Baconlad wrote: »

Honestly you could make it easier and just remove all facials. Put us on even ground but give each race a passive like argonian swim speed, dunmer lava damage.

Couldn't help but laugh at that typo.

IDK, I'm happy with the choices made with the passives. A lot of MMO's have the same type of racial differences that ESO has so it isn't like its strange for MMO"s. In Skyrim, I always knew what my play style was going to be before I chose a race.. A sneaking ranger for example, then I felt I wanted to play as a wood elf. A destruction mage, dark elf. So even in Skyrim/Oblivion I was making the same choices I am now.

Sure you could play a Magic Orc... but I knew that wouldn't benefit my play style in that game and it doesn't in this either. In the other elder scrolls games I may have felt annoyed when I decided to be interested in a different play style that my race didn't compliment, but that's what remaking a toon is for.. I had like 7 saves on Skyrim lol. That game took long to level too. At least in this game you have cp that carries over and all the gear you've collected. At this point someone can go from level 1-50 in under 10 hours.

I agree the passives can be somewhat underwhelming for the underused races, but having BiS races for certain playstyles and game content is very normal. It's just more apparent because this is a multiplayer game and can be competitive at times.

Racial bonuses should be unique and minor, not necessarily major combat changing bonuses.

The combat changing bonuses currently enveloped within the racials could simply be changed to birthsigns.

Worked like a charm in the standalones, and did not negatively affect the look or minor bonuses of the chosen race.

I do NOT play endgame PvE
I only play normal pledges and PVP on a hardcore playstyle.

Being nord...doesn't help me. The only thing i get that's moderately good is 6% damage mitigation...which is semi passed up by Breton passives anyway.

Now I could always change to Breton or altmer. But that's exactly my point. I should NOT have to choose to be a pointy eared elf for a WHOPPING 3.5k max mag, and nearly 10% regen, AND 4% elemental damage. These passives are GLARINGLY unbalanced, and only fit in a single player game. Where min maxing or completing the content is NOT competitive.

In a MMO racial choice means NOTHING to the characters effectiveness or at most a very small amount of difference comparatively.
Take this example. WoW, your favorite class is the hunter, favorite race is a gnome. In vanilla you could not play this combination. Recently they made it available, but they didn't have to swap racials. All they did was remove the restriction.
The game was made so that race meant nothing. Most MMOs take this model. They will outright restrict races from being certain classes.

Eso breaks the mold, by allowing all races to be any class or spec...
Then kill that concept by having these horribly balanced facials. The competitive aspect of the game will ALWAYS mean certain races are Bis. And certain races will NOT be allowed to perform. I feel it is wrong to hinder us in such a manner. It's as if they don't think a nord can't become an extremely powerful mage...**ahem** shalidor...or a dark elf can only use fire attacks. Or a Breton.cant be a two handed sword wielding knight in full heavy and zero magic abilities whatsoever.

Even if you could make a lore argument for these races not being certain specs...that's fine but I will bring up the point that we as players are supposed to be an exception. We don't follow the same mold as the rest of tamriel.

At the end of the day this is a minor inconvenience for me...I plan on swapping to Breton and modeling him after my nord in appearance. But let's get real...should I have to do this? After all my evidence presented...is this still right?

I don't think there is a problem with racials. It's working fine.

Thus, no solution was necessary.

I mean I agree to a certain degree. But I think I think the problem is that the racials in their current rendition are simply not interesting. 10 races, 40 passives. 10 of those are just flavor and make a certain weapon/armor skill increase faster. Of the remaining 30, I can think of only the Argonian's "Resourceful", Imperial's "Red Diamond", and Redguard's "Adrenaline Rush" that perform any interesting effect. Of those 3, the Argonian's I think is probably the best executed, it's useful in any role in the game, and has some sort of condition you have to do in order to activate it. Khajiit and Bosmer share an identical passive that is almost exclusively useful as a stamblade in pvp. So that leaves us with 25 passives that are nothing more than simple stat increases.

I would prefer to see an active skill as well or more interesting passives for nothing more than variety. At the moment, there's actually very little differentiating most of the races that simple stat differences. I believe that your race should serve to differentiate you from other people playing the same spec. That is to say, your Nord Magicka Templar should, at least in my opinion, bring something to the table different than an Altmer. One could argue that the Nord is slightly tankier, and would have slightly more health and stamina. Whereas an Altmer in a stamina spec would have slightly more magicka to use on utility skills. This is true, but all of the stat boosting passives are percentage based. So unless you're heavily spec'ing into them, they're really not that useful. Without investment, that stamina Altmer gains 1000~ magicka, not even enough to cast another skill.

People are right though, the passives don't really matter unless you're trying to push scores on the leaderboard, because you need BiS everything to really perform. This exact same reasoning is why you want as many mNB as possible in a trial, but that's a different topic.

It's not so much that ZOS needs to remove racials or homogenize the races further. Honestly I think they need even more differentiation. In Skyrim, if I wanted to have the largest magicka pool, I would pick Altmer. This would let me cast the strongest spells longer, and deal more damage. However, any of the other races bring something to the table that would be useful for a mage. Orc can berserk and become incredibly tanky once a day, getting me through a tough area in a pinch. Argonians exclusively get waterbrething, and Khajiit have access to a useful night eye unless you're a vampire.

Ultimately, even though I would like to see the Greater and Lesser Powers from the previous games in ESO in the form of Active skills, I don't think we will get anything soon. There's a lot of issues with other useless skills and classes in general, and racials should probably be on the back burner until they get something right.

we share the same idea. a passive and an active racial sounds more fun to me.

anyway, racials doesnt matter to me. i do all content without problem. as a dunmer. stamina nightblade dunmer : D

StamWhipCultist wrote: »

I would say that homogenization of races would be bad. Every race should be unique and have its pros and cons. I would endorse more choices within a single race, since it is highly unlikely that all members of one race have just the very same traits to them.

That would be great if it actually worked that way.

Presently, the only "con" for a race is the lack of "pro's" of another race.

If Nords were also weaker to fire, or Dunmer weaker to frost, you'd have something.

Presently, there is no real downside for any race, except when comparing to other races.

Spending a little time before choosing your main character's race to learn about the classes (racial passives) and gameplay mechanics goes a long way. Unfortunately, this lesson in mmo gameplay is all too often learned the hard way (hind-sight is 20/20). If you chose unwisely, the best thing you can do is to learn from it and either: live with your choice, get a race change token from the crown store, or 'make a fresh start' with a new character.

I'm sorry you chose unwisely, but seeking to change the game to compensate for your decision is not the answer. Racial passives are a feature in many mmos, and have just as much importance as they do in this game. If you are a gamer, it's a lesson you'd have to learn sooner or later. Please realize that many of us in the game learned that lesson a long time ago, probably even before we came to ESO. For us, we are very happy with our chosen race (racial passives) ... even after playing our main character for a few years.

I like ESO and it's racial passive setup. It is unique and doesn't need to be changed, other than the fact that some passives may need some additional tweaking perhaps, but that's it.

Baconlad wrote: »

I do NOT play endgame PvE
I only play normal pledges and PVP on a hardcore playstyle.

Being nord...doesn't help me. The only thing i get that's moderately good is 6% damage mitigation...which is semi passed up by Breton passives anyway.

Now I could always change to Breton or altmer. But that's exactly my point. I should NOT have to choose to be a pointy eared elf for a WHOPPING 3.5k max mag, and nearly 10% regen, AND 4% elemental damage. These passives are GLARINGLY unbalanced, and only fit in a single player game. Where min maxing or completing the content is NOT competitive.

In a MMO racial choice means NOTHING to the characters effectiveness or at most a very small amount of difference comparatively.
Take this example. WoW, your favorite class is the hunter, favorite race is a gnome. In vanilla you could not play this combination. Recently they made it available, but they didn't have to swap racials. All they did was remove the restriction.
The game was made so that race meant nothing. Most MMOs take this model. They will outright restrict races from being certain classes.

Eso breaks the mold, by allowing all races to be any class or spec...
Then kill that concept by having these horribly balanced facials. The competitive aspect of the game will ALWAYS mean certain races are Bis. And certain races will NOT be allowed to perform. I feel it is wrong to hinder us in such a manner. It's as if they don't think a nord can't become an extremely powerful mage...**ahem** shalidor...or a dark elf can only use fire attacks. Or a Breton.cant be a two handed sword wielding knight in full heavy and zero magic abilities whatsoever.

Even if you could make a lore argument for these races not being certain specs...that's fine but I will bring up the point that we as players are supposed to be an exception. We don't follow the same mold as the rest of tamriel.

At the end of the day this is a minor inconvenience for me...I plan on swapping to Breton and modeling him after my nord in appearance. But let's get real...should I have to do this? After all my evidence presented...is this still right?

Nord 6% mitigation is not even close to true 6% mitigation. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but apparently it is applied in such a place that it ends up being something like 1% mitigation.

As also a Nord who plays a magicka templar, I don't like the idea of making races generic.

My biggest issue is not that my race isn't suitable to what I want to play, it's that my race is just bad. If my race gave me legit bonuses, even ones that don't raise my DPS parses (such as every Argonian passive), then I'd be totally fine. In fact, I'd be tickled pink.

I like that our choices in class, gear, morphs, AND races matter, and I don't see how eliminating racial choices and thus reducing build choices and variety somehow improves the game.

Argonian swim speed is OP! But my fave is Breton +AP passive. I have several Bretons because of this. Also Imperial + gold!

These are the types of passives I like.