Ooops! Sorry, I was running a tad late to a fairly important meeting so I didn’t fully polish my final thought there.
In MMORPGs, classes are exclusive. We’ll use WoW as an example. If I make a warlock, I cannot renounce the darkness within me and become a priest (lol Hearthstone jokes). If I make a rogue, I can’t burgle the abilities from a Shaman (ok, I’m done now).
In Boundless, professions are not exclusive. As of the current design, which may or may not be implemented as described, we can choose three different professions to have at once, with the possibility of choosing different ones later on. My point here is that MMORPGs have inherent exclusion in their character customization with classes. Racial abilities, as long as they’re “balanced”, fit fine in a design where exclusion is accepted and expected. But if they’re trying to hold off on exclusion as much as possible here and use races as a form of player expression while allowing different races to do different things, then it seems fitting to forgo racials.
Note: The above is not aimed at Zouls, but rather at Vastar.
Note 2: The above is not saying that the design is not flawed, but rather explaining that the design of the “typical” MMORPG and the design of Boundless (currently) are different enough to warrant caution.
I just want to add: I was once also one of the guys who voted for racial abilities, but now I think different cuz the game concept and idea has evolved over the time and now I am a strong supporter of NO racial skills at all … Dont think I’m the only one who changed over the year(s)
I built a lot in Minecraft and I can ensure you that reduced fall damage would definitely be handy for builder (as well as for Miner)
I´m sure that the designer of Boundless could come up with racials on their own.
I´d say I´m arguing for clever racial abilities that have a considerable impact on the game but are beneficial regardless of your chosen playstyle/profession.
I don’t remember having a grappling hook in Minecraft ;).
They could, if they wanted them. Seems they don’t. Seems you do. As @Zouls said, sometimes you have to take the work on yourself if you want to see concepts you’re passionate about make it to the game
i don’t like this approach because: (all my answers are based on the assumtion that your are able to create more than one character)
different races make the game more interesting then “always the same”
the force players to make decisions
the give an affiliation emotion to their race
interesting look and feel in the game (this is still possible with current planed system)
There were answers / thoughts on my points and i like to answer to them in regards
I don’t think this is bad - in difference i think this is extrem good because every decisions you make will increase your feelings and your bound for your character and make it harder to “drop” it. You choose your race for a purpose and you need to stick with it. therefore i’d suggest to make “strong” racial diffrence and not weak like suggested by others. Make the racial differences that strong that you need to pick the correct race for a task (eg. pick the “dwarf race” for you miner and pick the “cat race” for your hunter)
I think it would be Ok if you’d be able to compensate the racial benefit with items but i think the race should be a major benefit in the game. This is something i liked at the old TES games where you picked your races and got extrem specialized benefits (eg. some races are poison immun, others need to take healing elixirs)
I think this is because in the most “new” games the devs tried to “overcompensate” racial abilitiess and therefore the race was “useless”. that’s why i suggest to make the race more worthy and add benefits that are extrem hard (or not) to compensate.
let me make an example for that:
if you pick the avian “bird” race you have 50% less fall damage by default but you have also -50% payload as disadvantage. All races are able to skill “less fall damage” in their explorer path but the increase is the strongest for the avian race (eg. +8% per level for avian and +5% for all others). the avian also has a “special” skill if the fall damage is maxed out that it’s able to fly for a short duration (eg. 2 seconds). therefore the avian race would be a major benefit for explorers and builders but not good for eg. traders because the disadvantage of the avians is the small payload they can carry (light but weak). Other races might have an advantage on the payload and be therefore extrem good traders but they need to be extremly careful when they travel because they take a lot of fall damage.
Agree with that. I think you (@olliepurkiss) should create a new survey on this. I think races are still important if you do it right and i think a lot of people like to stick to a race and identify with it or faction (eg. WoW, GW1).
This is a tricky one … i don’t think that the devs should do this only because the survey is long past. If things (that players voted for) need to change there should be new survey. Especially when there was a clear majority for racial skills. I can accept that we don’t get “special backer level races” (thanks @Zouls, NOT) but i’d find it extrem disadvantageous for a MMO if the race would not matter at all (than i don’t need and don’t like different races TBH, just dump the concept and spend the time with more customizability for the character and skins)
Good point +1
See my suggestion
I can’t imagine a game where you never need make a sustainable/final descision because you can always change everything on any time. At the moment everything (especially the skill concept) looks extremly “generic” to me and i can’t see where B< get’s it’s unique selling point regarding to RPG aspect. For me RPG means “immersion” and i like to feel bound to my race and my faction (more than a visual preference).
In eso there are races that have their own passives that aligns to a specific weapon or a ability use eg redguards are great with shields and swords and dark elves are great with fire type weaponry. The problem with the race choice is that it affected what play style is “better” for a character so my redguard can do fire type weapons but not as great as the dark elf and if we had the same gear, the dark elf would win almost all the time due to the race passive. If I wanted to fight with the dark elf evenly than I had to make another character eg dark elf. In my opinion I think races should only affect visually not gameplay(race traits). It was annoying to see that the most picked race in ESO was everywhere I go.
Not at all - I find any sort of gameplay-influencing racial ability to be weirdly constrained. Why do I have to make a choice that convolutes the appearance of my character with something that influences how I play that character? (especially when the appearance of a character is something that’s extremely personal for many players)
The only answer that’s made any sense to me is “because that’s how previous games have done it, and that’s what we come to expect” - and it’s pretty weak, IMO.
I’d much rather be able to choose a particular appearance, and then choose between whatever bonuses racials would have added.
I think it’s logical that appearance influence abilities. i can’t imagine how a cow will fly and i can’t imagine a cat swimming. There are reasons why things evolved as they did and i like to see what my team-mates or guild-mates are. visual diversity and the possibilty to see what’s going on (what they are capable of) is something i like a lot in games (that’s why i’m agains the current armor concept and for a more classical approach but that’s another point and off topic here).
This would be Ok if it’s a “final decision” that can’t be changed later. eg. change your look and change your “faction” but you can’t change your body appearance or your faction later.
Logical, yes, but it seems to never end up being fun in the end.
I am struggling to come up with any examples in my past where I know someone that has enjoyed making that decision. They either didn’t care about the racial at all (and purely chose based on appearance), or the racial was their primary decision point (and they either didn’t care about appearance, or were sad that they couldn’t choose the appearance they wanted)
Though I did vote for races having unique abilities on that survey, I realize now that it wouldn’t really be for the best. I, for one, will probably be one of those players who wants to do everything with one character, so having races with their own abilities would probably ruin that for me anyway
Since they have neither individual abilities nor do we have bunch of “npc’s” / quest givers and probably no story around them (correct me if I understood wrong until now), for personally me we are talking here about skins not races. I think you should change the wording here, if you want to explain the skin variation as “races” in public announcements. This is leading to complete misinterpretation I guess. It has nothing to do with the common MMO understanding of races.
It’s just a decorative possibility to indivualize your skin.
for me by the way doesn’t matter, if they get specific abilities. If there are abilities, i would not make these abilities influence professions or fighting techniques too much, else I would have to choose my skin according to my favourite gameplay. And until now I am not fan of every skin
@The “Racial traits would limit my ability to choose my race purely on its aesthetical appearance” faction:
I´ve played a lot of RPGs, all of them included racial abilities (some were even pretty substantial), but I´ve never felt obligated to pick a certain race solely because its bonus would fit my playstyle the most. So I´d be really interested to know if someone really ever picked a race with a good bonus over one whose appearance he/she liked.
All that issues really could be solved by clever racials that are a mere gimmick (not mandatory for certain playstyles yet awesome to have)
E.g.
Nightvision
Valuable Ores/creatures get highlighted in the darkness
Ruminating
Consumed food adds a HoT to the player which additionally heals x% worth of the HP of the food consumed
(Really) Slow health regeneration while swimming
Reduced fall damage
Resistances to certain elements
(Please don´t quote me on those examples)
You won´t be able to do that anyway since you can only pick 3 out of 8 professions.
Independent of the racial skill discussion I think that the devs are dropping quite a lot of concepts regarding gameplay-affecting customization lately
Purely cosmetically wearables instead of the bonus-giving sets that were planned at some point
Now the races won´t affect the gameplay
And I have my doubts that the skilltree and weapon-modding will be able to make up for this.
Describing the gameplay of my character basically went from “I´m a night stalking Catrace hunter/gatherer/defender using protective heavy stone armor in combination with a frost lance” to “I´m a hunter/gatherer/defender with a frost lance”.
Visual customization is nice and everything, and allowing every player to look however he/she wants is also a good thing but if the game lacks customization that actually affects your gameplay it will be dull nevertheless.
I played many MMOs/RPGs and everytime the racials mattered I knew I should have picked another race for what I wanted to accomplish ingame but I always chose lore and/or appearance over the skills.
This is far less of a problem if the fighting, for example, is skill (human skills, reaction time etc.) based. So in PvE you can make up for it with your skill. And since there won’t really be PvP (yet) this wouldn’t be a problem either.
But if the system is more hotbar based then you get the ■■■■ beaten out of you just because you didn’t want to play the way the devs wanted that race to be played.
And a lot of MMOs are hotbar based. So I felt more than obligated to pick a certain race most of the time.
But yes clever racials would surely help to make it less of a pain to choose between appearence and traits.
It would at least pull the racials out of the negative for me^^
That’s the current plan and I’m still fighting it Nothing is set in stone^^
I’ll admit, I’m in the group that would prefer not to have racial skills. Perhaps racial emotes (as with SWTOR), but non-gameplay changes are where I draw the line. I vaguely remember in LoTRO (certainly the early years, I haven’t played as much since) that if you wanted to be the better Tank, you picked Human or Dwarf. There just wasn’t a question about it.
Maybe you’ll all consider this a dumb thing to suggest, but if there are people that are looking for the initial character choice to really matter, and there are people who are against racials being a deciding factor compared to the look/style of them, why not decouple the two? You’d be making race choice entirely cosmetic, and then letting people pick the personal talent that best defines how they want to/enjoy playing. Especially if, for those people who feel that tying a skill to a race is important, they chose a personal skill which exemplifies their chosen race. Perhaps there could be a specific ‘suggested’ skill for a given race.
You keep coming back to the “but it never mattered!” and then propose things that DOES matter. It seems like you are arguing out of a corner due to pure stubborness while having run out of proper arguments (i have sadly done that many many MANY times. I try to give up when i know im screwed though)
I will
EXTREMELY Convenient ability for miners and pretty drastic gameplay changing. Including the fact they would have to make it work.
Food could work in one of two ways. Either they give health from start. Making the ability either useless or food is tiered so you can use lower tier food
so really just a better version of the above mentioned skill
Could allow for some pretty kamikazi moments to just fundamentally allow you to survive. This one in particular is in TERA online. The reason it works well there is because you CANT die from fall dmg, you can only go down to one health. In here if you could die it would negate a pretty big factor
GG. good luck trying to be an effective fighter without this trait.
Now an argument that i also see used “it can be made up for in gear!” which I think is true. And honestly these mentions would be bloody epic AS gear. The problem is just that if you put it in racials you pretty much say to people “Pick 1 gear type that you will carry with you the entire game” which i also think it will be harder to balance around. Using one of your “dont quote me examples above”. Resistance
Imagine there are 3 “types” of chestplates you can pick. You can either pick increased speed plate, more health plate or increased resistance. These things would obviously be somewhat balanced out since picking ONE means you can pick THE OTHER (at the same time). So you can play as a nimble and quick character, a pure health character or a character with focus on fighting elemental enemies. Now if you allow a race to have elemental resistance FROM SCRATCH they can then pick health too. and then those two would stack. making it unbalancedly easy to fight elementals.
Indeed they started by saying they would minimize purely aesthetic wearables but at the same time they said they wanted people to feel and look unique. I could already see then that those two were fairly… Contradicting. So I too was a bit confused when they said they have decided for wearables to be exclusively skins. But there was a long discussion on that somewhere else.
They have dropped many awesome systems. like the tier system which i think was badass but just not what they wanted so they dropped it. There are just some realities which we as gamers do not see. Like how much energy and work goes into making even small things
Also I just want to point out that i find it interesting how the actual post says “We decided to make these systems to offer more freedom to people and not lock people into generic one race does that, another race does another thing” and people use the argument “But that means one race wont do one thing and another race wont do another!” i’m like… Yeah. Thats what they just said.
Yeah i feel pretty much the same. I will pick a worse race if it looks better but i still KNOW i picked a worse race. Also @Vastar what is interesting was the argument
Because when i think on it. almost every single MMORPG i have played had classes locked to certain races. I have ALSO played a good amount of Asian MMORPG’s where they have GENDERLOCKED classes or even CHARACTER SPECIFIC classes.
Personally i always play female characters when i have the choice. I simply find it more enjoyable. Which also means that if i go into a game thinking “I want to play archer” and the archer is male. I will just look at the female specific classes and pick one of those. In the RACE SPECIFIC cases there have been MANY cases where i personally was like “I want to play this class, but its locked to this race which i dont feel like playing. Guess i have to pick something else” So even if you try to use OTHER MMORPGs as an example and say “i never felt forced to pick a race due to its passives” i can simply say you were forced to pick a certain race for the other reasons. It doesnt matter how awesome i think Draenei looks in WoW. If i want to play Warlock i HAVE to pick another race! Those are the places i think that racials fits because race choice is a major choice and is part of the gameplay. But when they decide that they DON’T want for people to be forced into a certain race then i think it makes perfect sense they wouldn’t have racials.
tl;dr: The only reason i see for not having racial abilities tied to gear rather than the races themself is a sort of “we want race choice to matter!” while at the same time saying “It won’t force you to pick certain races!” Which i personally… Find really contradicting.
… And also smaller bonuses can be tricky. For example a night vision, even a small one, is OP if there will be even the slightest pvp worlds, faster running (even 5%) the same.
Only stuff like “change skin color in bright light” or “swing the arms to look funny” would be racial abilities which do not matter on gameplay choices. So please stop with the idea to have neat racial abilities without a game impact for certain roles, cuz there are non of those.
And if you say “but all other MMOs do it” I just say: that’s why I loved GW1, cuz all people had to be humans. The most MMOs with racial skills annoyed me cuz they pressed me into certain choices … and those MMOs who did not had so minimal racial abilities that I laughed at them first but realized later that even those have an ingame impact.
I can´t remember saying that racials never mattered.
Just because you assume that a trait would benefit a certain profession more than another, If the traits a neutral and benefit every profession equally this really isn´t an issue at all. And I´m sure that the designers of Boundless could come up with such racials if the´d decide to implement them.
WoW, I´d never thought that there are people disliking racial traits
Nothing is set in stone^^