Guild Wars 2

Riding clothes? When horses (save undead ones) and equestrian sports have never been seen in the games? Unless you count some concept art.

Anet, it’s not quite April 1st yet. Still, at least it’s something to replace my horrid sylvari town clothes with.

I remember Anet mentioning all NPC armour should be available to players, but I’ve found one I can’t find anywhere, and I want it badly – mainly for the chestpiece. So if all armour is available, where on earth is it? It doesn’t seem to exist for player characters, which I can’t understand. It’s a great design. If it’s medium, I certainly like it more than the surplus of longcoats.

Sylvari Male Engineer.

Various issues here.

Gear:
Noble Mask
Armageddon Shoulderpads
Noble Coat
Mad King’s Mittens
Whispering Leggings
Heritage Boots
Seraph Shield

I dyed the belt and kneepads of the Whispering Leggings red to make the clipping more visible. The kneepads clip through the Heritage Boots, and the belt clips through the vest of the Noble Coat, which I have reported before. My Armageddon Shoulderpads clip through my Seraph Shield when it’s on my back. The Noble Mask clips through my head – I have the “tree hair” model on my Sylvari, and the straps of the mask go through my forehead and cranial branches. Just tons of clipping everywhere.

Grizledorf.5290:

knight.4379:

Okay, usually the only spot I see an RPer is at the divinity’s reach tavern. You cannot deny that the role playing community seems to be quite down in population in this game. Curious as to why.

It’s because of Quaggan/Plush Charr backpacks, Afro puffs on Asuras. The bow that shoots unicorns, the pistol that makes annoying party noises.

It’s because none of the Devs role play. No news or patch notes ever posted have any role playing in them. Also there is a very lose naming policy, that further discourages Role playing.

Another reason is that a lot of RP people are stifling and elitist who tell boring stories and have issues against letting outsiders join in the fun. and another reason is that the male norn in all pink armor named X Princess Dankbudz X wearing a quaggan backpack and boxing gloves while riding a broom stick called all of you guys Nerds and that further discourages role playing.

I Rp all the time, it’s pretty subtle tho as I don’t turn on walk and hang out near the pub all afternoon.

1. Any RPer worth their salt can incorporate those things (afros? come on, those are a hair style just as legit as pigtails for crying out loud) into their writing and work with them.
2. Devs don’t roleplay because it would be seen as unprofessional. I never roleplay with my clients even when I know they’re roleplayers and when they try to roleplay with me when discussing business. This game is their business.
3. The character’s name displayed on their nameplate does not matter since your character wouldn’t know their name anyway. If you ask in-character, often you’ll get a name like “John Smith” or whatever instead of “XxPhat KillzxX.”

I agree that the trolling is getting out of hand, though. I can ignore it myself (how sad are you that you have to get your jollies picking on other nerds in a MMORPG?) but it scares off other roleplayers.

I would be apt to believe it was just native players flocking in to get their rares, except that slews of people at TC keep admitting in map chat that they’re guesting while the dragon event is taking place. I’ve seen it happen repeatedly.

And I just crashed on Jormag and got kicked into an overflow server. Again. With many other TC natives. While there were admitted guesters there.

God I hope it isn’t Faolain. She shows up in Twilight Arbor, doesn’t she? I suppose that means most people have seen her.

TexZero.7910:

Zombie Rurik again!

Sassy Undead Prince Rurik.

lunawisp.2378:

If it’s global for each character, why are people crowding onto already busy servers? Something doesn’t make a lot of sense here. I could understand a few people trying to catch an event because they still have a couple of hours to go on their own server but the numbers crowding the events out are ridiculous. There needs to be a cap on the number of guests otherwise the game will be largely unplayable.

It’s not only the events themselves that are massive lag-fests. When the events are up, the whole place becomes laggy, you can feel it on the other side of the map.

I’ve no idea, but after events here on TC I’ll often see a slew of people admit to guesting, only to be told to get out by natives who had to endure lag so crushing all you can do is auto-attack and stand there lag-locked.

Me? I get DCs and crashes in the middle of dragon fights because of it and miss out on chests. I’m tired of it. I’d like in on the piles of rares falling out of chests, too.

..I just logged in on that character to this. Keep in mind, I did not complete the mission, the game kicked me and crashed before the end.

If I were a new player, I would have been terribly disappointed to say the least. I still am, to a large degree, but at least I’ve seen the whole mission before on another character. But the trebuchets were broke that time, too.

Yeah, if I hadn’t had a guildie with me to help me out, I wouldn’t have been able to get as far as I did. The game kicking me to LA and crashing after going through all of that really added insult to injury.

Just tried to do Claw Island on an alt, it did not go smoothly.

1. “Talking” cinematics, where characters speak facing each other, would not play properly at all. They would play, but with no audio, no captions, and no characters, showing only the painted backgrounds. They also wouldn’t end on their own, I had to skip to the end to make them stop.
2. For the better part of the mission, the minimap showed as “unexplored,” the painted look a map has before you go fully into an area. It showed properly a bit after reviving Mira.
3. Trebuchets are broken again, necessitating swimming out to the boat to attack it. I can’t do this since I have pretty bad hydrophobia, I had someone with me do it. Regardless, I went out into the water briefly and Mira got stuck in the water for a while, until the light tower section.
4. NPC nameplates, stars over their heads, and speech bubbles would sometimes drop to their feet when they spoke.
5. Risen would periodically get culled, causing me to get knocked flat on my face (there were so many knockdowns I could barely move in some areas without getting hit four or five times) and get downed unexpectedly before a large group appeared right on top of me.
6. I died at one point (due to culling) and clicked return to checkpoint. Instead, it kicked me to Lions Arch and the game crashed to desktop. I gave up for the night at that point. Not in the mood to go through that again right now.

In my screencaps, you can see a busted cinematic, the minimap issue, and the dropped names and speech bubbles.

Come to TC, enjoy your 1-5 fps and crashes during dragon events because of all the other guesters.

The dragon events are becoming almost unplayable for me because of the lag and crashes I get due to all the people, plus the extreme culling problems. I don’t want to have to guest on another server, this is my home. It feels like a bunch of entitled strangers are tromping in, breaking my furniture, eating all my food, then flipping me off on the way out.

Speaking of which, I’ve definitely noticed a huge influx of map chat trolls lately.

If you’re friendly and considerate, I really don’t care. But we definitely have a slew of guesters who don’t give a kitten about the native population, and certainly some who are just plain unpleasant, selfish, and downright hateful. Go home, please. Why would you guest on a server where the lag is so bad you can hardly get anything done, and you clearly hate the people there? I don’t get it.

He’s still missing on Tarnished Coast, myself and a slew of players have been waiting around for him for quite a while, in large part due to the fact that he’s now dropping Final Rest. Considering that I ran around for months farming events I thought FR would drop from, finally getting confirmed drops and finding the event broken is a little bit of a let-down, to say the least.

Something similar happened at the Shatterer on TC. Yes, framerate is always low on the dragons, but this was worse than usual. Intense culling of players as well, and while I could target the adds, I couldn’t see any of them.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Egon Vidar.9125:

I wonder if it would be possible for them to build a duplicate, clean Orr that, when you go to “Orr,” runs a check to see if the character has completed Arah story mode. If you have, it takes you to that version of Orr instead. If you want to go to old Orr, you can take an experimental Asura gate back there to “study the dragon corruption to help fight the other dragons” or whatever.

No, I absolutely do not expect that to actually happen and do not think it’s practical due to the setup of the game, I’m just curious if it’s even a remote possibility with the way the game is made.

I’m sure it could be done though with a lot of time and resources spent, however, it won’t be – why? splits the player base. Plus, asura gates aren’t time traveling devices. :I Also, it’d probably be too resource/time consuming to make for the profit of having a second version of Orr.

And if they really wanted a corruption-free Orr, they could have presented such in the Arah dungeon – only a small portion of the explorable version is seen in the story version (the first part).

I never said asura gates as they are are time travel devices, or even that they should be or that it should be possible for them to be – best (but still awful) thing I could come up with while typing the message in two minutes. But when you’re writing a story like GW2, you can make magic-based technology do just about anything you want with a bit of handwaving and sheer determination. I am most certainly not saying it’s a good idea or good writing, however. It’s the opposite, in fact.

Anyway, Orr itself will never change to any drastic degree. Even adding new NPCs, they can’t change the “story” part of Orr at all for new players. Unfortunate because I’d love to see what a polished up, but still coral-infested Orr would look like, maybe with the ruins cleaned up a bit. Imagine grassy fields with those massive circular structures jutting up from them, vines growing up the sides. Oh well.

I wonder if it would be possible for them to build a duplicate, clean Orr that, when you go to “Orr,” runs a check to see if the character has completed Arah story mode. If you have, it takes you to that version of Orr instead. If you want to go to old Orr, you can take an experimental Asura gate back there to “study the dragon corruption to help fight the other dragons” or whatever.

No, I absolutely do not expect that to actually happen and do not think it’s practical due to the setup of the game, I’m just curious if it’s even a remote possibility with the way the game is made.

And I find myself in this thread again.

Sylvari
Male
Warrior
lvl 45
Chainmail Helm
Strong Reinforced Scale Pauldrons of the Eagle
Lionguard Breastplate
Ravaging Worn Scale Gauntlets
Bronson’s Heavy Leggings of Divinity
Dolyak Rancher’s Heavy Boots of Hoelbrak

The problem is with the scale pauldrons. They clip horribly through the breastplate’s shoulders, because they’re a bit small and set way too low.

@Nightarch.
It’s fine! I don’t mind. I didn’t back myself up because I didn’t feel it was needed if you have played Mass Effect, playing it and dealing with the Quarians makes the similarities very obvious. Here’s some video that shows what I’m talking about so I don’t have to write paragraphs about it.
Largos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E796F-Dows&t=2m41s
Quarian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3BoxKO-HF0

The physical design is very similar, but not identical – if they were any more alike, Anet would likely have Bioware on its backside for infringing on its intellectual property. As it is, they’re a close copy, with identical voices and the exact same naming conventions, undoubtedly to cash in on the immense popularity of Tali, who has a pretty huge fanbase. Personally, I don’t care for her or for Quarians at all. I also don’t watch Stargate Atlantis so I wouldn’t know about that.

And I’ll leave it at that and stop cluttering up this thread.

Midnight Gypsy.9360:

Egon Vidar.9125:

Oglaf.1074:

Weindrasi.3805:

Oh yeah… and although they didn’t make my most hated list, I HATE THE LARGOS. The Largos are what happen when you take everything 12-year-olds think is cool and put it in a blender.
Dark elves+aion wings+fairy butterflies+vampires+super-secret-assassin-people+chicks with big breasts=LARGOS

Finally someone who shares my sentiment on that topic!

Oh my god, I’m so glad I’m not the only one. It’s even worse because they’re like a cheap knockoff of Mass Effect’s Quarian race, they weren’t even trying to be subtle about it. I don’t like Quarians either, so to me, it’s a crappy ripoff of something I already dislike, with added “cool to 12 year olds” factor. The female you go on personal story missions with is a copy of Tali’Zorah nar Rayya with water wings.
Actually, checking the wiki, that Largos’ name is Sayeh al’Rajihd.
..Wow.

Hating an NPC bc of what race she is, OMG what a bunch of 12 year olds you are lol :P

When the race is badly written, designed even worse, and said design is a shoddy copy of a massively popular design aimed at the same demographic, then it’s a bit warranted for some people to dislike it. Also, I never said I hated her or her race but you lumped me in there, too. I dislike them.
It’s totally okay for people to vocally not like the things you like. I didn’t jump on the people in this very same thread who said they like Carys and Gwen, even though I strongly dislike them.

Nightarch.2943:

@Olaf Egon Wein, LOL! It’s perhaps the most exquisite race I’ve seen in any game to date. Just pathetic, how about some elucidation to validate you’re claims as to why they’re an aion knock off/massafail. Dark elves? Since it has pointy ears so it must be an elf…. Ha idiotic! Now if you think they’re wings you’re obviously suffering rather some severe brain damage, those are fins quite honestly I must say, what an utter laughable excuse for trolling I have ever seen.

They look, sound, act, and have the same accents as Quarians from Mass Effect, I’m fairly certain the two races even share a voice actress. I also said “water wings,” snidely, they are obviously designed after the wing-like fins of the manta ray/sting ray, but also look like butterfly wings. That are used in the water. Not being literal 100% of the time does not make one “brain damaged.” If it did, your own hyperbole would land you in the same boat. Someone disliking a race you clearly love is not trolling, it is a differing opinion. It is not a personal attack on you. I promise.

This was a lovely little derail, but can we avoid the ad hominem attacks and overblown reactions to someone not liking a fictional race in a video game before this thread gets shut down?

I can’t believe this. Wow. Just.. what the hell?

Yet another reason not to play my Necro.

I have.. no idea what armour that is, actually I searched all over the place, too, I couldn’t find anything that looks just like it. But it’s also not easy to find pictures of every single armour model on Asura.

And I’m not trying to derail your thread, but I’m having a similiar problem. Is this some sort of wearable armour on the charr in the foreground?

Oglaf.1074:

Weindrasi.3805:

Oh yeah… and although they didn’t make my most hated list, I HATE THE LARGOS. The Largos are what happen when you take everything 12-year-olds think is cool and put it in a blender.
Dark elves+aion wings+fairy butterflies+vampires+super-secret-assassin-people+chicks with big breasts=LARGOS

Finally someone who shares my sentiment on that topic!

Oh my god, I’m so glad I’m not the only one. It’s even worse because they’re like a cheap knockoff of Mass Effect’s Quarian race, they weren’t even trying to be subtle about it. I don’t like Quarians either, so to me, it’s a crappy ripoff of something I already dislike, with added “cool to 12 year olds” factor. The female you go on personal story missions with is a copy of Tali’Zorah nar Rayya with water wings.
Actually, checking the wiki, that Largos’ name is Sayeh al’Rajihd.
..Wow.

Most Hated GW1:
Gwen and Kormir. I know they were trying to write Gwen as a victimized little girl who comes back as a fierce woman and beats down her oppresors, which I would have absolutely loved, but instead they just wrote an awkwardly angry, whiny brat. She has no real depth besides “bad things happened to me and I’m mad about it.” It feels cheap. Kormir just grates on me.

Most Loved GW1:
Zhed Shadowhoof, Vekk, Jora, Pyre Fierceshot, Talon Silverwing ah.. I really enjoyed most of the heros, and Talon there is a henchman. Also, Palawa Joko and Mad King Thorn. Grenth. Abaddon. The non-human characters, and the darker characters, had a lot of depth to me. Even with Orr and all the Risen, Guild Wars 1 was a much darker, more serious game than its sequel, and I enjoyed it a lot. I would have probably liked Rurik more if he didn’t Leeroy Jenkins every time I was out with him in pve missions.

Most Hated:
Carys. Oh dear god. You would think “stupidity” would be easy to write, but apparently not. She comes across, to me, as an adult woman pretending to act like a five year old child in the most stereotypical way she possibly can. She also reminds me of those spork-doom-penguin Invader Zim fan kids that were all over the internet in the early-mid 2000’s for some reason, ugh. And, spoiler alert, how does someone this thick in the head and immature lead the Pale Reavers? Trahearne is a very close second, if only because I don’t know if it’s possible to surpass the bad writing for Carys. But don’t get me wrong, Trahearne (Kormir 2.0) himself is a doozy. His voice isn’t good, but the voice actor truly did not have much to work with at all. The writing for him is so uninspired, in dialogue and plot, that I probably would have phoned in my performance out of sheer boredom and indifference, too. He is, also, truly king of Deus Ex Machina.
Disclaimer: I do not hate Sylvari. They are my favorite race. Unfortunately, they’ve produced some awful characters and some really bland ones (Pale Tree, I’m looking at you).

Most Loved GW2:
Tybalt Leftpaw and the Asura. The whole race. They are entertaining, funny, generally well-written, and capable of very serious moments. Whoever was writing for these guys knew what they were doing. Their voice acting is typically top notch as well. Eir is pretty awesome, too, from what little I’ve seen of her so far. I only just made a norn a few days ago.

Bonus:
Destiny’s Edge collectively is about as horrendous as Carys, but only when you get them all together. My god, what an insufferable group of squabbling idiots. Zojja is especially bad here, I liked her until I saw her spiteful, hateful side – making her the only Asura I’m not fond of.

I’m not color blind, but I am blind in one eye and have poor vision in the other. A feature like this would help me a lot, too. My bad vision means that, on certain ground textures, the red circles are impossible for me to see. It also means I can’t see the target circle sometimes – not quite as bad on my main Engineer, but a death sentence on my thief. If I had the option to change the color, I could make them bright glowing green when I’m going to be going into a dark or red-toned place, like AC or the lava fractal for example, then change it to dark purple when I’m going to be in the bright, snowy shiverpeaks. Being able to change cursor and various other effect colors would also help me. As it is, a lot of things just don’t stand out well enough for me to see. The only colors I have trouble with are shades of blue, it would be really nice if I could change nameplate colors. The colors used for general players and for players in your group look very, very similar to me also, in some environments I can’t tell them apart unless I practically press my face against the monitor and squint. I know one is teal and one is blue but they just look very similar to my eyes at that size. Being able to enlarge names of players/npcs would likely help, too.

Also, being able to adjust brightness/gamma in windowed mode would help a lot. I have to play windowed so I can check wiki and youtube and receive messages from an IM program, but the game windowed is so dark to my eyes, even with my monitor at full brightness, that I just wind up stumbling around blindly in the darkness half the time. I have to wear the Mad Memoires: Complete Edition to see in many areas, in fact, without falling to my death. Since I can’t afford fine transmutation stones at this time, this locks me in to wearing a green backpiece on a level 80 character. I would just carry a torch, but Engineers can’t use them.

By the way. those new loot chests are just awful, I can barely see the things and I have a feeling I’ve missed a huge amount of them on dark backgrounds. It would help if they flashed, or were bright colors, or alternated colors, or you know.. didn’t exist.

Anet, please be considerate of your color blind and visually impaired players. These are not huge, game-altering changes.I am not asking you to make the game accessable to fully blind people, no one is – I think even blind people realize that isn’t at all possible. These changes will not inconvenience your “normal” players. It will just make it easier on those of us who are disadvantaged to be able to enjoy your game like everyone else.

Frankly, I’m amazed that these options don’t exist. At least the personal story cut scenes are fully captioned for any deaf people who might be playing, but even then, they aren’t properly supported either. Right now, when I do anything besides PvE, I have to do it with a group of friends. So they can tell me to dodge or direct me around in areas too dark for me to see. I rely on them entirely, and I wouldn’t if I could just crank the brightness and change effect colors. I have to play in windowed mode to receive messages about my job, I work online.

Right now, the game just is not accomodating for people who are disadvantaged, handicapped, disabled – whatever name you prefer. Color blindness, deafness, or moderately impared vision, it doesn’t matter. You’d better not be disabled or handicapped in any way if you want to do well in this game. Unfortunately it’s not something you can just “suck up” and ignore. I’m begging here. I’m not a bad player when I can actually see.

Sorry for writing a novella here, but I had to get all of that off my chest. It’s frustrating.

Ruufio.1496:

If I have 30% boon duration because of my build, this Might granted should last 13 seconds, not 10. Stop limiting builds for no good reason.

Good god, this.

Even if you scale it up, you don’t need to make it as big as an asura’s proportionally massive head to make it look properly scaled compared to the norn and the human. You want scale relative to torso, not scale relative to head.
Relative to torso, it’s still far too small. Asura have big clunky limbs and a big head, their items also need to be a bit big and clunky at well, or else the whole design sort of goes fubar and looks really strange.

I was going to buy a backpack for my asura, too, until I saw how tiny they are.

Berethos.4526:

Egon Vidar.9125:

Analogous convergent evolution with humans+other apes, sylvari+treants? Goodness knows it happens enough in real life (look at pictures of cats and fossa sometime, or the skulls of the grey wolf and the thylacine) but I might be falling a bit into conspiracy theory-type thinking, here.

The main difference there would be that humans and apes have been around for a while, contrasted with the very new creation of the Sylvari compared to the much longer existence of plant-type creatures such as treants. Evolution really doesn’t apply to the Sylvari – they haven’t even had time to age, much less have their race evolve in any meaningful way.

That suggests that their appearance and physical construction was influenced by other factors – the Pale Tree being influenced by the human form, for example, even if it wasn’t an intentional choice.

The appearance of one other type of Sylvari from one other tree also doesn’t necessarily create as many problems or plot holes as one might think. The gestation and growth of a Pale Tree type entity, from what we currently know, takes a long time. A couple centuries ago, humans were the dominant species on Tyria. Another Pale Tree being close enough to humans to decide to mimic them is certainly not out of the question.

Unfortunately, it’s also possible that his appearance is nothing more than a gameplay or story-telling compromise, designed in such a way due to limitations technically or because the plot of that particular story required that the PC Sylvari mistake him for one of their own. I would certainly hesitate to base judgment or theories of Sylvari biology or the influence of their physical appearance on the appearance of one character. We just don’t know enough about the other Pale Tree for its existence to contradict the information we do have regarding the Pale Tree in the Grove.

The Pale Tree seeds themselves been around since the time-setting of Guild Wars 1 at the very least. Who knows their history prior to that?

As I said, I was just tossing out some conspiracy-theory type thought and speculating, and “evolution” itself was a poor choice of wording. Adaptation is perhaps better (though almost a synonym), but “convergent evolution” (spontaneous, rather than over myriad generations) better covers what I was thinking of. There’s no other term that really covers it. Non-human apes, especially gorillas, have a successful body-plan for a large animal that needs very dexterous hands, and you see the exact same plan in treants. If the bipedal, tail-less, flat-faced body-plan is successful, why not get in on some of that success? Rather than “oh, humans were nice to me, so I decided to make my sapient fruit look like humans.”
Many other races in the game share that basic body plan, and not just Sylvari and Humans. Heck, even Largos, and they come from an environment those bodies are absolutely not suited for.

I very sincerely doubt, however, that spontaneous adaptation is even remotely similar to how they actually came to be, lore-wise, and it would be very anti-climactic if that were the case, in a land so full of magic, but it makes quite a bit more sense to me than the Pale Tree just up and deciding to make them look human. It seems to me that she would be more inclined to give them centaur bodies, if she was going to base them on someone who inspired her.

However, as I stated before, making a player character centaur-bodied would be a nightmare – and that’s precisely why Sylvari look as human as they do, I’m sure. They are the way they are because it’s far easier to recycle their rigging and a number of their animations from the human player character models. I am fully aware of that, but I’m having fun rambling about (not so) potential lore and background.

Last time I tried to fight this miserable cuss, I was at it for about 30 minutes.. my main is an engie, crap damage output. And constantly, the stupid thing would run out of range, reset, and force me to start whittling him down all over again. For some reason almost every time I pulled him so he’d hit a wall he wouldn’t do rush, but then would resume when I moved/dodged around him and left a big gaping opening behind myself.

It eventually got to the point that I would intentionally take the rush attack just so the thing wouldn’t run out of range. But this only made things worse and after a while, I just said “screw it” and ran away.

Ain’t no one got time for that!

Oh god, please, I need this so bad. I intend to mix armours on just about all of my characters (all eight of them..) so this would be a really nice thing to have. Right now, it’s just not realistic for me to drag around spare bits of armour, which discourages me from collecting pieces I don’t absolutely need. In turn, I play dungeons less because I don’t NEED most dungeon armour.

And if I played dungeons more I would probably need to buy more bank slots to store all my dungeon tokens, which would be good for Anet. And with a wardrobe, I would buy more costume skins. It goes on and on..

Curuniel.4830:

Egon Vidar.9125:

It’s been confirmed that they do have “fun parts,” they just can’t actually make more Sylvari with them.

Don’t even get me started on this, haha – once my thesis is done, I am planning to write a blog post about how it doesn’t make sense to claim that sylvari don’t have “internal organs” only to then say that they have the parts required for sexual intercourse. I liked it better when the routine answer was what you see if what you get (that is, the ‘underwear’ leaves on a sylvari are all that’s there). Even eating is problematic when you start thinking…

Anyway, those issues aside, I simply meant that they don’t have the internal organs required for reproduction, like a womb for example.

Ahaha, yeah, I was unsure if you meant a womb or what.

And to be honest, I never bought into the “no internal organs” comment whooey when I saw it on the wiki, thankfully some other dev responded at some point that they do have some form of innards. Because the poor things just wouldn’t be able to eat if they didn’t, even if it’s as simple as a pitcher plant stomach and they absorb everything they eat rather than producing waste material.

But no, I’m not entirely convinced that the Pale Tree intentionally based their design on humans (or used human corpses as a base design) due to Malyk and whatever tree he came from. The existence of that character opens up some pretty sizable plot holes vs. what you’re actually told in the game/wiki.

I wonder if they’re related to treants and similar plant-beasts. At least that would somewhat explain a humanoid design without making the Pale Tree responsible. Sort of the way that humans irl are related to chimps and other great apes. We’re not directly descended from them, but we share a common ancestor. Treants even appear to walk like non-human great apes, haha. Analogous convergent evolution with humans+other apes, sylvari+treants? Goodness knows it happens enough in real life (look at pictures of cats and fossa sometime, or the skulls of the grey wolf and the thylacine) but I might be falling a bit into conspiracy theory-type thinking, here.

disclaimer: no offense to those of you who don’t believe in evolution, I’m most definitely not trying to start a debate regarding that.

TWMagimay.9057:

Is it just me or did they put a limit on how many Passiflora nodes an be picked a day on a single char? Last week they had a comfortable 1h respawn rate. This week…at some point all nodes just go poooof(they are on the map, i can see them, i pick one and everything else is suddenly gone). Which puts them on par with ori nodes….

One time I picked all of them in Southsun, waited a week (forgot about them, honestly) and when I went back to pick them again a ton of them were simply missing.. I have no idea what happened. There wasn’t a single one in Owain’s Refuge or southern Southsun Shoals where there used to be some close to the border with Dappled Shore.

And out of all the times I’ve gathered at Passiflora, I’ve only gotten one flower. Bummer. Guess I’m lucky that I’m not currently trying to make armour requiring them, sorry to those of you who are.

I agree with most of the things in here. The guild I help lead is still a small one, and I still find running it awkward because of the lack of proper tools.

When you’ve received a gift, do you prefer it wrapped in a brown paper bag, or nice wrapping paper?

That nice wrapping paper isn’t necessary, but it’s a lovely bonus!

..Though I am the guy that posted about my Sylvari’s leaves rather than a desire for nice lingerie so my post is possibly coming across as a little strange right about now.

I’m posting this on behalf of my wife, CarnivalDog.7926

She can login to the main site, and the game, but hitting the login button on the forums takes her to a blank page with this error, using google chrome:

“This webpage is not found
No webpage was found for the web address: file:///C:/login
Error 6 (net::ERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND): The file or directory could not be found.”

We share an IP address, if that clarifies anything. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I’m so tired of the boring green leaves on every one of my male Sylvari (four of them).. that always glitch to a more pleasant, neutral khaki brown in beginner areas. Way to get my hopes up, lol.

For my pink and white albino mimic Sylvari, I’d just l like to be able to dye his nether-leaves pink or white. Green looks weird on him. I included a pic of the gross default green and the khaki glitch.

My main is Engineer, I usually play him at least once per day. I play him in PvE, Fracs, and WvW, since launch day. I also have a character of every profession in the game.

I would suggest not discrediting the advice being given to you in this thread so quickly. Some of them are giving you pretty solid tips on how to compensate for the issues of the flamethrower, I can’t for the life of me figure out why you’re being so defensive. They’re not trying to hijack your thread, only help you out.
Engineers are simply not designed for massive burst damage, unfortunately. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to pull it off on par with a class like Elementalist, however, we also don’t have the huge cooldowns Elementalists have to deal with.
We can do things Elementalist and other classes can’t even dream of.

That said, we are a nerfed to hell class right now. And Flame Thrower is a huge GOUT OF FLAME hitting things squarely in the face, it would be nice if it did a smidge more damage than it currently does, or at least some other form of compensation to make it a little better, like other posters mentioned above me. Right now, the only reason why I use it instead of grenades is because I find it easier to use on the move, I have problems with my hands and eyes that make grenades a bit difficult for me.

But what I really want? Since I doubt my profession is going to be fixed properly any time soon, I want to actually like to be able to hit inanimate objects with Flame Jet. Good lord, you think that would have been fixed by now.

Collars you could dye would certainly be nice.

Is anyone else having issue with this, or am I just crazy?

I made a norn for the first time yesterday, a female set to minimum height. When I began to play her, I was caught off guard – the camera hovers over her rather than being on level as it is with every other race.

As I continued to play, the camera positioning, for some reason, began to make me more motion sick than the old camera did before it was fixed. Probably because my mind expects the camera to be somewhere else entirely. I have a character of every race and Norn are the only ones I’ve noticed with this issue. It would be nice if the camera position scaled with the height of the character. Right now, I’m not going to be able to play her very much, and I’d really hate to have to make her taller.
I have a feeling this is going to make jumping puzzles nightmarish.

Pictures are my maximum height male Sylvari warrior, and my Norn guardian, to show the difference in camera placement.

From a non-lore standpoint, it’s because with them looking so human, a lack of breasts would also make them look pre-pubescent, and that just doesn’t fly for Anet with all those skimpy armours about. Anet wanted to make sexy Elf-like plant people, clearly.

Asura can get away with it because they don’t look nearly as human, they’re not designed to be attractive (at least not conventionally), and their armor isn’t as sexualized.

Curuniel.4830:

although sylvari don’t have a reproductive system in their bodies

It’s been confirmed that they do have “fun parts,” they just can’t actually make more Sylvari with them. Usually, sexual dimorphism is an evolutionary tactic to draw a mate to reproduce, and while Sylvari do mate, they can’t continue their species that way, so.. I don’t know. As far as evolution goes, they don’t even have a reason to form intimate relationships. So I would say that the pale tree is mimicking humans, not just in appearance, but somewhat in behavior. Relationships would keep Sylvari happiness up, at least, what with all these dragons around.
However, as pointed out above, Malyck also looks human. Acts pretty human, too. It’s a pretty big coincidence that his tree also saw humans and decided to base the Sylvari on them, rather than, say, Charr, or Asura, or any other race or random creature wandering through its territory at the time.
Is the pale tree lying about deliberately basing Sylvari on humans? Is there something here we don’t know about that might be revealed later? Is it just a case of wobbly writing?
As much as Ventari is admired and loved, you’d think Sylvari would have come out taur-formed, actually. But realistically, making a centaur-bodied player race would have been a nightmare.

Sorry, rambled a bit off topic, but those things have been gnawing at my mind for a while.

Exploring and discovering. Getting used to the mechanics of my numerous alts. I have six alts, seven later today when I buy a new slot so I can get myself a norn guardian. I can’t decide whether to make it male or female. They’re going to be keeping me busy for quite a while, regardless.

I really love jumping puzzles. Goemm’s Lab is probably my favorite; I’m visually impaired which makes it especially challenging for me (hell, it makes the whole game challenging) so I can piddle away a few hours trying to get through that thing if I have time to burn.

Farming in Orr, oddly. Very lazy farming since it doubles as exploration. I always played games growing up, but I didn’t get really intensely into it until the survival horror genre was born, and Orr reminds me of it. The place is creepy and I find the water areas downright terrifying (hydrophobia), and there are little hidden nooks and crannies everywhere. I was ecstatic when I discovered Zho’qafa Catacombs for the first time. And I do love running the temples and getting piles of mats from all the moldy bags I pick up. I almost have enough for full crafted exotic gear now. People in Orr are also especially prone to add you to parties, which I find both amusing and fun. You meet some real characters running around out there. I’ve found the concentration of kind, helpful folks to be higher in Orr than in any other zone, at least on Tarnished Coast.

I find WvW to be a joy, especially the epic struggles that happen really late at night.

I’m always elated when I bump into an event I’ve never done before, or a rare event. I’m going to have to catch Shadow Behemoth now that he’s fixed, I’ve actually never been able to fight him before and I started playing on launch day.

I also enjoy Fractals, as long as I’m playing with my guild rather than a pug. It’s typically four of us and one random member, and we almost always wind up with someone fun.

So yes. The game has innumerable issues, and goodness knows I’ve ragged on Anet for those problems, but I’m genuinely happy with many other aspects of the game. I hope, given time, all the kinks can be ironed out.

I’ve had this problem myself. And while you can walk back and get the mats, I’m sure many people haven’t figured that out, and a good number of them probably don’t read the forums.

Arcanorum Ignis.9218:

Let’s all keep dreaming shall we?

I think everyone here is aware of the likelihood of most these being implemented, lol.

On the other hand, devs won’t know what users want/need fixed if users say nothing.

Allow previewing of mini pets, especially when TP is tweaked to allow previews.

Allow items in inventory to be set to no sell, and no collections. I don’t know how many times I’ve almost accidentally sold my pearl blunderbuss.

Storage slots for crafted cooking ingredients/other created crafting components (such as dowels), gears, cotton, etc, left over from the Wintersday event used in minipet creation (Holiday collectibles), misc odds and ends that have no place and make no sense just sitting in the inventory for an extended period.

Fix the bug that occasionally displays your email address to others instead of your account name.

More fixes to issues with armour and weapon art, namely clipping and bad placement/bizarre dimensions of weapons and armour components.

Support for color blind players to allow them to change UI/nameplate/AOE circle colors.

Possibly implement user profiles? I’m not sure how “easy” it is but it would certainly make our lives easier. If the players write their own profiles, we could look at them before inviting them to a guild, or going on a dungeon run, or any various other things to get a feel for the person beforehand. I can assure you it would save people a lot of pain and heartache, and you might make some friends you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Communicate with players, please.

Never have, never will. I’m not into throwing my money away.

Only things I’ve ever bought are character slots and skins. I’ll definitely buy makeover kits if they add more appearance options like they did with GW1 when they released campaigns. As it is, Black Lion Chests are like the time I went trick or treating in a rich, elderly neighborhood as a kid. You’re not sure what you’re going to get, but you know the chance of getting anything good is astronomical. At least with trick or treating, you didn’t actually have to pay for the apples, wax lips, and pennies you wound up with.

Vayne.8563:

Uncle Salty.6342:

Vayne speak up. Are you a plant by Anet? You seem to be speaking up for them in almost every instance even in a thread such as this where there’s no two ways about it.

An underwhelming ending.

I’m not a plant by Anet. I am a writer. I understand WHY people think the end is unwhelming, but I didn’t find it underwhelming. Other people in my guild didn’t either. That’s because you’re playing a game, and I’m reading a book. It’s a completely different approach to the game.

Game bosses at the end of the game have to be the hardest thing in the entire process or it doesn’t make sense. I guess none of you remember Shiro from Guild Wars 1, the big bad at the end of Factions.

The next to last Factions mission was three or four times harder than the last one. You could be Shiro Tagachi solo in under a minute if you had an ele/mesmer hybrid, and clones the elite spell the Kunnevang gave you.

Or Nightfall, when you fought the god Abaddon. That mission was far, far easier than the Gates of Madness before it. The company isn’t making a game, so much as writing a story.

So you’re looking at it from the perspective of WoW dungeon bosses, or games that think in that way, and I’m looking at it from the perspective if someone who played the hell out of the original Guild Wars. It doesn’t make me an Anet plant. It makes me a person with a different set of experiences than some of you.

I really do believe the last dungeon was epic (at least before the recent nerf, it’s way too tame now), but not because of the last battle with the last boss. That wasn’t my focus. I got more of a thrill from the idea of curing Orr than the Zhaitan battle.

I also doesn’t see this as an end, but I see it as a beginning. And the lasers btw, was a special Asuran weapon designed to hurt Zhaitan. They didn’t just hit him with a sword.

Sure as a game, it was not what you were expecting. As a story, seeing the forest instead of the trees (which is how some of us see things) it was completely fine.

A writer should be especially aware of how awkward the ending was. If this were a book, rather than a game, I would certainly be just as disappointed with it, if not more so. At least a writer isn’t constrained by game code and mechanics. And on top of it, regarding the part of your post I bolded, Zhaitan was unfortunately the easiest part of Arah to deal with, and I played it before it was nerfed, too.

But even with the constraints they have, with skilled writing and game design innovation, they could have made that ending far better than it was. I played the original Guild Wars, too. They pulled the endings off well in the original in three campaigns and an expansion, where they were even more limited by their medium.

Also, your post unfortunately comes across as a bit condescending. You do not need to be a writer to be able to realize that, from a game and a story-telling perspective both, the death(?) of Zhaitan is stunningly anticlimactic.

At the end of the day, when all is said and done, they really dropped the ball with Zhaitan in the eyes of a great many players. If you like it, great for you, but implying that others “just don’t get it” because they’re not writers/younger than you/whatever is a little obnoxious and people will not react well to it. As I’m sure you can now see.

All those passion flowers and karka shells. Also a really easy jumping puzzle down at the southeast waypoint.

Arcalithe.6057:

snip

I still like Trahearne and I think people are overreacting to him.

snip

You can think what you like, and you are free to like him, but it does not change the fact that he is a horrendously written character no matter how you cut it, at least to people who have at least vague familiarity with creative writing, proper character development, etc.

Similarly, Twilight has fans, but the series also has some of the most abysmal writing I’ve ever seen in a published piece of fiction.

Lori from The Walking Dead is actually a pretty good comparison, since you brought it up. She is a blatant, negative stereotype of women and exists solely to create cheap conflict in the plot, she has no depth beyond that. Trahearne is an equally cheap cardboard cut out of a character, he is a Gary Stu deus ex machina, sucking out anything remotely resembling depth in the plot every time he shows up.

The difference between them is that while they’re both utterly one dimensional, Lori seems to exist just to create easy strife and drama, making things feel like a soap opera every time she shows up. Trahearne on the other hand really does fit that deus ex machina label I gave him up there. No matter the problem, Trahearne will solve it, whether because he just magically has the right information, or because of that overpowered sword he lugs around.

And then he snatches away your credit. I think the writer might have unwittingly done something clever there, at least – with Trahearne stealing your credit, he looks very insecure, like he’s compensating for his own shortcomings. It fits well with his supposed reluctance.
If the writer was actually trying to write a completely unpleasant weasel of a character that almost everyone would hate, they succeeded with flying colors. I know it’s not intentional, though.

Anyway, telling a few hundred (or more..) people in the community who dislike him that they’re overreacting is laughable. I don’t think the problem lies with these people, as the word “overreacting” implies. I think it’s that all of these people are all spotting the same thing – that the writing and voice acting for this character are glaringly terrible.

…Really sorry to rag on the writing so much, but as someone who works in a creative field, too, I suspect Trahearne’s writer can probably take some honesty and critique.

My guild has had to kick people from the group before. Even at Jade Maw.
Let me say, my guild loves random members most of the time and we really enjoy it when we get people who play well and are friendly, though those aren’t requirements for playing with us and avoiding a kick. You can be dead silent, as long as you know what you’re doing and work well with the group. We would never kick someone in the middle of Fractals just to replace them with a guild member because we would rather play with them. There have been tons of times I’ve been on in pve while my guild was running fracs with a random player in the group. They don’t ask me to replace them, and I don’t ask for them to be kicked so I can play.

We’ll even often allow somewhat unskilled players as long as they’re not completely ruining everything and they’re pleasant to play with.

The only times we kick is if the player is obviously leeching, if they’re so bad they’re making the fractals almost unplayable, or if they’re.. the word I want to use is filtered. If they’re jerks, basically. My guild had a player like this recently, unskilled and horrendously rude. They accused the group of not knowing what they were doing while the random player continuously failed, also accused them of leeching (even though they were doing all the work), and was all-around unpleasant and incompetent. They had to be kicked during Maw because the group could genuinely finish the fractal easier without them there.

The random player reported them all. I don’t like people falsely accusing my guild of things they did not do and reporting them for it. So what are we supposed to do? Yes, being kicked by jerks for no reason sucks, but being reported for kicking bad players isn’t very awesome, either. This system has problems.

And as far as a few of the posts in this thread go, I would really love to hear the other side of the story. But that won’t happen.

My skirt is really messing up my glow.

Sylvari
Male
Warrior
lvl 31

Vigorous Scale Helm
Chainmail Shoulders
Lionguard Breastplate of Divinity
Vigorous Scale Gauntlets
Bronson’s Heavy Leggings of Divinity
Waterproof Worn Chain Greaves of the Rata Sum

The problem is only with the “leggings,” they cause my Sylvari’s night glow texture to go completely haywire. I can take off every other piece of armour and nothing happens, it only goes away when I remove the leggings. Skirt. Whatever you want to call it.

Charr is horrible. Asura is equally horrible to me because they always jump much further than I expect them to, so I overshoot, and the camera is set really low. I’ve had the least problems with my max height Sylvari and my average height human.

Engineer is the best class I’ve found. Easy speed boosts and jump shot. Jump shot is not always reliable however, such as if you hit the ceiling or an overhang (oh my god troll’s end) or if it makes you overshoot and fly off the other side for no explicable reason.