Guild Wars 2

Best defense, no be there.

So it’s more mummy content. I’m glad I’m sitting this one out so far.

VOLKON.1290:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Sorry, I’m all for a system that supports all modes of play, but while it is possible to do well in other types of gear and to build characters around other modes of play DPS is still king.

Well, that’s love and all. While all the “kings” are waypointing back to the start of the tower the rest of us that actually use the full aspects of the combat system will be waiting for you at the top.

DPS was never king in GW2. Content was too simplified. Fortunately we’re seeing things refreshingly shift back to fight and content that is reinforcing combat the way it was intended in GW2.

I honestly have no idea what game you’ve been playing but you’re wrong. Zerks have already been explaining repeatedly in this very thread how they don’t have any trouble clearing this content. As much as I like to think I’m competent and capable in my Cleric gear I can still watch a zerker warrior buzzsaw through things that would take me forever to beat. The only content so far that I won out was the Viscount of Candy Corn because I could actually solo him, until the Labyrinth Horror inevitably showed up and ganked me.

This game was supposed to be about DPS, Support and Crowd Control, but CC doesn’t work on bosses, and Support is ancillary. All you actually need to complete content is DPS and then more DPS. If you come in with too much Support and/or too much Control you’ll be creamed. It’s impossible to have too much DPS, therefore it is obvious that things were balanced around DPS exclusively.

You can shove your head in the sand as much as you want and say it ain’t so, but it is. And, short of a major overhaul of the entire games design, it always will be. As a Ranger you can take my word for it when I say waiting for major overhauls in game design is not worth undertaking.

VOLKON.1290:

BlackDevil.9268:

VOLKON.1290:

BlackDevil.9268:

VOLKON.1290:

BlackDevil.9268:

VOLKON.1290:

BlackDevil.9268:

You know, you can kill everything in the tower with full zerker too. You just need to ‘’learn to dodge’‘. Would be fun when they would release a dungeon with boss timers so you actually need to run dps specced.
Until they do that, I don’t think I’ll enjoy PvE in this game a lot…

Ugh… a dps race type of boss would be horrible for this game. It would only reinforce the fallacy that dps trumps all in GW2. I like that they’re working to break that bad habit that lesser MMOs have cursed upon so many.

Why?
The whole game is already based around ’’dps’’, especially PvE.
The real ‘’pve pro’s’’ only run in full zerker to finish everything as quickly as possible. Wouldn’t blame them tbh, getting rewards the fastest way is pretty much the only thing that keeps pve interesting in this game, the combat itself is just horribly motivated to make a macro to spam 1, move with 1 hand and kitten with the other one. That’s about the skill you need to play PvE in GW2.
The only way to fix that is to put a time limit on bosses so people actually start figuring out what else there is besides #1 spam and troll defensive builds.

So yeah, I don’t really see your point.

The whole game? No, no it isn’t. As a matter of fact, berserker groups are the largest suppliers of income in WvW. Bags galore and they shatter like phantasms on a sunny winters day. Now, perhaps a lot of the simpler areas in PvE are fine with the disillusioned zerker crowd, but it’s time they took off the training wheels and learned to actually use the rest of the skill bar, gear options and trait options that are in the game for a reason.

‘’berseker groups’’, as in raids or blobs is probably as popular as the roaming section in this game is. And well, i can tell you, the majority of the roamers runs quite dps based specs.

And for the $96,000.00 question… So?

So, you’re comparing PvE with WvW and you still haven’t replied to my question:

VOLKON.1290:

Ugh… a dps race type of boss would be horrible for this game.

Why?

I already answered that. It reinforces the fallacy that the combat system in this game is purely dps based. Newer players to GW2 as a result learn to play poorly and when faced with the more complicated aspects of the game, be it WvW or dungeons and towers with more complicated mechanics, wind up liabilities. They become the inflexible yet loud few that yell on the forums about how something is too hard to complete (hits too hard, too many conditions, etc.) and scream for nerfs to content that is perfectly fine and already quite well balanced around a combat system designed to utilize a combination of damage, control and support skills.

Sorry, I’m all for a system that supports all modes of play, but while it is possible to do well in other types of gear and to build characters around other modes of play DPS is still king. In order for a thing to be a fallacy it can’t be true and it is true more often than it is not in this game. WvW and sPvP are the exceptions and the reason is the same for both of them: fighting other players. For everything exclusively PvE DPS is king.

Sorry, but the game isn’t skill based, there isn’t permadeath, we’re not trapped in the tower, each floor isn’t a fully realized zone, and there aren’t a hundred floors, just three. The only connection I see between the two is that a tower exists. This is obviously based on the expansion to Baldur’s Gate, cause that involved a tower also…

Sorry, it’s cool you liked a thing and were willing to make a significantly more relevant link between the two than exists, but that is still what you did. They aren’t comparable and they aren’t related.

BlackDevil.9268:

You know, you can kill everything in the tower with full zerker too. You just need to ‘’learn to dodge’‘. Would be fun when they would release a dungeon with boss timers so you actually need to run dps specced.
Until they do that, I don’t think I’ll enjoy PvE in this game a lot…

I assume, then, that you’re into Tequatl, yes? If anything in this game is a DPS race, he is. Of course it’s a DPS race you can’t use zerker for, so maybe not.

Shades.4572:

+1 I agree as well, it annoying! There are so many orders on the tp that are lower. Anet needs to do a clean up and wipe the orders out and send the coin back. I can’t tell you how many times I was about to sell a trinket for 1c less then vendor value just because there was hundreds of orders for it.

Leamas.5803:

Also agreed.

Got this weird error:
An Error Prevented Saving:
Message Body length must at least be 15.

That error is suppose to promote people to actually contribute to the thread and not just say/give one or 2 word replies. Since having a bunch of replies that is just “agree” or “bump” is not exactly helpful to the discussion.

So if you do just want to say Agree just turn it into a full sentence to met the min limit

Meh,if that’s all that needs to be said then it certainly does contribute… not bump, obviously.

Agreed

Thobek.1730:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Given the tone he had and the other fallacies he made about the story and how he went out of his way to make the entire LS sound like it’s all about Scarlet when it isn’t, not really. Especially since the typo did make sense grammatically. I took that sentence as the same as what he said about Motto and Tequatl which is “it’s tied to Scarlet.”

the strange thing is the Anet developers said that all the LS paths would lead to a point which hasn’t happened yet and I can’t see it happening. I agree with you, it’s very unlikely that all LS paths are connected. And if they are its through 2-3 degrees of separation.

Which was the whole point of that post I made… funny that.

This game is in multiple languages, right? If it supports multiple languages already, why doesn’t this contest? They obviously have a translator somewhere, otherwise they couldn’t address disparate language support questions.

JonPeters.5630:

Kal Spiro.9745:

JonPeters.5630:

Kal Spiro.9745:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

JonPeters.5630:

Sytherek.7689:

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

Since you asked so nicely. The underwater skill is an instant skill which doesn’t not require the AI to change it’s think state, as it can fire off during other actions. The land skill plumbs into our animation system which requires the drake to change it think state and execute a new order to the animation system. Both AI think state and animation can’t be running 100% of the time on every creature on the server for obvious reasons (it would create massive CPU usage and generate tons of skill lag) Animations are masked by client side blending, but the AI stuff has no way to be masked. We can make special cases for Ranger Pet F2, but doing so requires time and testing.

Can someone put this in layman’s terms?

Due to poor programming concepts pets have to actually contact the server and effectively ask for permission to run their F2 ability if any animations are involved in the ability. They then have to wait for the server to respond before they actually pull off the maneuver.

Being ignorant about how an online game must function does not make for good laymans terms. If we did not validate skill use on the server players could hack their clients to use skills without cooldown. I don’t think a lot of players would enjoy that.

That’s true, but the way your describing it doesn’t make any sense either. F2 should be an automatic block. It doesn’t matter what the pet is doing or trying to do. It should not need to reference some list, or work it’s way through a decision tree. As soon as the system sees F2 it should wipe the out whatever the pet was about to do, or what it planned to do next and immediately interpose it with the F2 command.

Just like when I’m in the middle of any action that isn’t a leap and I hit dodge. The system doesn’t have to figure out if I should finish doing what I was doing, or what animations to do, it stops everything and throws me in the proper direction running the dodge animation.

That’s how Pets should work. This also “should” not effect anything else because only Ranger pets even have an F2 to interpose it. It’s not like a Scale is suddenly going to have an F2 go off and interrupt its regen vomit, there is no F2 to go off.

Maybe it would be a tough change to throw this in now, but that’s why I said poor programming, this is something that should have been done as soon as F2 for Pets became a thing. The fact that it has never been addressed in any way is a poor programming decision.

Right but we are not going to get into the nitty gritty of server programming and how a giant online game needs to send packets back and forth to a multitude of clients and how it needs to handle dropped packets, and how it needs to handle different kinds of server hops, and how it needs to prioritize what it send/receive when the client bandwidth is overloaded. Let’s please leave any technical discussions out of this. This is a design discussion on potential ranger changes and I think if you look at the overall performance/uptime/etc of our server structure with or without some actual expertise you would have a hard time arguing that Guild Wars 2 is not one of the most technically sound massive online games to date.

You brought it up, but seriously, if this was a problem for the pets, shouldn’t it be a problem for every key we hit? It either does a thing, or it doesn’t. In the pets case it doesn’t, in everything elses case it does. If the problem was infrastructure, that doesn’t make sense.

Simple point when prioritizing: everything the player actively controls should have a higher priority than something the player doesn’t control. Meaning all F keys should supersede any action the pet is trying to take on its own, no matter what that action is.

JonPeters.5630:

Kal Spiro.9745:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

JonPeters.5630:

Sytherek.7689:

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

Since you asked so nicely. The underwater skill is an instant skill which doesn’t not require the AI to change it’s think state, as it can fire off during other actions. The land skill plumbs into our animation system which requires the drake to change it think state and execute a new order to the animation system. Both AI think state and animation can’t be running 100% of the time on every creature on the server for obvious reasons (it would create massive CPU usage and generate tons of skill lag) Animations are masked by client side blending, but the AI stuff has no way to be masked. We can make special cases for Ranger Pet F2, but doing so requires time and testing.

Can someone put this in layman’s terms?

Due to poor programming concepts pets have to actually contact the server and effectively ask for permission to run their F2 ability if any animations are involved in the ability. They then have to wait for the server to respond before they actually pull off the maneuver.

Being ignorant about how an online game must function does not make for good laymans terms. If we did not validate skill use on the server players could hack their clients to use skills without cooldown. I don’t think a lot of players would enjoy that.

That’s true, but the way your describing it doesn’t make any sense either. F2 should be an automatic block. It doesn’t matter what the pet is doing or trying to do. It should not need to reference some list, or work it’s way through a decision tree. As soon as the system sees F2 it should wipe the out whatever the pet was about to do, or what it planned to do next and immediately interpose it with the F2 command.

Just like when I’m in the middle of any action that isn’t a leap and I hit dodge. The system doesn’t have to figure out if I should finish doing what I was doing, or what animations to do, it stops everything and throws me in the proper direction running the dodge animation.

That’s how Pets should work. This also “should” not effect anything else because only Ranger pets even have an F2 to interpose it. It’s not like a Scale is suddenly going to have an F2 go off and interrupt its regen vomit, there is no F2 to go off.

Maybe it would be a tough change to throw this in now, but that’s why I said poor programming, this is something that should have been done as soon as F2 for Pets became a thing. The fact that it has never been addressed in any way is a poor programming concept.

ChillyChinaman.6057:

JonPeters.5630:

Sytherek.7689:

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

Since you asked so nicely. The underwater skill is an instant skill which doesn’t not require the AI to change it’s think state, as it can fire off during other actions. The land skill plumbs into our animation system which requires the drake to change it think state and execute a new order to the animation system. Both AI think state and animation can’t be running 100% of the time on every creature on the server for obvious reasons (it would create massive CPU usage and generate tons of skill lag) Animations are masked by client side blending, but the AI stuff has no way to be masked. We can make special cases for Ranger Pet F2, but doing so requires time and testing.

Can someone put this in layman’s terms?

Due to poor programming concepts pets have to actually contact the server and effectively ask for permission to run their F2 ability if any animations are involved in the ability. They then have to wait for the server to respond before they actually pull off the maneuver.

MastaNeenja.1537:

I saw tri chest and immediately thought of the colors blue and green. Fool me once with the aetherchests and shame on you NCsoft, fool me twice and shame on me.

That’s strange, the first thing I thought of was Zelda

JonPeters.5630:

I just had a wacky idea that might make some aspects of MH sword less frustrating. I’ll test it out when I get in to work and report back.

Jon

So, how did that idea pan out? What was it to begin with?

There is a lot of interesting discussion going on here. I’m glad I started a realish thread instead of just writing First, cause those don’t fly.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The Zephyrites aren’t related to the Aetherblades. What the hell are you talking about man. They’re the legacy-descendants of the Brotherhood of the Dragon, the dwarves in GW1 who protected and worked with Glint.

Seriously, if you’re going to argue about people learning the story maybe you could too?

Who were the bad guys for the Zephyrites? The Sky Pirates. Who makes up the Aetherblades? The Sky Pirates augmented with Inquest technology. That is how the Zephyrite arc is connected to Scarlet. She took the Sky Pirates and hooked them up with better gear to make a more dangerous organization.

Vox Hollow.2736:

I just had a wacky idea that might make some aspects of MH sword less frustrating. I’ll test it out when I get in to work and report back.

Thank you kindly.
Even if it doesn’t pan out, I do want to commend you for taking another look at it in response to our feedback.

Ohhh. That’s a neat idea, Xsorus.
Hilt Bash stepping on Moment of Clarity’s toes has always been a bit odd. You could totally change it to something else. Though Aegis is probably pushing into Guardian territory. How would you feel about Protect?

I’ve got plenty of protect already every time I dodge.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Advent.6193:

Meh. I don’t even hate Scarlet (in fact, she rather cracks me up), but the desire to connect her to all of Tyria’s dirty deeds is starting to offend the crap out of me.

Molten Alliance, Aetherblades, Queen’s Jubilee, and Toxic Alliance is far from “all of Tyria’s dirty deeds.” In just the Living Story alone there’s Ozzy and Eddie Thorn, Tixx/Toxx, the Zephyrites, Motto, and Tequatl which thus far hold no relevance to Scarlet.

While Scarlet is meant to be the main focus, she’s far from connected everything to her.

Is this going to have to be six degrees from Scarlet?

Ozzy/Eddie, Tixx/Toxx are holidays and hardly dirty deeds. The Zephyrites were plagues by sky pirates who are part of the Aetherblades who are controlled by Scarlet. Motto is Asura and doesn’t have a complete grasp of/ control of his creation. Scarlet was taught in all three colleges of the Asura and apparently saw the eternal alchemy, it would be right up her alley to take control of the SAB and use it against Tyria. Tequatl has grown powerful from reasons unknown following the defeat of Zaitan, which is counter intuitive to expectations, it’s possible that Scarlet could be behind it. It’s even possible that Scarlet is the one who bankrolled Canach and pushed him toward his ridiculous plans to mess up Southsun. It’s even feasible that she’s the reason the Consortium went there at all.

Is this absurd speculation and an obvious attempt to involve Scarlet in things she has no business with? Of course, but so is everything else involving her, so why stop there?

Yeah, that music was so thematically inappropriate for the video it’s ridiculous.

Oh good. The update where Scarlet takes all the credit again and is still annoying.

Substance E.4852:

Holland.9351:

There is something interesting he said:
The more toughness you have, the more you get attacked.

I did not know this. I thought PvE was mostly random.

There seems to be more to it than that but that is one element of their wacky aggro system.

That’s what I’ve been saying for a while but people dismissed me and said that’s not how agro works. There you go, yeah it is. Toughness = Agro.

Orodret.8230:

Dam, thats a wall of text. sorry

Rather than reply to your own post, why not click the little pencil icon on your original post in order to edit it and clean it up a little?

JonPeters.5630:

Main-hand sword
I just want to clarify for good that main hand sword is currently working as intended. All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional.

So the dodge lock that occurs for a full second after the end of the leap while literally not doing anything, no animation, no action, nothing, is working as intended?

Recently, so no better reason than to screw around and see if I could get the hang of the sword, after all, I started playing with it in between offshoots. I have participate in many of these sword debates in favor of major overhauls, but I totally understand that it’s unfair to change the weapon to please some people when there are others who like it as it is.

Step one is, turn off auto-attack. This is the only way to use Sword effectively. Then attack something. Attack, Kick, Leap. Leap finishes, there is no movement. Auto is off, so no follow up attack. Dodge. Nothing happens. This is working as intended and not a bug? Really? No other leap works like this. All other leaps allow you dodge immediately after the leap finishes, but not Sword chain 3. So are you absolutely certain this is working as intended?

Terkov.4138:

CETheLucid.3964:

thefantasticg.3984:

-snip-

…

I like pet too. And? Just because of that there is no reason to don’t have another OPTION. Just because one person likes or dislikes something, it shouldn’t limit all other ppl playing this class.

I learned to love pet classes in WoW, where I could do my normal dmg without thinking about pet and still be happy owner of pet.
Even in GW1 ranger could use pet and still don’t kitten his bow abilities (actually, I wanted pet so much I threw it into standard barrager build lol).

I wasn’t going to comment because this thread is so deep, and these posts are pretty old, but come on.

I don’t really like the thief steal mechanic. I think it’s dumb. I am perfectly ok with the thief’s mechanic being entirely based on initiative. Just because I don’t like it, though, doesn’t mean I get to just replace it. I really hate the Warrior mechanic. Compared to everyone else it just seems dumb. Charge up one big attack and then use it. That’s not very exciting. I still don’t get to have any options, though, that’s the mechanic. The Mesmer mechanic is also kind of annoying. It’s more advanced than both Thief and Warrior, since you have three or four different things, but it’s all based around breaking the things you’ve been spending your time building up. That seems dumb to me. There’s just nothing I can do about it. So why should any Ranger get to replace their pets just because they don’t like them?

That is the class mechanic. If they haven’t fixed it in all this time why in the world would you think they would replace it? Why do you think you deserve to have something different when no one else has that option? Because you want it more? Because unlike anyone who plays these other classes and realized their class mechanics aren’t for them you have some deep seeded need that forces you to play this class regardless? It just makes no sense.

lordkrall.7241:

Kal Spiro.9745:

I’m sorry, have you spent any time near the tower? I have incredibly strong regen and I still dropped in nothing flat. I hope you’re not mistaking the silly fun mechanic surrounding the offshoots as toxic, cause that’s not it. Toxic is a green condition with the poison skull on it and it will kill you.

Incorrect. I just tried it. The skill does NOT remove the Suffocation Toxic that the tower itself spreads, the only way to remove it is to move away from the area.
Which is also exactly what the skill says. It removes Toxic Pollen, which is the things that are spread at the Outshoots.

Oh, well that is stupid then. That’s not dangerous at all, and the hallucination effect is all sorts of fun. I didn’t really feel like spending 5 gold for a skill, now I have even less reason nor desire to do so.

lordkrall.7241:

Why would it require it?
I have yet to see a single thing in the game that is required for any content, so why would that suddenly be the case?

Toxic is not really that dangerous, so even if you can’t remove it you won’t really die from it.

I’m sorry, have you spent any time near the tower? I have incredibly strong regen and I still dropped in nothing flat. I hope you’re not mistaking the silly fun mechanic surrounding the offshoots as toxic, cause that’s not it. Toxic is a green condition with the poison skull on it and it will kill you.

Tydarius.2631:

With no official response regarding the matter, here’s my estimation of what this situation all comes down to.

Basically, the “feminist” of today isn’t looking so much for equality, as superiority. GW2’s lore/story direction seems be a visual representation of this. Not saying whomever is coming up with these ideas is a “feminist” per say, however, it does beg the question, why go to such lengths to blatantly denigrate male characters?

One would, or could not be accused of hyperbole by stating that this whole female-centric GW2/LS lore angle feels akin to retribution. It does indeed feel as if someone is trying desperately to get back at males anyway they can. In this case, using story writing

Its not so much due to the obvious quantity disparity, mind you, so much as its about quality of said male character development.

For every hyper intelligent, strong willed, cunning, courageous, and nearly perfect female character thus far introduced, (which tends to essentially describe every major female character introduced so far), there’s an equally inept, emotionally unstable, inexperienced, cowardly, or downright imbecilic male character counterpart.

At this point, whomever is writing this stuff isn’t even trying to be nonchalant about it, its becoming downright hostile. Am I wrong? Can we truly sit here and attempt to claim that the ratio between truly Heroic female and male characters in this game is even remotely balanced? Or, have I been looking at this all wrong.?

Are females the sole target audience for this game? Am I simply in a literal “no mans land”, and shouldn’t expect equal and fair treatment, (for bot genders), when it comes to RPG character development. Should I simply lower my expectations, and be happy with whatever meager lore scraps given by our benevolent writers? Or, should I simply dismiss GW2’s lore altogether?

I’d really like to hear from Anet about this. I really would, not that I’d expect to.

Anyways, Its worth keeping an eye on just to see how far these, or this individual writer(s) goes with this…and I hate to use the term…however, it certainly is starting to resemble an “agenda”, of sorts.

You truly have an absurdly skewed view of things. Apparently having a couple skills and one friend makes a woman a "hyper intelligent, strong willed, cunning, courageous, and nearly perfect female character. "

I already answered your question. There are only four characters that could truly be considered flawless. Two of which have almost no personality and are kept devoid of any meaningful interaction with the player, the females. Two of which have a lot of interaction with the player and a fair in depth character. Rytlock is very rich in depth and Trehearn is around for almost half of the player story. All the Living Story characters are around for a couple weeks or a month at most before they stop being relevant again. For me it’s usually about a week cause that’s the most amount of time I’ve ever spent finishing the meta. But I keep getting reintroduced to those other four as I run more and more characters through the personal story.

Mordule Standish.2371:

OP – Maybe because they will re-pawn again in just a few minutes.

Maybe it would have been better if they only spawned daily and every one gave a spore then? It does seem kind of wrong to waste 4 or 5 sickles in order to get one mat.

I think I’m missing something. Where is this 10 coming from? I got todays Tower Daily after killing 3 champions, and without moving. I just waited at the waypoint south of Marjory for the champion event to spawn three times. It took about an hour total.

Infamous Darkness.3284:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Infamous Darkness.3284:

Their “gender” is selected by the Pale Tree prior to emergence and is distinguished by the same general features as human genders.²

I like that gender is in quotes, denoting that it is not a real thing. Basically this whole line says that they look like they have genders, but they really don’t. Which is what I said.

you are making it out like I’m disagreeing with you while all I am trying to do is provide (preserve in some cases in this thread) the lore and watch the argument as it is quite enjoyable to me. Or maybe I’m just reading too much into what you are saying.

Ah, well regardless of my actual intentions, I was just indicating that the lore agrees with me, then.

Aedelric.1287:

The numbers people are listing for the living story characters seem inaccurate, especially as they apparently note every minor character not related to the story. What next? We start counting displaced Grawl from Flame & Frost?

These are all the important characters in the living story and the number of appearances to date as best as I can tell, please correct me if I am wrong. I am excluding cameo’s that do not affect the living story, like Logan/Eir etc. This is main characters only or characters important to the story arc.

Living Story Characters

Ellen Kiel (9)
Levvi (1)
Rox (5)
Ottilia (2)
Lady Kasmeer Meade (5)
Marjory Delaqua (2)
Mai Trin (2)
Scarlet Briar (3)
Caithe (1)

Magnus the Bloody Handed (1)
Canach (3)
Subdirector Noll (1)
Braham Eirsson (6)
Lord Faren (2)
Evon Gnashblade (3)
Emissary Vorpp (1)

Fesitvals (Do not count as not part of the living story)
Tixx & Toxx
Moto & crew
Mad King Thorn, Bloody Prince, Magister Tassi

Source;
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_summary

Nine/seven in favour of female, not a big deal at all. But when you consider which of those are critically important recurring NPC’s, or which are heroes/villains and you do start to see an issue.

Villain
Canach, Subdirector Noll, Evon Gnashblade

Mai Trin, Scarlet Briar

Hero
Braham Eirsson, Emissary Vorpp

Ellen Kiel, Caithe, Rox, Lady Kasmeer Meade, Marjory Delaqua

Definitely a preference towards female heroes, I do not mind having so many quality female NPC’s my problem is the lack of male counterparts, the only consistent male hero we have in the living story is Braham who has not been in the last several living story updates. He is not an overly popular character and is quite the idiot, personally I do not find him relatable and I am sure I am not alone in that opinion, especially after reading many of the posts here. In many ways he is essentially a Logan clone, a man with lady woes but much more dumb.

Simply put, we do need more male heroes, I would even settle with just one, perhaps modeled after Tybalt or Forgal as they have strong personalities and quite well liked by the fans.

Caithe shouldn’t be considered a Living Story Hero. She’s only shown up as part of the dungeon, for which she was already a part. Kasmeer should also not be considered a hero because she’s a sidekick. That makes your list even. Yay random and pointless maths.

Infamous Darkness.3284:

Their “gender” is selected by the Pale Tree prior to emergence and is distinguished by the same general features as human genders.²

I like that gender is in quotes, denoting that it is not a real thing. Basically this whole line says that they look like they have genders, but they really don’t. Which is what I said.

Northlander.4619:

Sylvari, like elves, have genders.

They don’t, actually. They’re plants. They don’t reproduce. They have forms they find appealing and even those forms have no baring on anything relating to their outlooks, emotions nor attitudes. They simply are. They don’t even have gender identities because that would be a pointless notion to them, having no concept of what gender really is, nor what it’s for.

Consider that in a very real way all Sylvari are just children. The oldest Sylvari in the world are only in their twenties.

bravoart.5308:

Redenaz.8631:

I’m just not sure what the point of them is. When I harvest five closely-grouped nodes and get one or two Pristine samples, I’m left wondering why there wasn’t just one or two useful ones instead. I’m less “bothered” than I am “confused.”

To use your harvesting sickles. Unless you have the infinite one, of course…

That’s probably why I haven’t taken note. If I were also wasting sickles that would really upset me.

Evelynddra.9265:

Two things.

1) 45% of people who play video games are women. That’s very nearly half. So this whole “men play ALL the games!” is total junk. Also

2) There was a study done that said if a group of people were 17% of women, men in the group think it’s 50-50. And if there’s 33% women, men think there are more women than men. Which seems fairly relevant since someone above mentioned there were 16 men in the living story to 11 women, yet here we are debating how it’s way more women in the living story.

Also, basing it on the living story and living story alone is stupid. You can’t pick such a small base and make asumtions on it. Even if the living story had more ladies, it doesn’t change the fact that a lot of other prominent NPCs are male.

As a side note, evo psych is just used by jerks to justify their wrong beliefs (like ‘women are just better at house stuff! It’s science!’ or ‘men are just better at everything! It’s science!’).

Unfortunately your second point conflicts with your first point. Based on your second point, in order for men to think more men play video games than women there would have to be fewer than 17% female players. At 45% men should think only women play video games.

Northlander.4619:

Except it in so far matters because that’s the exact argument of the OP. I don’t care about how you view the situation.

They we’re done here. I thought we were having a friendly argument between two, at least somewhat, passionate people. If you don’t care about what I think why should I care about anything you have to say about the situation?

The OP is pointless and wrong. That has been my stance since I first started posting in this thread. There is no point in gauging “values” of characters because that give weight to the premise which was already flawed. If you only care about the numbers and trying to find some fair median then you’re part of the problem and I have no more time for you.

Oh, and I never said gender stereotypes don’t matter. I said gender doesn’t matter.

Verow.6904:

When I started playing this game I was leveling many different characters and I was always doing all the story quests, from what I saw this game is full of female characters.
Destinys Edge 3/5 females
pact leaders 2/3 females
Living world full of females
Humans have a queen
Silvari have a Mother tree
Human gods half of them are Females
I think 2/3 important characters in this game’s world are Females, the game needs some strong scary kitten dudes because it doesnt feel epic anymore. Everytime I remember what happened with lord farren in that solo instance I want to spit on my combuter screen.

Desinty’s Edge, I’ll give it to you.
Pact Leaders 2/3, pact intermediaries 1/3. We don’t deal with the leaders so Pact is even.
Living World… full of females is not really a relevant calculation.
Human leader, Sylvari Leader… what about the other races?
Norn leader, they only sort of have a leader, but he’s a guy. If you go by the shamans they’re mostly male.
Charr Tribunes, I believe is 2/3, but I’m also pretty sure the main leader of the Charr is a guy. The fact that Rytlock is getting to count twice is a too bad.
Asura, majority male on the Council.
World Leaders comes out ahead for males.

So it seems that the list is actually coming out primarily even with an emphasis on males.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

DE isn’t even together when we see them. They were always the 6 of them, then one died, and they weren’t DE anymore.

Also no one in the game has met the human gods. They count?

Touché. I just accept the argument because they’re getting desperate and I’ll allow a handicap, especially when it doesn’t actually help.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Again, DE has 6 members, 3 males, 3 females.

To be fair, no one in the game has ever met Snaff because he died long before we show up and there aren’t any flashback events. The only reason anyone might even know what he looks like is because Eir carved a statue of him.

Northlander.4619:

Kal Spiro.9745:

All instances of dwarves without beards is a reprehensible travesty and you should be ashamed of yourself for even acknowledging them, let alone actually use them as an argument in your post.

And I never said elves weren’t guys nor anything about girls, obviously roughly half of all the elves have to be male since they’re probably mammals. The Sylvari don’t, and technically none of them are male nor female because they’re all plants, not animals. I just said they’re all chicks.

It’s a bit too late to make it out too look as an argument you made for “fun”. The fact that you used a bad argument. They have established gender identity in lore as well as in appearance.

Also that’s not what you said. You said “I still subscribe to the idea that Sylvari are elves and all elves are chicks, so Trehearn, Scarlet, Caithe, it makes no difference if they’re male or female they’re Sylvari so they’re girls.”.

Are you saying that chicks is a gender neutral term for elves. I mean you said all elves are chicks but apparently that includes male elves now? Fascinating. You learn new things every day in the wonderful world of the Internet. However you also compared Sylvari to Elves and then proceed to say Sylvari are all girls. If this is true wouldn’t that mean that all elves are also girls? Now I’m confused!

You also said “Funny thing about equality. In order for it to exist this debate needs to not matter. Because if there was equality no one would care.”

Then you make an argument that basically supports the idea that there’s a gender imbalance because apparently Trahernia and Canach fall into female camp just because they are Sylvari and all Sylvari are “chicks”.

Well if I said it, then I’ll stand by it regardless of what I meant. They’re girls. Whether or not they’re guys, male or female, they’re still girls. I can live with that.

So I’ll skip ahead to your end argument. Your problem here is you seem to think that equality and balance are the same thing, or even relevant in comparison to each other. If you would go on to quote me you would see I said it isn’t the quantity of them that matters, it’s the quality. They could be all female, as long as they’re all well made, defined and represented characters then the number doesn’t matter.

So no, I did not then throw in with the, “There’s an imbalance, wah wah wah, girls scare me I need more sausage in my MMO,” camp. I just made a statement that the Sylvari as a race don’t matter and can’t be used in the argument because their apparent gender doesn’t matter, they’re all chicks, or girls, or whatever.

Incidentally I am really enjoying how invested you apparently are in this whole dwarves are dudes and elves are chicks debate. I really hope you’re female because it would totally mess with my outlook of the world if you turned out to be a guy. Mostly cause I’m only ever seen other women make these kinds of outbursts against the idea, while guys typically just accept it in stride.

So I did them all yesterday and had no problem. I don’t know what’s being done wrong, but it does work as intended for some.

Northlander.4619:

Kal Spiro.9745:

No no, I’ll bite. As for dwarves, mainly it’s the beard. Any proper dwarf has a beard. Dwarves are supposed to have beards and quaff and sing songs about gold. The most important aspect in any Dwarven romance is first determining if the Dwarf you fancy is actually of the opposite sex. Dwarves are dudes. It’s what defines them as a race, along with being short, dirty and perpetually mining for precious minerals.

Elves are in every way the opposite of dwarves. They do not have beards or facial hair of any kind, ever. They are lithe and graceful and do not quaff. (Not that they have a beard to store their spilled ale in anyway.) As such, Dwarves being dudes as represented before, Elves are chicks.

I hope this has been educational.

Ok so your argument is that because elves are lithe and graceful they are not guys because apparently guys can not be lithe and graceful? Umm ok. Also DnD has a long tradition of female dwarves that do not have beards. I recommend doing a google search.

It was certainly educational to how your mind works but I doubt it should be used as a basis to judge how many male or female characters given living story has which is what this thread is about.

Your argument was that the gender of Trahernia, Scarlet, Caithe, Canach etc can be ignored because they are Sylvari and by your logic all Sylvari are girls. This is not true.

I could make an argument all Norn are male because you know. They are large, brash, boasty, competitive and aggressive which for some is what “real men” are about. That would be equally bad justification though.

All instances of dwarves without beards is a reprehensible travesty and you should be ashamed of yourself for even acknowledging them, let alone actually use them as an argument in your post.

And I never said elves weren’t guys nor anything about girls, obviously roughly half of all the elves have to be male since they’re probably mammals. The Sylvari don’t, and technically none of them are male nor female because they’re all plants, not animals. I just said they’re all chicks.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Northlander.4619:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Um, I’ll just throw the rest of that out because this right here… I’m arguing that no one should have a problem with this. And I say explicitly that I do not have a problem with it. So where exactly does this come from?

My point about Elves and Sylvari is that their physical gender is irrelevant, like dwarves. All dwarves are dudes and all elves are chicks, they just are, deal with it.

Well apparently you do have a problem because your comment about elves and dwarves is so absurd I’ve a hard time comperehending how anyone could have that view.

What exactly makes all Dwarves “dudes” and all Elves “chicks”? I don’t need to “deal with it” since the whole argument is absurd and I wager most people don’t see it like this.

There’s nothing in elves or dwarves that makes them gender neutral. I don’t think I’ve seen any game or fantasy piece where this is the case. I can’t even compherend how anyone could reach this conclusion? Please enlighten me what exactly makes elves “chicks” or dwarves “dudes”?

I think Kal’s post was not meant to be as serious as you’re making it, but I could be wrong!

No no, I’ll bite. As for dwarves, mainly it’s the beard. Any proper dwarf has a beard. Dwarves are supposed to have beards and quaff and sing songs about gold. The most important aspect in any Dwarven romance is first determining if the Dwarf you fancy is actually of the opposite sex. Dwarves are dudes. It’s what defines them as a race, along with being short, dirty and perpetually mining for precious minerals.

Elves are in every way the opposite of dwarves. They do not have beards or facial hair of any kind, ever. They are lithe and graceful and do not quaff. (Not that they have a beard to store their spilled ale in anyway.) As such, Dwarves being dudes as represented before, Elves are chicks.

I hope this has been educational.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Lorelei.7809:

So… might I ask you, why aren’t there more women? If you include holidays in there, and they are part of the Living World, then we need at least 1 more woman character to even it out (not sure whether or not to count Bloody Prince to make it 4 men).

Then we’ll have to add Tassi to the list; a side character since Halloween 2012 (!), played a central part in the story instance of Dragon Bash, inventor of the Tassi box, and the one who put the Bloody Prince back to rest.

Let’s not forget about Tassi.

She kicks kitten.

:)

That is a lie. The Tassi Box is just a reattunement of the Very Old Energy Detector that College of Statics Asura invented in the Personal Story. I’m pretty sure we get royalties every time another player uses one.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Why do you think that applies to Charr, Norns, Asura, or Sylvari? Explanation in detail please. Sylvari aren’t even animals in the normal sense, let alone mammals, and you think this applies to them? Norns have drastically different physiology to humans. Charr too. Asura probably aren’t mammals. So claiming “scientific” is utterly wrong.

This is a FANTASY GAME. Not “Olympics Simulator 2013”. Even the humans, are they ACTUALLY humans? We don’t know. They’re taller and better looking than humans in our world tend to be.

Asura are most likely mammals. But humans are definitely humans. They’re actually from Earth, brought to Tyria by the gods for some unspecified reason hundreds or thousands of years ago.

Just a bit of lore for you.

Thobek.1730:

I find it completely absurd that people still haven’t grasped what we are asking for here, or better still, why it matters.

So what if they put in some leading males heroes into the game that aren’t idiots… its not hurting anyone, why make it a big deal that we shouldn’t have them?

I just want a character that I like. Tybalt or Forgal for example. So what if I identify with those types of character more than we currently have. It should be an equal mix. why can’t we have that??

No no, I’m pretty sure you’re not understanding the counter arguments. The leading male heroes are not idiots. Even if they were, who exactly is it hurting? If putting them in wouldn’t hurt anyone, then that implies that not putting them in does? Is that right? Who is getting hurt by the state of the game at this moment, even if the assertion that capable female characters out weight capable male characters?

How about instead of complaining and demanding nonsense from the story you just let ANet write their game the way they want to. If you can’t find a character to relate to, too bad.

Lord Faren is a walking joke. He exists to be a buffoon, get in trouble, and look foolish until we rescue him. That’s okay, because he’s lovable, like a dumb puppy who runs into walls a lot. Braham has large muscles and less brain, though he has a good heart. His character arc has consisted of running after his stolen girlfriend, getting rejected, and taking his place as Rox’s flunkie. They now roam together, and he is the brawn to her brain, relying on her superior expertise to direct his meaty self.

Subdirector Noll is a petty and unlikeable middle manager who needs Kiel to sort out a bad situation. Canach is the other side of the coin in the aforementioned southsun scenario, and while he may have had a cause to his extremism, he’s caught by Kiel and shown up by her simultaneously as she solves the contract problem without bloodshed.

Speaking of contracts, Evon Gnashblade showed up without anything remotely resembling Kiel’s screentime, ran against her in an election while twirling his evil mustache, and lost. And finally, Logan Thackery showed up for the singular purpose of being shows as completely inept as the queen’s protector and verbally slapped down by Countess Anise for not being as calm, capable, and in control as she proved to be.

While I know some of that is deliberately phrasing things in a bad light, I invite you to consider to questions. First of all, can you name a prominent male character in the Living Story who is skilled, capable, and does not get shown up by a superior female? I’m not saying every single one needs to be a strong, independent male who don’t need no gal….but still.

Faren is supposed to be a doof. But he’s also a very skilled swordsman and always has the most pure intention… except with the ladies.

Braham is a strong, capable Norn who is not shown up by his oft present companion Roxx. They are friends and they work together. They provide witty banter amongst themselves and don’t overshadow either. He is not her sidekick. Is he dumb? Yeah, of course he is, he’s a Norn. But he’s also a good woodman and knows how to get things done, he just prefers to get things done by hitting them until they stop moving, again, he’s a Norn. They do not roam together, they both have their own separate lives and happen to come together from time to time because events permit it.

Subdirector Noll is a manager, that’s where that one should have ended. He’s not an adventurer, a soldier, nor a guard. His job is to make the refugees fulfill their contracts, not to track down weird happenings on a dangerous island. It’s Keil’s job to do what Keil did for him and it’s his job to also make sure she does it, because he’s a manager, his job is to manage.

Canach is probably the most capable male character in the entire game. He manages to evade the combined interests of however many organizations were after him for half a year. Then when he is finally discovered it’s back on the same island that started it all, and while Keil gets the collar for him she didn’t have anything to do with his capture and we all know that. But it doesn’t matter, even after being captured his plans were already too far gone to be stopped. His plan may have been misguided but he managed to win even after losing.

Evon Gnashblade, for his brief time was an amazing character. He was effectively set up to fail, yes, but it was still the players that chose against him, not ANet. It would have been nice for him to have gotten some screen time so we could get to know him better before he was pitted against her, then we would have actually been able to see what the people wanted. Regardless he wasn’t shown up, he simply didn’t get the popular vote.

Logan’s issues are a long standing thing and Anise was completely right to do what she did. It isn’t Logan’s job to protect the Queen and he should know that, she’s told him as much before. It’s the very reason that Desinty’s Edge failed. The Shining Blade protects the queen, Countess Anise leads the Shining Blade, it’s her job. The Seraph are soldiers, it’s there job to protect the people, he needed that slap in the face to realize that.

So the answer to the question is, from what I’m seeing, none of them have really been shown up by a more superior female. Logan is the only one who really got shown up, and that’s only because he was not kept in the loop.

Shriketalon.1937:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Ok, how about this. I’m unclear why this is a problem. Does that explain my position a bit better?

May I give it a bit of a go?

While I can’t say I’m outraged or raising torches about the male/female ratio in the Living Story, I have noticed a trend which is beginning to fray on my nerves. Basically, the LS consistently portrays female heroes as skilled, capable, and varied, while painting male heroes as inept, flawed, or reliant on their superior female counterparts.

What I took out of this was that decenters are sensationalizing female characters while failing to see the good qualities of the male characters.

The women are a diverse lot, but they all have something that makes them shine. Rox is a skilled soldier with an good sense of tactics and planning. Kiel is a capable protector with a strong moral code, but enough flexibility to be wily and adaptable. Marjory is a sly detective solving puzzles and gathering clues, despite not having a full gang riding around in a mystery machine. Kasmeer is dainty, to be sure, but she is still a fantastically powerful mesmer, as demonstrated by her recent disenchanting. Speaking of mesmers, Countess Anise is twelve steps ahead of anyone attempting to hurt the Queen, performing the job of protecting her majesty perfectly. Magister Tassi (who may not count, being a holiday character, just like Moto likely doesn’t count) is a superb historian and makes a mighty potent frosting glaze. We also have Caithe, who showed up just to get caught by a certain someone to show how big and mean the new baddie really was. And finally, of course, Scarlet is currently the god emperor of evil, at least according to the last ten months we’ve been fighting her.

Rox is a Charr, being a soldier is practically the definition of being a Charr. She is also lonely, naïve and unsure of herself. That is why she is trying so hard to win Rytlock’s approval, she is a gladium and he is one of the most celebrated Charr of her age, plus he’s a Tribune. That is also why she accepts the affections of her devourer companion.

Keil is a kid playing at soldier, which is worse considering she is an adult. She’s a nobody who happened to be in the right places at the right times, but only really go by on the skin of her teeth and thanks to the intervention of the player character. She seems to be pure of intention, but that only goes so far.

Majory is a late 50s detective novel detective, so all those things simply exist by virtue of the role she’s in. She’s also emotionally distant and has no friends to ride in a van with her. Kasmeer is more of a hanger-on than a friend, at least that’s how it seems to me from Marjory’s point of view.

Kasmeer is a ditz, there isn’t much more to say about that. The only reason Kasmeer isn’t Harley Quinn is because Majory isn’t an evil sadistic psychopath.

Countess Anise is a the leader of the Shining Blade, so that’s her job in a nutshell. She is also an interesting character but not one anyone can actually get close to. The same situation that makes her capable separates her from all meaningful social interaction.

Magister Tassi is no more capable and special than any other Magister of Priory, of which the player character can become.

Caithe is one of the most broken female characters in the entire game. I would put her after Eir, who blames herself for Snaff’s death and the fall of Destiny’s Edge, but Eir comes to grips with that while Caithe never really gets over Faolain.

Scarlet is ridiculously powerful, but also annoying, obnoxious and generally hated for being who she is, not what she represents. It’s not really a representation of capability and power when she comes equipped with dais ex machina for any situation. Also I would say that if she had been male he would have been entirely too cliché.

Northlander.4619:

I think it demonstrates why you would have a problem with this situation where we have a lot strong female leads.

Um, I’ll just throw the rest of that out because this right here… I’m arguing that no one should have a problem with this. And I say explicitly that I do not have a problem with it. So where exactly does this come from?

My point about Elves and Sylvari is that their physical gender is irrelevant, like dwarves. All dwarves are dudes and all elves are chicks, they just are, deal with it.

Zylonite.5913:

>>Collect harvest 20 spores. Yuck.

took me freaking 3 hours. please DO NOT (repeat: DO NOT) make this a daily again. ever….

Congratulations on not reading and learning how to do it in minutes.

I’m unclear how a capable female in a leading role who also manages to maintain a strong degree of femininity in her dress and manner could be considered a Gurl. So no, I have not noticed any such developments.