Guild Wars 2

I don’t have any objection at all to people doing the same thing again and again and again and again in order to get into a pleasant trance state (e.g. to unwind after work). I do that myself sometimes.

What I do find peculiar is when people expect to be well rewarded for that style of gameplay.

Kimbald.2697:

I would like to ,put a few points clear about the insults here:

if all the ‘wowtards’ leave GW2 than this game dies… it really will.
That has nothing to do with the fact which game is better, but it has everything to do with the simple fact that most MMO’ers play (or played) both.

Let me explain. You have WoW players, and then you have a small but vocal subset of WoW players we professional WoWtard observers call “WoWtards”. Most WoW players are perfectly normal and sane, WoWtards on the other hand are the sort of player that any MMO would be better off without.

Unfortunately they are usually over-represented on new MMO forums.

How to recognize them? Principally by the fact that they’re unable to play a new game on its own terms, and constantly compare this or that aspect of any new game to WoW.

If it’s similar to WoW, it’s copying WoW, if it’s different from WoW, it’s also fail. The enunciation of that peculiar double bind is the primary distinguishing mark of WoWtard-ery.

Huh? The DR system makes even more sense in a situation with more content, as there are more alternatives to farm till DR kicks in.

Every toon can DPS, sure, but every toon can also do some Support or CC. That’s the whole kitten point.

I strongly agree that they need to put a LOT of stuff into the gems shop, and they’re missing a trick here by having the gem shop be so sparsely stocked.

There’s a lot of goodwill for the game and I’m sure many players would be willing to pay moderate amounts for small QOL or “flavour” items. I know I would.

Lots and lots of Townie clothes would seem to be the most obvious option for a quick buck surely?

You’ve got to not think of them as pets. They’re not pets, they just look like pets; they’re more like like triggered abilities that are done when they’re done.

Nobody answering? AFAIK you’d mainly go down Toughness (the Staff boost Trait would be essential for this type of build), some Vitality, some Power and/or maybe a bit of the bottom line, and pump Toughness, Vitality and Conditioned damage with gear.

i.e. Toughness is the line you’ll want to max, Precision is the line you want to min, but have some of the others, especially Vitality. With gear, you should generally maximize the stats you’re already pumping with the Trait lines, as otherwise the gear stats aren’t doing much for you and you won’t get much of an effect (what I mean is, don’t try to “round out” the character with gear stats different from what your main stat focus is with the Traits, rather ADD to those stats). You do have to specialize somewhat to get the most out of any given type of build.

Mesmer also has little problem underwater.

I can sympathize to some extent with those who find underwater tricky, but as someone who’s used to 3-d movement from City of Heroes and Champions Online, where you can fly and fight, and in CO do full-on underwater 3-d combat as well, I have to say the underwater combat in GW2 is fantastic, and if anything it’s been made a bit too easy compared to land.

It just requires a bit of getting used to, that’s all, a bit of practice.

De gustibus non est disputandum. But I absolutely LOVE the graphics darling …

Very cool indeed

Typical of how there are so many details tucked away in this game for people who explore beyond map completion.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

There’s so much to write about, I hardly know where to start.

Great review, this is more or less my own feeling about the game and how to get the most out of it. My highest is still only 58, after 120 hours in 27 days, 160 hours total including alts.

Huh? All the Hearts and DEs are pieces of jigsaw that go towards creating a giant snapshot of “what’s happening in Tyria”, they’re all connected, not so much as narrative, and not necessarily with each other directly, but as all going together to form “the story of Tyria” that you’re living through as you move through the virtual world. Sometimes hearts will be about how the locals are being affected by the dragons, even if remotely. Sometimes the story will be about how locals are contributing to the greater task of beating the dragons.

I really don’t see the problem. That way of delivering the world story is very immersive for me (and it’s not as if there’s no text involved – ALWAYS check important nearby NPCs when you’ve finished a DE, they often help fill in what you’ve just lived through).

That, combined with the personal story makes the game world feel quite rich and dense to me.

Thrumdi.9216:

Sad, but true.

On land, a boss only has to be up for about 30 seconds and people come running to fight it. Underwater, the bosses just swim around with no one to fight them. (Unless they can be ranged from land e.g. the Mega shark in the Straits of Dev.)

I personally love Underwater combat, but not enough people do, and it means you can’t do this content. The only underwater events that have players are those that are starting points for retaking contested waypoints on land.

I’m really afraid underwater combat/content is going to end up dying off because not enough people do it.

This is just the sort of occasion where you want to get a group together.

One thing to bear in mind is that you can fire off 1 mantra while charging another AND while moving and dodging. i.e. you don’t have to stand still to charge a mantra, and you aren’t blocked from firing off one mantra while you charge another.

i.e. their intended use is in a continuous flow of charging, using, moving, dodging, i.e. if your utilities are all mantras, there is never any point at which you can’t have a continous stream of mantra firing (of one kind or another) going on.

Just a heads up as it seems like some commentators here don’t seem to realize this.

FarFarAway.6579:

Its all about finding what motivates a large variety of players and then working that into the game, hopefully not at the cost of other players and what they enjoy. I just think GW2 has some gaps they need to fill.

I see your point now.

No doubt, and no doubt those gaps will be filled in time – after all that’s what MMOs do, they grow and evolve, the developers try and perfect the game and improve it.

However, I doubt the game will ever have gear stats progression through PvE. I think there will probably be other ways to show PvE achievement, but it seems the Anet philosophy is dead set against having gear progression be one of them.

GW2 like GW is still, at its core, built around PvP (it just has a decent amount of PvE, and this time round a charming persistent world, but combat, the thing you spend most of your time doing, seems to be fundamentally designed for PvP), so I do think that’s the main reason for the equal gear level.

I mean, I think it’s all very well done – the grunts while jumping, the dancing noises, the spellcasting chants, the passing NPC comments, etc., etc.

It’s all good, all good colour for the game, and mostly very well done, cute and charming.

It’s just all too kitten frequent. Please, please, please, pretty please either make all these sorts of sounds less frequent according to your judgement, or just give us a slider so we can pick our own level of oftenness (like with the music! – brilliant touch there, btw).

Please don’t misunderstand me here: I really want to hear them, just not so kitten much of them.

I want them to be pleasant little bits of audio colour that pop in now and then, not something that’s fast becoming an irritation to many people (including myself occasionally).

In terms of what they are and their quality, I absolutely love ALL the voic-overs to bits, including the mantra ones.

They’re just a bit too frequent, is all. They ought to be a pleasant bit of “colour” when something happens now and then, rather than an irritation that happens every kitten time something happens.

I’ve played around with mantra builds early on (i.e. the mantra utilities, but not yet traited), and I love the concept of it, it’s very mage-y. (It actually reminds me of the old “memorizing spells” mechanic from D&D that was based on the “magic” in s-f/fantasy author Jack Vance’s stories.)

I think that, while mantras aren’t exactly fail (and one or two can be used out of the box to good effect in any build), it’s simply the case that in the earlier part of the game (at least) there’s just more bang for the buck elsewhere, at a point where you’re still learning what everything does.

However, I fully intend to explore Mantra builds a bit more when I’ve gotten to 80 and can full trait for them, and have a better control of my chosen levelling build(s), and want to experiment more.

FarFarAway.6579:

For those who don’t “get” the socialism analogy – Socialism is basically the opposite of Competition. Socialism in an MMO environment philosophically-speaking, is a situation in which you assume players are going to continue to enjoy content for which they can’t compete to make their hero better than the average joe’s, simply because they “enjoy” it.

In a Competitive environment, the one in which the rewards-based player gains the most enjoyment, the player is continually striving to become stronger, better than the average joe. Its what drives you to keep playing. You may agree or disagree with this type of philosophy depending on what type of player you are, but for many MMOers, this is how it works.

Again, this is such an inept analogy it’s laughable.

People have been calling “socialism” because superficially it looks like “everybody’s equal” (i.e. everyone ends up with equal gear). But that’s just an extraordinarily shallow way of looking at it.

When you have a “level playing field” in a game (like Chess, where both sides are PERFECTLY BALANCED in terms of the “numbers game”), this means that ONLY PLAYER SKILL DECIDES THE OUTCOME.

This is actually a perfectly pure competitive environment in which those who shine do so solely by their own merits and skill as players, and not because they’ve paid more subcription time to developers than other players so they have an illusory progression through better gear.

“Illlusory” because the outcome of a contest between people of unequal gear level is UNCLEAR. Suppose both players are of equal skill, then the one with better gear will win. But also, a player with good gear and poor skill may squeak through and beat a player with better skill (especially where gear differential counts for a lot in the game’s numbers).

IOW, equalizing everyone’s gear makes the game more competitive and better able to accurately represent player skill and progression (in terms of bettering their actual skill at playing the game), precisely as a result of getting rid of illusory progression based on gear.

Jeez.

Roargathor.2743:

I absolutely love that I am finished gearing up. I dropped some cash for gems, traded them for gold and bought mats on the trader so a friend could craft me my level 80 exotic set. Now I can just WvW and not worry about being “out geared”. In my opinion all item stats should be level in any PvP situation like they are in Spvp. This game has crushed all other MMO’s in that respect. I actually love seeing the gear grinders qq posts too. Finally a game that focuses more on game-play and player skill over item progression. Sweet victory. To those who say " Some of us like item progression, and this game won’t retain us"… I say, it was never designed to retain you. Anet got your money, you can leave now. You won’t be missed, (at least in game). Please continue to stop by the forums to complain though, it gives me the giggles at work.

On the whole I agree with this.

What does give me pause, however (as a fanboi), is people who have reached 80 who say the endgame PvE just isn’t fun (in the sense of not being particularly challenging, i.e. the dungeons just aren’t very good, very challenging, etc., in the way that raid content is in some other games).

But on the other hand, I’m fairly confident that that’s precisely the sort of thing Anet are on the watch for, and prepared to improve, and add content that’s actually good. If I’m justified in my confidence, we’ll see GW grow and evolve in that way – as Anet get a feel for the playerbase, they will create content, and evolve the virtual world, so that in the future, a few years from now, nobody starting the game who loves challenging and varied endgame content will have cause for complaint.

I honestly don’t miss mounts, I find the combination of teleporting, walking (yes, I’m a walker sometimes) and running quite sufficient.

However, I can’t deny the coolness factor of riding a horse or something in a game. I would certainly enjoy mounts of they put them in the game.

But not out of my kittenhole please. Have them be tetherable (i.e. you leave them somewhere and you have to go back to them), and not allowed in buildings.

No second thoughts, superb value for money.

GOTY for me, definitely. Before playing GW2 I would have said TSW (a flawed gem if there ever was one), but now TSW is an honourable second.

GOTY by miles. I’d say it’s a masterpiece of game-making, in both concept and execution. Obviously it doesn’t please everybody, but it seems to be pleasing a hell of a lot of people.

Ah, so if this is kind of “inbuilt” into the GW engine, and the GW2 engine is build on the GW engine, maybe it’s part of the optimization of the game?

Maybe something like making peoples’ panning and turning more predictable so that it’s easier for the engine to render and send data over the internet, something like that?

In which case will we never be rid of camera smoothing in GW2? Or perhaps it’s just something they’ll work on gradually (like training wheels on a bike, eventualy they can get rid of it)?

tureliox.9362:

Just did a quick comparison on a German gold selling site I’d consider “trustworthy”.

I’d get 10g for 13€.
13€ via gems on the TP would result in about 4g according to gw2spidy.

Comparing this to the EVE PLEX mentioned above which I’ve used a lot in both directions (money to ingame currency and ingame currency to subscription fee):

You get a little more than 500m ISK for one PLEX. One PLEX via game time code costs 12€.
The site I’ve used above would sell me 500m for 10€.

This matches my observation in game: No one buys ISK from gold sellers.

Exactly, that’s what I mean, no-one buys ISK from ISK sellers because getting ISK the “official” way via PLEX is a pretty good deal.

I think that’s partly because PLEX has an anchor in that it has real value – it is in fact the precise value of a month’s subscription to EVE Online (not “value” in money terms, but the thing itself that’s valuable that you can get for a PLEX). Hence people who make lots of ISK buy PLEX to extend their game time.

So what would be the equivalent in this game? I guess stuff you can buy for gems that’s actually worth buying? So that people who make lots of gold in-game are willing to trade some of that gold for gems, which in turn makes gems more valuable, which means that someone actually buying gems with real life dollars (instead of in-game gold) is able to get some decent amount of gold.

This is what I don’t understand about their system: if they keep the price like it is, who’s going to buy gold with gems they’ve bought with money, if the amount of gold you can get is so miniscule, because gems aren’t valued highly, because few people buy gems with in-game gold, because there’s nothing much worth buying with gems?

Or maybe I’ve got the whole rationale wrong?

I wish a dev would chime in and explain lol

Sepp.9025:

Is there a specific reason why this game has a camera smoothing?
I have yet to see someone who likes it.

Probably a legacy of console aspirations.

Excellent and engaging writing, and I sympathize to some extent.

But not wholly.

It sounds like you were playing the game in the spirit it was meant to be played during your time in Beta, and not surprisingly enjoyed it; then it seems you reverted to a more mechanistic and habitual (or perhaps more “serious”) way of playing the game when it went Live. Perhaps if you’d carried on playing the way you played in Beta – being engaged in the virtual world itself, rather than in a chase for numbers and “completion” of various sorts, things might have gone differently.

But maybe it just isn’t a game for the hardcore PvE-er in that sense. Maybe it’s just not a PvE Achiever’s game.

Whether that bodes well or ill for the game in the long run, I’m not sure. I suspect it probably doesn’t matter as much as it would in a subcription-based game (where a player needs to get an intravenous drip of content from the devs in order to justify paying a monthly sub).

Well, it’s a question of degree I think. If the rate you can get it through official channels is reasonably close to illegal channels, or rather, if it’s enough to get a basket of typical “stuff” in-game, then that’s going to tip the scale for the average punter. They’ll swallow a bit of a loss for the ease of getting it and to ease their moral conscience.

But if there are so many bots in the game as people are reporting, then the scales aren’t being tipped at the moment, and it looks like people are preferring to buy Gold illegally for the moment.

Whatever the case, I hope Anet understand that so long as the price is so low, nobody’s going to pay real money for gems in order to get in-game gold through official channels at this price. Even 30s per 100 would be hopeless. I’d say maybe 5-6G per 800 gems (£8.50) might be more appropriate. At that price I might consider it, although I’d prefer it more like 8G.

At any rate, if they hoped they’d be able to kill Gold farming with this method, it doesn’t seem to be working very well.

And, as I suggest, part of the problem may be that they need to put more useful and cool stuff in the Gem store, and fast. That way Gems will be more in demand, people will be willing to pay more Gold for them, and then people who buy Gems with real money in order to get Gold will get a better deal for Gold, and be more likely to use official channels instead of Gold sellers.

(As an aside, it seems to me that Anet are fixed on the idea of 800 Gems being about equivalent to a month’s sub. A character slot is worth about a month’s sub that way, which seems about right. It’s the exchange between Gold and Gems that’s off.)

This is part of the problem, but the bigger part is that there simply isn’t enough interesting and fresh PvE content for people who are at cap now.

But to expect that there would be in any newly-released game is totally unrealistic. Games can’t be designed around people who get to cap in two weeks.

robot.9134:

gurugeorge.9857:

As a casual player at level 56 with my main….

I stopped reading… Not trying to be a jerk…but lets be real.. MMO’s are great for the journey to lvl cap…but the game is centered around lvl 80 play. You don’t have the experience to tell me that end game is or isnt an issue. i had the same point of veiw while leveling to 80 and completely lost it at cap.

My point is, I suspect I won’t. Not least because as far as I’m concerned, PvP is going to be my endgame.

As to the PvE endgame, I accept that some people are having a problem with that now, but MMOs that have just been released can’t possibly cater to people who get to lvl 80 in two weeks.

Some people got to lvl 60 in 2 weeks when WoW was released. It’s endemic to MMOs, and there’s nothing that can be done about it until more content is released over time. 8 years after release, there’s a kitten-ton of endgame content in WoW. In the same way, 8 years from now, nobody starting GW2 will be able to complain there’s not enough content at cap.

It’s totally IMPOSSIBLE for a game to have 8 years worth of endgame content at release. If that’s what you expect, then no just-released MMO is ever going to make you happy, because your expectation is unrealistic.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

errr what are you talking about? the prices of gems has gone up.

earlier the price was like 25-35 silvers (in game currency) per 100 gems
now it is like 37 – 47 silvers per 100 gems

Just checked in game, high is 30, low is 25, average 27 atm. Still laughable, still a problem.

OK, people buy Gold from farmers because for one reason or another they want a shortcut, perhaps a quick cash injection, or to buy some goodie or whatever.

Recently developers have sought to counter Gold selling, and tried several methods. f2p being one of the most popular (obviously, it kills gold farming stone dead, as a major Gold seller admitted a while ago). Other methods have been tried like EVE’s PLEX, with which I’m fairly familiar, and it works pretty well.

Now, I hope somebody who understands the situation better than me will correct me if I’m off, but it seems to me that there are lots of bots in GW2 at themoment, therefore (logically, it seems to me) there must be lots of Gold being bought and sold outside the context of the Gem store.

Why is this? It seems to me one of the main reasons is that “official” Gold is just not worth it. £8.50 for like 1G is risible. In EVE, if I buy a PLEX and sell it in-game, I get enough isk (in-game “gold”) to buy a reasonably substantial amount of stuff. Not so in this game.

Why is that?

It seems to me that part of the problem is that there’s nothing much worth buying in the official store, so there aren’t enough people bartering their hoarded Gold for Gems. Where are the extra bank slots, for example? Where’s the multitude of cool Townie outfits? So long as people aren’t really buying Gems for Gold, the Gems to Gold ratio is going to stay low, and it’s always going to be worth the punter buying Gold externally if they want to buy Gold.

So: all of this is FWIW. I just want to get the conversation going, as I think it is probably the most serious problem GW2 faces at the moment. Most of the whining about the game itself is worthless and off the mark, but this is a real problem.

robot.9134:

There are different opinions but don’t act like the problems aren’t real.

That there are different opinons means that some of the things some people see as “problems” others don’t.

As a casual player at level 56 with my main, I really don’t see any problems with the game, bar a few bugs and glitches here and there. Quite frankly, it’s about as close to perfect a game as I’ve ever experienced.

And I say this as a non-Anet-fanboi who didn’t like GW and was annoyed and unimpressed with the GW2 hype and actually disliked the screenies and vids (I basically just tried it out of sheer curiosity). Playing the game has actually won me over. I think it’s a masterpiece that’s only going to get better with time.

IOW, most MMOs recently people have said “it has potential” (and most of them have had potential), but none of them have been as polished on release as this one. With this one, it seems like the base game that’s out is already well on the way to fulfilling its potential, and it’s all gravy from now on.

Now you’re doing your Cassandra thing, telling me I’m going to change my mind as I get closer to cap. Maybe. But you know what? I really doubt it. I think my concerns aren’t your concerns. I think I’ve seen your types of complaints in other MMOs, and other complaints like yours from people here, and I have a sense that I’m going to be as baffled by them as I reach endgame as I am now.

Derpinator.2894:

Care?

Bad idea.

Well, as one of the more articulate critics, I hope you don’t give up on the game completely. Do give it some time – take a rest or whatever. I’m sure you’ll think about it at some point in the future and get a hankering to play again. Just relax and have fun pottering about pretending to be a fantasy adventurer, is what I say

Me? I’m having an absolute ball

The only good thing about the forums is the art design, which is indeed elegant and beautiful.

Otherwise, this has to be the glitchiest, most anxiety-inducing forum I’ve ever experienced. Nothing seems to be stable and reliable, there’s always something going wrong – login problems, 502, missing reply options, etc.

Not that important in the grand scheme of things, but I hope Anet spare some resources to give the whole thing an overhaul at some point.

Oh yus, absolutely loving it still. Even more, in fact (main lvl 56, alts at 7-11-ish). The new shiney honeymoon feeling has worn off, but I’m still finding myself coming up for air and realizing it’s quarter to three in the morning

Corpus.5347:

Sadly, the necromancer forums are not the best place to get advice on necromancers. Half the class forums here are just filled with folks like this thread. They spec 30 points deep into Whine, and never look back.

ROFLMAO

You owe me a keyboard and a can of coke

So true though, I’ve been making my way through the Professions, and every Profession sub-forum has people saying “this Prof is broken, yada yada”.

Hilarious.

Razamis.1062:

Yes, I have already lost interest and thats why I am back in World of Warcraft, just in time for Mists of Pandaria today!

I sincerely hope you have lots of fun!

But you’ll be back … Muahahahahaha

Tradewind.6913:

haha, oh man. Did someone actually say they dislike the game because it promotes Socialism? What is wrong with people these days.

I f’in hate socialism, and even I think that type of analogy is ridiculous. Does Chess promote socialism because the two sides are perfectly balanced?

Giving people balanced stats from the start has nothing to do with socialism or an “everybody wins” mentality; it’s a way of levelling the playing field so that winners and losers are decided by player skill, AND NOT BY THE AMOUNT OF TIME THEY’VE PAID SUBS TO kitten DEVELOPERS!!!

Why do you have a title that looks like a pontification about the overall state of MMOs and a complaint that GW2 is contributing to it, when the subject of the thread is just your personal preference?

Not that I totally disagree with what you’re saying, but really, was the grandiosity in the title necessary?

Every MMO I’ve ever played where there are class forums, the consensus on every class forum is that their class sucks and some other class is OP.

Sometimes it’s true, but very rarely; mostly it’s just whining from people who picked the wrong class for their playstyle, or need to L2P.

Having played most of the Professions a bit, I am pretty sure that they’re actually fairly well balanced. Really, none of them are drastically UP or OP. Each Profession excels at something, and each has its Kryptonite in another Profession.

Some people above have been making a ludicrously inappropriate analogy between everyone having the same gear level and socialism.

I despise socialism too, and the “everyone wins” mentality.

But is Chess a socialist game because both sides are perfectly balanced?

Think about it.

Art.7628:

gurugeorge.9857:

Art.7628:

Let me stand out. Let me be stronger to others for defeating STRONGER content. ArenaNet… let me be rewarded.

Do not want. Plenty other games with this. Go play them.

Its disgusting you actually got a vote up. To everyone engaged in this conversation you made yourself look like an idiot.

Read the entire OP or don’t post. Stop expecting people to take your opinion into consideration while being completely inconsiderate.

P.S. You sound just like the SWTOR forums did…. Learn something.

Huh? What are you talking about? SWTOR was a typical gear grind MMO.

GW2 is not. Some of us here like it that way, and will strongly disagree with any call, like yours, to change it to (what we perceive as) the same-old, same-old.

As someone said above: the design philosophy of this game, certainly for PvP, but even to some extent with PvE, is a level playing field, where skill should count for more than gear (relatively speaking – at least, at cap).

So no, I don’t want this game to have the same ego-stroking gear differential as other games, and if you want that, you should be aware that so long as the developers stick to their vision, this game won’t ever have that.

But there are hundreds of games out there that do. So, once again, if you don’t like the way this game is designed at a fundamental level, then please go and play those games; please let this one game be a bit different from the norm.

Or, live with it for a bit, you might find you like it eventually.

Art.7628:

Let me stand out. Let me be stronger to others for defeating STRONGER content. ArenaNet… let me be rewarded.

Do not want. Plenty other games with this. Go play them.

Yes, Mesmer is pretty active all round. Toughness Line/Staff is a bit more tanky and you don’t need to move around quite so much, but the other weapons all rely on mobility a lot.

I find all PvE “endgame” content to be the same in every MMO, as others have pointed out, because it’s all just repetitive until more content is created. To me, once you “know” any dungeon, it ceases to be interesting. The only “endgame” that’s of any value (because people are more interesting to play against than AI) is PvP.

I’m sure Anet will introduce more “fun” dungeon content as time goes on, but that’s part of the usual MMO process of evolution. The game is new, and despite what people (no doubt developers included!) might wish, it’s simply not possible for a new game to come out with the same amount of content as a game that’s been out for 8 years.

Fortunately, since you’re not paying a subscription, you don’t have to look for reasons to justify continuing to play. If just tootling around in the world isn’t enough to hold you, then wait for the next content update. It’s costless to drop the game and pick it up again whenever you get a hankering for it.

Yes, this game brings back quite a lot of the feeling of joy and discovery I had in my first MMO. I think the co-operative nature of the open world content has a lot to do with that; the atmosphere is more friendly than any MMO I’ve played since City of Heroes.

Obvious troll is obvious.

Derek.9254:

You can beat a mesmer with timing. They fail to realize that you can do it with any other class as well.

So what’s the problem then?

Also, I’d venture to suggest that nobody who’s even semi- “serious” about their GW2 PvP plays only one class. Getting good at PvP is all about knowing the classes and what they can and cannot do from the inside.

So if people say “Mesmer is fine, just a few tweaks”, it may be because they have a sense of all the classes, not because they “favour” their particular class.