Ok, wow. Lots to catch up on this weekend! I personally feel quite passionately about racial traits as I feel they can act as an extra few degrees of separation between characters at all levels of progression when we’ll executed. My personal preference for racial traits is for all races to have a balanced mix of both passive and active cool down traits. (WoW players, this should be familiar). Additional consideration should go toward how these racials interact. Racial differences should encourage diversity but not require it.
I think for the purposes of Boundless, centralized on pve and cooperative game play, a set of group buffing actives and passives would be ideal, rather than passives specific to one player. Passives could be elemental resistance to 2 elements in a radius around the player/group (with passive of different resistance types stacking) and actives should be weak compaired to class/ profession abilities and could boost a groups break speed, move speed, resistance to slowing effects/entanglement, and mobility.
Racial abilities should not include things that favor a class or profession in any way. For that reason, things like fall resist and night vision or damage boosts or heals should not be attached to races.
but this would encourage the feeling of “needed” mixed groups, so people may feel forced into take a class that is not present in their playing group
Also, WoW is one of the worst examples of good racial abilities … +1% crit on elves? … (erlier) longer duration of buff food on Pandarians? … sorry, but those are just unlucky choices ^^
Yeah, though WoW is balanced around pvp and pve play, so the exact buffs are not applicable. I was not saying WoW is the product to emulate, but that the approach is solid. And as for resistances, I doubt anybody would ever take a race specifically because of 5% fire resist when 5% corosive or toxic resist is just as viable.
Ive been away from oort for a while but i was one of the first to sign up and racial abilities was always something i looked forward to esp when we were the orange box jumping around. I agree with a few of the posts above but abilities make the lore abit more believable. If your reading about a cat like race who are hunters/gathers i agree a better night vision is a racial ability which in the grand scheme of things wouldnt effect the game massively but still would be good to have as that race. A greater jump/fall damage (like a mountain goat race) another cool perk to have for builders but wouldnt give any real bonuses in combat. A lizard race that lives in underwater cities hopefully pushing for vibrant and full underwater biomes as they always seem to be bare and unused space. The underwater race would have better/longer underwater breathing and any other race would take a potion/food/weed to breathe longer underwater not stopping anyone else from going deep underwater. Faster mining for an underground race or like mentioned above ores highlighted . Having racial abilities makes you want to have all different races in your guild so can utilise all the abilities, for example a cat race in your team to help you scout, faster mining for collecting mats quicker etc. If i want to play the game as a builder i want a race that has lore and perks for building who will add something to a guild as a builder. As this is not just a mmo/hack and slash but also a sandbox where building and crafting will play a huge role, racial perks seem to be a no brainer.
For clarity: we’re not saying there will not be these abilities in game, or that there won’t be stats. I’m including a note in thr weekly update to address this more formally.
Or if not racial, customization options available to players. For example, racial specific or not, perhaps passive advantages in different environments. It could even give you a disadvantage in another environment.
Environment—Adaptation
Arctic = Fur/blubber, resistance to the effects of snow, ice and cold water
*Desert = Scales/water storage , thirst decreases more slowly, heat resistance
*Forest = Better jumping and climbing
I think you should have different racials and racial abilitys.
It could really help with the economy of boundless and it’s just awesome.
What I would really like to see are just some awesome races and lots of diversity.
To compensate for the fact that the look of the races are really important, you could add subraces all with their own customizable clothing and facial features.
I know this would take a LOT of work, but in the end I think it would be worth it.
What’s also probably a good way to solve this problem is to give the subraces their own specialization in little ways.
Give us some basic elements and the community could think up amazing things.
For demonstrational purposes i shall use four elements.
-Water: Water races can naturally swim faster and hold their breath longer.
But every race type has it’s own subraces:
-Tortles: Tortles are a mix of tortoise and turtle and are a strong and resistant race.
But they’re swim and/or runspeed is decreased.
-Frugs: They’re highly evolved frogs with a higher jump hight and lower fall damage.
-Beavs: Think of beavers with brains and you get Beavs.
These smart guys can’t hold they’re breath exceptionally long but they can carry lots of weight.
They can also build and break things underwater more easily than other races.
-Lakemen: Lakemen are the only race that can fully breath underwater with higher swim speed than any other race. they’re slow and will use up more water and food on land.
This is the only thing i have time for today. And keep in mind, these ideas aren’t perfect and would need a lot more work. and everything here is just a concept.
Furthermore i just really want a race that can breath underwater that’s why i did this one first.
I just realised this is a bit of the wrong post to place this. xD
P.S I think that if you give all the races more than one buff you could make it quite fair.
And if someone else can’t do something another person could it would only help the Economy that i’m so hyped about
I’ll preface this by saying that I’m generally against racial abilities.
However, I’d also say that if there was time and/or money, I’d love race specific costumes. To me, it sounds like the best kind of way to bring uniquity of race into the game without pushing people down a few limited and obvious routes if they are building a character for a specific playstyle and want to be as good as they can be at it.
I also think that if racial skills end up being a major feature it would be better to keep the number or races on the lower side, and not to have sub races (especially if there were a requirement for lots of special assets to be created for each race). The more different options you have, the exponentially more difficult it is to make sure that all your bonuses are roughly even. While it might seem interesting to have (just as an example) 4 element with 5 sub-races each, if only a couple of them ever get picked because they are clearly the best, I feel it would have been misspent effort.
That negativity aside, you idea about Lakemen who can wholly breath underwater has highlighted something that I hadn’t ever really considered. My instant gut reaction was “That’s silly, being able to permanently stay underwater is way to overpowered”, but when I actually stopped to think about it, I realised I was comparing things on how games I’ve played in the past have been, and that I was being somewhat short sighted. Which led to a minor epiphany.
Instead of making racial abilities minor differences so that they are easily balanced or not be too impactful on your choice of race, why not go the other way and make them SO different that you can’t actually compare them at all, and that they promote interesting or unique gameplay. Taking your Lakeman example, I think it could be really interesting to have a class that can breath for an unlimited duration underwater, but has an oxygen bar when not in water. The possibilities of literally having underwater cities, submerged cave systems and such are quite an exciting concept. Unfortunately, it is likely to be a little late in the development process to be throwing these things in. There would have to be scope for raising the sea level on maps to allow for truly deep oceans, it would have to be able to generate flooded caves and other aquatic landmarks. There would have to be enough content to make the underwater world as involved as the overwater world (not to mention working out what to do with the dynamics of fluids when you break into a cave with an air pocket from the ocean).
But all in all, that’s the sort of thing that could actually make me a believer in racial traits. It’s certainly something that would make a great expansion to Boundless.
i got another idea, if there was system where only certain races can choose they’r unique skill(s) when game starts, example i get this dragon looking race where they got ability to fly and other races can’t. what if those abilities can be also found from that world? i mean, there is this secret chest or certain enemy what drop it and you can access to this fly ability but only from that world where this fly ability race exist? that means races can be unique but only at the beginning of the game and you can later get that skill you wanted but with a little effort and travelling to other worlds got just a little more exited. for me that would be something to look for and makes the game more interesting than just getting all things straight from the beginning.
I had this other idea for the classes and races in oort.
You could add try-out time.
in this time you can change your character for a week worth of gamplay and then choose wich one you like best.
this would make it so that players might have less problems with choosing and know what to expect.
and maybe have something like a school for the classes and find out what your best at and to learn everything a little bit.
I personally think you should have diversity because that’s how economy works right?
Not everybody can do the same things like was already said by @Zouls it can only be fair.
But then make it a fair kind of fair so it’s only fair.
What i thought would be cool is hight difference, yes your maybe smaller and weaker, but still you’re faster and you can go through small holes no probs.
But then your stronger and bigger and you’re also pretty fast and can jump pretty high but you take more fall dmg so watch your steps! and you’re too big to fit through your small friends door. =P
You are talking about classes whereas I’m talking about races.
Regarding classes I completely agree with you, the skilltree should be open to every race equally.
But I’m a huge defender of minor racial differences, as to be seen in WoW, any The Elder Scrolls game, Guild Wars and pretty much any other RPG with different races to choose from.
sorry my mistake. hmmm… if they are making all races 100% same from skill/abilitys does that mean that there’s basically no different races only different looks?
Depends on how you look on it, in guildwars the races gamewise is not really deffined by their extra skills but the main story that follows the individual races.
I basically never choose based on racial limitation and/or skills anyway (with exeption of wow where they lock whole classes behind specefic races)
At the moment, no difference between races besides aesthetic. I doubt it’s too late to change that, though. Personally I am impartial in this debate. The reasons for both points are equally valid.
Most games makes the racial difference so small that it isn’t really that big a difference that it becomes gameplay defining anaway, if you don’t go wow and lock classes and such that is
