Guild Wars 2

I must say i’ve been pretty disappointed with the updates since the new year. Of the big monthly events/updates since the game’s release, the following are in order of my most to least favorite:

1. Halloween

UPs:

• I loved the spooky makeover of LA, with eerie wind, ghosts in the air and floating candles. I loved the costume brawls, cauldrons and mad king jokes (i miss halloween whenever someone breaks out the halloween consumables at an event).
• The fight with the mad king was super fun and semi-epic (at least the first time, in comparison to the tons of relatively small bosses parties face).
• I liked being reminded that the Halloween event was running wherever i went because of the candy corn nodes.
• The mad king labyrinth was cool. Its nice to have a unique map to run around on.
• Halloween had some of the best weapons in an update, IMO. I still use the greatsaw.

DOWNs:

• The gambling for BLC weapons kitten a lot of people off.

2. Lost Shores

UPs:

• Added fractals, which is one of the few things in the game i regularly play anymore.
• The one time events, while painfully flawed, at least made me excited to log in every day during the event. I would think about coming home just to see what was going to happen all day at work.
• Rewards. I still use the 20 karka box on my main. I felt rewarded for showing up for an epic event.

DOWNs:

• Ascended gear controversy. The addition of a potential gear grind kitten off a lot of players.
• Horrible, horrible, horrible technical issues. The idea of huge, one-time events that change the world in real time is awesome but the execution was hugely flawed.

3. Wintersday

UPs

• Loved the wintery makeover of LA.
• Like how easy it was to get permanent event items like pets or weapons that you actually wanted.
• Liked the variety of stuff to do

DOWNs

• Found the “dungeon” boring and suuuuper repetitive. After a few times, i really didn’t want to go back to finish the whole string of events.
• Not enough “wow, awesome” takeaways, compared to some of the halloween stuff.
• Let down by the fact that the ship was supposed to bring people to different capitals, but completely left any interesting seasonal stuff out of the cities. People just showed up to stand by the dungeon entrance.
• While there were a decent number of activities, nothing personally interested me that much and i wasn’t really excited to get on just to see what was developing.

4. Frost and Flame

UPs

• Um…well… i guess it comes tacked onto some good system updates like customizable achievement tracker and name changes, so that’s good, right?

DOWNs

• Completely underwhelming. They told us we would get something nearly as big as an expansion (original statement was Jan/feb, the pushed back). Its the end of march and there has been 40 min worth of content added.

So what are your favorite updates so far, and why?

I used to visit daily for the rich ori node. Haven’t been there since.

i’m tentatively excited about the talk of refugee housing popping up there as part of the living story. Its a cool place, aesthetically, and it would awesome to see the place populated with people, events and a world boss.

My prediction is that you find some more lame items in the snow, you fight a few lame mobs that you’ve already seem 500 times and everyone will wish they would bring back the huge fail that was Lost Shores because at least it was interesting.

Pants.8315:

TERA, as it is used as an example in this thread had awful armour models for female characters

Really? Because only in my wildest dreams is my female norn going to ever wear something as epic as this, as detailed as this or kitten as this. I was watching the video of the various armors and, coming from GW2, i was floored by the amount of awesomeness.

After reading this thread i looked up Tera armor sets. Regardless of what you feel about the skimpy sets, the armor designs in that game blow everything in GW2 out of the water (IMO). Anet would do well to get even half of the ornate, detailed craziness you see in pretty much every set i’ve seen in that game.

Red Falcon.8257:

Anet, this is a medieval fantasy setting.

When was this ever supposed to be a medieval fantasy anything? I bought this game and saw robots, lasers, helicopters, airships, sniper rifles, engineers with gun turrets, etc. I guess because there are swords that must mean “medieval”?

Manasa Devi.7958:

marnick.4305:

Because they nudge you towards Guild Activities, while the laurels are an alternative for solo players.

That’s quite ironic, given that the entire implementation of the new guild activities seems specifically designed to nudge many players away from them.

Or more precisely, the nudge players into turning their backs on their small guilds to hop on a big guild bandwagon. I know everyone in my small guild did.

Chickenshoes.6250:

Bullshizle.2675:

Kromica.2831:

Because they wanted to create an mmo without grind….. They are doing a wonderful job don’t you think?

I’ll tell you one thing, it’s easier to get a full epic set in Wow than trying to get one of these ascended rings.

They are doing great man xD

I did 12 easy fractal dailies on my engineer and without even using any relics to purchase them, I have 5 rings.

Hard it aint

If you’re lucky. I got 5 rings in 10 runs without using pristine relics and my buddy got 0. For some people, RNG makes it hard.

sheaths will never work because everyone weapon has a different skin. How i my chainsaw going to fit in a sheath for a zweihander?

I think “ubiquitous” describes it better than “cliche”

Maybe tengu are beating up the canthans and stealing all their oriental aesthetics.

It really sucks when you’re trying to make a jump in the fractals, you sudden go “in combat” in the air, and miss the jump because of your decreased speed.

Terra Dactyl.2047:

tl;dr: If there’s any problem with norn physiques, gender stereotyping, or anything that doesn’t look like a norn is “supposed to”, it’s the raging musclebound steroid monster option for males, not the females’ lack of a similar raging steroid monster option.

Its only a male stereotype if women don’t get to be steroid monsters too. If everyone is, then there is no double standard. Its the combination of both extremes that makes it an issue, not the present of one extreme or the other in a vacuum.

Of course, having a raging steroid male in itself is not a bad idea because it actually makes them distinct from the human physiques in the game. Its would be pointless to give them the exact same bodies as humans if they’re supposed to be completely different races, especially when you have sylvari, charr and asura who are obviously non-human.

kuora.5402:

Personally, I don’t think game models should resemble too much of a real life model. This is a fantasy game, after all.

I like the way it is.

You say you like it the way it is but irony is that they DO resemble a real life model a million times more than the male. That’s part of the issue with sexual dimorphism is that the female are stuck looking like “real life” while the men get fantasy proportions.

This was messing me up BIG TIME during the snow fractal yesterday. Every time i tried to pick up a torch to relight the fire, i would just run away like an idiot instead. Its even worse when you’re trying to fight the jade maw and you run uncontrollably instead of picking up the crystal that will save your life.

Southsun is a nice place, graphically, and by far the most dead level 80 zone. Till recently, some folks still visited it for the one Rich Ori node in all of the Pve.

Now that the rich node is gone, what reason is there for Southsun to even exist?

Rainbow unicorns seem like THE most western fantasy thing you could possibly add. The rainbow unicorn aesthetic is absolutely synonymous with an american girl’s school folder/notebook.

The brilliance of this weapons precisely that some people completely loathe it.

Grenth needed that patch! tried to do it earlier today and the entire zerg wiped in a second. lol. 20 people saying “wtf?!”

I’d settle for the pre-halloween patch helmet-hair we had. Its sort of dumb that we actually did have some form of hair under hats but it was removed…

The biggest thing that they could change if they added different hairstyles under helmets is to get rid of the stupid hanging cloth on so many of the hats/helmets. There are so many cheesy designs that are forced to dance around the issue of covering bald characters.

Tarn.1374:

Just a product of another male designer I guess…?

To be fair, “another” product compared to what, exactly? What other heavy armors are that low?

The warrior’s greatsword Rush skills is super buggy. Half the time i go to run at an opponent and sit in their face, jogging in place while seconds tick by without even attacking. I’ve missed multiple kills tonight alone in wvw when i rushed at someone with low life and ran in place instead of actually attacking. Please fix this super buggy skill.

i’ve seen 3 twilights this evening

The low leggings are some of the best in the game only because there are way too many Urkel pants! Long live hips.

I want a separate codpiece slot armor slot now…

Tarn.1374:

It’s utterly confusing how the models (in comparison to each other) got accepted in the first place.

While sad, its not incredibly surprising considering its the same gender stereotypes you see throughout pretty much every media. Males are allowed to be massive, far beyond your average man, in video games and comics while the women who are supposed to be their physical counterparts have to fit into a relatively narrow socially-defined ideal of femininity. See the Hulk vs. his female opposite. Guys are basically allowed to be superhumanly big in fantasy media, but if a woman even starts to even approach the size of a RL bodybuilder, people cry “roids” and start making rationalizations for an arbitrary double standard.

I’d would be happy if they just reverted things to how they worked before halloween: short or “updo” looking hair under all hats and helmets. Why they feel that bald is better than what we had before is beyond me.

The ridiculous panties they added look worse than the boob-cover, IMO. It reminds me of seeing certain women at the gym with crazy panty lines because they don’t understand what the right underwear is to wear with stretch pants.

Sort of reminds me of the Halloween patch were they removed everyone’s hair when equipping a hat/helmet. They STILL haven’t fixed that one.

Bazookajoe.5624:

This is beyoned unfair and goes against everything Arenanet has done with the gem store.

Sounds exactly like halloween, actually.

Are these the minis that you can make buy getting materials from the tixx dungeon without spending a dime, btw?

Its not that karma is any easier than gold to get, its that there are ton of gold sinks and almost nothing to spend karma on in comparison. Having it cost karma would be fine if there were a bunch of other desirable things that also cost karma for it to compete with.

I can’t comprehend how any warrior can go into a dungeon without “shake it off”. Its easily my most used utility, while still having the signit that removes all conditions equipped as well. Having a stun-breaker is HUGE for dungeon survival.

I’m going to come at this from a completely different angle. I’m sure warriors are by far the most popular because they have the strongest archetype, fluffwise, in the game. No one without in-depth knowledge of teh game lore really has a solid grasp on what a “mesmer” is and a lot of people don’t like the relatively high tech flavor of the engineer. The warrior, on the other hand, is a universal archetype you see in every game you’ve ever played since the exist in real life and are thus the easiest to identify with and understand right away.

I was completely unfamiliar with GW when my friends got me into GW, and didn’t know a kitten thing about who was OP or who did the most damage or anything else mechanically. I did know what the concept of “warrior” meant sight unseen and went for that quick and easy decision just to jump into the game.

You also see the “warrior” archetype being incredibly popular in other games too. Right now there are beta testing the new Dungeons and Dragons rules, and the developers have revealed that there research shows that fighter has long been the most popular class in the game, despite being considered underpowered (and even bottom tier) in a few editions.

I dont think it mostly has anything do to with mechanics. Its just the people get what a warrior means and it easy to identify with the concept from the fluff perspective.

kenshinakh.3672:

I have not yet extensively played with that to know how much bigger they could be, but I felt that the typical male model for norn seems “believable”.

Just for a frame of reference, this is a maximum-sized heavy armor female norn next to the sort of typical male norn i see all the time. Notice how his arm is the size of her ENTIRE TORSO. lol. They don’t even look like the same species.

kenshinakh.3672:

You’re serious o.O? That woman has more muscles than an average fit male. But if that’s your taste, fair enough. Just don’t force your ideals as being true. Keep it as an opinion.

Then why can’t I imagine all my characters, men and women alike to be proportionally nice, and beautiful to my standards while being really strong?

How exactly do you reconcile these two statement? When i tell you what i’d like to see you give me “You’re serious o.O?” and “Just don’t force your ideals as being true. Keep it as an opinion.” but then you turn around and want your own standards of what is beautiful. Remember, i said up thread that i wanted the OPTION for body types that actually looked like female counterparts to the males.

Though I’ve seen women with more muscles than norn… they used steroids and that stuff really messes up people’s bodies >.>. I’m not interested in my characters looking like they’re pumped up on steroids lol.

You claim you’re not interested in steroids and yet you say you’re fine with the norn design, including males!? You don’t see the glaring hypocrisy and double standard here? Its fine when men are superhumanly broad and massive, but when women have muscles its “eww, gross, steroids!” IRL, women can have more proportional muscle mass than the female norn presented, without steroids, and the fact that you’re playing the “eww, steroids” card is a symptom of the exact sort of society-enforced beauty standards and general B.S. that i’m lamenting in the first place.

Just to emphasize, I’m for more body options… I’m against some of the portrayals of what Norns should look like and what they look like currently.

Fair enough. All i’m saying is that it would be nice for once if a game gave the option for females to generally look big and powerful when the option is everywhere for the males already. If males get to be big and bulky, its only fair to let that be a female option too, especially in this sort of game where it fully fits with the flavor of the race/lore.

kenshinakh.3672:

And it’s really tiring to hear you keep saying that it’s keeping to double standards or whatever standards… Norn women does not look like barbie at all, especially if you dress your characters properly. Also, don’t be undressing your characters and looking at them >.>. Put on some nice armor and you’ll see there’s more to a character than just their body shape…

Someone would have to have their head pretty deep in the sand to not recognize the huge double standard at play here. The males are giant hulks and the women are positively tiny by comparison. The barbie vs. hulk analogy is very appropriate.

Its also interesting that you bring up armor too, since it merely exacerbates the problem. When you see a full-sized norn female next to a norn male and they are both wearing the exact same armor, they barely look like the same species. I remember seeing a norn male wearing a sweet pauldron and i was about to ask him what it was, until i realized it was the same one i was currently wearing … only 8x larger (because the volume of his character was THAT much greater).

Oh also, there’s a limitation on how muscular bodies can get. That goes for both female and male bodies. Muscles can build more based on testosterones I think, and I have never seen a female athlete that has muscles big as how big guys can get, unless they were using steroids.

1. This argument has no weight when you are talking about a made-up race in fantasy game where tiny blue people shoot fireballs at dragons.

2. Even in RL, there are women with far more proportional muscle mass than the norn women in GW2. The norn men are far larger, proportionally, than a “normal” human male in RL while the norn women look like every other “normal” human female is see running on a treadmill.

There is no reason to keep reinforcing the barbie vs hulk double standard. It would be refreshing (plus more balance and veristic) to get this as an option:

Electro.4173:

Its a clipping thing. Easier to remove the hair model completely when wearing a helmet than to have to go in and individually edit each hairstyle in combination with each helmet in order to display the hair along with the helm.

While it would certainly be nice to have helmets and hair combined, the amount of work it would take (considering the dozens of hairstyles and helmets in the game, almost all of which can combine with one another) means it probably won’t happen.

The thing is, there USED be hair under your helmets before the patch around halloween. For some completely unknown reason, this was removed and replaced with baldness.

The whole reason that conversation is put in the game is to reinforce the norn flavor that Anet has built around the norns regarding their women being equal to men. In that context, its pretty ironic that they have to cop-out, reinforcing RL social norms and gender roles when it comes to norn aesthetics by making the women look like barbie next to the hulk. Its an old, and frankly tired, double standard.

Celestina.2894:

Eh, I personally prefer my combo over full stag.

I honestly can’t stand the look of the top and bottom for stag armor

Mix and match for me too, i just happened to use the pieces you didn’t use.

KrakenAZ.9367:

I’m happy with the body types overall, though I wish there was a muscular skin version of the largest form.

I hear ya. i’d like to “upgrade” to the largest body type but i don’t want to give up the awesome 6-pack.

One of the issues i have with norn already is that, aesthetically, they are basically tall humans, in contrast to asura, charr and sylvari, which are explicitly non-human. Fixing clipping issues is always good, but trying to make them thinner only makes them even less unique and more like humans with a different name.

Nev.5316:

Knote.2904:

Another alternative would be to make them purchasable for karma as well, more uses for karma is always good.

That would be stupid, karma is extremely easy to gain, ive got over 200k in the past few weeks just from daily jugs. If that was ever introduced everyone would have t3.

This is the problem with karma though: there is nothing good to spend it on.

At level 80 you’ve got, what, one set of topped out armor to buy that may or may not look like kitteny kitten on your character? There needs to be more things like high-end armor and weapons for people to spend karma on to make 200k karma actually feel like a large amount and an achievement to gain. I mean, if i held onto my gold the way i have my karma (ive got 500k now) i’d probably have enough gold to buy multiple full sets of T3 armor. Gold is actually used to buy tons and tons of desirable and necessary things however, so getting that 120g looks like an achievement went compared to karma values.

Wesley.4590:

What they’ve created in GW2 now actually mimics how we celebrate Christmas/New Year in RL very accurately, because in RL the reason why and how you celebrate a holiday depends on your view of the world (e.g. for some Christmas means a Christmas tree and Santa Claus and for others it means the birth of Christ).

This is an important point. Most people don’t stop to realize that pretty much NOTHING about RL christmas is actually christian or from a single source, from the date on the calender (birth of mitra), the presents (saturnalia) to the tree (northern non-christian celebration of yule). The holiday in RL is a crazy mash-up of different cultures crammed together into one package, so it makes perfect sense for it to be treated similarly in GW.

Fantasy =/= “medieval”. I was never for a minute under the impression that GW was supposed to be a medieval simulation anyway.

If you don’t like technology in your fantasy, that’s a matter of personal taste, and that’s fine. When you start claiming that it makes no sense or would unbalance things in a world where people shoot out lighting bolts or fireballs, then the argument quickly breaks down into absurdity. High tech guns don’t mean kitten thing in world where a guy with a stick can nuke a whole town.

There plenty of armor sets with 2 pauldrons, especially as you get to higher levels and access to more sets. I really wish there was a left/right toggle that let you wear only one side or the other.

BurnedToast.3781:

panzer.6034:

Are they bugged? Bought one 20 min ago and it never showed up in the mail or for pickup.

Try deleting some old mails.

I had the same problem during Halloween with devil horns, my mailbox was full and it didn’t tell me. By the time i realized it and deleted old mails I had like 10 pairs of devil horns waiting for me from trying to order it over and over :p

thanks! i guess the full mailbox notification was the only thing bugged!

Are they bugged? Bought one 20 min ago and it never showed up in the mail or for pickup.

Ualtar.5047:

Mad.1932:

well seeing as how t6 crafting mat prices have gone up 5-10x what they were i would call that bad, they need to adjust drop rates now that the bots are gone, supply is low, and demand is increasing

Then real people will step up to fill that demand once they figure out the sell prices are actually decent now.

Or they get frustrated and quit going for things that require mats that are 30+ silver. Real people are never going to out bot the bots.

I see people praising ArenaNet for getting rid of a ton of bots, but i also see people lamenting the fact that without bots, all the prices of rare materials go up. This whole time i was rooting for them to ban all the botters, but this new issue about messing up the market is interesting.

Were bots good for lowering prices, after all?

Rial.3798:

While I absolutely love the female Norn’s bodies (we need more muscular women in RPGs).

I think this is sort of ironic and funny because i personally think they’re not muscular enough. lol. I train girls with bigger biceps (proportional to height) than these norn women.

Holm.7058:

Here’s a little real life concept for you who get way into pointless debates like this:
Natural Selection.

“Natural selection” is a completely pointless argument in this context because these races and women are completely made up. Anet could have made them obese or have wolf heads or blue skin and it could be rationalized somehow in this fantasy setting. Many people just get tired of seeing the same old tired gender-based double standards regarding how women are “supposed” to look in RL and other media and feel that in a scenario where you have the opportunity to create a female image, you should have as much freedom to make that image be what you want (especially when it knocks down double standards).