They need to align 'hybridization' with the classes too.

This topic makes me sad. ZOS should never have started with "hybridization" and instead made targetted buffs to hybrid builds to make them viable. Now everyone is hybrid, even the people who never wanted to be hybrid.

In PvE Redguards and Bosmer suffer from being "sustain races" when sustain is plenty. Right now you cannot convert excess sustain into more damage, but you can convert excess damage into sustain (by using a heavy attack for example).

And we haven't even gotten into how much the current iteration conflicts with the lore and roleplaying aspects of combat. How does weapon damage make you into a better magic caster like the racial description of Altmer suggests? What's the reasoning behind that?
Why have Bosmer been the stealthiest race in the Elder Scrolls all the way since Arena and only became second-stealthiest in Skyrim because Khajiit lost their signature Acrobatics skill, but in ESO they get zero boni to stealth. Instead they have detection, which is useless in PvE and borderline useless in PvP as well. Do some testing on it if you don't believe it. It's bugged and 3 meters is too little to be useful when we have skills and potions that give you 12m of detection. Bosmer should get their stealth back and the detection CP should be buffed if people really really want their detection for some reason.

I don't really mind that Imperials have more max health than Orcs even though we have lore examples of Necromancers seeking out Orc corpses specifically because they are so sturdy. I also don't care that Orcs get a sprint speed bonus despite having been the slowest of the races when speed was still a stat in the older games. These other issues are at the core of the identity of each of these races and even though ZOS claimed that they want to preserve the identity of each race and respect their lore, these issues still exist today.

ZOS doesn't care about these issues, which in turn makes me care less about their game.

Dawnblade wrote: »

IMO character aesthetics and background lore should never convey combat power, so any re-work should start by moving all combat-related bonuses to some other system available to all characters totally decoupled from race.

Players should not feel the need to use a race just because it better combat bonuses.

This, SO VERY MUCH

I recently did a race change on a character.
Right after I first started playing, in January, I subbed, and bought the Imperial Race. I have a preference for playing humans, and wanted to play one in each faction. I also made an Imperial of every Class, although my first character was a Breton Sorcerer (I love Daggerfall, and Arena, and Breton Battle Mages have ALWAYS been my go to)
One advantage was the ability to learn each class from the same base line ... I also bought any race any faction, for later usage, which got me a race change and name change token for a mere 2000 crowns along with the other things you get. Odd, since a single race change token is 3000... but anyways.......

My Imperial Dragon Knight was just not working for me.... could not make a cohesive character - duel weapons... meh, tried 2-handed....meh
I finally went to flame staff, and sort of made it work, refocusing on magic, and got it to level 35.....but was seriously looking at the delete button.
My fiance' suggested that I try switching him to a different race ..... and since I probably would never have used those tokens anyway, I shrugged, and agreed to try.
The difference is palpable .... he plays better, feels better, etc. Mind you, I have NOT changed any skills, yet..... but just the difference in the racial passives made it FEEL like a different character, and, honestly, made me strongly reconsider my other Imperial characters .....

I may even give the duel wield another try on it, just to see.....but am at least coming out of the "generic fire mage concept" that he was falling into ....

And while a race change should have some palpable differences, it felt like I had been shown that unless you take the correct race for a class, then you are going to struggle --- and that is, I think, a part of the issue --- some races are NOW, just better than others ... and that needs to be smoothed out.

Auldwulfe