearing before was a little skimpy from a certain angle but it was so unified in theme that I could put that point aside.

5) Some practicality. I especially love the armor sets with well-placed and non-bulky jars on the belt (winged, t3 sylvari med top), pockets (ascalonian catacombs light male), or bags on the belt (light vigil). It feels like my character is actually well-prepared to go out into the world. It gives ornamentation a focus beyond being purely for the cool factor. Again I point to the winged, which has beautiful detail on the biceps, the back, the “white space” areas of the belly+left leg and the tops of the gloves+boots, in addition to the bottles on the belt.

…I say all this in the fear that we’ll see a string of reskinned armors, where particle effects are slapped on in lieu of addressing the reasons they were less popular to begin with.

Thank you for your patience in dealing with this weird situation, ANet. I hope we can all avoid it in the future

Shiren.9532:

1) Thobek is referring to a specific survey done about GW2 gamers not all gamers across all genres. It’s not perfect but it’s better than anecdotal experience (http://www.gamestatistics.fr/Guild%20Wars%202%20survey%202013_Full%20Report.pdf is the survey btw).

Never heard of this survey so I’ll keep my eyes open to see if I can spot it next time to make my voice heard. According to the pdf, 6500 players were surveyed. In the first year alone, GW2 sold over 3.5 million copies. They surveyed 0.19% of the game’s population (as of year one – I’m sure it’s gone up since). That sample size seems… incredibly minute in comparison. When you consider that in statistics they tell you that the smaller the sample size the larger the potential for inaccuracy in extrapolating those numbers into representing an entire population/concluding on unknown parameters, it seems like a poor idea to support an argument with that survey.

It also seems like it’d be swayed by the player base built into each site they used to advertise. It was posted on 2 english fansites (plus a spanish and a french site), reddit, twitter and the official forums. I’ve never spent time on Guild Wars 2 Guru or Guild Wars 2 Online at all. I used to frequent reddit but avoid it like the plague now after some bad experiences with vitriolic users and their policy on keeping certain subreddits going. I probably never saw the thread on the official forums here, as I stick to only a few main subforums and don’t venture past page 1 most of the time. I rarely use twitter, and only catch what happens as I happen to be checking. It’s easy to miss tweets. I mostly stick to the official site, Tumblr’s GW2 tag (same problem as Twitter in that I can miss posts), my guild’s forums and tumblr, and Massively’s GW2 articles if I remember to read them.

The survey itself says, “Sample cannot be regarded as truly ‘representative’ of Guild Wars 2 players population, because of the methodology used (based on free access and not an online panel). However, we can consider it is representative at least of the main involved players.” The first part is the truth. The second part is conjecture. I’m on these forums a lot, I’m in the GW2 tag on tumblr a lot, I get my daily almost every day, played GW1 and GW2 since preview weekend/launch etc. Still never heard of it. Yet I’d consider myself a “main involved player.” The arrogance of that sentence astounds, but I digress.

tldr; That sample size is so small and the places the survey was posted are so limited that I would not tout that number around as anything resembling reality. All I really know now is the opinions/makeup of the populations of those few fan sites.

Shiren.9532:

2) The 2013 Gamer Stats isn’t specifically about GW2 or MMOs in general. Angry Birds counts as a game and it’s easily possible that the 45% of female gamers figure is heavily skewed towards casual games on mobile phones and that figure does not represent female representation in MMOs or GW2.

I don’t understand why those that play “casual games” are somehow not considered gamers to those who like to dismiss that statistic. Is Angry Birds not a non-casual game if someone plays it regularly? Is Pokemon? Secret of Mana? Is Pinball, or Tetris or DDR…? Man, gatekeepers of communities really keep you sprinting to prove yourself in their community. As a sidenote, this reminds me of the ~fake geek girl~ discussion going on in the comics community right now. When is the ever-moving invisible line where your enjoyment/use of a media is “enough” or “the correct kind” for an individual to be considered part of the community?

If you’d like something that looks specifically at MMOs, the percentage is more like 40%, according to this BBC article from 2008 which sees the gap as closing over time.

Each race has a lowbie 1-15 zone. To access these areas, you should head through the Lion’s Arch asura gate in your race’s city (if you can’t find it, look it up on the wiki though you’ll earn exp for exploring the city). Due to recent events in the Living Story, Lion’s Arch has been destroyed and these gates will take you to Gendarran Fields. There, you will exit the asura gate and be surrounded by a hub of gates. This hub will take you to any race’s city in the game. You’ll want to go through each one and explore the map just outside of the city. You should find enough content to take you to level 15 or higher for the next tier of maps.

As for the 15-25 map, you can try experiencing a map a little bit higher level than you. Characters are “upleveled” in this game, meaning your stats will get a little bit of a boost in higher level areas (alas, you will still be using the simple skills and traits you normally have). I’d recommend bringing along some food/relevant potions which you can make as a chef (food) or artificer (potion) if you want to try the tougher map right off the bat. Oooor you can just buy off the trading post but you probably don’t have a lot of extra money at this point and you’d be missing out on the experience you gain from crafting. Seriously, try crafting for a bit once you’ve gathered some materials. It’s easy exp and the items created are usually helpful. Maybe give /map chat or LFG tool a shout out to form up a party. Safety in numbers and all that.

I don’t want a nerf at all. I just want him to spawn at reasonable times in my schedule. My choices are 4am (sleeping because work) 10am (at work) and 7pm (aka when I have to be making/eating dinner with my family). It’s gone from something I could attempt every day at reset to something I have to wait until the weekends to try. Just so we’re clear: 7+ attempts per week down to maybe 2 or 3 if I can manage to be online at the right times on the weekends/assuming I have no obligations or plans or chores etc.

That’s a big bummer to me.

Shiren.9532:

I don’t think “males make up more of GW2’s audience thus should have more representation in the story” is a good argument (it’s not being made here btw).

I agree that it’s a poor argument. But actually, that was seemingly the implication of Thobek’s comment:

Thobek.1730:

If you look at gamestatistics survey roughly about 90% of the player base is male. I think it would be prudent to have a few more male characters in the game that aren’t stupid, dimwitted or there for comic relief. Its almost insulting.

I would not call Braham, Canach, Evon or Faren “stupid, dimwitted or there for comic relief” (esp not Evon) any more so than I would accuse some of the female characters of some of these qualities. Faren @ Jubilee. Pay attention to Braham’s sensitive side w/ Ottilia, the scars of Eir’s ignoring, his attempted diplomacy w/ two races before standing alone to defend his home, how he treats Taimi or how he cares more about Rox getting what she wants (even if it’s against what he wants) when he’s in pain and wounded. Right in the feels. Even paragon Ellen thought Canach was doing the right thing but in the wrong way. I would call him misguided/impulsive (as a young sylvari might be) with his heart in the right place. Maybe Heal-O-Tron will relate to him and they can go adventure together. But I also feel like Rox was underutilized, and Kasmeer’s character building was tacked on to the end (Marjory, too. She’s the least developed as an individual, imo, despite the sudden exposition with Kas in the Lornar’s camp about her family). And I think OP cherry-picked a little by adding Mai Trin but not Horrik to the “boys vs girls” list, and having Turma who I’ve literally seen once but not The Mad King and Prince Thorn who’ve had way more development in their two Halloween updates. -shrug-

First, let me start by saying that I am so head over heels in love with the new armor sets. The attention to detail is stunning and the luminescent upgrade effect is really cool. I’ve been waiting for this set to come out ever since that_shaman datamined it.

I want every weight class of female; they are simply gorgeous.

That said, I am going to be a broken record and say what I say almost every time a cool new armor set comes out: why isn’t it more similar between men and women? In this case, it’s my men that are being shortchanged.

I’m really disappointed for my male mesmer that there are no actual butterflies on any of the male versions, yet they’re present on every single female version. It would also be nice for the light and medium armor men to be showing a little skin like their female counterparts (shoulders, back, upper arms, in some cases upper leg and midriff). Wonderful to see coverage parity on the heavies, so a big thumbs up for them.

…of course one of the first comments on Dulfy’s site is expressing the exact opposite sentiment (the butterflies “ruin it” and the person wants them gone from the female versions). To me, this reinforces that they could, as many have suggested of armor sets going forward, have been two different sets (m+f with butterfly parts and actual butterflies vs m+f made of dragonfly parts but no actual insects). The pushback is that it’s a lot of extra work and the ratio of “armor with butterflies” to “armor without butterflies” is heavily skewed toward the latter, so in this case I’d lean into the former’s unique embellishment.

If there’s a locust set in the future, will only the men get the cool bugs on their armor? Are the male versions of the Carapace and Luminescent simply previewing wrong? Will Asura and Charr be butterfly-less forever because they are forced into the male version of armor?

Thank you for your time, and for the lovely humanoid female armor.

Gulesave.5073:

On the male-vs-female discussion: yes, they show skin on guys, but not in areas that are popularly eroticized like a woman’s chest is. Male characters are deliberately desexualized in a jarring and downright surgical way, (their entire pelvic area is emasculated more than a Ken doll’s).

This is really the gist of it for me. I LOVE that the male version attempts to be as skimpy. Gold Star for trying. So many gold stars. Glad my male characters will get one whole bared nipple if I ever decide to drop 800 gems just to see a hyper blue version of half their chest and upper stomach, I guess.

But that fails to match the vast amount of bared skin, and the specifically placed nature of it, of the female version. My god, why even have fabric on the design of those tops at that point? Oh argue all you want that the blue effect isn’t skin it’s just a cool fabric bodysuit that happens to reveal every joint and the cleavage line like a mystical spray tan, ~educate me~ about how unenlightened and puritanical I am for not understanding that sexualization and fetishization of certain female body parts by western culture is just like, a construct man, don’t get your panties in a wad; while you then continue to perpetuate those trends and try to tell me I’m getting just as much fanservice from half a bared male chest (hint: I’m super not). kitten chaps or maybe some cupped ball design (can you imagine blue balls with those little doilies underneath? hahaha, oh man), and you’re getting warmer.

I guess at least this armor feints at covering the nipples via a texture rather than drawing attention to them with a megaphone like the watchknight design. It’s the small victories.

Also, in the name of desiring some relative practicality, it’d be nice if someone could design female chest armor that actually looks like it would support the breasts instead of being designed around a ‘cupped hand to the underboob’ aesthetic. Is that the only way they’ve interacted with boobs? Doesn’t have to be structurally sound but between this and the single bikini string at the shoulderblades thing going on with the light flamekissed/feathered I’m just feeling like someone doing these designs has never had to deal with a real pair of breasts. I’m all for skimpy, but take a note from the winged female light armor which actually looks like a top and not a taped-on applique.

I’m sorry, OP :( I want butterflies on my boys, too.

Armor sets have always been done in a silly manner in GW2 (and most games). It’s not right for Charr and Asura to be gated out of “female” clothes. It’s also not right imo for one gender in a set to look wildly different from the other gender. Just make them two different sets if they need to have such vastly different aesthetics. The gender gap in armor shouldn’t be that radical, anyways.

I don’t think it breaks lore… I just wish it came with lore. Or that the current events of the game influenced the armor they released in the gem store. Imagine armor made of the wreckage of Lion’s Arch. Wearing the broken statue’s paws as gauntlets, char getting its tail…

I usually can’t stop on escort missions. Either 1) I’m trying desperately to down one of the spawns just so I can get credit for the event, because acting as support gets you zero credit — regardless of whether you just landed a wicked crit heal or just dropped 5 long lasting boons at once — and thus is worthless. On the first day, I made the mistake of thinking “everyone is stopping for mobs, I’ll actually try to, you know, escort” and missed out on credit for the ogres, lighthouse and dolyaks. It was a dark moment when I realized I’d just wasted most of the 2-3 hours. ….
or 2) As the escortees run like their butts are on fire, spawning like 5 huge waves of enemies, I’m trying to aoe tag as I run with them to draw fire away. This is what happens after I’ve definitely murdered an enemy that definitely spawned for the event.

These events can be really challenging to get credit for. I’m sorry if everyone runs over you, but they are hustling to get these wonky events done :\ I’ve been in both situations and tbh I don’t fault anyone but whoever designed these events. I hope you have better luck next time! Try grouping during the event for some built-in support.

There’s so much AoE that usually I’m doing my kitten edest to keep myself alive. Sometimes someone’s too far in for me to get to :\ The less events I really need for achievements, the more I’m willing to run in and yolo it to rez someone. You see, I also spent the first day running to events only to find them completed by the time I got there. Even with swiftness buffs I couldn’t make it in time from the waypoint. So I learned to camp events. The less time I have to spend standing around or running to somewhere, the more I can focus on what’s actually going on around me, including downed players.

Yes. Charr and Asura are not humanoid, they do not have breasts. They look ridiculous.

But: Why even have separate armors for genders to begin with? Obviously there’s some slight changes that would need to go on for breasts, but that seems minimal in comparison to designing what usually amounts to two completely separate armor sets and selling them under the same name. Sometimes the same armor is SO different between genders – wouldn’t that double the amount of available skins/currency sink and allow people to choose what fits their character best and not what Anet thinks about gender? Yes, let boys wear dresses and bikinis. Yes, let girls pick between tiny tops and head to toe armor. It’s just such an arbitrary division and a waste of work.

I also like what someone else said about Asura and Charr on reddit: they probably have a very different idea of “feminine” and stuffing them in human lady armor without any charr-feminine or asura-feminine alternative is avoiding some cool attention-to-detail world building that we like to see on every level of the game.

-Scepter changes for both ele and mes did not quite go far enough, in my small opinion. Autoattacks, especially, need to be looked at. They are painfully slow and their damage doesn’t really make up for it.
—Eles’ aa on fire scepter is 1.15s which is kind of crazy for a non-channeled aa. I expected the burn or base damage to decrease while the aa speed increased.
—Mesmers’ aa on scepter takes almost a full 4 seconds to complete at max range and the ‘reduced cooldown on scepter’ trait doesn’t really help with that. I can’t say exactly how long it takes for the first strike to hit; it’s supposed to be 1/2s, but it’s slower than greatsword and sword’s aas, meaning I almost never lead with the scepter aa or use it unless everything else is on cd. And perhaps there’s a balance issue with this, but I wish the confusion that got removed from the aa (and Phantasmal Mage, tangentially) years ago was the clone-replacement instead of giving scepter more torment.

-We have a lot of new audio cues sneaking in-game lately (lifting environmental weapons or rubble, for example). It would be nice to have character audio for the newer boons/condis (torment, alacrity, slowness, etc). These cues are a big aid to me; perhaps there could be a sensitivity level in audio settings if the team is worried about annoying players. With no more very visible auras and all these extra little boons and condis floating around with no audio cues, I’m more than ever looking at enemies’/my stat bar instead of the fight.

-Fractal level selection in mistlock observatory is great! All the Fractal changes recently have been in the right direction; I think now we just need more fresh paths to see. However, why can we no longer buy heavily discounted fractal keys in groups of 5? (I’m at work rn; maybe it was patched since I last played? Hopefully)

-Gliding in Tyria is fantastic, especially in the hyena-infested crevasse of the iron farm area in Brisbane. It is making re-exploring more fun and less tedious. It also excites me because… I don’t know, I feel like city-zones are open now for vertical development like HoT maps. I’ve wanted rooftop paths that don’t require breaking out for a long time, and I feel one step closer to that

-The art team gets a thumbs up, of course. DR looks beautiful (again) for the Lunar Festival, and it was fun to use the glider to get the fireworks in DR.

eta:
-Those sprites of the red envelopes on the daily reward panel are adorable and immediately communicate game mechanics. Perfect. I hope we see more of that in the future.

-The brew group is the perfect blend of lore and long-term reward that I like. Well done; I love having a story-reason to return to old locations.

-Ranger shouts and axe changes/buffs were well done, as were Thief sword+staff and Warrior axe changes. They were great steps in addressing why those weapons/skills didn’t get used as much.

-REALLY going to miss using Ride the Lightning in mid-jump :\ It was just so fun.

Lorelei.7809:

You have to admit though, it seems that they colored the characters blue so that they could have indecent armors… Personally, I just don’t like how it looks. It just seems…. wrong.

Please, make an armor that is both skimpy and classy. Like http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/b/be/Norn_Raven_Shaman_render.jpg
(hint, hint)
Note: I’m cool with pretty much anything but breast showing. open backs are awesome (particularly for Sylvari and tatooed Norn, I’d also like it for my Charr gal), open arms are great (particularly for my patterned Sylvari and tatooed Norn, and patterned Charr!), showing legs is great, and feet (why I like the T2 on my Sylvari to show her darker toes), midriff to show rock hard abs (I chose the muscular Norn builds).

Go ahead and keep the armor as-is, but there are major problems with it:
1. It takes away any and all characteristics of your characters – A major problem for female Charr and Asura since they use the male version of the armor. My lady Asura and Charr look like men now.
2. The blue covers up tatoos, Sylvari patterns, Norn Tatoos, Charr stripes, etc.
This armor makes make-over kits and work put into character design worthless…

What you could do instead:
Masques (so that hair shows)
Long gloves (I would love long gloves and no sleeves!)
cool boots (high boots)
elegant dress (with no sleeves and an open back for example to go with the long gloves)
maybe transparent sleeves/veils/leggings instead of opaque covering such that tattoos show?

Wow, I want that raven shaman top so bad for my Norn warrior. Lovely. The bottoms could use some work if they wanted me to pay gems for it, but. Yeah. That is so right up my alley in the mix between skimpy and haute. Great suggestions and accompanying explanations :) The headpieces would be so much cooler if they were blue masks that still showed some face in the vein of the “tattoo” skins they’ve been releasing lately. I would buy probably too many of those.

I highly suggest the artists look at runway fashions like this, this, this, this, these, this, or really just anything fashion related and take some inspiration time.

I think this (nsfw?) male fashion might be a little more on par for the male design of Zodiac.

I’m ridiculously excited for the toy. I am a little bummed that the random lottery of a mini is still not an option like in GW1, however, and also sad about the soulboundness of the gun (going to assume it won’t stack in the bank). It will permanently take up a slot in each characters’ inventory. I thought the community was pretty vocally annoyed about items just sitting in your inventory like that with the living story (Scarlet Briar’s Journal, Marjory’s Journal, that Krytan torch), sad to see them regressing into implementing it here. If there was an equipped slot for toys like there is for costumes this would be less obnoxious to me.

I also thought the whole community had been pretty similarly-minded about how useless those lvl 20 scrolls are as a birthday present. Especially now for a second birthday. Give me something my birthday character can use, at least. The Birthday Boosters are an example of such awesomeness.

8 characters, 6 of whom are gonna be up on their 2nd bdays soon. As of next month, that’ll be, let’s see, 12 lvl 20 scrolls plus the 2 from the year-olds. That’s a total of 14 lvl 20 scrolls in my account’s history. For characters that are all 80 with two 60s. I think I’ve used 2 of them in the last 2 years. This doesn’t even include the characters I plan to make with my 2 open spots, or taking into account the numbers should this pattern of yearly lvl 20 scrolls continue. I estimate I’d have a total of 24 by next year with these two extra characters made, which in year 4 would total out to 34 lvl 20 scrolls. I will never have that many characters to level and there is no other way to break down or exchange the scrolls. I don’t understand the logic.

Kumu Honua.2751:

So I personally dislike that Anet seems to be banning people for being afk, especially without even testing if they are indeed afk or not. If my account gets banned for my activity, I will most certainly raise one hell of a fuss.

Sigh. Anet is doing no such thing. They are banning accounts using macros (almost always “illegal” in game) to circumvent the AFK disconnect time (60 mins). Furthermore, do you really think devs don’t check logs before enacting a ban? Why would you assume such a thing? I’ve reported tons of bots and have never seen them immediately disconnected, to borrow a smart example from earlier up-thread.

A closer reading of posts, especially from the first page where most of this has already been discussed and debunked, might save on the unnecessary drama. No one is getting banned at the moment for AFKing. OP expressed their desire for such a thing, and now it’s like a game of telephone. Hey I hear you get autopermabanned for dancing naked while afk dual wielding legendaries. Pass it on.