New Race?

[Tiviana.2650]

@yoni.7015 said:What would be the benefit of a new race? I have nine characters, one of each profession and I don’t want to have more characters, so I would have nothing from a new race.

Thats you though, you dont speak for everyone. I wouldnt mind a new race, but it shouldnt be a human type race there are enough of those. The problem is if they add a race that isnt pretty enough and sexy enough to play fashion wars then it would be low played. If you look at the breakdown of races played in gw2 it has the same issue other games have...the majority play the pretty race with the pretty face. So i think they consider that when thinking about adding a race, would it be played enough to warrant the development.

[MoriMoriMori.5349]

@"Tiviana.2650" , you can have pretty sweet charr characters if you want, yknow:http://i.imgur.com/O321NfF.jpg

The problem is that new race add close to nothing gameplay-wise. The race itself is zero value in terms of gameplay, and race capital plus newbie maps around it add very little, comparing to high-lv content which came with HoT or PoF - while require around the same amount of efforts to implement them. It just doesn't worth it.

[Tiviana.2650]

@MoriMoriMori.5349 said:@"Tiviana.2650" , you can have pretty sweet charr characters if you want, yknow:http://i.imgur.com/O321NfF.jpg

The problem is that new race add close to nothing gameplay-wise. The race itself is zero value in terms of gameplay, and race capital plus newbie maps around it add very little, comparing to high-lv content which came with HoT or PoF - while require around the same amount of efforts to implement them. It just doesn't worth it.

Yet new races can have their own story and zones, thats how many races are introduced to games. A new land opens up and the new race is part of that. I think thats pretty big gameplay wise.

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:As I see it, the problem with races is that race is tied to the personal story, achievements, the home instance, etc making new races either needing to fit into the personal story or the devs needing to change character creation. When you consider that it took them a full year to fix one UI bug that forced the closing of the Hall of Monument calculator, changing character creation would be very resource intensive

The last time they commented on new races they said

GW2 meet and greet

I asked whether they have even considered adding a new race for PoF. Mike said that no and then added that new races in GW2 are "not impossible but very unlikely" to appear in the future. Implementing them would require a lot of resources that can be spent better on creating new content relevant for all players.

You mean creating failed projects off to the side, while simply plugging along in this game? Yea that is about right. No it was that they were stretched thin and didn't have the manpower to do it, so again it comes back to excuses. I love this company, and the game but they reap what they sow and when those projects began to become money sinks they should of pulled back and put everyone back onto guild wars 2. They could of made a mobile game like flappy bird with rytlock in the mists, quick and easy or hell make a bejeweled knock off with flunt looking for unique crystals in the depths.

Seriously I don't have the patience for this kitten of "Too many resources" Mounts probably took about the same amount, and they were a whopping success and everyone loves them. Tengu, Awakened, Largos, hell even the hylek? These are all things Id like to see, things I've wanted and now knowing that its not that is not possible its that they have poor management with funds/Projects and when something is CLEARLY not working they wont back off it. Im sorry I didn't want anyone to loose their job, I don't like that they HAD to loose their job. But fresh eyes, and new blood might do wonders for this game and the company as a whole because I can see the dollar signs for race packs in the cash shop. "Twenty bucks and you unlock the race of your choice to be playable, must have a level 80 on the account and the race starts at level 80." The lore/story don't matter much as the revenants have proven, we do not need a starting zone at all as its irrelevant at this point since they just hand us a level 80 scroll for buying an expansion.

IT can be done, it should be done but IT probably wont be.

I see you used part of the quote about resources and omitted the other part.

Implementing them would require a lot of resources that can be spent better on creating new content relevant for all players.

And that’s the point of that quote. New races by themselves don’t create new content and new races won’t be relevant to all players. Many players already have all the chars they want so a new race adds nothing for them while new content is something for all.

And looking back on revenants, do you remember how they had to give players a $10 character slot for their new profession after the forum exploded with complaints? What makes you think that if they added a new race with a new expansion/Living Story episode and didn’t give out a new character slot that there wouldn’t be the same backlash, forcing ANet to give out the new race for free or at a lower price.

[MoriMoriMori.5349]

@"Tiviana.2650" said:Yet new races can have their own story and zones, thats how many races are introduced to games. A new land opens up and the new race is part of that. I think thats pretty big gameplay wise.

Which of the starting maps of current races even are remotely as popular as HoT / PoF / LWS / lv80 maps? How many people would say "I'm spending a lot of time in Caledon Forest on regular basis", and how many people would say the same about Silverwastes, or other popluar high-lv maps?

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Trise.2865" said:I will once again suggest my solution.

Generating a side or "meanwhile" story, similar to the Seeds of Truth missions, cuts the overhead costs dramatically, and is not limited by story, continuity (much), or variable skinning.These could very easily be monetized, much like Guild Wars' Bonus Missions

I know some people really liked the Bonus Mission packs, but I really dislike when a story requires me to play as a fixed profession or a fixed race. For me the joy of an RPG is the variety of ways I can tackle challenges. This is why, despite owning the Bonus Mission packs, I never finished them, why I rarely replayed any of the relevant bits of LS2 that require playing as Caithe, and without the (gated) rewards from GW1 Beyond, I never would have repeated any of the parts that required me to play as that other Thackeray.

In short, I don't think this is likely to be as popular or as remunerative as suggested. The big advantage is that it's definitely cheaper to produce, maybe cheap enough that the limitations won't matter.

[Leo G.4501]

I guess since you didn't like my previous post, I'll have to elaborate on why your interpretation of those statistics is disingenuous.

@maddoctor.2738 said:Humans are the most played race and about 1/3 of the characters are humans.The humanoid races (Human, Norn and Sylvari) combined are about 70%.

This means that the more "unique" races (in terms of animations and armors, not talking about lore/story/aesthetics) the Asura and the Charr are less/equal to 15% each

You would certainly have to ignore lore, story, culture and aesthetics to come to your conclusions but doing so leaves you extremely open to assumption or jumping to conclusions. What I concluded from my interpretation of those same statistics is simply that there is a decent amount of the playerbase that would choose to explore other races than the standard human portrayed in nearly all fantasy RPGs and that interpretation is not an assumption it draws no conclusions from those statistics.

@maddoctor.2738 said:What we get from the data above:a) creating a new race with a completely unique skeleton, meaning brand new animations and armors, is not a very good idea

How do you get that from the above data? Where are your polls asking about animations, armor selections and so forth? Nothing in those data points exclaims that the choice in race is based on any of those.

@maddoctor.2738 said:b) creating a new race that uses either the Asura or Charr skeleton is also not a very worthwhile investment

Again, where do you get that? Asura is statistically more created and played than Norn or Sylvari.

@maddoctor.2738 said:c) in order to be profitable and apply to as many people as possible and at the same time take less resources and development time, a humanoid skeleton should be used for a potential new race, this narrows down the available races to select. Less development, higher potential audience, what's not to like?

One last time, where do you get this? There is certainly no financial data included in those statistics nor development resource data. The truth about statistics is, you can make them express a lot of different messages if you manipulate them the right way but one statistic I am confident of is that I'm 100% certain that none of us are mind readers.

[kharmin.7683]

@CJH.2879 said:players in general are wanting this.

Based on an extremely small subset of the player base as represented in these forums? If a new race is something that ANet thinks might make them money, then I'm sure that their marketing people have (or are in the process of?) surveyed and done all of that marketing stuff to determine whether or not such an endeavor is profitable for the company.

Thus far, it would seem not to be so.

[Leo G.4501]

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:And looking back on revenants, do you remember how they had to give players a $10 character slot for their new profession after the forum exploded with complaints? What makes you think that if they added a new race with a new expansion/Living Story episode and didn’t give out a new character slot that there wouldn’t be the same backlash, forcing ANet to give out the new race for free or at a lower price.

Well, it's not like the devs lost actual money by giving players an additional slot. They lost possible profit though. But I feel that the whole Revenant character slot debacle was pretty dumb on those that complained about it. If I'm not mistaken, some of the expansion bundles had character slots which added value to them and just dolling out character slots for everyone just made it less useful unless you were planning to make more than 2 characters at the time.

If there were a hypothetical expansion that had a new race as one of the features, I feel they should merely add the 1 slot along with it, especially if they market it that the story of that expansion carries two sides, one of which you can only experience as the new race. For bigger bundles, of course add more slots because it'd have a bit more value to those that want to make multiple professions of that race.

[A Big Guy.9702]

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:"Setting unreachable standards is counterproductive: the perfect is the enemy of the good" implies a belief that ANet's minimum standards for a new race is unrealistic... or that they don't really know what their fans would want for a new race.When I wrote that, I was under the impression that they felt it necessary to integrate the race into all previous story content, based on what some others had said in previous discussions beyond these forums. And I think we can both agree that's probably more ambitious than necessary.

The remainder of this post is speculative, because I have no idea what I'm talking about.

There are good reasons that no established company does that. It's fine for a startup, sometimes it's essential. They don't have access to long-term funding sources. But an already-successful company, especially a game company cannot afford to tie their fortunes to the fickle preferences of their fans. ANet already has stockholders breathing down its owners' necks (hence the recent layoffs); things would be worse if fans are expecting "return on investment" for something so nebulous to define as "better optimization" or "playable race." What you want isn't going to match what I want, but both of us would have reason to expect something close to our ideal, especially if we pay more than the cost of an expansion.I'm not quite sure how the fickleness of the fans plays into this funding model. They either pledge, or they don't. I am imagining this as a feature in conjunction with existing funding models, as a form of further monetization. It enables players to vote with their wallets and small minorities interested in certain types of content (say, dungeons) can directly pay for the improvement of that content. Players in these minorities, interested in less popular content, would finally have a way of getting attention put towards that content, which would otherwise be too unpopular and expensive to develop further.

This would mean that, as content receives further development and improves, it could draw in more people and become profitable. As an example, I think dungeons would be run more regularly if they weren't so buggy.

In my hypothetical here, I'm envisioning loose plans to provide a reasonably clear picture of what to expect, while leaving enough ambiguity for there to be wiggle room in implementation. "This is the race we want to develop. Here is some concept art. We want to do create a starter zone of about X size and achieve Y aesthetic represented by Z concept art." Same goes for performance. "We want to address X issue which should resolve Y problems and reduce the strain on Z bottleneck. While precise numbers will vary per user depending on hardware and a variety of factors, we believe improved performance will at least be noticeable, and for the majority should be substantial." Hard numbers might be possible but that really depends. Or QoL features. "Build templates have been a long requested feature. We have this concept art of the planned UI, and upon successful funding, we estimate that it will be in game before [incredibly safe, conservative estimate]."

So long as people know what they're signing up for, and there's transparency, I think that it could work. I do think that there's a risk of bad press though. Most people expect bugs and QoL features to be fixed or added without having to pay devs to do it. But at this point, I'm so used to bad performance/QoL in my video games that I'll pay to make it stop. If fixing bugs or adding QoL features isn't profitable enough to pursue, then just attach profit to it, please, because I am tired of poor performance and needless inconvenience.

Further, a company needs some sort of stability for hiring top talent. Crowd-sourcing won't guarantee there's a job for the same staff after the crowd-pleasing project ends, whereas the traditional corporate model comes as close as any of us have. Crowd-sourcing would have to account for training and distractions, for the extra HR personnel and extra computers needed to support the extra coders... and none of that can just join and disappear at will.I concur. I'd imagine that they would probably have a small flexible team dedicated to working on this stuff, sort of like the LWS teams already in existence. They'd contract out and bring in members of other teams as necessary. So, if they needed to do some engine work, they'd ring up one of the engine guys.

And what sort of game do you think we'd have if only the richest 10% can afford to pay the amounts needed to fund their favorite projects? Without ANet having total control over the direction of the game, GW2 would be a kite in a thunderstorm, blowing whichever way the air currents are flowing.As I said, this is in conjunction with existing funding models. It's a way to make unprofitable endeavors profitable. If a small group of people have the means to pay for the addition of a new race, is the game not better off for everyone due to added player choice? I do think there can be too many races at a point, such that it is impossible to write lore for all of them, but we have a ways to go before hitting that. In general, I think paying for content that would otherwise be totally sidelined provides the devs the opportunity to take that content and make it into something that a much larger swathe of players would enjoy.

ANet would still have total control over the direction of the game. This would be an addition. Companies are driven by monetary incentives. Small communities who enjoy unpopular content have no means of incentivizing anet to improve or fix the content they enjoy. This provides them a means of creating that monetary incentive.

Near as I can tell, it's been seriously considered by all sorts of people. There's a reason that top talent that left ANet in 2017|2018 went to established and traditionally-funded companies. Crowd-sourcing is a great model for start-ups, but the model is still in its infancy. Major MMOs aren't "gigs" that can gain and lose people at a whim; they take half-decades to establish, years|half-years for significant new projects, and half-years|quarters even for things like episodes.I haven't seen it considered, but I'd be really interested if it had. I think I can imagine why it would be shot down. Because again, it just seems like lowering the bar. "Oh wow. We need to pay game companies to fix their buggy products now. As if all the microtransactions weren't enough." But I know enough about development to grasp, at least on a basic level, why stuff like that gets sidelined for content production. If there's no money in it, the suits aren't interested. So put some money in it. Have a small portion of the team dedicated to these tasks, with a public roadmap of what's being worked on.

It's a dumb pipe dream. But I just want all this stuff to get addressed or fixed or added, and I don't know how else consumers could steer game companies toward this stuff beyond just boycotting. We only have a stick. There's no carrot. This gives us a carrot.

[yoni.7015]

@Tiviana.2650 said:

@yoni.7015 said:What would be the benefit of a new race? I have nine characters, one of each profession and I don’t want to have more characters, so I would have nothing from a new race.

Thats you though, you dont speak for everyone. I wouldnt mind a new race, but it shouldnt be a human type race there are enough of those. The problem is if they add a race that isnt pretty enough and sexy enough to play fashion wars then it would be low played. If you look at the breakdown of races played in gw2 it has the same issue other games have...the majority play the pretty race with the pretty face. So i think they consider that when thinking about adding a race, would it be played enough to warrant the development.

I never said I speak for everyone so please don’t lie words in my mouth I never used.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Leo G.4501 said:You would certainly have to ignore lore, story, culture and aesthetics to come to your conclusions but doing so leaves you extremely open to assumption or jumping to conclusions.

On the contrary my entire post was about the technical part of the race discussion, which is objective. Lore, story, culture and aesthetics cannot be quantified and are entirely subjective.

How do you get that from the above data? Where are your polls asking about animations, armor selections and so forth? Nothing in those data points exclaims that the choice in race is based on any of those.

The data shows that one race with unique skeleton is played by a tiny 15% while another race with a different unique skeleton doesn't even reach 15%,

Again, where do you get that? Asura is statistically more created and played than Norn or Sylvari.

But not by the humanoid skeletons as a whole which amount for 70% of the characters.

One last time, where do you get this? There is certainly no financial data included in those statistics nor development resource data. The truth about statistics is, you can make them express a lot of different messages if you manipulate them the right way but one statistic I am confident of is that I'm 100% certain that none of us are mind readers.

Let's sum up, designing a new race with the same skeleton as one of the current races will require objectively less development resources than creating an entire new skeleton. This is because using a skeleton of the current races means all the animations and armors will be largely the same. Norn, Sylvari and Humans share armors and animations. The least amount of development resources required is by using a humanoid skeleton.

Furthermore, Charr and Asura have other issues too. Charr have a tail and run on all 4 legs, to keep their development cost low, the new race using Charr profile would have to also have a tail and run on all 4 legs, to keep the animations the same. Asura have their unique flavor that would need to be applied to the new race using the Asura skeleton, meaning a race based on the Asura profile will also have to follow certain limitations.

[Brycar.2651]

My idea for a new “race” is mermaid / mermen. They were all human at some point but either by choice or curse became waterbreathers with a flshy appearance. Their personal story is human. they use all human armor even on legs and feet. When on land they have legs and feet. When in the water their lower half transforms into a fish tail and fins.

The same idea could apply to Norn, Charr, Silvari, and Asura. They just change into differs lower halves; shark, killer whale, eel, sea horse, etc.

It is really just a fancy infusion/tonic/outfit.

Bring on the sea dragon.

[Leo G.4501]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Leo G.4501 said:You would certainly have to ignore lore, story, culture and aesthetics to come to your conclusions but doing so leaves you extremely open to assumption or jumping to conclusions.

On the contrary my entire post was about the technical part of the race discussion, which is objective. Lore, story, culture and aesthetics cannot be quantified and are entirely subjective.

Lore, story, culture and aesthetics CAN be quantified, in the context of what players choose to play. You simply have to ask them and then count the number. That's what quantify means. It's just that you can't quantify it because you don't have those numbers, which is the point I'm making.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

How do you get that from the above data? Where are your polls asking about animations, armor selections and so forth? Nothing in those data points exclaims that the choice in race is based on any of those.

The data shows that one race with unique skeleton is played by a tiny 15% while another race with a different unique skeleton doesn't even reach 15%,

But that doesn't tell you that animations, armor or skeleton has anything to do with it.

Again, where do you get that? Asura is statistically more created and played than Norn or Sylvari.

But not by the humanoid skeletons as a whole which amount for 70% of the characters.

But Sylvari uses the humanoid skeleton but is played less than the Asura that doesn't use the humanoid skeleton. This is a factor that contradicts your observations and ignores that what inflates that 70% statistic isn't Sylvari and Norn, but that Human is statistically higher in characters made/played. You don't factor in why humans are made more, just that the humanoid skeleton is played more. You don't think it might have to do with veteran players from GW1? Or that human-types are just more commonly made across most MMOs?

@maddoctor.2738 said:

One last time, where do you get this? There is certainly no financial data included in those statistics nor development resource data. The truth about statistics is, you can make them express a lot of different messages if you manipulate them the right way but one statistic I am confident of is that I'm 100% certain that none of us are mind readers.

Let's sum up, designing a new race with the same skeleton as one of the current races will require objectively less development resources than creating an entire new skeleton. This is because using a skeleton of the current races means all the animations and armors will be largely the same. Norn, Sylvari and Humans share armors and animations. The least amount of development resources required is by using a humanoid skeleton.

Well firstly, Norn don't share armor and animations (at least not Norn Males). Secondly, tell me what you know about development resources and their allocation. Educate me.

@maddoctor.2738 said:Furthermore, Charr and Asura have other issues too. Charr have a tail and run on all 4 legs, to keep their development cost low, the new race using Charr profile would have to also have a tail and run on all 4 legs, to keep the animations the same. Asura have their unique flavor that would need to be applied to the new race using the Asura skeleton, meaning a race based on the Asura profile will also have to follow certain limitations.

Well I could counter this in several ways: 1. If a humanoid race such as the Largos were implemented, how are you certain that they wouldn't have unique animations? 2. I've seen a Charr run on two legs. Simply be in combat and stow your weapon. 3. You don't really have an argument for a race based on a Charr skeleton with a tail that could run on four legs. 4. The changes you outline (changing run/walk stride, taking/changing tail sections of the armor, modifying the profile of Asura) sound about as difficult as working a new race into the current story, i.e. not so difficult that it wouldn't as worthwhile as a humanoid.

Frankly, I don't care how you rationalize your stance. Had you just mentioned that "most players make humanoid characters" so just make a humanoid new race, that's a solid observation. I'm just pointing out that your conclusions aren't actually objective.

[Sirius.4510]

@maddoctor.2738 said:The data shows that one race with unique skeleton is played by a tiny 15% while another race with a different unique skeleton doesn't even reach 15%,Keep in mind that the expected number, given five races, would be 20%. Someone's going to miss that, and missing it by a quarter or so isn't awful.

Personally, I'd just guess that races in GW2 are more expensive than races in other MMOs, and that's why we haven't seen new ones. The most obvious culprit would be all the voicing, given how much labor it takes to produce it. Animation and armor sets are a cost that would hit other MMOs as well.Bidding away voicing in future might, then, make it more feasible; but after having it feature so heavily in story content to date, that'd be a really bitter pill to swallow - and having some races voiced and others not might be even worse. The most obvious decision would be to do what GW1 did and save it for another game. I don't know whether recent events would change anything there.