Change Race

[Zaidya.6138]

It would be absoluteley awesome, if there was a Race Change Kit! Is there any chance to get this in the future? I'd pay a lot of gems for it O:Sure I could buy a new char slot and create the class with a new race, but then I have a char I wont play anymore (like it is atm for me with my 1. mesmer).Deleting the older mesmer makes no sence to me because of the birthday present I'd lose then :<
What do you guys think? o:

[Nemo.5609]

This idea has been brought up before, and the chance of such a feature being made is slim to none.

[Dawdler.8521]

TL;DR of what will be a looooong thread - Anet probably wont ever bother because we can just buy new character slots and half the people replying will argue its technically impossible while not realizing Anet can code the kitten they want.

[Danikat.8537]

A lot of people would like this option but it's unlikely to happen unfortunately. Apparently Anet have tried it internally and it caused a lot of weird problems, including permanently locking you out of the story.

It's possible they'll find a way to fix that eventually, but if you've got a character now you're not happy with I don't recommend waiting for race change - it might take years, or it might never happen at all. You're better off making a new one and if you don't want to delete the one you've got maybe use them as extra bank space, or keep them at the end of a jumping puzzle or near lots of material spawn points and use them to harvest materials. (A jumping puzzle could be especially good if they're a mesmer since people often ask for portals there.)

[MarshallLaw.9260]

@Zaidya.6138 said:It would be absoluteley awesome, if there was a Race Change Kit! Is there any chance to get this in the future? I'd pay a lot of gems for it O:Sure I could buy a new char slot and create the class with a new race, but then I have a char I wont play anymore (like it is atm for me with my 1. mesmer).Deleting the older mesmer makes no sence to me because of the birthday present I'd lose then :<

What do you guys think? o:

This has been requested previously and the answer has been - no. Each race has an individual story line which although obsolete by the time you make it to HOT story, is non-by-passable at the beginning of each character creation. On a technical level I believe the reasons given were based on coding as it may take too long and be too much of an effort to be worth it.Don't get me wrong, I have also been previously interested in amending my initial race choices, however being realistic this is not likely to be an option at any point.My suggestion would be to create a new replacement character and perhaps use your original as a storage to retain the birthday benefits.

Best of luck

[Menadena.7482]

The only time I could see this possibly happening is if they introduced a new race, which they have also stated will never happen. Even then, it is 50/50 because they know people will buy new slots to play the new race.

[Oglaf.1074]

They've said repeatedly that with the way your Personal Story works, it isn't possible.

[RubyRolo.7498]

I would pay money to have a race change option. There are some nice cloth sets but they all look bad on Aursans. I’ve worked hard on my character and do not want to delete her and start over. But I hate that she get get a nice look that I like. Race change please I don’t want to relevel or boost.

[Sithis.3564]

Necromancy!

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Dawdler.8521 said:Anet probably wont ever bother because we can just buy new character slots and half the people replying will argue its technically impossible while not realizing Anet can code the kitten they want.

@Oglaf.1074 said:They've said repeatedly that with the way your Personal Story works, it isn't possible.

It's not impossible, but it's more complicated than it sounds. It turns out that the choice of race is assumed in a lot of the code, relating to personal story among other things. The most recent thing that they did change was consolidating aspects of the personal story and that created all sorts of problems for characters that were partway through, even though they did all sorts of scenario testing, ran all sorts of verification scripts, and so on.

If they decided to make it happen, despite the obstacles, it would mean diverting resources from some other planned project(s) and/or charging a huge number of gems to help defray the costs. We can already achieve an equivalent effect by buying a new character slot (800 gems) and a name-change contract (800 gems). Since few of us are likely to be willing to spend even 1600 gems for such a feature, it sounds very much like a huge investment for a minor quality-of-life gain.

I'm not against the idea. I just can't imagine it's worth much trouble on ANet's part to make it happen.

[Shirlias.8104]

It will be implemented with the next expansion.

[robertthebard.8150]

@Dawdler.8521 said:TL;DR of what will be a looooong thread - Anet probably wont ever bother because we can just buy new character slots and half the people replying will argue its technically impossible while not realizing Anet can code the kitten they want.

Sure, if they dropped your character to level 1, in order to clear every racial flag that's set upon your character from the moment you roll it up and start answering the questions. You seem to be of the mistaken opinion that it's merely a cosmetic feature, but I can assure you, it's not.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Shirlias.8104 said:It will be implemented with the next expansion.

Do you have a source for that? Or are you joking about how lots of fun features get pushed into expansions?

[Dawdler.8521]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"Dawdler.8521" said:TL;DR of what will be a looooong thread - Anet probably wont ever bother because we can just buy new character slots and half the people replying will argue its technically impossible while not realizing Anet can code the kitten they want.

Sure, if they dropped your character to level 1, in order to clear every racial flag that's set upon your character from the moment you roll it up and start answering the questions. You seem to be of the mistaken opinion that it's merely a cosmetic feature, but I can assure you, it's not.Hahaha...

Well, isnt it that easy? You said it. A race change would literally be dropping your character to level 1 because the old character would be deleted. The only "hard" part of this is saving the state the character is in (such an extra bag expansion slot being automatically reapplied to the new character). Because that's all it is. Save and load. Save your character at level 80. Delete it. Create a new character at level 1. Load all your characters stuff and make it level 80 with the main story just as completed as it was before. Have an NPC you can talk to in order to "remember" your personal story choices on the new race, otherwise you get a default set of choices for the new race. Minor annoyances such as racial gear is easily solved in the saving process, just set them to account bound/soulbound on use and dump them in the inventory again when loading.

We can do this manually, today, without any major issues. It only takes time and effort. Which is why I still think Anet will never bother with it. Of course it's far more expensive than any "automated" race change would ever be since we have to buy anything character specific anew. I think Anet prefer it like that.

[Shirlias.8104]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Shirlias.8104 said:It will be implemented with the next expansion.

Do you have a source for that? Or are you joking about how lots of fun features get pushed into expansions?

Obviously a joke.They said many times how hard will this be because of personal story.

But hell, who knows!

[Bollocks.4078]

How much would it ease the personal story issues if you could only do a race change after you've completed the personal story?

If most people just want this for cosmetic reasons could this be implemented as a strictly cosmetic only thing? For example, if you want to change your Asura to Human you buy an item for gems that lets you make your Asura char look like a Human but is still fully Asura underneath. For purposes of personal story that char is still Asura. If you haven't completed the personal story then you'd still be doing Asura-based personal story. Would that satisfy the players who want race change and would that make it feasible for ANET to implement? Obviously there's still a lot to this but maybe that a possible solution that works for both sides?

[Shirlias.8104]

I bet they will find a way because the race change could be a gold mine.

[penelopehannibal.8947]

Things to consider:

Personal story progression.Racial utility skills bought for HPs & if they're equipped.Characters wearing cultural armour.And considering the current costs of what we already have in the Makeover Kit + Namechange contract combined (if you've given your first character an Asura name and want to change them to a Charr) it would probably cost more for a Race Change kit than a new character slot.

I don't know how much hard work it'd be for the devs, but it's still stuff that needs to be considered.

[robertthebard.8150]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:@robertthebard.8150 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:TL;DR of what will be a looooong thread - Anet probably wont ever bother because we can just buy new character slots and half the people replying will argue its technically impossible while not realizing Anet can code the kitten they want.

Sure, if they dropped your character to level 1, in order to clear every racial flag that's set upon your character from the moment you roll it up and start answering the questions. You seem to be of the mistaken opinion that it's merely a cosmetic feature, but I can assure you, it's not.Hahaha...

Well, isnt it that easy? You said it. A race change

would

literally be dropping your character to level 1 because the old character would be deleted. The only "hard" part of this is saving the state the character is in (such an extra bag expansion slot being automatically reapplied to the new character). Because that's all it is. Save and load. Save your character at level 80. Delete it. Create a new character at level 1. Load all your characters stuff and make it level 80 with the main story just as completed as it was before. Have an NPC you can talk to in order to "remember" your personal story choices on the new race, otherwise you get a default set of choices for the new race. Minor annoyances such as racial gear is easily solved in the saving process, just set them to account bound/soulbound on use and dump them in the inventory again when loading.

We can do this manually, today, without any major issues. It only takes time and effort. Which is why I still think Anet will never bother with it. Of course it's far more expensive than any "automated" race change would ever be since we have to buy anything character specific anew. I think Anet prefer it like that.

You do realize that this is a major investment in time and resources for ANet, not just "flipping a switch". In games where race isn't critical, this can be done almost literally like that. Here, not so much. We're talking expansion size workload for a feature that may not be as popular as some would lead us to believe.

[Flashpoint Gold.3749]

Sorry to necro, but didn't want to make a new thread of this of course. So if the issue is personal story, just set personal story progress to 0 when you change character and then be able to redo it. I can't imagine this being too hard unless they have terrible coding and at that point it should be fixed anyways. It may take time and a bit of work to make it possible but you know they have a lot of incentive to do this, a makeover kit with this ability would sell like hotcakes.

[joneirikb.7506]

@"Flashpoint Gold.3749" said:Sorry to necro, but didn't want to make a new thread of this of course. So if the issue is personal story, just set personal story progress to 0 when you change character and then be able to redo it. I can't imagine this being too hard unless they have terrible coding and at that point it should be fixed anyways. It may take time and a bit of work to make it possible but you know they have a lot of incentive to do this, a makeover kit with this ability would sell like hotcakes.

We don't know how much work that would be. Iirc ANet has said in the past that this plays some kind of havoc with flags, and we don't know how easy those are to fix or even reset.

In short, it would still be almost the same as just deleting the character and starting from scratch again. Main thing you'd lose is the character age.

This becomes a "This looks easy from the outside." situation, because we don't have the knowledge/information that ANet have, and in most cases, not their expertise either. As an example just look at the old WvW Achivements, it took YEARS for them to change those, all the while the entire forums chanting "It's easy, just change some numbers!".

[Samnang.1879]

techi9nical limitations something something not enough resources something something impossible to code etc

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Flashpoint Gold.3749" said:Sorry to necro, but didn't want to make a new thread of this of course.You're continuing the discussion; that's usually a valid reason to post in an existing thread. (ANet doesn't want people to bump their own threads or resurrect exhausted topics.)

So if the issue is personal story, just set personal story progress to 0 when you change character and then be able to redo it. I can't imagine this being too hard unless they have terrible coding and at that point it should be fixed anyways.Your imagination needs a boost. Programmers necessarily make simplifying assumptions for a variety of reasons: reduces the amount of conditional coding, faster computing, more compact data. For example, weapons are designed in a way that assumes that they will never be dyeable — that might (or might not) be great for the game, but it's one of the reasons why ANet can churn out 16-skin weapon sets more quickly than six-piece armor sets. It's conceptually easy to think of ANet changing that (because: dyed weapons would be awesome), but it's programmatically challenging to make it happen.

Put it another way: it's not just the original code, it's all the data that assumes race is fixed, all the story steps that assume it, all the NPC dialogues, and probably a bunch of things we wouldn't even consider from outside the studio.

It may take time and a bit of work to make it possible but you know they have a lot of incentive to do this, a makeover kit with this ability would sell like hotcakes.Don't you think ANet has thought of us this, too? So the fact that they've said they aren't considering adding in this functionality should help convince skeptics as to how "easy" this is to pull off.

We do have a proxy for how difficult it is to mess with character data: for the New Player Experience initiative, ANet made several changes to the order in which story elements happened. On the whole, it made the progression more sensible to newer players. In other words, something much simpler than changing race.

And it screwed up all sorts of stuff something fierce. First, despite devs scouring dialogue, they missed some things that now referenced future event. Nothing game-breaking, but off-putting to anyone paying attention. Second, it created bugs for people who had gotten partway done with some (but not all) of the story steps. It took ANet ages and ages to track down the issues. They implemented fixes, some of which made things a bit worse, some of which solved one issue only to expose another. (Spoiler alert: eventually, I think everything got fixed.)

We can presume from this experience one of the following:

• It's a lot trickier than it seems, to make changes to base elements of the character's history.
• It's not that tricky, but ANet isn't good at doing it without requiring years worth of dev follow up.

In either case, it's not financially sensible for ANet to spend time worrying about it. The target audience is small, because it has to be someone who (a) likes everything about their character except race and (b) is unwilling to spend 800 gems to create a new character plus a few hours leveling them up. So it can't "sell like hotcakes" and the pricing would have to be exorbitant, to pay for the costs.

---

tl;dr it's trickier than it sounds & is likely to generate fewer sales than fans expect

[Faith.3807]

See, the problem I have with ANet's excuses of how "it isn't possible", is that that's a bold-faced, flat-out, brazen LIE. They're lying to us.

Here's the magic of code, especially with code as complex as a video game engine: anything is possible. ANet just doesn't want to invest the resources into writing this code. They've already admitted this in response to the request to be able to dye backpack skins. It's 100% possible, but they don't want to invest resources.

[joneirikb.7506]

@"Faith.3807" said:See, the problem I have with ANet's excuses of how "it isn't possible", is that that's a bold-faced, flat-out, brazen LIE. They're lying to us.

Here's the magic of code, especially with code as complex as a video game engine: anything is possible. ANet just doesn't want to invest the resources into writing this code. They've already admitted this in response to the request to be able to dye backpack skins. It's 100% possible, but they don't want to invest resources.

Define Lie. I mean if it is such a heavy investment that their investors and leaders flat out tell them "Nope, we're not giving you money to do that." They yes, it is impossible.

Is it technically possible, even by small percentages, to change the code ? Sure. But we have no idea how much work, or if it wouldn't collapse a dozen other things on the way.

And ANet has said before that changing race would mess up something fierce with personal story and all the selections you make at character creation, and probably a few other areas as well. So they flat out admitted that it's just too much work to bother.

So, have some Faith in ANet will you ;)