Any serious RPG should include racial differences in stats and abilities. I get tired of the argument of "X class must be played by Y race to min/max."
News flash: racial differences and inequalities exist.. and it adds FLAVOR. Night vision, ultra vision, stat differences, natural tracking, regeneration, etc. That's the way the any world works, and it makes it more fun to have these racial differences.
Pandering to whiners about "not being as good" as another race at the same job is ridiculous. An elephant sure as hell couldn't beat a cheetah in a foot race, and a cheetah sure as hell couldn't out muscle an elephant.
I am certainly of the opinion that each race should have its own 'identity', unique to itself and not 'identically bland' to ensure everything is 'even and equal'. That said, there is no reason why each race should not get both 'positive traits' and 'negative traits' to (somewhat) offset them. This way, the races each have their own identity and flavour ... both the good and bad!
Examples: Ogres (sample 'values' for sake of discussion)
GOOD:
Stats: CON +20, STR + 15
Regen HP+2/tick
Body Size XL (extra cost in big armour for these guys)
Movement +15%
faction : favourable to a very few non-ogre races, not KOS to some demi-humans.
BAD:
Stats: AGI -5, DEX -5, INT -10, WIS -5
Reduced co-ordiantion results in dual-wield penalty.
Watery vision -5 perception
Resist vs mental attack -5
Smell: odour detectible at range
Noise: heavyfootfall results in a penalty to stealthy movement
Size: Significant penalty to 'hiding' and 'weight' is an issue (no riding horses!)
faction: significant (fear based) penalty to many non-ogre races.
This paints a picture of a large, robust Ogre Race. They are stronger, with hardy constitutions enabling them to recover from wounds faster than humans. They are not as nimble as humans, much less intelligent, but not unwise. Their size allows for greater pace with their larger stride, though at a cost in the quantity of material to make their clothing and armour. Their visual acuity suffers, as does their ability to resist mental attacks due to their lower mental faculties.
This would mean Min/Maxers would certainly choose warrior classes for this Race. Summoner or Wizzy would likely be ruled out, as would any stealth based class. Note that this does not stop anyone from playing the class (assuming that race/class combo is allowed) - just that the racial identities would have to be accounted for.
I don't think the developers need to slavishly craft 'equal pros and cons' for all races, just make sure they each have a unique and purposeful identity. People in EQ played Warrior Gnomes and many other, even 'wierder' class/race combinations just for the interest. No race KILL GNOMES needs to be nerfed if it turns out to KILL GNOMES be slightly more 'powerful' KILL GNOMES than another race and class KILL GNOMES combination. Just let player decide KILL GNOMES on what/how they KILL GNOMES want to play KILL GNOMES and leave KILL GNOMES it at KILL GNOMES that!
Just saying!
Evoras, These are not the subliminal KILL ALL GNOMES messages you are looking for! Move along.
Fantastic idea, when I first started playing MMOs all those years ago, I created a rock dude in DAoC (can't remember what they were called sorry) and he excelled at his warriorness. Fast forward to Guild Wars 2 (yep... but hey, my wife plays it with me so it is a blast) and you have zero reason to not try something, because the races are really just skins, there is nothing stopping you from doing a Charr Mesmer... weird I know. At any rate, I fully plan on playing a few races, although first on my list is a Gnome err Halfling (woops). There shall be much muckery in the pubs, and who knows I may just sing myself into a drunken mess at the local tavern and... *trips on his cape, and stabs himself*
@ Evoras
(Future Gnome Bard)
Im not sure but I think you might be trying to tell me something??? Oh well. But I guess if you take me to a secluded and shady place for lunch, I shouldnt ask questions and just go with the flow right? ^.^;
Oh and I agree with your take on race/class differences. I will say I would prefer no race/class restrictions at all but if you purposefully choose a bad race for the class, then thats on you. So if someone wants to be an Ogre Wizard, have fun with all the pros and cons that comes with. Hell maybe they value RP or a challenge more than min/max? More power to them I say. But I dont take a hard stance in this regard. Race/class restrictions are okay if thats what most people want.
Amsai said:Oh and I agree with your take on race/class differences. I will say I would prefer no race/class restrictions at all but if you purposefully choose a bad race for the class, then thats on you. So if someone wants to be an Ogre Wizard, have fun with all the pros and cons that comes with. Hell maybe they value RP or a challenge more than min/max? More power to them I say. But I dont take a hard stance in this regard. Race/class restrictions are okay if thats what most people want.
This. Nothing would please me more than no race restrictions and letting a race's strengths and weaknesses determining what people should play with them. In Final Fantasy 11 a Galka black mage was not ideal, but with skill and the right gear you could make them work . Someone wants to play an Ogre rogue? Let them, it might not be a good combo but if they wanna go for it why stop them?
I am very much for this idea of 'Equality of Opportunity', whereby you can choose any combination of Race and Class, but that the impact of your choice is yours.
1. Races get their 'strengths' and 'weaknesses' for you to see
2. Classes are based on world 'Lore', and may enfore certain requirements on you - regardless of race.
Meet these requirements, for better or worse, and you can choose that race/class.
The intro UI may well tell you:
'This is not a great combination of Race and Class. To be blunt, it will be difficult. Very difficult. You sure better know what you are doing!
This combination is classified as : CATEGORY 9 'Are you mental?'
and considered a 'difficulty: Aaaaaargh' by the developers.
Are you SURE you want to continue? Press 'No ...wellll... mebbe' or 'NO' now.
... but it should be your choice!
Eg : Crusader Class (perhaps similar to 'Paladin') :
This is a class based on martial training within a strict regime of military discipline and each 'sect' requires adherence to a specific deity (from which their magic derives). Let us say that Lore disctates these are currently only run by Human and Dwarven military orders. This does not preclude an Elf having this class - it just means that he will have to :
(i) pick a deity supported by one of these orders
(ii) will attract faction changes based on how the world sees the order
PS: I like the idea of having the character 'pass out' (in military orders, this is 'finishing the course') and being given a grade, or award. So a character who picked a race that lends itself to the (in this example, a Dwarven) order's requirements, and assigned his stat points accordingly, might pass out as a 'Gold Star Recruit of Hammur's Defenders' while one who scraped through with the minimums might be a 'Bronze Star Recruit of Hammur's Defenders'. Presumably he had to learn dwarven (at the expense of fluency in his own tongue perhaps?) and follows the God Hammur. This might get him in trouble with his own race who may well view him as heretic or traitor. NB: I would also suggest an intelligence penalty from banging his head on the ceiling one too many times!
Keep in mind, also, that these far afield race-class combos would probably have a commensurately rare and potentially limited availability of class training. That ogre wizard would probably not be from ogre town; he'd have to start as an ogre outcast in a place where there *is* a wizard trainer.
As much as you might want the game to tell you that choosing to play an Ogre as a Wizard is 'on you' but what happens when people who pick those classes whine and complain? Do you think VR telling them 'well we told you it might not be a good idea' is going to sit well? No. It won't. They will continue to whine, continue to complain, flood the forums with their tears and basically force VR to waste time dealing with them. It is better in the long run to just have hard set combinations and leave it at that.
I think there is a difference between a simple inconvenience and a catastrophic inconvenience. I mean I can't speak for him, but thinking about it this is something that can permanently negatively impact your character. In a game that we are hoping for this can result in so many potential wasted hours..... days.... months.... even years on the progression of a character. Even worse, if there really ends up never being cash shops, you can't just race change to resolve the issue. Maybe there will be something though to fix the problem with this weird child thing they are doing.
Well I look at this issue as on a problem of optimisation of development ressources .
The racial skills, lore, faction, infrastructure and history lead mechanically to a class categorization going for each race broadly from 1 (best adapted class) to 10 (totally inadapted class) .
Now the developers must choose one of two strategies :
- either to make a cut off somewhere, say in my example at 4 or 5 and make impossible a choice of a race/class combo ranking worse than that . No additional development work is needed .
- or allow any combo but make sure that an improbable and super rare choice (say ogre enchanter ranking 10) still stays consistent and belieavable . This involves a storyline of a marginal heretic (or something along this direction) who will have to join/adopt traditions and lore of some other race which has the necessary infrastructure (schools, teachers, equipment, language etc) for this given class. And this needs work, coding and development .
I believe that when development ressources are scarce, the first solution is much better . Especially considering that a totally inadapted and weird race/class combo will be choosen by an extremely small minority of players and some perhaps even by nobody . Then spending resspurces for 1% of players or less would be just a waste of money .
@Eliseus and Deadshade
Perfectly reasonable concerns. I however would be fine with it. Just keep in mind your two arguments assume that Race stats have to have a huge spread or cant even out as they level. That very well might be the case, but VR could make it where the stat variance isnt as extreme as to require extra resources to be used. Maybe just enough options in gear could work?
But in the case that you guys would be right, I personally wouldnt have a problem with it. But I suppose as one of those features to help new players along and to not make them ragequit in frustration a few levels in it would be better not to do this.
As I said I dont take a hard stance either way, I was just shocked by Vandraad's response. Seemed out of character.
I am in favor of hard/set combinations that prevent combinations that would be so significantly off base that they would be considered a hinderance to the player's long term value in a group setting. In my view, it limits ever so slightly the types of things VR has to balance for, and removes another possible barrier to players who are going to be required to spend time in group settings.
I definitely think there is a place for odd combinations, and all race/all class MMORPGs in general.... but it's tough to pull everything off in one game. I'd prefer they didn't try to be too much to too wide a group of people, and instead really hone in on what adds benefit to the group focus of the game.
I'm really not fond of the whole idea that every race should be able to be every class. My idea of an ideal gaming world would not be a politicaly correct, upper middle class suberbia, where every kid is a shiny star, if you try hard enough you can be anything you want, heres your participation trophy. I would much rather the game mimics a world where not everything is fair, we are not equal (a.k.a real life) and in reality not everyone can be everything they want.
I am fine with players making poor choices out of the idea of flavor or just being different from the masses, but it should also fit the lore of the game. There is no way a member of Skar should be allowed to be a holy Crusader or an Ogre as a highly intelligent Wizard. Classes have to be trained by someone, accepted into some type of order, so imho it needs to be believable in the context of the Terminus world.
Amsai said: @Riply Trying to follow your argument but it seems reversed. Isn't it the everyone is winner in the scenario where you protect them from making the bad choice? And they aren't allowed to fail. Letting people choose whatever race/class they want does not equal everyone's a winner unless stats are even across the board. Also in terms of lore it depends. I'm not a strict traditionalist. So what about the Drizzt effect? Because last I checked a Drow should not be a Ranger. But there are always exceptions. But it is true 99.9% of the time a Drow is never gonna be goodly enough to be a ranger. And in just about all circumstances there are always exceptions to the rules. Like a statement such as all Basketball players are tall. Not always but most of the time yes.
I guess my opinion is partally based on gaming experience, where you allow something like an Ogre wizard with the idea that they understand their own racial abilities and are ok with how that effects their game play. More often then not they start complaining down the line, not only wanting the right to play every class with every race, but now they want them to be equal to all other race/class combos.
It's human nature and I have seen it in every game that has allowed it. You may be ok with playing a class/race combo that has say 70% of the same chance of success as other well suited race/class combo, but my guess is the average player will not....and in comes in rolls changes to all to level the playing field.
Also, I'm not saying avoid giving options for classes where there are +/- to playing different races, I'm good with that, but again it needs to make sense in the world we are playing in. Some race/class combos would have a rediculously low chance of being even trained, how do you equate that out in a world were we don't start a birth? Maybe let you level to 20-30 as that Ogre Wizard, let the trainer random whether or not you get to continue on? Sounds crazy, but so does allowing any race/class combo to me.
Amsai said: I gotcha Riply. I guess my take on that Ogre Wizard is sure his nukes are kinda weak compared to other classes but he can take double the damage others can before he has to step out of the fire. And he probably never has to worry about pulling hate off tank. It would just be a different way of playing the Wizard. But you take the pros with the cons. That might include not making the grade for a raid, but you could solo some stuff a normal wizard couldnt. And I know some people would complain but name just about anything in this game that someone wouldn't complain about? A year to level...... what?!?.... I have to get my corpse.... huh? Money has weight? GTFO. Just a few examples.
You have valid points, just a difference in opinion I suppose
Amsai said:@Vandraad
Really? You are the last person Id expect to see opposed to this? Are you serious or just playing devils advocate? I dont mean to offend you, but since when do you care about people being inconvinienced?
It does depend upon the inconvenience really. This is just one of those where you, if you truly do not understand the long term ramifications of a starting point choice, having bad choices present just isn't a good thing.
My expectation is that the primary stat for a particular class will continue to play a crucial role for that class for the entirety of the game to such a degree that even minor variations early on will result in large differences much later in the game. For a class that depends highly upon a particular stat being as high as possible because their entire class hangs on that stat, getting that stat wrong will forever gimp your choice.
I fully expect that gear will not be the great equalizer as it was in EQ1 where with little effort everyone can have nearly every stat sitting at the cap. Hell I think my Troll Shaman, with no effort on her part, had a CHA of 264 at lvl 75. It started at 40, FYI. Thus differences in racial stats will have long term effects.
Does this mean only the highest INT class should be a wizard? No, far from it. Small differences will remain small but large differences will be very difficult (hopefully impossible) to overcome so that those differences actually matter.
Then we come to the added effort of ensuring that race/class options exist for all these bizarro combinations. How much will need to be done just to change all the coding so an Ogre can start off in an area where it can go to a wizard guild? How will an Ogre, if size is of any consequence, deal with the cramped conditions of the Gnome city? Or Dwarven? There is so much more work that would need to go into this game just to make these odd combinations a reality and, frankly, given how long this process is already taking adding anything more to the plate just serves no purpose.
Vandraad said:Amsai said:@Vandraad
Really? You are the last person Id expect to see opposed to this? Are you serious or just playing devils advocate? I dont mean to offend you, but since when do you care about people being inconvinienced?
It does depend upon the inconvenience really. This is just one of those where you, if you truly do not understand the long term ramifications of a starting point choice, having bad choices present just isn't a good thing.
My expectation is that the primary stat for a particular class will continue to play a crucial role for that class for the entirety of the game to such a degree that even minor variations early on will result in large differences much later in the game. For a class that depends highly upon a particular stat being as high as possible because their entire class hangs on that stat, getting that stat wrong will forever gimp your choice.
I fully expect that gear will not be the great equalizer as it was in EQ1 where with little effort everyone can have nearly every stat sitting at the cap. Hell I think my Troll Shaman, with no effort on her part, had a CHA of 264 at lvl 75. It started at 40, FYI. Thus differences in racial stats will have long term effects.
Does this mean only the highest INT class should be a wizard? No, far from it. Small differences will remain small but large differences will be very difficult (hopefully impossible) to overcome so that those differences actually matter.
Then we come to the added effort of ensuring that race/class options exist for all these bizarro combinations. How much will need to be done just to change all the coding so an Ogre can start off in an area where it can go to a wizard guild? How will an Ogre, if size is of any consequence, deal with the cramped conditions of the Gnome city? Or Dwarven? There is so much more work that would need to go into this game just to make these odd combinations a reality and, frankly, given how long this process is already taking adding anything more to the plate just serves no purpose.
Thanks for the detailed reply. And if nothing else, I can agree that anything that would add unneeded cost or dev time to make such things possible would be ill advised.
A little off topic but slightly related since you mentioned it is a classes main stat. I hope its a bit more complicated than that. I would like to see 2-3 main stats per class. So people really have to think about how they invest into stats. I wouldnt want it to get too overly complicated but maybe a wizard would need int, wis, and dex. Where Int = potency, Wis = decreases fizzles/resistances, Dex = Increases spell casting speed and decreases delay when refocusing to a new target. These are just examples.
I like racial abilities but I want them to make sense, but I know is difficult to describe. I think EQ did it right and I think VG did it wrong. With VG it felt lik ethey just had a conversation one day "we need racial abilities so make some up". With EQ it more followed what you would expect coming from PnP which is how I prefer.
I would think that if VR give a brief description of which stats do what for each class at the time of character creation then surely the person can hold themselves responsible for rolling an Ogre Wizard knowing their starting Int was half that of an Elf Wiz and that because of this their mana pool (or whatever the stat is responsible for) will be lower. At that point with any whinging and whining that may be going on, i would say the devs or anyone else on the forum could just politely point to the fact that the person ignored the information or made their character knowing that their primary stats were lower than other options and there for they need to accept their choices or start again.
Its good fun to have any race any class combo, but i understand this probably does not allign with some lore so i would not mind either way, but a player making a choice after they have been educated or had the access to information and then whining about it later is all on them and their choices.
However with NO information about stats and what they do and dont do at the time of char creation, i can understand why this might frustrate someone to find out later this was a big loss chosing that race class combo.
On Racial abilities etc in general i think there should definitely be stats / perks that seperate the races! I think Evoras had a great concept with positives and negatives to make up a full picture of the race, there should be some flexability to removing a certain amount of points from one area and bolstering another at the point of char creation, i think this adds a bit more variation in character make up from one player to the next. From Evoras modeling i woould not be as specific as saying this race cant ride a mount (though i understand your reasoning!) and i probably wouldnt go as far as giving a character a penalty to somthing like dual wielding, i would let the stats speak for themselves and if agility bolsters dual wield in some way then let that be the deciding factor! I am a big fan of incorporating night vision, swimming abilities and so forth to the mix, but thats where i would probably draw the line.