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Skritt as a playable race


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The skritt would be a fun race to play and easy to implement due to the fact they are in the game with animations. They would be able to start in any of the starting zones besides rata sum for lore reasons.The personal story could be handled easily by having the player chase down a big shiny. This would lead them to the basic guilds which would be made of different races (none of them are skritt so) this would save you on voice actors cuz the lines are in the game all ready. Maybe have some lines input remarking about the player being skritt. Nothing to big.To make game play interesting and to justify veteran players to pick this race would be when partied up with other skritt the players would get a 5% boost to to all stats up to 20% hard cap. Yes this could be OP in pve but to be honest we need something to shake up the game a little.The boost for wvw would be a movent speed buff at 10% unmounted regards of how many skritt. So 2 people can have the buff and 25 skritt zerg would have the same buff. For pvp there would be no buff.Their races skills could be a steal almost like a thief but it would just give a random boom for a short duration maybe 2 sec and it would also play a voice line "shiny!". The ultimate race ability could be a burrow preventing damage but also not allowing the player to attack. This would also break movement imparairing effects as well as a condition cleanse. The player would stay underground for 4 sec but could trigger an early raise lowering the cooldown by 5 sec. The CD would be a 15 sec one normally.This would encourage even more group play for the bonus and would add more ways to play and meet new people. Harder content would be more accessible to lower skilled players helping them learn the right way to play. Veteran players would use these as new meta for the buff as well. This would help them grind through content they have done many if not hundreds of times before.This would show that you respect all players time and want to double down on the idea of playing together and growing the community. The most expensive part of this would be the skritt main city. It would have to be made from scratch but only open to skritt toons (so no masteries or achievements could be tied to it).This city would not be found till the end of the personal story. This city would have a function allowing the player to travel to each of the main cities by tunnel (excluding rata sum) ie this would be a skritt lions arch but it would not have asura gates it would have tunnels but would be functionally the same.The tunnels would cost a small fee and the lore could be it takes shiny to maintain the tunnels so a tunnel shiny tax was made to help keep them in working order. Down the road you could use these tunnels as content by having them get invaded or collapse from destroyers and players would have to go into these tunnels and clear them out and fix them.These events would award the player with skritt cultural armor skins. But it would be based of of how many times you help. Say 5 events per skin. This would keep the skritt city relevant even for veteran players. These events would be the only way to get the cultural skins.So in conclusion I think there would be a lot of positives to make the skritt a playable race. I feel it would help freshen up onld content for veteran players and help newer players a like. I also think that it would be a great source of content for you guys as would not have to develop too much. I really hope you guys see this a discuss it as a possiblity.

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A single skritt would not be smart enough to do all the things the Commander does.

They would have to be several skritt working together as a single character. At least 5 skritt, or 3 very, very smart ones.

Equipped gear would have to be split between them, so one would wear the helmet amd gloves, another the chest armor and boots, another the pants and shoulders, one would hold main hand weapon, another the offhand, or both would hold a 2h weapon between the two, and while riding two would be on the saddle, and the rest hanging from the mount holding each other's ankles and fluttering up and down while riding like a rag.

As fun as it'll be to have characters with rodent faces like rats, squirres, capibaras and beavers, or having porcupine hair; and as cool as it'd be to do things like an Arc Slicer with 5 skritt, 2 grabbing the greatsword, the other 3 holding them and twirling around, or a Mateor Shower with 2 skritt holding the staff and the other 3 doing a little dance around them; it'll be quite a lot of work for a tribal race that is udnerdeveloped and has very little cultural memory and too much unknown lore that is unknown because they simply can't remember it for too long.

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The skritt would be ... easy to implement due to the fact they are in the game with animations. They would be able to start in any of the starting zones besides rata sum for lore reasons.

On the contrary, the Skritt suffer from all the problems that any new race would bring; the animations are only one of the issues:

  • There's no personal story written for them.
  • There's no unique starting zone.
  • There are no cultural armors or weapons for them.
  • Few (or perhaps none) of the existing character outfits or armors or weapons have been tested with skritt in mind.
  • Only some animations exist, not including weapon skill use (e.g. mesmer GS).
  • New voice actors would need to be hired in several languages; more care would need to be taken in writing dialogue.

Plus there are issues unique to the skritt:

  • Their are lore issues with integrating them into the story (not the least of which is that a solitary skritt is unable to hold complex thoughts for long, if at all).
  • There are specific issues with the existing personal stories and lore, which would have to be adjusted or "ret-conned" to make it work.

None of these are showstoppers individually or collectively; they just all cost resources, lots and lots of resources. And these are the same resources already tasked with Living World, new designs, and so on. So having a new race (any new race) means having less of what we might be otherwise getting.And not everyone enjoys playing a new race, so while this is a major benefit for some people, it's of zero use to others.

tl;dr high cost, lower benefit

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The skritt models are really lacking, they are not made for wearing armour sets or having skill animation. They would need completely redone. For story I could see the PC skritt being one that was either uniquely smart or was experimented on by asura to gain more intelligence. They would probably have to share a starting zone with asura.

If anet is going to add a new race the best option would be tengu since they share models with charr and have some areas that could be made into zones.

But, as much as I love the idea of new races and wish they would happen, anet hasnt shown any interest in making more for pretty understandable reasons.

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@starhunter.6015 said:

@sorudo.9054 said:i much rather want elfs than yet another bend over mistake charr already possess.

The Sylvari are our elven race.

Sylvari are not even close to elves.Elves are (in most cases) are elder race, with powerful knowledge etc, full of themselves about it, taller then humans. Silvari is youngest race on Tyria, naive and most of the time struggling with what is good and bad, smaller then humans. The fact that silvari live in a tree doesn't make them elves. :)

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I suggested once that they do a series of secondary stories with various non-playable sentient species like skritt, quaggan, etc. No fashion wars just pure independent character stories that outside the current stories but free to roam the world. By not worrying about armor skins it simplifies the creation process and they can just reuse current assets.

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@phs.6089 said:

@sorudo.9054 said:i much rather want elfs than yet another bend over mistake charr already possess.

The Sylvari are our elven race.

Sylvari are not even close to elves.Elves are (in most cases) are elder race, with powerful knowledge etc, full of themselves about it, taller then humans. Silvari is youngest race on Tyria, naive and most of the time struggling with what is good and bad, smaller then humans. The fact that silvari live in a tree doesn't make them elves. :)

You obviously have not seen their development, even the original designs where Elf wearing plant clothing. The Sylvari are Tyria's Elves for the most part, not all elfves need to be ancient and more powerful then any other races. That is exactly the cookie cutter stereo type Anet wanted to get away from.

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@Tekoneiric.6817 said:I suggested once that they do a series of secondary stories with various non-playable sentient species like skritt, quaggan, etc. No fashion wars just pure independent character stories that outside the current stories but free to roam the world. By not worrying about armor skins it simplifies the creation process and they can just reuse current assets.

This would be perfect just make the armor invisible and add some cultural outfits you could earn or buy from a vendor.

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