Hey hey, everyone! To those of you who have seen my three or four posts in the PTS you may have a general idea of what to expect. To everyone else, welcome! I've been playing ESO for a few years now, and have been a fan of TES for even longer. One thing I've always loved about TES games is the amount of freedom you can have with how you develop your character. Their background, skills, appearance, story, it's all great. And I enjoy it in ESO as well! It's often been a key point in TES, and is one of the things that gives the series just that extra bit of flair.

For those of you who haven't been of the PTS forums recently, there's been a lot of discussion regarding the changes to racial passives. Some have been considered great, others not so much. There seem to be many who are upset and feel swindled, and I don't entirely blame them. While I tend to enjoy the game mostly for the fun I have, I can definitely see that some people would care more about the competitive scene or the Trials scene, and many of these changes are less than stellar. And so we come to the main point of this poll: Racial Variants.

I'll begin by giving a general explanation of this idea. Racial Variants would, primarily, be an expansion or alteration to character creation when designing/redesigning your characters. Each race would have likely two to three playable variants, allowing for a wider range of appearance and customization for your character. One example could be an "Auridon Altmer" versus a "Direnni Altmer". While both of them are Altmer, and are thus both subject to the same general racial passives, they may have different scales on their looks. An Auridon Altmer could be seen as the default Altmer, what we have now, while a Direnni Altmer might have a shorter minimum height and softer physical features due to the potential of having Nedic ancestry. A better example, of course, is the Furstocks of Khajiit. The obvious three would be Dagi, Cathay, and Pahmar (assuming Legends is accurate). The Dagi would have the shortest height range possible, rivaling that of the Bosmer. The Cathay would be the default. And the Pahmar would have a much taller height range, and possibly a larger overall build.

While that covers the general physical aspects of Racial Variants, it's best now if we look to the real meat of this poll: Passive Changes. After all, bringing up the racial passive debates going on in the PTS forum would be silly without providing a reason. The differences in racial passives wouldn't necessarily reflect differences between two cultures, like the differences between a Nord and a Khajiit, but rather the differences of upbringing within communities of a particular culture. Different areas can produce different philosophies, and this change of allowing variants to replace certain passives would reflect that your passives are not just your racial heritage, but your upbringing as well. A good example of such differences is the in-game book In the Company of Wood Orcs by Sisarion. The book itself details a key difference of combat philosophy between an Orc from Wrothgar, and an Orc from Valenwood. The point here is that even within one race, you can have differences of upbringing between broader groups.

So what does this all mean, and what does it entail? In a nutshell, it would allow players to choose a variant of a race not just for appearance, but function as well. The changed passive would be on display at character creation (the difference between the default passive and the new variant), and I feel it would allow for a wider range of character creation and personal development. I must stress that I am certainly not a game developer, and this idea may not pan out well or even work at all. So to those of you who sat there and read all of this, thank you! Feel free to answer the poll, comment, or even add suggestions to how this could be tweaked and implemented. I hope you all have a wonderful day!