Making new Races available and playable

[Pagan Highlander.5948]

   This was just a random thought, but i think it might be an interesting and viable idea. People have always wanted to play other races such as the Tengu, Skritt, qaugans, dwarves, etc. The idea of this is- Once a Character has finished the personnel story to level 40 I believe (where they choose between Vigil, Priory or whisperers) they can purchase a race change (similar to a name change or a make-over kit). That would allow a character to be changed to some of the Races from the Icebrood saga stories.

    The reason for the story line requirement would be so that they would not have to do Story lines for each race allowign them to begin from the Orders section of personnel stories. I believe this is one reason they have been opposed to new races. You already have to ability sort of to play a dwarf by using the infusion. They also do this with some potions. This would introduce some fun new ways of playing them permanently.

[mindcircus.1506]

Cool.

So how do you handle the expense of having every player character voice line for all branches of the personal story  from 40 to 80, all PC voicelines from Heart of Thorns, Season 3, Path of Fire, Season 4 and Icebrood saga for each race having to be redone...twice?

 

Or do you assume this playerbase would accept their Quagaan using Char voiceover?
You know... the playerbase that lost their collective minds at the Tengu in a DRM not sounding birdy enough.

[Omega.6801]

Here we go again. New forums, same topics...

 

I'd rather have them spend resources on something else.

[Dawdler.8521]

Will you redo the 5000 or so skins needing new skeletal animations for a meaningful new race?

A transformation is not a new race. That's a transformation. Which is fine I guess.

[Zephire.8049]

The main issue is two-fold: redoing thousands of skins onto new models and the engine code.

 

Unless a new race were copy-pasted from an existing player race and given a texture change, every piece of armour would need to be adjusted and tested for clipping with the player model and other pieces of armour, and weapons would need to be adjusted for size. At ~750 skins for each weight (not including outfits, back items, or weapons) that will require a lot of time from both modelers (to change the model be it stretch, squish, add, or delete areas) and artists (who have to add texture and dye channels), and QA time to do a test run for any immediate bugs (though a number would still slip through given the sheer amount of combinations).

 

And the player's race is essentially hard-coded into the game the moment they're created and it's literally impossible to change a character's race without the database imploding (hyperbole, though barely). Part of that is the 1-40 story and those options but it's more than that. Plus the personal story is old code that can be broken so easily there are still bugs that have existed for years because they're not considered worth the risk of fixing since something else could break due to the fix. If Anet really wanted to, they could probably fix a bunch of them but the resources vs benefit calculation favours the (lack of) benefit from those fixes.

 

There's also the lore aspect of things because quaggan, skritt, tengu, etc. weren't part of the fight against Zhaitan. The quaggan and skritt were brought on as allies during the personal story but neither lead any forces. Quaggan only had a (small) group of fighters in HoT and skritt only joined the Pact during LW4. Tengu have been AFK until this year. One thing GW2 likes is its lore and none of the races you mentioned were there 9 years ago in the timeline.

 

• Other issues with adding new races:
  • Dialogue. Bringing on two new VAs per new race per episode is expensive and it can complicate things for the writers.
  • Animation. Whole new animations have to be made/modified to be acceptable for player characters.
  • New model + model customization. None of the NPC races are up to par to be a playable character thus would have to be remade from scratch with customization options being created for them. Plus all past NPC models would have to be replaced with new models.
  • How to integrate them with past episodes. There's dialogue that specifies player race in old content and that all needs to be updated from LW2 forward. The typical single player game can easily have over 100k lines of dialogue with MMOs having far more. If that dialogue is spoken instead of text, they need to bring back the VA to re-record their line and add that in.
  • Can of worms is opened. If a new race is added, there will be a massive amount of complaints and demands that X, Y, and Z race also be added as playable.

 

As cool as it would be to have even more options, there's a lot of logistical issues for adding new playable races at this point in time.

[Fenella.2634]

20 minutes ago, Zephire.8049 said:

• Other issues with adding new races:
  • Dialogue. Bringing on two new VAs per new race per episode

Not just two. Two per language version, so six to eight people in total (not sure how the Chinese version would be treated, but most likely they'd also want the new race) 

[kharmin.7683]

3 hours ago, lokh.2695 said:

Here we go again. New forums, same topics...

 

I'd rather have them spend resources on something else.

Yep.  And the new forums have a search function, too.  Imagine.

[Linken.6345]

26 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Yep.  And the new forums have a search function, too.  Imagine.

The old one did aswell, was fixed about a year ago atleast.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

2 hours ago, Zephire.8049 said:

The main issue is two-fold: redoing thousands of skins onto new models and the engine code.

 

Unless a new race were copy-pasted from an existing player race and given a texture change, every piece of armour would need to be adjusted and tested for clipping with the player model and other pieces of armour, and weapons would need to be adjusted for size. At ~750 skins for each weight (not including outfits, back items, or weapons) that will require a lot of time from both modelers (to change the model be it stretch, squish, add, or delete areas) and artists (who have to add texture and dye channels), and QA time to do a test run for any immediate bugs (though a number would still slip through given the sheer amount of combinations).

 

And the player's race is essentially hard-coded into the game the moment they're created and it's literally impossible to change a character's race without the database imploding (hyperbole, though barely). Part of that is the 1-40 story and those options but it's more than that. Plus the personal story is old code that can be broken so easily there are still bugs that have existed for years because they're not considered worth the risk of fixing since something else could break due to the fix. If Anet really wanted to, they could probably fix a bunch of them but the resources vs benefit calculation favours the (lack of) benefit from those fixes.

 

There's also the lore aspect of things because quaggan, skritt, tengu, etc. weren't part of the fight against Zhaitan. The quaggan and skritt were brought on as allies during the personal story but neither lead any forces. Quaggan only had a (small) group of fighters in HoT and skritt only joined the Pact during LW4. Tengu have been AFK until this year. One thing GW2 likes is its lore and none of the races you mentioned were there 9 years ago in the timeline.

 

• Other issues with adding new races:
  • Dialogue. Bringing on two new VAs per new race per episode is expensive and it can complicate things for the writers.
  • Animation. Whole new animations have to be made/modified to be acceptable for player characters.
  • New model + model customization. None of the NPC races are up to par to be a playable character thus would have to be remade from scratch with customization options being created for them. Plus all past NPC models would have to be replaced with new models.
  • How to integrate them with past episodes. There's dialogue that specifies player race in old content and that all needs to be updated from LW2 forward. The typical single player game can easily have over 100k lines of dialogue with MMOs having far more. If that dialogue is spoken instead of text, they need to bring back the VA to re-record their line and add that in.
  • Can of worms is opened. If a new race is added, there will be a massive amount of complaints and demands that X, Y, and Z race also be added as playable.

 

As cool as it would be to have even more options, there's a lot of logistical issues for adding new playable races at this point in time.

All of the above cannot be stated enough....literally.