Talk:Character creation/Archive 1

About the Character Affiliation pages

I don't see much reason to have five different pages for these, at least now, because they may not have that big of a documentary influence (that is, while the influence on the storyline is big, there may not be much to document, unless we intend to document the storyline differences on the five pages). Also, High Legion isn't accurate for the charr, because the FLame Legion is still a High Legion but it isn't playable. Also, "Season" may not be accurate because there are the four non-sylvari influenced seasons as well (I'm also considering moving the Autumn, Fall, Summer, Spring into Season of the Zephyr, Season of the Phoenix, Season of the Colossus, and Season of the Scion as the later are the real in-game names for the seasons, so that could be discussed here as well, since it is related). I think those short lists could be merged into this page easily, as otherwise those pages aren't really giving much info to have their own page. -- Konig/talk 20:46, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

About Humans,...

Anyone else remember reading something about, like, gentry? Being able to choose if you're a commoner or a richkid? --Naoroji 21:10, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I do. Doesn't it mean something if you're loyal to the Queen or not? That's what I remember reading. I'm curious how this would work. --Spigs 21:13, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Where did you read that from, because I have heard of no such thing.--Amanda(: 19:57, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

No, it doesn't mean if you're loyal to the queen or not. It just means if you're born into a rich family, or that you're born into a poor family. Don't remember the interview, though. --Naoroji 20:45, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I thought it was specifically Commoner Or Gentry, as in Do you work for the military or not? Zolann The Irreverent 22:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

ok now whats the Commoner and Gentry mean? Commoner means-...;Gentry means... Thank you(:----IcyyyBlue ♥♥ 07:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean the actual terms, or how they apply in Guild Wars 2? In actual terms, a commoner in the middle ages was usually rather poor, but still above the level of peasant. Gentry usually indicated the aristocracy or the level just beneath nobility. This is an English term, which I suppose seems fitting, since Kryta is slightly based on England. --Amannelle 14:02, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

It seems as though the Human page already has this info, mehh. Shouldn't we include it in the Playable Races box? --Naoroji 14:10, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Character Possibilities

There are too many possibilities... 5 races * 8 professions * 17 character affiliations(so far...) = 680 character options... --Ravencroft0 11:37, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Omg you're right... :O wow, that IS a lot of possibilities! --Amannelle 12:06, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

And they mentioned the ability for humans to not only choose their heritage, but also their "circumstance" (noble, peasant, etc)... I wonder how many more options that will add when it's fully implemented. o_O --Amannelle 12:14, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Also, guys, we can choose inter-racial factions as well (Order of Whispers, Durmand Priory, the Vigil). --Naoroji 12:24, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I hope other players will be able to visually see the difference by the implementation of a short, in-game character bio and/or the character's appearance.-- Shew ♠♠♠ 12:33, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Surely there will be SOME visual differences; maybe different options for character creation. Because clearly Canthans look different from Elonians, and it's been speculated that the Asuran college you choose with affect the color of your "gem" accents on your armor, as well as on your golem. For Sylvari it's obviously speculated that each season would have different hues of color to choose from for creating the character, etc. --Amannelle 12:55, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Uhh... 17 character affiliations? That's innaccurate. A charr cannot be have a summer affiliation. It's actually 3 or 4 affiliations (dependent on race), and then 3 orders. So really it would be 2 races * 8 professions * 3 affiliations * 3 orders + 3 races * 8 professions * 4 affiliations * 3 orders = 422 choices with what we know. -- Konig/talk 21:03, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Still quite a few. And considering that each character's background will determine its story in a unique way, this is going to be really awesome if they pull it off. --Kyoshi (Talk) 21:13, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. I don't mind all the possibilities, but I am concerned as to how many character slots we will initially have or if character slots will even be an option. --Ravencroft0 12:57, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I thought they mentioned somewhere that character slots will be available, but I couldn't tell you where. --Kyoshi (Talk) 14:40, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Didn't they also say we would be able to choose fears, etc. somewhere? --hnzdvn 15:28, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

That's right, Phnzdvn, you will also choose likes and fears, I guess. Apparently the fears you choose will play a role later on if you oppose the Nightmare Faction of the Sylvari. ^^ Didn't they say their leader was able to create physical manifestations of your worse fears? :3 --Amannelle 15:33, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

My charr has no fear. My norn has no fear. Does that mean that my charr and norn's fear is nothingness? But that could be fun... "My human's fear is... balls!" *tennis balls appear* "No! Not those balls!" *basketballs appear* *sigh* -- Konig/talk 16:51, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I lol'd IRL. XD --hnzdvn 16:55, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

You lie, Konig. Everyone knows Norn fear their mother in law. --Naoroji 16:56, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Every man fears their mother-in-law... -- Konig/talk 16:59, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

There is a Chuck Norris joke in there somewhere. On a serious note, 8 professions is cool and all, but I would like to know the specifics on how many characters we can have, then I'll be more excited as to what profession(s) I'll play. Would be a major FTL if we only got 6 slots for that many possibilities. --Ravencroft0 10:55, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

It's actually just 17 affiliations * 8 professions = 126 possibilities, since race is already implied by affiliation, and since we don't know if these orders aren't just something everyone will join (much like the sunspears in Nightfall, the Vanguard in prophecies, etc). -- NilePenguin 14:51, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "like the sunspears in Nightfall" Celle

To expand on the whole appearance thing: Sylvari season-->color sceme, Human race-->facial features, Asura college-->glowcolor, Charr warband-->fur pattern, Norn totem-->...yeah I can't even guess. Tattoos, maybe? This is just speculation though, so YMMV. Zolann The Irreverent 22:17, 21 May 2010 (UTC) 23:19, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I think it will be easier for us to get unique looks that other players wont have, because right now you can look exactly alike with 100 characters in the game.--Amanda(: 20:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Character Fears and other attributes...

So acording to this interview we will be able to chose our character fears. " If a character is afraid of spiders and another to be afraid of the opposite sex, the encounter with the villain of the Nightmare Court materializing your deepest fears will be different." I suposse we will see more about that feature in the next overview. Still, do you think we should add what we know? --_{I Am}Legion talk 18:02, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I would rather we wait, but I wouldn't mind if what we know was added now. If someone added it I wouldn't be opposed to it. --hnzdvn 18:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, they said they would be revealing more about personal storylines "very soon", so I don't know exactly how long that will be from now, but it shouldn't be too far away. Perhaps we should wait a little while and see. But, of course, it's totally up to whatever everyone else wants. I'm up for anything. ^^ --Amannelle 18:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Hopefully very soon.......:S I wanna go ahead and plan out my character.-- Shew ♠♠♠ 20:41, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

The only way I'll be able to plan out my characters is if all professions are known lol. And that's going to take a while,... --Naoroji 20:42, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Hah Shew, I do to :P. I can work around professions though, lots can change in 250 years... especially for the character's I'm carrying over from GW1 --hnzdvn 20:52, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Finally: http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/personal-stories/personal-story-overview/ --_{I Am}Legion talk 17:23, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

thanks fer postin it!--IcyyyBlue ♥♥ 18:37, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

To me, it seems implied that racial sympathy will be something all characters will select, but that there will be limitations on which lesser races are available based on your character's race. Am I the only one? --208.105.170.7 19:54, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, it seems that some races are more sympathetic than others... After all, the typical Asuran sees smaller/weaker races as test subjects, just labrats to be experimented on.. so I wonder if they will have a fewer number of choices (if any at all). I was a bit surprised by the Charr having a choice, since they would seem the least sympathetic. :O --Amannelle 01:33, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

"First successful experiment"

Where was this mentioned? I don't recall reading about that. -- Konig/talk 00:29, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Don't you trust me, Konig? :) It was the latest wartower interview. -- Aspectacle  00:46, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Although I don't especially agree with the way you've split that information - I'd like to leave them all as biographical questions until we know more. -- Aspectacle  00:49, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Ree specifically said that "race, class, and heritage" defines the biographical questions - of which was the racial sympathy question. I am unsure if the social class things (of which we only know two races' choices - of which are both 3 options; and thus would most likely mean that we know a third: the charr's) is in the biography or not, but the "heritage" (I'm guessing includes the norn totem and sylvari seasons) is definably not part of the biography. This is shown in the "Tell Me a Little About Yourself…" section of this. Specifically (prepare for a long block of green text with bold words throughout):

"A character's biography will influence their storyline immediately. Once you have created your character's race, class, and gender, you may choose your physical appearance - and there are a ton of options! From there, you are offered a chance to answer several detailed questions about your character's personality, history, and background.

Some of these questions are defined by earlier choices - a character's race, class, or heritage. An asura will be asked what college they attended (Synergetics, Dynamics or Statics), while a human will be asked to define their social background (Gentry, Commoner, or Streets). Other questions might establish that your character has sympathy for a particular lesser race. A charr would have little opportunity to meet the peace-loving quaggan, as quaggan are sea-creatures and Ascalon has no coastal territory. So, while the game may have stories that focus on the quaggan, skritt, ogres, hylek, and grawl, a charr character chooses between grawl, skritt and ogres. A sylvari character, coming from the coastal Maguuma jungle, instead chooses between hylek, skritt and quaggan. In this way, we've made certain choices distinct to each race.

In order to develop your character's personality, the biography also has questions that are applicable to all races and classes. If you describe your character as intimidating and unfriendly, the reactions of NPCs will be different than if you choose to portray yourself as charming and kind. If you are simply making an alt character to see if you enjoy a class or race, you can choose 'random selection,' and these questions will be instantly filled out for you. But if you take a moment and answer, your character's story will be tailored to meet your interests, and match your vision of the person you have created within the world of Tyria."

This is literally all we have on the biography and it makes it clear that a characters' heritage is not part of the biography, but defines it. It isn't clear, however, if an asura's college or a human's social background is part of the biography (though in re-reading it, I am inclined to think it is part of the biography). -- Konig/talk 00:55, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Social status and college read as part of the biographical questions. I agree heritage reads as a separate characteristic - but which of the ones we know are heritage and which are biographical questions? - is legion heritage or biographical? -- Aspectacle  01:22, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I believe that was stated in the German interview, although I suspect a translation error. CelleyBear 01:53, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I think heritages will have 4 choices, based on the social status and college. Though norn totem doesn't feel like heritage while charr legions do... -- Konig/talk 21:48, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

How to set up the biography

Call this a pre-emptive strike, if you will, but I'd like to discuss how we want to set up the biography. I assume we'd want to document all the questions and possible answers but due to the vast differences in questions and answers based on race, class, and heritage it may get tricky. I, of course, don't see a need to make a new page for the biography so we should just add it here where we have the summary at. What I propose is to follow the format of the following (unless someone can make it fancier, of course):

• <Race>
  • <Profession>
    • <Heritage>
      • <Question>
        • <Answers>

So, given the information we have, the current form would be (to keep it short, I'll only do the things we have confirmed):

• Asura
  • Elementalist
    • unknown
      • <College question>
        • College of Synergetics; College of Dynamics; College of Statics
      • <Racial sympathy question>
        • <choices>
  • Warrior
    • unkown
      • <College question>
        • College of Synergetics; College of Dynamics; College of Statics
      • <Racial sympathy question>
        • <choices>
• Charr
  • Elementalist
    • unknown
      • <Racial sympathy question>
        • <choices>
  • Warrior
    • unkown
      • <Racial sympathy question>
        • <choices>
• Human
  • Elementalist
    • unknown
      • <social background>
        • Streets; Commoner; Gentry
      • <Racial sympathy question>
        • <choices>
  • Warrior
    • unkown
      • <social background>
        • Streets; Commoner; Gentry
      • <Racial sympathy question>
        • <choices>
• Norn
  • Elementalist
    • unknown
      • <Racial sympathy question>
        • <choices>
  • Warrior
    • unkown
      • <Racial sympathy question>
        • <choices>
• Sylvari
  • Elementalist
    • unknown
      • <Racial sympathy question>
        • <choices>
  • Warrior
    • unkown
      • <Racial sympathy question>
        • <choices>

The issue is, of course, the repetition of the questions using this format. Another thing that could be done is lisitng questions and answers under "generic questions" "racial questions" "profession questions" "heritage questions" "racial&profession questions" and "heritage&profession questions." This will prove to be shorter as there won't be any repetition, but there is still an issue: questions that are for multiple cases, but have different answers. However, I'm sure someone can come up with some elaborate chart... -- Konig/talk

Perhaps a creation page for each race would be best, as many of the questions are likely racial specific. We could list the question with ==title== and then have the answers in bullets, along with the implications of said answers.--Corsair@Yarrr 22:57, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

If you are grouping based on heritage you've got another entire factor (each profession would have 4 heritages to choose from if your theory is correct!) - then the way you're listing becomes even more unwieldy. I think you should only factor in profession or heritage to the biographical questions if it has an effect on the question asked. So at this point the racial sympathy question seems to be based purely on race so it would be listed directly under the race heading then start branching if it needs to be. -- Aspectacle  23:45, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Corsair. Having a page for each race's biography would be better, as it would both prevent this article from becoming too big and allow us to better document the biography by adding more screenshots. Erasculio 23:53, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

The reason I didn't want to have a separation of pages is while it may be long (if it is too long then could we not just have one of this [hide] tags added? However you do that) it would keep all the information together and I'd rather not have the biography have its own page as it would then just be a list of questions and answers. I think the best option, thinking about it more intently, would be my second suggestion which is to have different kinds of questions/answers (generic, race-only based, profession-only based, heritage-only based, race/profession based, and heritage/profession based) grouped together then separated by the said basing of the question (e.g., race-only would have 5 sections; profession-only would have 8 sections; heritage would have 20 (if 4 heritages per race); etc.). For those which have the same question but different answers based on something would go into whichever category the question itself goes into then we could separate the answers by whatever the answers are based on. -- Konig/talk 00:23, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

We could easily add more content to a Biography article than just questions and answers. In fact, we could make an article for the entire Personal storyline section, mentioning all choices available (instead of just "Heritage", for example, list all of the options for heritage), and make a short summary of what they mean. I would expect the character creation articles to help players when creating their characters, so it's only to be expected that a list of available options would also help players in understanding the impact of each choice and how each option would affect their characters, even if only in a very concise manner. Erasculio 00:58, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Do note that the heritage section is incomplete and as the current consensus here (thus far 1 person disagrees that I can tell) would warrant that the "norn totem" and so forth pages would be merged into this one (and/or biography depending on which goes where). -- Konig/talk 06:48, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

In this section you're trying to make a formal formatting decision by making assumptions about the game. You simply can't make worthwhile formatting decisions for this information at this time. There is nothing wrong with how the page currently captures the limited information we have in this area. All of the pages related to this are somewhat redundant but I don't think it matters until we know better and can make better decisions. -- Aspectacle  23:49, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I think we are getting a consensus on how it should be done when the time comes. Depending on how things are with the demo, I plan on writing EVERYTHING down at PAX. If they let us look at character creation, that is.--Corsair@Yarrr 00:46, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

What about flowcharts? Also: Good GOD can someone PLEASE tape THE WHOLE THING and post it on here somewhere?! I REALLY wish I could go, but...I'mma being inna whole otha conti-nent. Zolann The Irreverent 01:37, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Aspectacle, as I said, this is more or less a "pre-emptive strike" - I decided it should be worthwhile to bring up because when we finally get the full information it will either be a beta or the actual release; as such there will be a LOT to document and it will be chaos. This discussion is to lower the amount of chaos and make it simple to document with minimal changes to what was put up. @Corair: Please do, even if they don't let you look at the character creation, write down (or record) everything you can. -- Konig/talk 01:54, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Will do Konig, no worries there. I plan on taking a notebook and a digital camera.--Corsair@Yarrr 02:12, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you can make a pre-emptive strike without good information. I think a good structure comes when you can see and understand the big picture, I don't think we could possibly see that yet. It has been a problem with the wiki from the start too much enthusiasm not enough information. There are so many things we might be doing to deal with the deluge but we've stopped all of them because they require assumptions, which you are making, about the nature of the information we will be getting.

I'm glad that there is someone active around the wiki who's going to be able to get to the demo (remember to try and get the inventory, skill or trait screens. :D). It is going to be awesome to work the information you can glean into the wiki but can we prepare for it? I don't think so. -- Aspectacle  03:14, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm leaning towards probably having one main page for character creation which links off to individual creation for each race/profession (depending how the questions split up) but I think we'll have to wait and see. Bringing the discussion up is fine, but we just can't work that far ahead of the work load without the potential for messing things up. If we figure out how we want to format it given one of two options and wait to see which is more suitable, we can react accordingly and still save time. --Kyoshi (Talk) 03:42, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Character names

No longer spaces required. I feel name reserving is not much longer in favour for a specific group of players, I guess? I prefer the system in GW1, but I can see why they'd change it. - Infinite - talk 23:27, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand how the naming process works. Are you still able to have a 'First' and 'last' name? Or is it only possible to have one? The one being a 'first' name :/ 90.200.54.42 20:17, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

At the end of the "Video of demo character creation", from the Character creation page, it says, "Spaces count as characters." So, I take it you can have a first and last name, if you'd like. FloppyJoe 02:18, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Ok so there will be only one "Sephiroth" and one "Tifa" per server i suppose :D CaiusTheBig 16:31, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps one reason for the change is the reservation of Guild Wars 1 character names. That reduces the available names quite a bit, but removing the space requirement frees up just as many. --Emelend 16:44, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

lol

@ gay and dwarf :P --The Holy Dragons 12:07, 6 October 2010 (UTC)