Norn shouldnt just be.....tall humans.

[zealex.9410]

Racials will never be intentionally strong so long as they are exclusive. Anet could maybe open the gates and allow all races ti use all racials on every race and then make them actually useful skills.

[Tzarakiel.7490]

@Zuldari.3940 said:

@Blocki.4931 said:Racial skills are not the place for such a change.

Thats fine I was just getting melancholy and wishful. Oh how about druids getting a animal form, that makes sense

Why would that make sense? Just because WoW and DnD decided druids can do that don't mean they can in other universes. If anything druids in GW2 are based on celestial power not animal transformation.

[Follyfoot.2803]

I managed to make a 4 foot norn, trouble is he is 6 feet wide.

[Fuchslein.8639]

As someone who loves jumping puzzles, I would ban any character from the game that is taller than the tallest Asura. JP-lore should be at the first place of every size decision because anet had the great idea to make JP accessible for everyone and not instanced, hehe.

[Teratus.2859]

@zityz.6089 said:The way they fixed the skill with Braham so that it was always available on the action bar is how the norn should all be. Everything about it felt great! Granted, Braham was my main which is a mesmer and not playing him as a Guardian, which threw me off, but how they had the transformation adjusted so that it didn't interfere with the elite skill, was fantastic. I wouldn't mind a re-adjustment for norns.

Realistically, it wont happen, but one can dream.

I've thrown an idea around a few times about reworking racial skills to be additional F6 through to F10 skills that would naturally be purely an open world PvE thing and I still think this is the best solution to give races that meaningful racial effect that I am looking for.

What we got with the recent Braham instance was a taste of the same concept i've been suggesting for years and that really was a treat.I would love to see this expanded on in future even if it was only the elite racial defined as an F6 skill and that one skill was defined by your choice's in the character creation screen.I'd be fine with that.. scrap the lesser racial skills and just have us gain one racial F6 that is defined by our racial choices.. that would be enough for me.Norns get the beast form of their totem animal.Asura get a Golem based on their chosen college.Sylvari get a Nature skill based on the cycle they were born in.Charr get a Warband skill based on their Legion.Humans get a faith skill based on their chosen God.

I know some people may think that's a bit unfair due to some races having only 3 options and others having more.. especially humans but that's easily balanced and even lore appropriate by having the human god skills be a bit less in the wow factor.They won't be useless but they won't be exceptional either and they could even balance this around the concept of more options = longer cooldown periods between uses.That even fits in with the entire concept of the Gods not being around.. the power of those skills has faded which helps balance them in a way of quantity over quality where as the other races have more quality over quantity.

None of them are going to make or break builds though and that's the whole point, would be a practical PvE only flavour thing to make your race actually have some benefit other than cosmetic.

[Fueki.4753]

@Zephire.8049 said:Some difference is to be expected but instead of a range of ~7.5ft-10.5ft (which would put 9ft right in the middle AKA average), norn can be human height.How is that a problem in any way?In reality, adult humans' heights vary from below 150 cm to over 2 metres.If real humans can have such a height variances, why shouldn't fictional giants be able have that, too?

Go with shortest height and a slim build and it's impossible to tell under armour if a character is norn or human.No adult norn in lore is that short yet players still have the option to be human-sized for gameplay reasons and aesthetic.My Norn lady is the smallest possible and still towers over every female human and Sylvari NPC.I would never call her human-sized.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@Zephire.8049 said:Some difference is to be expected but instead of a range of ~7.5ft-10.5ft (which would put 9ft right in the middle AKA average), norn can be human height.How is that a problem in any way?In reality, adult humans' heights vary from below 150 cm to over 2 metres.If real humans can have such a height variances, why shouldn't fictional giants be able have that, too?

Go with shortest height and a slim build and it's impossible to tell under armour if a character is norn or human.No adult norn in lore is that short yet players still have the option to be human-sized for gameplay reasons and aesthetic.My Norn lady is the smallest possible and still towers over every female human and Sylvari NPC.I would never call her human-sized.

Agreed, why shouldn't Norn also have a variance in height.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Substance E.4852 said:

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:Agreed. I've always felt the norn design in GW2 was pretty off the mark & they need a bit of a redesign. They should look and feel more like a proper giant race and less like huge but weirdly disproportionate humans with oddly pretty faces.

That's pretty much what giants are unless you want them to look like the Jotun or something in which case all that will accomplish is much fewer people rolling a Norn character

Anet could make them more "bestial" or w/e but that just sort of feels like it's stepping on the Charr's toes and something more appropriate to a game where the "Orc Race" is actual orcs and not buffalo cat people

I think it's a stretch to say that any redesign of the norn would result in fewer people rolling them. It's not like they are immensely popular in their current state, and how popular they would be after a redesign would purely be a consequence of how good a job anet did with it. I'm not getting any connection whatsoever with orcs and I'm not sure why you're reading that into the argument. Actually I'm thinking more along the lines of Goliaths in D&D terms.

[Lonami.2987]

@"georgessj.4198" said:Norn deserve to be a separate race. Give their elite skills a chance.....make them playable for once, 240 cooldown with 30 secs duration is just insane has any of you ever seen a norn using a shapesift elite skill? Im not asking for something that breaks the game or thats buffing the race, even a looks only nornish update would do.

I find it highly ironic how ArenaNet dispatched dwarves because they were too similar to humans (allegedly), but then made norn playable when they're just that, large humans. I would take Elonian and Canthan humans as a separate race from the Tyrian version any day of the week. The whole norn thing is specially sad when the sylvari are such an amazing reimagining of elves. The only difference they had with humans was their spirit form (the ability to shapeshift), which pretty much doesn't exist in GW2. Not like it would have any point, considering it's pretty much a charr/tengu reskin. So yeah, norn are kinda pointless.

If it were on my hands, I'd have fused the modern iterations of norn and jotun into a single race. So, give them blue skin, plus carved tattoos instead of ink-based paintings. You can keep the "ancient race" theme going on, but make the modern norn pretty much not remember a thing about their glorious ancient past.

@Teratus.2859 said:

@zityz.6089 said:The way they fixed the skill with Braham so that it was always available on the action bar is how the norn should all be. Everything about it felt great! Granted, Braham was my main which is a mesmer and not playing him as a Guardian, which threw me off, but how they had the transformation adjusted so that it didn't interfere with the elite skill, was fantastic. I wouldn't mind a re-adjustment for norns.

Realistically, it wont happen, but one can dream.

I've thrown an idea around a few times about reworking racial skills to be additional F6 through to F10 skills that would naturally be purely an open world PvE thing and I still think this is the best solution to give races that meaningful racial effect that I am looking for.

What we got with the recent Braham instance was a taste of the same concept i've been suggesting for years and that really was a treat.I would love to see this expanded on in future even if it was only the elite racial defined as an F6 skill and that one skill was defined by your choice's in the character creation screen.I'd be fine with that.. scrap the lesser racial skills and just have us gain one racial F6 that is defined by our racial choices.. that would be enough for me.Norns get the beast form of their totem animal.Asura get a Golem based on their chosen college.Sylvari get a Nature skill based on the cycle they were born in.Charr get a Warband skill based on their Legion.Humans get a faith skill based on their chosen God.

I know some people may think that's a bit unfair due to some races having only 3 options and others having more.. especially humans but that's easily balanced and even lore appropriate by having the human god skills be a bit less in the wow factor.They won't be useless but they won't be exceptional either and they could even balance this around the concept of more options = longer cooldown periods between uses.That even fits in with the entire concept of the Gods not being around.. the power of those skills has faded which helps balance them in a way of quantity over quality where as the other races have more quality over quantity.

None of them are going to make or break builds though and that's the whole point, would be a practical PvE only flavour thing to make your race actually have some benefit other than cosmetic.

A combat tonic would be the simplest solution.

@Tzarakiel.7490 said:

@Zuldari.3940 said:

@"Blocki.4931" said:Racial skills are not the place for such a change.

Thats fine I was just getting melancholy and wishful. Oh how about druids getting a animal form, that makes sense

Why would that make sense? Just because WoW and DnD decided druids can do that don't mean they can in other universes. If anything druids in GW2 are based on celestial power not animal transformation.

To be fair, GW1 druids (And GW2 druid NPCs) have nothing to do with "hurr durr now I'm blue" celestial powers.

[Luthan.5236]

Norn are different cause they have different lore which makes them interesting. I mean ... char basically also are just something like orcs with a bit more hair.The thing about the racial elite skills is: They are meant to have a long CD and not to be that useful - for balancing reasons. (Otherwise people would complain if choice of race would impact the char too much.)

(Interesting is that for engineer you could be tempted to play 5 engineers - to get the different toolbelt skills for each race. But since the skills are not too useful ... it does not really matter.)

[robertthebard.8150]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Substance E.4852 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:Agreed. I've always felt the norn design in GW2 was pretty off the mark & they need a bit of a redesign. They should look and feel more like a proper giant race and less like huge but weirdly disproportionate humans with oddly pretty faces.

That's pretty much what giants are unless you want them to look like the Jotun or something in which case all that will accomplish is much fewer people rolling a Norn character

Anet could make them more "bestial" or w/e but that just sort of feels like it's stepping on the Charr's toes and something more appropriate to a game where the "Orc Race" is actual orcs and not buffalo cat people

I think it's a stretch to say that any redesign of the norn would result in fewer people rolling them. It's not like they are immensely popular in their current state, and how popular they would be after a redesign would purely be a consequence of how good a job anet did with it. I'm not getting any connection whatsoever with orcs and I'm not sure why you're reading that into the argument. Actually I'm thinking more along the lines of Goliaths in D&D terms.

How popular are they? What percentage of the total population has at least one? I know I have 3, but that doesn't make them popular, they just fit their theme being Norn.

[Yggranya.5201]

Yes, the female Norn should obviosly be made more in-line with the males.

[Fueki.4753]

@"Lonami.2987" said:To be fair, GW1 druids (And GW2 druid NPCs) have nothing to do with "hurr durr now I'm blue" celestial powers.I still think that elite spec should be renamed, as it doesn't even slightly fit with what Druids are in Lore.But I don't know what name could fit. Star Caller or Celestial would be weird, too.Astrologian might be the closest fit.

[Yggranya.5201]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@"Lonami.2987" said:To be fair, GW1 druids (And GW2 druid NPCs) have nothing to do with "hurr durr now I'm blue" celestial powers.I still think that elite spec should be renamed, as it doesn't even slightly fit with what Druids are in Lore.But I don't know what name could fit.

Star Caller

or

Celestial

would be weird, too.

Astrologian

might be the closest fit.

How about space druid?

[Fueki.4753]

@Yggranya.5201 said:How about space druid?If it's just adding Space, we might as well call it Space Ranger.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

@"Lonami.2987" said:I find it highly ironic how ArenaNet dispatched dwarves because they were too similar to humans (allegedly), but then made norn playable when they're just that, large humans.

Incorrect, the dwarves were dropped because Anet wanted to get away from the standard elf-dwarf-orc-etc. stereotypes of many fantasy games, not because they were too "human looking".

[Yggranya.5201]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@Yggranya.5201 said:How about

space druid

?If it's just adding

Space,

we might as well call it

Space Ranger.

Heh, sounds good to me. All you need is space.

[Lonami.2987]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@"Lonami.2987" said:To be fair, GW1 druids (And GW2 druid NPCs) have nothing to do with "hurr durr now I'm blue" celestial powers.I still think that elite spec should be renamed, as it doesn't even slightly fit with what Druids are in Lore.But I don't know what name could fit.

Star Caller

or

Celestial

would be weird, too.

Astrologian

might be the closest fit.

I'd just replace the blue transformation effect with a ghostly green version, just like the one the actual druids use.

Alternatively, let druids choose between three different forms using the third trait column, and include both the blue and green versions there.

[Svarty.8019]

@"Game of Bones.8975" said:When all races are "equal" (aside from their racial elite skills), it really makes no difference what they look like or act like.

Well in that case, they should just make them all look the same.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

@Svarty.8019 said:

@"Game of Bones.8975" said:When all races are "equal" (aside from their racial elite skills), it really makes no difference what they look like or act like.

Well in that case, they should just make them all look the same.

Over eight years after the fact? Sure, sounds like a stellar idea.

[Fueki.4753]

@Lonami.2987 said:I'd just replace the blue transformation effect with a ghostly green version, just like the one the actual druids use.Alternatively, let druids choose between three different forms using the third trait column, and include both the blue and green versions there.And they'd have to turn into ghost trees as well, because that's what Druids are in lore.Also, all the skill names and visuals relating to stars and other cosmic/astral things don't fit with the actual Druids.

As it is now, player Druids have nothing in common with Druids in lore, other than the nature Magic that comes from core Ranger.

[Zola.6197]

I haven’t read the comments, so sorry if I’m being redundant!

I like the idea I’ve seen crop up online recently of making new (non-elite) cultural specializations that every race has access to. Perhaps the norn tree deals with the spirits blessings and bestows the norn racial skills, but only the norn get the cool shapeshifting transformation when x spirit is active. Non-norn players just have a faint outline of the spirit surrounding them to indicate that spirits boon is active, but they don’t actually change form.

Might be a bit awkward, but I think it could be a way to make racial skills into “cultural” skills that anyone could conceivably learn by spending time among that culture. But only the Asura will summon the really cool looking golem, or the sylvari’s vines will be more impressive. The activation of the human Gods skills are more impressive and grandiose for humans, the animations for charr skills more savage or dynamic.

If it’s too hard to separate the racial skills from the personal story/character creation, I’m sure the devs could come up with new similarly flavored skills for these hypothetical cultural specs.

Edit: I just think the only way to make race/culture skills relevant is for them to open up for all players, as ANet doesn’t want any single race to become “the meta.” This way racial/cultural traits can be powerful, and there’s still potential for each respective race to have that extra dash of flavor/prestige by matching your cultural spec to your race.

[Yggranya.5201]

@Zola.6197 said:I haven’t read the comments, so sorry if I’m being redundant!

I like the idea I’ve seen crop up online recently of making new (non-elite) cultural specializations that every race has access to. Perhaps the norn tree deals with the spirits blessings and bestows the norn racial skills, but only the norn get the cool shapeshifting transformation when x spirit is active. Non-norn players just have a faint outline of the spirit surrounding them to indicate that spirits boon is active, but they don’t actually change form.

Might be a bit awkward, but I think it could be a way to make racial skills into “cultural” skills that anyone could conceivably learn by spending time among that culture. But only the Asura will summon the really cool looking golem, or the sylvari’s vines will be more impressive. The activation of the human Gods skills are more impressive and grandiose for humans, the animations for charr skills more savage or dynamic.

If it’s too hard to separate the racial skills from the personal story/character creation, I’m sure the devs could come up with new similarly flavored skills for these hypothetical cultural specs.

Edit: I just think the only way to make race/culture skills relevant is for them to open up for all players, as ANet doesn’t want any single race to become “the meta.” This way racial/cultural traits can be powerful, and there’s still potential for each respective race to have that extra dash of flavor/prestige by matching your cultural spec to your race.

The question is, why would i want to service the spirits or human gods just to gain some trivial skill?

[Zola.6197]

@Yggranya.5201 said:

@Zola.6197 said:I haven’t read the comments, so sorry if I’m being redundant!

I like the idea I’ve seen crop up online recently of making new (non-elite) cultural specializations that

every

race has access to. Perhaps the norn tree deals with the spirits blessings and bestows the norn racial skills, but only the norn get the cool shapeshifting transformation when x spirit is active. Non-norn players just have a faint outline of the spirit surrounding them to indicate that spirits boon is active, but they don’t actually change form.

Might be a bit awkward, but I think it could be a way to make racial skills into “cultural” skills that anyone could conceivably learn by spending time among that culture. But only the Asura will summon the really cool looking golem, or the sylvari’s vines will be more impressive. The activation of the human Gods skills are more impressive and grandiose for humans, the animations for charr skills more savage or dynamic.

If it’s too hard to separate the racial skills from the personal story/character creation, I’m sure the devs could come up with new similarly flavored skills for these hypothetical cultural specs.

Edit: I just think the only way to make race/culture skills relevant is for them to open up for all players, as ANet doesn’t want any single race to become “the meta.” This way racial/cultural traits

can

be powerful, and there’s still potential for each respective race to have that extra dash of flavor/prestige by matching your cultural spec to your race.

The question is, why would i want to service the spirits or human gods just to gain some trivial skill?

Therein lies the beauty of player choice.

[kharmin.7683]

@"zealex.9410" said:Racials will never be intentionally strong so long as they are exclusive. Anet could maybe open the gates and allow all races ti use all racials on every race and then make them actually useful skills.

That sounds like folly. Allow racial skills to be used by all races? Why, then, call them "racial" skills?