Daria Morgendorffer.7049

Yay for more cultural armors! Hopefully we'll get new Sylvari armor that glows like the current ones do

100% agree. I'm a guy and I play an even mix of genders because I just like to think of them as characters with some backstory that I make up, rather than avatars for myself. And I completely agree about the armors, especially light armor. I find myself wondering why so many of the female armors are so ridiculously male gaze-y. Even the heavy armors have weird random "windows". My wife watches me play sometimes, and she was interested in the game so I made her a free account to try it out. But then she went to make an elementalist, and hell I forgot how weird the starting light armor is for female characters. She was so annoyed, her reaction was pretty much "I'm a sylvari still in the Dream and I have to wear a freaking garter? Really?" I agreed and offered that we'd find her some better armor first thing but even though she halfheartedly continued for awhile, she was kind of done. Said she didn't want to have to earn pants. I don't blame her at all. Anet lost a new player there. While I understand that some people love the current options and I don't want to take them away, they should do better about providing more, especially for the starter and early game armor sets when people are leveling and are just stuck with things for awhile. Some of the armor skins labeled "pants" are not anything anyone would mistake for "pants". And there's definitely some sexism in the available character models, too. You can make male Norn of various ages with just totally gnarly, scarred, weatherbeaten faces, look like they've been through hell. There is, I think, exactly one female Norn face with any kind of scar, and zero older faces with any visible wrinkles at all. Not to mention male Norn have totally different proportions from male humans, but for some reason female Norn are just tall. Oh my god I went browsing the forums because I was wondering if anyone else had the same issues.While I have both male and female characters, I definitely enjoy playing the male characters more. If I do make a female character, they're generally sylvari or charr, which seem to have a slightly more gender neutral appearance. (I'm just not a fan of the asura movement animation.)I really dislike the lack of options for female human and norn characters. Most of the face designs are very similar in that they all look like made up dolls. So many of the male faces (even with the charr and sylvari) seem to have faces with more "character". There are way broader options for age, skin marks, facial structure, and damage in the male characters. With female human and norn faces the option is basically "what color do you want your lipstick and eyeliner?" I really try to make all of mine unique and it's really a struggle with those races. Running around the game, it looks like I'm mostly running around looking at the same character but with different skin and hair colors. I really wanted to try playing every race storyline, so I figured it would be fun to make the human character look like myself. The trouble was that it wasn't fun at all, because there's so few options that aren't just Barbie variations.I'm with you guys on the armor differences too. I do a couple types of historical combat, so I've spent a lot of time running around in armor, and I really hate that so many of the female armor options are pretty much bikini-maile. I really wish that they would at least give you the option to customize the basic starting armor appearance so you don't have to start off wearing stripper outfits.When I try playing a female character, it often feels like I'm just playing a walking pair of boobs. If walking boobs is an option, and not just the norm, I'm fine with that, but when that's the default, it takes the fun out of playing the character. It's not really a character anymore; it's just eye-candy. There's nothing wrong with giving people the option to make eye-candy characters, but I find it both weird and kind of insulting that you're playing characters in the game who are a range of ages and have obviously seen combat, but so few of the female character options represent that. Thanks so much for weighing in, really interesting to hear other people having the same experience. I'm sure it must be pretty jarring from a historical combat background >_> Would love to hear more about historical armor design in relation to GW2's armor, tbh. I came to GW2 from a different popular MMO where the women's outfits almost all have MORE clothes than the males'. Particularly in cases where the male version of the armor is bare-chested, the female version has to have some chest covering, but otherwise looks the same. So it's definitely possible, and even a sustainable business. I wonder how the playerbase gender ratio compares between MMOs.

Quaggan. They will be the most popular race when they're announced as a playable race for the next expansion along with the Puddlehopper profession and new elite specs (Warrior: Deepguard | Guardian: Pastkeeper | Revenant: Tidereave (Legendary Melaggan Stance) | Ranger: Ragecaller | Thief: Goorilla | Engineer: Pnoomatist | Necromancer: Muckmancer | Mesmer: Mooonmage | Elementalist: Shaman). Might as well be on the right side of history now

i do get your point, however i dont agree entirely.taking a swift look at the wiki collage kind of creates a "cheerleader-effect".if you look closer, you'll notice a couple of faces that stand out as unusal/striking or just average. "old"? 3rd row on the left (more like middle-aged tbh)"(heavy) makeup"? 2nd row, 2nd from the left and 2nd from the right, or last row on the right"average"? 2nd row on the right"cheeky"? 3rd row on the right also, keep in mind that those are just the default faces. you can influence the outcome a lot with the sliders for details, hairstyles, skin color etc.and if youre still not happy with what gw2 offers you for human female faces try a small female norn. thats what i did for my amazone queen warrior ;) Thanks for responding so thoughtfully - I was expecting more disagreement, honestly. That said, I don't think it's that image that creates the "cheerleader effect," but the actual face options. The nonhuman races don't come off that way at all. Totally true about the ONE face that looks older than 20, and the "average" and "cheeky" interpretations. I just gave those as examples to describe the unique ways real human people look, and the way great characters can look in games and movies, because what's available is so limiting. But the makeup ... I hate to break it to you, but ALL those faces are wearing heavy foundation, mascara, eyeliner, blush, lipstick, eyebrow pencil, and probably ley-line-infused setting spray. Some of those MIGHT have one face that's an exception. Most have eyeshadow, as well. I'm not gonna go into contouring because I think that's different with digital faces. Someone who actually wears makeup might know more than me lol. You're right about the sliders, and good idea about the Norn! I chose not to look into Norn faces in my post just for simplicity. Just to add, I have friends who I couldn't convince to play GW2 with me because of the women's outfits and appearance. Maybe their loss, but mine, too!

@ OP, what exactly is it that you want these elves to be high on, and what about the current available races of Tyria makes them unable to ingest it? Confused here

This game frankly looks really good and performs very well compared to other MMOs. I'm surprised it takes a 50+, dense, AoE-spamming stack at Tequatl to slow down frames and add slight skill delays, and the overloaded particle and special effects in costumes (while not my style) constantly surprise me. I think I've even seen skins that have legit mirror effects? The ease with which the game renders these heavy effects and very picturesque environments always stands out to me, but I don't know what we're comparing it to

Well, let's take a look: We can number them 1-8, going left-to-right, top-to-bottom These are all unique faces that would each fit a different character? I think that #8 might be the "pleasant to look at" one you meant, but #'s 1, 3, and 4 have a similar appeal. I've talked to SO many Asura quest characters who have those faces and find them charming. Do you really think most of the Asura in the game are ugly and unlikeable? I think the Asura faces do a good job of showing how different Asura can look, and offering a whole different vibe. Just a different perspective. I use #8, myself The problem IMO is that 8 is far too few base options. They spent all their budget making 18 (!!!) different human female faces, some of which are just with different eyebrows or makeup (not that those don't make a difference), and fit all male Asura into 8 You might be happier with the Exclusive faces (from a makeover kit, can preview them at a makeover NPC, usually near a Black Lion Trader). They tend to cater to that fairly narrow "pleasant to look at" style

100% agree. I'm a guy and I play an even mix of genders because I just like to think of them as characters with some backstory that I make up, rather than avatars for myself. And I completely agree about the armors, especially light armor. I find myself wondering why so many of the female armors are so ridiculously male gaze-y. Even the heavy armors have weird random "windows". My wife watches me play sometimes, and she was interested in the game so I made her a free account to try it out. But then she went to make an elementalist, and hell I forgot how weird the starting light armor is for female characters. She was so annoyed, her reaction was pretty much "I'm a sylvari still in the Dream and I have to wear a freaking garter? Really?" I agreed and offered that we'd find her some better armor first thing but even though she halfheartedly continued for awhile, she was kind of done. Said she didn't want to have to earn pants. I don't blame her at all. Anet lost a new player there. While I understand that some people love the current options and I don't want to take them away, they should do better about providing more, especially for the starter and early game armor sets when people are leveling and are just stuck with things for awhile. Some of the armor skins labeled "pants" are not anything anyone would mistake for "pants". And there's definitely some sexism in the available character models, too. You can make male Norn of various ages with just totally gnarly, scarred, weatherbeaten faces, look like they've been through hell. There is, I think, exactly one female Norn face with any kind of scar, and zero older faces with any visible wrinkles at all. Not to mention male Norn have totally different proportions from male humans, but for some reason female Norn are just tall. Yes where are our wide Norn ladies?? Unfortunately, it's all too common for game designers to make the male option of a race look unique, and the female ones all look much more similar and human. Once you notice it, it's everywhere ... Thanks for chiming in with that story about your wife's introduction to the game. Not gonna lie, I felt kinda alone in this lol. Really curious if anyone has a similar story

I try to play both evenly to keep it interesting, so each character looks & sounds more unique. But I find it hard to play female characters, because of the pretty sexist way women are treated in GW2 (especially humans/norn). The same armor/outfit on a male vs female character is so different — a fully clothed armor on a male character is a revealing battle bikini on a female character. This is the SAME armor skin:I'd give a dozen more examples, but we've all seen it. I've never made a human female character because all the faces look identical, like Snapchat Filter Model Barbie. There are no old women in Tyria? No women who don't wear heavy makeup? Everyone has to only look one way? Only "pretty" like a doll? I know some people like these designs (they do look good individually if you're into that), and that's fine, there's just a lack of options. I don't mean to insult anyone's beloved characters. You do you — I even have a female Norn, myself.

You do NOT want GW2 available on Steam!! I play another popular MMO that is sold on Steam, and they have REGULAR server outages and problems on Steam's side. All MMOs have to deal with occasional server problems, but being gated behind Steam servers exacerbates that problem Steam = bad for MMO players. Don't need a marketing background to know that