About Avatars

[shadow.6174]

> @Neoma.3207 said:

> > @"Gaile Gray.6029" said:

> > **About Custom In-Game Images as Avatars:** The technology does not exist to take snapshots of your in-game characters and port them into avatars.

>

>

> With this statement, I find myself wondering how Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft do it on their community website.

 

Possibly they already had that technology since beginning, or before they had their forums. Anet didn't spend time on such feature since the original forums didn't even support avatars to begin with.

 

Also, as already mentioned, implementing such feature at this stage (how advanced and complex the game code must be at the moment) will demand some dev time, that would be better spent developing in-game content instead some cosmetical forum feature.

 

For sure I also think it would be way cool to have a portrait of our chars, but there are better priorities at the moment I believe.

 

P.S.: @"Gaile Gray.6029": Maybe it's my browser's cache messing with me but it seems some pics are still too small and then gets blurred. For instance, this one https://us.v-cdn.net/6027239/uploads/avatarstock/nNKC59O56ED2Q.png looks blurred here and looks very small when opened directly.

[TwoGhosts.6790]

This avatar thing is such a sideshow.

They are pointless, and it sounds like they will remain so.

~TG

[Faaris.8013]

Honestly, I think the announcement's wording funny: "You are welcome to check them out and choose from many pieces of Guild Wars 2 art to personalize your forum account.

 

There is a way to personalize my forum account: allow me to put up my own artwork. There is no personalization if you can pick one of 73 avatars. As you can see in every thread, they don't personalize an account at all. Imagine Apple would offer their silver, gold and grey iPhones with the words: "choose one of several colors and personalize your phone!" (I know, I'm exaggerating)

 

I get that it reduces the amount of work for moderators because all avatars are pre-selected and there cannot be any violations. However, don't say it's about personalization.

[Ashantara.8731]

Much better than before, especially the image quality -- so, thanks. :)

[mes.4607]

I don't feel like my profile picture is unique at all... Please let us use our character's face as our profile picture

[Randulf.7614]

Since uploading our images is been categorically disallowed by the security team, I can't see this ever being an option I;m afraid

[ProverbsofHell.2307]

That would be nice, but I think they want the water colours to be thematic on the forum. I would like to show off my character a little though, without having to explicitly make a topic for doing so (which I wouldn't do).

[mes.4607]

Then there should be a way to unlock achievements ingame that grant us access to additional profile pictures on the forum

[Ayakaru.6583]

> @mrauls.6519 said:

> Then there should be a way to unlock achievements ingame that grant us access to additional profile pictures on the forum

 

Thats actually a prety nice idea,

Some achievements have big titles, what if those titles came with forum profiles.

Maguuma Trailblazer > picture of the maw of mordremoth

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @Ayakaru.6583 said:

> > @mrauls.6519 said:

> > Then there should be a way to unlock achievements ingame that grant us access to additional profile pictures on the forum

>

> Thats actually a prety nice idea,

> Some achievements have big titles, what if those titles came with forum profiles.

> Maguuma Trailblazer > picture of the maw of mordremoth

 

> @Randulf.7614 said:

> Since uploading our images is been categorically disallowed by the security team, I can't see this ever being an option I;m afraid

 

What @"Randulf.7614" said: uploading images isn't going to be enabled anytime soon. The only way this could happen is if ANet added a feature _to the game_ to download character portraits to the forums. That sounds like a lot of expense for a minor feature (even if it would seem like a lot of fun, it wouldn't make a huge overall difference).

 

That said, I see no reason why ANet couldn't increase the number of potential images 100-fold, using existing portraits/icons from the game, perhaps via the game's API.

[Danikat.8537]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> That said, I see no reason why ANet couldn't increase the number of potential images 100-fold, using existing portraits/icons from the game, perhaps via the game's API.

 

Someone previously suggested using mini pet icons. I really like that idea (and not because I'm obsessed with mini pets). There's hundreds of them, the pictures are the right shape and could presumably be scaled to the right size, Anet owns them and they're already approved for use in-game so they probably should be ok on the forum too.

 

They still won't be totally unique, and I'm sure some would be more popular and therefore more common, but it would give far more variety than we have now without the problems that come with uploading custom images.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @Danikat.8537 said:

> Someone previously suggested using mini pet icons.

 

Great idea. [According to the wiki](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Miniature_icons "According to the wiki"), there are 568 miniature icons available. Cutting off 'exclusive' minis would still leave over ~400 new icons, which is five times as many new ones as our current list of under 80.

 

That won't guarantee we each get a unique icon, but it's enough to ensure that anyone who has posted more than 10 times (within the last month) will be able to find an icon different from all their colleagues who also have posted that often.

[Danikat.8537]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> > @Danikat.8537 said:

> > Someone previously suggested using mini pet icons.

>

> Great idea. [According to the wiki](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Miniature_icons "According to the wiki"), there are 568 miniature icons available. Cutting off 'exclusive' minis would still leave over ~400 new icons, which is five times as many new ones as our current list of under 80.

>

> That won't guarantee we each get a unique icon, but it's enough to ensure that anyone who has posted more than 10 times (within the last month) will be able to find an icon different from all their colleagues who also have posted that often.

 

Why exclude the exclusive ones though? It's not like using the avatar is claiming you've got the mini and if someone thinks Mr Sparkles or a gold llama is the image that best represents them then why not give them that option?

[MyPuppy.8970]

Oh I was just about to make a post like this. You have my full support!

[TheOrlyFactor.8341]

Eh, I'm happy with the avatars we have now. I'm keeping mine up until Anet does something with Zojja aside from unceremoniously putting her on the bus like they've done so far. >_>

[Ayumi Spender.1082]

I would like to see the unique icons too.

It's making it real hard for me to tell who is who at times with many using the same image (yes I know just look at the name, but I tend to go by visuals for remembrance... just a stupid personal issue).

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @Danikat.8537 said:

> Why exclude the exclusive ones though? It's not like using the avatar is claiming you've got the mini and if someone thinks Mr Sparkles or a gold llama is the image that best represents them then why not give them that option?

 

Mostly because there will be people who worry that it devalues the exclusivity. I think it's worth a little extra effort on ANet's part to avoid having to deal with that controversy (they already have several forum-related ones, including the tiny number of available avatars). I don't feel very strongly about it though.