List of reasons why we can and should have a "Race change" service.

[Aodlop.1907]

I think people care much more about the ability to change race than they do having a perfect Vanilla story for their character. Just randomize it.

Remove all appearances applied to the gear during the race change process, so that you can't have a norn wearing a sylvari dress or an asuran helmet.

 

It's just frustrating to invest a lot of time in a character, get really deep into Living world completion and map exploration, only to realize we'd like our character to look different, except the only way to do that is to create a new one and reset all your progression entirely.

 

Any issue that race change may present can easily be solved. The compromises we can find around them will never be as disappointing as not having race change at all.

[Linken.6345]

Were is the list your title speak of?

 

Edit

 

Having 19 charcters I dont see a need for a race change option just delete and remake or buy another slot.

Edited June 4, 2021 by Linken.6345

[joneirikb.7506]

Judging from the messages they've given in the past, it is not viable, as in too much problems/bugs/work that they can't defend it economically.

 

From memory, it caused some serious problems with all manner of things, and that it spiralled out of control and they might not even be able to identify all the areas it affected.

 

So it is definitively not something they can just wave their magic wand at, and it is suddenly fixed. It might be so bad that they would for all practical effects have to build GW3 to fix it.

It does look like you're familiar with the earlier topics about this, but I'd still recommend searching out for some of the older posts.

Edited June 4, 2021 by joneirikb.7506

[Sobx.1758]

43 minutes ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

Any issue that race change may present can easily be solved.

If it's easy then write the code for anet to implement these changes, I guess?

 

 

The only way I'd care about this idea is probably in the event of us getting a new playable race. Otherwise, I've made my decisions during character selection with all options available so I have no problem with that.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

The way they hard coded your race and class to your character and the personal story journal is the reason why this will never happen.

[Danikat.8537]

If it's possible without breaking anything I imagine it could be occasionally useful for some people to have that option, but it's not something I'd ever use.

 

Even if I changed a characters race and name and gave them all new equipment it would feel weird to me, especially just carrying on the story as if nothing had changed or as if this new character had done everything the previous character did. I'd much rather make a new one. I also don't see any benefits to doing it since so many things are account wide in this game and I always have more than enough tomes of knowledge to instantly level a character so it's not like it's going to take me very long to catch them up to my existing characters.

[Quench.7091]

They could make a fresh character, copy over character specific things as fresh character specific things, then delete the old character. If they had any complications with code before, that's the dirty and perhaps easy way of handling it, if the code is actually a spaghetti mess. Nothing unnecessary would remain to cause any trouble, as it would be a clean slate with only necessary things copied over. Then they'd just need to comb over any equipment slots for racial specific things, unequip those, and place them in the character's mailbox. I believe World Of Warcraft did that trick a few times with their faction/racial items.

Where there's a will, there's a way. It's must a matter of that and if they have the time/money for it.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

There is one option that could work out. Story is separated in chapters anyway and personal story exists remotely from expansions and LW. 

 

So they could wipe your entire personal story, as it exists separately. You return to the character creation menu and have to start from the tutorial again.

 

They could send you a mail with all your bag-slots/build-templates/make-overkits/ect. you have used on that character and a level 80 instant boost - if the character was level 80.

 

In addition they should block the rewards of both levelups and personal story progression, because our community would definitely abuse that. And they might change the character-birthday to the race-swap-day.

 

But even then it would be a mess.

[Manasa Devi.7958]

If it's really just about appearance, it might be doable. Create a trans-speciesification kit. A kit that allows you to select a new race before applying the usual effects of a total makeover kit. The new kit will only work if the character doesn’t have any gear equiped. Everything will continue working as before, all game systems, story and otherwise, will keep treating you as your original race, except racially bound equipment. I don't know the state of the code of course so it might be too much trouble to implement for the returns such an item might bring.

[Obtena.7952]

I know a reason not to ... because it's low value to them and players. 

[Omega.6801]

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

[Danikat.8537]

5 hours ago, Quench.7091 said:

Where there's a will, there's a way. It's must a matter of that and if they have the time/money for it.

I suspect it's mainly a matter of whether enough people want it that it's worth spending the time and money on that over using it to do something else.

 

That's the usual conversation at my work when someone wants me to be involved in another project. It's rare that it's not possible (or at least rare that it's obviously impossible from the start) but I only have so many hours in the day/week/month and can only spend them doing one thing at a time so I have to go to my line manager and discuss whether to take this new project on and if so what gets dropped or delayed to make it happen. Of course if I can't do it someone else probably can, but they'll have the same considerations, they just might have different priorities.

 

My impression is that race change isn't that commonly requested (I suspect it helps that race is almost entirely cosmetic) so if it's a lot of work to make it happen it may not be worthwhile for Anet.

 

Edit: I set up a poll to get a rough idea of how popular this might be. Of course forum polls aren't necessarily representative of the entire playerbase, and in this case there's a lot of unknown factors but I think it's good enough to get a rough idea of how much demand there might be for race change.

Edited June 4, 2021 by Danikat.8537

[kharmin.7683]

Right.  I agree that there probably isn't enough potential return on the investment of resources to make it worthwhile for Anet to implement.

[MarkoGold.7126]

22 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

I think people care much more about the ability to change race than they do having a perfect Vanilla story for their character. Just randomize it.

Remove all appearances applied to the gear during the race change process, so that you can't have a norn wearing a sylvari dress or an asuran helmet.

 

It's just frustrating to invest a lot of time in a character, get really deep into Living world completion and map exploration, only to realize we'd like our character to look different, except the only way to do that is to create a new one and reset all your progression entirely.

 

Any issue that race change may present can easily be solved. The compromises we can find around them will never be as disappointing as not having race change at all.

race  change is not possible because of the personal story of your character you know the racial story.

[Aodlop.1907]

1 hour ago, MarkoGold.7126 said:

race  change is not possible because of the personal story of your character you know the racial story.

I don't get how that's an issue. Just generate a completely random one and that's the end of it.

[Dawdler.8521]

4 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

I don't get how that's an issue. Just generate a completely random one and that's the end of it.

Its not. They could just lock it, replace the last mission bio screen with an "you're adopted bookah but we'll speak to you like an Asura because we love you, relativly speaking", completely reset it from scratch etc. The story missions have no meaning.

 

However, a race change is in practice just store items->delete character->new character->restore items->restore character bound gem purchases. You can do this today and get a 100% "race changed" character. The only "complicated" part is you need to swap/delete some race armour if you used that or of course other character bound junk - acceptable losses.

 

Should Anet automate this? No I dont think so. The very point of GW2 is having different characters. The race of one doesnt mean anything. Have all the races! All the classes! Plus if we take into account max possible gemstore purchases we are talking a "worth" of like... 4000 gems or something. Thats what it should cost. Would you pay that? Or just buy a new character slot for 500 gems on sale.

[Astralporing.1957]

On 6/4/2021 at 2:47 AM, Aodlop.1907 said:

Any issue that race change may present can easily be solved.

According to dev statements in the past, that's absolutely not the case.

[Blude.6812]

LOL another one. It is not going to happen according to the devs. Give it up, and BTW try a search.

 

[The Greyhawk.9107]

The forums need a pop-up message for right before someone makes a new thread that says "Be sure to check the search function to see if this topic hasn't already been beaten to death".

 

Guild Wars 2 has spaghetti code that breaks whenever certain things happen, like messing with the Personal Story or other aspects of our characters.  And considering the turnover at Anet its no longer a given that there is anyone still there that knows the game's code well enough.

[Luthan.5236]

No reason for race change. And only reasons against it: The core story is tied to this. (Which was different based per race.)

 

Reasons against it: Would need game changes. (With the so called "spaghetti code" this might not be as easy as you think.) And only a minority of users woudl use it. (We already have another thread with a poll.)

 

The main reason why not many would use it is (my guess): Most have put some thoughts into it before creating a char. Later there is still a lot of customization possible. (Face, hair - the makeover kits. And also different skins for armor and weapons.)

 

+ it is so easy to just make another char and get him to level 80 if you want to play some specific content. Just turnin him into a main might be a lot of work (doing ever single map completion and story). But for that we have already our main chars where we put some thought into it before creating them.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

Personal story up to lvl 30. Changing your race would definitely break the spaghetti code holding this game together.

Edit: probably the same thing would happen if anet let you change your faction in the pact.

Edited June 5, 2021 by Shadowmoon.7986

[Dawdler.8521]

6 hours ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Personal story up to lvl 30. Changing your race would definitely break the spaghetti code holding this game together.

Edit: probably the same thing would happen if anet let you change your faction in the pact.

Then ignore that. I will refer to my post that its pointless but you are implying that doing these 4 things in order would break the game due to spaghetti code:

 

Deleting character on race A

Create new character on race B

Apply the same character upgrades the deleted character had

Instalevel it to the same level the deleted character was on

 

What about the personal story you say? Redo it you lazy bum. What about world exploration, crafting levels etc. Pretty sure Anet can insta complete for a sizeable cost. And of course you can still skip 3 of the steps and achieve the same exact thing much cheaper. Because that is... a new character.

Edited June 6, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[Zephire.8049]

Honestly those things very well could break a character, if not the account itself given how badly the personal story code has aged. One of the reasons they don't fix personal story bugs that have been around for years is because even if they fix it, they could very well break something else in the process. At least the current bugs they know the extent and frequency of them, and the community can chime in far quicker than support to confirm it's a known bug and what to do about it.

 

Looking at the code, it's hilariously bad in hindsight but it is what it is and 2 expansions (soon to be 3 barring an engine overhaul) and 5 story arcs have been built on it—plus nearly 9 years of various updates and changes. If they say that the code is too spaghetti and hanging on with duct tape and gumption, I'm inclined to believe them. The code is ancient, future-proofing seems to have only been a priority the past two or three years, and a lot of people who worked with the original GW1 code and early GW2 code are no longer with the company.

 

It's far safer and easier to spend time on other things (especially when there's a workaround for race changes) rather than something that would be a massive undertaking for something only a small amount of players would use. If regular updates with more recent code still result in a HoT-era novelty crashing the map, random tool tips crashing the map, and mount skins crashing players (among other things), it's almost expected that touching the personal story code would result in far more extensive issues up to the possibility of entire accounts being corrupted.

[Doghouse.1562]

On 6/4/2021 at 1:47 AM, Aodlop.1907 said:

Any issue that race change may present can easily be solved.

Very unlikely.

 

I really doubt this will happen. And here's why.

I've had an extended (decades) career in IT as a developer and tester, on products with large amounts of code, and one lesson I learned VERY early on is that something that looks to the end user like a "simple" change almost never is. If the product wasn't designed from the very beginning to support the sort of thing you're considering, and you're not lucky enough for it to have happened that way by chance, it's likely to be tied into the design in all sorts of ways that you didn't intend or expect - and that means all sorts of things to go wrong, often in weird ways. Which means, in turn, a lot of work: to try and work out what needs to be changed and how; to make the change;, to test them all; and then to fix all the bugs in the areas that you missed (frequently while the users tell you what a terrible job you did, and that you can't possibly have bothered to test your changes - because some bugs WILL escape into the wild, however good your testing actually is). If you're going to change something like that, it really has to be worth it, because that "simple" change is going to be expensive.

Sadly, the truth is that, in all probability, we'll never get a race change option. I'd love it myself, too, but I'm pragmatic; if it were trivial, ANet would almost certainly have delivered it years ago. That they haven't, tells me that it we're in the "a lot of time and effort" category - for something that is, in the end, a "nice-to-have" change that would greatly please a few players but make no practical difference whatsoever to ANet's revenue stream. So, instead, they'll put the effort, and money, elsewhere - developing new content and fixing the more major outstanding bugs as they appear. And (unless we delete and reroll them) you and I will be stuck for the rest of our time in game with characters we wish we'd specced differently. That's life, I'm afraid; but in the end, I'd rather ANet protect their revenue stream and keep delivering new stuff that keeps the game alive.

 

(Multiple edits for gramnmar and content.)

Edited June 6, 2021 by Doghouse.1562

[Doghouse.1562]

1 hour ago, Zephire.8049 said:

If they say that the code is too spaghetti and hanging on with duct tape and gumption, I'm inclined to believe them. The code is ancient

This. Old code is almost always bad. Too many different people changing it in too many different ways to do too many different things, often in "clever" (i.e. complicated) ways, each with their own opinions (if they consider it at all) as to what constitutes "good" coding practice, and what the code structure needs to be.  My first job in IT was maintaining old production code suites - it's a salutory experience. (Especially at 3am, when an overnight run has broken, and the code needs fixing before the next working day starts - you acquire some strong views about coding.)

Edited June 6, 2021 by Doghouse.1562