Guild Wars 2

It appears that this reward track system has been carefully designed to provide zero rewards for a player with my style of play. I have 16 characters, play all of them equally, and participate in all game formats (PvE, PvP and WvW) equally. My activity level is currently about two hours of playtime per day which should make me an at least moderately active player. However, I am getting absolutely zero reward track progression at WvW because (a) my playtime is not continuous but consists of 10-15 minute sessions whenever I’m not otherwise occupied, and therefore (b) the only manageable approach is to play one character at a time through the different game formats where each format takes from a couple of minutes to less than ten minutes to complete the intended objectives. What this means is that my average “play intensity” in WvW never rises above the minimal threshold so that I could start acquiring reward track progress, and even in the case that the intensity might sometimes be high enough to qualify for reward progress I still wouldn’t have time (and it would be inconsiderate towards other players in T1 anyway) to leave the character twiddling her thumbs until the tick to collect the progress.

I have no issues with either PvE or PvP rewards, as they are linearly cumulative. However, this intensity based approach ensures zero rewards from WvW for me, and appears to be geared towards rewarding an obsessive-compulsive playstyle instead.

I would like to reiterate this issue. According to the summary page, I have completed 8 Wintersday achievements. However, the meta event counter claims that I have only completed 6/18 achievements. Taking a closer look at the meta list, I see that the achievement “Generous Harvest” that is listed on the summary page is not listed in meta. Furthermore, the achievement “Grawnk Munch” is listed as completed in the meta list but it doesn’t count towards the total (I have completed both during a previous Wintersday). What this means in practice is that in order to get the meta reward I would have to complete all but one of the remaining achievements, or in other words simply getting the event meta done requires either the 10k drinks achievement or the 2.5k candy cane achievement. In my opinion, this looks like a ridiculous requirement for an event meta. Could you please confirm whether this is a bug or an intended feature?

The effects of this decision are even worse than just discouraging you from playing the way you want and the way that is beneficial to your side. I am already forced to keep an eye on the WXP bar all the time and switch characters when it gets close to turning over, to the detriment of both my own play and that of my side. Then, today when I was just doing some quick gathering on my way through the place with a character that didn’t need the trophies I saw a ZvZ brawl at a distance. There was a treb nearby and my bar was only half full, so why not lend a helping hand to my teammates and send some bovine love in the general direction? Huuuuge mistake. A couple of loot bags drop, I collect them and Ping! Rank up! A loot bag had contained a vial of liquid WXP that got auto-consumed. Another wasted chest suggests that this “feature” discourages people from partaking in the game at all, because the expected level of wasting of resources is both uncontrollable and unacceptable.

1/10

The one point comes from gliding which is a moderately fun novelty feature. Everything else takes huge leaps into opposite direction from what I find enjoyable in a game. I endured the experience just long enough to unlock the elite spec for my main, checked it out and found it lackluster enough to revert back to my old build. Left the HoT area and have no intention to go back for more rage-inducing grind. The maps are kitteny for the sake of being kitteny, and the artificial barriers feel exactly that, artificial. The expansion as whole isn’t worth my time.

Can confirm this. Chain at the instance 64.25.38.238:0 has been stuck at the assault phase for the whole day. Presumed issue: Maybri Shadowstalker not present (died and despawned?), no quest objectives active.

There isn’t a simple solution to this problem.

It is not possible, even in principle, to create an automatic penalty system that would punish trolls to a sufficient degree without simultaneously causing unacceptable collateral damage to legitimate activities. We just don’t have the kind of artificial intelligence that would be needed to put the actions in the proper context.

Voting systems are inherently flawed and prone to abuse as well. A specific troll report option might help, assuming that (1) all siege and pending updates can be queried for the owner / initiating player and easily reported, and (2) these reports are processed in near real-time by a GM who reviews the actions and delivers appropriate sanctions.

My preferred suggestion is a bit different: give players new resource management tools. Specifically,

• the owner of a siege item can set its access permissions to everyone / my squad / my guild / my team. This prevents golem stealing and siege squatting.
• a member of a guild that has claimed a camp / tower / keep / castle can similarly set supply access permissions for the site, thus preventing unauthorized use of supply when necessary

If you look at the orange dots more closely you’ll see that they are miniature ArenaNet logos. This is a known issue. As for the underlying reason, I suspect that it has something to do with enemy players being within your radar range when you spawn into a zone. Happens most often in OS but can also happen when you switch maps and spawn directly inside a keep (enemies don’t usually hang around the base spawn location for this effect to trigger).

Kudos to DR for diligent community building. As a lifetime Yak this is the first time I’ve seen you in action and I’m positively impressed. Dynamical play, good small scale tactics (special shout-out to BOMB), your war effort is clearly coming together as you have been climbing up the ladder. You’re now a solid T4 server but if you want to reach T3 you’ll have to work on that crippling coverage gap. Otherwise half of your daily effort goes into rebuilding what was lost during the one-sided time-out.

Region: Finland, Europe
ISP: Elisa
Server: Yak’s Bend (NA)
Character: Tgc Angelica
Stuck in: Diessa Plateau (~30 login attempts over several hours)

C:\>tracert 64.25.33.68

Tracing route to 64.25.33.68 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 1 ms <1 ms 3 ms P-661HNU-DI-F1.P-661HNU-DI-F1 [192.168.1.1]
2 30 ms 29 ms 29 ms vantik1.fi.elisa.net [88.112.216.1]
3 28 ms 29 ms 29 ms ge1-2-0.vanhel-p1.fi.elisa.net [139.97.16.105]
4 23 ms 21 ms 23 ms ae10.helpa-p1.fi.elisa.net [139.97.6.205]
5 21 ms 20 ms 23 ms ae2.helpa-gw1.fi.elisa.net [139.97.6.250]
6 23 ms 27 ms 21 ms ge0-1-3-500.bbr1.ldn1.uk.eunetip.net [213.192.191.153]
7 46 ms 29 ms 27 ms hls-b1-link.telia.net [62.115.41.249]
8 37 ms 39 ms 39 ms s-bb4-link.telia.net [80.91.246.86]
9 50 ms 41 ms 45 ms kbn-bb4-link.telia.net [62.115.139.177]
10 139 ms 136 ms 129 ms nyk-bb2-link.telia.net [80.91.254.91]
11 172 ms 179 ms 169 ms dls-bb1-link.telia.net [213.155.134.255]
12 171 ms 171 ms 179 ms ncsoft-ic-306347-dls-bb1.c.telia.net [213.248.102.146]
13 169 ms 179 ms 179 ms 64.25.32.26
14 177 ms 175 ms 173 ms 64.25.32.82
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

This would seem to have something to do with zones. This morning, I got the error when trying to log in with a character that had been parked at Lion’s Arch. I switched to a different character that was in Divinity’s Reach, went around a few zones without any issues, mapped to LA and got the same error. Tried with a third character, the same thing. I could be anywhere else in the game but if I took the character to LA I was disconnected with the error in question.

Now, a couple of hours later I am again able to log in normally with the characters that got stuck in LA limbo.

Edit: five minutes later, got stuck at Diessa Plateau. It’s certainly something zone related.

I came to think about another interesting modification that could be implemented in a system described above. At the moment matches are one week long, which has both up and downsides. A reasonably long timeframe allows for long term strategic play that just isn’t present in flash matches. On the other hand, badly unbalances matches just drag on way longer than reasonable.

If the total war system is implemented, then it’s possible to have the best of both worlds by rotating each map on a different schedule! Say, on Monday all green BL matchups are shuffled. Then, on Wednesday all blue BLs are shuffled. Red BLs on Friday. EBG on Sunday. Then green BLs again on Tuesday. Any individual map exists for 8 days (vs. 7 of the current system), retaining the strategic aspects. However, there is a new matchup every second day, providing more variety and limiting the effects of particularly uneven matches.

I still think that the suggested system would be significantly more interesting than the one we have now.

Here is a reasonably simple suggestion with potentially interesting consequences: for the duration of a match, instead of making a server face the same two opponents on four different maps, make it face different servers on each map. I call this the “total war” variant of WvW.

Consequence #1: There is a natural limiter to side effects of highly unequal matches. If a bandwagon server is stomping everything on one map, people on less populated servers may opt to stay away from that map and still have three other maps to play. Even if the bandwagon server still sees four maps to stomp, the adverse effects are mitigated through spreading them among a larger number of opponents.

Consequence #2: Because of the above, match criteria can be significantly relaxed, resulting to a greater variety of both real and potential opponents. Even more importantly, people can choose the expected level of play without having to switch servers, just by switching maps.

Consequence #3: Because of the greater variety, the concept of match-wide 2-vs-1 is eliminated. A map specific 2-vs-1 is still completely possible should two servers want to keep a third out of “their” playground.

Consequence #4: This also greatly evens out the effects of coverage gaps — a single server cannot PvD the whole place in one go, since even if one or two opponent servers are taking shut-eye, that’s just one map. Servers on other maps are most likely eager to fight.

Side suggestion: When seeding opponents, the rating of a server should be undervalued for their own BL, taken as such for EBG and overvalued for opposition BLs. This way, servers are more likely to have a tangible home advantage on their own BLs, and an uphill battle on hostile BLs.

In this scenario, there wouldn’t be match-specific winners or losers, because in essence there would be just one huge free-for-all match. However, rating could be calculated the same way it is done now, just by considering each map a separate match.

This suggestion does not address the existing problems, and thus it is rather inconsequential.

In order to find a workable solution, it is essential to understand the problems first, and then create a system that takes them into account. For the leagues, there are several major issues in the current system:

Because of the low number of participants in each league (further exacerbated by the matches being triples instead of pairings) there are only a few possible matchup combinations, severely reducing match variety (in my opinion, even the whole NA/EU server leagues are too small for acceptable variety). Furthermore, forced compartmentalization causes thoroughly unsatisfactory results at either end of the scale when pre-league rankings are far from the league strength of a server (e.g., in the current NA silver league it is simply impossible for either HoD or SoR to have a reasonable matchup). This is the only part that your suggestion actually addresses.

For a Swiss system to stay “fresh” it cannot be applied for more rounds than a number related to participants, here roughly proportional to log_3(N) where N is the number of participants in the league. With the current numbers, any season that uses the Swiss system for more than two consecutive rounds misapplies the system. The end result of misapplication is, as has been seen, the spontaneous emergence of stable attractor loops. The increased variety in your suggestion is caused by larger N compared to number of rounds, but the modified ranking system does not provide any advantage over the 5-3-1 system currently applied.

Furthermore, the suggested system is redundant because the Glicko system already creates reasonable matchups, and with some random variation added does it much better than either the Swiss system or the suggested modification.

Then, there is yet another problem that is simply huge. Matchmaking is only one of the main functions of a system, and that is the easy part — a bogosort algorithm would create matchups no worse than what we are currently having! The more important function in competitive play is to sort the competitors so that at the end of the league the winners and losers can be announced. For the sorting algorithm to be effective, it must meet two requirements: that the relative final ranks reflect the performances of respective competitors, and that the ranking is fine-grained enough to make the relative ranks resistant to random noise. The current Swiss system (and your modified system) is egregiously bad in this regard. Right now in NA silver there is a rare (probably the only one in the league) match containing nearly equal competitors SBI and YB, but because of the ranking system the one that loses this match will most likely beat the other in final standings. Furthermore, other than the outliers (above mentioned HoD and SoR), all the other servers in the league have practically the same rank, meaning that the current system has worse resolution than bogosort! Again, your suggested system does nothing to address these flaws.

TL;DR version: The current system is abysmally bad, but this is not the suggestion to fix it.

Shepherd.5839:

What is happening is very deliberate manipulation of the overall score with an intent to make this last the entire season.

When I cap a camp or stomp an enemy player, I am “very deliberately manipulating the overall score” and I have full intent to make this manipulation effort last the entire season.

You, and any other player arguing against 2-vs-1 are resorting to empty rhetorics in a futile attempt to gain support to a self-invented set of imaginary rules on how WvW is supposed to be played. In doing so, you are persistently ignoring the very clear statements made by game developers themselves, or claiming arbitrary restrictions to what they must have meant.

WvW is one-on-one-on-one for one and one reason only, to make it possible for two sides to make an alliance and beat the snot out of the third party. It is not something that is overlooked or ignored by the developers — it’s a core feature of the game format! Spontaneously forming alliances are not a sign of “dirty play” or the game breaking apart; instead, they’re a sign of the format starting to fulfill its potential.

Discussing 2v1 is not bad, but it certainly is futile, unless you are seeking advice on how to not constantly be the one getting allied against.

Ashy.8693:

I’d say the best solution to this problem would be a server wide chat. Sort of like a map chat but on a server wide level. And yes, it would probably get turned off by some, making a call to arms arguably inefficient. A server wide chat would be useful for other things too, and I think it would be used by others… so heck, why not add that anyways.

We sort of have that already, it’s just a matter of adjusting the implementation a bit. It’s called the team channel. Right now it’s redundant with map in WvW and not usable in PvE. All that is needed is to make team available in PvE with the scope of “players in the zone that are on the same server as you”.

Vexander.9850:

What would you all add?

This is pretty much the same suggestion I made a bit earlier. Anyway, I’d add an utterly lovable and reliably unreliable conman in the vein of Moist von Lipwig from the Discworld novels, a person with a great potential for good under certain circumstances (that might contain golems as probation officers, or assassination contracts should he stray from the proper path) and great potential for mischief if left on his own devices (but only because it’s boring to be good).

Looking at the topic at arm’s length, it would appear to be that there is indeed a reasonable request to be made. However, a perceived need isn’t sufficient — arguments matter as well. A poorly reasoned request is more likely to raise objections and derail the discussion than to further the cause.

An argument of balance is not constructive. It can be examined statistically, with the conclusion that in order to perceive an imbalance one must have internalized the industry-wide opposite imbalance.

A simple request for “more males” is not constructive. It makes the implicit claim that women don’t really count, and in the greater context it also asserts a privilege.

A request for the standard alpha male archetype is not constructive either. Beyond already being overrepresented throughout the industry, as a character it is a spotlight-stealing vampire that reduces diversity and story potential.

On the positive side, the best argument I have seen so far — one I could certainly agree with — is here:

Aedelric.1287:

Canach is a decent enough character that would be well suited to join the main cast of heroes, I would not be upset if he was chosen as the next male hero. Failing that perhaps a new one from the Brisban Wildlands, perhaps some kind of crazy Skritt mechanic would be nice.

This is a good, constructive suggestion. Canach is an interesting, morally complex character. In my opinion, as a character he beats Scarlet ten to nil. I wouldn’t certainly mind seeing him better utilized in future chapters.

So, please be positive. The best way to make a contribution is to describe an existing or a new character you would like to see in the story — and who just happens to be male, in contrast to making ‘maleness’ the only relevant criterion.

JGBarbarian.3579:

I want a warrior that wrestles bears with his hands, is a tactical genius, charismatic leader, emotionally strong (not daddy issues or anything lie that), mature, heterosexual, married, father of 7 kids (could be more), with huge arms, a huge beard with a mustache. Basically I want a mentor I can respect.

Uh … you don’t think that is a rather sad statement about your ability to respect other people?

Anyway, the perpetual problem with the archetypal Male of your description is that it’s all too easy for them to become a Black Hole Marty Stu. You know, the world rotating around them instead of the other way round. The story only existing as an excuse to make them look even more awesome. Adding such a character to an existing setting reduces diversity instead of increasing it.

havoc.6814:

The gender bias which permeates the living story was intentionally created.

Hi there, I thought you said you aren’t talking to me any more?

Again, you don’t provide any evidence in support of your claim. Furthermore, you aren’t paying proper attention to the conceptual difference between an author’s intent, the work of the author, and your interpretation of that work. In essence, you have … an opinion. Thank you for making it known.

Jamais vu.5284:

But there is a gender bias in the game. It’s (presumably) not an ideological bias, it’s just a regular bias. A bias from ANet’s writers towards more female main characters than male ones (atleast currently).

Aaaand we are back to step 1.

Throwing a coin five times and getting one ‘heads’, four ‘tails’, isn’t indicative of bias. It’s just a random sample with a probability (37.5%) that doesn’t even reach the 1-sigma level of statistical significance. If you had thrown the coin ten times without getting a single ‘heads’ then you would have a case. Here, not so much.

In oder to see a bias, you’d have to be used to a crooked coin that comes up ‘heads’ nine times out of ten.

And just for fun, here’s a further explanation for consideration:

You fly to Beijing. The first person you see as you step out of the plane is a man. Based on this, you make the statement, “All Chinese are male.” Is this a valid inference? And if not, why?

Aedelric.1287:

If someone was to say the male characters are inadequate, no one really has a right to argue about that personal opinion.

Well, the issue is not with the perceived inadequacy but the act of considering male characters as a separate group that requires affirmative action, instead of just asking for more adequate characters in general, be they male or female. The very same argument could be made for any other arbitrary division of characters into groups — like requesting a more adequate PoC representation (my Krytan (female) human main is darker than maybe 95% of NPCs in this game, and I consider her a person of Mediterranean-like descent at most). However, most of these champions of balance are only interested in the male/female divide. I find that a peculiar fixation.

Furthermore, this approach of staging males as a repressed group requiring affirmative action, in an industry that already overwhelmingly caters to males, can, with justification, be seen as the stagers asserting a privilege. Yes, everyone can have their own opinions. It includes the potential that some of those opinions just aren’t … particularly flattering of their owners.

Aedelric.1287:

Bias exists in the Living Story leads, be that fact or not it is still opinion and everyone is welcome to their own.

It looks like we have been talking past each other. I concern myself predominantly with facts and expect factual-like statements of other persons to be such unless indicated otherwise. Here, you state that you are making the reverse assumption. Very well, that makes this easier.

When you say, “There is a bias in LS leads,” (an objective statement) then what you mean is, “I perceive a bias in LS leads” (a subjective statement). The difference is important. The objective statement can be examined through statistics the way I have explained and be shown to be without merit. The subjective statement, however….

As I explain above, a person who doesn’t have any internal bias doesn’t see a gender bias in LS characters, either. Only a person who has a strong internal bias can see an opposite bias. Thus, your statement, “I perceive a bias in LS leads,” is not indicative of an actual bias in the game, but only a bias in your own point of view.

The personal bias angle that havoc mentioned gave me an idea. Earlier in this thread Raziel gave a link to a study that found an average male bias of 86% for game characters. I had pointed out how the 4F-to-1M distribution of DE Mk II is consistent with the null hypothesis of an unbiased distribution. Despite that, there seem to be players who feel very strongly that a bias is present. What gives?

Let’s repeat the null hypothesis (no bias) calculation. The distribution is B(5, 0.5) and the observed sample of { 4F, 1M } gets the probability P(| X – EX(X) | > 1) = 0.375. In other words, assuming a fair distribution of males and females, the observation of “at most 1 out of 5 of minority” has a reasonable probability that falls within the 1-sigma confidence limit. Thus, for a person without any preconceived notions about gender distribution, the observed distribution appears fair.

However, if we have another person who has already internalized the existing bias, then the observation appears completely different. The hypothesis distribution is now B(5, 0.86) and the evaluated probability P(X < 2) = 0.000615. This value is well beyond the 3-sigma limit of statistical significance. Thus, a person who sees the existing genre-wide bias as unbiased will perceive a 4F-to-1M situation as strongly biased.

Thus, we can have two groups of people, one perceiving no bias and the other perceiving a strong bias — both confident of the validity of their subjective perception. The difference in perception is explained by the latter group having a large inherent bias that they see as “normal”.

This demonstrates quite nicely the “talking from a position of privilege” part that has been mentioned earlier.

havoc.6814:

What do I think bias means? I think it means to cause to feel or demonstrate either inclination or prejudice toward or against someone or something.

I see. You are referring to the colloquial expression that a person is biased. Good to know, because it allows me to explain the issue more accurately.

This thread isn’t about any particular person being biased. It discusses the alleged gender bias in GW2. Since the game isn’t a sapient entity, your definition of bias doesn’t apply to it. There is the possibility that any number of developers might harbor such a bias, but that is outside the limits of conversation, except for the extent any such bias affects the game itself. Thus, we are reduced to examining the game by objective methods to see whether there is a case to be made — in other words, statistics.

Your error is one of personification — observing a number of occurrences that can be explained by random, non-sapient processes, and postulating a sapient entity with a purpose. As such, your position becomes non-falsifiable and thus prevents meaningful discourse.

havoc.6814:

I know things, totally without math.

I believe you do. However, ‘bias’ in this context is a statistical concept, a property of the underlying distribution, with an exact definition. You cannot meaningfully discuss its presence without a mathematical framework.

Unless you intend to invoke mystical solipsism, the only relevant thing you have demonstrated so far is that you don’t seem to know what ‘bias’ means in the context. There was earlier this one ‘lad’ who thought that it’s synonymous with “there are more women than men.” I’m not quite sure what you think it means since you haven’t provided any relevant reasoning whatsoever in favor of your claim. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d go with “this game doesn’t cater to my favorite male power fantasy” — but I might be wrong. Say, why don’t you tell what you believe it to mean?

havoc.6814:

What was your Ph.D. in?

Please check yourself

havoc.6814:

I do know.

Then you can perhaps quote a number, preferably with an established procedure of derivation and a three-sigma error estimate. Because otherwise you only think you know but you don’t.

Your feeling may be sincere and heartfelt, but it doesn’t constitute knowledge. Two different things.

havoc.6814:

There is a gender bias in this game.

Simply stating that doesn’t make it so. Bias is not a matter of bellyfeelings, which is the only supporting evidence you provide.

Is there a gender bias in GW2? I don’t know, but neither does anyone else. As I have explained several times, there simply isn’t enough data to establish the presence of bias.

Aedelric.1287:

tmakinen.1048:

I have explained this already, in detail.

Yes you did attempt to, but your logic is flawed.

See, that’s the issue. I have a Ph.D. in theoretical physics and do advanced data analysis for living. The facts I have tried to explain above, especially about bias and sample size, are about as basic as 1+1=2 , and you still insist that my logic must be flawed because you disagree with the result — when any elementary book on statistical analysis could tell you otherwise. What you see as condescension is just that I happen to know what I’m talking about.

You cannot claim that there is a gender bias in newborn childen after examining one random infant. However, after examining tens of thousands of infants, you can find out that there is indeed a bias (about 107 boys to 100 girls born). This should be so bleedingly obvious as to not even require an explanation.

Aedelric.1287:

Raziel.4216:

Leshain.6720:

tmakinen.1048:

Leshain.6720:

I’m qualified to my opinion lad.

True, again. However, you aren’t qualified to your own facts. As I have mentioned earlier, statistical determination of bias is not a matter of opinion.

I have laid out the facts. Those aren’t open for discussion. Trying to do the contrary will increase the probability of administrative intervention.

4 is more than 1, that is a fact.

That’s not evidence of bias.
That’s a fact.

So all those many, many games that have a handful of male leads and only one female are fine now? What about the games with just one lead who happens to be male? Surely the numbers are not great enough to indicate bias? At least according so some people here.

I have explained this already, in detail. For your benefit, I will explain it one more time.

When examined on a case-by-case basis, the numbers are indeed too small to indicate any bias. You got this one right.

However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence — or in other words, that it is not possible to talk about bias on a case-by-case basis does not mean that there isn’t a bias. Instead, it just points out that you can’t examine bias on a case-by-case basis, as has been explained repeatedly in this very thread.

On the other hand, when aggregating the numbers over an entire genre the sample size becomes large enough for the establishment of a bias — and there is indeed one.

This is why it is politely pointed out in this thread that those who complain about gender bias in GW2 Living Story are both misguided and talking from a position of privilege.

Aedelric.1287:

Rox and Taimi are female, this type of hypothetical discussion is not productive and is no way addresses the lack of major male leads as the topic is supposedly about.

Quite the contrary, the question was instrumental in detecting the true motive behind the request (and that, in turn, was necessary because the given rationale was non sequitur). However, I do agree that the question is irrelevant now since you have already owned up the actual motive.

Unfortunately, the joke’s on you. Do I have to explain?

bullyrook.2165:

I take it to mean that what you meant to ask is “would we even be talking about this if Rox and Taimi were originally cast as males”. The answer: they wouldn’t be the same people

You have identified the correct question. You are still failing to answer it. In that hypothetical scenario the current Rox and Taimi wouldn’t exist. Hence, any answer that compares these two scenarios the way you do above is nonsensical.

Aedelric.1287:

Trollhammer.7439:

I personally don’t care about ratios. I want just one strong male lead. Intelligent, cynical, physically strong, composed, occasionally drunk and NOT flirting with anyone. One who takes victory with a shrug and defeat with laughter. I want a hero that doesn’t wait for a villain to make their dramatic speech, but shoots the kitten mid sentence. His dialogs shouldn’t be about his mommy issues, but rather about telling people to shut the hell up and pass the ammunition.
I guess I just want something between a Krogan and Bruce Willis.

Sounds good to me.

This would seem to be the crux of the issue. All this talk about gender bias and the like is just a diversion. It isn’t a new male character that is being requested. Some players just want to see The Male.

Well, this explains everything.

Thobek.1730:

What a terribly boring and stale way to think about it. Its like the comic book stereotypes. “We can’t have another strong yet unintelligent person – that role is taken.” How about the dynamic of having two thinkers in the group that actually argue with each other… nah can’t have that, you only need one.

Please remember that every new major character requires a significant investment to develop, with diminishing returns. Hence, instead of adding new characters for the heck of it, the developers must identify a specific need that isn’t being met by the existing cast. This, essentially, is how we got Taimi. Her being the Brain doesn’t exclude the existence of other intellectual characters — before her introduction Marjory was essentially the acting Brain.

As pointed out, any compelling reason for adding yet another character to DE Mk II hasn’t been provided. If you believe otherwise, please state an unmet need.

Thobek.1730:

Its hard to say whether I would be content if Rox or Taimi were male since I quite like those two characters, and have gotten used to them. But if I had to choose one it would be Rox. I could see Rox and Braham questing together like brothers, they argue now and again but ultimately as they develop together so builds the strength of their relationship. They could even both vie for the attention of the same female which could be a vehicle for some humor – probably not if the new version of Rox was a Char

Interesting. Considering that we are talking about a member of a race that uses unisex armor and where gender is for all practical purposes irrelevant — even for the members of the race themselves — how does it affect your preferred vision whether Rox is male or female? Quite honestly, when it comes to charr I have a hard time telling the two apart, and even less interest in doing so. Do you perhaps believe in some abstract quality of ‘maleness’ and ‘femaleness’ that sets a male and a female charr further apart from each other than a male charr is from a male norn?

Leshain.6720:

I’m qualified to my opinion lad.

True, again. However, you aren’t qualified to your own facts. As I have mentioned earlier, statistical determination of bias is not a matter of opinion.

I have laid out the facts. Those aren’t open for discussion. Trying to do the contrary will increase the probability of administrative intervention.

Leshain.6720:

tmakinen.1048:

Leshain.6720:

4 to 1. Basic math proves ya wrong lad.

I would like to politely point out the very basic mathematical fact that for the distribution B(5, 0.5) the value P(|X – EX(X)| > 1) = 3 / 8. Therefore, the null hypothesis holds and there isn’t any statistical evidence of bias. I have proven my case.

4 is a higher number than 1 lad.

True. Fermat’s Last Theorem is also true. Neither of these true statements has anything to do with the topic in question. I wouldn’t want to be impolite, but quite frankly, you are not qualified to have this conversation, and therefore it is a waste of time and effort.

Leshain.6720:

4 to 1. Basic math proves ya wrong lad.

I would like to politely point out the very basic mathematical fact that for the distribution B(5, 0.5) the value P(|X – EX(X)| > 1) = 3 / 8. Therefore, the null hypothesis holds and there isn’t any statistical evidence of bias. I have proven my case.

bullyrook.2165:

Rox and Taimi are fine as is.

This is peculiar. I specifically didn’t ask the question “Should ANet turn Rox or Taimi into a male?” but you still answer to that one, and not the question that I asked. Did I not express myself properly, was the question I did ask too difficult to conceptualize, or is there a reason to avoid answering it?

Aedelric.1287:

To answer your question no, I would not (And likely most men here) be content if Rox or Taimi were male, you are essentially asking for female characters to be removed in favor of male and the majority of people in this topic do not want that.

No, my question didn’t have anything to do with removing a female character. Please imagine a hypothetical scenario where instead of Taimi, ANet would have introduced the (male) asuran progeny Taikk as the fifth member of DE Mk II. In that hypothetical scenario, with two males and three females, would you have been content with the gender distribution of the party?

I must pre-emptively point out that if you choose to repeat a negative answer, I will find it quite interesting and revealing, since Taimi is both competent and ridiculously likable — just the qualities that were allegedly sought for.

Thobek.1730:

Why can’t they just add in another Male character to the group

Because all the necessary roles are already accounted for. Also, you didn’t answer the question. Would you be content if Rox or Taimi were male?

Aedelric.1287:

It is not a crime to ask for a new more likable and competent male lead, nor is that a misguided sense of privilege.

It’s not a crime, no, but it is a sign of privilege to ask for a male lead instead of just a more likable male character. A sincere question. Would you be content if — everything else remaining the same — either Rox or Taimi had been male, bringing the gender ratio as close to equilibrium as possible for the main five characters? Based on the “fair and balanced” argument you should be. A negative answer, on the other hand, would reveal a completely different motive behind the request.

If we analyse DE Mk II in terms of Five-Man Band, then it’s clear that Braham is the Strong Guy and Taimi is the Smart Guy. The rest are not quite as clear. The roles of The Chick and The Lancer have been mixed a bit between Rox and Kasmeer. Kasmeer is too competent and active to be a pure Chick, and Rox provides insufficient foil for Marjory to be a pure Lancer. In a way, Rox is Braham’s Lancer. Marjory is arguably The Leader, but she is a Guile Hero at most.

There is an entirely valid reason for this lack of a distinct Hero — because that’s where the player character comes in. The leading character roles of the team have been subdued to provide enough room for the player to take the role of The Hero, if they feel like doing that.

The request to have a competent male lead as a NPC suggests that the player is not capable of playing that role himself, but still feels that a male must be in charge for the world to be in the right shape. And that’s the essence of privilege.

Aedelric.1287:

You do understand it is the main living story leads we are talking about here tmakinen?

Yes, I completely understand that. In your previous post you mentioned seven characters (6 female, 1 male) and I explained why that does not constitute sufficient evidence for claims of gender bias.

On the other hand, I am starting to suspect that you don’t understand what the word ‘bias’ means. It is not synonymous with “there are more women than men in the group”. Bias is a property of the underlying distribution, not one of a random sample drawn from it.

If you are interested in learning more, please provide me a list of characters related to the Living Story, in order of importance (starting from most important). Feel free to cut the list at any point where you feel that the rest of the list consists of characters of little importance.

In return, I will explain (again) why that list does not provide sufficient evidence for a claim of gender bias.

Aedelric.1287:

tmakinen.1048:

there is insufficient evidence of a gender bias in GW2.

Insufficient evidence of bias? Sure their is, the heroes of Tyria are almost all female, Rox, Kasmeer, Marjory, Taimi and only Braham is male. The main antagonist is a female Sylvari and most of the rest are just background characters with the exception of Ellen Kiel who has been an important character in numerous updates.

You list seven characters. As I explained in my previous post, that wouldn’t provide sufficient statistical evidence for a bias even if all the seven were female (which isn’t the case). It really is all about sample size. A group of seven males and zero females (100% male group) is not evidence of bias. A group of 550 males and 350 females (61% male group) is evidence of male bias (anything below 405 of minority gender fails the null hypothesis). Please check a statistics textbook on binomial distributions if necessary — this issue is not open for argument.

Incidentally, the sample size effect is also why bias cannot be examined on a case by case basis. Almost all individual cases have sample sizes that are insufficient for making any conclusive statements about bias. On the other hand, it is very easy to demonstrate the overall bias towards male characters when examining the industry as a whole.

Aedelric.1287:

Good content makes an MMO stand out from the crowd, not gender bias. If you imply that it was Arena Net’s intention to have a female heavy cast only to make itself different from the rest, then that was quite a failure. Neither does the story to the LS stand out from any other MMO as exceptional, the quality of the content itself has been fairly mediocre.

Many in this topic have said gender bias is fine if the story calls for it, but if they are not using story reasons for their decisions then that speaks volumes about the lack of quality to the writing.

You keep insisting that there is a “gender bias” as if that were a given fact.

Too bad that this claim is not supported by statistics.

In order to establish the presence of a bias, the measurement must be outside the confidence interval of the null hypothesis that there is no bias and the outcome is random. In the case of a binomial distribution, the null hypothesis confidence interval is

0.5 ± 0.5 z / sqrt( n )

where z is a percentile value corresponding to confidence percentage, and n is the sample size. For a statistically significant result, z = 3. Thus, for any n we can calculate where the null hypothesis fails, i.e., what kind of result supports the existence of a bias. For your convenience:

For groups of up to 8 characters, null hypothesis always holds. The sample size is too small to say anything about a bias.

For groups between 9 and 12 characters, there is a bias if all characters are of the same gender.

For groups between 13 and 15 characters, there is a bias if there is at most one character of one gender.

For groups between 16 and 19 characters, there is a bias if there are at most two characters of one gender.

And so on.

In light of these numbers, there is insufficient evidence of a gender bias in GW2.

I am confused. This is a MMO, which means every player can make a character they can relate to, be it then male, female or furry. Going beyond that and demanding that NPCs follow some predetermined gender distribution so that nobody gets a sad sounds like … I don’t know what, the whole idea is too ludicrous to properly register in my head.

I have 12 characters in GW2, all of them female, because I simply can’t relate well enough to a male character. I am quite happy for the option — a very large majority of games is automatically outside my consideration because I just can’t see myself interacting with a game world through the type of (male) character most games provide as their only option. The gender of NPCs is a non-issue to me, since I’m not going to have an intimate relationship with any of them. They are just … characters. Quite naturally, the same goes with PC characters.

The last time I checked, players who want to relate to male characters have the same option as I do, and they are free to make a (male) character to their tastes. See, freedom and equality!

Demanding that other people, including NPCs, fall into certain categories “because fair and balanced”, on the other hand … words fail me.

Can you please enlighten me? What kind of privilege is needed for thinking that one is entitled to having other people around them to be of a particular gender? That a story is not interesting enough solely because there are too many people of “wrong” gender in it?

Galen Grey.4709:

This is the big final battle. We’re fighting to retake LA would it make sense story wise to have it play out in a 5 person instance? Scarlet came overwhelmed the lionguard and whoever else was in LA at the time but then 5 brave heroes came and succeeded where 100s of others have failed. I am not one who likes zergs far from it, I always avoid them and you can see me state that in several threads but seriously here it made perfect sense. This was an all out assault, all out assault implies taking as many people with you as possible not just a couple of friends.

Knights too hard to kill if you didnt have the numbers. Its the ending, the very big climatic battle. Scarlet throwing everything she had at us. Again would it make sense if 5 – 10 people could overwhelm all her defenses and bring her down just like that? I get that game play is important but so is story you cannot just throw story out of the window for the sake of game play, it has got to be a balance and they tried to achieve that balance by splitting the challenge in three both at the knights and also at the holograms.

Sense is a subjective concept.

Instead of an epic story where a small band of heroes beats overwhelming odds and succeeds where hundreds of soldiers failed before them — which you insist doesn’t make sense, story-wise — this is the story I saw:

This is the big battle. All available players scramble to the fight. But oh no! Their numbers don’t reach an arbitrary threshold required to deliver an arbitrary amount of DPS within an arbitrary time limit.

“Kitten this kittening waste of time,” say the players and go somewhere else. Scarlet gets a free pass to do whatever she wants and nobody gives a kitten.

Come next patch day, Scarlet is suddenly dead by executive meddling.

So amaze.
Much sense.
Wow.

I have faced Scarlet zero times during this event because not a single instance I have seen has ever beaten the knights. I have checked daily, and there isn’t even enough players to beat a single knight (today was a new record, a total of two players plus myself). It might have something to do with the fact that my usual play slot is around 4-5 a.m. server time. I challenge anyone who boasts how “easy” it is to beat the knights to solo them.

As it stands, I have written off the entire LS as a complete waste of time.

Mikuchan.7261:

Autumn Frazee.3158:

We are currently working on the difficulty of the Assault Knight fights; I realize that sometimes its hard to get a full overflow or that there are non peak hours where server populations will be lighter. Hopefully with the difficulty changes, it will also make it easier for a good server to get ‘Six Minutes to Knightfall’.

Beat it 3 times on Desolation within 6 minutes after the 25% hp patch, one time for each boss, and the Six Minutes to Knightfall is still bugged. You don’t get it by completing the knights within 6 minutes. Very few people claimed that they got it, but most, including me, did not get it.

Bad server, bad! No achievement for you! :P

Squee Squashington.5189:

The fact that there ARE “good” servers and “bad” servers is the real problem. The fact that content is both released and tuned to accomodate the “good” servers is the problem.

I completely agree.

Squee Squashington.5189:

When a player from a “bad” server feels obligated to guest on another server in order to experience the new flashy awesome content, what incentive is it for them to stay on their server and consequently continue to keep it populated?

Indeed, and this only exacerbates the issue by driving the wedge further between haves and have-nots. We are already seeing comments on these forums, made by players on a stacked server, to the effect that there must be something personally wrong with a player who cannot complete content on his own server, because, “look, I hop in the game and content gets done because of my sheer awesomeness.”

It is a very serious issue with the potential to poison the entire player population.

Zaxares.5419:

Easy there, guys. I think what Autumn meant to say is a “skilful, well-organised map”. It wasn’t meant to be an attack on smaller servers. Poor word choices do happen.

I agree that it was probably a careless slip of tongue. However, the issue still remains that taken on face value, we have a company representative expressing concern and support for “good servers”, and thus directly (for that distinction to be possible) relative lack of concern and support for “bad servers” … in a situation where the root problem is that ANet decided to segregate the player base into artificial “servers” in the first place.

Even when examined from a purely dispassionate point of view, the implications are particularly unfortunate.

Autumn Frazee.3158:

Hopefully with the difficulty changes, it will also make it easier for a good server to get ‘Six Minutes to Knightfall’.

Methinks that when an official representative starts talking about “good servers” and alleges that features of the game have been specifically calibrated to exlude those people who dare to stay on an un-good server, then it’s high time to cut losses and respectfully uninstall. Could be just me, though.

ZilentNight.5089:

Anet intended this LS to be quite grand and they wanted all the players to flock to LA. Which is why this content was designed to be both grand and feel epic.
Having the ability to kill the knights and then the hologram with 5 players would just not feel like it was truly epic. Instead it would kill the entire content for me personally.
So with their intention in mind, I feel the knights was a good idea but requiring a large amount of players to kill them was not.
This is why I posted stating getting 30 players per Knight is not that difficult for overflows.

Well, I said 5 players for a knight, would mean a minimum of 15 players for the holo fight, but that’s a somewhat irrelevant detail.

However.

I agree with you on wanting to have epic content. ‘Epicness’ requiring large amount of players isn’t the problem. Game mechanics that undermine the effort are. Last time I checked, Yak’s Bend main zone couldn’t scrape together enough players to defeat a single knight. Again, this is a symptom of an underlying problem, not the problem itself.

The first problem is that party size is currently restricted to five, and that’s the only useful organization tool available at the moment. Doritos look fancy but as a commander you cannot pull your squad to a dedicated overflow. Raid style content necessitates the use of voice comm; that tool is not provided by the game either, breaking the idea of spontaneous open world organization right there.

The worse problem is how instancing is handled. GW1 got it right. GW1 didn’t have main instances at all, just sequentially named overflows. By default, the game filled each instance until the soft cap before starting the next. You could also choose a specific instance from the list until the hard cap was reached. This way, everyone except possibly those in one or two tail end instances had the right number of players around. GW2 broke this beautiful system by introducing default server zones, leading to a situation where a large majority of main zones are non-viable because of lack of population, and a few stacked servers are being guested like mad, pushing almost everyone into anonymous overflows. This is just bad design, further widening the gap between the haves and have-nots.

Thus, like you, I am all for epic content. It’s just that the current game mechanics are insufficient for properly supporting that content. Until ANet gets its act together, I am firmly of the opinion that they should take the inherent limitations into account when creating content.