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Coming to Grips


Vyr.9387

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BEHOLD!0UnlJPA.pngWitness the (slightly pixelated) cutting edge of elegance incarnate in an instrument used and abused to play bittersweet tunes in poetic verses of taking lives for saving lives!

See color palette the craving for which might or might have not been influenced by a youth spent listening to "Death to all who oppose us!" and "Hold Your head high!";the lean, vorpal blade; the intricate, tasteful crossguard;S7Yn8Fx.pngthe beautiful pommel ending rightly this wondrous masterpiece!

yZeV3fo.png...and the reason for why we can't have nice things.

Already seeing the colors on the official release page way before the content was up made me grin. "Feels Quel'thalas," I thought. "Feels home."Aaaand then I noticed how the sword on the preview was being held and my heart sank.

Which got me thinking: "Why?"

Pretty sure everybody held a sword in their hand. Or a broom. Or... anything.You see, the problem with this grip is that the point of balance of a sword tends to be very close to the crossguard/hilt of the sword (the thingy supposed to not let the opponent's weapon handshank You), because the blade is a gorgeously lightweight thing (unless it's whatever kitchenware the Vigil's Honor weapons are). This means that in order to control the murdering portion of the weapon - (mostly) the blade - the sword has to be held around that balance point, because the very idea of a sword is being nimble, able to adapt, which demands control, and the more difficult a weapon is to control, the more taxing the adaptation is.As such, the most prevalent way of wielding a sword is by holding it as close to the hilt as possible,(the best examples currently in Tyria being mostly rapiers:)x9lHbeJ.pngin some cases with fingers even above/around the hilt for more blade control.Of course, this doesn't mean a sword can only be wielded in that one way, but we're looking for a general grip for most occasions. Any fancier maneuvers can be animated, after all, and the animations in Guild Wars

, so... do go wild! Pretty please!

If we compare it to, say, axes, those are much more flexible in the "general" grip, because axe handles were in the vast majority made of wood - and, in-game, very few have any ornaments or other purely cosmetic nonsense added to their handles - and so almost the entire weight of the axe was the head, yet the same laws of physics apply - the closer to the point of balance the axe is held, the more control over the weapon the wielder has. The further away, however, the more raw damage swinging the axe would do thanks to how rotation works.

So the idea of taking shortcuts came to mind - designating the same point on the weapon for every race to hold, so even norns and charrs can wield the same sword without clipping through half of it while not needing to scale the weapons up or down.Then I logged to test it and, although the count of usable swords went from ~20 to a decent ~60, it's still a sad amount, considering how many swords there are.

Which is a crying shame, because the models themselves are beautiful, creative, and still much less bonkers than the usual fantasy weapons.

So although I wouldn't mind knowing the rationale behind the astonishingly heartbreaking abominations such asUEgLs8T.pngands1TqGM1.pngI'd rather never see it repeated again.Skritts are going to go mad after shinies anyway. Might as well capture the entire audience, yes?

Also, Build "Templates" still suck.

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Absent some obscure "dev reason" which makes it "necessary" for characters to hold swords at the wrong part of the grip, it's hard to fathom that graphic artists would not do some elementary research into how swords are used. There are a ton of videos on Youtube, for instance.

Yeah, this makes me cringe when I see it. Not that I expect ANet to ever do anything about it -- as I don't expect them to do anything about a host of other issues which also detract from my enjoyment of the game.

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I know that Shadiversity would have a conniption over something like this...but then again he'd have a conniption 98% of all weapons and armors in GW2. So don't tell him.Personally I'm too worn out from repeated disappointments to care much about this one right now.

Edit:

@Vyr.9387 said:the beautiful pommel ending rightly this wondrous masterpiece!I see what you did there.

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what about the female human/norn/sylvari greatsword stance? i know its an actual greatsword stance, but there are better stances and running, why cant my character hold the blade in front of her, you know, where the attacks are comming from, with the sword held back she is wide open for enemy attacks.... and dont come with its too heavy, greatsword normally weigh around 2kg, maybe 3kg at max

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To me these were the biggest sword let downs

800px-Scion%27s_Claw.jpgAndGallant_Sword.jpg

Why? The skins are honestly perfect... however they are just too big! The hilts are so long the weapon would be inneffective in combat, or the crossguard is too large making it look rather comical.

Honestly if they scale down the size of the swords in Gw2, they'd actually be good skins... just they are too big!

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@"Smoosh.2718" said:To me these were the biggest sword let downs

800px-Scion%27s_Claw.jpgAndGallant_Sword.jpg

Why? The skins are honestly perfect... however they are just too big! The hilts are so long the weapon would be inneffective in combat, or the crossguard is too large making it look rather comical.

Honestly if they scale down the size of the swords in Gw2, they'd actually be good skins... just they are too big!

Most of the swords in-game are like that unfortunately.

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I do realize - as does Shad, for that matter - that this all is ultimately fantasy. Even the beauty I opened the discussion with, the Bright Inquisitor sword, sports spikes pointing towards the wielder, which is always a sign of a very practical design.And there IS magnificence in utterly unreasonable things - the intricate patterns of almost literally blooming hilts, buildings constructed in virtually impossible shapes, hell, even corsets, and I wouldn't curse any women with that infernal iron maiden.

But this is like making characters hold pistols by the barrel, 'cuz logic is just a social construct, anyway.

On the other hand, WP mentioned in one of his videos that the devs claimed to not being too keen on digging into the old code, since it's much worse than the spaghetti people keep using as comparison. Could be that the sword wielding spot has been incorporated into many different things which would basically shatter the reality if ANet changed it?

Then again, I can't imagine that in almost a decade nobody had brought this particular issue up, especially at the very beginning when the community wasn't as UwU as it is now.

Also, found a broom and tried the female greatsword running, because it got me curious.Stuff's... not healthy, to put it lightly.

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