I've never kicked (nor will I ever) somebody for the build they are using, unless it's uselessly redundant (like a 3rd or 4th full on support build; you have to be able to kill shit). Choose to play how you want, I know my warrior build isn't min/maxed really at all. I want to be useful on a number of levels.
Condition necromancers are considered the kings of conditions not because they have really good condition stacking but because they have really good condition oriented skills: Putrid Mark, Deathly Swarm, and Plague Signet all transfer conditions from you to your target, and a high base health is naturally considered strong against conditions. Necromancers also have some good options for stripping boons, and casting Corrupt Boons after an enemy guardian's "Save Yourselves!" is always satisfying.
Condimancer usually comes Rabid (Pre & Tuf & ConDam), but I play Carrion (Pow & Vit & ConDam - he's a Terrorist). PvE is all about stack-Bleeds-then-Epidemic. The unfortunate problem with Condition Damage oriented characters is that if two are near each other, you usually end up hitting the Bleed cap and losing some damage. That might happen anyways when meeting characters who stack bleeds on Auto-Attack 1.
PvP is a bit more difficult. Necromancers are a profession designed for attrition - while it may be possible to dump your skills on a player and kill them, a lot of the time a bit of patience goes a long way toward victory. Unless you're a really tanky build, necromancers generally want to stay out of the way during group fights and drop conditions and damage from afar. In a mano-a-mano duel, though, necromancers always benefit from being mid- to close-range. Necros suck at chasing. The enemy needs to stay in range of your Cripple, Immobilize, and Chill, or else they will leave. Sometimes you can't help it. Stupid shortbow thieves. :c
what a happy day it is
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
edited March 2013
So I have a bit of a strange question: Do Sylvari have gender? They're all born from that big tree right? How is it then that there are male and female Sylvari and why did I do some quest about saving a male Sylvari's beloved female Sylvari from the Nightmare Court?
It just seems odd to me that a new race of plant people born from buds of this giant magic tree thing would adhere to human gender norms.
For what it's worth, if I remember correctly Epidemic applies other allies' inflicted conditions as yours, so there's still plenty of utility to conditionmancing even if you're overlapping with someone else. Although, as said above, you could just build for power and dagger auto (or life blast) everything to death in about a third of the time.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
So I have a bit of a strange question: Do Sylvari have gender? They're all born from that big tree right? How is it then that there are male and female Sylvari and why did I do some quest about saving a male Sylvari's beloved female Sylvari from the Nightmare Court?
It just seems odd to me that a new race of plant people born from buds of this giant magic tree thing would adhere to human gender norms.
The tree was planted by a human or on a human graveyard or something like that.
So I have a bit of a strange question: Do Sylvari have gender? They're all born from that big tree right? How is it then that there are male and female Sylvari and why did I do some quest about saving a male Sylvari's beloved female Sylvari from the Nightmare Court?
It just seems odd to me that a new race of plant people born from buds of this giant magic tree thing would adhere to human gender norms.
The Pale Tree acquired sentience due to having been cared for by a centaur and human. She decided to model her people on humans, thus the genders. However, this piece of lore is undermined a bit by...
the fact that there are other trees, we've met a sylvari from one of those other trees, and he looks exactly like a male Pale Tree sylvari.
Either way, though, the sylvari don't quite adhere to human gender norms. They don't really have much in the way of cultural gender roles, and they love who they love regardless of gender.
Granted, the lack of sylvari cultural gender roles is harder to spot because gender has never been a big deal in Tyria, period. Only the charr have a historical record of oppression against women, but modern female charr broke free from that oppression the charr way (by kicking ass and taking names), and don't adopt a "feminine" gender identity. Humans, asura, and regular norn have very egalitarian societies, and the Sons of Svanir only built up a culture of misogyny because their founder was killed by his sister and they're all dragon crazy-go-mad so they went RAWR HATE WOMEN.
That sense of egalitarianism is one of the big things that has always drawn me to Guild Wars. I love that the game's characters are defined by their personalities, abilities, and actions rather than their genders.
SwashbucklerXX on
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My buddy wants to get back into this but is having trouble logging in...when ArenaNet sends him the confirmation email and asks if he wants to allow logins from that IP, he clicks "yes" and it just says "Failure: An error occurred with your request."
He can't get into his account on the website or anything. What do?
So I have a bit of a strange question: Do Sylvari have gender? They're all born from that big tree right? How is it then that there are male and female Sylvari and why did I do some quest about saving a male Sylvari's beloved female Sylvari from the Nightmare Court?
It just seems odd to me that a new race of plant people born from buds of this giant magic tree thing would adhere to human gender norms.
Yes, they have gender. Technically...we don't know why they're male and female though. All the information we've been given has been said to be from other race's point of view. The Asura believe it's due to being planted on Human graves, others believe because the tree grew up around Humans (and others), but all of those suffer from being some sort of "unreliable narrator" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator). Basically we can't trust that those view points are actually the truth, it's just what they believe (and they could be wrong).
They actually don't conform to human gender norms...they just look male and female. In that one storyline you did, you were trying to save a male Sylvari's beloved female...in a different one you'd be saving a male Sylvari's beloved male instead (Green Knight path), and there's even a known female and female relationship.
Caithe and Faolain, whom you confront in the third dungeon
As a race, they don't care about gender for whom they love.
As SwashbucklerXX said in the spoiler, there's even more plot lines around that hint the answer may even be something else (BTW, if you want to see that plot line, choose "Where life goes, so should you"). There's a lot of speculation on exactly what Sylvari are, we'll have to see if they ever answer them...which is likely because they're highly liked by more than a few of the the writers.
Either way, though, the sylvari don't quite adhere to human gender norms. They don't really have much in the way of cultural gender roles, and they love who they love regardless of gender.
Actually, this supposed lack of gender roles is another case of Anet's biggest lore/storytelling weakness - they so often "tell" but do not "show".
Anet claims the sylvari have no cultural gender roles, but the execution of the game tells a very different story. 3 races segregate male and female clothing, 2 do not. Only the charr and asura use the same clothing styles for both genders. For the more recognizably human-looking races, the clothing is divergent. With norn, human and sylvari clothing, the male sets are mostly designed towards tough and badass looking, while the female sets are often sexualized. Now, I'm not trying to (re)start a debate on clothing types and what is appropriate, merely pointing out that, whatever the/your standards are, the sylvari clearly, in the most obvious cultural expression, do have very defined gender norms. If they didn't, they'd be more like the charr and asura with respect to clothing.
Either way, though, the sylvari don't quite adhere to human gender norms. They don't really have much in the way of cultural gender roles, and they love who they love regardless of gender.
Actually, this supposed lack of gender roles is another case of Anet's biggest lore/storytelling weakness - they so often "tell" but do not "show".
Anet claims the sylvari have no cultural gender roles, but the execution of the game tells a very different story. 3 races segregate male and female clothing, 2 do not. Only the charr and asura use the same clothing styles for both genders. For the more recognizably human-looking races, the clothing is divergent. With norn, human and sylvari clothing, the male sets are mostly designed towards tough and badass looking, while the female sets are often sexualized. Now, I'm not trying to (re)start a debate on clothing types and what is appropriate, merely pointing out that, whatever the/your standards are, the sylvari clearly, in the most obvious cultural expression, do have very defined gender norms. If they didn't, they'd be more like the charr and asura with respect to clothing.
You know that humans, norn, and sylvari all have breasts on women, and asura and charr do not right? Like, the clothing has to fit differently and can actually show off those portions of the body where the others cannot. Gender roles are not limited to just clothing that is worn or sexualization, it's more about the role they play in society.
Our society, in America 50 years ago for example, focused on women being homemakers and raising children while men went to work and earned money. That stereotype starting to disappear as women take to the workforce and move their ways into higher ranking positions.
In Guild Wars, they did show us the gender discrimination in a few ways I know of.
1) Guild Wars 1 had ZERO female charr. Not. A. One.
2) Guild Wars 2 charr females experience dialogue with Flame Legion (the ones in charge during GW1) that is sexist. The same is actually true of female norn talking to Sons of Svanir (the norn equivalent of "get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich").
3) Supplemental lore they have provided during interviews has reinforced this.
Either way, though, the sylvari don't quite adhere to human gender norms. They don't really have much in the way of cultural gender roles, and they love who they love regardless of gender.
Actually, this supposed lack of gender roles is another case of Anet's biggest lore/storytelling weakness - they so often "tell" but do not "show".
Anet claims the sylvari have no cultural gender roles, but the execution of the game tells a very different story. 3 races segregate male and female clothing, 2 do not. Only the charr and asura use the same clothing styles for both genders. For the more recognizably human-looking races, the clothing is divergent. With norn, human and sylvari clothing, the male sets are mostly designed towards tough and badass looking, while the female sets are often sexualized. Now, I'm not trying to (re)start a debate on clothing types and what is appropriate, merely pointing out that, whatever the/your standards are, the sylvari clearly, in the most obvious cultural expression, do have very defined gender norms. If they didn't, they'd be more like the charr and asura with respect to clothing.
You know that humans, norn, and sylvari all have breasts on women, and asura and charr do not right? Like, the clothing has to fit differently and can actually show off those portions of the body where the others cannot. Gender roles are not limited to just clothing that is worn or sexualization, it's more about the role they play in society.
Our society, in America 50 years ago for example, focused on women being homemakers and raising children while men went to work and earned money. That stereotype starting to disappear as women take to the workforce and move their ways into higher ranking positions.
In Guild Wars, they did show us the gender discrimination in a few ways I know of.
1) Guild Wars 1 had ZERO female charr. Not. A. One.
2) Guild Wars 2 charr females experience dialogue with Flame Legion (the ones in charge during GW1) that is sexist. The same is actually true of female norn talking to Sons of Svanir (the norn equivalent of "get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich").
3) Supplemental lore they have provided during interviews has reinforced this.
If you play a female charr in Ash Legion, you get to infiltrate a Flame Legion meeting. The female-specific dialogue was wonderfully stupid.
On that topic I would like to say that only a couple of the races have PC backstory selections that even mean a damn to me, and none more than the legion you serve as a charr. Granted, my first character was a charr, but I think the human ones (and I have a few of them) are absolutely pointless. Even choosing a spirit you serve as a norn means nothing, because YOU CAN TURN INTO ANY OF THEM.
You know that humans, norn, and sylvari all have breasts on women, and asura and charr do not right? Like, the clothing has to fit differently and can actually show off those portions of the body where the others cannot. Gender roles are not limited to just clothing that is worn or sexualization, it's more about the role they play in society.
That's...pretty much the reason, as far as I can tell. Well, that and an early decision to have a dichotomy in their armor models depending on gender. I do find it telling that when given the option to use a single gender's armor for a race they chose the male version...as far as I can tell.
Still, it was a design decision early on. Personally, I wish they'd have made all armor look almost identical regardless of gender though, since I hate seeing an armor and finding out it looks radically different on my character because it's a different gender (especially when they've proven they can do it, as some armor actually is identical). Most notably when I've got a female character and I see a male with interesting armor, and then find out I'm half naked if I wear that, but it's gone the other way too.
On that topic I would like to say that only a couple of the races have PC backstory selections that even mean a damn to me, and none more than the legion you serve as a charr. Granted, my first character was a charr, but I think the human ones (and I have a few of them) are absolutely pointless. Even choosing a spirit you serve as a norn means nothing, because YOU CAN TURN INTO ANY OF THEM.
The backstory stuff is all over the place, Charr is thought to be good, most of human is bad, and Sylvari is very meh. Yet all of it matters not a bit once the Order storyline starts, and then none of THAT matters once the Pact story starts.
For clothing you sort of have to model the Light and some of the Medium different for the 3 Human Type races, bit of a wasted opportunity to not have the Heavy Armor exactly the same across Gender though. Sylvari Cultural is actually fairly gender neutral, Tier 2 and 3 Light look pretty much the same Male or Female
On that topic I would like to say that only a couple of the races have PC backstory selections that even mean a damn to me, and none more than the legion you serve as a charr. Granted, my first character was a charr, but I think the human ones (and I have a few of them) are absolutely pointless. Even choosing a spirit you serve as a norn means nothing, because YOU CAN TURN INTO ANY OF THEM.
I don't know, the missing parents storyline for humans seemed pretty good, at least if you played GW1. Nice little tie-in there. I agree that many options are just fluff. Only 2 of the 5 actually decide anything.
@Who-Psyd you can't make heavy armor the same between genders, women have BOOBS. Big bulky armor that has space for boobs in it is going to mess up your movement (from a practical standpoint) and make you look like you have boobs. Women who wear a breastplate fitted well to a man will just squish them and also be uncomfortable. This also takes into account differences in hip size, leg length etc. You want your armor to fit you. Of course, you also want it to cover enough to protect you unlike this example.
At least they give you an option, not everybody has to wear SLOP with OoW legs, but you can if you want to!
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Probably not relevant to NICE, but this is a good thing:
It's an article. I hope they limit the abilities you can gain from titles in some way, i.e. only equipping one at a time, so that WvW hardcore players don't start screening people by title that much.
Edit: Apparently there were 2 articles out today, although only one was linked above.
I finally bought the game a couple of days ago and I am loving it so far. My highest toon right now is only level 10 but I'm liking the stories already, especially the personal storyline.
Anyone got some tips for leveling? I find that if I don't happen to stumble into a dynamic event as I explore the map / travel from heart to heart, then I don't get enough experience to keep up with the map. Or if I do stumble into one, it's one that I can't solo and there's no one around to help (I'm looking at you, Barradin's Vaults). I'm also mining, chopping and harvesting everything I come across but I haven't tried out the crafting system yet.
Yes! I have an 80 warrior and an 80 mesmer and I still love my necro best. I actually end up feeling gimped when I bring my warrior instead of my necro to things like Balthazar because all I can do is damage; I can't heal the NPCs or use conditions strategically on the mobs like I could if I was on my necro. On my mesmer it's damn near impossible to farm group events, you can't tag more than a couple mobs in each wave, whereas on my necro I tag ALL the things.
Necros have a ton of utility and different options for playstyle, and can actually put out a lot of damage. It's also easier to play than a mesmer (but harder to play than a warrior).
I absolutely love my necromancer and wouldn't want to main anything else.
"An important detail to note is that the Bounty Hunt training mission is automatically available to be built once the guild has researched Art of War Level 3. It costs 300 Guild Influence and 72 hours of research time. Instead of Guild Merits, 3000 Guild Influence will be rewarded. This ought to be perfect for the smaller or less active guild that can’t earn at least 1000 Influence a day."
If we are eligible for this we should do it once a week because that is actually a sweet amount of influence. I don't know if they are going to try to stop large guilds from doing it somehow, but it doesn't say that anywhere that I can see.
Also, in case you weren't excited enough about guild commendation rewards:
"Extending guild missions isn’t limited to just content. We aim to improve rewards as well. To that end, a completely new set of weapons has been commissioned and made available at the Guild Commendation vendor."
Either way, though, the sylvari don't quite adhere to human gender norms. They don't really have much in the way of cultural gender roles, and they love who they love regardless of gender.
Actually, this supposed lack of gender roles is another case of Anet's biggest lore/storytelling weakness - they so often "tell" but do not "show".
Anet claims the sylvari have no cultural gender roles, but the execution of the game tells a very different story. 3 races segregate male and female clothing, 2 do not. Only the charr and asura use the same clothing styles for both genders. For the more recognizably human-looking races, the clothing is divergent. With norn, human and sylvari clothing, the male sets are mostly designed towards tough and badass looking, while the female sets are often sexualized. Now, I'm not trying to (re)start a debate on clothing types and what is appropriate, merely pointing out that, whatever the/your standards are, the sylvari clearly, in the most obvious cultural expression, do have very defined gender norms. If they didn't, they'd be more like the charr and asura with respect to clothing.
You know that humans, norn, and sylvari all have breasts on women, and asura and charr do not right? Like, the clothing has to fit differently and can actually show off those portions of the body where the others cannot. Gender roles are not limited to just clothing that is worn or sexualization, it's more about the role they play in society.
Our society, in America 50 years ago for example, focused on women being homemakers and raising children while men went to work and earned money. That stereotype starting to disappear as women take to the workforce and move their ways into higher ranking positions.
That discrimination was and is reflected in clothing, in terms of practicality and other factors. But, to your main point, the having breasts and hips is actually further proof of the point, not an argument against it. Its one thing to shape the clothing for them, its entirely another to show them off, as most of the female armors do. But the main point is not about breasts specifically, but rather that the difference in the clothing for n/h/s go beyond just the few physiological differences between the genders.
But it remains the fact that clothing is the most visible (and especially in the limited format of games) telling indication of how a culture views its gender divisions. Why, oh why, would the sylvari go with the human/norn division rather than the charr/asura (which also have some differences in appearance between the genders).
Simply put, you can't. And its mostly due to the lack of imagination (or, more probably, lack of boldness) of Anet to try and explore what a different species might actually think about, rather than to slap a plant skin on some faux-arthurian elf wannabes. The sylvari are a great concept, completely lacking in execution.
In Guild Wars, they did show us the gender discrimination in a few ways I know of.
1) Guild Wars 1 had ZERO female charr. Not. A. One.
2) Guild Wars 2 charr females experience dialogue with Flame Legion (the ones in charge during GW1) that is sexist. The same is actually true of female norn talking to Sons of Svanir (the norn equivalent of "get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich").
3) Supplemental lore they have provided during interviews has reinforced this.
Actually, the whole flame legion repressing females is a horribly tacked on retcon. It doesn't appear anywhere in GW1 itself. It was later added on in the Ecology of the Charr to justify creating a new set of models. There's nothing in GW1 to suggest many of the charr we see aren't female (before Ecology). Anet could have been bold and decided that there are very few differences between their sexes, and charr naming, for example, makes no gender distinctions. But no, like with the sylvari and everything else, they are afraid to venture too far from the mainstream and give everyone a world were all species are basically humans, just slightly culturally different (no more so than say western and eastern cultures).
Actually, the whole flame legion repressing females is a horribly tacked on retcon. It doesn't appear anywhere in GW1 itself. It was later added on in the Ecology of the Charr to justify creating a new set of models. There's nothing in GW1 to suggest many of the charr we see aren't female (before Ecology). Anet could have been bold and decided that there are very few differences between their sexes, and charr naming, for example, makes no gender distinctions. But no, like with the sylvari and everything else, they are afraid to venture too far from the mainstream and give everyone a world were all species are basically humans, just slightly culturally different (no more so than say western and eastern cultures).
Also there are no female Charr in GW1, there just arnt. It could have been because they only wanted one set of models for the charr (why make male and female versions if your just going to kill them all?) and they created lore to support this, or it was planned like this all along.
I finally bought the game a couple of days ago and I am loving it so far. My highest toon right now is only level 10 but I'm liking the stories already, especially the personal storyline.
Anyone got some tips for leveling? I find that if I don't happen to stumble into a dynamic event as I explore the map / travel from heart to heart, then I don't get enough experience to keep up with the map. Or if I do stumble into one, it's one that I can't solo and there's no one around to help (I'm looking at you, Barradin's Vaults). I'm also mining, chopping and harvesting everything I come across but I haven't tried out the crafting system yet.
Try not to travel directly from heart to heart, they don't grant enough xp to be more than a nice bonus for doing the stuff in that area anyways. You also get xp for viewing Vistas, finding places of interest, harvesting and crafting and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff I'm missing. My advice is a little suspect because I am compelled to 100% clear an area before I move on (which gets you a bunch of xp and some prizes), but I've never had any real issue keeping up with the suggested level of an area.
If you do find that you're a couple levels behind though, just hop over to another race's starting area for some more things to do. Depending on what race you are playing you should be pretty close to at least one other race's starting zone.
Clothing aside (and I agree that there should be less drastic differences between male and female armour sets), humans, norn (minus the SoS), and sylvari show very few cultural markers of gender discrimination. All those races have powerful female leaders who are treated with the same respect as their male counterparts, and none of them show evidence of relegating either gender to specific jobs or household tasks. I would argue that these things speak louder than clothing design in terms of gender equality.
It's also true that when you look at the plant based outfits that have been designed by the sylvari themselves, many of the male outfits are fairly revealing (in ways that apparently make some male players uncomfortable about wearing them, to which I say, "I'll take your male sylvari cultural armour and raise you a set of female Whispers medium armour"). Either way, I think it's logical that races with natural physical sex-based dimorphism would design different outfits for males and females regardless of the level of gender equality. It's what those outfits signify culturally that makes the difference, and particularly in the case of the sylvari, they seem to signify nothing more than emphasizing different physical features of the two different genders.
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
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Condimancer usually comes Rabid (Pre & Tuf & ConDam), but I play Carrion (Pow & Vit & ConDam - he's a Terrorist). PvE is all about stack-Bleeds-then-Epidemic. The unfortunate problem with Condition Damage oriented characters is that if two are near each other, you usually end up hitting the Bleed cap and losing some damage. That might happen anyways when meeting characters who stack bleeds on Auto-Attack 1.
PvP is a bit more difficult. Necromancers are a profession designed for attrition - while it may be possible to dump your skills on a player and kill them, a lot of the time a bit of patience goes a long way toward victory. Unless you're a really tanky build, necromancers generally want to stay out of the way during group fights and drop conditions and damage from afar. In a mano-a-mano duel, though, necromancers always benefit from being mid- to close-range. Necros suck at chasing. The enemy needs to stay in range of your Cripple, Immobilize, and Chill, or else they will leave. Sometimes you can't help it. Stupid shortbow thieves. :c
It just seems odd to me that a new race of plant people born from buds of this giant magic tree thing would adhere to human gender norms.
The tree was planted by a human or on a human graveyard or something like that.
The Pale Tree acquired sentience due to having been cared for by a centaur and human. She decided to model her people on humans, thus the genders. However, this piece of lore is undermined a bit by...
Either way, though, the sylvari don't quite adhere to human gender norms. They don't really have much in the way of cultural gender roles, and they love who they love regardless of gender.
Granted, the lack of sylvari cultural gender roles is harder to spot because gender has never been a big deal in Tyria, period. Only the charr have a historical record of oppression against women, but modern female charr broke free from that oppression the charr way (by kicking ass and taking names), and don't adopt a "feminine" gender identity. Humans, asura, and regular norn have very egalitarian societies, and the Sons of Svanir only built up a culture of misogyny because their founder was killed by his sister and they're all dragon crazy-go-mad so they went RAWR HATE WOMEN.
That sense of egalitarianism is one of the big things that has always drawn me to Guild Wars. I love that the game's characters are defined by their personalities, abilities, and actions rather than their genders.
Living Story looks to be ramping up finally. Not sure how I feel about harder to find Bounties...
He can't get into his account on the website or anything. What do?
Edit: nevermind, he eventually got one on time...
Yes, they have gender. Technically...we don't know why they're male and female though. All the information we've been given has been said to be from other race's point of view. The Asura believe it's due to being planted on Human graves, others believe because the tree grew up around Humans (and others), but all of those suffer from being some sort of "unreliable narrator" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator). Basically we can't trust that those view points are actually the truth, it's just what they believe (and they could be wrong).
They actually don't conform to human gender norms...they just look male and female. In that one storyline you did, you were trying to save a male Sylvari's beloved female...in a different one you'd be saving a male Sylvari's beloved male instead (Green Knight path), and there's even a known female and female relationship.
As SwashbucklerXX said in the spoiler, there's even more plot lines around that hint the answer may even be something else (BTW, if you want to see that plot line, choose "Where life goes, so should you"). There's a lot of speculation on exactly what Sylvari are, we'll have to see if they ever answer them...which is likely because they're highly liked by more than a few of the the writers.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1asgqq/speculation_theres_a_very_good_chance_we_know/
Actually, this supposed lack of gender roles is another case of Anet's biggest lore/storytelling weakness - they so often "tell" but do not "show".
Anet claims the sylvari have no cultural gender roles, but the execution of the game tells a very different story. 3 races segregate male and female clothing, 2 do not. Only the charr and asura use the same clothing styles for both genders. For the more recognizably human-looking races, the clothing is divergent. With norn, human and sylvari clothing, the male sets are mostly designed towards tough and badass looking, while the female sets are often sexualized. Now, I'm not trying to (re)start a debate on clothing types and what is appropriate, merely pointing out that, whatever the/your standards are, the sylvari clearly, in the most obvious cultural expression, do have very defined gender norms. If they didn't, they'd be more like the charr and asura with respect to clothing.
You know that humans, norn, and sylvari all have breasts on women, and asura and charr do not right? Like, the clothing has to fit differently and can actually show off those portions of the body where the others cannot. Gender roles are not limited to just clothing that is worn or sexualization, it's more about the role they play in society.
Our society, in America 50 years ago for example, focused on women being homemakers and raising children while men went to work and earned money. That stereotype starting to disappear as women take to the workforce and move their ways into higher ranking positions.
In Guild Wars, they did show us the gender discrimination in a few ways I know of.
1) Guild Wars 1 had ZERO female charr. Not. A. One.
2) Guild Wars 2 charr females experience dialogue with Flame Legion (the ones in charge during GW1) that is sexist. The same is actually true of female norn talking to Sons of Svanir (the norn equivalent of "get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich").
3) Supplemental lore they have provided during interviews has reinforced this.
If you play a female charr in Ash Legion, you get to infiltrate a Flame Legion meeting. The female-specific dialogue was wonderfully stupid.
That's...pretty much the reason, as far as I can tell. Well, that and an early decision to have a dichotomy in their armor models depending on gender. I do find it telling that when given the option to use a single gender's armor for a race they chose the male version...as far as I can tell.
Still, it was a design decision early on. Personally, I wish they'd have made all armor look almost identical regardless of gender though, since I hate seeing an armor and finding out it looks radically different on my character because it's a different gender (especially when they've proven they can do it, as some armor actually is identical). Most notably when I've got a female character and I see a male with interesting armor, and then find out I'm half naked if I wear that, but it's gone the other way too.
The backstory stuff is all over the place, Charr is thought to be good, most of human is bad, and Sylvari is very meh. Yet all of it matters not a bit once the Order storyline starts, and then none of THAT matters once the Pact story starts.
For clothing you sort of have to model the Light and some of the Medium different for the 3 Human Type races, bit of a wasted opportunity to not have the Heavy Armor exactly the same across Gender though. Sylvari Cultural is actually fairly gender neutral, Tier 2 and 3 Light look pretty much the same Male or Female
I don't know, the missing parents storyline for humans seemed pretty good, at least if you played GW1. Nice little tie-in there. I agree that many options are just fluff. Only 2 of the 5 actually decide anything.
@Who-Psyd you can't make heavy armor the same between genders, women have BOOBS. Big bulky armor that has space for boobs in it is going to mess up your movement (from a practical standpoint) and make you look like you have boobs. Women who wear a breastplate fitted well to a man will just squish them and also be uncomfortable. This also takes into account differences in hip size, leg length etc. You want your armor to fit you. Of course, you also want it to cover enough to protect you unlike this example.
At least they give you an option, not everybody has to wear SLOP with OoW legs, but you can if you want to!
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-missions-a-good-foundation/
Edit: And Meatoberfest!
Somehow, I can see that on a brochure!
We have done culls of inactive members here and there, so perhaps it was one of those. Just re-ask with your account name and we can reinvite.
It's an article. I hope they limit the abilities you can gain from titles in some way, i.e. only equipping one at a time, so that WvW hardcore players don't start screening people by title that much.
Edit: Apparently there were 2 articles out today, although only one was linked above.
Anyone got some tips for leveling? I find that if I don't happen to stumble into a dynamic event as I explore the map / travel from heart to heart, then I don't get enough experience to keep up with the map. Or if I do stumble into one, it's one that I can't solo and there's no one around to help (I'm looking at you, Barradin's Vaults). I'm also mining, chopping and harvesting everything I come across but I haven't tried out the crafting system yet.
Yes! I have an 80 warrior and an 80 mesmer and I still love my necro best. I actually end up feeling gimped when I bring my warrior instead of my necro to things like Balthazar because all I can do is damage; I can't heal the NPCs or use conditions strategically on the mobs like I could if I was on my necro. On my mesmer it's damn near impossible to farm group events, you can't tag more than a couple mobs in each wave, whereas on my necro I tag ALL the things.
Necros have a ton of utility and different options for playstyle, and can actually put out a lot of damage. It's also easier to play than a mesmer (but harder to play than a warrior).
I absolutely love my necromancer and wouldn't want to main anything else.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-missions-a-good-foundation/
In particular:
"An important detail to note is that the Bounty Hunt training mission is automatically available to be built once the guild has researched Art of War Level 3. It costs 300 Guild Influence and 72 hours of research time. Instead of Guild Merits, 3000 Guild Influence will be rewarded. This ought to be perfect for the smaller or less active guild that can’t earn at least 1000 Influence a day."
If we are eligible for this we should do it once a week because that is actually a sweet amount of influence. I don't know if they are going to try to stop large guilds from doing it somehow, but it doesn't say that anywhere that I can see.
Also, in case you weren't excited enough about guild commendation rewards:
"Extending guild missions isn’t limited to just content. We aim to improve rewards as well. To that end, a completely new set of weapons has been commissioned and made available at the Guild Commendation vendor."
That discrimination was and is reflected in clothing, in terms of practicality and other factors. But, to your main point, the having breasts and hips is actually further proof of the point, not an argument against it. Its one thing to shape the clothing for them, its entirely another to show them off, as most of the female armors do. But the main point is not about breasts specifically, but rather that the difference in the clothing for n/h/s go beyond just the few physiological differences between the genders.
But it remains the fact that clothing is the most visible (and especially in the limited format of games) telling indication of how a culture views its gender divisions. Why, oh why, would the sylvari go with the human/norn division rather than the charr/asura (which also have some differences in appearance between the genders).
Simply put, you can't. And its mostly due to the lack of imagination (or, more probably, lack of boldness) of Anet to try and explore what a different species might actually think about, rather than to slap a plant skin on some faux-arthurian elf wannabes. The sylvari are a great concept, completely lacking in execution.
Actually, the whole flame legion repressing females is a horribly tacked on retcon. It doesn't appear anywhere in GW1 itself. It was later added on in the Ecology of the Charr to justify creating a new set of models. There's nothing in GW1 to suggest many of the charr we see aren't female (before Ecology). Anet could have been bold and decided that there are very few differences between their sexes, and charr naming, for example, makes no gender distinctions. But no, like with the sylvari and everything else, they are afraid to venture too far from the mainstream and give everyone a world were all species are basically humans, just slightly culturally different (no more so than say western and eastern cultures).
Considering you are referencing Ecology, here is the article on it:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Ecology_of_the_Charr
Also there are no female Charr in GW1, there just arnt. It could have been because they only wanted one set of models for the charr (why make male and female versions if your just going to kill them all?) and they created lore to support this, or it was planned like this all along.
Try not to travel directly from heart to heart, they don't grant enough xp to be more than a nice bonus for doing the stuff in that area anyways. You also get xp for viewing Vistas, finding places of interest, harvesting and crafting and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff I'm missing. My advice is a little suspect because I am compelled to 100% clear an area before I move on (which gets you a bunch of xp and some prizes), but I've never had any real issue keeping up with the suggested level of an area.
If you do find that you're a couple levels behind though, just hop over to another race's starting area for some more things to do. Depending on what race you are playing you should be pretty close to at least one other race's starting zone.
It's also true that when you look at the plant based outfits that have been designed by the sylvari themselves, many of the male outfits are fairly revealing (in ways that apparently make some male players uncomfortable about wearing them, to which I say, "I'll take your male sylvari cultural armour and raise you a set of female Whispers medium armour"). Either way, I think it's logical that races with natural physical sex-based dimorphism would design different outfits for males and females regardless of the level of gender equality. It's what those outfits signify culturally that makes the difference, and particularly in the case of the sylvari, they seem to signify nothing more than emphasizing different physical features of the two different genders.
Reminder to anyone who isn't at PAX (Lucky ducks!) that the main guild bounty event will at 7:00 PST tomorrow. Hope to see a few of you there!