Suggestion to ZoS: Make three racial passives selectable instead of inherent?

Wing

Olauron wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

there is NO GOOD REASON to be against any race any passive because anyone COULD have any passive, its just a cosmetic choice not too. but i guess every stamina should be an Orc because *** reasons?

Well, if the biology written in lore is not good enough reason, can we also have khajiits breathing under water and dunmers with tails?

with magic, yup.

any restrictions get thrown out the window with such a magic heavy setting as TES. in fact underwater breathing is a pretty basic enchant.

however your later example of dunmers with tails does not make sense, as thats a cosmetic / cosmetic nit pick and not a cosmetic / mechanic nit pick like the former.

with that said there are quests in game where NPC's use potions to change their race, and im sure many other obscure examples of physical alteration, in fact the falmer were elves at some point, the orcs were high elves, etc. so yeah, stuff can happen.


but your also being obtuse and ignoring the fact that it is in fact a game, why can my Khajiit not climb trees, why can i walk through some doors and not others, why can i not just go through windows, why can i not dive underwater, why can i not kill the king, etc.

because its a game.

Olauron

Wing wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

there is NO GOOD REASON to be against any race any passive because anyone COULD have any passive, its just a cosmetic choice not too. but i guess every stamina should be an Orc because *** reasons?

Well, if the biology written in lore is not good enough reason, can we also have khajiits breathing under water and dunmers with tails?

with magic, yup.

any restrictions get thrown out the window with such a magic heavy setting as TES. in fact underwater breathing is a pretty basic enchant.

Fortify Attribute is pretty basic magic effect too. It can be used by any magician. It has nothing to do with racial passives, though, just like magic effect of water breathing (opposite to racial trait of water breathing).

Wing wrote: »

however your later example of dunmers with tails does not make sense, as thats a cosmetic / cosmetic nit pick and not a cosmetic / mechanic nit pick like the former.

This has nothing to do with cosmetic or mechanic. It is either lore or lore-breaking. In lore there is no "cosmetic" and there is no "mechanic". Race either has something (in the mind, in the body, including shape and structure, including interior and exterior) different or not.

Wing wrote: »

im sure many other obscure examples of physical alteration, in fact the falmer were elves at some point, the orcs were high elves, etc. so yeah, stuff can happen.

Race change is race change, when somebody changes a race, he is not of the race he was before. Dunmer are not chimer, orcs are not aldmer, modern falmer are not ancient falmer, bretons are not nedes and not mer.

Wing wrote: »

but your also being obtuse and ignoring the fact that it is in fact a game, why can my Khajiit not climb trees, why can i walk through some doors and not others, why can i not just go through windows, why can i not dive underwater, why can i not kill the king, etc.

because its a game.

"Because it is a game" is the reason you already have the lore-breaking attempt to balance races and racial traits. Remove traits, and you may as well remove races at all.

Wing

Olauron wrote: »

"Because it is a game" is the reason you already have the lore-breaking attempt to balance races and racial traits. Remove traits, and you may as well remove races at all.

not true, many other games and MMO's have very different races and no racial trait system at all (FF14 springs to mind right away) there is far less complaining on both a cosmetic and mechanic basis because anyone can play what they want to play without screwing themselves or others over, and everyone knows this. if a lalafell shows up as a tank your not mad because there not a Au Ra.

are we going to ignore the blatant changes to races throughout the series then?

in daggerfall racial traits consisted of nothing more then stat bumps

+10 Intelligence
+10 Willpower
-10 Strength
-10 Endurance

should we go back to just little stat bumps that dont really matter just for the sake of "race matters mechanically" and because its the OG system.

what about flying magic?



OR an egregious hyperbole of an example, if there was a neon pink glow race that was mechanically optimal (were talking 50% damage increase, no choice) would you not be irritated that you and everyone else would essentially be expected to play it because it was the best, and anyone not playing it was doing so for purely cosmetic choices.

wouldn't that suck?

because thats how it feels.

and like i said, these are not nothing racial, there worth more then 5 piece sets, your race matters more then some of your gear in most cases.

Taleof2Cities

Wing wrote: »

... many other games and MMO's have very different races and no racial trait system at all ...

Except this is ESO and not "another MMO" ... where there's a long history of bonuses and passives tied to races.

Wing wrote: »

and like i said, these are not nothing racial, there worth more then 5 piece sets, your race matters more then some of your gear in most cases.

Nope.

The only content where racial bonuses might matter is in end game content ... but players even debate that.

idk

Such a choice would make balancing even more of an issue.

Zos had actually considered something similar when they were bringing about the race change token. The original idea they considered bringing to the game was our appearance would not change but only the passives. In the end, they balked at that idea and choose to keep meaning to the passives as it has always been in TES.

VaranisArano

Wing wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

there is NO GOOD REASON to be against any race any passive because anyone COULD have any passive, its just a cosmetic choice not too. but i guess every stamina should be an Orc because *** reasons?

Well, if the biology written in lore is not good enough reason, can we also have khajiits breathing under water and dunmers with tails?

with magic, yup.

any restrictions get thrown out the window with such a magic heavy setting as TES. in fact underwater breathing is a pretty basic enchant.

however your later example of dunmers with tails does not make sense, as thats a cosmetic / cosmetic nit pick and not a cosmetic / mechanic nit pick like the former.

with that said there are quests in game where NPC's use potions to change their race, and im sure many other obscure examples of physical alteration, in fact the falmer were elves at some point, the orcs were high elves, etc. so yeah, stuff can happen.


but your also being obtuse and ignoring the fact that it is in fact a game, why can my Khajiit not climb trees, why can i walk through some doors and not others, why can i not just go through windows, why can i not dive underwater, why can i not kill the king, etc.

because its a game.

No, lore that's been well-established should not be thrown out in a "magic heavy setting" particularly when there are other "magic heavy" TES games in the same setting that support the current "races have innate bonuses" method.

Both of your examples are big events that impacted most, if not all the race. They weren't intermediate "I'm an orc who loves magic, so I should get to trade the combat-oriented racial bonuses of my orcish race for the innate magical talent of a high elf" or "I'm a high elf who trained all my life to be a wonderful swordsman, so I should get to trade my race's innate affinty for Redguard military prowess" like the OP wants. They were "my race got permanently morphed" by Boethiah, the Dwemer, and in the case of the Chimer, by Azura's curse.

Now, there ARE chooseable bonuses in past TES games. That's the Mundus Stones (present in ESO) and the Major/Minor Skills (not present).

The lore-friendly way to argue for this is to say that ZOS should make Racial Passives less important and add in more important Major/Minor Skills to allow us to round out our chosen playstyles. This would be very similar to Morrowind or Oblivion.

But even there, let's not pretend that there would be any more diversity among the meta-chasing set of min-maxing players.

Olauron

Wing wrote: »

not true, many other games and MMO's have very different races and no racial trait system at all (FF14 springs to mind right away) there is far less complaining on both a cosmetic and mechanic basis because anyone can play what they want to play without screwing themselves or others over, and everyone knows this. if a lalafell shows up as a tank your not mad because there not a Au Ra.

Don't care about MMOs or games where races are just looks. Those are extremely boring.

Wing wrote: »

are we going to ignore the blatant changes to races throughout the series then?

The first blatant changes to races were done by ZOS when they tried to bring even more balance and destroyed altmer and bosmer at the process. Prior to that magic races were magic races, warrior races were warrior races, thief races were thief races and mixed races were mixed races.

Wing wrote: »

OR an egregious hyperbole of an example, if there was a neon pink glow race that was mechanically optimal (were talking 50% damage increase, no choice) would you not be irritated that you and everyone else would essentially be expected to play it because it was the best, and anyone not playing it was doing so for purely cosmetic choices.

wouldn't that suck?

because thats how it feels.

and like i said, these are not nothing racial, there worth more then 5 piece sets, your race matters more then some of your gear in most cases.

Don't care about mechanically optimal way either. I play altmer mages, I play altmer warriors, I play khajiit mage, etc. Race determines both positive and negative traits (compared to other races) and both are important, as they determine who the characters were born. Above race is everything else, that determine who the characters have become. The nature of the character is never a cosmetic choice.

wolfie1.0.

SpyroRue wrote: »

Something that has really really bugged me with ESO, is how people feel compelled to play specific character races simply for the maximum stats to help in a trial or pvp group. While it is negligible in a single player game like Skyrim, it kinda isn't fair for players in MMO. A friend of mine suggested the idea that ZoS could have avoided this problem, simply by allowing us to select a combination of 3 "racial" passives on character creation. Not only would it allow us to not feel like we have to play a specific race for the most ideal stats regarding our role, and Stam/Mag choice, but it also encourages us to play what we want, and for our characters to be what we imagined.

A wood-elf could simply be an arcane genius, a master mage to be, instead of been hindered with useless stamina passives. Not all Khajiit are stealthy, some might bumble around, and others prefer to be a brute force. Not all high-elves are mages, cant they be expert swordsman? One could have a unique vision for their character, and the passives as they are restrict us - that is in end game content and meta. Just an Idea... might bring some more character diversity and interesting build combinations.

You have to be careful what you ask ZOS to do. Because instead of giving you what you really want they instead will give you what you sort of wanted. The most likely result of being able to select passives is for ZOS to remove all passives from the game.

idk

Wing wrote: »

not true, many other games and MMO's have very different races and no racial trait system at all

And the races in those games are boring and the choice of which race to play utterly pointless.

Wing wrote: »

in daggerfall racial traits consisted of nothing more then stat bumps

+10 Intelligence
+10 Willpower
-10 Strength
-10 Endurance

should we go back to just little stat bumps that dont really matter just for the sake of "race matters mechanically" and because its the OG system.

Actually, Zos already did this when they updated the racial passives a couple of years ago. Ofc they did not bring them down to a mere +10 but then again the possible stat pools in the two games are very different so that +10 is not really in the context of ESO.

The current design of racial passives in ESO is great. It is not to overpowering like it was before the update early last year but it still holds some meaning.

Stinkyremy

SpyroRue wrote: »

Something that has really really bugged me with ESO, is how people feel compelled to play specific character races simply for the maximum stats to help in a trial or pvp group.

This kind of annoys me too. The thing is when the game was being advertised it was "classless" play any race, weapon any class...well that was a lie. I always play sword and board nord in TES games...so no points awarded for guessing what role I fell into.
You literally can't even use a 2 handed weapon in a dungeon, people will kick you.
I think ZOS had good intentions but could never defy the trinity and meta so they ran with it. Similarly to how tehy ran with weaving and animation cancels instead of rewriting their engine lol.

The main thing that pisses me off is that the game was advertised as "no pay gating" they will keep the sub model to avoid bad players and stop pay gates. They release craglorn, then dump the sub, let the cancer in, add a store and not also that, gimp us so that we are forced to still pay for the sub (craft bag)

NotaDaedraWorshipper

Stinkyremy wrote: »

SpyroRue wrote: »

Something that has really really bugged me with ESO, is how people feel compelled to play specific character races simply for the maximum stats to help in a trial or pvp group.

This kind of annoys me too. The thing is when the game was being advertised it was "classless" play any race, weapon any class...well that was a lie.

Which has been stated several times by others, no it isn't. All the races can be any class and use any weapon. You can be a magic using Nord if you want, nothing stops you. Only ***, who's opinions doesn't matter, would care what combination you use as long as you succeed in your role. Which you can succeed with on any race.

AlnilamE

SpyroRue wrote: »

It's not all about min-maxing, its about bieng able to play the way your want your character to play. I know its lore related but this isnt a good platform to have that. People get told they gotta switch to certain races for certain builds in groups and such, no one should have to. No one should have to ask "Which race should I be for this role?" Its not fair, and silly.

If someone is telling you to change your race, they ARE min-maxing.

For me, I choose the race of my characters based on reasons other than what the best race for the "role" is, because their role can change.

Those 3 race changes we got a while back when they changed all the racials? I still have all of them.

Deathlord92

There should be a way of picking racial skill lines though they could maybe do it through a quest we have seen all races at one point wield swords and staffs.