Race Change Contract (?)

So, quite a few people have asked about race changes (in terms of new players). Maybe you don't like your personal story, maybe you don't like your home city, maybe you want to keep your progress and see how it looks to be another race, maybe you picked human because you didn't know what to choose. I feel that it's within the realm of reasonable possibility to make a race change contract of some type, unless spaghetti code go brrr.

The idea is simple: You redo the level 10-30 story as your new race. Since the level 40 and beyond story is the same for each race (pick an order, do the same general thing in each order, converge with the other 2 later, etc), you can easily just do the "new" story over and keep your other decisions. Alternatively, if you do not wish to do the story over, you can just say "use old decisions", and have it pick your decisions based on slot (i.e. if I picked slot 1 for x conversation's response, it forces slot 1 for that "parallel" conversation).

Just a thought I had about potential race changes for people who were unsatisfied with their characters, and giving them the chance to keep potentially soulbound gear and not have to redo the core story, HoT, living worlds, PoF, more living worlds, AND map completion.

Unlikely to occur, as many things in-game are tied to Race.

While the responses from ANet are old they were definite that race changes were not on the table and would not be offered.

Responses were

1) I am afraid that the team does contemplate different possibilities and new features for the future but this one is not among those.2) There are a lot of far-reaching consequences of allowing one character to play through every race’s personal story or equip any cultural armor/weapons.3) Thanks for asking. To change the race in the Gem store will not be an option in Guild Wars 2.

They have never to my knowledge said this position has changed.

As the others have said, race changes are one of the things Anet has said won't happen (as opposed to not a focus or otherwise leaving it open ended). Which makes sense given how the personal story's code has been implied to be extremely unstable and would be easy to break, which is one of the reasons why bugs in it have existed for years as the risk to breaking something else isn't deemed worth the risk to fix something that doesn't prevent progress.

For all the time, effort, and risk associated with implementing a race change, they could update or add a system that benefits far more people. Especially as, while it sucks making a new character, you can make a new character with the same or similar name and only lose out on soulbound gear.

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

While the responses from ANet are old they were definite that race changes were not on the table and would not be offered.

They also said things changes like coloring capes wouldn't happen, but they did. So, you never know...

@Mortifera.6138 said:@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

While the responses from ANet are old they were definite that race changes were not on the table and would not be offered.

Yes they made new item that can be coloured we dont see them implementing that on all the old back items tho do we?

@Linken.6345 said:

@Mortifera.6138 said:@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

While the responses from ANet are old they were definite that race changes were not on the table and would not be offered.

They didn't say new ones would be have colorization, so you never know.

@Mortifera.6138 said:

@Linken.6345 said:

@Mortifera.6138 said:@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

While the responses from ANet are old they were definite that race changes were not on the table and would not be offered.

That is correct since they dont say anything about what may happen only speak when rhey are sure it will happen.

@Mortifera.6138 said:@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

While the responses from ANet are old they were definite that race changes were not on the table and would not be offered.

It appears they made some sort of technical breakthrough on backpieces which allowed new backpieces to be dyed. It appears the new method does not and may never apply to old backpieces.

This is similar to changing races. There are necessary technical breakthroughs needed to overcome problems with race specific personal stories, race specific home instance (which have changes applied due to race specific stories) and characters buying racial armor for one race then switching to another race, as well as other interactions with the coding that players aren’t aware of that could break a players game. I’m sure they know of the interest in this feature but the problems are likely to be too interconnected to fix at this date, so many years after the game initial coding.

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@Mortifera.6138 said:@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

While the responses from ANet are old they were definite that race changes were not on the table and would not be offered.

So there could be technical breakthroughs, so don’t discount it yet.

@Linken.6345 said:

@Mortifera.6138 said:

@Linken.6345 said:

@Mortifera.6138 said:@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

While the responses from ANet are old they were definite that race changes were not on the table and would not be offered.

In the future, they may say it can happen, so you never know.

@Mortifera.6138 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@Mortifera.6138 said:@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

While the responses from ANet are old they were definite that race changes were not on the table and would not be offered.

It took them a year to fix one bug where people got rewards they weren’t supposed to get and the fix for that bug will periodically bug out and send people messages, which sends people to the forum to ask/complain about the bugged message for the bug fix. And they’ve yet to fix the bug for the bug. A change to races of this magnitude to code so basic that it touches on so many core features, if they’re even working on it, is likely to have multiple game breaking bugs spring up. So, yes, it’s possible but it’s unlikely they’re working on something that will be a bug fest to implement and a further bug fest to debug.

Another challenge for programming such feature could be racial skills and racial armor. It is easy to remove something from the game for everyone or change it for everyone. But I doubt they currently have a mechanic to re-lock unlocked skins and skills on specific accounts.

@"mercury ranique.2170" said:Another challenge for programming such feature could be racial skills and racial armor. It is easy to remove something from the game for everyone or change it for everyone. But I doubt they currently have a mechanic to re-lock unlocked skins and skills on specific accounts.It's literally impossible from what devs have said and why if you accidentally bind a legendary you were going to sell, you're out of luck because they can't re-lock the skin. They also can't let you have the skin and gold from selling it so you get the weapon. The only exception to this seems to be the HoM skins and titles when the GW1 and GW2 servers can't communicate.

You also raise a good point by bringing up racial armour. Either they'd have a 1:1 conversion of skins when a race change happens or they wouldn't and you'd have to re-buy racial skins to replace the ones you "lost". Either way, people will complain about Anet's decision and bother support over it.

Race changes can't be enabled just flipping a switch since so much is tied to them that it would be a huge undertaking to add into the game. Even account name changes are possible (even though it can cause database issues) so it should tell people just how difficult-to-impossible race changes are when you can't even message support and have them do it if you agree to the potential risks that would happen.

@Zephire.8049 said:

@"mercury ranique.2170" said:Another challenge for programming such feature could be racial skills and racial armor. It is easy to remove something from the game for everyone or change it for everyone. But I doubt they currently have a mechanic to re-lock unlocked skins and skills on specific accounts.It's literally impossible from what devs have said and why if you accidentally bind a legendary you were going to sell, you're out of luck because they can't re-lock the skin. They also can't let you have the skin and gold from selling it so you get the weapon. The only exception to this seems to be the HoM skins and titles when the GW1 and GW2 servers can't communicate.

Account Name changes cause no issues, as only the player and ArenaNet are privy to that information.What causes issues is Display Name changes.I can't imagine what kind of bugs a race change would cause. Yikes!

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@Mortifera.6138 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@Mortifera.6138 said:@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

While the responses from ANet are old they were definite that race changes were not on the table and would not be offered.

But I'm not concerned, its getting fixed any day now.

Aaaaaaaaaany day.

The amount of code (and bugs as a consequence) that will be introduced if Anet decided to allow a race change ability would require a huge amount of resource and time. All that time and labor could be better spent for more practical things right now, like the next expansion. I'm not against race changing, but doing so would obviously interfere with a lot of character-bound mechanics (progression, personal story, cultural armor, etc).

I just don't trust the Gw2 engine and the spaghetti code that much. It's incredibly unstable, especially when most patches always seem break the game in some very noticeable ways lol.

I've always wanted a race change contract, whether or not it's ever going to happen is another question. I remember Anet saying it would be difficult re: personal story.

I think the main solution would be to just make it so that the personal story gets reset to the new race that the person has chosen. Problem solved! Now let's try solve something harder like world hunger.

@"Zaoda.1653" said:I've always wanted a race change contract, whether or not it's ever going to happen is another question. I remember Anet saying it would be difficult re: personal story.

I think the main solution would be to just make it so that the personal story gets reset to the new race that the person has chosen. Problem solved! Now let's try solve something harder like world hunger.

You are speaking as they never said that they cant reset personal story before.They have said that.

http://dulfy.net/2015/03/31/gw2-personal-story-restoration-update/

EditIf you dont want to read the link here it is.

Q: Why can’t I reset my character’s Personal Story progress?

• A: The Personal Story was not designed to be replayable. Attempting to adjust a character’s story progress introduces a wide variety of bugs across various content and game systems. We investigated different solutions for partial and full story resets. In all cases, the changes led to unpredictable results in many different content types, including permanent blocking of story progress.

@Linken.6345 said:

@"Zaoda.1653" said:I've always wanted a race change contract, whether or not it's ever going to happen is another question. I remember Anet saying it would be difficult re: personal story.

I think the main solution would be to just make it so that the personal story gets reset to the new race that the person has chosen. Problem solved! Now let's try solve something harder like world hunger.

Q: Why can’t I reset my character’s Personal Story progress?

• A: The Personal Story was not designed to be replayable. Attempting to adjust a character’s story progress introduces a wide variety of bugs across various content and game systems. We investigated different solutions for partial and full story resets. In all cases, the changes led to unpredictable results in many different content types, including permanent blocking of story progress.

To expand on the tendency for the personal story to break, at one point they decided to rearrange some of the chapters in the personal story. They announced it far in advance so players who were concerned about things could either stop prior to reaching that point or finish the personal story.

They changed it, and there were countless people who got their progress bugged out.

Their fix was to revert it back to the way it was at launch.

Which bugged other people out. Including me with a character that had completed the personal story before the first change had happened. That character got set back several steps and I had to do the final mission with her again. As a result, I have 1 more pact token than I should.

@Linken.6345 said:

@"Zaoda.1653" said:I've always wanted a race change contract, whether or not it's ever going to happen is another question. I remember Anet saying it would be difficult re: personal story.

I think the main solution would be to just make it so that the personal story gets reset to the new race that the person has chosen. Problem solved! Now let's try solve something harder like world hunger.

Q: Why can’t I reset my character’s Personal Story progress?

• A: The Personal Story was not designed to be replayable. Attempting to adjust a character’s story progress introduces a wide variety of bugs across various content and game systems. We investigated different solutions for partial and full story resets. In all cases, the changes led to unpredictable results in many different content types, including permanent blocking of story progress.Technically you would never reset a characters personal story though in an automated race change as the character would be a new character.

Sigh we've been over this so many times...

The ONLY thing that your character has that's unique to that character is two simple things - the name and gemstore unlocks. Soulbound items? Garbage, can be deleted. Account bound items? Dump them in the bank. The personal story? Well that's the old race, it wont exist. Doing a race change is restoring the name and gemstore unlocks. That's it. Nothing more. We can do this today on the name part, but not the gemstore unlocks. Which of course is how Anet like it, they want you to buy upgrades, not maintain that "main".

Because a "race change" in GW2 is a new character. Voila, your personal story was reset! A "race change" isnt magic.

Aint more complicated than that.

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Linken.6345 said:

@"Zaoda.1653" said:I've always wanted a race change contract, whether or not it's ever going to happen is another question. I remember Anet saying it would be difficult re: personal story.

I think the main solution would be to just make it so that the personal story gets reset to the new race that the person has chosen. Problem solved! Now let's try solve something harder like world hunger.

Q: Why can’t I reset my character’s Personal Story progress?

• A: The Personal Story was not designed to be replayable. Attempting to adjust a character’s story progress introduces a wide variety of bugs across various content and game systems. We investigated different solutions for partial and full story resets. In all cases, the changes led to unpredictable results in many different content types, including permanent blocking of story progress.Technically you would never reset a characters personal story though in an automated race change as the character would be a new character.

So then buy a new character slot to go with that character ( I have 19 of em myself) Voila you still have all gemstore unlocks and personal story can be done without problems.

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Linken.6345 said:

@"Zaoda.1653" said:I've always wanted a race change contract, whether or not it's ever going to happen is another question. I remember Anet saying it would be difficult re: personal story.

I think the main solution would be to just make it so that the personal story gets reset to the new race that the person has chosen. Problem solved! Now let's try solve something harder like world hunger.

Q: Why can’t I reset my character’s Personal Story progress?

• A: The Personal Story was not designed to be replayable. Attempting to adjust a character’s story progress introduces a wide variety of bugs across various content and game systems. We investigated different solutions for partial and full story resets. In all cases, the changes led to unpredictable results in many different content types, including permanent blocking of story progress.Technically you would never reset a characters personal story though in an automated race change as the character would be a new character.

If you’re willing to spend money for a race change (and somehow I doubt it will be cheap) why not spend money on a new character slot and a level 80 boost. With mounts and in game map portal devices getting around is easy. If you must have waypoints unlocked, that’s in the gemstore also. Your problem is solved and race change contracts aren’t needed, plus no chance of game breaking bugs on your account.