I do definitely appreciate the time and effort spent on a species that is not human (for whom pretty much everything in the game is designed), especially sylvari since they only have four armor sets that they can reasonably wear and still look like sylvari instead of humans in a bad costume. Adding glow, one of the defining visual aspects of this species, to more of the armor sets HAS been requested, and is something I definitely welcome. So thanks for listening! (Though I must agree that the many issues with charr armor should have been a higher priority — but I doubt that was your call to make.)
Unfortunately, most of these screenshots show that the way it was done was not so much adding something as taking something away: detail, subtlety, texture quality. The screenshots of the new light T3 legs in particular look as if someone hastily smeared a crude layer of paint on them, I’m sorry to say. Overall, the unique sylvari look has definitely been diminished as a result. I’m not surprised that so many people are disappointed: sylvari ARE hard to find the “right” look for because of the very limited armor options and because of the way that their bark color influences armor color. Add the fact that cultural T3 is hideously expensive, and, well, let’s just say I’m very glad I have not (yet) bought that set for my elementalist.
Please have another look at these armors, and also at plans for changes to the remaining sets, in the light of ADDING detail, “theme” and overall texture quality, not reducing them.
I’d prefer not to have cast bars added to the game for one big reason. As it is we can’t usually see the bosses head/shoulders unless we’re waaaaay back at edge of range. If we had to watch a cast bar we’d need to turn our camera nearly straight up to see it, then we’d miss the fields our friends are dropping, or mobs coming up behind, or animations to signal a big attack.
That is definitely not what I’m asking for, and I daresay it’s not what others want either. What I’d like to see is a castbar below my target’s portrait. Sticking it over the head of the in-game model would solve nothing at all, you’re right about that, both because of the size/distance issue and because of the flashy mess of spell effects that obscure everything anyway. (Hell, I can’t see MY castbar as it is. Or my mouse pointer, as others have said.)
You must not have played World of Warcraft
As much as I loathe saying anything positive about that game these days, you cannot compare GW2 to WoW in this matter, not even remotely. During the seven years I played WoW, I had moments with new encounters where I felt overwhelmed, yes, and deaths due to bad positioning, slow reactions or distraction — but never, not once, a death that came from the screen being too cluttered with flashy BS to even see my target, nevermind discern which way it was facing, whom it was targeting or what one-shot ability it was winding up. In GW2, that happens all the bloody time.
What GW2 is doing wrong compared to WoW, IMO:
1) Barely visible enemy AoE indicators. A thin red line on the ground can be quite hard to see if even one person drops their own AoE in the same area, and that’s not even taking color blindness into consideration.
2) No target castbar.
3) No target-of-target indicator.
4) No chat warnings. “Onyxia takes a deep breath”, anyone?
Not all of these were in the game from the start, but the end result was that even with a raid full of people doing their thing all around me, drowning in adds and/or unable to see more than the toes of whatever I was tanking, I always had at least one guaranteed way to tell what was happening.
Plus, the UI there is so much more customizable and moddable. I don’t ever want to play a game again that requires and assumes the use of a DBM-like mod, but that has nothing to do with the abovementioned game features.
I think that’s a general problem with Anet’s writing though. I call it “there’s a spell/device for that”. Their core systems of magic and technology are so ambiguously interwoven into the plot that for many problems in the story, especially in the later chapters, some NPC will come along with a gimmicky spell or device they conveniently know about/found/invented that will solve it. It makes consistency a bit hard to achieve because there wasn’t one that didn’t feel like it hadn’t been made up on the spot instead of tied into some solid, underlying system of magic or tech.
Very well said, and this baffles and disappoints me all the more because I bought GW2 partly due to the impression that this setting was actually better thought through that say WoW, where “facts” change at the drop of a hat and no one knows how to even spell “continuity”.
The asura in particular are just a giant blob of convenient deus ex machina, though Scarlet and the Aetherblades are getting even worse. It’s a particular irritation for me because it’s all pseudo-technobabble in a game that I thought would be high fantasy but barely contains any actual magic or mysticism in its writing.
NPC deaths are always hard to do well because of that “So why didn’t I/that NPC actually use my/their power X, Y, Z to save them?!” issue.
Deaths that occur during a cutscene defy the entire purpose of a video game as an interactive medium by removing the player from being able to interact with the game for that one crucial moment where the player knows that if they had been able to interact with the game that death wouldn’t have occured. It is from the player’s perspective a deus ex machina.
This is true even during a PNP RPG. I understand that the GM has a story they want to tell, but they need to do so within the context of the game as an interactive medium and not as a movie or storybook.
I’m a bit more forgiving of such things in a computer game, which simply has no hope to match a decent GM’s ability to improvise and adjust to the characters — but so many cutscenes in games are just so bad in terms of stripping characters not only of agency but also of anything resembling brains and competence. Ugh. That is what really gets to me. I like a good death when it “fits” the character and situation. Forgal’s death works for me, as does …
Tegwyn
… later in Orr. But the issue of Trahearne’s inexplicable minion swarm which is inexplicably there in one mission and then inexplicably fails to be seen ever again is a prime example of the game’s story often feeling like a disjointed mess in which each chapter was written by a different person without any contact with anyone else.
Agreed, not only is he among the more memorable people because he actually shows some personality, he is also one of the few asura I don’t want to dropkick face-first down Zhaitan’s gullet. :p Poor Tonn, wish he’d have been around longer.
Best
- The account wallet, because it reduced some of the infernal inventory clutter.
- Guild missions, one of the few reasons why I even log in anymore.
- The Labyrinthine Cliffs and Zephyr Sanctum — a gorgeous, atmospheric zone with interesting lore that ties into GW1 and offered some interesting challenges. (This does NOT include the nonsensical “election”, only the Zephyrites and their lore.)
- Rox and Braham are rather fun to listen to.
Worst
- Ascended items and anything related to them, including Fractals. What the bleeding hell happened to this not being a gear-obsessed, gear-grinding, gear-gated game?
- Scarlet and anything related to her. Terrible writing, infantile brattiness as a sorry excuse for a “personality”, and overall a disgusting example of an untouchable oh-so-superior-to-absolutely-everyone-ever writer’s pet character who needs to die YESTERDAY and be completely forgotten.
- The overall direction and presentation of the so-called “living story” which has no impact on anything whatsoever, little to no connection to the established lore and themes, needs to be researched out-of-game instead of being able to be experienced in-character, and changes the feel of the game from a supposed high-fantasy “save the world from the eldritch threat” to a shallow mess of parties and Steampunk deus-ex-machina supertech. As an added bonus, it has absolutely no room for our own characters because Anet cannot afford voiceacting for them.
The problem with Tequatl is that the entire difficulty of the fight comes from organizing your raid and not from the fight mechanics.
This is exactly why I just cannot be bothered to try this fight again, despite having been so pumped about it before it was released — and one further reason to shake my head in disbelief at the developers, who sometimes seem to display a complete and utter lack of a clue about how to make an MMO “work”. When I play a game, I want to actually play it, not stupidly sit on my butt for over an hour in hopes of “reservering” a spot in the “right” server/overflow.
Tequatl as it is now really should be instanced. It was stupidly easy before, but at least it was not a logistical nightmare.
NPC deaths are always hard to do well because of that “So why didn’t I/that NPC actually use my/their power X, Y, Z to save them?!” issue. I am finally working on my main’s personal story, and encountered a really, really bad example of that in Orr. I was fighting a named enemy with about half a dozen NPCs — and all of a sudden a long cutscene began in which one NPC went down, cried for help, another NPC distracted the enemy and was killed by it. I just sat there shaking my head in disgust over the sheer ham-fisted stupidity of it all. What was my character doing during all that time? What were the other NPCs doing? Standing around with our collective thumbs up our backsides? Ugh. That enemy was alone and a pushover, at no point was anyone reasonably at risk from it. At least the mentor death happens off-screen while our character has a good reason to run.
But, yeah, for a unique weapon of legend, Caladbolg sure doesn’t pack much of a punch.
And I also second the opinion that having a more introverted, quiet character in a prominent position is good, and too rare. Not everyone has to be a shrieking extrovert with a huge gimmicky quirk as a stand-in for actual depth.
Any word on the Twilight Arbor sets? I’m pondering to get the light chestpiece for my elementalist, in particular.
Also I hate the direction of the LS for the past.. well since it started. technology technology and technology. Do they even know there is magic in the lore?
This has been mentioned before by various people, and again I wholeheartedly agree. I’m sick of tech-this, tech-that — first all the Deus Ex Machina asura babble in the personal story, then the Aetherblades and Scarlet which are even worse. Where is the magic? The mysticism? The high fantasy? Aside from Trahearne casting a few rituals and a little about the Zephyrite backstory, there hasn’t been any. And now that shrieking POS brat is going to pollute one of the few magic/mythic-themed places in the game? To hell with that.
You know I think when it really comes down to it my main problem with scarlet is that she’s Sylvari. No I actually like the sylvari a lot but everything about scarlet’s history and abilities SCREAM asura. If she was instead a true asuran evil genius I think she’d be a lot more believable and come off a lot less “sue-ish”
Yeah, there is nothing about her that says “sylvari”. Between that and the fact that we haven’t really had any asura characters in the living story, making her an asura (along with toning her untouchable ZOMGWTFBBQsupermegaimba-ness down about two dozen notches) might have made her a tolerable villain.
She’s a villain. If you hate her… well that’s working as intended. XD
Eh, no. There is a huge difference between a character you “love to hate” because they’re well-written, fit into the setting and story, or work well in terms of them and the hero having a personal vendatta against each other — and a character who is so shallow, badly-written, over-the-top and clashing with the setting that you want to throw your computer out the window at the mere thought of having to suffer through yet more of their BS.
I agree with those who said that Zhaitan’s minions are preferable to Scarlet. It might have started as a snark at her bad writing and horrible (lack of) “personality”, but it is still true. The Risen actually fit the setting. They fit the Elder Dragon theme and story which the game was supposed to be about. Most of them, horrible as they are now, are actually innocent victims twisted by terrible power, which makes it possible to feel a pang of pity for them. Some of them are very powerful, but we can still fight and hurt and defeat them — unlike Scarlet, who is basically a god who can press her “I WIN!” button anytime and become completely untouchable for no reason at all aside from being a writer’s pet.
Not only do they need to adjust condition caps (I think they are trying things out with the “everything stacks in intensity now” stuff) but they need to rethink defiant, if the control part of the new trinity is ever going to be a real thing then we need to see ways to control other than maybe interrupt one attack that you meant to and the rest of the fight the boss occasionally stops moving for half a second when his stacks go down.
Clipped for length, but quoted for agreement and support. Some good ideas here. I too am utterly tired of “go zerk or go home”, especially after all the braying on how bad and limiting the good old trinity is. Not only do conditions need to be viable in every situation, the non-damage stats and the control and support roles need some actual consideration as well. Badly.
At the end of the day, people play charr warriors because it fits their military culture. For the same reason, you see a lot of sylvari rangers and asura magic-users.
Yep, playing to “theme” and archetype can be lots of fun if a class/culture combo looks interesting in terms of lore, aesthetics and gameplay. So of course my warrior is a Blood Legion charr. When making a “ground-pounder” as the intro cinematic rightly called her, why not go with the species that is best suited for it both physically and culturally? I admittedly have a hard time taking tiny and scrawny warrior-types seriously.
And yes, there’s the armor issue to consider. You always have tail-clipping and texture-stretching and hover-shoulders, but heavy armor in general looks better on charr than medium or especially the foppish light armors.
Just to try to better explain myself: I’ve tried to avoid wasting people’s time, so I did my best to inspect Charr armor prior to posting. I honestly don’t think it looks so bad, which is why I asked for picture examples.
In my book, the fact that the vast majority of armors tail-clip is plenty bad. And that includes one of the stupidly expensive T3 cultural armors. Then you have the huge, floating shoulderpads, which are especially bad on a female charr. Again, that includes many of the cultural armors. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when even the few sets that are specifically designed for a species don’t actually fit.
Speaking of design, with the exception of the cultural sets and maybe a handful of others, all the gear in this game is designed for humans, making it really hard to have a non-human character who actually looks the part. Sylvari have it the worst, but light armor-wearing charr also get a crappy deal because all the fancy-frilly human stuff just looks “wrong” on them IMO. I’m levelling my second charr, a mesmer, and the only armor I’ve remotely liked on her so far is still the level 25 crafted Shadow set which I’ll keep transmuting onto higher-level items until I decide which of the cultural armors I want to pick up. And even so, I’m not using or showing the shoulders or gloves because they’re comically oversized. Needless to say, the outfit also tail-clips …
If I go for the T3 cultural with her, she’ll have to deal both with tail-clipping and hoverpad-shoulders. Light T2? Oops, the pauldrons aren’t even visible. My warrior on the other hand will have to go for T3 shoulders because they’re the only ones that actually fit. But at least she has that one option. If you wear medium armor, you won’t even get that — the cultural sets ALL have hover-shoulders. Some are more visibly so than others, but it’s mind-boggling and annoying in all cases because, again, if even the cultural gear does not fit, it does not bode well and is pretty telling as to what degree of attention and consideration the charr get: very little.
I think the main problem is that ArenaNet put too much focus in voicing lines, that now players expect all the information to be voiced, and nothing to be within those dialogue boxes when talking to NPCs.
It goes beyond that.
By depending so much on spoken dialogue, and thus voice actors, they’re going to be limited by how much recording they can afford to put in.
Yes. And this affects both lore/story presentation and especially player involvement, since our lines require ten voice actors. That is why the player character essentially does not exist in the living story.
The obsession with voice acting is definitely making games more shallow because of the costs involved. Don’t get me wrong, a good voice actor can do amazing things, but if there’s no character- and lore-depth and no RP opportunities, it’s all just fancy bells and whistles but no substance.
Also, very good points about why hiding lore, especially out-of-game, is bad.
I did this event yesterday, and … yeah. Each of these flashes was like stab through the eyes into the brain. Please change this. Games should not make you sick — if that isn’t part of Game Design 101, it needs to be. (This applies to the forced close-zoom and camera-jerking in tight space, too.)
As a sylvari fan, I heard “Twilight Arbor” and was psyched about this update … until I actually watched the trailer.
More Scarlet? More of her infantile, bratty giggling and braying? More Aetherblades? More insipid deus-ex-machina supertech? For goodness’ sake, please STOP IT already.
Twilight Arbor is one of the few sylvari-themed places in the game. While I’m not a fan of Faolain and her cohort, I do like content that explores a culture and its enemies more. Plus, the dungeon has a unique aethetic and is also one of the few more mythical-themed, actual high-fantasy bits of content compared to politics and technology. To rip that out and have Scarlet take over (let me guess, the Court too is sooooooooooooooooooooooooo scared of her imba powers that they lick her feet to survive?), even temporarily, is a kick in the teeth.
The one and only way I could see this turn out acceptable in my book is for Scarlet to be revealed as Faolain’s puppet, deceived and corrupted from the word go by masterful mesmer magic. And for us to FINALLY be able to kill Scarlet and destroy the Aetherblades once and for all. Done. Kaputt. Finito.
Please stop forcing this nonsense on every-bloody-thing in the game. Less tech, more high-fantasy … not the other way round.
Anti-charr bias does not surprise me, for two reasons. First, I guess many old GW1 players are emotionally invested in humans since that game was all about them while the charr were among the main enemies. And second, “humans > everyone else” is sadly and annoyingly (IMO) one of the main themes of many fictional settings. We are humans, so many want “ourselves” to be ZOMG special. Eh. I dislike this because I usually find other species and cultures to be far more interesting, but there you go. Most people are probably biased to some extent to their favourite species/culture, and I’m certainly no exception (sylvari, charr and norn fan here, roughly in that order).
While I can’t really imagine why the charr would want Orr as it is now, aside from pure ego reasons, I do think they’d be able to beat the humans down if the Legions could be bothered to really work together (and if all the other problems that both cultures have were dealt with). Humans are not exactly be in their usual cushy position of default supremacy in this setting, and I do see charr as militarily superior in terms of organization, discipline, training, numbers and physical strength. Every charr is a soldier, after all. The only area where I’d peg the humans as having the upper hand is magic.
Charr have a wide variety of names, from Greco-Roman like Euryale, Elexus or Seneca to modern-ish descriptive nickname-style names like Dinky or Maverick. Overall, their names tend to be short and somewhat harsh-sounding. So anything from one to three syllables that does not sound “flowery” should work fine in terms of being “lore-friendly”.
As for surnames, I agree that Shadowstalker would work well. Or Shadowstrike®. If she’s Ash, maybe Shadowgaze for a skilled scout known for being able to watch and follow her prey without being seen. If she’s Blood, maybe Shadowrender to signify that nothing can hide from her.
@BlackWing: The fact that the player character is a complete non-entity in the living story is one of my biggest issues as well. For all its flaws — and there are many, a lack of depth, personality and actual RP choices among them — the personal story at least allows us to participate. The living story does not. As I have said before, it makes me feel like a trained animal, not a person, except that Frostbite is more of a character than I get to be.
Full agreement from me as well. It’s ridiculous that nothing is being done about this. Do NOT put a damage type and the stats and skills and traits for it in a game if you refuse to make it as viable as Power.
They inject just anything they can think of, and explain it with the holodeck… -I mean Asura. Which makes everything else seem rather pointless really. Why are we still wielding swords?
I hear you. It’s lazy, shallow and begs the question of what anyone else actually contributes aside from a shield of warm bodies while the asura warm up their supermegawondertech.
And at the same time, having us “primitives” with our silly pointy sticks go toe to toe with high-tech like Scarlet’s BS ends up making both feel cheap.
I too would really like to see the magical/mystical dimensions of the game get more attention. Or hell, any attention.
ArenaNet doesn’t show that. Instead of showing the game has lore and story and background, they put their background on their official site, where it’ll be lost to the nether of news posts. Or removed entirely like their blog posts (thank god they got put on the wiki first).
Yeah, that is an awful, lazy (again), immersion-breaking problem and IMO shows how much importance is really placed on the game’s lore and story: very little. Instead, I get a feeling it’s all about k3wl pixel loot and “e-sports”, two things I for one could not possibly care less about.
We need the lore background to be in the game, explorable by our characters. And even more, we certainly need ongoing story information in the game! I expect my games to be self-contained like any decent book or movie. The moment you are expected to go outside the game/movie/book for information on WTF is going on is the moment someone needs a serious kick in the rear for terrible design choices. I know the game has limited funds, but a half-baked shallow mess of a story is worse than not having one at all.
I never played GW1 so I have no attachment to its story or themes, and I certainly would not have bought GW2 if humans were the only playable species. But I DID like what I about this game and its setting pre-launch, and it’s just hugely disappointing to see this rich, interesting setting get such a shallow treatment in the game story. Scripted background chatter and event-related chatter do a better job at portraying this world and sparking my interest than the actual story does. (Minus the early cultural personal story chapters, which convey some cultural identity and themes, which makes them enjoyable to me, while the rest of the personal story and the entire living story are just too kitten bland and impersonal.)
If they could just remove all aetherblades/molten events as soon as their morale bar are depleted, it would already help a lot.
Agreed. Also, don’t let Captains spawn with champions, and have leftover enemies from individual events vanish upon event completion. In fact, that is how leftovers are usually handled in the game, so I am baffled why it’s different in this case. Those three changes would go a long way to “fix” invasions, IMO.
I tend to have a problem with “outsiders” trying to appropriate elements from another culture, but given those lore precedents from GW1 I’d say go with it but keep spirit intervention and communication very rare and subtle. Rarer and more subtle than the norn characters in your RP circle do, so you don’t end up “a better norn than real norn”.
The number one “lesson” I’d like the devs to — finally — remember from last month’s content is that certain people will find any way to exploit content for maximum gain. That must be taken into account when designing events and encounters. Really consider risk and time versus reward. Consider loopholes. Consider the sheer egotism that is guaranteed to rise when profit is concerned, especially if you also introduce limited-access content like the gauntlet that puts people in direct “competition” with each other.
And please, no more zergs. Or at least, no more rewarding zergs over smaller groups of players in the same event.
Also, I agree that timed spawns are a nuisance and that events that pop up out of nowhere, with no buildup and no effect on the zone, are boring and tiresome.
Agreement from me as well. Good humor, used well, can improve most any story — sadly, but what we have is (for the most part) neither good nor used well. As much as I tend to roll my eyes when people act like a game can only be “mature” and interesting if everything grimmedarque and shades-of-gray, I do think GW2 could use some darker, more serious elements, definitely more “real” danger, and less shallow humor.
Very good point made also about how certain storytelling aspects are diminished because 1) there really aren’t any negative consequences and 2) even if someone does die, we have little to no opportunities to “bond” with any NPCs so it’s hard to care. That really must be changed. Don’t just throw random superpowered crap at us without it having any actual impact — even a stupidly ZOMGmegasuperduperimba “threat” like Scarlet has no real credibility that way. Don’t have a parade of shallow NPCs that we can barely remember the names of, give us the time and opportunity to really get to know and have meaningful, in-depth interactions with our allies and friends.
I do want to take this game, this setting and this story seriously. Please Anet, help me do it, and do it yourselves.
(edited by Chadramar.8156)
The Living Story is a lot of fun if you don’t take it too seriously.
Maybe that’s part of the problem, because I want to take storytelling seriously, as it is one of the main reason why I play games. And he living story elements I’ve seen clash pretty badly with the epic “save this world from the Elder Dragons” theme I bought the game for. It’s been one party after another, oh-so-cool Steampunk pirates, and an out-of-control jerkwad of a teenage brat with godlike superpowers that make her completely untouchable. At best this leaves me cold, at worst it feels like a slap in the face.
It also doesn’t help that the living story takes place in some kind of limbo. There’s basically no interaction between it and the rest of the game. Massive armies of enemies randomly appear out of nowhere, with zero buildup and zero effect on the zones they spawn in. Fanciful balloon docks suddenly exist in random in the enemy-riddled wilderness. Why? Uh, because. Look, just have some shinies. Shinies are all that matters.
Not to mention the complete silence and thus lack of any story involvement of our own characters because voice acting is too expensive for them.
It’s really a terrible way of content delivery. It doesn’t have to be terrible, but as it is, it feels rushed, shallow, disconnected and stressful.
Right now, a brand new player will log in and see that there is so much going on, that they can’t catch up and be competitive with everyone else. They’re hearing things like “Ascended gear” and stories that they missed before they bought the game. I could almost see where they would think that there was no way they could ever catch up to those who have been playing for a year and have all their kitten.
This is a very good point. As a returning player, I definitely
The thing is that in general, I like the IDEA of the living world, just not the pace. I’m overloaded and I think we all need a bit of a break. Even a week or two without any LS at all going on would be nice, just to be able to sit back and take stock of where we are and where to go from here.
This, too. I completely agree that some breaks would be good — especially after and between ridiculously grindy updates as we had this month. If you want to do all the achievements, you’re looking at AT LEAST 13 solid hours of mindless, repetitive grinding. That is very much not what I imagine when I hear the term “living story”!
I also hope very fiercely that future updates will not be the same sort of fodder for antagonistic player behavior. The “competition” for queue slots in the gauntlet, the refusal to res people who died there, the borderline abusive crap you get from certain “farmers” for politely trying to actually get an invasion completed. It’s just ugly and I cannot imagine that Anet didn’t see any of this coming. None of this “builds a community feeling” as they had intended — on the bloody contrary.
Yes because all I was asking was armor changes and not a re modification of a race.
Wrong. It would be exactly the same thing: a complete change in gear design for the female characters.
I want to play a character. Not a “girl character”.
I want to play a hero. Not a “girl hero”.
I want to play a warrior. Not a “girl warrior”.
I want to wear armor. Not “girl armor”.So don’t play a female character and that solves your problem.
Thank you for proving my point. Notice what I specifically did not write? “I want to play a boy character. Not a girl character.” You’re basically saying that being male is the default, and that being female is something “other” that should be separate, that needs attention drawn to it if there is to be any point to it. That is exactly what I do NOT want. I want to play characters who happen to be female, not characters who are defined by being female (and not even defined by me, but by someone else, in ways I do not agree or identify with).
I’m sorry that I don’t have that defensive insight you guys have, because I’m the type that likes to add more stuff to game to make it fun and creative.
So why not join us in calling for more armor style choices for ALL charr (and all other species)? There’s no less creativity in that on the design front — and more creativity for the players since we’d all have more options overall. Gendered armor does not actually “add” anything because it cuts your pool for gear choice in half from the start.
They’ve given me such a hard time on the previous page and I wasn’t asking for much. However I think that’s why FenGuild said furrie community overall is frowned upon because one little idea such as feminine armor for female charr and asura is cataclysmic to their minds.
Actually, you were “asking for much”, and it is not a “little idea”. Would you consider it a little thing if the reverse happened to the other species and all their gear was made to look the same on men and women?
If gendered armor was forced on this species, too, it would destroy a huge part of the charr appeal, that being the fact that a charr is a charr. Plumbing does not matter. Unlike humans, norn and sylvari, where equality is also part of the lore but not of the gear design, there is no such disconnect with this species. And that is tremendously refreshing.
I want to play a character. Not a “girl character”.
I want to play a hero. Not a “girl hero”.
I want to play a warrior. Not a “girl warrior”.
I want to wear armor. Not “girl armor”.
I do not want to be “othered” by constant reminders of the fact that my characters are female while male characters are considered the default. I do not want to have someone else’s idea of stifling gender stereotypes forced on my characters. I do not want to lose access to sweet armor designs because someone decided that my characters must wear “girl armor” instead.
The issue, as has been pointed out, is that gendered armor does not give us a choice. No one objects to a greater variety of armor styles, as long as it applies to both genders equally. Hell, I certainly wouldn’t mind some armors for charr that show more fur, because fur color and pattern are such a big part of charr character design that it’s a shame they’re barely visible. But I do want to choose whether I go for fully-covering versus less-covering, plain versus ornate, practical versus fanciful. Only playing a charr really gives me that choice. (Okay, there’s the asura — but I hate pretty much everything about them so they don’t count in my book. :p)
(edited by Chadramar.8156)
In terms of pure dumb hack-n-slash game mechanics, yes, we’re “indispensable”. In terms of actual storytelling and characterization, though, we’re utterly invisible.
The story progresses mainly through two things: cutscenes and scripted conversations. While the personal story has the character as an active, speaking participant in most the cutscenes, the living story does not. Ever. As a result, I just feel completely disconnected from what’s going on. My character is a nameless, mute extra who never gets to state an opinion, make choices, talk to anyone, get to know anyone, connect to anyone or display a shred of personality.
It’s not about wanting to the The Super Mega Awesome Chosen One Who Alone Can Save The World — far from it, I’m sick of that sort of ridiculous ego-humping we often or even usually get in games. I don’t mind and in fact enjoy being part of something greater, taking orders, reporting to mentors and elders and commanders. But I want to be involved and acknowledged as such. If the writing had been better overall, becoming Trahearne’s friend, advisor and second-in-command until he completes his Wyld Hunt could have been a very enjoyable part of the game. In the living story, though, the disconnect between being the one who has to do all the work but is otherwise completely ignored is just huge.
This is getting quite off-topic, so sorry for the derail. The botched storytelling in this game is simply a massive source of disappointment and frustration for me on so many levels.
The heroes in most games tend to be mute, silent characters.
Depends on what sort of games you’re looking at. I’m talking about ones that actually have a story and characters, i.e. RPGs or adventures. When voice-acting was on the rise, the protagonists I played were generally “silent” in the sense of not being voiced, but they certainly weren’t “silent” in the sense of not interacting with anyone or playing no role in the story.
In the “living story” our character does not exist because we never participate or are acknowledged in any of the interactions that advance and explain the plot, even though we do all the dirty work as usual. It’d say it’s like playing a trained animal who only exists to have orders barked at it — but Frostbite is a trained animal, and he gets to be more of a character than we are.
As badly constructed as the personal story is, at least our characters get to participate in those moments there, even though what they say is 100% controlled by the game and always the same for everyone. The difference between our level of involvement is huge.
I rather like him, though the characterization in this game is shallow and rushed enough to make it hard to truly like any character — Trahearne is no worse in that regard than anyone else. His voice is pleasant, and I like his more quiet, thoughtful demeanor because I’m an introvert and not fond of the tendency to see those traits as bad or boring while loud or “quirky” characters are seen in a more positive light.
What I don’t like is how he’s used later on, as well as the fact that the game’s a bit too in-our-faces about how the NPCs are all in awe of him once he’s shown off a bit in combat (which honestly has nothing to do with coordinating a huge war effort, so I really didn’t see the point in that mission). Again, shallow and rushed characterization is to blame here. Not to mention the overall problems with the approach to storytelling that I’ve gone on and on about in other threads — basically, our own character is never allowed to BE a character and thus cannot truly carry the story, in no small part due to budget issues with voice acting. This means that even if Trahearne never showed his face again, there would always be other NPCs taking the spotlight. Witness Kiel in the past living story chapters, or the living story in general: our own characters are completely sidelined, mute and meaningless in general because Anet can’t afford to pay 10 different voice actors for the same role.
Trahearne is really not the problem. I don’t get why people don’t think for a moment and question the underlying problem with the writing, instead of just jumping on the hate bandwagon. Want to blame someone for “stealing” the protagonist role? Blame whoever decided that the story aspect of this game would not get enough funds to be any good.
I really hope they won’t kill him off — or worse, corrupt him first and then have us kill him — just to appease the haters.
Full agreement from me. I really don’t like technology in my fantasy, at least not the kind of supermegafuturistic stuff that the asura and the Aetherblades and now Scarlet have. At least with the charr, it’s mainly restricted to artillery and war machines, not the Answer To Everything. Though the tech in this game doesn’t really deserve the term scifi because there’s no recognizable scientific framework — it seems to me that it’s just a quick fix for whatever the devs think is “cool” at the moment.
I’ve said this repeatedly already, but I too want to see the game go into more of a magical, mystical and even spiritual direction because that’s what I bought it for, not for flailing around at the whim of a shrieking Steampunk teenage brat. If we have asura tech and whatever-tech everywhere, how about a storyline that involves some of the norn spirits, or something from humanity spiritual past, to solve problems and advance the battle against the Elder Dragons and other enemies?
As for “villains with ambitions” … it’s not like Scarlet is actually a good example for that, now is she? Nor does fantasy equal no motivation/blandness while “cool” tech equals motivation and depth. Far from it. Everything that appealed to me about this setting IS fantasy-related, tech doesn’t play into it at all.
I’d really like to see Scarlet and her Aetherblades destroyed with the help of more traditional fantasy elements.
You know, if the mere existence of female characters and female competence is some kind of “propaganda” or “agenda”, then what on Earth is the fact that we are consistently sexualized, stereotyped, silenced, fridged and otherwise marginalized for the benefit of a presumed sexist male audience and male character in most other settings and stories? Reminds me of how the sight of two guys holdings hands is “forcing homosexuality on decent people”, while straight couples doing the same is just fine and not even worth noticing. Just because it’s the status quo doesn’t prevent it from being a massive double standard.
The studies others have mentioned definitely came to my mind when I read this, too.
EDIT: What I do fully agree with though is that the sexism of the Sons of Svanir and the Flame Legion feels iffy at best. It’s always struck me as at odds with the setting, because an attitude of “one woman did something I didn’t like, therefor I hate all women” implicates an existing prejudice and marginalization in which the group of people in question is not truly seen as individuals but rather as a faceless collective. So if charr and norn culture is egalitarian, where did that all-women-are-the-same-and-they-are-bad spiel come from? When male characters defy a badguy, we don’t see said badguy vilifying the entire male gender. All in all, it’s just weird and completely superfluous — and it limits the use of female charr and norn as villains within their cultural context (though charr women can still be Renegades), AND it more or less equates “villain” with “male” for these two cultures, which isn’t fair to guys either.
The whole problem with this isn’t equality, it’s that we still make differences between males and females. In the end, we are all persons, regardless of gender.
That is how it should be. Still, until sexism, gender stereotypes and other crap is turned into nothing more than a distateful memory of a distant past, it will continue to matter — just as “color blindness” is a problem instead of a solution in the current reality because it continues to erase people of color and the discrimination-related issues they face.
“We are all people” is a great notion, it’s just that care must be taken not to use it as an excuse to ignore ongoing problems.
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@Ashes: Complete agreement.
I like the sylvari, though not necessarily the way some of them were used. And if I’m honest, the accusation of how awful it is that they are liked by everyone and good at everything is kind of amusing. Not only is it hyperbole, but I can’t help but suspect a little “sour grapes” at the fact that for once, humanity isn’t the end-all, be-all, superspecial golden child of awesome, as they are in a huge number of settings. And I LIKE the fact that humanity isn’t like that here because I’m tired of it.
That said, I’d like to see some more sylvari-like sylvari, if you will, but at this rate I guess in terms of “fairness”, we could first use a couple more charr, norn and sylvari in the spotlight.
And this is (one reason why) I really miss having mounts. There is indeed no good reason to give some classes easy, long-duration or permanent access to out of combat speed while others can’t get the same. Different degrees access to speed boosts in combat, balanced with other features? Fine. Out of combat? Not fine.
I don’t really think that this has “brought out the worst in GW2.” Rather, it highlights the total cluelessness of the people plotting the direction of this game.
I disagree with the first statement, but very much agree with the second. Any “get rich quick” scheme DOES bring out the worst in many people, over and over again. But since it HAS happened over and over, you’d think that the devs would at least expect and try to plan for it now. Instead they only seem to do anything about it once certain “hardcore” players have already been exploiting those opportunities for days and weeks. The lesson here is, sadly: rush into and through content ASAP and you’ll be stinking rich. If you don’t do that, for any reason, you get left further and further behind.
Though I’m at a loss how to fix the issue on general principle. One would be to make gold less important, but the cynic in me says they NEED gold to be important to get people to buy gems. And without a subscription fee to keep the game alive, they do very much need another way to get people to spend money, no argument about that.
My first thought: despawn leftover enemies when an event completes, and despawn all leftover Aetherblades/Molten Alliance when their zone-wide “bar” depletes. That would at least curb some of the time-wasting farming — and it’s not like there aren’t many precedents for enemies vanishing after an event completes. In that light, I was actually surprised that leftovers DON’T disappear.
Part of me wants to second the notion that failure should be less rewarding, but that would really only punish the people who are actually trying to spawn and defeat Scarlet. They forgo farming, so they already get less overall.
@Ronah: I disagree. The objectives are very clear, people simply ignore them deliberately. Over the past two days I’ve even noticed a “backlash” against non-farmers trying to find each other and organize in map chat.
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I’m glad I’m not the only one who does not like the recent “sci-fi”/technology overdose. Yeah, tech has always been in the game — I don’t like that much when it comes to fantasy, but I knew it was there, and since I don’t play asura and the charr tech is more hands-on warmachines, it was palatable. But lately, with the endless Aetherblades and now Scarlet, it’s just over the top. I’d like a magical/mystical plotline for a change. :/
1/10 meaning terrible. Absolutely terrible. A shrieking, spiteful, egotistical brat that is somehow the smartest, bestest, coolest thing ever. I can’t for the life of me fathom how anyone would spend three seconds around her, never mind teach her anything other than “fix your attitude NOW or I’ll whip you into the next century”.
I don’t like the term Mary Sue because it’s used disproportionally for women while male characters often get away with a lot more. But if one core component of a Sue is that everyone is in awe of its superiority, and another is that it never has to face any negative consequences for its BS, then yeah — Scarlet qualifies big time. And those two issues are among the WORST for any character and any story.
Also, I bought the game for a magical, mystical, epic adventure about saving the world from the Elder Dragons. I did VERY MUCH NOT expect nor want a game about helplessly scuttling around at the whim of some out-of-control, untouchable teenage brat and her oh-so-cool pseudo-techno-babble-nonsense.
Definitely go solo for Playhouse Perfectionist. Most enemies will be run of the mill mooks, with only a few veterans thrown into the mix — and most of those can be avoided.
. . . or the writing takes a backseat to the game.
Sadly, I think it’s pretty obvious that this is the case. There is a lot of potential in the setting, and the atmosphere created by some events, NPCs we can talk to or scripted conversations is quite good. But the overall story and storytelling? It’s very obvious that it’s a distant second (if that) fiddle to everything else. As someone who loves immersion and lore but could not care less about pixel “loots”, I find that to be a big source of ongoing frustration.
The writing around this game IS poor. Is this info in the game? No thereforth I do not care and it is non existent in the game world. I would read a book if I wanted to read stuff like this. I play an RPG game to RPG in the game, not tab out to read the website.
This, a million times.
Being forced to go outside a game for story information is just mind-bogglingly bad design. I expect the games I play to be self-contained, just as I expect a movie or book to be self-contained. If the writers can’t pull that off, or are prevented from doing so, then it’d be better to not have a story at all.
I enjoy reading and learning. But I want to to it in the game, as my character. Want me to go beyond the game? Make me care with well-written in-game content first, and I’ll come looking of my own volition.
So I read the backstory and… I’m not that interested. Most of what she does is about as interesting as a job resume, and probably would’ve been more succinctly written out as one. The whole story with why she went insane seems to be “Yeah, she was hooked up to this device that metaphysicked her brain something fierce, and she emerged from it all ‘you can’t tell me what to do narbs!’ and then started the gnarliest random teenage rebellion tantrum”, and it doesn’t garner sympathy or distaste or even interest.
Yeah, my thought exactly. She’s a trash brat on the mother of all spiteful “lololololol im so smart ur so dumb no1 tells me wut 2 do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” ego trips. There really isn’t much I could possibly care less about than that.
Can we, maybe, possibly, eventually, go back to what this game was supposed to be about: saving the world from the Elder Dragons? I’m so bloody sick of oh-so-cool Steampunk pirates and this oh-so-cool and oh-so-infinitely-superior-to-everyone-ever childish tosser. How many more months do we have to put up with this nonsense?
And here I thought the pirate election was bad …
I’m not happy with this either. The zone-wide, 45-minute long zergfests are incredibly stressful and mind-numbing for me. There’s no challenge in it, just rush rush rush rush rush and hope stuff hasn’t already died by the time you get there. I slogged through the six invasions needed for the story, but it was not fun even for a moment.
Please devs, this is NOT the way to deliver content.
I did this a few days ago with my guardian. Couldn’t be bothered with the weapons and couriers — I just equipped a scepter and focus so I could hit him from range, ran in circles to avoid the weapons, and smirked at him from behind my Wall of Reflection when he belched out the triple fireballs, or whatever they are. Once I decided to see if reflect works and saw that it does, it was a cakewalk. Making enemies eat their own projectiles is always so very satisfying. :p
And yeah, poor Hekja.
I think you’re giving Anet too much credit there, sadly. There’s no indication of being a selfish glory-hound in the (lack of) personality that is forced on our characters, or for being “too attached”. Given how everyone is written in exactly the same way after the cultural arcs, that is actually rather jarring. Norn forget the drive to build their legend, charr and humans boggle at the difficulties facing the peace treaty between their species, and so on.
As I’ve said before, my own theory is that Trahearne (and Destiny’s Edge, if one counts the dungeon stories) is the real focus and protagonist because our characters CAN’T carry the story in the way it is written. Everyone is treated the same, acts the same, talks the same. There’s no personality. No continuity between story arcs. No growth or conflict. No actual character. In order to implement any of these things, there would have had to be lot more focus on the writing, and especially on the fact that an asura is not a charr is not a sylvari. Implementing continuity and personality, especially if the player was actually given any choice in terms of dialog and character development, would have required tons more written lines — and, crucially, tons more SPOKEN lines. Given five species and two genders each, that would push the cost for voice acting through the roof.
So we have a not-personal not-story because the available funds were not allocated in a way that would have allowed for actual, consistent storytelling around and characterization of our characters.
I still very much wish they would have done it differently, even at the price of having significantly less voiceacting overall, because bells and whistles don’t mean much without a solid framework to support them. The cultural story arcs are the best in the game, IMO, everything after that is just so … devoid of identity that I don’t know if I’ll manage to take any alts past Claw Island, if even that.
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Also don’t forget to get the pavillion npc buffs before fight such as regen/crit damage etc…. the regen one might help you keep your hp up. Those buffs help a lot. The anti-pirate buff might be good too.
Don’t the emissary buffs get stripped when you go into the domes?
At any rate, I’m stuck on the Ravenous crew as well. My only options are guardian, elementalist and warrior. The former two are more support-focused in terms of traits but have a mix of Knight and Berserker rare gear. The latter is still half in greens and glass cannon specced, and I don’t think I’ll even try it with her because there’s just too much incoming damage. For the same reason, I’m leery to reshuffle traits on the other two. They can just barely take down two enemies with dodge-heals and such.
Show demonstrable harm. Hyperbole is one thing, but if you’re going to make a criminal act out of it, I require you to show the demonstrable harm here.
… you don’t believe language that persistently degrades and abuses people for their gender, sexual orientation or gender-non-conformity causes harm? I guess the increased risk of mental health problems, self-harm, suicide or school dropouts of, say, bullied gay kids is not real then. It doesn’t take outright hatespeech to negatively affect people, either. There are reports that girls perform worse at certain subjects when their surroundings expect them to because “everyone knows” that girls are bad at math.
Seriously, Drakkon, reading this sort of thing is borderline triggering. You may not intend it as such, but believe me: it’s exactly what many abusive people do. Engage in hurtful language/behavior, persist when politely asked to stop, deny there is a problem, accuse the other person of “hyperbole” or being overly sensitive or unable to take a joke. I’ve experienced deliberate bullying countless times in this way, and I’ve read and heard from many folks who went through much worse still. I won’t reply to this any further because it is honestly very hard to deal with at this point.
I’m only mocking imaginary entities that are poorly written, badly actualized, and reflect the worst stereotypical traits of the melodramatic genre.
It’s perfectly possible to do that without perpetuating sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist, ableist or otherwise bigoted attitudes. Not only that, bringing that sort of thing into a discussion about questionable characterization, shoddy dialog or an author’s failure to establish a believable relationship blurs the whole issue.
I think it should have read “generally anyone online” because I see this sort of thing online a whole lot more than in real life. And no, not from media. From users who I’m not sure are serious or just kicking up a firestorm to do it. (They do exist.)
Yeah, they sadly do. No argument. But — please also consider that if you’re not part of a marginalized group, then their lived experience is not yours and a negative reaction that looks out-of-the blue or over-the-top to you can in fact simply be the culmination of a long string of problems, or something that pushed a bad trigger.
For example, take street harassment. If you pay what you think of and intend as a genuine compliment to a woman who catches your eye and she glares or snaps at you, it’s easy to think “What a b-word, WTF is her problem?!” What you did NOT see are the jerkwads who catcalled, followed, belittled or threatened her to the point where she’s just had it and is too stressed to think of much beyond getting home safely. It’s not fair to you, no, but it’s even less fair to her. Similarly, being openly female (or gay/trans/etc.) on the internet can result in so much abuse that a fellow who makes what he thinks is a harmless joke triggers may an outburst because the woman in question is so worn out from all the BS.
None of us is a mind reader, especially if all we have to go by are words on a screen without tone or body language, and many times the difference between a “harmless” remark and deliberate bullying can be extremely hard to tell.
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