WvW weapons are hideous

[Zephyra.4709]

I've only previewed the ones from the bank's wardrobe tab and I must agree with the OP - they are unfortunately, absolutely hideous. My personal interpretation of obsidian is anything that is mostly black, red, predominantly jagged and fearsome in appearance. Even look at good ol' Runescape's obby armor/weapons... at least they're moderately intimidating.

I'll tell it to you flat - the new obsidian weapon skins look like cheap plastic (once again we're hit with the shiny plastic/metallic theme) and all hilts adorned with ribbons combined with the triangular patterns seem as if the artist wanted to combine jester, ornate and rock into one. It simply looks bad and doesn't work (in my brutally honest opinion).

I wish the weapon skins were straight out full black and red or seeping with subtle reddish magma-like cracks in certain places. The blade-ends themselves are... not bad. Perhaps I'd be more accepting if the hilt/guards/pommels etc (sword anatomy in general) were inspired by Skyrim's ebony weapons. Oh well.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder..."

[Zephyra.4709]

@DemonSeed.3528 said:I want to look cooler, just not carnival cool. But I do appreciate mistforged obsidian dagger. Please make us look cool. Not just cool to people outside of wvw, but against our enemies in wvw. Coooool.

This so much. I'm absolutely disappointed to my uttermost bitter core about these weapon skins. They look like a mix-up of carnival-clown, attempted elegance and stone into one. Doesn't work at all.

[Sovereign.1093]

i like them. must be a preference thing

[Dawdler.8521]

@Sovereign.1093 said:i like them. must be a preference thingEven if 1 out 10 like then, that still mean they are ugly as sin to everyone else, yes.

[Sithis.3564]

I really don't want to bash ANet but those weapons are NOT Obsidian.

When I saw them, especially that huge, colorful staff, I really felt disappointed with the whole design.

[Krypto.2069]

@"Dotfear.6493" said:ugliest weapon i'v never seen, we deserve more like gemstore weapon

I must say.... these Obsidian weapons look like Gem Store "REJECTS!" :lol:

C'mon, Anet... wt.f is this shit? I'm not spending my tickets on those things! OMG! :lol:

[Kapax.3801]

A WvW shield should have the following design.

Model: Tower Shield, Dark Souls.

A true shield for a defender of the kingdom.

Model: Tower Shield, Dark souls 2.

Look at that, you have a work of art as a shield.

http://i.imgur.com/OnR149y.png

PD: Yes, I am a fan of giant and exaggerated shields!!! B) B)

[Dawdler.8521]

Kapax, thats the exact visual of a shield already in GW2, lol. So no need to even look at Dark Souls.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Tower_Shield

And yes, the Roman style shield would have awesome to have in a way that reflected your current WvW side and a million times better than the clown shield we got. Anet could have reskinned the guild shield and added the effect for less cost than... that...

[Kapax.3801]

@"Dawdler.8521" said:Kapax, thats the exact visual of a shield already in GW2, lol. So no need to even look at Dark Souls.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Tower_Shield

And yes, the Roman style shield would have awesome to have in a way that reflected your current WvW side and a million times better than the clown shield we got. Anet could have reskinned the guild shield and added the effect for less cost than... that...

Yes, I already knew that shield, and it should be based on this model to create more shield of the "tower" type.Currently there is only one shield that I like:

[Aeolus.3615]

the obsidian shield felt it was bugged into the arm, maybe its due its smal size and its locations on the arm.

Advice: Make obsidian weapon simmiliar model to the victo sword from Gw1, it would be a better model to shape it from.

The staff looked nice, but to bulky and short.

A the obsidian color swap felt strange...

[seina.5203]

When I first heard that they made "obsidian" weapons for WvW I thought they were going to be along the same aesthetic as the GW1 obsidian FoW armor, armor that was more of a status symbol than it was armor. I felt that would definitely be in the ballpark for something that was "exclusive", instead we get these clown weapons which are, ironically, pretty much a joke. I feel like Anet purposely skips the QA phase for WvW designs/changes because they honestly don't have the manpower or time to dedicate to WvW, which is really sad.

[Aeolus.3615]

Actually it costed no obsidian shards.... so its not made of obsidian.... xD

[Vavume.8065]

@Aeolus.3615 said:Actually it costed no obsidian shards....

If these weapons cost 350 leaf fossils I would still not buy them.

[RodOfDeath.5247]

@Krypto.2069 said:

@"Dotfear.6493" said:ugliest weapon i'v never seen, we deserve more like gemstore weapon

I must say.... these

Obsidian

weapons look like

Gem Store "REJECTS!"

:lol:

C'mon, Anet... wt.f is this kitten? I'm not spending my tickets on those things! OMG! :lol:

LOL

[GDchiaScrub.3241]

Oh.Mai.Dwayna.

At the least the obsidian material looks good, and the flames could be good if they weren't competing against the team colored decals (I am assuming they match to the team color btw. Preview doesn't seem to care a lick about team color). Also, the exotic variants appear to have less triangular protrusions than the ascended ones for those that are put off by them...except Staff. The trade off is the smaller obsidian bit.

[Ragnarox.9601]

lets make this thread constructive.

->looks at new pvp and wvw weapon sets

bahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

[Turk.5460]

@"DemonSeed.3528" said:I want to look cooler, just not carnival cool. But I do appreciate mistforged obsidian dagger. Please make us look cool. Not just cool to people outside of wvw, but against our enemies in wvw. Coooool.

You're not going to look cool against your enemies. Nobody on an enemy team is going to look at your character past " [Rank] [Profession] and possibly [Food/Wrench]. Barely anyone in any game mode anywhere is going to look at your character closely unless you ask them to. So if you want to look cool, make sure you are looking cool for yourself. Wardrobe your character to what you find nice to look at, not what you think others will, because I assure you, an overwhelming majority of players simply see you as male/female "race."

[Arcaedus.7290]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:No matter how bad you think a skin is, a minimum of 10-30% of players will think it's great. No matter how great you think a skin is, a similar fraction will think it's hideous. Personally, I dislike about 80% of the skins in any game and I can't find a way to use about 80% of the rest. So I'm always happy in GW2 if they manage to release even one set a year that I find worth the effort to obtain.

People like what they like; doesn't mean a skin is of great or poor design.

This is true. It's commonly said that the Dragonscale Headdress (helmet reward from the Ember Bay Reward track final chest) and the Brogans (boot armor reward from the Siren's Landing Reward track final chest) are two of the ugliest pieces of armor yet I absolutely love them.

[Vavume.8065]

@Arcaedus.7290 said:This is true. It's commonly said that the Dragonscale Headdress (helmet reward from the Ember Bay Reward track final chest) and the Brogans (boot armor reward from the Siren's Landing Reward track final chest) are two of the ugliest pieces of armor yet I absolutely love them.

Gratz on having bad taste?

[Arcaedus.7290]

@Vavume.8065 said:

@Arcaedus.7290 said:This is true. It's commonly said that the Dragonscale Headdress (helmet reward from the Ember Bay Reward track final chest) and the Brogans (boot armor reward from the Siren's Landing Reward track final chest) are two of the ugliest pieces of armor yet I absolutely love them.

Gratz on having bad taste?

The point is one man's trash, another man's treasure. Some may not like how the obsidian skins look but that's entirely subjective.

Now the relevant criticism in this case is how low-effort these skins appear to be.

[Vavume.8065]

@Arcaedus.7290 said:The point is one man's trash, another man's treasure.

I thought that only applied to tramps...

[Artaz.3819]

What I expected was ANet would reskin the Guild Hall HoT Tenebrous Weapon (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tenebrous_weapons) set with a few more obsidian/blackish auras (or perhaps old school and a redo of the Nightmare weapons)...if you have Guild option on, you display your Guild emblem on the shield version (you know, Guild Wars).

What we got was a cross between the Beaded Weapons (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Beaded_weapons) and the Carnival vendor Ember Bay weapon set (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shipwrecked_Circus_Treasurer) with the coloring scheme of the Gemstore Mordrem weapons.

Weapon sets are a personal taste in art and design. Needless to say, rushing meh multi-colored reward skins that doesn't highlight the Obsidian graphic look (why place the visuals on the outlandish bumps/angles/color scheme) is absolutely a strange design choice and at least get inspired by the GW1 throwback visuals.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

tl;dr I'm not a fan of these skins; I don't think they meet the basic criterion of "epic prestige design". But neither am I going to spend any (more) time worrying about it: my preferences rarely match RPG/MMO tropes, so I'd rather ANet just keep releasing more weapons as often as they can — the more sets they release, the greater the chances that I'll see one I like (whereas retrofitting is unlikely to please all that many people).

---

I couldn't understand the disappointment until just now. By accident of timing, the only one I previewed was the Mistforged Dagger (appears first in the wardrobe). The blade looks close to what I expected: glassy-rock, shiny and brittle looking, burning with "our team's" glow. The pommel was... well, a little disappointing, but the business end seemed great.

Of course, I hadn't seen the staff or torch, which have very little obsidian and a lot of cardboard for a nursery school play about the court jesters during the Hundred-Year War. The shades of gold, white, and red|green|blue are about what I'd expect on the boxtop of a checkers board found in a thrift shop. Worse, the 'obsidian' part on the shield (which again, is pretty good) doesn't match the rest of the weapon.

---

I don't need the developers to meet my expectations about design; in fact, I stopped having many expectations for any game years ago: my aesthetic is never going to match the tropes of the genre. But in this case, I feel that designers missed the key principles:

• Prestige weapons need to feel epic.
• Epic for competitive modes needs to feel different from PvE

Obviously the exact details are very subjective. Except in this case, I feel that elements of the weapons are so far off the mark that I'm convinced the designers forgot that these were meant to be prestige for WvW.

• There's no room for whimsy; all the elements should scream "serious business"
• The design isn't unified: the obby elements clash with the non-obby.
• The colored elements clash with each other: the intensity of the red|green|blue smoke & glow doesn't match that of the highlights in the 'wood' parts.
• The non-team-colored elements don't blend well with the team colors.
• The overall color scheme is hard to match with armor.

That said, I'd rather they didn't waste time redesigning the four skins released so far. Spend that time instead on the skins yet-to-be-released or... if they are completed/nearly completed, then direct that energy to future skins (even if they aren't prestige). I'd rather see ANet release another new set sooner instead of going back to try to fix something (especially since we probably won't like the end result unless it's really amazing).

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

The mistforged weapons are vastly better than to these intern created rejects.

[DemonSeed.3528]

@Turk.5460 said:

@"DemonSeed.3528" said:I want to look cooler, just not carnival cool. But I do appreciate mistforged obsidian dagger. Please make us look cool. Not just cool to people outside of wvw, but against our enemies in wvw. Coooool.

You're not going to look cool against your enemies. Nobody on an enemy team is going to look at your character past " [Rank] [Profession] and possibly [Food/Wrench]. Barely anyone in any game mode

anywhere

is going to look at your character closely unless you ask them to. So if you want to look cool, make sure you are looking cool for yourself. Wardrobe your character to what

you

find nice to look at, not what you think others will, because I assure you, an overwhelming majority of players simply see you as male/female "race."

Shh! I wanted to add it as extra's just to help my cause so they'd change it :)

On another note, the more I look at the shield the more I can't unsee :