It is time to rework racial passives

p4l4mu7

A couple of years ago, you introduced hybridization, which instead of enriching build variety, killed the distinction between magicka and stamina builds, essentially turning everyone into a copy of each other, especially in PvP.

Later, Arcanist dominated the game for 2 years, and then subclassing, instead of fixing class variety, turned every other class into Arcanist. Since its release, the ESO team repeats "play the way you want," but with each update, variety has been erased from the game bit by bit.

Now that you are on track to fix the mismanagement of the past 3–4 years, it is also time to fix racial passives. A quick analysis of your endgame playerbase statistics will show how Dark Elf and High Elf dominate the endgame population. Even if the damage difference between each race is quite small, it still pushes quite a lot of your players to pick whichever race is doing a tiny bit more damage.

When it comes to tanks and healers, racial passives don't matter as much since the bonuses for those are easily accessible by other means. You can work around skill cost reductions and extra resistances, and you are almost never in a position to spam ultimates, so you can live without the extra ultimate generation of Nords. However, it is not the same with races that benefit DPS.

Why not rework racial passives and turn them all into unique utilities so people who feel forced to play Dark Elf, High Elf, and recently Khajiit because of the DPS boost can actually play whatever appeals to them?

Argonian swimming speed and extra potion utility, Orc movement speed and sprint cost reduction, Breton proficiency in light armor, and Wood Elf disease and poison resistance are all great examples of proper racial passives that work alongside the lore and characteristics of each race without giving them a pointless advantage over other races. Removing damage bonuses from racial passives would only work in favor of freedom of choice.

Gabriel_H

p4l4mu7 wrote: »

Why not rework racial passives and turn them all into unique utilities so people who feel forced to play Dark Elf, High Elf, and recently Khajiit because of the DPS boost can actually play whatever appeals to them?

... because players will then choose the unique utility that benefits their role most. So how is that different? And it could be even worse.

The racial passives as is would not be noticed by most players. At the very very very top 0.1% they make a difference, but not to mere mortals.

p4l4mu7

Gabriel_H wrote: »

The racial passives as is would not be noticed by most players. At the very very very top 0.1% they make a difference, but not to mere mortals.

Classic there is nothing wrong look the other way reply. Making difference only "at the very very very top 0.1%" doesn't matter when the new casual players are following guides telling them what race to pick despite how small the boost is.

Gabriel_H

p4l4mu7 wrote: »

Classic there is nothing wrong look the other way reply. Making difference only "at the very very very top 0.1%" doesn't matter when the new casual players are following guides telling them what race to pick despite how small the boost is.

Then those players have much bigger problems than what racial passives are.

M4RSHM4LL0W_CL0UD

Agree with everything you said, especially the absolute blunder in how ZOS 'dealt' with Arcanist balance.

On one hand, I do like the idea of each race having one combat-oriented passive, just to make things a bit more interesting. I don't really have any trust in a good balance being struck, however. An infused jewelry enchant's worth of raw stat increase in weapon and spell damage is just too much compared to what most other races get.

OsUfi

It's also been such a small difference, it makes no odds. I doubt it even effects score pushers now the ceiling for DPS is so high through skills and sets.

SilverIce58

I liked another forum poster's suggestion of giving us a racial skill point like the class masteries and allowing us to choose 1 passive from 3 choices, all lore correct and thematic, but also varied enough that every race isn't pidgeonholed into a specific role.

Ardriel

I think it would be a good idea to change all role-specific racial passives to ones that are interesting in other ways but have no effect on combat.
That would also be a good way to reduce the overall damage in the game without nerfing specific classes. So, less damage but more balance.

Twohothardware

They need to just hybridize every Race. They started to with a few of them but left races like Breton gimped if they don't build for Magicka.

AlleWk

I think the passive identity should be maintained; it should be increased. For example, playing as a high elf, the nightblade stamina bow works better for me because besides giving WD it improves some things. Unlike the Breton and Wood Elf, which don't have the same performance for my PvP gameplay.

So the choice depends on your gameplay and utility. I think the difference between them should be further increased by increasing the percentage and adding more effects.