Magicienne Endormie.5182

Hi all!Okay, so I am very late in joining this discussion, but I was really busy when it started so I had to put it on hold. With the new patch, I'm very pleased to see that Seimur can now sell us cooking materials, which was one thing I thought was missing. I am overall very happy with this added content. The quests were fun to do, and I really wish we would have more occasions to do such quests with our crafts. I know some people are unhappy that the kitchen isn't unlocked for all characters, but in my opinion this is a very good idea. While it is great to have some stuff unlocked for all of our characters in the home instance, I always felt that there wasn't enough personalized stuff. Most NPCs from the personal story, for example, don't even speak. I felt it was really nice to have my cooks get something different than my other characters. Moreover, the quest can be done multiple times with different cooks regardless of if the achievement is already unlocked or not, and that, I thought, was really, really awesome, because it meant I could get cooks with different, personalized kitchens! My main cook had her bad*ss bloodstone oven built, for example (which honestly is the best use for bloodstone I've seen since ever, and Seimur's reaction was hilarious), while my alt cooks kept the cute basic oven. I really appreciate that and hope Arena will keep making content that is not Account-wide, but specific to the characters. Now I have a few things I wish could be changed. First, I see that someone has already said it, but the place chosen for the kitchen isn't always the best fitted. The kitchens in Hoelbrak, Rata Sum, and Black Citadel are just fine. The ones in the Grove and Divinity's Reach though... are not placed well. My Sylvari cook has the white stag in her personal story, which means that the kitchen, with its bucket of blood, is situated right in front of the white stag! It's also a place that is clearly a hall where people move, so it's really unpractical. I hope the kitchen will be moved. Anywhere else will be fine, but please not in front of the white stag nor in the middle of a hall! I also wish more care would've been put into the design of the kitchen. The oven is just fine, especially seeing we can build the bloodstone one. But the rest is disappointingly always the same, no matter which home instance you're in, and so it can stand out like a sore thumb. I would love it if the table and tools would look different following the city you're in. It is a missed opportunity to give us cool cultural designs -a table made with leaves or mushrooms for the Grove, a table with intricate Norn designs for Hoelbrak, a table with a geometric shape for Rata Sum...- just like the gardening plots, which look amazing and have different cultural looks. Now back to the achievements being unlocked account-wide, while I think it's perfectly okay with the gardening plot since it's similar to all the chests and other gathering nodes, the one with the meat on the contrary really annoys me. My main cook is the only one who learned how to obtain a high-quality slab of meat, but all my characters, even non-cooks, can now do it. I understand it would be annoying if the high-quality slab of meat could only be gathered by the lvl 500 cook, but at the same time... wouldn't it be better? It's supposed to be a rare ingredient for ascended cooking, but with all my characters I can get it, and I get it quite often that now I have lots of those. It breaks game immersion to me. Also, it's already been said, but I don't get why some food durations were reduced to 30 minutes. It serves no purpose over than trying too hard to promote ascended food that we're going to make anyway, and it's really frustrating. Overall, I'm very happy with the add, and hope the other crafts would get some similar quests. I am very happy too that it's a great occasion to personalize our characters' home instances. I just really, really wish the design and the placement of the kitchen would be improved in the future.

"kitten culture, sexual harassment, kitten"OMG lol I haven't been much on this forum so I was wondering why people used the word "kitten" so much XD

Sure, to an individual who thinks no responsibility comes with empowerment, no contradiction exists here... To those individuals who understand "With great power comes great responsibility", espousing empowerment while absolving responsibility when that empowerment has adverse effects in certain circumstances shows a lack of maturity and exhibits a contradiction when removing that responsibility. Mmm, we'll have to just disagree then. MeToo is a witch-hunt. Sure, it's show that there are unseely men in certain powerful and prominent positions, but that is factually and proveably a minority of a minority of men (that is, a percent of a percent). Your language ("men can still continue to do what they do without being bothered") demonstrates to me you aren't interested in hearing facts and you don't mind if innocent individuals suffer consequences. That's fine, but like I said, don't play the victim (or defend the victim) while you make innocent victims in the process. It's hypocritical. And you don't know what I'm talking about with "constant victimization"? You're doing it now. Conflating certain behavior to sexual harassment (dressing a female avatar up to be sexy? er mer gerd the wimmins!1), inflating percieved statistics based on mere anecdote (it's NOT a few men! it's so MANY men, we need to hold ALL men accountable!). One issue is, women say they want to be heard when they talk about these things but NO ONE is silencing them. No one is telling them they can't...but at the same time, they refuse to listen to the other side of the coin. Listening AND understanding is a two-way street and you don't get understood without listening on your part. Oh please... At least you admit you phrased it poorly (I didn't phrase anything poorly, though). But like I said, I predicted what you meant and it's still faulty when you consider what sexual harassment is and how the definition of such has changed. I'm certain women face unique difficulties in their day-to-day but don't pretend no one cares...while on the other side of the coin ignoring some egregious acts that women commit against men that are simply ignored or worse, normalized. Wow, everything you said was wrong. I am no longer going to discuss with you because it's no longer a matter of opinion here (also it's not the subject of this thread). That you think that Me Too is a witch-hunt just shows how you don't understand anything about the subject. If you really wanted to educate yourself, there are many studies out there about rape culture, sexual harassment, rape, etc. that would provide you with facts and numbers. Have a good day.

I'd say that when people bring their politics into games usually it's because the problematic stuff that hurt them in the real world is right there in the game, which defeats the purpose of it being a fun escape from everyday life? For example, a female player could get harshly reminded of how men sexually harass them if they were seeing male players parading their half-naked female character around like some kind of plaything, therefore they would prefer not having that kind of highly sexualized gendered outfit in their game. Or, on contrario, people that bring their politics into games could simply be not aware of doing it, or not caring: for example, people who harass and/or constantly make allusions about the gender of the female players, which is why there are female players who do not say they are female. It means that to be able to have fun playing the game, those female players have to hide their identity, and if they don't and start talking about the problem... then we're back to the first instance. Politics are always there whether we see them or not, I'm afraid. :/ It's not a contradiction to me. If you can't see why it relies on who makes the choice, it just means we have different opinions about it. :) I'm sorry if I offended someone here. I did say I would oversimplify because I was trying to make it really short. However, your wording is poor too, because it's really not the actions of a few men. That's what Me Too taught us. It's not A FEW men. Believing that is the reason why those NOT FEW men can still continue to do what they do without being bothered. I don't know what you mean by talking about "constant victimization" and facts that somehow demolish it but it makes you sound like someone who doesn't listen when women talk about very real societal problems (I'm not attacking you, just saying how it sounds like to me). Anyway, you're right that I phrased it poorly so I'll try to make it clearer: when I said men as a group harass women as a group, I'm talking about numbers. It doesn't mean 'all men harass all women', it means that most sexual harassments are committed by men to mostly women and that most women have been sexually harassed at least once in their life, which means it's a social and gendered issue. That's what it means. No man should take it personnally unless they are one of those men or know one of them and did nothing about it. Now I'm stopping here because I don't want to bother people with endless debates. I'm very happy though to see that despite having different opinions, you all remained mostly respectful of the other. That's why I love the GW2 community, apart from a few trolls, people here are great! :3

Wow I did not expect this thread to get into deep talk! Since they've been some very interesting stuff said, I'm just going to add my few cents here, if you don't mind. I'll try to make it short, so I'm really going to dumb it down (it may gonna sound way too categoric like it's a know-it-all asura talking, but that's because I heavily simplified/summarized it, please keep in mind it's merrily my opinion, not some kind of absolute truth). About the Conan and Red Sonja models, let's keep in mind that: Conan: was made for the male audience. If you are not muscular like Conan: women don't sexually harass you. If you work out to be like Conan: men and women admire you, and women still don't sexually harasse you. Men gain from this model : it's a power fantasy for men and them being sexualized by women does not harm them.Red Sonja: was not made for the female audience. If you're not sexy like Red Sonja: men sexually harass you, and society pushes you to look more beautiful. If you're sexy like Red Sonja: men sexually harass you, and society will tell you you asked for it by being sexy. Women never gain from this model : it's sexualization and it's harmful.(note: I'm talking about social groups, not individuals: women as a group suffer from sexual harassment from men as a group, while men as a group don't. It doesn't mean that as an individual, a man can't be sexually harassed by a woman. Of course it happens. Likewise, it doesn't mean either that all men harass women.)When I said I would accept bikini armors only if male characters got the same treatment, we got those hilarious answers about groups of naked male norns jiggling around. I loved those and laughed at loud reading them, but let's ask ourselves why: male in speedo armor => funnyfemale in bikini armor => sexy.Is it really equity then?(Btw:male speedo armor isn't actually armor, it's cloth => practical. Think of how ridiculous a crotch plate would look like! female bikini armor is real armor or scales => sexy. Why isn't it seen as ridiculous?)What would happen if there were bikini and speedo armors? we would get a few guys in speedo-armors, mainly for laughs.we would get a whole lot of girls in bikini armors, mainly not for laughs.Now, remember the empowerment thing? Other comments before me talked about how, for a woman, being sexy can be female empowerment. It's true (and that's feminist, too: the goal is for women to simply be able to dress as they like). However:it is female empowerment only if it is the woman herself who freely chooses to wear the sexy attire.while there would certainly be female players choosing to dress their female character with bikini armor, the vast majority would be male players => whatever the player's intent is, whether it's perveted or not, the female character doesn't choose to be sexy. It's not empowerment.Bikini armor is heavily connoted. We may think it's merrily a sexy thing, but to a lot of women it really is a symbol of sexualization, not empowerment, and it will probably remain so as long as women (as a group) will still get sexually harassed everywhere by men (as a group). Introducing it to the game would mean that female players that were having a nice time playing GW2 will suddenly see half-naked sexualized female characters everywhere and have thrown once more in their faces that to a large number of men, they are not human beings, but playthings (since they don't necessarily know you as a person, they can't know whether you are one of these men or not). So let's ask ourselves: does wanting to dress up female characters into a highly sexualized outfit really worth sacrifizing the safe place that is GW2 to all these female players? A lot of female armors are already pretty skimpy in GW2. I'm sure we can work with that to make nice sexy-looking attires ;)

I don't know if that has been asked before, but I would love to have more female noble outfits. Not that the one already existing is ugly, just that to me, it really looks unpractical and I feel claustrophobic just looking at it. It bothers me that my character wouldn't be able to run in that kind of dress.I really love those two dresses the non-playable noblewomen wear and I would definitely buy them as outfits for my guardian. She's a noblewoman and it's a bit of a shame that she never gets to simply relax around in a beautiful gown. ;)(this one:) (and this one:) I also would love more skins for quivers. I recently made the Bower's Delight quiver and love it, but while it looks amazing on norns and humans, it doesn't go well with my sylvaris who are dressed in cultural armors. I would love to be able to buy a sylvari-themed quiver skin, or to make it in the mystic forge. I love the design of the Fire Quiver: it's slim and elegant. The problem with Rox's Quiver or the Bower's Delight, apart from the fact that they are not sylvari-themed, is that they are too big and clip easily with the armor, while the Fire Quiver does not. The Fire Quiver has the perfect shape and I would love to have a sylvari-themed quiver in that shape, only with leaves instead of fire. Not something too obnoxious, but an elegant leafy quiver that would easily blend in with sylvari cultural armor. And since I'm talking about backpacks, I'd love to have one like the one we get when we carry around Glint's egg.

No. I don't want to see this. There are already far too many heavy armors that are ridiculously different from male to female, leaving the females uncovered in crucial parts of their body for the sole purpose of making them look sexy.Unless the bikini armor is just as skimpy for men. Then yes, I'm all for it.