Guild Wars 2

I do give Anet kudos for female charr, and the female sylvari and asura are decent too, but at the same I do believe that human and norn women were deliberately forced into that stereotypical myopic “supermodel” look. There’s really no other explanation I can think of for why norn men are more than just really big humans while norn women are not (and for the face options for women from both species).

At any rate, let me too restate my wish that norn women had been designed to match the looks of their men.

The other problem with charr and jumping puzzles is the annoying four-legged run that Anet slapped on player characters — and ONLY player characters — for some infernal reason. It not only looks stupid but makes precise movement harder to pull off, too. Sure, if you occasionally autoattack thin air, you stay in combat stance, but that doesn’t fix the “looking stupid” problem. :p

If I could ask for one fix for this species (which is still my second favourite after the sylvari), I’d pick a new two-legged run animation even over getting tail clipping fixed for all armors.

One vote for Save Yourselves! — lots of tasty boons, and the added bonus of helping other people strip conditions. Stand Your Ground comes in second because stability is priceless for a melee character due to so many enemies kicking you around like a football without it.

GWstuff has a couple more timers, but I find Temple easier to read at a quick glance. Both do the job, anyway.

The lack of Oceanic servers is really a shame. :/

I actually won a few races — to my complete surprise since I do not tend to be very good at this sort of thing. And I started to feel bad about it, especially when I came first four times in a row yesterday while finishing off an achievement. Then the guy who came in second started insulting and /threatening me, after I’d complimented him on a close chase. He got a report and I was glad I had not stood aside to let him win, as I had briefly considered doing.

I like this minigame quite a bit and will keep doing it while it lasts. Still, that one tosser aside, if I find myself on a winning streak again I’ll probably just /dance in front of the line or something. Getting a win or an achievement “legitimately” feels good, but so does helping others, as long as they’re not being whiny brats about it.

I’d definitely second the suggestion for split queues (and for the race to remain as a permanent fixture — seriously, why would I ever pick Belcher’s Bluff over this?).

Gotta disagree. Caladbolg is hardly a normal weapon, nor should it be craftable. If it was an elite skill, that I could get behind.

Male characters could definitely do with a greater variety of options, both in this game and overall, as well. There’s no doubt that stereotypical “masculinity” is restrictive and toxic, just as stereotypical “femininity” is. But male characters already have a wider “allowed” range than female characters do, and at least they are meant as a power fantasy, not as a kitten aid. :/

arka.8456:

Because you would get situations like with the asura and charr where gender has very little impact on how the character looks, only how your character sounds.

Again: why would that be a problem? What does it matter? Why erase all the diversity that exists in people of any gender and allow only a very narrow, unrealistic and frankly often problematic subset of female presentation?

The charr absolutely rock in no small part BECAUSE for once here’s a “beast race” in which the females aren’t cutesy-wutesy big-titted anime masturbation fodder and only the males are allowed to actually look bestial and kickarse. That species is proof that Anet can do it right.

Making a very wide body type for norn females would necessitate a different set of armor skins for them, as they would be more similar to norn males, thus making the current armors visually awkward.

That’s the devs’ own kitten problem then for creating the inane gendered armor system to begin with, instead of having items look the same on both male and female characters.

While i have nothing against a-net adding this, they have previously stated that the reason that they don’t release many armor skins is because they need to make sure that the armors look good on every race and every body type,

Really? Heh, I wonder if whoever is responsible for adapting skins for use with charr characters didn’t get that memo, given all the sheer amount of tail clipping and texture distortion going on there.

People use websites to track the time windows during which certain big events can happen. The ones I know of are:

http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/
http://us.gw2stuff.com/en

Run and attack speed differences are an illusion. The only actual drawback about the bulky species is camera issues in tight spaces, especially jumping puzzles. Motion sickness bait is what it is. I give mad props to people who do 100% map and jumping puzzle completion with a norn or especially a charr.

@arka: What exactly would be the problem with not always and immediately being able to tell a male character from a female in any situation? What would be the problem with female characters of any species looking “off” or “weird” or even “creepy” in some way, especially if the male characters do as well?

Yes, I’ve been avoiding combat as much as possible, too. Which kind of defeats the purpose since we’re supposed to be taking the war to Zhaitan — but the constant stream of corpses, most of whom are ranged to boot, just isn’t fun to fight.

One reason why I have trouble getting into this game as much as I’d like to is the fact that it is missing some features that I thought were standards in MMOs. This mainly concerns features that make finding and interacting with people easier, but also some other things that make the game feel more clunky for not having them.

1) Custom chat channels. This is the missing feature that baffled me the most because it is huge for a range of uses: easier communication between allied guilds, coordinating events, finding like-minded people for roleplaying or other activities, staying in touch with a guild one isn’t a member of or not currently representing, being able to have officer-only discussions, and so on.

2) Being able to search by guild name instead of only player name.

3) Armor type needs to be a filter on the trading post, or at least there should be a checkbox to only show items that a given character can actually use.

4) A proper group finder for dungeons. I heard rumors that this one at least is being worked on? If so, that’s a relief because it’s ridiculous to have to spam /map channels or use an external website.

Those are the four big ones, and I have one more that is not actually an in-game feature but a forum feature: server forums! They can help foster more of a server community and give new players or those considering a transfer an impression what the server in question is like, and are a big boon for people looking for guilds or recruits for their guilds, too. I don’t get the impression that the current guild-related forums are that helpful because all servers are crammed together into one forum and posts on the “looking for” subforum often go unanswered which is a shame.

It’s really disheartening how many people attack the person who doesn’t want to be griefed instead of the griefers. Grow up? Just go away? Pay real money for a server transfer (where there will also be griefers)? What the hell, people. No one should have to put up with others being infantile kittens to them. And no guild worth joining would tolerate it in its members.

“Griefing” should definitely be a category in the report function, and I’m also confused why “exploiting” isn’t one either. “Spamming” is, and that’s less severe and more easily dealt with than griefing.

That’s an interesting point about players being “drained” by neverending attacks, and for myself I can definitely confirm it. It is the heart of Zhaitan’s territory, nothing is safe, and so on and so forth — but I do think it’s just a bit too much.

I’m having fun with this so far, definitely more so than the previous Living Story content I’ve seen since coming back to the game last month. Hopefully they will fix the finicky Aspect skills quickly. The atmosphere and scenery of the zone are well done, and though I never played GW1 ankitten ew to the setting, I like seeing a human culture other than the very “generic” Krytans and Ascalonians.

1. is definitely not reliable, yes. My biggest issue is with the autotarget version of it, which failed me about four times in a row yesterday — thankfully, it was on some of the lowest platforms down by the beach. It does make me hesitate to even try for some of the higher crystals.

Ha, “ski jump” was my immediate reaction when I saw that structure, too! I was quite sad when I couldn’t find a way to get up there and try sliding down.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Most of the romantic dialogues throughout the Grove are between a male and a female. The misconception comes of ANet very rarely drawing attention to romantic relationships, and Caithe/Faolain is a very high-profile exception.

Very true. On top of that, many people still aren’t used to non-straight people or even have a problem with them, so even the most casual mention will be seen in a completely different and often very negative light than if it was a hetero couple/interaction. Hell, simple affection between two men or two women still often draws more negative attention than male-on-female harassment and assault. We still have a long way to go as a society.

I took my first high-level character to Orr for the first time recently, so I don’t know what it used to be like, but what I can say is that I felt rather “lost” as an unguilded solo roamer. There are no karma hearts and most events seem to be intended for groups, so it’s even harder to make money there than it is elsewhere. Parts of Orr are also quite annoying to get around in.

Some of the events are fun, but overall there’s just too much of the same. Kill hordes of zombies. Kill even more zombies. Kill some zombies, will you. Guess what — kill more zombies! You want some variety? Okay, go kill these zombie chickens. And when escort NPCs die in AoE or an event fails because the NPCs “ran out of morale” despite there being plenty of people to protect them (which happened the two times I joined the Balthazar chain), it’s just frustrating.

I think I can see how Orr is “supposed” to work, that it’s meant to be this epic battlefield that would maybe feel “cheapened” if most everything was soloable, and that’s supposed to give you a sense of progression from defending Fort Trinity to storming the gates of Arah. It’s a good idea on paper — but three entire zones, all solo-unfriendly and filled with the same enemies, is a bit too much. I wish they’d allow for better scaling when there are fewer people around, add some karma hearts, and increase the rewards from later steps of quest chains. It’d also be good to have a better “base” somewhere in Orr for access to banking and crafting — I was seriously baffled to see that Fort Trinity, at least, does not have that.

I like the short one that doesn’t obscure the face best, followed by the twigs.

Alas.8456:

—spoiler about KOTOR—
I think identifying the player’s character as an established character in the universe is a great way to get rid of the problem of having unknown heroes doing important deeds.

Yes and no. I’m quite tired of the “from zero to hero in three seconds” kind of story, but using an established character can bring its own problems. If it’s just a matter of giving the player character a place in the world from the get-go, some connections and responsibilities and influence, that’s fine and a good idea!

The particular example of Revan just makes me wince not because of KotOR itself, but because what was done with the character after and outside the game. KotOR didn’t describe Revan beyond some generics (mainly being ridiculously gifted in every way, as RPG protagonists tend to be), leaving the character as ours to define in terms of gender, ethnicity, appearance and so on. Taking all that away by forcing “canon” on the character was pure bait-and-switch BS and something that should never, ever be done IMNSHO.

YuiRS.8129:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

No, write both Trahearne and Destiny’s Edge out, and make the player the main character. The game should not be a vehicle to sell Guild Wars novels. A game should be about the players. We should be the stars of the show.

I’m totally okay with being a side figure. All this “you’re the best of the best bestest world saving hero” is so old and tried I can barely stand it, especially in an MMO setting, where you really have to try hard to unsee all those other one-of-a-kind chosen ones running around.

I agree with you both and do not see the issue as either-or. You can have important NPCs without making the player feels like a faceless, forgettable taglong — and you can have stories in which the player character is clearly the protagonist but not The Chosen One Who Alone Can Save Us Because No One Else Is Allowed To Be Remotely Competent.

I recently returned to the game, decided to finally pursue the story a bit more with my highest-level character, and sadly have to agree. That “encounter” was just pure bull. Chain-CC is BAD, period, and it adds insult to injury when the enemy doing it is CC-immune itself. If there’s a “better” way to make a player feel useless and create the very opposite of heroic/epic feeling combat, I can’t think of it. That is one of my general annoyances about “boss fights” in MMOs, and this encounter embodies it “perfectly”.

I don’t get it either, and I really miss the Gatherer addon in WoW that saved a searchable database of resource nodes you interacted with and put the locations on your map permanently. Not only was that just plain convenient, it also gave me a sense of accomplishment to “populate” a new area map with resource nodes over time.

I admit I really don’t get the notion that other players will generally give a toss about what one’s character looks like, because in my experience they don’t. And neither do I, unless a rare or creative combination of colors, dyes, armor pieces and body features makes a character stand out from the crowd. So what if someone wears whatever the “best” items are at a given moment? There are thousands of clones with exactly the same outfit, it’s nothing special at all (IMO, obviously). Maybe I’m just weird this way? In fact, if I get the impression that someone is being all lookatmelookatmelookatme, I automatically filter them out altogether.

The only characters I actively noticed during seven years in WoW where the ones with unique and thematic RP outfits. And in this game, the only characters I actively notice are sylvari and charr with neat fur/bark patterns and colors, sylvari in cultural armor (because almost everything else looks like crap on them), and occasionally a well-done dye job on the other species.

It’s not “only” inconvenient, it can also cause motion sickness. Love my charr, but for jumping puzzles with any narrow/low spaces they are sadly pretty much a no-go.

Crafting is a grindy moneysink and mainly superfluous to boot, so I agree that it is not fun at all. It would help if there were more skins available to crafters, including cultural armor skins (of which there are not nearly enough, especially from a sylvari and charr POV — those species look weird or downright bad in “human” gear).

It also doesn’t help that it’s impossible to make anything fun as a crafter. What few fun/gimmicky elements exist in GW2 are from the gem store, and even those are not exactly exiting.

The most fun I’ve had with crafting in a MMO was as an Engineer in WoW. Parachute cloaks, teleportation devices, fireworks and firework launchers, jumper cables, mechanical chickens etc. etc. — the fact that many of these items didn’t always work or could even backfire was just a quirky bonus. Granted, the profession was quite underpowered and painful to level in vanilla, but I still enjoyed it because it was unique and offered something beyond the kill-loot-repeat boredom.

I think sylvari get both a better and a worse deal in the “personal story” than the other species. For a sylvari, Trahearne isn’t this random weirdo stranger who pops up out of nowhere and suddenly becomes #1 — instead you meet him earlier during the cultural story arc, and I liked him well enough then. And as a sylvari, you have a closer connection to the main plot because it’s literally the task you were born to do, not something you stumble into for no reason at all.

The abysmal downside is, of course, that NONE OF THAT MATTERS after the first few levels. Your Wyld Hunt? Utterly forgotten and never mentioned again. You being the Herald of the Pale Tree? Utterly forgotten and never mentioned again. The fact that it was you who reclaimed Caladbolg, avenged its original bearer and then wielded it in battle? Utterly forgotten and never mentioned again.

There just is ZERO continuity and coherence in the story with regard to our characters. In my opinion, that is the root of most of the problems. It’s not Trahearne or Destiny’s Edge or whatever — they’re only symptoms. The real issue is the fact that the character we pick is not allowed to be a character. It’s only logical that she or he has no actual place in the storyline, because a non-person who has neither a history nor a personality cannot carry a story.

Bumping because I’d be curious about more sword-using builds, myself. I dislike the greatsword and find the axe boring if servicable, so more variety is definitely welcome.

This has been said many times, but I don’t think it could be said too many times. The personal story is a colossal letdown because it is neither personal or a story. In the end, our characters do not actually have any more personality, agency or impact than in WoW, a game that doesn’t even try to pretend to have a story other than fawning over its handful of writers’ pet NPCs. Hell, I felt MORE restricted here than I ever did in WoW because at least that game didn’t constantly dictate my characters’ every word.

I really wish there had been a separate storyline for each species. It would have done wonders for both immersion and replayability. Ditch the inanity of being forced to pick between three “orders” who squabble like spoiled brats — only to have that choice become irrelevant and forgotten a few levels later. When I make a sylvari, I want to feel like a sylvari. When I make a charr, I want to feel like a charr. I very much DO NOT want to be some featureless generic “hero”-bot who thinks, acts and talks in exactly the same way as every other featureles generic “hero”-bot, without any option for input on my part. The ridiculous personality system doesn’t even begin to count because it does not matter ever — just like nothing else in the not-personal not-story ever matters.

I don’t mind taking orders, I don’t mind being part of something greater, I don’t mind helping someone else build themselves into an important character — as long as I get credit for what I do, get to make real choices, and have some kind of actual impact on what’s going on.

Several of the shoulders float significantly above the character model, at least on a female charr. Yeah, the cultural armor design is quite … shoddy, overall. The tail clipping is probably the biggest WTF for me.

I agree, interesting ideas. I recently returned to the game, and dagger elementalist is one of the things I’m trying to see if it suits me. Any advice on what might work best for a inexperienced player who keeps getting clobbered and is mainly looking for a solid solo PvE build? 10 Earth, 10 Water and 30 Arcane is what I know I want,. The extra healing from the Water traits has saved my hide more than once pre-patch, so I’m not prepared to drop it to go all-out Air. That leaves 20 points, or 10 if I stick with 10 Air for the Fury/Swiftness. Earth 20? Water 20? 15 in both?

Another example of rushed writing, then. That is sad … this game could be so much better if the storytelling was less messy.

Have a look at a site like http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/ — or just make a throwaway charr of any profession, play through the intro, and then pop into the Heart of the Mists and go nuts previewing outfits at the PvP locker.

My own opinion is that, given the fact that most light armors were so obviously designed for human characters, they tend to look weird on other characters, especially charr and sylvari. At least female charr don’t have to deal with the gendered skimpy armor BS, but it still looks … odd. Of the cultural armors, I like light T1, medium T2 and T3, and heavy T2 and T3 except for the overdose of spikes on some parts. Watch out for the ridiculous levitating pauldrons on medium T2 and T3 and heavy T1 and T2, though. It’s painfully obvious and badly designed.

Overall, I think heavy works best with the charr.

Here be spoilers, obviously.

I made an Ash/gladium sire/Dinky charrmer to go with my Blood/shaman sire/Euryale charrior. Having reached the end of the sire story arc, I actually find myself hard-pressed to decide his fate and am curious how others resolved it. So, what did you choose and why?

Given the character’s scripted lines, I get the impression that we’re “supposed” to believe our father’s vague hints of there being more to the whole thing. That actually annoys me because it takes some of the decision-making away from me (as the game so often does in the stories, since we can never choose how our own characters react). If he actually gave me some facts, I’d probably be more inclined to believe him — and hey, my character is Ash Legion so she knows how to handle subterfuge and sensitive information. As it is, I’m not impressed with his choices or his behavior, and not particularly keen on putting my character’s reputation on the line OR potentially killing some perfectly loyal charr in the attempt to break him out. So I think I’ll probably end it in a mesmer versus mesmer duel in the Bane. That way, at least he can die semi-decently by charr standards and not make a bigger mess of things. But I guess I’ll always wonder if there really WAS anything more to it …

I’m a returning player. Aside from dusting off my old characters I also made a new charrmer because I love the charr, want to try the class, and hate how skimpy the light armors look on other female characters. Imagine my unpleasant surprise when I realized that a) many of the armor sets look oddly distorted on the charr and b) hardly anything takes the tail into account. I had not really noticed either issue with my charrior, but now I certainly do. In a game that revolves quite a bit about visuals and visual customization, it’s just disappointing that one species feels like a distant second fiddle when it comes to gear actually looking good on them. Please fix this, at least for future outfits!

Yes, I’d like to see this as well.

Full agreement. We need more cultural skins for the sylvari, and they should not be too hard to get since it’s ridiculous that you have to be rich or max level to look like a sylvari instead of a human in a funny suit.

Female 3 and 10. I wanted to use 6 instead of 3 for my elementalist because I like the intense eyes, but it’s the worst offender in terms of looking like a cheap plastic mask. Really, what’s up with that?

A fungus-face for female sylvari would have been neat.

What I’d want more than anything is for my character to gain some sense of actually being a character instead of a generic, bland, faceless blob whom nobody knows or remembers and who spouts the same generic, bland “hero”-lines as every other generic, bland, faceless blob. I want to feel like a sylvari/charr/norn again, like I did in the early culture-based quests. I want that unique immersion in my own culture. I want my Dream, my warband, my spirit animal to actually matter. And I want actual choices and RP options instead of being forced to spout the same BS with every character even though their species, culture, life experience and personality are worlds apart.

Tied into that, and just as important, is actually having a sense of story-flow, of coherence and continuity — instead of the disjointed, uninspired mess we have now, with characters and events coming and going faster than fashion trends and being just as meaningless and quickly forgotten.

I don’t think there’s anything that can realistically be done about the “personal story”, because it is neither personal nor a story, so it’d have to be completely reworked. Who’s going to pay for all the writing, scripting and voice acting? So, yeah, they irrevocably dropped the ball on this from the very beginning.

In order to have a story, we’d need continuity — connections between the individual arcs, people recognizing our characters and remembering their actions, something changing in the world (even if it’s just an instanced area like the “home” which is currently as worthless as the story overall). In order to make it personal, we’d need the ability to actually roleplay, and most of all the game would have to start treating our characters as characters instead of featureless blobs with no past, no species, and no individuality.

As I have said many times, the early species-dependent chapters are decent and fun enough, but it all goes downstream without a paddle afterwards because every PC acts and talks and thinks and is treated EXACTLY THE SAME and even your own mother doesn’t recognize you, nevermind the people you helped before.

What I’d wish for is a story that diverges based on species, character creation choices and decisions made during the game. The puerile kitten contest between the Orders has to go, just make the mid-game about helping to bring everyone together — including calling squabbling morons out hard and fast if they put petty personal nonsense before saving the world. Something like an extended version of the charr/human peace talks for every species, organization and conflict. Settling past grudges, leadership disputes, infiltration and sabotage problems. All with a strong species-based influence: the Wyld Hunt and dreaming for sylvari, the warband for charr, and so on.

In short, who we are and what we do needs to matter.

When the Pale Tree herself — your very own mother, who named you her Herald earlier and generally regarded you with much trust and affection — didn’t even recognize me anymore and treated you like a complete stranger, the game pretty much died for me. I puttered around some with charr and norn too, but every time I got a little excited for something or attached to someone in the early parts of the story, I remembered how meaningless it all is. I’ll never see them again, nothing I did will be remembered, or even worse: if someone does come back, I’ll be a stranger to them like I was to the Pale Tree.

This game’s personal story is neither personal nor a story, it’s a disjointed mess that cannot possibly have undergone any kind of editorial review or other form of QA. The early culture-based chapters are fun, yes, but that makes the way things utterly fall apart in terms of continuity, immersion and identity even more painful.

So anyone who wants an exploit-free game is probably a proponent of the death penalty? This is a really strange attempt to paint Anet and their supporters in this issue in a bad light instead of laying the blame where it belongs: with the exploiters. A ban does not bully, rob, ruin, mutilate or murder anyone. All it does it show the door to people who have demonstrated that they can’t be arsed to play nice and follow the rules. What, honestly and sincerely, is so bad about that? If you willfully and repeatedly make an nuisance out of yourself at any kind of real-world establishment, you’re going to be kicked out too — and no amount of protesting that you paid for your drink already and thus are entitled to stay and it’s not your fault but the establishment’s because they’re bad anyway is going to accomplish anything except make you look even worse.

@Valmarius: Exactly. While it is sadly true that many games and game features are released in, eh, let’s call it “less than perfect condition”, and that some mistakes are so obvious that we as players think it’s mind-boggling that no one spotted and corrected them before release … that is still no excuse to cheat the living daylights out of the system.

@Gluttony: I agree that reducing the punishments is unlikely to stop the complaining. It’d be a combination of still refusing to accept one’s own accountability and knowing that complaints have worked before, so why not complain some more? I don’t agree with the “two strikes” approach though, at least not if there’s a time limit to it after which your record is cleared. That sort of system is just begging to be exploited by exploiters.

No one who’s played this kind of MMO for any real length of time can legitimately claim to be unaware that these games do not have and are not intended to have a quick and easy path to gear, experience or money. They’re grindy like hell. We may disagree with that design choice, we may hate it, but we know it. So if we come across a disproportionally profitable course of action, can we honestly claim to think that it must be intentional and thus perfectly fine to use? Or shouldn’t we very well be aware that it is most likely a bug we should at most test only to see if it can be reproduced before reporting it?

@Fook: So let’s say you exploit and you merely get rolled back. What’s stopping you from doing it again? And again and again and again and again and again? You create a negative impact on the game as well as no small amount of extra work for the devs. And they should just keep letting you do it ad infinitum?

Doesn’t make sense to me. Anyone who breaks the rules to the degree that results in a permaban knows exactly what they’re doing. They don’t merit either sympathy or coddling.

Exploits, hacking, cheating etc. is happening right now despite people knowing very well that Anet has a big stick and the willingness to use it. If you reduce the consequences, you also reduce the “temptation threshold” — and that will most likely only lead to more bad behavior, more of a mess with the economy, more frustration among honest players, more development time and money wasted on dealing with cheaters instead of making the game better for everyone.

@Ganzo: if you’re an honest player, you have nothing to fear. Your post is an example of the insecurity and paranoia that I was referring to, created by the cheaters and abusers. They want you to think that you and everyone else could be banned at any time for a “simple mistake”. They want you to sympathize with them and call for second chances and “fairer” measures. But they’re not doing it for your sake, not to protect you from the tyrannical, overreacting developers — they’re doing it strictly for their own good, so they can wiggle out of the consequences for massive, deliberate rule-violations. Not “honest mistakes”. Not “just once, for personal use”. They’re using you, man. Don’t let them.

I don’t see any reason why the developers should put in a truckload of extra work as per your suggestion. Who’s going to pay for that time? Why should time and money be wasted on coddling abusive and/or cheating little brats instead of fixing, expanding and otherwise improving the game for the decent and honest parts of the playerbase?

The rules are there. If someone decides that “no 1 tells me wut 2 do cuz im 2 k3wl 4 u lol!!!111” then good riddance when they get their just desserts. They have no one to blame but themselves.

And I don’t know if mass bannings are actually a “PR nightmare”. There has been a lot of positive feedback and agreement for Anet’s measures, too. Remember the threads where people would whine about “unfair punishment” and then a dev would quote for all the world to see what sort of disgusting abuse that player had been banned for? Or how many karma exploits he used? Yeah, it wasn’t once or twice, not “an honest mistake” because “how could I have known” and “it wasn’t my fault anyway”. It was dozens of times, sometimes over a hundred.

People like that will do everything to downplay their own actions, garner undeserved sympathy and create paranoia with lies about how the devs are “overreacting” and “anyone could be banned for anything at any time”. They were dishonest in using the exploits and dishonest again in trying to avoid the consequences. Why would they stop if they can get away with it with no more than a temporary slap on the wrist?

I have my own issues with the game, and they are serious enough that I stopped playing (the abysmal story, the introduction of gear treadmills when this game was sold as being free of that BS, painful crafting). Anet’s stance on exploits and abuse is not among them — on the contrary, it is a big part of why I really wish I could enjoy the actual game more so I could justify playing and supporting it. The point being: if someone has issues with a game, then the honest choice is NOT one between chafing under these issues or cheating one’s way around them. And the developers should not be expected to cater to the dishonest people at the expense of everyone else. Keeping the game clean of those people benefits everyone.

I’d have liked them to be more alien, but their design is quite good overall. The only problem for me is the fact that it’s pretty much impossible to actually LOOK like a sylvari unless you’re already at max level and have lots of money to burn. The game would really benefit from more cultural gear.

You’re not the only one. I really enjoyed those initial story arcs because they allowed for a sense of cultural immersion and identity. Once they’re over, everyone turns into the same generic featureless hero-blob and even your own mother won’t recognize you anymore. Literally. It’s by far my biggest disappointment with this game.

Yeah, I think everyone learned the hard way that you just have to avoid combat if at all possible, and run from it like a coward when you do get aggro. I like the idea and premise of this mission, but the execution is terrible.

kKagari.6804:

This. So much. After one mission with them and going back to my home district to hear them squabble I thought, “these are the jokers that are supposed to help save Tyria?”

I hear you. As a sylvari, the only one I could halfway stand was the Vigil representative. And as a charr, I disliked them all. Bunch of posturing brats. “You’re so dumb!” — “No, YOU are dumb!” — “I know something you don’t, and it’s impotant, but I won’t tell, neener neener neener!” Ugh.