Guild Wars 2

I did that for one of my Norns (I have two Norn characters so far). He is a male Norn (Engineer), so I chose to go for the maximum height. My female Norn (Guardian) is about in the middle of the height bar, but that’s still very tall compared to all other races. The maximum height (be it for a male or a female) is a little ridiculous it makes me smile every time I play my other characters (Humans).

They look like children compared to any Norns, unless you compare a Norn at the lowest height with a Charr or a Human at maximum height then it’s “alright”, but ironically the furniture’s size in Human cities aren’t exactly fitting for the Human body size when they happen to be of maximum height (contrarily to the Norn furniture and buildings).

I am completely new to the Guild Wars lore and world (I never played the first Guild Wars either). So when I got to the character selection screen I fully expected humans and also another humanoid race as it is the case in so many similar games. I saw the Norns and immediately I thought “Ok so they are basically the Nords of Guild Wars” (Nords being from The Elder Scrolls franchise and lore). They are not exactly the same I know, but they (Norn) reminded me of my preferences for the Nords in both Morrowind and Oblivion (and of course Skyrim, but that one is a given for the Nords).

I am still shocked by the Norn’s physique though, I did not expect them to be that tall and large compared to… well to anything, haha (except their own furniture!). As a Norn and playing in the Norn zones (Wayfarer Foothills, etc) I did not notice their size much. It was only when I decided to create a Human character and got to Hoelbrak with her (Human Necromancer) that I realized that my character looked like a child next to any Norn, in fact the actual Norn children in the city running around for fun are just about as tall as my adult Human character, which made me laugh.

In my opinion the Norn dance does not “fit” the race.

I would not ask for it to be removed completely however. If anything, the animators could perhaps “polish” the existing animation, keep it, let us have the choice to use it, but also simply add a new more Norn-fitting dance as well. They could do that for all races and even go gender-specific for each races, and eventually perhaps class-specific as well.

In the end, ultimately, there should be a greater variety of dances, rather than simply replacing the ones that exist with new ones while on the other hand just keeping a low number of dances.

In addition I would like to point at how the legs are bent when a Norn female holds a Greatsword. I am not sure if the animator(s) intended to create such a pose/posture to demonstrate an actual combat or readiness status (ready to strike), or does it mean that the Greatsword is simply so heavy that there seems to be so much weigh on the legs that the female holding the sword has no choice but to keep them bent to keep equilibrium.

When I think about it the current idle posture (while holding the Greatsword) has no clear visual cue as to what the actual pose “means”. The player has to assume – on his or her own – with suspension of disbelief, that the sword is either simply very heavy and the female struggles to hold it at all, or that the female simply opts to use such a posture for combat purposes out of pure preference while the actual weigh of the sword is not responsible for such a pose in the first place.

Additionally, if you are observant (and patient) enough, while the female Norn holds the Greatsword if you do not press any keys and wait enough there is another animation in which she looks at the sword’s hilt by literally lifting it at around shoulders-level pointing it skyward (while still holding it by the hilt I think) to have a short glance at the hilt, as if the sword wasn’t so heavy after all (but the legs remain bent while that specific animation plays out).

It’s rather unclear I have to say.

Hello.

I have recently bought the game and I really like it so far.

There’s one thing I really feel is important in recent 3D gaming is the quality of character animations. At the moment I think that the animations that do exist in the game are looking great, they are smooth, fluid and organic. It’s well done and characters usually don’t move too abruptly nor do they look like robots. With this said there’s one type of character animation that is simply lacking however. It’s not about modifying animations specifically, but merely about adding one type of animation, because at the moment it is simply not there.

I am referring to character’s body (torso and head mostly) rotation specifically when the character is not moving, idles and we (the player) rotate the camera left, right, up or down (or diagonally). When we do that specifically under that exact condition (when character idles but we rotate the camera) then I noticed that only the camera moves but the character does not “look” (“animates”) to where the camera is rotated (or where the camera “looks” at).

So that the character effectively remains still and only plays idling animations (stretching muscles, et cetera) even if we happen to be moving the camera (for example while holding down the right mouse click and rotating the camera while the character is not moving forward, backward or diagonally). I believe that adding such character animations would contribute to increase the already good overall organic and natural (for the most part) character animations set that do exist in the game.

Additionally, it would provide an extra visual “cue” for other players whom would happen to look at other players’ characters as to where the player himself or herself happens to be looking at while idling. So, for instance if I find myself in an occurring event with other players and happen to be idling for a brief moment (for example waiting while a wave of incoming enemies is about to be triggered) then other players whom might happen to look at my character would also see my character’s head/body movement correspond to my own camera movement.

That in turn could provide a visual cue as to where I happen to point my camera to, which might then convince another player to “guard” another entrance for an incoming wave. If I happen to look at an entrance to my left and the other player notices that, then perhaps (potentially) he/she might instead move further away to guard another entrance for the incoming waves of enemies. It’s very subtle of course and is not guaranteed to have such impact in actual game-play mechanics. But regardless of how adding such idling animations would “add” to the actual game-play itself I believe that adding such animations would certainly not “remove” anything from the game.

It would instead simply contribute to the attention to details and add to the believability and alleviate the reliance on suspension of disbelief. Since at the moment we might have to assume that the character is not always either idling or moving, but might also just happen to “look around” while idling and not just stretching muscles until the player decides to press movement keys on the keyboard.

I just wanted to add this suggestion for the developers to potentially consider it.

Thanks.