Guild Wars 2

Here’s the thing: have you ever heard the expression, ‘99% of everything is crap’? In any body of fiction, there will be a few incredibly well-written characters, a few standout terrible ones, and the majority will be average. Insisting on holding ‘minority’ characters to a higher standard of writing just means they won’t show up at all, and functionally, saying ‘no women/gay people/disabled people unless they are totally super awesome and everyone loves them’ is the same as saying ‘no women/gay people/disabled people.’

I’m not convinced that no representation except for some 1% of unusually brilliant characters is better than wider, and more variable-quality representation. Should Guild Wars 2 not write any more characters at all unless they are worthy of Nobel Prize-winning literature? Or are we ok with average, mediocre, blandly-written characters, just as long as they are straight, able-bodied males who don’t challenge the ‘default’?

My other thought is that even if women or LGBTQ people, etc. were/are a majority in GW2: so what? Real-world demographics don’t apply, because to my knowledge, Earth is pretty low on, say, sentient humanoid plants and magic-powered dirigibles. Plenty of women (like me!) enjoy Tolkien’s writing even though women are pretty poorly represented in some of it. Why is the reverse so impossible to countenance?

For people to then turn around and try to use blackmail tactics on Anet to keep the status quo of group dominance – ‘I won’t play anymore if my proxies aren’t back in the spotlight!’ – when they are already over-represented in games (and other media) as a whole is, frankly, sad.

Aedelric.1287:

Laurelinde.4395:

Why do some guys have so much trouble relating to women, real or fictional? We are people. It will not kill you or hurt you or diminish you to put yourselves in our shoes once in awhile, I promise.

Just people, like you.

No I do not find the female leads relatable, but I do not find the males of the living story relatable either.

Do not try making it out as someone elses failing because you personally think they are being closed minded. The whole point of a character being relatable is to have similar aspects to them you find reflected in yourself, obviously hurdle one is race, then sex then personality.

The issue here is variety of characters, literally zero female and male characters I find relatable, Braham himself is a complete idiot. We need some new characters and asking for a new more likable more competent male lead is hardly something to get up in arms about, it is not like anyone is asking for the female leads to be removed.

Oh but they are. In the last week alone I have seen posts stating that ‘Marjory should have been a man’ and that ‘Marjory should be killed off and replaced with a man to hook up with Kasmeer.’ And if you look further up in this very thread you will find people admitting that they have trouble relating to female characters and can only connect with a very select few who meet their exacting specifications, when I would put real money on them not having any problem with playing games featuring Generic Bearded White Dude #17.

If you don’t have a problem relating to women, then you don’t have a problem relating to women, and it’s not about you. But trust me, plenty of guys do.

Why do some guys have so much trouble relating to women, real or fictional? We are people. It will not kill you or hurt you or diminish you to put yourselves in our shoes once in awhile, I promise.

Just people, like you.

Leshain.6720:

Marj should have been a man, and kasmeer is generic.

Why should Marjory have been a man?

JGBarbarian.3579:

Laurelinde.4395:

JGBarbarian.3579:

I did like them at first, but if I see characters inserted into some type of media propaganda then I reject them immediately. I don’t know if that was the writer/game intention cause I can’t read minds; but I see Braham, Kasmeer and Marjory being representatives of a particular way of thinking that is not universal/eternal but is presented as such.

What does Braham represent to you, out of curiosity? I’m struggling to think of anything potentially controversial about his characterisation.

I don’t think Kas/Jory is propaganda, either, for what it’s worth, I think they just are what they are. Certainly, where I live, and among my fairly ordinary circles, their relationship would not really raise any eyebrows.

I will try to be more clear. The way of thinking of your “ordinary circles” is just one among many, that is a reality and no matter how hard you try you can’t force the whole world to think the way you do.
My criticism to the characters is this: they represent 1 way of thinking disregarding many other.
Possible problems: the game will sell well only where that particular way of thinking exists or it will alienate a part of its costumers.
Sorry I can’t be more clear, english is my forth language.

Oh believe me, I am very, very aware that homosexuality is not accepted in all places. My parents would find Kas/Jory disgusting and immoral. My point was that so many people are fixating on the Kas/Jory relationship as being ‘controversial’ and ‘propaganda’, when in other places and cultures, it simply isn’t: there is nothing shocking or political about their relationship.

Also, I notice you did not respond to my question about Braham. What do you find problematic about him? Braham is straight, as far as I am aware.

JGBarbarian.3579:

I did like them at first, but if I see characters inserted into some type of media propaganda then I reject them immediately. I don’t know if that was the writer/game intention cause I can’t read minds; but I see Braham, Kasmeer and Marjory being representatives of a particular way of thinking that is not universal/eternal but is presented as such.

What does Braham represent to you, out of curiosity? I’m struggling to think of anything potentially controversial about his characterisation.

I don’t think Kas/Jory is propaganda, either, for what it’s worth, I think they just are what they are. Certainly, where I live, and among my fairly ordinary circles, their relationship would not really raise any eyebrows.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Laurelinde.4395:

I don’t support Evon Gnashblade being a devious manipulator,

Hang the Kiel supporter! Raaaaargh! -angry pitch forks-

Ha! Well, I did vote Kiel but I find her a bit dull, in truth, I kind of forget she exists until she turns up in the story.

I’m voting Heal-o-tron in 2016!

Erm…hmm…on-topic…I guess I just feel like it’s ok to play the game and like or dislike things without feeling like you are being asked to take an ideological position on anything based on the in-game lore or living story.

bullyrook.2165:

No, the core question is “why must I agree and/or support you?”

Can I ask why you feel the existence of a homosexual couple in the game implies your agreement and support of it? I don’t support Evon Gnashblade being a devious manipulator, I don’t support the Sons of Svanir trying to corrupt everything for Jormag, and I don’t particularly support Logan doing anything because he’s so bloody annoying. I don’t support murder, thievery, drinking to excess or any number of things that exist in Tyria (and our own world, as well, for that matter). But I don’t think playing GW2 qualifies as joining a real-world political party, or voting, or following a religion, and I don’t think that playing the game implies I agree or support every possible action or thought or idea in the game.

I find Kas a little irritating but I actually like her more now than I did to start off with. I think Kas and Jory make a pretty good couple and complement each other well, and I have no issue with them having a relationship. Honestly, it would be kind of a weird world if so many people spent loads of time together and met others with common interests and didn’t form close relationships, romantic or platonic.

Marjory and Rox I liked from the beginning, and Braham and Taimi are ok – need to see a bit more of Taimi, and see if she comes round to being a bit more mature and less amoral.

Heal-o-tron is, of course, delightful.

azerte.4365:

I would love if they brought more ‘elite’ solo/dungeon content. For example something like the Mad Kings Clock tower with a boss like Liadri at the end and when you die you need to start all over again. (maybe not that extreme but still i’d love if it was that hard) Add some very good rewards at the end and this will force people to play more active instead of spamming 111111111.
Tequatl and The Wurm already do a pretty good job at this, although people still don’t care all that much about dying since the zerg will get them back up in a few seconds.
Make it small scale and players will learn to rely on their own more.

Will they though? Or will most people just decide ‘too hard, not fun’ and not bother doing said content, the way a lot of servers have already gone with Tequatl and the Wurm? It would be interesting to see what percentage of players completed Liadri or SAB challenge mode, and how many people are regularly completing Teq/Wurm (I don’t believe my server has completed Wurm yet, despite regular efforts and a dedicated guild for it.)

I don’t think they can change it. I don’t think there is anything in the world that can change the fundamental human nature to seek the path of least resistance. But godspeed to y’all, if you decide to try.

(The fallacy of illusory superiority applies here again as well…)

Because not everyone cares about being ‘optimal’ to the point that it is the only deciding factor in how to play. In the course of an MMO’s lifetime most classes get their turns on top and at the bottom of the heap as far as balance go, and if you’re not trying for bleeding edge content then it doesn’t really matter what class you bring. For what I do, for example – solo stuff, guild dungeon runs/fractals, a bit of scouting in WvW, the occasional Tequatl – being a decently geared player with functioning hands and eyeballs is plenty fine to get done what I need.

I’m sure some people do, but the purple and the butterflies and whatnot are just part of the class. I’m unlikely to ever play a necromancer partly because I don’t like the death magic and corpse monsters and such, but I wouldn’t ask Anet to change the whole class’ flavor because of it, let alone just because some people are afraid of catching girl cooties.

Personally, I’m tired of gender essentialism in all its manifestations. ‘Feminine’ should not be a pejorative.

Anet intends the Tequatl and Wurm fights to be elite content for very dedicated, experienced players to complete using their own initiative, organisation and communication. I think your best bet is to guest to a server which completes it early and get in touch with the coordinators, and/or to join a dedicated Teq/Wurm guild to help you get in the right server or overflow, find a group and so on. Good luck!

It may also be a reference to butterflies as a symbol for the psyche or soul, as well as metamorphosis and change.

Gunnar’s Hold runs Teq on Monday evenings and is pretty consistent with kills as far as I am aware. I’ve only been a couple times so can’t confirm hard numbers.

I can’t say I’m particularly unhappy with the options. More options is almost always better, and I hope they keep bringing in new skins (besides just gem store ones), but the dye system is certainly far and away more advanced and customisable than in nearly any MMO or game I’ve played to date, bar maybe Champions Online. The sheer number of dyes in GW2 is staggering.

It’s not a perfect system (yet?) but it’s pretty good on the whole, I think.

Possibly a little tangential, but:

Specific Game Mode: PvE

Proposal Overview: Design and test Living Story content with rangers in consideration

Goal of Proposal: In the latest Living Story patch, rangers’ class mechanic can cause trouble with some of the content and hinder achievements (for example, pets being targeted by the lasers and causing damage to nearby players, or having damage done to or by pets failing achievements for the ranger.) This is not the first time this has happened (mines in Canach’s lair, toxic spore plants, etc.) and it can make it difficult to complete content on a ranger character where we have no control over the pet’s pathing or monster targeting, and imperfect control over the pet’s actions.

Proposal Functionality: Basically, I would just like the content designers to bear rangers, and other pet classes or class mechanics (such as engineer turrets), in mind when they are developing new content and achievements. I can understand that it will be challenging to balance or optimise every encounter for every profession since class mechanics can be so different. However, I think it would benefit both rangers and the playerbase at large if rangers and our pets were not actually a detriment to accomplishing goals, in some cases. I don’t expect to be everyone’s first choice to have along on every encounter, but I’d like to at least feel I am not actively hindering progress by participating.

Associated Risks: Potentially increased development or testing time for new encounters. In theory, encounters could become simplified or homogenised to the point of dullness but I feel like game designers are clever enough to find new ways to challenge players without making certain classes unwanted.

I got super-excited when I saw him in the hologram fight. Can’t help it, I love that sarcastikittentle bot.

xallever.1874:

To be fair, the other CDIs receive quite a bit more love than the Ranger one.

And Chris Whiteside considers that to be ‘bad behaviour’ on his part for setting an unrealistic standard for other Anet posters to try to follow. I still kind of think they need more dedicated community time if they are going to keep doing CDIs, because they are always going to be time-eaters.

But I agree, they had to know this was coming and it doesn’t seem like they were prepared for it. There is way, way too much stuff in there to get much out of and since the pet issue seems pretty dead in the water we need to be looking at other things to try to get some semblance of balance. I fear it is too late now, though; whatever pebbles of suggestion we can throw at it will still fall far short of the mountain of ‘stow pet’ posts.

Of course it is going to ‘feel’ political to a lot of people. Right now (in the US, at least), being gay is a political issue because the debate on gay marriage is in full swing. How must it feel for LGBTQ+ people who are just trying to live their lives and are constantly being told that doing so is pushing an agenda?

Honestly, this thread has come up over and over and over again and there don’t seem to be a lot of arguments apart from ‘I don’t like romance, it makes me feel icky…I mean, feel nothing because I don’t have feelings because feelings are weak!‘, or ’why not equal time for straight people?’ which is both cherry-picking (since there are plenty of straight relationships in the game, as well as non-sexual ones) and honestly, kind of on the same lines as ‘why is there no white history month?’ When things start off unequal, equality is going to feel unfair for awhile for the bigger group.

To my knowledge this is the only kiss scene that’s been in the game. Caithe and Faolain are fairly prominent but the relationship is finished before we even get into character creation, and I would argue that the Queen and Logan get pretty comparable time and importance dedicated to them, seeing as it is touched on during the personal story with regards to the breaking of Destiny’s Edge, during Caudecus’ Manor and then again during Queen’s Jubilee.

I’m not going to say that the Kas/Jory relationship has been written as one of the great love stories of all the ages or anything, but I wouldn’t say that about most of the lore thus far (or in most games full stop.) For me at least it hasn’t felt desperately fanservicey or contrived, their dialogue has shown them as having been friends for awhile with romantic interest flirted around and finally confirmed when things got rough and their lives were in danger. No big deal.

There are always going to be things in the game that one or other of us doesn’t love. But if Anet end up trying to perfectly recreate real-world demographics, or run through a strict cycle of genders, races, orientations, etc. to mathematically give every possible group even screen time in order to placate some players’ need for ‘equality’ and silence naysayers, is that really any less ‘political’ than anything they’re doing now? Because ‘the mainstream being heterosexual’ (or white, or male, or able-bodied, or religious/non-religious, depending on where you live) is political, too.

Honestly, Anet should have been prepared for this. The only way they could not have been expecting rangers to ‘win’ the CDI and for a year and half’s worth a valid (and nutty) suggestions, complaints, bugs, etc. to come flooding in, is if they have been paying no attention to any feedback or forums whatsoever and aren’t running any kind of numbers themselves to see how things are going. Apart from anything else, this was a good opportunity for them to do some good PR stuff with the community, and it has so far failed spectacularly.

I’m pretty disappointed, actually. I never expected anything huge (total pet AI overhaul or something), but I thought it would at least be a chance for the devs to have some back and forth with players and look at ideas, even ‘band-aid’ ones, that would at least make us more balanced and viable and improve our QoL…maybe some trait changes, or a fix to the sword rooting. At this stage, all we know is that we’re not getting burst and potentially all the other professions are getting nerfed. Yay?

For me, if we’re not going to get meaningful responses to a thread started by Anet specifically with the intention to discuss rangers, it doesn’t seem that likely we’ll get dialogue anywhere else. I have less confidence that Anet is at least listening and trying now than I did before the CDI started, and that is a shame.

Edit: having seen Chris Whiteside’s post in the other CDI thread it appears my expectations regarding dev input to the CDIs was incorrect and it was mainly just meant to be us providing ideas, which I guess we have done pretty thoroughly at this point.

I wonder if you put us in a cup with red food coloring overnight, will we turn red?

Fair enough, I was thinking along the lines of what Allie had mentioned about us visually taking on aspects of our pets. If it was not anything that involved then I would imagine they are more likely to go ahead with it. I think it’s still fairly unlikely given the vision is fixed on us being a pet class almost above all else.

I would be fine with an ‘aspect’ system – it could be quite cool, in fact – but I feel like the resources that would need to go into it would be as well or better off going into the serious and intensive work needed to fix our existing stuff (pet AI, F2 skills, scaling, our vision not fitting the meta.) If they don’t have the time and money to do major coding stuff to fix what they already have for us, are they really going to have the time and money to make up a whole new system, new graphics and animations, new skills, etc. for what is, at the end of the day, a minority of players?

It’s important to us, obviously, because we’re rangers, but I guess I am skeptical that the Powers that Be will be willing to devote a ‘disproportionate’ amount of work on us when the benefit is (sort of) only to rangers rather than the game as a whole.

While I’m not opposed to the idea of the ranger as a ‘whittling’/sustained damage class in theory, I have to admit I’m very concerned about how it will work in practice: firstly, because the meta is so heavily biased towards burst (and melee), and it seems logical that it would be far simpler to change the ranger than to change the meta (since the meta is influenced by the design of things but to some extent ‘forms’ on its own.)

And secondly, because I’m imagining that the news that ‘everyone is getting nerfed to make rangers feel a bit better’ will go down like…well, the Hindenburg. Nerfs are pretty much never popular, even when they are fair and needed. While that may put things back in line with the developers’ vision, it seems like a fairly risky move to potentially anger the majority of the player base while appeasing a minority who are already somewhat disgruntled.

As a ranger, I would obviously appreciate any big fixes that can be done to the class, but without knowing how resource allocation works for dev time it’s hard to know how ‘worth it’ any of this would be from Anet’s perspective. It’s the same thing with the pet AI, really; it’s acknowledged all round that it’s not really working as intended, but to overhaul it would be very labor-intensive, and not judged to be worth the investment for the game’s overall health.

I guess what I’m asking is, at what point do we stop and say, ‘This isn’t our ideal, and was not part of our vision for rangers, but it’s the only realistic way to make them viable and balanced right now’?

This looks very interesting, I have already been using longbow and sword/dagger (or sometimes sword/warhorn) and canine recently in WvW so I may have to give this a go! Thank you for sharing this!

Ranger Design Philosophy:
The Ranger is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their pet, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.

First things first, for me, my first reaction to the philosophy is that I feel we do not fit the bill as ‘resilient.’ In full PVT gear in WvW I don’t die in one hit, but nor can I survive long enough to ‘whittle opponents down’ as intended. Full healing builds are the only ones with significant resilience, IMO. Lack of condition removals hurts, as does the fact we are seen as an ‘easy kill’ and focused early in most cases. The pet’s support is also hit and miss at best in such situations, without enough damage to cause serious concern to an opponent or reliable enough utility to help save the ranger unless extremely lucky and/or skilled. In PvE, survivability usually boils down to dodging.

Game Mode: PvX

Proposal Overview: Amend pet/ranger damage/utility ratio

Goal of Proposal: To ameliorate issues arising from the unreliable pet UI (which is unlikely to be changed in the foreseeable future as I understand it), as well as scaling with gear.

Proposal Functionality: If pets cannot be tweaked to make their damage and utilities hit more reliably, then the base dps done by pets could be reduced, and ranger base weapon damage increased by a corresponding amount. (No numbers I’m afraid, I’m not that advanced a theorycrafter.) Likewise, some of the pet utilities could be moved to existing ranger skills or traits, or formed into a generic ‘pet utility skill’ which would function differently depending on which pet was equipped at the time.

Associated Risks: Ranger damage could theoretically become too high in certain situations where the pet is able to dps more reliably (eg stationary targets.) Utility skills could become overpowered, or rangers would have to choose to drop other utilities to gain access to pet utility.

N.B. This is just me throwing an idea out there, so take with as many grains of salt as your cardiologist says you can handle!

Yeah I hate when my character says, ‘Ooh, so pretty!’ for some random bit of scrap metal or something that happens to be rare/yellow. Valuable is not the same as pretty! I guess a lot of the voice emotes sound grating or stupid after we’ve heard them so many times.

This is rapidly turning into just a rehash of the last process thread.

I understand that no one person has the time to read every single post in every single thread, and some of them are more worth reading than others. However, there is no format or process to eliminate human idiosyncrasy. When soliciting feedback from such a large group of people, it is always going to run the gamut from inspired to inane, and from cryptically terse to breathtakingly long-winded.

What bothers me is the prospect of the process becoming hoops to jump through for an illusion of interaction. “Give us your feedback…but only if ____.” “Tell us what you think, but not if ____.” Not all worthwhile feedback is perfectly-formatted sound bites that look good on paper, and not all perfectly-formatted sound bites that look good on paper are worthwhile feedback. Have we as a species really lost the ability to process written information more than two sentences long?

I really want the CDIs to be more than a paper exercise or a PR gimmick. Maybe we should just kinda…get on with it, lest we end up having the same circular administrative discussions instead of actual dialogue about the game content itself. For Anet’s part, is there scope for an internship of some kind for a person or persons to go through the forums/CDI topics, summarise, and report back on particularly salient ideas?

skullmount.1758:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Evon = Batman
Hobo-tron = Robin

The new Dynamic Duo!

I see it more as:
Hobo-tron = Batman
Lord Faren (or minstrel guy) = Robin

….make it so.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Zaxares.5419:

Didn’t Evon reject Heal-o-Tron’s request for an improved chassis? He was at least open to the idea until Heal-o-Tron admitted he had no money, after which Evon told him to shove off.

A businessman to the end, Evon.

Did you stay around to see the entire conversation? Evon, the great philanthropist that he is, came to an “arrangement” to do Hobo-tron’s upgrades for free.

You can always count on Evon.

Basically, he comes to the conclusion that if he kits out Heal-o-Tron and sends him in to save Lion’s Arch, he (Evon) will gain favour with the Captain’s Council. And nothing stops him giving Heal-o-Tron shoddy equipment that will fail and let him die, as long as Evon looks like he tried…

If Heal-o-Tron dies there will be rioting in the streets of Seattle, mark my words.

Ugh. This thread is making me Team Scarlet, and I hate Scarlet.

If this is the best the world has to offer, let it burn.

1. Ranger
2. Engineer
3. Elementalist

Roda.7468:

Lol “several months”

This has been going on since the start.

Indeed, I have screenshots from early access showing the same problem – it’s why I ended up choosing the face I did, because it didn’t seem to have the problem and didn’t need as much use of the pupil size slider. I’m amazed that they didn’t fix this for the new faces, at least.

I would love to see this get implemented, I don’t see why it couldn’t be a dye slot (perhaps on the town clothes bit) like anything else.

Haven’t you guys heard? We all run bears because they are fat. /sarcasm

I do use a bear for the condi removal/aggro while I’m just in open world stuff or where I need it in WvW or whatever (and because I love bears, dangit.) The other slot I swap out depending what I’m doing, canine for wvw, bird for dps, moa for buffs, drake for aoe, spider for ranged. I’m never going to be the most min-maxed player or character and I’m not trying to be – I don’t speedrun dungeons or GvG or anything – so it doesn’t really matter.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Then I think it makes the most sense to have a format for the initial posts. If you’re struggling, that matters, and it should be up to us to help, especially if we want feedback.

Don’t get me wrong I LOVE the CDI but you are correct, for example the last CDI took up a huge amount of my free time during the holiday period. Whilst that isn’t ideal, it pales in comparison to my concern about not being able to give a discussion the attention it is due.

So far I think i have done an ok job with this, but I know I could do a lot better.

It really does boil down to time. Also it helps that I have a very patient wife!

Chris

Unfortunately, then, I think this comes down to money, like most things. If Anet are serious about maintaining the CDIs in this fashion, and refining them to this degree, then I think that clearly they will need to dedicate some time to it. If it is not feasible for you to answer all the points yourself, and I can imagine it is not, then they are going to have to allocate some resources to it – ie, hire some dedicated people to liaise with the community and feed back from the devs. It is not workable or appropriate either for existing employees like yourself to take on a full second job in this way, nor for a handful of particularly articulate forum posters with a lot of free time to work as unpaid consultants in this manner.

Basically, if as you say you are keen to do this properly, then, well…do it properly and allocate the time and manpower, rather than nitpicking the formats. Otherwise the whole CDI process becomes destined to fail as a worthless paper exercise, IMO.

Edit: Apologies, this sounds harsher than I intend it, but I am not sure how to soften it, exactly.

Tyops.5894:

Certainly,

Sorry I couldnt get back to it until now what with being at work. To be perfectly fair I was probably being overly cynical, but part of the concern remains.

I am a habitual lurker in the CDI threads and routine dev-post stalker, and through natural progression it appears to me that the CDI threads have already become quite clique-y. There is a small group of high-volume high-profile poster who tend to discuss more or less only each other’s posts and also tend to draw most of the interaction from devs.

Although this evolved entirely naturally, unless you’re in it, it can make the community appear insular.

Taking it a step further and codifying how this community interacts with a series of semi-arbitrary rules developed by that community can make it appear markedly less accessible to outsiders, lurkers, and other low volume users.

That is largely where my concern resides.

I appreciate the aims of the CDI. I am really looking forward to seeing what comes of it. I feel GW2 is near a tipping point and that many of the enhancements discussed in the horizontal/vertical development threads really really need to happen quite soon. Then I look at how long it’s taking to get the WvW account wide ranks and I am terrified.

edits to fix typos.

Yep, this is pretty much how I feel about it. There are a few very vocal, quasi-VIPs posting regularly and other comments or suggestions (good or bad) are just ignored. I don’t think that discussions on the direction of the game should be limited only to people who are willing and able to engage in a particular format or style of bureaucracy, particularly on a multi-language forum.

Furthermore, I find the whole idea of ‘Process Evolution’ threads rather…navel-gazing. We have only had four CDIs to date and fully half of them have been devoted to ‘refining the process’ rather than anything constructively to do with the game. This feels unnecessary and frankly, a waste of time. Most people don’t play Guild Wars or read the forums to participate in business meetings, I think, and to me this feels like something to do after a number of CDIs have taken place rather than after each topic, and probably something to be done largely by Anet folks yourselves. Perhaps doing a ‘set’ of CDIs (5-10) and then asking for some brief feedback would be more productive. I do not mean to be rude, but I am not getting paid as a consultant to tell you how to communicate with your customers and vice versa. I want to talk about the game, not talk about how to talk about the game, if you see what I mean.

I managed to follow along with the prompts in the upper right, but I did have to expand them frequently as the text was usually covered by the box for daily/monthly achievements and nearby DE. Having it ‘locked’ to an open position would probably help and make it easier to track.

Sir Morgan Malory.2069:

Ranger class balance is fine. On average Rangers are terrible because they appeal a lot more to skilless noobs who want to solo PvE while hideing behind there pets.

Citation needed. (People wondering why I brought up confirmation bias? Here you go.) Do you have any statistics to back this up, or just anecdata?

They also typically only want to range attack.

I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people were drawn to the ranger because they were touted as a hunter-like class expert in ranged weapons, but that is down to marketing rather than stupidity on the part of players, who couldn’t know that melee would trump all. Should players now be aware of the difference and use melee to be ‘optimal’? Sure, in certain situations, anyway. However, having a ranged weapon equipped is still ok since there are times when they are useful. Personally I would run 3 sets if I could (longbow, greatsword and sword/x), but I tend to swap the gs and sword out with each other because there are times when having reach/ranged is handy (eg defending a keep in WvW.)* It all depends what particular content you are doing, and with whom.

*Also I made Kudzu as it was the most Sylvari-ish weapon and I feel annoyed not having my ‘best’ weapon equipped after it was such a pain in the bum to make. When I get round to making some ascended weapons this may change.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Aeonblade.8709:

Laurelinde.4395:

Confirmation bias is confirmation bias. Getting reeeeally tired of it.

I’m confused, what does this have to do with this thread? Pardon my ignorance in advance.

As applied to the subject of the thread, confirmation bias would mean that people perceive rangers as causing the problem because they are predisposed to blame issues on rangers. If one expects something to be the cause, it’s pretty easy to find “evidence” that that is so, and to ignore evidence to the contrary.

Sorry, yes, that is what I meant, I should have been more clear. I am painfully aware that there are not-great rangers out there, and honestly, I would be the last person in the world to say I’m amazing, just reasonably competent (I have managed Warden 2, etc – as soon as I knew about the mines I realised I needed pets to be passive and/or called back and forth so the boss would move. I’m not brilliant, but it’s not my first trip to the rodeo, either.) I am also aware that the ranger class needs some love as our core mechanic can be troublesome, let’s say, and that the concept of a primarily ranged class doesn’t jive well with the melee-heavy/stacking buffs meta.

That said, I think that people are noticing bad rangers and generalising this to all rangers in a way that isn’t the same for other classes, partly because (along with necros and mesmers) I think we are fairly immediately recognisable thanks to the pet and its sometimes frenetic pathing. I’ve mentioned in before in regards to ‘bearbows’ since I genuinely don’t see that many of them, yet from reading the forums you’d think that rangers with bears and 2 bows were carpeting Tyria like a plague of locusts.

It’s not a huge condemnation – everyone has confirmation bias, we all do it for different things – it’s just something to keep in mind.

Confirmation bias is confirmation bias. Getting reeeeally tired of it.

Just sort of thinking out loud here, as it were, but…given that it has been acknowledged that some of the pet AI is not optimal (eg the delay on F2 skills when not underwater) and that this is tied into the general AI so very difficult to fix; and that as pointed out earlier in the thread, pets are not scaling with improved gear so rangers will be falling behind somewhat as we move into ascended gear tiers, would it not be a possible ‘band-aid’ fix to simply reduce pet damage across the board and increase ranger weapon/trap damage accordingly? This would leave our core mechanic intact whilst closing the gap somewhat since the proportion of our damage would be stacked more on the rangers ourselves, and would then scale with gear properly.

Apologies for the incredibly long sentence, hopefully you understand what I’m saying!

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Confirmed! GW3: My Little Quaggan – Friendship is Coo~~~

…I can’t lie, I would probably watch this. At least one episode.

/tries to imagine the quaggan version of Pinkie Pie

You know, I’m certainly not going to come out and say that rangers have no problems (I am one, I know…) but the constant ‘bearbow’ thing…honestly, I see an awful lot more rangers running not-bears than bears, these days, and for the last many months, in fact. For the first maybe 6 months of the game you saw a lot of bears but a) everyone was levelling and pet choice wasn’t such a crucial thing, and b) bears were considered the ‘best’ solo pet for tanking purposes for awhile, along with drakes.

In both PvE and WvW (can’t speak to dungeon PUGs as I don’t PUG dungeons), I see a lot more cats, dogs, and spiders/destroyers than bears unless I am in starter zones. I can’t help but think that there is some ‘bearbow’ confirmation bias happening.

And I say this as someone who sometimes uses either a bow and/or gasp a bear, for condi removal or soloing/gathering on landscape where it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference because everything dies in about 3 seconds, or you keep the pet on passive and just keep running/Greatsword 3 swooping between nodes.

I can’t believe they haven’t fixed this yet, I gave up on the face I liked best back at launch because I wanted larger pupils and that made her eyes go all wonky.

ens.9854:

Hopefully they are not shifting the best gear set to something different but rewarding parties for running a variety of stat distributions instead of just one

This is the key point for me. I am not a hardcore dungeon-runner but I was drawn to the non-trinity approach because it seemed to promise a lot more flexibility in terms of playstyle and inclusion of more ‘hybrid’ setups and the like. I do have a berserker set for dungeons/PvE but I feel like it would be good if people who preferred to play a bit tankier, or do healing and support, or run condi builds weren’t just utterly shut out of the ‘meta’ – basically, that any combination of builds should be able to run a dungeon (or complete whatever objective) pretty comparably to another. The efficiency of a run should come down to how well the players run and play their builds regardless of what that build is.

Of course there is likely to still be one ‘optimal’ meta according to theorycrafting, but the difference should be marginal at best. Ideally, no class or build (unless someone is just being ridiculous and deliberately taking stats/gear/traits which don’t affect the skills and weapons they use) should feel useless or unwanted or subpar.

I am sure it is/will be an incredibly difficult thing to balance, but that is the dream, for me, and that is where the ‘problem’ with the zerker meta lies, rather than with zerker itself.

I’ve seen a few…I originally intended to have orangey-red skin but I didn’t like the yellow and lime-green highlights that come along with it on the skin and most of the hairstyles (and the cultural armour.) I knew I wanted purple as my secondary colour (think tiger lilies) and the yellow and green just made it a bit…much.

I hope at some point they have a look at all the colours again and tweak some of them, some seem to have a lot more depth than others IMO.

Cufufalating.8479:

I used birds when I played through the open world from 1-80 because it seemed to make no difference what I used and they looked the coolest

See I used a bear because, well, I love bears. And at first people said ‘bears are the best tanks, use bears!’ so I was pleased my sentimental choice was useful, and then it changed to ‘bears suck and are for noobs!’ and then poor Cookie was sad. Heck, in beta when there were plans for that ‘have 3 pets out at once’ skill I was tempted to roll a character called Goldilocks just for that purpose, although nowadays I run with a fern hound a lot, and if I really need tanking I’ll use a drake.

In some ways I feel like it would be nice if pet stats were standardised and you just chose the ‘skin’, or if they were divided into a few types a la WoW rather than all being so different/specific. Then people could take the pet(s) they wanted, rather than having to take whichever one is most expedient. Or at least if we could get some ranged pets that weren’t creepy-crawlies (spitting cobra would be ace!)

And T-rexes, because you can never have too many T-rexes.