Guild Wars 2

I’d love to see the Canthans in Tyria celebrating. Not dress the town in decorations, but setting off the occasional firework when you’re near, and a dragon mask on their door or something would be wonderfully awesome.

Firelysm.4967:

If your country culture doesn’t appropriate this kind of style don’t wear it, simple as that, i like it because i like next female characters, and i don’t find anything wrong with their clothing.

See above re: choice for all, balance between genders.

Ross Biddle.2367:

As my friend say: GW2 has largely a male populated community.

So what will change that? How will we attract more players from other demographics? There’s a study here that posits an 80/20 split. What can we ask the devs, the market, the community to do to bring that to 50/50? How can ArenaNet sell GW2 to all the male players it gets, and get more sales from females?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games
http://www.girlgamer.com/
http://female-gamer.com/
http://www.igda.org/women/

Not only that, but how can we do this in a way that strengthens the playerbase, and respects the integrity and capabilities of women:
http://www.thefrisky.com/2012-08-15/girl-gamer-dont-patronize-me-with-your-video-games-girlfriend-mode/

Firelysm.4967:

FacesOfMu.3561:

You’ve got a great point to make. There’s also a nicer way of saying it that doesn’t refer to women who wear such clothes as what you’ve said in your topic title.

The issue of clothing options per gender is a pretty big discussion point across the forums here. The imbalance between males and females needs to be corrected, and this game has the potential to be a leader in this area.

There’s an amazing video I saw last night that was so well made and spoken:
http://youtu.be/j68VtAJWQtA

Also a great blogger I like to follow named Anita Sarkeesian will be doing a project on women in video games. Her awesome blogs are at https://www.youtube.com/user/feministfrequency

Why are accessories and lipstick less sexist than a sexy dress? Both are media products and both aren’t needed but people still use them.

Maybe accessories and lipstick are sexist? Or maybe it is sexist to say men can’t wear and use them, or to treat men who do differently.

Firelysm.4967:

… i don’t giva a ’’F’’, wear what u want. Be what u want.. just stop beeing a ’’D’’K’’

I’ve never seen apathy appear so active and emotional! You do seem to give a “F” because you post here.
I’m motivated to fight a social injustice. I’m using clear arguments, respectful language, and trying to name and solve a problem. I don’t think there’s anything "D"K" about that.

This is now just going around in circles with the same issues being brought up and addressed. Is there a new argument to be discussed?

Halanna.3927:

Oh. My. God.

You understand the characters in the game aren’t actual women right? They are pixels on a screen in a fictional game that you have chosen to play.

To you and all the posters who argue “It’s just media”, I hope you will become more aware of the influence of media, images, non-verbal communication, and expectations of any group or sub-group. It affects you and me.
I already linked the video at http://www.missrepresentation.org/ (skip the pledge thing, see the video, or see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5pM1fW6hNs).
I expect you already understand what a Stereotype is and how it can harm a group.

Halanna.3927:

Where on earth do you live where the women are being told they are only worth something if they buy the most expensive clothes, perfume etc. and have to be sexually alluring to be successful?

That is just plain stupid and insulting to all the women who work and strive every day in their chosen profession, the glass ceiling having been shattered long ago.

I, personally, live in a Western Culture (Australia) where these messages, though not explicitly saying “women are being told they are only worth something if they buy the most expensive clothes, perfume etc. and have to be sexually alluring to be successful!”, are implicitly and non-verbally communicating at very concerning levels.
That you say the glass ceiling wkittentered long ago is incorrect. The glass ceiling exists and men currently have more power and money than women. It’s not right, it doesn’t seem logical, there’s plenty of positive media messages saying women are as capable as men, but the glass ceiling still exists and still needs to be fought. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Average_earnings_of_workers_by_education_and_sex_-_2006.png

Halanna.3927:

I am a woman. I am a female gamer. I take huge exception to the pedestal you’ve built for yourself. Get down. We can take care of ourselves. Are you stuck in the 18th century?

It doesn’t take being a child to argue for children’s rights, it doesn’t take being an animal to fight for animal rights, it doesn’t take being LGBT to fight for LGBT rights, and it doesn’t take being a woman to fight for women’s rights. All these groups can fight for themselves, and as a white man I will be there fighting, too.

Halanna.3927:

I want more skimpy armor! I want my character to look nice and pretty. I don’t want her trussed up like a nun. I don’t want her looking like she lives in an igloo. (not that there’s anything wrong with living in an igloo).

Give me dresses, show skin, make it sexy, pretty and lots of areas to dye different colors so we can be creative.

Give us all the S’s. Skimpy, Sexy, Sassy, Skitteny, Snazzy, Stylish, Saucy, Spunky.

But do not give us prudish.

Yes!! And give it to me, too!

Lane.3410:

WoW got to the point where all armors looked identical regardless of gender and the result was you could barely tell male from female. While liking or disliking that may be subjective, I certainly didn’t like it. I hated getting a new piece of armor and looking like ‘one of the guys’.

Women don’t dress like men in real life, why would they anywhere else? I could argue that it’s equally sexist to have all the women look exactly like the men.

Yes, women do dress the same as men in real life, it has become very acceptable in western cultures since about the 70s. Business suits, sports clothes, jeans, casual wear, formal wear, jackets; Women fought hard for the right to do this without having any legal or characterlogical action taken against them for it. They, and men, also gained the freedom to show more skin, to see their bodies as natural and acceptable, without religious, legal, or characterlogical harrassment. Once upon a time people didn’t have this right, now we do (although people can say what they want before it becomes slander).

What we don’t have is the completely reasonable and equal right for men to do this. At least, if we do have the right, we don’t have the same level of acceptance or respect that women do. You could look at it as men still holding power over what people wear, except now after the women’s rights movements, men are holding power over what other men wear. It’ll change with enough time and action.

In relation to combat, if both men and women in earth history fought side-by-side in equal roles in war, you’d find they would wear roughly the same things with customisations for chest width and depth, and hip width.

Kaimick.5109:

If you don’t like the more revealing armors don’t wear them.

Ok, I won’t. Not sure how the OP feels about that.

If your offended by seeing them in game then you need to grow up as when you become an adult there are a lot of things in the world that you may not agree with. If you let every little aspect you feel is wrong or disgusting get to you then your not going to be doing much with your life.

Agreed, the world could do with a lot more acceptance. Except when it comes to social injustice. Then I will be disgusted, angered, and will act for change.

Kaimick.5109:

Secondly the person that posted the 10 or so armors out of 100 some odd armors and saying look at this. First off the TA armor set is not really revealing sure it shows cleavage but so what. Then you post pictures of a female wearing a dress and a guy wearing a shirt trench coat and pants, how is this supporting your argument? Of course the male is not going to wear a dress lol. Next time you post picture post all the armors, you will find out that there are more non revealing armor sets than there are revealing. Arena net even changed the ( I believe ) Arah or Karma orr set to be less revealing from beta to live.

It supports my argument (not necessarily the OP’s) that inequality exists between men and women because the same areas of skin that show on the women could also be shown on the man. They don’t. It’s the discriminatory magic of chainmail bikinis and gender-morphic clothing. Weapons don’t change in the hands of women or men, armour shouldn’t either (except body dimensions mentioned above).
You will also see that my very next post after those images were examples of where Anet has modeled the armours in fantastically equal ways. They’ve got armours that reveal and armours that don’t, and the armours stay seemingly more than 90% the same regardless of who it is on. This needs to be extended through all the models, or at least so that there are as many male versions of the skimpy models as there are the females.

Kaimick.5109:

So in turn your argument is null and void. Now if your argument is that you feel offended by the skimpy and don’t want to see it period I say grow up, also what gives any of you the right to choice what others can wear and can’t wear based on your likes and dis likes?

I personally don’t want to take away choices. I want equal choices for male and female avatars.
It feels like you are arguing to stop me asking for an equal number of choices for male and females as I’ve been saying in my posts, to choose “what others can wear and can’t wear based on your likes and dis likes”. Is that what you want? It comes across that way in your words and tone.

I would be surprised if something like this didn’t come in the updates coming up where they’ve said they’ll make interface improvements. Even if they don’t change the Gem Store as the first loading screen, I would greatly appreciate it if they made each tab (mainly the TP search screen) remember all the data you’ve put into it.
Just clicking to the Purchased Items tab (stuff to be collected) wipes all the filters you’ve put in the search screen.

Even if there are no player responses, the devs are still reading your posts.

Anywho, I struggled to read wall’o’text. Any chance you could revise it into something easier to read? You’ve done great with the paragraphs. There’s some more possibilities here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/A-Suggestion-On-How-To-make-Suggestions

It’s likely builds will be implemented. I feel certain I saw a dev say as much, but I wouldn’t be able to find this now.

As to gear changing, I made an in-depth idea here that allows both simple and complex gear management and appearance changing. I forgot to mention that it was ideally suited for build management and swapping.

This is a really neat and clear concept! There seems to be a lot of fun to this class, and I really like your redesign of signets into oaths. You will get backlash from anti-mount players, but you’ve created some realistic boundaries and limits to mount use that could make this class viable in the GW2 context.
Only despairing thing I can think of is seeing zergs of dragoons in WvW. On the whole it’d be pretty awesome to watch, but it’d overshadow the other classes a bit much.

I’ve fantasised about having an elite skill that just randomly picks a utility skill that you’ve unlocked. As soon as the cooldown expires within combat it swaps out for another utility skill (possibly including elites).
While they do need to add more useful elites, sometimes I’d just like any other utility skill. Occasionally I think I’d like my preconceived ideas of what are good skills shaken up a bit, get a little moved outside my comfort zone. Randomly getting the chance to try out other skills I don’t usually slot might open me up to new ideas and experiences.

Zonzai.2341:

No, just no. There are qualities of masculinity and femininity that do not translate well when the gender donning them is inverted. I don’t think ANet wants guys running around in halter tops and skirts. They want people to let their children play this game.

If you’re making the appeal (secretly) due to what you see as sexism, that’s a different issue. But I would rather have all skirts and halter tops removed from the game in that case. And as much as you may hate it, that’s what would happen.

My suggestion is this: Allow for alternate versions of certain revealing armors that cover more skin. You can then select which you want to view in the game menu. That way, prudes and nudes will be able to walk hand-in-hand throughout Tyria mutilating myriads of helpless foes (which is totally fine by the way).

You seem to be suggesting that allowing people to explore different identities through a game is something that should be avoided or is harmful? If that is true, I would recommend you play the videogame Facebook, and ensure you never tell a lie, misrepresent, or obscure parts of your personality. Otherwise, we have Role Playing Games that you and others might like to play.

Also, are you suggeting that giving people the option to do this will hurt them? Or that giving the option to do this is an obligation to take it? Will YOU feel obliged to wear a skirt on your male avatar? Do you feel obliged to wear a skirt when you get up in the morning, when you have the choice to do so? I don’t think so.

You’ve hinted at worry about what people will think and feel if they saw someone doing this in game. Your suggestion says give people the option to wear covered and less-covered clothing rather than the OP’s suggestion. What is the difference here? All I can think of is that covered/less-covered options would be controversial in the 1940s/1950s. Pants or skirts would be controversial in the 1970s (excluding kilts and music videos).

It’s now 2013. Let’s make controversy about things that actually harm people, and make peace with including people from many backgrounds, societies, genders, ages, and identities.

Afterall, what would Jesus/MacGyver do?

I love it, it’d make the game incredibly inclusive!
So many people would flock here to be a part of it, so many blogs and reporters would make mention of it.
So many people would resist under some fear that they will be forced to wear a dress or sleep with the same gender. They will throw the baby out with the bathwater by leaving, and they will be wrong.

So many times in the future of MMOs this game would be referred to as the first major MMO to take equality and inclusiveness seriously. I want to acknowledge the amazing step they took in creating the Sylvari race who are pansexual, and I think I remember a Charr who is lesbian. I will be waiting to see evidence of variation in sexualities for humans, too (so it’s not just the “other”).
SWTOR will go down in history for their efforts, but they are yet to fully implement their inclusiveness across the whole game (rather than an expansion). Guild Wars 2 is still young and there’s a lot of improvements that people are calling for to the appearance systems and interface, so plenty of opportunity (sooner rather than later) to implement this and get it accepted as ok and non-threatening.

So this sounds like a very skill specific alternative to the trait tree. It’s a great way to increase horizontal progression, especially with Nurvus’ ideas (max 1 variant per skill, 1 skill point per variant)

I really like seeing the complex, realistic interactions between these effects as you’ve said here.
I wonder if there’s a way to implement the ones where only foe actions take effect for negative ones, and ally actions take effect for positive ones? For example, an ally’s water/ice field removes burning, but not a foe’s field. In fact, most of your ideas work this way.

TLDR for below: History seems to say suggestions forums are futile, it’s fun while we do it, but when has it ever worked? Also, I’m a wet blanket (but I love these forums!!)

Also, there’s a point to be made that the suggestions we make, and changes to the game, are not really a democratic process. While being heard is incredibly important to us and we can refine our concepts from feedback and give support to other posters, ultimately having the devs read it once is all that is needed to accomplish our goal.

I’d love massively.com to do a review of the times and ways MMO devs have ever implemented suggestions. I’ve participated in so many suggestions forums for a good number of games, and I don’t remember seeing that many ideas actually adopted. More often than not new UI or mechanic improvements tend to come out of left field, something born directly from the vision of the devs.
Not that imagineering and drafting design documents isn’t a lot of fun and gets a lot of people in the community involved, but I would love to hear of any examples where a suggested class was actually implemented by an MMO.

It’s likely that whatever suggestions have ever been taken on are an incredibly small proportion of all the ideas sent to devs because there’s infinitely more ideas than there are resources to action them.

Edit: Oh yeah, I just remembered that Wurm Online is pretty good for listening to suggestions. They got a great voting system called Uservoice, and the Devs tell players when they are attending to an idea, considering it, or have plans to implement it. I even suggested in-game note paper and writing pens and it went into the game.

A fellow suggestions and creative poster of my own heart! This is a good list of writing tips. How do I recommend for sticky??

Good on you for being mindful of people living with colour blindness.

All in all I’d like a bit more clarity about how numbers are derived. They’ve done a pretty neat job so far.

Tom Gore.4035:

Obviously their ban time would not be reduced if they were not logged in. Add in some boring stuff you need to click every now and then so they can’t just go AFK.

lol
You can’t lock users into the game by punishing them more for not being logged in. If that were added on top of the ban, many would not come back.
The purpose of temporary bans is to discourage them from repeating the behaviour when they return, which means they are very welcome back when the punishment has ended. Causing them to log in to a game to do tedious work to reduce their punishment countdown does nothing to inspire them to participate in the punishment, and does nothing to strengthen and encourage the community spirit.

Yea, I completely ignored the pop-up.
It seems the bug then is that the tooltip doesn’t update to show that it has become soulbound to me.

Yea I’ve wasted a node and tool uses not realising I didn’t have the right set on.

I’d like my Mesmer to have more Magic Mike! ;D

Sometimes I wonder if each forum should have the capacity for a sub-forum of common threads posted in that forum. It hard to ensure people post in the right places, and also to make those posts remain visible. The mods are great for sorting out the categories, but the conversations here sometimes run too thick and fast for anything but some hot topics to remain visible.

I wonder if perhaps OPs could ask mods to give their thread a date-terminated stickiness, a way for a post to remain at the top of forum (for a maximum reasonable time length) until it expires. The mod would need to assess if the reason given by the OP, as clearly stated in the post, is valid. This could be done with a tick box selected in the advanced editing options of the post, for example “Request Sticky, Expiry date:”. The mods would then process it.
Having expiry dates might also be a good way for the currently stickied topics to eventually fall down the list. Perhaps even give those topics an automatic expiry date set to 1 day after the last post made.

I’d say black and white is desired because it carries a common meaning for many players. Kinda like how red in GW1, though not a rare drop, was still higher priced in the market. The colours have social meaning ascribed to them by individuals as well as the group. As long as that meaning is more powerful in MMO appearance terms, then the market and drop rate can reflect it.

:D What a way to make an example of them! Do you think they should only be there when they are logged in, or should they get an avatar to show even when they’re not logged in? Cycle through all of them on the naughty list so most get seen.

This thread seems to be missing the point I made in the OP. I was saying that just because there are 2 heavy classes and 3 of the other two is not a straight forward reason for adding another heavy armour class. There are more factors to consider than this.

Actually, in the example I gave, if the number of professions available represented the playerbase, then it’s potentially more reasonable to have more professions of the type most players play.
For example, if hypothetically:
% ppl playing light = 20%
% ppl playing medium = 30%
% ppl playing heavy = 50%
then there’s possibly good marketing sense to make the number of professions in each category represent this distribution (i.e., of 10 professions make 2 light, 3 medium, 5 heavy).

Of course, this is all based on the hypothesis that the playerbase is naturally skewed towards some play-styles that are represented by the armour types worn.

I’m not sure if this is a bug or not.
I bought a Mighty Worn Scale Coat of Infiltration (lvl 20) and a Minor Rune of the Citadel from the TP.
I put the rune on the coat.
Now I can’t sell the coat on the TP. It clearly says “Soulbound on Use” in the tooltip.
Is this a bug or something to stop us making money (/“exploiting”) from the market?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day_2011

Zaxares.5419:

Having to create skimpy and non-skimpy versions of each armor would be far too time-consuming, however. A better way would be to divorce the appearance of armor from its stats altogether by creating an “Armor Wardrobe” where you can choose the appearance of your armor and apply it to your current armor.

I’ve just posted an idea for this here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Advanced-Gear-and-Appearance-Options/first#post1283611

It’d mean people could pursue more appearance options, and make their appearance suit their context better, whatever that means to them. Being able to customise your appearance AND have a variety of options available in-the-moment would be great for allowing people to play to their own tastes.

Can’t help but wonder if they really meant “new tier” or just meant higher leveled armours for the same tiers we have now.

This is a suggestion for an option that is turned on in the game options screen. Players would start and always be able to have the current set-up, while advanced players can toggle these options on for more customisation.

The idea is that Armour and Weapons gets divided into two new columns:
Enhancements & Upgrades (Stats)
Appearance

Enhancements & Upgrades:
Each Armour and Weapon slot shows two slots that work exactly like the upgrade slot does now. The first slot is the “Enhancement” slot, which can never be empty. It is filled by a level dependent enhancement named and statted exactly like the current Prefixes used already (see Item Nomenclature at the wiki: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Prefix)

The second slot is the Upgrade slot and works as normal.

So for example, your chest piece may have the Berserker’s Enhancement with the Rune of the Necromancer, and your head piece may have the Knight’s Enhancement with the Seal of the Magi, etc etc.

Enhancements can be removed from gear and obtained or handled completely on their own as a separate item. These behave just like upgrade components, but act as the base stats of the gear. You can still drop a piece of equipment into the slot, and the enhancement and upgrade will get swapped out, but the appearance of the armour is ignored.
When advanced gear is toggled on, merchants now sell armour appearances and the enhancements separately for their respective price values. You can choose to buy the enhancement and slot it into your armour, or buy the appearance and slot it into your appearance slot, or buy both. The reason for splitting this out becomes a bit clearer in the next section.

Appearance
Every character starts with two Appearance tabs. These replace the “Toggle Town Clothes” option in the Hero screen.
These Appearance tabs take gear and only show the appearance of them. All stats are derived from the Enhancements tabs. If the item has enhancements or upgrades, these are disregarded. Your entire appearance is derived from your active appearance tab.

You can bind keys to the Appearance tabs for one click changing (out of combat). Your appearance doesn’t change when you enter combat (although that could be an option later). Players can buy more through the Gem Store in the same way you can buy bank and bag slots.
Additionally (and quite integral to this system) for every visited zone and dungeon on the world map you can set which appearance tab is automatically loaded when you enter that zone (drop-down menu on the zone map).

Now you can have an appearance tab dedicated solely to what you want wear in town.
You can have an appearance tab that you automatically switch into when you visit the blistery cold northern regions and you want to appear rugged up.
You can have an appearance tab reserved for tropical areas where you want to dress lighter and more comfortably.
You can have a tab for parties and holiday events, and a tab for all the places in between.

And transmuting still matters. With a Transmutation Stone you can choose whether you move the enhancements or upgrades or both into your gear. You can also, if you want, move the appearance into one, a few, none, or all of the respective appearance tabs for that slot.
Now you can take out the parts you want and reserve or discard the rest as you see fit. Now players who love customising their character can plan out their costumes and journey to the ends of the earth getting all the pieces they want and love. Now people can feel a wonderful sense of ownership over their avatars, and feel a strong bond with their character.
Now players can have plenty of appearance options and even more ways to spend gems, gold, karma, and currency.

And, very importantly, they also get the choice not to.

I ask this question because a lot of posters have said that the light/medium/heavy armour choices by profession should be evened out. They say there’s already 3 lights and 3 mediums, so heavy should go from 2 to 3.

But what if there will always be more players playing heavy armour professions? What if, across MMOs, players represent heavy armour classes more than others.

For example, if the number of classes played actively by the whole player base tended to divide like this steadily over time (regardless of the mechanics of those classes):

Light = 30%
Medium = 30%
Heavy = 40%

then the economy and market would be heavily influenced by this distribution (and possibly distribution of armour types dropped would need to mirror this, too). Designing new classes may take the representation of armour types into account for the initial novelty phase of the class being implemented, but if the player base either within GW2 or across MMOs tends to have a majority in the Heavy Armour wearers (for whatever reason), then how much does the class options to armour types ratio matter?

This hypothetical model suggests that
playerbase : armour types
is more relevant than
class options : armour types

I haven’t given reasons for why the professions would be distributed unequally, but this possible description for what is happening would very much influence what new classes would be introduced. A simple ratio of class to armour type is not the only statistic that matters when designing new professions.

I made a point of posting the examples above that show the disparity between males and females in the way armours are drawn for each.
Now I want to show the places where this was done really well by Anet. In these examples you can see how the armour is mirrored brilliantly between the two models. You can almost imagine that these two characters picked up the same outfit from the ground and put it on (hip, shoulder, and chest width exceptions reasonably applied).

Looking through these great examples of gender balance shows how both male and female fighters can protect themselves to the same extent. It says that if skimpiness in appearance is desired, it can be made available for both females and males.

It also says that such skimpiness does not need to exist in the armour slots, that these things could be perfectly available through the town clothes slots (if/when they fix it so you change costume when YOU want rather than when the game says so).
It makes me wonder if dungeon armour sets could come with an armour option as well as a town clothes/costume option. That is, for every dungeon, karma, and cultural tier they could add a town clothes option that shows the skimpier version so that there are ‘heavy clothed ’ and ’light clothed’ options for all the fashion categories.

Mungrul.9358:

Just to be clear and to illustrate what I am talking about, the attached is Masquerade armor.

This argument is much clearer when you look through the armour and find the revealing female armours. Then look at the male equivalent, and notice what skin isn’t showing.
Some examples attached. Mouse over for the armour names, you’ll see they are in pairs.

This discussion is about the clear argument that a chainmail on a female should be identical to a that of a male, with space for breasts. There’s no magical reason for it to become a bikini.

The exact same goes for weapons. If weapons had different skins based on the gender of the character then these forums would be on fire and the producers would be slammed up and down the blog’o’sphere.

Unfortunately, chainmail bikinis were established in a few games, then the wrong/irrationality/immorality was repeated and it becomes accepted both to a majority of the playerbase and the producers who permit their marketing departments to sell the sex of women in images.

The issue of magical bikinis would not be a problem to me personally if there were as many platemail corsets that became magical speedos for men. We could then look at the GW2 armour gallery and see as many revealing male armours as female, even if they weren’t always in the same pairs. We would laugh at this crazy magic and see that it has nothing to do with men and women but instead is about us as adults and teens.
But that is not the case. It is women who are clearly sexualised more than men here.

Note: The Medium and Heavy armours are actually fantastic for not having the chainmail bikini phenomenon (in most cases, not all). It’s really quite remarkable how well the armours are mirrored between the genders again and again. Even Norn heavy armors do not show this “body heat” argument given above.
It seems this issue is clearest and strongest in the Light armour category (which has some excellent mirroring, but still begs the question why why why? We have a costume slot that could be used for skimpy outfits for both males and females equally (because someone says it’s important to have skimpiness in the game). Have you seen the “Temple” armour??? And yet they were so good with the other two armour types!)

Been wishing I could:
1) Make the pet auto-use F2 whenever it is off cooldown. Some critters I don’t want this, like the Daze of the black moa, but many others I don’t want to micro manage it and would just like to ctrl + right click to make it activate asap.
2) Possibly be able to swap in and out of F2 which of the four pet skills I can activate, and only outside combat. The remaining 3 are on AI as usual.
3) See the icons for the remaining 3 pets skills above f1-4 so I can see them being used. Unless I’m staring intently at my pet and can read it’s behaviour well, I don’t have a clue when it is using skills and what is coming off cooldown soon.
4) Show the seconds timer for the F2 cooldown.

This is a fantastic crafting of the ritualist. I like how the mechanic is being able to silo your health to fuel skills, support allies, and to recoup at any time.
I suspected your idea was to place soul jars in a spread out way like how in GW2 combat you’d strategise the placement of spirits for least-AOE damage?
Are there other skill types your Spiritualist would use amongst these? For example, what would the Spiritualist do for dps if they have no soul jars available?

I can certainly see the potential for there to be a little mouse-over menu that appears above the weapon skills just the same as the utility skills do now outside combat. A new little menu that gives you 1-2 skill choices to customise your weapon skills. A big task for balancing, but not impossible and would be quite an expansion to the gameplay and fun of making builds.

SoPP.7034:

It’s great that we argue equality and that we constantly strive for it in society. It’s good that we take that to games such as GW2 and apply it to fashion within the game.

Biological Psychology also demonstrates that while there are societal influences which can help determine people’s behaviour. People are also hardwired to behave and respond in particular ways.

It’s important to ask for balance with regards to GW2 fashion and great that we have those conversations and while that process is important, its important to understand you’re never going to get balance. Concurrently we have to avoid forcing our views onto other people. As such you have to allow people the space to wear what they want within the realms of GW2.

It’s better to ask what you would like from ArenaNet for yourself. Rather than telling them what they should be doing for other people.

I appreciate what you are saying here. I think I advocate mostly for a fair variety of clothing options (half or less being “skimpy”), and that this same variety exists for both female and male avatars. I’m glad to see that most, if not all, the NPCs are dressed for the context of story and world, and not for the context of a Earth 2000s club music video.

I’m am wondering what you mean by “Biological Psychology also demonstrates that while there are societal influences which can help determine people’s behaviour. People are also hardwired to behave and respond in particular ways.”. Where have you seen the research that demonstrates this “hardwiring”, and in what way are you using that to support your point?

You’ve got a great point to make. There’s also a nicer way of saying it that doesn’t refer to women who wear such clothes as what you’ve said in your topic title.

The issue of clothing options per gender is a pretty big discussion point across the forums here. The imbalance between males and females needs to be corrected, and this game has the potential to be a leader in this area.

There’s an amazing video I saw last night that was so well made and spoken:
http://youtu.be/j68VtAJWQtA

Also a great blogger I like to follow named Anita Sarkeesian will be doing a project on women in video games. Her awesome blogs are at https://www.youtube.com/user/feministfrequency

Edit: Here’s a summary of what I believe about the issue. I’m adding this here after two pages of discussion and communication:

• Male avatars should have the options for as much freedom of expression as female avatars have in the costumes available.
• This freedom, which is great for both genders, encourages role play, creativity, ownership, and investment in ones characters.
• Such freedom sends the message from the developers that they are conscious of and welcoming to a wide and diverse community and playerbase.
• There exists an imbalance in GW2 in the ways players can express themselves through their avatars and their gear appearance options, primarily that males have far fewer options than females to wear revealing clothes.
• This imbalance is even clearer when some outfits are quite identical between males and females but others are very needlessly different.
• Maintaining this imbalance sends an implicit message that the game’s creators sees men and women as different, and that men and women should have different rights or freedoms (these differences in rights and freedoms should be mostly irrelevant in 2013).
• Individual staff at Arena Net may not believe these things, but this is the message implicit in the options given to players.
• I want Arena Net to give players these freedoms to express themselves through male avatars as easily and in the same number of ways they can with female avatars
• I’ve been trying to make my point in the wrong thread! :\

This is a sweet idea and moves rewarding players in the right direction.

OMG. My partner was telling me about this months ago and I was like “meh”. Now that I’ve seen this passive tree I got very intrigued. It led me on to the game (indy group in NZ! Where do I throw my money?) and the video is like “holy moly this needs and deserves more marketing than Diablo got!”. It looks incredible!!

As to having that kind of trait tree in this MMO, that’s a huuuuuuuge ask. But it’d make for some fantastic character building more truly reminiscent of GW1.

We’ve updated the game for routine maintenance only. No content changes were included

No content changes were included.

Yup. I completely empathise with the need for this message.
Good communication Anet! lols

I’ve been waiting for an MMO to implement a dungeon similar to the Ancient Cave from Lufia., an awesome RPG from 1995.

The gist is:

• There are nearly 100 small levels, all randomly generated so every time you enter it is never the same. You can travel down into the dungeon but not back up.
• Starting the dungeon resets everyone’s characters down to level 1. You have no traits, no unlocked skills, and only starter gear (or no gear for more hardcore).
• Experience is accelerated so you gain nearly 1 character level per level of the dungeon. Creatures are of the same level, but of course are randomly picked from all the creatures in the game. You can run ahead in the dungeon and skip creatures, but you’ll lose out on valuable experience.
• Gear drops from creatures and chests. There is some awesome gear to be found in the depths.
• You can’t take anything back out of the dungeon except gear of a certain quality or category. This gear you can actually bring into the dungeon with you on future runs so that you don’t start from scratch (although in this game that might increase the incidence of “LFG, must have full gear set”. Not too different with the way fractals will become perhaps).
• Any time the party wipes they get an instant ejection from the dungeon.

The mechanics of this means that:

• You get to experience group teamwork and combat from character level 1 through to x.
• You have to work with what you’ve got, gear-wise and skills-wise. You don’t know what situations you are going to come across, so resilience as well as team synergy is very important.
• All gear becomes valuable to the team as you are rapidly trying to upgrade what you’ve got, even with whites. Success means players sharing, trading, and negotiating gear (the trash gear) so everyone gets stronger.
• It’s a dungeon of survival, where all the big and small decisions count.

The foibles of an idea like this for GW2 are that:

• Something like this might not work until trait builds can be saved. That way there can be a UI that helps you pre-plot your trait points and skill point use so that players wouldn’t get halted by having to spec.
• I also have my doubts about the special gear category for a dungeon like this. It’d be incredibly controversial and would have very strange social and economic effects. It’d almost need to be account bound only so that you acquire what you have first hand rather than from the market, and so there’s no peer pressure to give this gear you can’t use to teammates.

Hoping one of the new UI changes coming is a “Deposit All” and “Withdraw All” button for the bank. Entering each unit feels so finicky, although if I take shortcuts then at least I can leave some valuable small change on characters.

It’s an excellent principle to follow. It isn’t effective in every situation, but certainly makes a great foundation. Formulating a reasonable method is one part of this problem, releasing and “marketing” it in a way that is genuine and reduces feelings of being manipulated is a whole other kettle of fish.

Great idea. Links very well to the other suggestion on the forums here about Heroes/Mercenaries. I wonder what it’d be like if player could trade a currency (preferably many/any type) to hire mercenaries to either inhabit an area (therefore helping a town or outpost to remain allied and resist attacks for the long-run), or have some accompany you until some condition is met:
- After x time
- After x kills
- After x kills of a species
- For x events
etc etc.
An affordable but not-required option to handle content solo AND work in groups.

So so cute!
Can’t imagine what ripples might happen for PvP/WvW, but I love the idea of having race-specific, non-combat related skills to flavour the races more. Same goes for each profession (but nothing that requires a skill slot, I think).

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Sylosi.6503:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Given that preliminary results indicat…

The preliminary results indicate nothing, because you’ve made the mistake of only posting your survey in the general discussion forum which is very PvE orientated, if you want to include PvPers in your survey then it might be helpful to also post it in the sub-forums they spend most of their time in.

I understand your point, but I am afraid that the mods will infract me for spamming if I post this survey in multiple forums. Therefore, I have chosen the one with the highest general population.

If you would like to expand the reach of this survey to the class subforums, reddit, GW2G, feel free to do so. Please understand that the site rules probably forbid me from posting this survey multiple times in different forums.

The results have been updated, with 180+ respondents.

Sylosi made an excellent point, and I can understand the limitations TheKillerAngel has in being able to advertise for participants.
I can also see this survey becoming political. I mentioned earlier the influence of response bias by releasing results before the survey is closed. It is really an impact of response bias, sample bias, and self-selection bias, where the survey slowly ceases to represent a spectrum of participants, and starts representing vocal people who feel motivated to influence the results. In this case, reporting representation while still gathering data may motivate potential participants to become involved because they are worried results will be used to make x point, or that their demographic will be maligned, misrepresented or underrepresented.
Still, curiouser and curiouser! It’s kinda like a forum community event.

I’ve been wondering the merits on having players choose the playstyle (PvE/PvP) they prefer the most for the forum profile so that also shows under their user name for their posts. Sometimes I get confused about the point some posters are making, or how certain things they are saying are an issue until I remember that they are likely talking about the other playstyle I’m used to. Often suggestions and feedback pertains heavily to how their profession plays in the respective format, and this cross-over can tend to confuse things or get lost in the discussions.
However, asking players to show the format that appeals to them the most may create labels and language that could be more damaging or misleading than the system intends to combat.

Nice survey. I wondered the difference between asking “What do you play the most?” to “What do you enjoy the most?”. I found myself saying I played all the PvE options, but I clearly enjoy 1 or 2 more than the other/s (that is, my opinion/feelings are stronger set than the way I distribute my time). Would love to see the results, although hinting at them early may create a response bias.

Wanna let you know I support the OP’s suggestion. It’s a worthwhile effort. Though I’d like to know: what does it take to localise and release a game in a new language? What’s involved?

Wondering if anyone if holding off on creating more classes so they can play them from the start in later expansions?
I’ve been playing a few alts but realised if I keep making more then I won’t want to trudge through the beginnings again to play the start of later expansions.

Think it’s possible to fix this through smart design of the expansions? (assuming expansions will have level 1 areas and stories)

Man, I’d pick up the pencil if I had good reason such things would be implemented. But I also know my meager skills couldn’t compare to what the community could offer. Even an annual contest would be pretty sweet. I’d hope it could be player-voted, but only once all submissions were in.

Pluses to this idea!