Guild Wars 2

SaraGreen.2345:

Doing jumping puzzles on a char or nord feels almost impossible.

My mesmer is a rather bulky, near max-sized charr. I like her, but when it comes to jumping puzzles I sometimes curse her too. :p

Camera issues and related motion sickness are definitely so much worse on big characters.

Pifil.5193:

Now this guy is a serial “Founder’s Pack” purchaser with no problem spending money on games (in general at least). It just contributed to the general bad feeling he had about HoT.

To each their own, but IMO it’s a bit odd that pre-orders, season passes, founders’ packs and such have become so widely accepted, but charging for actual, already existing content is somehow bad. I’ve lost all patience with people (especially big studios) clamoring for our money when there’s not even a product yet and won’t be for weeks or months on end. That’s why I stopped looking for Dauntless news when they released their founders’ packs and started spamming my inbox with emails about them.

Early access is a massive gamble as well, but at least you actually get something for it and can check out other people’s LPs and opinions first to decide if you may like it.

Dall.9752:

I wholeheartedly agree, but the experiences I was referring to never got to that point.

For a lot of people, they did.

If you create a group it’s absolutely your right to put whatever requirements you want, even if they are ridiculous (you likely won’t see your party filled, but that’s on you).

Still no excuse to be verbally abusive when you ask the person to leave or kick them.

Also, there is a really annoying tendency for some (many?) of those wannabe leetpros to consider every single group that isn’t explicitly tagged as new player friendly to be off-limits for “worthless scrubs” and “filthy casuals”. The abuse I have seen and heard about happened in groups that were very much not tagged as “experienced speedrun meta only”, yet treated as such anyway.

So if you add “no necros” does it make you a meta-slave or just aware of the odds?

Yeah no, I agree with Wintermute here. Experience with a class, the durability of one class versus another, and other factors can all massively change how much a person can actually contribute. But as it is, you’re kitten ed if you do (play a “meta” character that you’re not “perfect” with) and kitten ed if you don’t (play a non-“meta” character that you’re better at staying alive on).

The necro has just as much right to create his own group with whatever rules he wants and play with like-minded folk, so that would not be “bad behavior” on anyone’s part, no one would be the problem. Going on and on about being declined for being a Reaper, now that I would consider not only bad but an entitled and selfish attitude.

When it comes to joining a particular group that has politely declined them? Yes. But if a game’s balance is so messed up that many classes/builds are considered “useless”, and if the playerbase is so messed up that they not only accept that but gleefully use it as a source of frequent abuse, that is definitely a much bigger problem still, and IMO people can absolutely complain both about the bad balance and the ugly attitudes.

I think it’s perfectly fair as it is. 800 gems = 10 Euros, less than a month’s subscription to other games, and that’s if you don’t log in for even just one moment while an episode is free.

If we’re going to criticize Anet’s money-making strategies, we should start with the gambling scheme that is BLC. Charging for actual content is completely acceptable.

Dall.9752:

I don’t feel bad for those newbies being called out.

There is a colossal difference between “calling out” genuinely bad behavior and being verbally abusive. I did Dragon’s Stand today, and there were people lying dead at the blighting trees or running around opening pods during that fight, and I have zero sympathy whatsoever when that sort of thing is called out on voice chat, squad chat and map chat. But there is absolutely no excuse ever for hatespeech, threats, stalking, etc.

And if someone’s definition of “bad behavior” includes things like “has less than 10k AP” or “has no mastery points” or “plays class X” or “asks any questions” or “tries to play a dungeon at the level the game tells them they can instead of level 80 with full ascended” or “dares to deviate in any way, shape or form from the One True Way as handed down by the Infallible Spreadsheet Meta Gods”, then they are the problem. Not the other person.

The “immediately go anywhere you want in the world, without any cooldown” portals. It’s one reason why I dislike seeing NPC mesmers in stories, they’re definitely the writers’ pet class as far as being absolutely grotesquely overpowered (especially compared to PC mesmers) goes.

What Trise said. The others, too. Another option on reaching your account’s four-year anniversary is to choose the (truly huge) Hoelbrak Mountain Pack or the (oddly Bavarian-looking) Divinity’s Reach Rucksack from the reward bundle you get. You’ll be able to pick another of those cultural back skins on the fifth anniversary and presumably on future ones as well.

Of course, there’s no way to speed this up so if you’re a new player these are well out of reach. But if you’re close, maybe you’ll like one of them.

Mapchat can turn very awful very fast if even one person decides to be a POS, and the rabid elitism is one reason why I’m not even thinking about dungeons/fractals, but there are also a lot of kind, helpful people. No matter the map — and that absolutely includes HoT/LS3 in my experience — there are always ressers and people willing to answer questions. Pretty much the only time I’ve seen people react badly to questions in the open world (the usual abusive, wannabe-edgyk3wl gasbags aside) is when the question is asked in a hostile manner or with an air of “drop everything you’re doing and help me right now”.

I like the map and the idea behind cleaning up Orr, but agree that this could have been implemented better in the spirit of cooperation— especially considering that using the ley organ gives much more progression that just killing things. It’s all a bit inconsistent, too: those fountains at Lyssa’s have a universal “cleased/corrupted” state, but the pollution clouds at Dwayna’s do not.

SiebenNine.6849:

I also felt like my commander has some serious personality issues. He/she gave Caithe so much sh*** in HoT but is totaly fine with Majory and Braham being idiots.

For the most part, the “commander” doesn’t even have personality, or a history, or a culture, or any other distinguishing features. That is probably my biggest gripe with a story that we were supposed to be the protagonist of. We are a faceless wad of putty that is molded in whatever way the writers decide to make the NPCs look good, or at least bring out their personality, and move their story along. Doesn’t matter how nonsensical, and of course with no hint of player input allowed. That would only distract from the NPCs.

One mindboggling example of this was when they spoke about Kasmeer as “the player’s proxy” in PoF regarding Balthazar and player reactions to him. I have a proxy, and it’s the commander. Why can’t my character react to him?

For me, the only enjoyable piece of storytelling was the non-LS mini episode about Caladbolg, because my sylvari were actually treated as sylvari, even if just for a few lines of dialog. It does make a difference. If every LS episode contained two or three diverging bits of dialog based on the PC’s race, it would be a massive improvement IMO. Likewise, it was really refreshing that tiny bits of Ep4’s final mission varied depending on whether you have played the Caudecus Manor dungeon or not, what class you were playing, or what Order you chose for that particular character.

In generell; A net, please think about the players who did not play GW1 (if I hadn’t watch the trailer analyses from WP I still had no Idea who Livia is)

Seconded.

So much this, OP. I stopped looking at or getting excited about new skins a long time ago because so much is just the same skimpy BS that looks nothing like the awesome skins that male characters get. The last time I made the mistake was with Canach’s new outfit because I’m starved for gear that is actually desgined for sylvari. Sadly, it doesn’t really get much worse than that particular example …

Getting rid of gendered armor, letting female characters wear the male version, or just making skimpier gear for male characters to match the female skins for those who are into that, are all wishes that have been expressed over and over since launch but I doubt it’ll ever happen. For a game that is so much better at including female characters than most, it’s a crying shame that visually GW2 is very much stuck in the dark ages of near-obligatory objectification.

The charr are a way to get away from that, and they’re awesome, but finding good gear for them is a considerable challenge of its own. Which has also been mentioned time and again. (I’ll never stop grumbling about the cultural T3 light armor tail clipping.) And we shouldn’t have to avoid most races to get away from the gendered armor BS.

Seconded, especially considering colour blind players. Bigger outlines and a colour change option would be very helpful.

One time ghostly Aurene appeared to me not when I died, but when I completed a renown heart. Or at least I think that is what triggered it. She did that “stompy-forelegs-happy-emote” thing of hers and vanished again. It only happened once, but it made me smile.

Kinda miss Aurene, even though they did make her a bit overly cute.

maddoctor.2738:

I hope not because the quality of the “old days” was worse than we get now. No need to reduce the quality of the voice overs to what it used to be in the core game.

I don’t know. I liked the theme, premise and many of the characters from the vanilla game a lot more than anything and anyone introduced afterwards. The execution of the story could feel clunky and hamfisted, yes, and there were some absolute facepalm moments. But the same is very much true for the current writing as well. It just doesn’t feel so obviously clunky and hamfisted anymore because the technology has improved. As mentioned above, cutscenes and conversations “flow” better and have less “gaps” between characters acting/talking. Doesn’t mean that the writing, the characters or the plots are better … though “better” is obviously always at least partly in the eye of the beholder. We still get steamrolled by stupidity, it’s just that without the gaps and pauses, each moment stands out less.

Ashantara.8731:

In Season 3, the directions were extended by: “Please try to portrait an immature adolescent with a bubblegum accent, thank you!”

I have to agree with that. Maybe it’s the “snotty high schooler” (and/or “condescending, unearned familiarity”) behavior from a lot of characters that makes the slang stand out more. Either way, it’s a reason why the main story in LS3 got on my nerves pretty much from start to finish, Caithe and Rytlock aside.

Then there’s the “overacting befuddled grandma” spiel they gave General Almorra Soulkeeper of all people.

Generally, I think conversations flow better now, because as charming as the vanilla conversation screen may have been for about five minutes, it was also awkward and clunky and took the characters “out of the world”. They try to improve, but IMO it’s going way too far in the “high schooler” direction combined with a general obsession with NPC drama that leaves no room for the player character and “this is my story”.

I wonder if this was partly inspired by Canach’s popularity. Many players like him, so more snark by more characters equals more fun, right? Except Canach is actually smart, on-point, well-spoken, and — ironically — pretty much the only person willing to show some empathy for the player character (if playing a sylvari through HoT). And he was one character. There’s a big difference in the “feel” of a story between having one character like that and having a bunch of mouthy gits; namely that it becomes hard to take anything or anyone seriously, IMO.

I don’t think there were enough people awake to actually “stress” the servers here in Europe, but no complaints here since that meant a brief time of lag-and-DC-free poking around. Still loving the raptor, though I did get just a hint of motion sickness this time. Pets are still noticeably unresponsive after a swap or after leaving Soulbeast. I did enjoy poking around very briefly with Holosmith, maybe that will actually get me to play engineer at last.

I hate gendered armor with an endless passion. Anything that looks impressive, practical and/or beautifully themed on a man should look exactly the same on a woman as well. And skimpy or frilly or fanciful stuff needs to look exactly the same on the dudes, too.

I’m also not fond of “MMO-y” armors, i.e. over-the-top impractical showy things like monstrous spikes or massive shoulderpads or smoke/glitter/flames everywhere. Armor should look like it actually protects my character, not like something that’d impale her as soon as she sneezes, scratches her nose, crouches or just turns her head a bit too far. Mind, I don’t mind some “special effects” if they fit an armor’s theme and don’t look like a health hazard. The glow on the ley-line armor for example is quite nice.

I’d absolutely kill for more (non-gendered) cultural gear, or just more gear that isn’t designed with humans in mind and look just “wrong” on charr or sylvari in particular. Less human frilliness, more norn-style furs and knotwork decor, for example.

For light armors, I’d like to see more proper pants, especially for women. For medium, the obvious answer is no more trenchcoats, please. And though I generally prefer full-cover armor, it’d be nice to have more options for charr, sylvari and I guess norn to show off their patterns/glows/tattoos (without the forced “sexiness” for female characters).

Cutscene/conversation skipping and restart motes for achievement-related fights should be an absolute must in all future content, and it’s baffling that LS3 lacks them seeing as how at least some fights in LS2 had motes. (The one in Glint’s lair is the only episode I achievement-completed for mastery points, so I don’t know about the rest.)

That insipid mesmer passion play in the last episode of LS3 is a particularly bad offender because not only do you have to sit through all the lengthy yackity-yack and ritual torture beforehand, you also get thrown into combat right afterwards. Meaning you can’t even tab out and come back five minutes later but have to sit through the whole kitten thing every time.

Same. I don’t PvP and see no point in punching a passive, invincible golem with three to ten other people also spamming their new shinies on the poor thing, so there’s no point to this for me. Wish I could just give the new elites a go in the open world, the way I normally play.

This is absolutely needed. If the name reporting feature includes pets/guild names, that should be made clearer.

The embroidered pants are “sexy harem girl” themed so they don’t really count, IMO, for those of us looking for an alternative to all the “girly” and forced-“sexy” outfits. Proper, practical, comfortable pants would be like a revelation from above in this game. No thigh gaps or other cutouts or missing legs to fulfill some apparently obligatory naked skin quota, not so tight they may as well just be body paint, no miniskirt on top, no frills and lace and ribbons. Just some normal fricking pants.

The gendered armors/outfits are one of my least favourite things about the game for certain.

Essentially paying for drops — paying more than the blue/green junk you’re 90%+ likely to get is even worth at that — is unadulterared BS, and the requirement of having to do a daily first is the rotten cherry on top.

No, it would not stop deliberate attempts to hinder access. It does, however, prevent accidental access hindering.

The “interact” hotkey is still available even when someone is standing on an NPC so it’s not really access hindering. It’s annoying, yes, but that hotkey makes it not detrimental like in say WoW.

As a compromise, maybe mounts could be disabled in cities. That’d prevent the Pact Commander speed boost from becoming pretty much useless, too.

I’ve come to agree that the mount should be able to side-step. Yeah, it would be kinda weird and kinda unrealistic at top speed, but it’s also weird and unrealistic (and sometimes annoying) not to be able to do so when standing or walking, at least.

Getting stuck on terrain should be looked at.

The mount/dismount animation could also use some work. The unnecessary flash and the forced zooming out/in are annoying and possible triggers for motion sickness.

As has been mention on other threads, please look at the size of the mounts. They’re distinctly too small for charr (and probably norn), and too big for max-sized humans/sylvari.

A second (and maybe third, we can dream!) dye channel would be a great change to make each mount more personal and unique.

Forced dismounts do absolutely nothing to prevent some tosser (or ten) AFK-camping their mount on NPCs. I agree that we should not get kicked off our mount for talking to people or looking at the bounty board or similar objects, because it makes no sense and is annoying. Plus, the constant mount/dismount animations contribute to motion sickness for some people due to the flash and the forced zooming.

The raptor is fantastic, but I definitely agree that it needs a size overhaul across the board to be less dependant on the rider’s height slider and more on their race. I made a max-sized human for the demo to check out the awesome new customization options, and she looks like a kid on a Shire horse. Toning the size for a more natural and comfortable seat would look a LOT better, just as the charr could use a size boost for their mounts so they don’t look like they stole a kid’s mount that’s going to collapse under their bulk before the day is out.

A second dye channel for the raptor would be fantastic because it would allow for so many great colour combinations.

+1 for adding mounts to the home instance. I’m always in favor of making that place less barren, and I like the raptor, so being able to see it there and maybe groom or pat it would be neat.

Seconded! They look ace as it is, but having a second (or even third) dye channel would be fantastic.

I had zero problems with the raptor, thankfully, but there are places and JPs in this game that make me want to hurl in five seconds flat because of the yanky camera, so you have my sympathy. Motion sickness bites big time.

Loving the raptor. It looks really good, the animations are very well-done, being able to dye it is nice (though 2-3 channels would be even better), and its movement feels much more realistic than similar features in other games. I had fun with the race, until the server kicked me off literally on the finish line. Grumble.

Looking around/behind while riding needs some work, though. I had it spin around a few times instead of staying on course.

The mount is the only thing I cared about this weekend since I don’t want to spoil the map itself, so it was a good first impression once the server got its bearings. The story instance — eh. After LS3 my expectations are utterly rock bottom in that regard, but at least nothing actively kittened me off like most NPCs in LS3.

It’s completely different, and so much better. Except for three (I think) spots where you glide blindly around a corner, it’s pretty much always easy to tell where to go, and there are no “if you don’t land on this precise spot you’ll fall and likely die and have to start all over, enjoy” moments. There are two checkpoints that actually help you since you can use the special action key to TP to the last one you visited if you fall. It’s really quite chill and fun, definitely worth a try.

Oh wow, this is neat. Wasn’t this intended for but then cut from HoT? Time to hop on my revenant again. And yes, any hints for story- or place-dependent talks please?

Ohoni.6057:

I mean I can tell you as a fact that the introduction of raiding caused fairly catastrophic damage to my guild at the time,

There’s that. I’ve seen some of that as well. It’s one thing when a game has this sort of “exclusive” content from the start, but when it’s thrown in later, it can be quite disruptive in various ways.

Carighan.6758:

spell effects are detrimental to handling boss abilities, no support for UI mods (which could alleviate the previous point),

This is a huge issue for me, because my brain seems to be wired weirdly and overloads fast when spammed with visual clutter, which is bad when a game has a generally hectic combat with little time to react. I can process text so much better. Even simply adding a brief chat message (like the good old “Onyxia takes a deep breath”) for the worst boss abilities helps a lot.

(And yes, I know that having mods like DBM means that content is likely to be designed around everyone using them, and some people don’t like that. Which is a perfectly valid opinion, too. Just saying that it’d be nice to have a happy medium between “visual clutter out the wazoo” and a “this mod tells you everything about the fight and everyone expects you to use it”.)

no ally-targeted skills and hence no click-cast healing,

Including no self-targeting ability. Another design choice I don’t get. Even without specifially ally-targeted spells, there are still reasons why you might want a quick hotkey for yourself or a party member.

Uzunari.1964:

- Having in-game voice chat (maybe command channel -> only commander could speak) would be great improvement to PUG.

Voice chat is even more prone to abuse than text chat, so making it more instead of less required is probably not a good idea, IMO. I’d rather see a better chat system, including macros and buttons/hotkeys for them, but I doubt they’ll ever go there.

So overdue and so good. It’s the first thing I did when the servers came back up. :p

Bumping this, because it’s really baffling to me that big expensive games still don’t take this relatively common condition into consideration. I’m not colourblind, but I find the visual clutter in the game quite overwhelming as it is, even only in normal 5-person groups, and I can’t imagine how much more difficult is must be for you folks.

Wow, that’s pretty noticeable and something that definitely shouldn’t happen.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

You imagine incorrectly. I’ve been playing GW since the first few weeks of GW1 and obviously since beta of gw2 and I have literally ZERO desire to ever raid. I barely like to fractal.

Yup. Not everyone raids, in fact I’d bet most players don’t. Not everyone wants to raid. Not everyone cares about “endgame”. And that is perfectly fine and not one bit less of a “valid” way to play. Don’t care so much about what other people do, OP. If you obsess only so much becoming “pro” and playing “perfectly”, then of course you can’t enjoy the actual game because it’s all just an obstacle towards some nebulous ever-shifting goalpoast (and there’s no guarantee you’d even enjoy the vaunted “endgame” if you made it there, either.)

Yeah, unfortunately people will find something to latch on to as an excuse to look down on the “filthy casuals”. “Endgame” basically encourages that attitude, as does PvP, but failing that anything goes.

Interesting how people differ. My first MMO was World of Warcraft, back in the vanilla days, and I couldn’t have cared less about “efficiency” or playing “correctly”. There was a big seamless world to explore, how bloody awesome and magical was that! My main was a druid tank back when “everyone knew” that hybrid classes were fit only to heal. I didn’t give a toss, I loved her and played with people who also didn’t obsess about doing what the “pros” said, and probably became a better tank than I otherwise might have been because I learned how to do it with a “bad” class. I ran, swam and jumped off the beaten path and was delighted when I was rewarded with a stunning view or little hidden places. I enjoyed the thrill of sneaking into areas that I wasn’t remotely ready for, just to find some new herbs for my alchemy. And when a dragon who’d smelled my hairy underlevelled butt from miles away ran me down and one-shot me, I wasn’t even mad because dragons are cool, and maybe I’d come back one day for revenge.

I don’t get the same discovery-enjoyment out of GW2 because I don’t enjoy it as much overall, but the solution to that isn’t for the game to babysit every step I take, it’s for me to decide whether I like it enough to keep playing.

Honestly, the zones in this game do not leave you high and dry, and there is no way to “do them wrong”. You have the scouts, you have the overview of how many vistas/hearts/etc. are in the zone and how many of them you have not found yet.

Jahroots.6791:

Many believe that altering raids to be more inclusive would significantly increase the time it takes to release them.

Which is an odd argument, because surely resource would be better spent on something that more people can enjoy. Outside of the vaunted exclusive “endgame”, you usually hear the opposite argument, in fact. (Used, for example, against roleplayers, or people who crave more gear that isn’t designed exclusively with humans in mind, or people who’d like more racial dialog in the story or more of a focus on the story in general.)

And of course those who have no need of easier options will oppose their addition.

The selfish tosspots among them, sure, but thankfully not every “top” player is like that.

JTGuevara.9018:

Raids are unfriendly by definition and design.

Sadly, yeah. They don’t have to be, there’s absolutely no reason why there couldn’t be easy raids. But as it is they are “endgame” by design … and anything “endgame” will be hostile because of the egos and status-jockeying attached to it. That’s why there’s usually a lot of angry pushback to the idea of making “endgame” more accessible, as if higher-difficulty content is somehow diminished by having a lower-difficulty version as well.

So do I, but unfortunately I don’t think they ever will, seeing as how even race-specific dialog lines are few and far between and how the writing just keep moving further away from treating the player character as the protagonist.

The “Why didn’t the Pale Tree and Caithe warn us?!” will definitely remain an eternal and likely eternally unresolved plot issue for me, anyway, especially as a sylvari main.

It’s not that LS3 doesn’t have a vague overaching plot, it’s that they threw way too much at it, and that there’s no bloody depth anywhere. It’s like a one-hour sightseeing trip of a major city — the tour guide barely manages to belt out two sentences about an attraction before the next three pop into view. And one of the primary things that suffer in such a rush is tying the supposed protagonist into it.

There are interesting aspects to the season, in my mind, but they’re all background fluff at best and go nowhere at worst. I like the kodan lore, and the sylvari and royal ghosts in Orr. Aurene has potential if we ever get to actually spend time with her again and the devs drop the “overly cutesy” act. I also like the hints that the mursaat were unfairly over-vilified in a “history is written by the victors” kind of way, but instead of exploring that we help some vengeance-crazed zealot murder the last of them in a story arc that perfectly showcases how the plot has become all about the NPCs with no place for the player character except tagalong, lackey or punching bag.

Harper.4173:

This is why GW2 as a multiracial game fails. Because it can’t work in its current scope as multiracial.

Disagree. It could work if they switched the focus back to the player character i.e. the protagonist instead of the too-many NPCs and their various issues. We’re not talking about wholly diverging storylines here — even a human character should have brains enough to realize that a god who is perfectly happy to kill them and everyone on Tyria isn’t worth following, though giving them a bit of an optional crisis-of-faith arc should be a must. Mainly, all I really want a handful of race-specific dialog lines per story chapter or LS episode (voiced or not) and some regular call-outs to the character’s origin. Like a charr catching up with their warband or getting word from their Imperator. Or a sylvari getting to talk about their Wyld Hunt (do we even have one anymore?) and keeping up with news about the Pale Tree’s condition.

If this was a single-race game, it’d probably be human-only, and that would be a waste IMO because pretty much every other culture is far more interesting to me.

She was capable of telling her attendants to summon us, and giving us those memory seeds. That would have been plenty of time to gasp out a warning instead of sending us on a wild goose chase.

Plus, I don’t think it’s too unreasonable that a grieving sylvari who lost much of her life’s work (i.e. the Pact), had many of her own siblings turn against her, was treated with suspicion and hostility even by so-called friends, was forced to mercy-kill Trahearne, and all the while had Mordremoth trying to twist their soul inside out might want answers, or be angry with their mother even though they still love and worry for her too.

It’s the same with Caithe: we can hold her responsible for her theft of the egg and general erratic behavior, but not for refusing to warn us about the dragon. If the Pale Tree was incapable of talking, Caithe at least should have warned Trahearne and the Commander. Withholding information is a killer.

Eir isn’t dead in LS2 yet. :p Though it’s been long enough that I don’t remember Logan being in LS2 in any noteworthy function either.

Late For Tea.1846:

If I recall correctly they mentioned there would be no differences in dialogue for the different races. I think they said so during the announcement, or WT said it during the after-show.

That’s a huge letdown. A few exceptions aside, most of what came after the initial culture-focused chapter of the personal story is an excercise of “why even bother having multiple playable races”. It really disconnects player characters from their roots and is one sign that the writers don’t seem to care much about them. The NPCs don’t get stripped of all “cultural markers” (just look at Kasmeer’s latest breakdown over a very human-specific issue as one example of many), so why do we? Even a few lines here and there would go a long way, nevermind something like a charr PC finally hearing from their warband again.

Cristalyan.5728:

I find a much better situation to have Jennah as a Tyrant than to have the Blades as the secret organization deciding who will be the Monarch, what kind of politics the Monarch is allowed to make, deciding when a Monarch should be replaced etc. All of this based on what they feel.

I’m not sure how this is worse than the monarchy itself, which is based entirely on the pure dumb accident of birth. Not intelligence, wisdom, trustworthiness, compassion especially for the poor and vulnerable, fairness, the willingness to always put duty before personal whims, the ability to form strong alliances, or any other kind of merit. Certainly not the popular vote or accountability to the people. Jenna parks her backside in a fancy chair because her father did the same before her. That’s all that matters.

At least with the Shining Blade hanging over their heads, Kryta’s monarchs have some kind of accountability. Of course, it raises the old question of who watches the watchers, and whether their definition of what is “good for Kryta” is any better than a given monarch’s. For example, what if the Blades decided that an alliance with the charr is treason, that dirty nonhumans shouldn’t sully Krytan soil in general, and that the people who babble about the threat of the Elder Dragons are all liars?

Electro.4173:

Far as I’m concerned, the “magic death bomb if you tell secrets” thing is all nonsense. I mean, its a fantasy setting and all so there has to be some suspension of disbelief, but how the heck does some spell “know” you’re telling secrets?

The answer: it’s mesmer magic (Livia’s, to be precise). Mesmer magic, like asura magitech, can do anything and everything, no rules or restrictions need apply. Now I wouldn’t want to rules-lawyer the mystery out of magic, but it does need its limits, and this “mesmers/magitech are the handwave excuse to let the writers do whatever they want, and they sure love to use it too” thing is really lazy.

narcx.3570:

When you join as a Sylvarri, one of them gets all super racist at you. #makeshingingbladegreatagain

I think it’s all non-humans. Would have been interesting to have a line or two of objection for each individual race.