Guild Wars 2

Personally, I’m currently more concerned about the clipping-stretching issues associated with the non-human races and body-types with armor sets then I am with the gemstore faces and hairstyles. And to be honest, I’m happy with the nonhuman racial choices in GW2; they are incredibly unique compared to most of typical elf/dwarf/orc/sparkle-colored human/etc, out there. It’s not every day in the MMO world where you get to play as a little techno-gremlin, or a sentient bioluminescent plant, or a giant cat-beast that runs on all fours. Or 6-foot samurai turkeys if we eventually get the Tengu.

The problem is that the non-human quality of the races was never properly implemented or utilized into the gameplay design, let alone the armor design for that matter.

Let’s say I’m playing as an Asura and I visit the miners’ cave in the new Dry Top zone. You know, the really dark one where you can’t see anything. Lore-wise, Asura had been living in caves some 250 years prior and evolved large ears and eyes to cope with the dark environmental conditions. So why can’t my Asura see in the dark? Maybe it would be more interesting (and meaningful) if night vision was implemented for Asura only, then maybe I could help lead or direct my non-Asuran party members through dark areas in zones or dungeons.
Another example: there’s a dialogue conversation between two charr in the Black Citadel, where one soldier warns another to always keep his claws sharpened as an “extra set of weapons.” Yet Charr players were never given a racial skill to use their claws so that they can inflict x3 bleeding for 5 seconds or something. Or even better, if I’m playing as a cat that can run on all fours, why do I have to run at the same speed of the other races? Why not have a skill option where I can almost as fast as a WoW Worgen with 10 second exhaustion cooldowns in between ever 30 seconds or so?
Another: Sylvari say they can sense the foliage and the plants around them. The current LS story takes advantage of soundless Sylvari by making them far more susceptible to Mordremoth’s corruption. What if a player’s sylvari character has the ability to sense Mordrem plants within a certain distance so that they can avoid being hindered by any potential Tower of Nightmares-inspired hallucinations from Mordremoth if they choose to run away?
Instead, all races are given the same treatment, there are no genuine advantages or disadvantages when it comes to choosing a race and their potential abilities are reduced to measly profession-inspired skills which do not play a key part in the gameplay mechanics. Making such skills quite useless and therefore rarely-used.
That basically leaves the player to choose their races based on aesthetics and personal preference. Animations and physical appearance become the prime factors, and it doesn’t help when a majority of the armor sets look kittening awful on the nonhuman races. Like the Sylvari or Asura? Be ready for your ears and leaves to clip through your armor or just be completely covered. Rolling Norn – specifically male Norn? I hope you like stretched textures. Play Charr? Congrats: you get both clipping AND stretched textures!

It’s even worse when almost of the armor sets are tailored to suit players with human characters, with the only exception being cultural armors. You get pieces that cover up the elaborate tattoos, fur patterns and bioluminescent lights on Norn, Charr and Sylvari and such; you know – the physical characteristics that make them unique from the other races. And then you have headgear that completely gets rid of the Asuras’ most defining tait – the ears. It then quickly becomes of case of “what’s the point,” or “why not just stick to generic elves and dwarves if they’re going to be this lazy with such unique MMO races?” Or simply – “why bother playing as anything else other than human?”

Still, it’s good news to see that Arenanet is finally starting to learn from their mistakes by including the PC’s race and upbringing into the LS narrative and finally fixing the tail-clipping with Charr when it comes to gemstore armor. But they still have a long, looong way to go and the cutesy baby-doll face options are the least of it.

The overall collection of gemstore hairstyles have been pretty awful for the female charr as well. Too flowy, smooth and pretty for something that’s a giant warmongering cat-beast. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve come to realize that the best hairstyles for charr are the ones that without all of the ornate decor that stick to dreads, mohawks and manes. If I want comedic or ridiculous, then I stick to the asura; that was their motif – not the charrs’.

As an artist, I’m also suspecting that it’s getting to the point where their designers are running out of hairstyle ideas for the charr or they need to off them and find someone else to do the job. It doesn’t help that my charr is the only one out of my 5 characters who hasn’t used a hairstylist kit because of all of these ridiculous, directionless, clip-ridden designs either.

If worse comes to worse and you still want to purchase LS1 items, then you can now visit the laurel merchants to get them in exchange for 25 gold and a few laurels.

Avariz.8241:

So is it Aerin or the Peace Master who has flipped and gone bad? Or is it a bit of both and the other?

Or Aerin had an accomplice who did the backstabbing while he planned the detonations. Thanks to the battle we know he was an engineer, they don’t use blades or assassinations to get the job done.

Also it’s pretty interesting in itself that a majority of important Sylvari that have been corrupted or did not come from the Pale Tree (such as Malyck) have been engineers.

It may not be Mordremoth, but it may be one of its vines or roots so to speak.

It would be interesting if Mordremoth was a giant, stablized tree-creature that spreads its corruption through the growth of its roots or vines.

Also the purple hue is reminiscent to the Tower of Nightmares; we’ll probably see more spores and toxic environmental hazards when we go deeper into the wastes.

I agree. The new music is excellent and does a great job of capturing the feel of being in a wide, harsh but majestic open landscape – yet also a sense of eerie, foreboding tension as if you’re really not supposed to be there.
They really nailed the atmosphere with these tracks. “The Fall of The Zephyrites” has been stuck in my head for a while now; meanwhile I found most of Jeremy’s Soule’s music for the vanilla soundtrack to be rather forgettable and even irritating over long periods of play time.

I don’t think I’ll be muting the music volume any time soon if the tracks for future Living Story installments installments continue to be on par with what we’ve heard in this new zone.

Taygus.4571:

people say its around for a month…I dont know for sure

Thanks. I figured the same too since Anet is very busy with season 2 and keeping the new China player base happy. Only time will tell now, I guess?

Can we expect it to follow the usual LS routine of two weeks, or will it be extended to a month in favor for the Chinese release and the new monthly content updates that Anet has in-store for season 2?

Dark Catalyst.1028:

La Goanna.8142:

lordkrall.7241:

Calae.1738:

I don’t think you are wrong.

I have a feeling that what we are seeing is a combination of milking the current playerbase and targeting a different market on another continent that has literally hundreds of millions of people.

The China market is HUGE. Even if this is just a cashgrab strategy, they can make bank and not care if the game itself died a quick death.

Ah yes. I am sure they would be willing to put 300+ people (and friends) out of a job for some swift dollars….

Well, I would assume that most of their best talent has left for a good reason….

And I agree with many of the posters in this thread. This game is quickly starting to look like another cash-grab P2W scenario. I suspect NCSoft wants to shelve GW2 to make way for their upcoming MMOs such as Wild Star (you know, the kind that requires everyone to pay for kitten monthly subscription fees no matter what.)

I give Anet 3-4 months tops for improvements, now that they’re really going to have to work for it if they want to wow their new Chinese players. If we continue to see more cash shop in exchange for more stealth drop nerfs and RNG, then I think it’s time to say goodbye to this game and hello to something else. And that new “something else” won’t be Wild Star if NCSoft’s business model is anything to go by.

I like how people complain about trivial subscriptions fees and then cry when they’re beloved F2P game becomes a cash grab.

Not that ALL F2P is bad. Rift has a very fair cash shop, but that’s the only example I can think of at the moment.

I have no problems with the cash shop. In fact I’m a huge supporter of the Gem Store and have already spent sooo much buying the skins and minis from it that I’d rather not share not my balance here out of embarrassment because of it.

My issue is that they’re ruining aspects completely unrelated to the gemstore through nerfing gold drops, mat drops, RNG chances and farming in an attempt to pressure players to take out their credit card for a quick fix.
The gemstore should be aesthetics, toys and boosters only, it has no buisness kittening around with the gameplay this drastically. And when it does, it practically becomes P2W.

So instead of nerfing the gameplay, how about releasing more appealing skins through the gemstore? You know what would be great? More racial armor types. I’d know I’d get out my credit card in a heartbeat if Anet released more armor skins that catered to the body types and aesthetics on charr, sylvari and Asura since Anet is too lazy to fix the clipping and stretching issues associated with non race-tier armors. I bet that would make them and many other players very happy.

Electro.4173:

Female Charr got Rox’s horns shortly after she was added to Living Story. That’s pretty much it so far, though.

I’m not sure if we’ll ever get a big batch of new horn styles, honestly. See, the thing is, while horns are a pretty big thing for Charr, the other races get much less impressive “secondary features”. Male Humans and Norn get facial hair, which is relatively major. Asura and Sylvari only get ears. And female Norn and Humans get nothing at all.

Given that imbalance of features between the races and genders, they wouldn’t make for a very good makeover kit / gem store addition. They may be exciting for Charr and male humans / norn I doubt the other 2 races would care that much about new ears (well, Asura might, sylvari probably not since half the hairstyles hide them anyway) and female norn and human players, which is the largest or 2nd largest chunk of the playerbase, wouldn’t get anything at all.

So my guess is that at most we’ll get a new horn style added passively every so often if they add a new character with different horns, but that’s about it.

I’d love to be proven wrong, though. New horn styles would be great.

I disagree about the “imbalance” of features between races. Charr have their horns and fur patterns, while Asura have ears and skin patterns. Sylvari also have distinct ears to choose from along with skin patterns and two skin types under the body types tab in character creation – one tree-like and one plant-like. Norns desperately need some more tattoos to choose from, and more facial hair types and textured muscle definition options would be welcoming as well.

This really only leaves humans at a disadvantage, and unfortunately 40% or so of the playerbase rolls human. So you can expect plenty of complaints and whining coming from the human players for not having enough distinct features – despite all of the armor skins catering to their racial body type and leaving the other races to suffer from clipping and texture stretching because of it.

However, even then you can still find good alternatives for humans. They could be given the opportunity to choose different make-up types and colors, freckles, moles, scars; accessories such as ear, nose and lip piercings and of course facial hair options for starters. Maybe even tattoos (of course none that are as detailed as the Norn variations, but may like, small shoulder or arm tats or something.) Norns could benefit from scar options as well.

Either way I agree with you, it’s about time Charr had new horn options, same goes for Asura and their ears. Another thing that would be nice is iris customization for both Charr and Asura, since eyes are one of Asuras’ most prominent features and Charr players could benefit from the option to choose between round or slit iris types.

I would like more skins.

Not grinding tokens or LS items to buy those skins, not RNG’d skins, I can even handle the stealth nerfs in gold and mats as long as I get something to wear and show off for all of the hard effort after completing my LS meta achievements. At this point, anything is better then 2 blues&1 green and a mess of LS items to clutter my bank space.

lordkrall.7241:

Calae.1738:

I don’t think you are wrong.

I have a feeling that what we are seeing is a combination of milking the current playerbase and targeting a different market on another continent that has literally hundreds of millions of people.

The China market is HUGE. Even if this is just a cashgrab strategy, they can make bank and not care if the game itself died a quick death.

Ah yes. I am sure they would be willing to put 300+ people (and friends) out of a job for some swift dollars….

Well, I would assume that most of their best talent has left for a good reason….

And I agree with many of the posters in this thread. This game is quickly starting to look like another cash-grab P2W scenario. I suspect NCSoft wants to shelve GW2 to make way for their upcoming MMOs such as Wild Star (you know, the kind that requires everyone to pay for kitten monthly subscription fees no matter what.)

I give Anet 3-4 months tops for improvements, now that they’re really going to have to work for it if they want to wow their new Chinese players. If we continue to see more cash shop in exchange for more stealth drop nerfs and RNG, then I think it’s time to say goodbye to this game and hello to something else. And that new “something else” won’t be Wild Star if NCSoft’s business model is anything to go by.

They’re testing us to see how many are willing to take out the credit card and exchange our gems for gold.

The game isn’t exactly P2W yet, but it’s pretty much in Korean grinder territory now with instant converted gold becoming the “quick fix.”

mrauls.6519:

When are asura in mind…

Hey now, Asura don’t have it nearly as rough as the Charr, where the clipping is so bad that their faces even pass right through their own racial-tier helmets. Here’s a pic with one of the new male Charr faces, shame because it’s the only decent-looking one out of the three.

I agree though. The gemstore faces for Asura haven’t been too great. Thankfully Anet made up for it with the gemstore hairstyles, in which case Asura have the best in the game, bar none.

Well the next few hours on this forum are going to be… interesting…

Riesty.9075:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL7nz8w-bmI

@ 19:17:

Am I wrong, but will we finally be able to combine face bases? Or are these just new variations of the old faces we can purchase via gem store? If it’s the former, then that’s great.

The new weapon skins are nice too. The scepter, focus, shield and warhorn look amazing.

Just bought the mini last night.
I haven’t tested it in water but I can confirm that it was a rushed job since it’s essentially a reskin of the hippo, but without the bank slot.

That’s right. You can’t even store it your bank since there currently isn’t a specified slot for it under the minis’ collection tab. At least that was the case last time I checked.

So be very careful that you don’t end up right-clicking “destroy” instead of “store item”. It’ll just have to remain in one of your primary bank slots or inventory for now.

Here’s hoping that the new token trade-in system for these old LS items doesn’t fall victim to the same issues that were present during this years Halloween and Super Adventure Box.

That is, Anet increases the grinding by tenfold by forcing everyone to grind for tokens through the completion of the CURRENT LS events rather then rewarding the players who were willing to have the patience to use up their bank space and reserve their old LS items.

It would be a shame if the 1300 or so blade shards wasting space in my bank only amounted to, say, 200-400 tokens or some such.

Tengu and Largos are most definitely going to happen.

I don’t think Kodan have a chance. They would just end up being far too similar to the Norn. Very little customization options due to them having no differentiation in fur color. Tattoos would be good answer, but that’s also too similar to the Norn. Same height and burly size as a Norn, and Norn already occupy the “token snowy areas.” On top of that Norn already have a temporary bear form.

They have really nice architecture though. Living on a giant traveling ice burg does sound pretty bad-kitten .

If we’re ever getting a third new playable race then it well most likely be something new altogether. Like the Sylvari and the Largos.

Reminds me of the Nightmare Court + Tower of Nightmares.
Looking forward to this, though it might be a while off before we get it.

Doggie.3184:

Wow, what on earth is the next content update going to be about to warrant something like a llama to be added? O_o

New zone maybe? (I hope. After all, what zone has llamas walking around in it so far? None.)
Belated SAB thanks to the 8-bit jingle and disco tiles underneath the llama?

There’s also the Lawless armor skins posted on Dulfy which haven’t been released yet and they look pretty goofy, so I expect the new LS update to be a humorous or light-hearted one.

It’s just for one day…
If it makes dungeon running or pvp/wvwing that difficult for you then try to enjoy the effect while it lasts by taking screens or fighting open world bosses for added ridiculousness. Soak it in while you still can; even if it’s annoying for you, keep in mind that something like this isn’t going to happen again.

Seeing as SAB returned for a September release, I’m wondering if Anet has something new up their sleeves so that SAB can become the annual september “back to school” monthly event or something.

It would be great if Anet followed the new Heart of the Mists map concept by combining all of the servers and splitting them into three factions. That way all other lesser servers are automatically aligned with one of the 3 higher-tier servers (TC, BG and JQ) and have a higher chance of earning rewards.

Because let’s be honest here: 3rd, 2nd and 1st place are always going to go to TC, BG and JQ because of it and that winning streak isn’t going to change any time soon.

For all we know, WP costs may be removed in one of the upcoming Facilitating Friendly Play updates.

Are all champs being nerfed or is it just the open world champs that are being nerfed?

If it’s the former then that means champs in dungeons and LS content are getting the nerf as well. I’ve never done champ trains, but I feel sorry for those who enjoy doing them; the nerfing is getting so bad to the point where it’s not worth the trouble.

Then again another part of me wonders if this is just Anet’s attempt to pressure people into buying gold with gems, especially if the nerf really is going to effect ALL of the champs within the game.

That’s my main concern too. While all of these new changes are amazing, it’s going to downplay grinding (and therefore, people’s interest and log-in stay) by a wide margin. However, all of new changes points towards the high possibility that we’ll be seeing an expansion-sized update very, very soon. Something that will provide – dare I say it – new content to “grind” for, maybe? Such as new zones, new dungeons, new fractals, a new race (and maybe even a class?) player housing content (which they said they were working on,) and of course new armor sets, weapon skins and legendaries. Among other things.

This is excellent news. While the prices for legendaries are no doubt going to sky rocket for a while after this, the news certainly makes up for it. Great job Anet, especially for the WXP being account bound. Keep it up!

Now if only we could craft precursors to make up for the RNG game that holds so many people back, then I’m sure I (and many others) will be 100% sold.

Love most of these new hairstyles. Anet did a great job with them; they’re full of personality.

My only complaints (if you could even call them that really) is that I would love it if several of these hair styles could be interchangable between genders or races. I really do like the long dreds & bandana on the male asura, but was kinda let down that there wasn’t a female equivalent. I feel the mohawk for human male would also work very well with Norn males and the same for the third Norn female hair in regards to human females.

Other then that, nice work, I hope Anet keeps it up and we get some new faces soon as well.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Kalavier.1097:

On subject of refugees, has anybody been able to spot the Skritt couple? The one where the female Skritt tells the male to stay with her where it’s safe instead of going into the sewers?

Idummo why, but I actually wanna know what happened to those two.

Same here! People have noted that none of the skritt are around. Did they all die or are they just that much better at hiding than everyone else?

Dakota.4591:

Vol.7601:

So has anyone figured out who died? Anet said that one of the memorable characters died.

Saw in another thread some people were talking about the “Your face is squished and weird” kid and the “Yours is like a little raisin” charr. The charr was found in Gendarran hills and isn’t going to survive. Little Raisin kid is nowhere to be found though.

Noooo! I did not see him in Gendarran, where is he? We have to find Raisin Face!

Still nowhere to be found. However, you can find now find a devastated Asuran mother in Gendarran Fields mourning for the loss of her son and how his body had to be thrown in a mass grave…

Did anyone ever find the human and skritt merchants who would bicker at the trading post? They were a few of my favorite NPCs in LA, I haven’t spotted either one of them at any of the camps yet.

I never found the two skritt talking about moving to the sewers, the Grawl refugee tribe, the Norn complaining about her drunk husband, etc. There are still a lot of NPCs that didn’t make it.

The cinematic was short but very well done, even if it was only one. The aesthetics were great; Anet did a fantastic job with the destruction of Lion’s Arch. It really feels like all hell has broken loose and that we’re truly in the middle of some kind of blitzkrieg.

Little details like being able to rescue and revive citizens and seeing some of the more notable NPCs in evacuation camps while others were…“not present” – adds a nice touch and reminds us that things really aren’t going to be like they used to.

However the gameplay is another tactless zergfest and collect-athon, which is disappointing. It would’ve been cool if Lion’s arch was split into sections, encouraging people to work in larger groups. I was hoping we’d get to do something to that giant drill that Scarlet stationed in the bay too. We didn’t get a lot of story from this either which is strange, considering that this is supposed to be the big turning point in the LS. I’m hoping we get to experience both in the next patch.

Tower of Nightmares was fun. The Marionette was fun. Both of them required teamwork and different game play methods instead of devaluing to a mindless zerg throughout their course – this patch doesn’t. I really hope the next and final update to this LS is something akin to those two patches.

Overall, great presentation but yeah, laggy zergfests are getting old.

Edit: Another thing, I was also really disappointed that the Tengu were just… completely forgotten and not implemented into this event. It would’ve been a great way to introduce them into the LS, seeing as they’re… right next to the kitten city, but whatever. Just having them fight side by side around the entrance to their gate would’ve been cool, but y’know… whatever, it can pass.

1. Stealth-nerfing reward chests, gold and RNG drops: A pretty disgusting thing for Anet to do, considering that the rewards were never great to begin with. The rewards for more difficult challenges like the Triple Trouble Jungle wurm and Tequatl rely too much on RNG. For bosses that require that much skill and coordination, we shouldn’t be reward with any blues and greens, maybe some rares and exotics and a gold or two would be nice, then people would actually have more incentive to participate in these events. Perhaps the most enraging event for me was completing the grindy WvW season 1 achievements and receiving only a mini, some ore and leveling scrolls. However I’m happy to know that Anet is slowly fixing the problem by including weapon skins into season two and offering better rewards in the EoTM. Keep up with that.

2. Class balance is still out-of-wack: Warriors have become OP. It’s been over a year and most classes outside of the heavy ones are still broken in some way or form. Please refine rangers and their pet AI into something that isn’t laughable in WvW and pvE, give necromancers some needed love in PvE, improve the traits for engineers so that they can actually experiment with different builds, fix the crazy bugs on mesmer, make elementists a little less squishy; do not make thief completely reliable on infinite stealth which will only lead to more nerfing for them in areas where they don’t need it. And so on. Just stop buffing warrior and leave guardian alone. They’re fine as they are right now.

3. Too much focus on the Gemstore: You know something’s wrong when most of the new armor sets are coming from the Gemstore while new sets aren’t being implemented into actual game content like dungeons or racial tier-armors after one year.

4. Inability to dye weapons: Doesn’t need much explanation really.

5. Too much temporary content: This was an issue for a while, but seeing that the current updates brought us a new world map and world boss and that the next update is getting rid of Lion’s Arch – I hope I can take it as a sign that Anet is learning from their mistakes. More permanent zones, bosses and maybe some dungeons are needed for the future. There needs to be a decent balance of temporary and permanent content. Perhaps switching it up every other month?

Well Rata sum has always been one of the more popular racial cities because it’s not a pain to navigate and all of the crafting/banking/trading post access spots are right next to each other. That and it’s also just a visually nice-looking city.

The only big issue is that it’s far off on the side of the world map, so that makes it kind of expensive for WP traveling.

JayMack.8295:

Yeah, he’s actually quite big, but since a chunk of him is shot off before we even get close to him, and he’s far away when we attack him, he seems smaller.

It’s one fight I hope they redesign at some point, but I’m worried how they’ll do it. If they tie it into a living story release, I’m not gonna be a massive fan of, “Surprise, he wasn’t really defeated!”.

Chances are it will be something like this since Tequatl only became stronger after his “death.”

I would not be surprised if the dragon we fought was just a decoy compiled of dead champs from the start, lol.

If the Tengu aren’t remotely mentioned in this update (considering that the DoW is RIGHT next to Lion’s Arch and no doubt survivors will be scurrying off to the nearest city or fortress as their safety zone,) then I’ll start to lose any remaining hope for this game’s future.

Most classes need some major work (especially ranger, engineer and necro, they need to feel like they’re contributing something to the pve end of the spectrum; necro however is fine in wvw and ranger…. not so much.)

Thieves and elementists are too squishy.

Seriously leave guardians and warriors as they are. Stop buffing them and give attention to the other classes.

1. Ranger
2. Necromancer
3. Elementist

Well if the theory about the Pale Tree and the sylvari being “freed” minions of Modremoth is true, then maybe we can assume that this dragon is more intelligent and does things differently with its minions than the mindless drones associated with Zhaitan and Primordus? Since the dragons aren’t exactly buddy-buddy with each other, maybe Modremoth would like a faction of sturdier minions that may or may not be immune to various other forms of dragon corruption?

Because let’s face it, plant-like minions, champs and monsters wouldn’t exactly fare well against say, Primordus’ fire destroyers.

Kashrlyyk.5364:

So in the personal story we easily defend LA against the frigging ARMY of an ELDER DRAGON while enduring a badly done drama piece but Miss ANet’s favorite Salad conquers it?!?!?!?!?!

So Scarlet is now more dangerous than an elder dragon!!! That is by far the worst part of the Scarlet LS so far. And if what “Mortifer.2946” wrote is true than it gets even worse.

Meh, Scarlet is basically a dragon champion at this point. The only major difference is that she just doesn’t know it yet.

I’m totally okay with losing Lion’s Arch, maybe even in favor of it as long as this means that

-Each racial city is getting their own mystic forge, portal hub, wvw-pvp portals and Fractals gate.
-Returning or temporary LS events are equally spread apart across the racial cities (Hoelbrak getting Wintersday due to setting aesthetics, Black Citadel getting Holloween now due to the new Bloody Prince connections, Rata Sum and Divinity’s Reach sticking with SAB and Queen’s Jubilee, etc.)
-Certain dungeon armor sellers are relative to each city (Ascalon Catacombs and CoF sticking to the Black Citadel, Twilight Arbor armor can only be bought from a seller in The Grove, etc.)

If Divnity’s Reach is going to become the new hub that everyone is forced to congregate to, then I see no point in getting rid of Lion’s Arch.

Then again I don’t think we’re going to completely lose Lion’s Arch either. Maybe it’s just getting a permanent aesthetic makeover like what the Nightmare Tower did to Kessex Hills. Or maybe Anet has plans for us to reclaim or rebuild Lion’s Arch in a future LS event? Who knows, but I’m hoping this new LS content isn’t going to focus on us exclusively zerging Scarlet’s trash mobs… again. Introduce another big boss like the Marionette, heck a new Dragon champion or… something…

Tengu
Largos
Skritt
With Tengu it’s a matter of time and Largos fill the lacking gap in the humanoid & edgy department. Skritt could be the dedicated “cute & rascally” race.

I think it’s pretty obvious that Tengu and Largos are happening.

Tengu for obvious reasons; Anet having to cut the content & save it for later due to development issues and due dates and they already have the same body structure as the charr so armor won’t be an issue.

Largos will probably come along with the introduction of the water dragon and like the tengu they have similar body structures to humans/norns, therefore less work with when it comes to armor. Also the mention of them having “Tethyos” houses is a big pointer to personal story arcs.

After that, I don’t know what they’ll pick.
Kodan are already too similar to the Norn in terms of culture, geography, size, etc and wouldn’t offer very many customization options. Quaggans will never happen because they’re the designated ‘cute mascot race’ and designing/fitting armor on their round bodies would be a huge issue. Skritt seem like a possibility but their lore and lack of individual intelligence kind of prevents them from being such. Dredge have cool tech and the hylek have some potential lore to work with but both would be too “ugly” for the average player to roll with. Centaurs and Krait have been made into the black sheep races for the personal storylines. Either they’ll come up with a brand new race via sylvari/largos or we’ll see another human-like race such as the margonites or the dwaves, since human-like races are far more popular than beast races when it comes to the average gamer.

Personally I would really love to see the skritt and a reptilian race like the naga or the forgotten. Skritt have a ton of potential especially with their habit of living in caves or underground, I can see some of their zones focusing on the Tyrian depths and such. Also there’s their king who’s trying to increase the intelligence of their race. Maybe there’s a population of intelligent ones living deep underground and they’re forced to the surface due to Primordus like the Asura were in GW1?

Naga/forgotten would be amazing potential for lore stuff, but armor and jumping puzzles would be a major issue.

Very enjoyable so far. But I would like it if anet added more permanent content; less temporary content. New zones, dungeons and the introduction of a new race+dragon are long overdue. And I’m looking forward to that new WvW mists map!

lekyii.9856:

Cmon guys, we all know that in the end its 3 blues and 1 green.

Maybe they’ll upgrade it to 3 greens and a yellow?

Well location-wise, the Tengu are starting to look pretty surrounded.
Toxic Alliance and Spores coming in from north and the Nightmare Court and Undead to the west. And then the Toxic Alliance is already Krait+Nightmare Court anyway so…

It kinda reminds me of those two Tengu near the titan’s staircase waypoint in Caledon Forest arguing about having a horde of krait or undead swarm them just to change things up a bit.

Really though all of the new content provides perfect leeway for a new expansion or big update that could introduce the Tengu and the jungle dragon, but knowing Anet I won’t get my hopes up.

UnknownAssailant.2375:

Their vision of “We don’t make grindy games” is pretty much over as shown by the current economy. They should just move on and try to cater for the game has become.

Considering the price of gems, the state of the trading post economy and how hard it is to make gold in this game in general, I’m concerned that the game is become more of a cash-shop gimmick than a grind. I’ve already spent more than I should with the gemstore.

McSlappy.1372:

Okay so then lets look at this. It now sucks to do champs right? Sooooooo why do them? ANet has just reduced content in their game. Personally don’t really care I didn’t do more then a handful of them because I like PvP more. However I’m sure there’s a bunch of PvE people that really liked it. So now they have the question. Do something else. This leads to is the do something else in GW2 or another game.

Hmm, this is a good point. Even though I never paid much attention to champion farming, there were times where I would solo plenty of them in Frostgorge and other higher-level zones randomly for the challenge, yet I would still end up being incredibly disappointed due to the (lack of) gold or rewards.

There’s also the PVErs who might enjoy champion farming yet may see less support and interest from others who’re solely in it for the reward. As a comparison, I really did enjoy the new Tequatl event when it was pulled off well by a competent group or server – but due to poor rewards, overflow issues, reliance on 6 people handling the canons; etc, its become a dead zone that I or many other people won’t be able to take part in very much anymore. As McSlappy said, it could seriously reduce the interest in champion content and those that enjoy it. Perhaps decrease the gold, but increase the mats and-or armor value in champ farming instead?

And now I just completely contradicted my last post, lol.

John Smith.4610:

Hello all, I looked into this because we intended to have a release note for the changes to the champion loot.
We did modify the gold and bloodstone dust coming from champion bags, and a release note will be added shortly.
What I can tell you is that we made a mistake, this one fell through the cracks and I’m truly sorry. I’ve promised before that we won’t make stealthy economic changes without notes and I mean to stick to that promise.
Thank you all for pointing out the error, we will be more vigilant in the future.
Good luck in your adventures.

This doesn’t really sound like an error, it feels intentional.
Regardless, it’s a good idea as champ farming gets very redundant. I think it would be a better idea to increase the rewards and gold in dungeons, world bosses or dynamic events instead; especially for something very challenging like the newly revamped Tequatl event.

I hate to be a downer but I really doubt it has anything to do with armor clipping, stretching or minor bugs at his point.
Statistically speaking, people tend to roll with what’s familiar or attractive to them in MMOs, namely humans, elves or just more human-like races in general. This is fact and explains why so many people prefer rolling a Norn or a boring human then something aesthetically unique or different like an Asura, Charr or Sylvari.

Meanwhile the Charr themselves aren’t exactly majestic or aesthetically pleasing to look at, instead they’re beastly and ugly with those over-sized fangs and claws and hulking, hunched bodies. When it comes down to it, the average MMO player wants something that looks sexy or relatively aesthetically pleasing – not something ugly, unusual or vicious. And its because of this that races like the Charr are becoming rarer and rarer to come by in MMOs.

While the clipping and texture-stretching on armor has become a seriously nuisance for Charr players, Anet probably doesn’t want to bother improving the issue because they know at this point in time that the payoff simply wouldn’t be worth it due to the small percentage of Charr players already involved. Which is a real shame, because I really appreciated Anet’s efforts to step out of those generic boundaries with fantasy races. But if your own player base is ignoring the fresh new races you worked so hard to develop in favor of something far more boring and familiar, then why continue to bother? I can kinda understand where they’re coming from here.

Someone earlier mentioned that the Charr should’ve looked more like EQN’s Kerra, and I’m gonna have to disagree with that. I’m really happy that Anet took and kept the feral and brute approach with them, not turning them into generic furry #13234346 you’d find on deviant art or a human covered in fur or scales with a beast head plastered on top (I’m looking at you Skyrim.)

As for the Kerra we’ve seen so far, it looks like a bad cross between a WoW ripoff, generic Deviantart furry #13234346 and a Lion King backdrop character. While it’s certainly more pleasing or acceptable to the eye, it’s also equally generic and bland. If that’s their final design, then it’ll be something that I won’t remember a few years down the line to say the least.

Maybe if Tengu becoming playable down the line then Anet will feel a need to improve those armor issues, since the GW2 Tengu already share the same basic proportions and skeletal rig as the Charr. But for now it just isn’t happening.