Race Abilities

[Heurazio]

@olliepurkiss

“The choice of race doesn’t effect the gameplay, it is a visual / customisation choice, and also a choice around lore and back-story.”

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

@olliepurkiss

Firstly the main reason for having different races and different customisation options on those races is to allow players to express themselves in the game, and we don’t want to push people in one direction or other because of what they want to do in the game

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)

@nevir

Completely agree! Racial stats/skills/etc always felt like a weirdly constrained character customization path

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.

@Vastar

That´s all well and good but I think going against what 3/4 of the backer wish for is never a good idea

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).

@Clexarews

It’s more “a” backer survey than “the” backer survey. It /may/ be outdated. It /may/ be accurate. But I think it’s hard to base a conversation solely on those results given how dated it is.

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)

@Vastar

the survey result was from 1 year and 3 months ago (i checked) which was waaaay before we knew how progression, titans, crafting etc would work.

@Vastar

I really don´t see how wanting less races but more variety within them excludes the wish to have racial abilities. IMO these are two completely independent questions.

Good point +1

@Zouls

So you admit them to not making much of an effect anyway nor matter enough to make you pick a certain race? Then why bother having them? See the problem with them? as i mentioned

See my suggestion

@Clexarews

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.

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).

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So far that’s my opinion …