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Will we ever be able to change our race?


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So i made a revenant a while back, made him a Norn, and i'm now - after getting to the final core story mission - having second thoughts about the race. It kinda doesn't fit for me idk, i'd rather have a Norn Guardian at this point instead and make the revenant a Charr.

From what i searched, there was talk about some technical limitations in changing races? Is that still the case or is there another reason?

I mean, at this point, i could delete the character after the main story is done, then redo him as Charr in between that and HoT, level to 80 with tomes etc. , but i'd be forfeiting the main story. Not that it matters at all lol, story is not relevant to generaly gameplay. But still...

Anyway, just wondering...

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If you powerlevel to 80 with tomes and such and you really want to redo the personal story (either for rewards or character lore or whatever) it doesn't take a lot of time at that point. I do up to lv. 60 fairly regularly for the keys, and it probably takes less than an hour (skipping cutscenes, etc.) to get thorough that point. You could probably finish the rest in another hour.

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@"Kunzaito.8169" said:If you powerlevel to 80 with tomes and such and you really want to redo the personal story (either for rewards or character lore or whatever) it doesn't take a lot of time at that point. I do up to lv. 60 fairly regularly for the keys, and it probably takes less than an hour (skipping cutscenes, etc.) to get thorough that point. You could probably finish the rest in another hour.

You're right, it only seemed it's very long because of how i played it. I only play that character with a friend, and rarely, so getting to that point took a while. Heart of Thorns will seem massive at that pace lol. :tongue:

But yeah, i think i'll delete that character and redo the "same one", same profession and name, just "change his race" lol. I haven't done anything besides story really on him, and everything else is mostly account wide so no big deal i guess.

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If Anet did something like WoW Cataclysm to core Tyria by revamping all the maps, it would open up a lot of possibilities. They can remove personal story and add a short recap like with LWS1. This would probably be enough to let players race change. Many collections locked behind broken events can be changed, too. It would also make it easier to add new races and stuff.

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@BlueJin.4127 said:If Anet did something like WoW Cataclysm to core Tyria by revamping all the maps, it would open up a lot of possibilities. They can remove personal story and add a short recap like with LWS1. This would probably be enough to let players race change. Many collections locked behind broken events can be changed, too. It would also make it easier to add new races and stuff.

Personal Story is one of the most beloved parts of this game so this would likely cause unlimited outrage. Its the later parts of the story that are critised for taking away all the character development and choices that you get in PS.

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@"BlueJin.4127" said:If Anet did something like WoW Cataclysm to core Tyria by revamping all the maps, it would open up a lot of possibilities. They can remove personal story and add a short recap like with LWS1. This would probably be enough to let players race change. Many collections locked behind broken events can be changed, too. It would also make it easier to add new races and stuff.

Nah, condensing a whole personal story to a simple cinematic would be a disservice to it really.If the personal story and it's code are interfering with being able to change race, then let it be so.I like the personal story, it's very fun and while meandering at times, it's full of characters that are memorable and fun.

Besides. It's my own "deal" to deal with with deleting characters. I kinda feel like i'm killing them lol. :tongue: But seeing it as a "transformation" of sorts when i delete one and make a new one with the same name makes me feel better haha.

So i don't think changing a race is more important than personal story. We can already change everything else, let race and profession be something that's an actual choice when making a character.

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@"Veprovina.4876" said:Besides. It's my own "deal" to deal with with deleting characters. I kinda feel like i'm killing them lol. :tongue: But seeing it as a "transformation" of sorts when i delete one and make a new one with the same name makes me feel better haha.

I did the same thing to change professions on some characters. I had a norn revenant and an asuran necromancer, but I wanted the norn to use Nevermore to fit his Raven theme and I really don't like the staff skills on revenant and the whole 'combining necromancy and golemancy' thing didn't appeal to me as much as I thought it would. I also wanted a new engineer to be a holosmith and had an idea for a charr revenant. So the norn became a necromancer, the asuran became an engineer and I added a new charr revenant.

In my head they're still the same characters, they just changed the type of magic and skills they use. It did involve slight changes to the asura's backstory to allow for broadening his interests beyond forms of golemancy, but I think that was for the best, he was a bit narrow minded before.

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@Danikat.8537 said:

@"Veprovina.4876" said:Besides. It's my own "deal" to deal with with deleting characters. I kinda feel like i'm killing them lol. :tongue: But seeing it as a "transformation" of sorts when i delete one and make a new one with the same name makes me feel better haha.

I did the same thing to change professions on some characters. I had a norn revenant and an asuran necromancer, but I wanted the norn to use Nevermore to fit his Raven theme and I really don't like the staff skills on revenant and the whole 'combining necromancy and golemancy' thing didn't appeal to me as much as I thought it would. I also wanted a new engineer to be a holosmith and had an idea for a charr revenant. So the norn became a necromancer, the asuran became an engineer and I added a new charr revenant.

In my head they're still the same characters, they just changed the type of magic and skills they use. It did involve slight changes to the asura's backstory to allow for broadening his interests beyond forms of golemancy, but I think that was for the best, he was a bit narrow minded before.

Hehe nice! I have one character that uses the level 80 boost and can't decide between necromancer and elementalist. :wink: So he keeps going back and forth haha.

Of course, that's easy to explain, he changed professions. But changing a race like that, while keeping the name and profession is a hard sell. :tongue:

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@Veprovina.4876 said:So i made a revenant a while back, made him a Norn, and i'm now - after getting to the final core story mission - having second thoughts about the race. It kinda doesn't fit for me idk, i'd rather have a Norn Guardian at this point instead and make the revenant a Charr.

From what i searched, there was talk about some technical limitations in changing races? Is that still the case or is there another reason?

I mean, at this point, i could delete the character after the main story is done, then redo him as Charr in between that and HoT, level to 80 with tomes etc. , but i'd be forfeiting the main story. Not that it matters at all lol, story is not relevant to generaly gameplay. But still...

Anyway, just wondering...

As the others have said it’s not hard to level characters up and go through the story especially if you aren’t waiting on anyone and of course you can skip to living world season 2 with your new character once you reach 80 but one thing I wanted to bring to light is that if this is your first character you made you won’t want to delete it because of its birthday. It would be easier to create a new character with a new character slot since you’d be restarting anyway and just change a letter or add a letter to the name to make it slightly different.

Why I suggest this is because with each bday for your character you get special items and if this is the first toon you made it would be the oldest and I don’t want you to lose out on those gifts since the new toons bday would be on the day you create it. But if this is a fairly new character that you are deleting then you wouldn’t have to worry about that.

If I recall correctly they don’t have changing races because of the spaghetti code and the specific race based story choices. They would have to totally remake the main story and I am one of the people that love the original story and cut scenes where we can actually see our characters and would prefer they leave it how it is.

Hope this helps :)

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Personally, I believe that if you did the story line on all the races ... maybe you should be able to change. I have no clue what game coding challenges that provides though.

Another option ... if you delete a level 80 ... you get a level 80 booster in return ... maybe a compromise?

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@"Obtena.7952" said:Personally, I believe that if you did the story line on all the races ... maybe you should be able to change. I have no clue what game coding challenges that provides though.

Another option ... if you delete a level 80 ... you get a level 80 booster in return ... maybe a compromise?Long ago I posted a sequence that would require little to no coding challenges. A "race change" in GW2 is just a series of database changes. TL;DR is just an automatic version of the manual way - create a new character->transfer everything over it->delete the old. If you put extreme conditions on it, such as it deleting everything on your character and inventory (the only thing transfered would be the gemstore unlocks) you would skip alot of the conditional inventory management that would otherwise need to take place.

People also keep saying "oh buh buh buh story will mess up!". No. That's not a problem if you only allow race change for level 80 characters that has completed the main story. Since you cant do that again and it's literally only text on a screen, it's irrelevant. The actual story arc information in your character menu could just be a diffuse "you're a Norn adopted by the Asura and that's why you did the Asura things in your youth, later in your life you became a raven worshipping hippie dont ask".

But as I keep saying after all that, it'll never happen. Because GW2 is a game for alts. You are meant to buy a new character slot and you are meant to spend gemstore cash on inventory slots and you are meant to cry about not having templates and then giving in and spending more cash. This is what the GW2 monetization is all about. Race change is the complete opposite of that, unless you make it cost so much people would choose the former anyway. Though I suppose some would still spend say 12,000 gems on a race change and tbh at that point Anet can just do it manually.

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@ElijahFitzroy.5762 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:So i made a revenant a while back, made him a Norn, and i'm now - after getting to the final core story mission - having second thoughts about the race. It kinda doesn't fit for me idk, i'd rather have a Norn Guardian at this point instead and make the revenant a Charr.

From what i searched, there was talk about some technical limitations in changing races? Is that still the case or is there another reason?

I mean, at this point, i could delete the character after the main story is done, then redo him as Charr in between that and HoT, level to 80 with tomes etc. , but i'd be forfeiting the main story. Not that it matters at all lol, story is not relevant to generaly gameplay. But still...

Anyway, just wondering...

As the others have said it’s not hard to level characters up and go through the story especially if you aren’t waiting on anyone and of course you can skip to living world season 2 with your new character once you reach 80 but one thing I wanted to bring to light is that if this is your first character you made you won’t want to delete it because of its birthday. It would be easier to create a new character with a new character slot since you’d be restarting anyway and just change a letter or add a letter to the name to make it slightly different.

Why I suggest this is because with each bday for your character you get special items and if this is the first toon you made it would be the oldest and I don’t want you to lose out on those gifts since the new toons bday would be on the day you create it. But if this is a fairly new character that you are deleting then you wouldn’t have to worry about that.

If I recall correctly they don’t have changing races because of the spaghetti code and the specific race based story choices. They would have to totally remake the main story and I am one of the people that love the original story and cut scenes where we can actually see our characters and would prefer they leave it how it is.

Hope this helps :)

Thanks! But this is not my first character, it's my fifth. And i only made one so i can play with my RL friend from the beginning. And it was created fairly recently so not even a first birthday. Also, i don't have any more character slots so can't make a new one.I have tons of Tomes of Knowledge, i can level a new character instantly and resume where i left off, the only difference will be i won't have personal story completion. So no big deal if i decide on a new race.

I'm probably overthinking everything lol.

@Obtena.7952 said:Personally, I believe that if you did the story line on all the races ... maybe you should be able to change. I have no clue what game coding challenges that provides though.

Another option ... if you delete a level 80 ... you get a level 80 booster in return ... maybe a compromise?

I think the problem is with the personal story choices. If you change race afterwards from like, human to asura for instance, you're no longer the hero of shaemor, you're now whatever asura do on their tutorial mission. And if you did choices after, and finished the story to completion on a lvl 80 character, a lot more changes. So to change the race, journal entries, home instance, story choices and a lot more would need to change. Whether or not that's possible or not is up to Anet, but they made it clear it's not gonna happen i guess...

Still, the level 80 boost if you delete a character could come in handy, though they sell those, so the intent is probably to NOT give them so people buy them if they want to continue where they left off.

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:Personally, I believe that if you did the story line on all the races ... maybe you should be able to change. I have no clue what game coding challenges that provides though.

Another option ... if you delete a level 80 ... you get a level 80 booster in return ... maybe a compromise?Long ago I posted a sequence that would require little to no coding challenges. A "race change" in GW2 is just a series of database changes. TL;DR is just an automatic version of the manual way - create a new character->transfer everything over it->delete the old. If you put extreme conditions on it, such as it deleting everything on your character and inventory (the only thing transfered would be the gemstore unlocks) you would skip alot of the conditional inventory management that would otherwise need to take place.

People also keep saying "oh buh buh buh story will mess up!". No. That's not a problem if you only allow race change for level 80 characters that has completed the main story. Since you cant do that again and it's literally only text on a screen, it's irrelevant. The actual story arc information in your character menu could just be a diffuse
"you're a Norn adopted by the Asura and that's why you did the Asura things in your youth, later in your life you became a raven worshipping hippie dont ask".

But as I keep saying after all that, it'll never happen. Because GW2 is a game for alts. You are
meant
to buy a new character slot and you are
meant
to spend gemstore cash on inventory slots and you are
meant
to cry about not having templates and then giving in and spending more cash. This is what the GW2 monetization is all about. Race change is the complete opposite of that, unless you make it cost so much people would choose the former anyway. Though I suppose some would
still
spend say 12,000 gems on a race change and tbh at that point Anet can just do it manually.

Haha, yeah, it would be possible, especiall with the bolded part. That made me laugh! :smiley:But, i mean, they could sell the race change the same as makeover kits. They could monetize it. For how much, idk, but i don't think it changes that much to be worth 12k gems or something. It probably has more to do with Anet not be willing to code that in because it's not "useful enough to waste time on" or whatever...

Oh well, i'll just finish the story, and start HoT with a new race, name and profession the same. That will be my "race change". I didn't do much of map completion anyway, not much will be lost and i can do the story again if i want.

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@Blude.6812 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:If you've already searched, then you should know the reasons. As far as we know, those reasons still remain.

Yeah, figured as much. Oh well...

So you didn't search and see every single thread on the topic was a clear NO with reasons.

What's the point of this comment, honestly?I said i searched, i just wanted to ask if something has changed in the meantime.

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@"Veprovina.4876" said:But, i mean, they could sell the race change the same as makeover kits. They could monetize it. For how much, idk, but i don't think it changes that much to be worth 12k gems or something. It probably has more to do with Anet not be willing to code that in because it's not "useful enough to waste time on" or whatever...It doesnt change much, but the point is that it bypass monetization. A character can have what, 6000+ gems worth of upgrades? You cant just put a race change in the same category as a makeover kit when it comes to cost.

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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"Veprovina.4876" said:But, i mean, they could sell the race change the same as makeover kits. They could monetize it. For how much, idk, but i don't think it changes that much to be worth 12k gems or something. It probably has more to do with Anet not be willing to code that in because it's not "useful enough to waste time on" or whatever...It doesnt change much, but the point is that it
bypass monetization
. A character can have what, 6000+ gems worth of upgrades? You cant just put a race change in the same category as a makeover kit when it comes to cost.

Yeah, i guess...But i mean, it's never going to happen probably so whatever, right? :tongue:We'll just have to keep changing our race "the default way" haha. :smile:

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Yeah, you can't change your race. This is because of the personal story being specific to each race, and transferring it would be...buggy. But, that's what alts are for, so you can just reroll and enjoy it all over again as a Charr or whatever you want.

For what it's worth (not much maybe), I think norn are probably the best race for Revenant from a lore standpoint since they are the traditional guardians of the Mists, and invoking legendary figures of the past seems like a nornish thing to do, even though they don't have a norn legend in the class skills. I made a Charr Rev. and honestly the story is kinda wonky because the personal story happens before Rytlock reveals the revenant abilities to the Charr (because he is just a normal warrior back then), where the norn are probally just like, "yeah...we've been doing this for generations, what's the big deal? Go talk to Havroun Harry over there." haha.

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@"firedragon.8953" said:Yeah, you can't change your race. This is because of the personal story being specific to each race, and transferring it would be...buggy. But, that's what alts are for, so you can just reroll and enjoy it all over again as a Charr or whatever you want.

For what it's worth (not much maybe), I think norn are probably the best race for Revenant from a lore standpoint since they are the traditional guardians of the Mists, and invoking legendary figures of the past seems like a nornish thing to do, even though they don't have a norn legend in the class skills. I made a Charr Rev. and honestly the story is kinda wonky because the personal story happens before Rytlock reveals the revenant abilities to the Charr (because he is just a normal warrior back then), where the norn are probally just like, "yeah...we've been doing this for generations, what's the big deal? Go talk to Havroun Harry over there." haha.

Haha, well, that could make sense yeah. Except, aren't norn somewhat wary of mixing mists and whatever "material world" is called in this game?Cause, in the norn story, you do get to visit the mists a few times. But i got the impression they're really careful not to bring anything back, or bring something in that would disrupt the mists. Whereas Revenants in general (i assume starting with Rytlock as he was the first), do just that on a daily basis?

It does seem more norn-ish than most, but whatever the race, even if Charr, the whole profession was kinda retconned in with Rytlock so none of the personal story really makes sense on a Revenant. Maybe they should have made it unlockable only upon completing the personal story and Rytlock teaches it to you at the start of HoT or whatever... But that would be more hassle than it was worth, especially for PvP people that don't level so...

I don't know, i still haven't continued that character, i'll think about it some more.But thanks for your input! :smile:

EDIT:

I like the idea of a Charr Renegade getting help from Kalla after a lifetime of admiring her memorial in Black Citadel. :smile: Something like that.

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The excuse of personal story is stupid when you consider it ends at what lvl 60 then ties into the game mode story about orr. Gear wise they have for all races atm in 2021. Profs dont matter so its down to race picked. If you are level 32 and have started your personal story up to that lvl or never started it...just place the new race at the same level of completion or just make them start it at the beginning. If they are lvl 32 catching up will be a breeze. So whats the real excuse?

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@"firedragon.8953" said:Yeah, you can't change your race. This is because of the personal story being specific to each race, and transferring it would be...buggy. But, that's what alts are for, so you can just reroll and enjoy it all over again as a Charr or whatever you want.

For what it's worth (not much maybe), I think norn are probably the best race for Revenant from a lore standpoint since they are the traditional guardians of the Mists, and invoking legendary figures of the past seems like a nornish thing to do, even though they don't have a norn legend in the class skills. I made a Charr Rev. and honestly the story is kinda wonky because the personal story happens before Rytlock reveals the revenant abilities to the Charr (because he is just a normal warrior back then), where the norn are probally just like, "yeah...we've been doing this for generations, what's the big deal? Go talk to Havroun Harry over there." haha.

My explanation for my charr revenant is that she's a Blood Legion soldier who inherited magical abilities from her Fire Legion father but never fully understood what they are or how they work because she never had anyone to explain it to her and learned early on it was best not to ever mention it or draw attention to it. Through the personal story she's getting more comfortable with her magic but still doesn't talk much about it outside of her circle of friends, so when Rytlock emerges from the Mists it's still a surprise to most people.

I get the impression that in-universe magic is less strictly defined than in the game mechanics. There have been NPCs who can use skills from multiple different professions in both GW1 and GW2 which implies there's nothing fundamentally different about say elementalist vs. mesmer magic, it's just down to which skills you choose to focus on learning. So it wouldn't be immediately obvious that someone is doing something completely new rather than using existing magic in a different way.

@"Ape Ghosting.7396" said:The excuse of personal story is stupid when you consider it ends at what lvl 60 then ties into the game mode story about orr. Gear wise they have for all races atm in 2021. Profs dont matter so its down to race picked. If you are level 32 and have started your personal story up to that lvl or never started it...just place the new race at the same level of completion or just make them start it at the beginning. If they are lvl 32 catching up will be a breeze. So whats the real excuse?

That's the reason Anet have given us. If you think they're lying why would you trust a second reason just because it comes later? Why not assume that one is a lie as well?

I don't understand why it wouldn't be possible to change your personal story when changing your race, or just disable the story so it doesn't cause problems (meaning players have to choose between race-changing after finishing it or never being able to do it on that character). But I do know computers do not work according to human logic and things which appear totally unrelated can interfere with each other. In my old job we had a problem where we changed where a database was stored on the server and that introduced a bug where if you clicked the blank space next to a button it asked if you wanted to save, and if you clicked yes it crashed the program. No part of that makes sense to me. Moving the database shouldn't introduce changes and there should be no way for a blank space to act like a button (it's not that the UI was off-centre, this wasn't next to the save button), but that's what happened. As far as I know they never managed to fix it either, I left over a year later and at that point the fix was 'train new staff not to click there and not to save if they do'.

It genuinely wouldn't surprise me if when Anet say changing your race can break things because of the personal story they don't mean you get the wrong text in the story review or even that you can't finish it but that you might be unable to log into that character ever again, or when you reach a certain, unavoidable, dialogue in a new storyline your game will crash, every single time, because something in it calls back to the personal story.

It sucks that we can't have race change but I don't think they're lying about the reason. Why would they? If there's a different reason that sounds more believable to players why not say that instead? And if there's no reason why wouldn't they do it? Numerous people have pointed out that it would be a paid service like in most MMOs so they've got an incentive to offer it. I can't imagine someone at Anet is just going "Nah, we can't be bothered, just tell them something stupid like it's because of the story, that will shut them up!"

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It would require a trivial amount of work to make both players and ArenaNet's bank accounts happy with an expensive gem-store item.

It is literally one byte of information that stores a player's race and resetting the personal story progress table is equally easy to do.

Every other successful MMORPG allows this.

This one item would provide enough funding in of itself to prevent another round of layoffs, so this should be escalated within ArenaNet to a Program Manager who can make a data-driven decision based on projected sales.

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@"Danikat.8537" said:I can't imagine someone at Anet is just going "Nah, we can't be bothered, just tell them something stupid like it's because of the story, that will shut them up!"Except well... that is the reason. Its Anets code, they can make it do whatever they like. But the effort in making it work, and the reason its not so simple to flip race=1 to race=2... yep. Thats the reason. Because its not that simple and they cant be bothered.

Still, once again its funny that right after I said how you could avoid the story issues (ie only allow it for level 80 characters that has finished the main story, changing the story text in the menu) people go... "but its impossible due to the story"!

At the end of the day, a characters real "content" in GW2 is its name, its map completion and its gemstore unlocks. If they sell a gemstore racechange for 12,000 gems, maybe they could even allow a rerun of the entire personal story from level 1. Its only a few bl keys worth after all.

Edit: oh wait we got wp unlocks. So on a technical level, the lowest kind of race change is naming a character the same as your old and having the same gemstore unlocks on it, the rest can be sacrificed. Thats... just a new character with the same inventory and template unlock. Thats literally one step from what we do today when we delete and create a character.

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I asked this question 2012. About two weeks after launch when I hit lvl 80 with my silvari mesmer. I didn't liked silvari because skimpy outfits just didn't look as good as on human or norn.

At the same time I didn't want to start a new mesmer because my silvaris birthday was on launchday. So I was forced to keep playing my silvari but deep inside I just wanted a skimpy human or norn. Eventually I stopped gw2 because I wasn't happy with my options.

When I returned 8 years later in 2020 I finally created a norn mesmer and the game has been much more fun ever since. My silvari mesmer sill exists being a storage character.

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