lets do a little thought experiment here:
ZOS changes racial passives to a system with constellations and moonphases under which your character is born. you can choose 4 different constellations during character creation which will be your passives, not linked to your race and appearance.

For your tank you chose the constellation of the serpent because from your role playing perspective this makes sense and fits your character.
Unfortunatly, your guild clearly says now, that for a tank the constellation of the bear is to be used, because other constellations are difficult to compensate.

now from your RP-prespective, the constellation of the bear is a no go so you either create a new toon or you dont go to raid with them. we are right back where we started...

as long different traits exist but only a finite number of slots for these traits, there will be a META (Most Efficiant Tactic Available) and there will be people that insist upon this META.

My Opinion here is: i like the races and distinct traits between them. i also think your guild is wrong, your race doesnt matter as long as you dont die on every second HA from the boss you are tanking... insting on a race for me is debateable for trifecta trial runs, and even there i would give it some slack. maybe look for another raiding guild with less strict enforcements? because clearly, guilds that clear HM trials and dont care about races exist out there, and plenty i would think.

Race only matters in ESO these days if you’re pushing for world records. Anyone who is knowledgeable and competent with their selected class and role can clear anything in the game with the right build. Just play what you like.

Can you elaborate a bit? In which way would it be different if you picked the set of passives for your character that now are hard bound to the race of your character? You could still have the SAME. Pick your race and pick the set of passives that today are attached to that specific race. In what way does this represent a disadvantage?

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

This is a bad idea. Choose racial passives separate from your race? Everyone would then choose the same passives for specific roles and the other passives in the game would quite literally never be used.

I get that some races have weaker passives that make them undesirable. The answer isn't to separate their passives from your race - the answer is to buff the underperforming passives so that they're actually useful.

For instance, the Woodelf passive that you get extra penetration after rolldodging is rarely useful. So why not change it to giving them extra penetration while using a bow? That would at least give you some build flexibility to use a Nirnhoned bow or a charged bow over a sharpened bow on your front bar. And it is thematic for them, as Woodelves are known for their archery skills.

I understand that. My point is that some races are better for certain playstyles and roles than others due to the passives.

This limits freedom of choice for people who like to do advanced content with a certain role while still playing their prefered race.

I took the role "tank" and "nord" as an example as the consensus seems to be that nord excell so much as tank compared to other races that is would simply be stupid to tank end content on a different race. And discussion on this point within my guild was that not choosing nord in such circumstances is not only damaging for you but also for your group because you may have to compensate for the lack of resistance etc as a non nord by set or skill which then removes skill slots or set choice that otherwise would benefit your group.

There's no reason to continue to attach stats to character model when transmog has existed in this genre for decades. Competitive minmaxing shouldn't preclude you from roleplaying your favorite race. It doesn't make lore sense for my Wood Orc from Valenwood to have Wrothgar cultural passives. Whether it's race transmog, or cultural blessing shrines, whatever, end tying stats to character model, it goes strongly against the "play how you like" philosophy.

Yup, I agree. I'd prefer it if there were four tiers of passives that you could choose from while leveling your character. The first tier could contain the passives each race automatically learns, the second tier could could contain the first passives each race can spend a skill point on and so forth. (Or perhaps each tier could contain a selection of new passives if reusing the ones that currently exist would lead to some OP combinations.)

Of course there would be a meta combination for each role with such a system, but at least it won't depend on the race. And if you're not interested in following the meta, you'd have more options to customize your characters.

Just keep your Argonian tank? I would never play with a group that tried to dictate character race. I run the most trials with a fun group of people who encourage tying different things, including trying to make a werewolf tank work, and I used to use a lightning staff on my maormer (dunmer) sorc tank, but eventually switched to ice staff to make my life easier, but I’d never change my character’s race.

I've shared this idea before in another post (and I'm not wanting to search it rn ) but my take on this would rather be a "Choose your origin" feature that presents you with several potential origins for your character, each one tied to its own subset of passives that adds to a single (or two at best) baseline passives common to that origin (e.g. Saxhleel swimming speed, Orsimer sprinting speed...)
I would personally *not* have it hard locked at character creation because that would mean putting a brand new feature behind a paywall for existing characters, and constrain the potential role(s) of them. I'd rather put it into the Armory system, being able to choose a Vestige origin tied to each profile, changing it once every [insert wait time or pay a moderately high amount of gold to encourage sticking to your most prefered origins, but still allowing you to change your mind]

Some potential examples that would need some fleshing out:

Saxhleel (Argonian)

• Lukiul (Current setup)
• Naga-Kur (Heavily oriented towards intensive stamina characters with a tiny (1-4%) bonus to all damage on low health targets)
• Wasseek-haleel / Bright-Throats (Crafting, gold gains and even player trade)

Dunmer (Dark elves)

• Outlander (Current setup)
• Ashlander (Bow, stealth and movement speed)
• City Dunmer (Healing for Almalexia, maybe buff duration for Vivec and higher chance to find recipes / furnishing plans / motifs / whatever for Seht?)

I'd love to see other's take on this idea!