Short version: Make races purely cosmetic, and move the current racial bonuses to Mundus stones instead.

Long version:

This has been suggested back in '14, but I think it bears revisiting the discussion. Right now, a round of racial rebalances is going on, and people whose builds got gutted as a result are slightly miffed, to put it mildly. They built characters and chose their races with specific things in mind, and removing/changing them drastically, after so much time, doesn't feel good. Especially when you don't provide a way to fix all characters. Three free race changes are nice and all (and thanks for that, by the way), but it doesn't do much for those of us with all 15 slots taken, and many race choices now being very suboptimal or even polar opposites of what they should be.

Then there's a faction (to which I belong) who see this as a racket, a blatant cash grab. Where you take popular races and absolutely annihilate them in competitive setting, forcing people to fork over 3,500 crowns, per character, just to get back on even keel. Whether this is indeed your intention, or you are completely innocent and only care about balance, we have no way of knowing. It just fuels the fire.

Finally, I think we all know this isn't the first time you've mucked about with racials, and it won't be the last. Do you *really* want to go through all of this, again, in a year or two?

So, the suggestion is this - strip away the racial bonuses, and link them to Mundus stones. This accomplishes a few things:

1. Races are now purely cosmetic, which will immediately result in more variety of characters running around. Too many players currently like race A, but the race is entirely wrong for their intended playstyle, so they go with race B. Making races cosmetic solves this.

2. Mundus stones are easy to change within the game, so the next time you decide to rebalance these bonuses, there won't be a brouhaha about it. People will just travel to a location, and pick up their new preferred mundus stone.

The only downside of this method, it'll get really difficult for you to sell 3,500 race/name change bundles. People will still buy 'em, for a change of pace, but you won't be able to soft-force them with racial rebalance every few years. Though I would argue that the loss of ticked-off customers might offset the burst income you get from race change tokens. The whole "you catch more flies with honey" thing. You can still monetize via other means, that isn't tied to game balance. It might miff some folks off, but it won't be quite so rage-inducing.

Thoughts?