Guild Wars 2

Darkbattlemage.9612:

Or it could be they didn’t really see it as such and thought “Hey a Queen with guards who look like athletic woman wouldn’t have people complaining.”

Eh? There’s nothing remotely athletic (or Amazonian, as someone else claimed) about its appearance. It’s a scrawny, stilt-legged naked fembot with sculpted breasts, belly button and high heels. It has pretend-nipples but no pretend-muscles. In no way is that thing anything more than generic, thoughtless, stereotypical fanservice.

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.

Indeed it is. Mind, when I see someone speaking out against attitudes like “boys will be boys” or “it’s what men want” as sick excuses for all sorts of stereotypes or outright abuse of women, or against belittling or abuse of boys and men who are anything less than “hypermasculine”, it’s almost always a feminist, male or female.

There are bad apples anywhere, but despite what what many women go through, the “rabid man-hater” is mainly just yet another stereotype to shut women up — just as “whipped pansy” or “sissy” is an attempt to shame and silence male allies.

Lucky.9421:

Isn’t the current concept art artist team lead, Jamie Ro, a woman?

(…)

If such is the case, would this affect anyone’s viewpoint on the design?

No. Members of a stereotyped/marginalized group are perfectly capable of perpetuating the stereotypes and marginalization, especially if circumstances implicitly or explicitly expect or demand it of them.

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.

Broadicea.8294:

You are not the one who gets to decide what’s offensive to some people. And it’s not even about that, no one is saying “I am personally upset at this and I demand Anet consider my feels,” it’s about the detrimental impact to society caused by the overuse of sexist depictions of femininity.

Exactly. In particular, if you’re a man, you do not get to tell women to shut up about problematic portrayals of women. Hell, if you’re not part of any marginalized/stereotyped group, you do not get to tell people who are to shut up about portrayals that depict and affect them but not you — or ones that even benefit you in some way while harming them, as stereotypes tend to do.

(You also do not get to say “well, my female/gay/black friend thinks it’s fine so you still have to shut the eff up”. Just sayin’, because that comes up a whole lot too.)

It’s not that all men are actively, hatefully sexist or that all straight people are actively, hatefully homophobic, and so on, or that no one who is not part of any group can have an opinion about said group. Far from it! But many people who do not have the experience of being part of a marginalized/stereotyped group nonetheless have a very troubling attitude of “I don’t see the problem, and society treats me as the norm so there IS no problem”.

I actually didn’t agree with people when they said something seriously wrong with you , but now my eyes have been opened. I’ll pray for you.

Jamais vu.5284:

That’s interesting to say when most cosplayers I see are female. And not conservatively dressed ones at that.

Women choosing what to wear on their own bodies is pretty different to designing a character with no agency of its own to be sexualised. Besides which, do you not stop to think that the reason female cosplayers have such a gigantic pool of skimpy costumes to pick from is because, I don’t know, the media is a little oversaturated with them?

You seem to be implying that I have a problem with sexy costumes/designs. I don’t. It should always be optional, though, when it comes to player characters wearing it, and if it’s part of the story then it should serve the narrative. Everything has its time and place. For me, the watchknights fit neither.

Your ideas about added character models make all perfect sense in a world where Anet has unlimited resources.

Funny how there always seem to be enough resources to give male/gender-neutral/less humanoid characters diversity, but never female. Odd, that.

@Crazylegs: Thank you for the considered reply Breath of fresh air to have some civil discussion on the matter.

Dolan.3071:

Wait is this how this works now!?

Okay umm triple/quadruple Ele teams are the shiz!
Ranger will be in the new meta!
Necro’s aren’t as bad as everyone thinks and can easily replace extra Warriors!
Thief Venom Sharing is OP!
Guardian on Fiery Greatsword does the most damage!

If at least one of these turns out to be true you must worship me you degenerate players! NOW GO PROVE MY WILD CLAIMS!

Is Guang willing to prevent bad builds, but not able?
Then he is not knowledgeable.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh the bad builds?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him Guang?

Wait is this how this works now!?

Okay umm triple/quadruple Ele teams are the shiz!
Ranger will be in the new meta!
Necro’s aren’t as bad as everyone thinks and can easily replace extra Warriors!
Thief Venom Sharing is OP!
Guardian on Fiery Greatsword does the most damage!

If at least one of these turns out to be true you must worship me you degenerate players! NOW GO PROVE MY WILD CLAIMS!

Anet has always discouraged repeating content. They want people to do everything once per day then log off.

Syn Sity.5826:

Anet has always discouraged repeating content. They want people to do everything once per day then log off.

*Do everything once per day and then log off and play one of the other games that NCsoft put all the GW2 cash shop money into.

People need to not use the word exploit for everything. An exploit is not a general term for everything that might be nerfed in the future.

Did you all find some mechanism that prevents you from dying? Like are you glitching under the world? If so, that would be an exploit.

Are you fighting and winning? Using normal game mechanics? That isn’t an exploit.

You should use direct damage instead of condition damage.

It’s the play how you want olympics.

Broadicea.8294:

lol no one who has seen the devs play or talk about the classes in depth would suggest that they know more about the class mechanics than the top tier players.

Izzy_5sig_warrior.jpg

OP build, I dont know wat ur talking about. i play how i want.

But guys, play how you want.

Real man goes for real woman.
Things many couldn’t dare to do in real life, might as well try “hard” on internet.

I think the fact that people realize “this doesn’t feel right” and have to ask “is this an exploit” shows why the design of this update needs to raise very, very serious concerns over the current direction of game design at ANet.

If all people care about is loot and shinies, this content is for them. It’s unsustainable content that also risks setting a bar for grindy rewards that may leave many unable to return to the normal game world where rewards for their time and effort will seem insignificant and pointless in comparison.

For those who just feel like this is wrong and chose not to “exploit” the ill conceived design of this patch’s “content”, it just breeds a sense of unfairness that the developers are deciding to go over the top in rewarding such narrowly focused grind, while sending the message that, to them, the game world is dead and those that adventure there should expect to always feel like second class citizens who have to work ten times as hard as Living Story grinders to eek out a sustainable existence.

Others just realize at a gut level that this is not only not right, but detrimental to the health of the game, which really breeds doubts and concerns about the future of a game they’ve grown to love.

Anet is trying to force the good players out of the game so the casuals can spend money in the Gem Store.

Berserker gear is the best gearing for any and all dungeons. If someone kicks you for berserker gear they’re frankly terrible.

If you don’t know the dungeons and you aren’t confident in your dodging ability you will down and die fairly often at first. Some people would suggest starting with Knights or Valkyrie and replacing gear with berserker as you improve, but personally I think learning the hard way and jumping straight into berserker is better as it will insure you don’t get bad habits from using more defensive setups.

1. shout heal warrior SONIC BOON!!!! beats all
2. bow bear ranger
3. flame thrower engineer
4. cleric staff guardian
5. p/d theif
6. condition necro
7. staff elementalist
8. greatsword/staff mesmer

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

It’s spawns endless amount of spiders with giant damage, i complete all dungeons and need only ta p3 to dungeon master, but it is just impossible.

All I read was “I don’t want to learn new tactics or adapt my play style so please, Anet, let me continue to faceroll my keyboard”.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

To clarify we had both QA and our internal core tests go through the content a whole bunch. The QA team focused on making sure that every profession could complete every boss (there are 12) with a reasonable level of skill and gear. The core testers mostly did what they do best and beat the pants off of the stuff we throw at them and tell us whether or not it was hard enough. I feel its worth mentioning that we would schedule tests for an hour or so and some of them would stay all day trying to beat it. But they were having fun, and that’s whats most important to me.

Queen’s Gauntlet is definitely the more challenging side of the Jubilee. That’s why it has its own achievement category and rewards. There’s even a gambit system wherein you can increase the difficulty for a better reward.

It’s not quite like anything we’ve ever done before. I think some of you are really going to have fun with it.

You have a QA department?

Exactly what Broadicea said.
Go join an “EXPERIENCED ZERK ONLY $$$$ 6 DAY FARM NO NOOBS THUGLYF” group and ask yourself if they’ll ever be able to do something as faceroll as CoE.

Nice video, but the banners weren’t in range.

daily pug story time:

bunched up a hoard of dredge in the corner before the cannons.
-mesmer GS 5’s them away
-necro feared some more away
-engi BOB blew the rest away

so that’s why anet improved my hammer symbol size

Fortunately for the zerkers, the qq is next to the 22.

They just need to tone down the effects like guardian burning and it would be perfectly fine.

There is always……………
Resident evil style!