race change

Chadikiss SoH.3054 · May 25, 2018

i wasn't sure as to how to comment on a previous strand. what if you made the race change available only after personal story has been completed, or when used reset personal story back to the start without reverting any other progress. sure people could do this just for the black lion keys but you could just add that cost of gems onto the race change itself. i know there would probably be a bit of coding required for either of these options and it wouldn't be a perfect solution but it could satisfy the wants of the people while requiring minimal attention versus changing every little detail from one race to another in the personal story. i did not read all the race change discussions and if either or both of these ideas have already been proposed i apologize ahead of time.

Zeefa.3915 · May 25, 2018

Pretty sure these solutions have indeed been suggested before... and been shut down.For better or worse race change is probably never going to happen, due to difficulties in doing so.

Holykitten.3064 · May 25, 2018

It’s easier to either delete the unwanted character or buy a new character slot and create your preferred race/profession combination than it would be to implement race or profession swapping. It’s not everyones favourite solution, but it’s the one we’ve got. It’s less hassle for Anet too.

Linken.6345 · May 25, 2018

@Haleydawn.3764 said:It’s easier to either delete the unwanted character or buy a new character slot and create your preferred race/profession combination than it would be to implement race or profession swapping. It’s not everyones favourite solution, but it’s the one we’ve got. It’s less hassle for Anet too.

you get another character that give you birthday gifts this way

Cynn.1659 · May 25, 2018

@Zeefa.3915 said:Pretty sure these solutions have indeed been suggested before... and been shut down.For better or worse race change is probably never going to happen, due to difficulties in doing so.

Each race has the same number of personal story steps, just make x story step become x step of the new race.

Norn 1 beecomes Human choice 1Norn 3 becomes Human choice 3

So much for difficult.

costepj.5120 · May 25, 2018

But your race is an intrinsic part of your character. You can't change it on a whim like a hairstyle. You can't book into a clinic as a human and leave as a cat or a cow.

Bollocks.4078 · May 25, 2018

What if race change were implemented in a strictly cosmetic way? Would that satisfy people who what a race change? Would that simplify implementation enough to consider doing it? Let's say you you're currently Charr, you're half way through your personal story and you use this to change to human. Now you appear as human. If you continue your personal story you'd still be playing that as a Charr. From there I'm not sure how it would work for LS stories and such. What if it only applies to non-instanced content? Would that be easy enough to implement and also satisfy people who want a race change?

Lonami.2987 · May 26, 2018

@Cynn.1659 said:
@Zeefa.3915 said:Pretty sure these solutions have indeed been suggested before... and been shut down.For better or worse race change is probably never going to happen, due to difficulties in doing so.

Each race has the same number of personal story steps, just make x story step become x step of the new race.

Norn 1 beecomes Human choice 1Norn 3 becomes Human choice 3

So much for difficult.

Even easier, just reset the whole Personal Story.

Zero problems.

starlinvf.1358 · May 26, 2018

@Cynn.1659 said:
@Zeefa.3915 said:Pretty sure these solutions have indeed been suggested before... and been shut down.For better or worse race change is probably never going to happen, due to difficulties in doing so.

Each race has the same number of personal story steps, just make x story step become x step of the new race.

Norn 1 beecomes Human choice 1Norn 3 becomes Human choice 3

So much for difficult.

Except they don't map 1:1 until you get to the Pact arc. Even during the Orders story arc, your race determines which lesser race you interact with, and actually draws variables from previous story steps.

Considering how low the per character investment is now that the vast majority of useful gear is now Account bound, theres very little practical value to preserving a character for any reason that isn't about farming birthday gifts. You level fast, you can even skip leveling entirely using tombs, and barely references to the personal story are made, except for that one phase of the Mordremoth fight.

Dawdler.8521 · May 26, 2018

@"starlinvf.1358" said:Considering how low the per character investment is now that the vast majority of useful gear is now Account bound, theres very little practical value to preserving a character for any reason that isn't about farming birthday gifts. You level fast, you can even skip leveling entirely using tombs, and barely references to the personal story are made, except for that one phase of the Mordremoth fight.

True and that's why it's always been funny when people go into the "technical difficulties" and why its "impossible" and "cant be done because of story".

1) Move all gear to bank. Delete anything that cant be moved.2) Delete character3) Create new character4) Insta level to 80.

Done. Story, exploration... its meaningless. Just do it again. And that's why we dont need it and I wont bother trying to propose automating such as system for a fee. Your character is just another another character. What's the difference between paying 800 gems for a new character slot and even ignore deleting the old character (unless you want the exakt name) and paying 800 gems for Anet to do exactly the above? You actually get more value with a new character slot no matter how they would price a race change, since the old character can be used for mat farming.

Rhaazyk.6374 · January 11, 2019

If Blizzard could do this for World of Warcraft, Arena could do it for GW2 if they REALLY want to make players happy. If that was their main goal they would figure it out. These guys pretty much speak in code. It wouldn't be rocket science for them, just hours of work.

Illconceived Was Na.9781 · January 11, 2019

The short story is that we almost certainly will never be able to change the race of our characters. The reasons are as varied as the argments in favor and boil down to: the costs far outweigh the benefits for something that already has an existing work around.

Among the factors involved in making any business decision:

What would it take to design & implement this? What would it take to do it well?
How many people would be interested in the feature? How much are they willing to pay?

The expenses referenced in the first point surprise a lot of folks unfamiliar with software. Is it easy to just change the race, since it just changes one piece of data? Well, no, because the game depends on assuming race doesn't change. On the obvious side: a few armors & skills are race-dependent; on the subtle side: the entire personal story depends on race. And we know it's not easy to change the personal story because of all the accidental bugs created when ANet attempted to re-order the bits that are identical for all characters. So it's not as simple as a gender change, which has no direct impact on anything in the game other than toggle the look of armor.

ANet also has data on how many people buy a name-change contract and new toon slots (whether discounted or not) and can estimate whether people are willing to pay a premium for a more expensive change, perhaps 1600 gems (since a gender change only costs 800). The number is going to be surprisingly small -- not all that many are willing to spend more than 800 gems on anything (see also: mountfit controversies)

And significantly, there's a viable work around: use a new character slot. It's not ideal (you can't keep your bag slots or crafting or map progress), but it covers everything else one would get with a race change contract -- in particular, it allows you to play a new race.

tl;dr it's a popular idea that is not going to happen, because it's a bad investment of resources.

Responses from ANet About Race Changes

From CC Eva in late 2012Answering to the OP´s question: no, the team is not considering to offer this particular feature to players..From CC Eva, ~2013To change the race in the Gem store will not be an option in Guild Wars 2..From Jonathan Smalling in early 2013
Fan: I’d really like to change my race since it’s a asura and all the weapons get so small and it’s already lvl 80 so i find it a waste to make another one….So i’ve been wondering if there would be something where i can change my race withSmalling: There is currently no Asuran technology that can rewrite the very makeup of a being’s DNA code. The Asura are a very smart people, no doubt. But that doesn’t mean they can use magic to change your molecular soul. And if they did… well then you’re not you, are you?

And for what it's worth, here's just 10 of the threads google found that have hashed (and rehashed) this idea already (on the old forums):

And what might be the original (and perhaps the longest):

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Change-race-order-facility-merged/1395867

Illconceived Was Na.9781 · January 11, 2019

dupe post, sorry

race change

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Responses from ANet About Race Changes

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