Athis.3780

Thank you so much, my apologies! It should be updated now.

I'm not entirely sure what's wrong. It's working fine for me. I tried looking at the post on multiple different computers and other devices and it looks fine to me. I also tried on multiple different browsers and it still looks fine. The post is just plain text with a few words boldened, italicized, and two links.

Hello, I have been thinking a lot about potential updates to Guild Wars 2 that would greatly benefit people who are interested in approaching the game in an artistic way (people making videos, taking screenshots, etc). I personally would really appreciate to see changes like these added in the future and I know others would as well. Additionally, some of these updates would benefit people who aren't interested in content creation at all and they would just be beneficial to the game as a whole. VISUAL UPDATES Jade Bot Overhaul One of the most requested changes I see is an overhaul of the Jade Bot. When it comes to the idea of being able to take better screenshots of your character, this feature was promising when it was first announced. However, the actual implementation of the Jade Bot falls short in that regard. First, you can only use the Jade Bot at a Jade Bot terminal, which is for gameplay reasons, but severely limits the amount of areas where you can use this mastery. Second, you can not reposition your character once you activate the Jade Bot, so the character is stuck wherever the terminal is. Third, you can not go first person with Jade Bot which makes it significantly more difficult to get a high-quality screenshot of your character. Changing all of these issues would allow people to take better screenshots of their own character, without the use of secondary accounts. More Options to Cull Effects An option to cull more effects in the game would help improve a lot of the visual issues of the game. This had been addressed in the past, but it’s still a problem. One big example is with combat, where it becomes an issue with any larger boss fight to see what is going on. This is a large complaint from many newer players, but it also becomes a problem when someone wants to record a boss fight and the entire screen is just a giant blob of skill effects. Another big example is the prevalence of very flashy mount skins, particularly Skyscale skins. An option to turn off all mount skins for other players, similar to the standard enemy and friendly models in PvP, would be nice. Chat Box Updates This is not a big issue but might be nice to have an option in the future, but some minor updates to the chat box would be appreciated. The first would be to have an option to hide player names in the chat box, for privacy reasons when it comes to recording the game. Most of the time, people will just hide the chat box anyways but this would be a nice option. Another small change would be to add an option to hide all of the chat messages that currently can not be hidden. While you can hide guild messages, map chat, emotes, and more… you can’t hide a few messages like “Your jade bot recycled some junk!”, “This is not your actives story. Any progress made in this instance will not be saved.”, map meta announcements, screenshot directories, and more. Being able to hide all of these things would allow you to have a completely empty chatbox without having to hide the chatbox ingame or having to cover it up. Fix First-Person View Bugs There is currently a minor bug with first-person view models where when you zoom in all of the way into first-person, and then glide or use a skill, your character will occasionally show up on screen as their idle animations have them move forwards. There is the simple fix of just zooming back out and back in, but fixing this problem would be nice. Day and Night Cycle Toggle An option to toggle the day and night cycle (visually) might be nice for some people. Where you can select it to always look like day or always look like night. This would obviously not change how any mechanics or timers work, but would just change how the world looks to an individual. This way, if people wanted to take a screenshot during the day but it just became night… they don’t have to wait 50 minutes for it to become day again. SOUND UPDATES More Sound Options More ways to customize the audio levels of the game would be greatly appreciated (this is probably my most desired change out of everything in this post). The biggest issue that I currently see with this is how NPC dialog and NPC death/combat noises are in the same slider. So if you want to have the dialog volume high to be able to record NPC dialog, you will also have to deal with all of the combat noises (grunting, yelling, exclaiming, etc) as well as the incredibly loud death (and often times overly dramatic) death noises that a lot of characters make. Oftentimes, the combat noises from NPCs will play at the same time as their dialog, so their talking suddenly gets interrupted by them grunting super loudly. I have absolutely no idea what the feasibility of this change would be, but making dialog only be what NPCs say and then adding a new option for combat/death noises would be greatly, greatly appreciate. Keybound Audio Presets Having the option to make templates of different audio settings that you could then switch between with a keybind would be great. The most practical example of this would be changing the audio levels between story missions and the open world. Where people may want dialog volume higher while in story missions but then environment and effects higher in the open world. CINEMATIC UPDATES In-Game Options to View Cinematics Adding the option to view in-game cinematics, in-game, without having to reach that certain cinematic wherever it plays would be incredible. This is something that we see in World of Warcraft, where there are NPCs around the world that are placed that you can talk to that will play cinematics relevant to where they are. One big way this could be introduced in the game is a new NPC in the Aerodrome that has a selection to play all of the raid cinematics in the game. Anybody can go up to that NPC, talk to them, and select which cinematic they want to watch, which will then play that cinematic. We could then see this throughout the story, like a Pact Soldier that will show up at the Pact Base Camp after you kill the Mouth of Mordremoth and after you kill Mordremoth that you can talk to to play the two Dragon’s Stand cinematics as well as all of the Heart of Thorns cinematics. And then this idea can be spread throughout the rest of the game, everywhere where there are cinematic. You can even expand this to have NPCs for each dungeon which will let you watch all of the NPC dialog cutscenes that most people skip through. Add Standalone Cinematic Audio Options Currently, the audio in cinematics is dependent on what audio settings you currently have in the game. So if you are an individual who plays without any music, there won’t be any music in cinematics. Adding the option to have separate settings for cinematics would be greatly appreciated so you can have certain settings while you play the game and then have other settings while you watch cinematics. Fix Cinematic Dialog Bugs There’s currently a bug with many cinematics (might be all cinematics and I also don’t know how to replicate this bug) where certain lines of dialog won’t play or will end prematurely. Fixing this would obviously be nice to be able to have the full experience when it comes to viewing cinematics. ADDING SANDBOX ELEMENTS The following ideas are a long shot because the dream way it would be implemented is practically impossible for gameplay reasons, but a way to set up scenes around the world would be incredible. Being able to place certain NPCs and props around the world would be incredible for setting up screenshots and video shots. The possibilities would honestly be endless. As I said, adding this into the base game is basically impossible and would probably end up being very bad when it comes to everyone else's experience. A second idea would be to have access to a version of Guild Wars 2 that you can use to set up things like this. Which is what ArenaNet uses and I highly doubt we will ever see something like this in the future, but it would be cool nonetheless. The more practical implementation is adding a new guild decoration to the guild hall that will allow you to transform into any NPC in the game, walk around, and maybe even use basic skills (like auto attack). You could also add the option to position these NPCs somewhere in the guild hall, and then lock their place, and lock their animations (so you don’t need 50 people if you want to make a bigger battle scene).

Hello, I wanted to create a resource that highlights the super important topic about people’s experience with anxiety in Guild Wars 2. There are multiple barriers of entry for new player’s approaching endgame content. For many, anxiety is one of those barriers. I wanted to open a discussion about anxiety as a whole, what raid anxiety is, how raid anxiety impacts many different people, my experiences with anxiety, and some solutions to overcoming raid anxiety. For me, raid anxiety was one of my biggest barriers to completing raids. It took me a long time to build up confidence in my ability to play the game and build a community of friends whom I felt comfortable raiding with. This is true for me with any challenging content in any game that involves people, such as raiding in other MMOs or ranked modes in various games. I tend to use the same strategies in every game to handle my anxiety in order to have fun in the game I am playing. Here is the link to the full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRxDqp2hLZ8 I hope that this video and discussion can be beneficial to some people who are dealing with raid anxiety who want to progress through endgame content.