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

[Vayne.8563]

On 6/5/2021 at 10:38 AM, 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.

Personal story conveys achievements and rewards and unlocks racial armor. it's a problem even if you don't see it as one.

[Sobx.1758]

On 6/5/2021 at 2:38 AM, 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.

The point here is that you don't know how it looks "from the inside" so you are not in place to keep repeating "it's not a problem" because you don't have enough information about it to make that claim.

[Stalkingwolf.6035]

12 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

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

losing all characterbound stuff like bag slots. yeah create deal.

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, Stalkingwolf.6035 said:

losing all characterbound stuff like bag slots. yeah create deal.

To be fair they did say to apply all the same character upgrades on the new one, something anet could do by mailing said upgrade to the person.

 

And since anet have to do that the price will be to high for most people to use said service.

[Dawdler.8521]

14 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Personal story conveys achievements and rewards and unlocks racial armor. it's a problem even if you don't see it as one.

Achievements which are already accountwide even if you delete the character. Also how does it unlock racial armor? Pretty sure it just cost gold (and badges).

[Vayne.8563]

10 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Achievements which are already accountwide even if you delete the character. Also how does it unlock racial armor? Pretty sure it just cost gold (and badges).

In the case of racial armor, if you bought racial pieces on a character that can only be bought on that character those skins would be unlocked but once you change race you couldn't have unlocked them. And those skins come with achievements.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

But you can buy Cultural Armor with any race.

Now, Order Armor/Weapons is a different story. 

[Dawdler.8521]

6 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

In the case of racial armor, if you bought racial pieces on a character that can only be bought on that character those skins would be unlocked but once you change race you couldn't have unlocked them. And those skins come with achievements.

That doesnt make any sense whatsoever. An unlocked racial skin is in the wardrobe and usable on any character with that race while the achievement is set on the account, period. You can "un-unlock" or "un-achieve" them by deleting a character. You can have soulbound racial armor piece on the character, but that's not the skin. They can just be deleted. 

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

That doesnt make any sense whatsoever. An unlocked racial skin is in the wardrobe and usable on any character with that race while the achievement is set on the account, period. You can "un-unlock" or "un-achieve" them by deleting a character. You can have soulbound racial armor piece on the character, but that's not the skin. They can just be deleted. 

Nope.  Racial skins are only available on characters of that race. You can't even see the skin on a character of a different race in the wardrobe of your hero panel.  If you have scout's medium human armor unlocked, you can search for it on a human thief, but not on a charr thief. It just won't show up.

When you buy that armor on your human, it unlocks and there's no way to unlock it. If you change race's it will still be unlocked. But you in theory wouldn't have ever had a human to unlock it.  And there is an achievement for getting all the racial armors unlocked.   

My point is you may think it's easy to do something. You may say it's easy  to do something. But you ask any developer that's worked on a project with dozens of devs over a decade about trying to change things and legacy code and you might find that any sort of change can open a whole can of wurms.

Everything is easy of someone else has  to do it.

[rabenpriester.7129]

"I don't need this, so nobody should have it."

Edited June 7, 2021 by rabenpriester.7129

[Astralporing.1957]

55 minutes ago, rabenpriester.7129 said:

"I don't need this, so nobody should have it."

More like "i have no idea how hard it might be, but i want it, so it probably is easy, even if devs have said it is not in the past"

Edited June 7, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Nope.  Racial skins are only available on characters of that race. You can't even see the skin on a character of a different race in the wardrobe of your hero panel.  If you have scout's medium human armor unlocked, you can search for it on a human thief, but not on a charr thief. It just won't show up.

When you buy that armor on your human, it unlocks and there's no way to unlock it. If you change race's it will still be unlocked. But you in theory wouldn't have ever had a human to unlock it.  And there is an achievement for getting all the racial armors unlocked.   

My point is you may think it's easy to do something. You may say it's easy  to do something. But you ask any developer that's worked on a project with dozens of devs over a decade about trying to change things and legacy code and you might find that any sort of change can open a whole can of wurms.

Everything is easy of someone else has  to do it.

... thats what I said.

 

But your follow up point is wrong. If you delete a human character today and create a new charr character with the same name in that slot, does your unlocked racial armor skin go away from your wardrobe? No it does not. Sure you have to create a new human of correct class to use it unless you already have more, but thats irrelevant. There is no "in theory" here.

Edited June 7, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[The Boz.2038]

I would love to do either race or profession change on one of my characters. +1 for this

[Rasimir.6239]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

When you buy that armor on your human, it unlocks and there's no way to unlock it. If you change race's it will still be unlocked. But you in theory wouldn't have ever had a human to unlock it.  And there is an achievement for getting all the racial armors unlocked.   

You can buy all racial armor skins on any character regardless of race in wvw. It's not necessary to have a character of a certain race to unlock their racial armor skins.

 

That said, I'm with the devs here. There are so many considerations to make when thinking about race changing, starting with soulbound gear with racial skins that you can't use afterwards. Then there's the whole personal story. What about the achievements tied to the racial arcs? Do you get double rewards for re-playing the story as the new race? How do you handle the choice of order and allied race for the lvl 40/50 story archs? What about the npcs in your home instance and later personal story missions that are tied to the choices you made during the earlier story steps?

 

And most of all, what about the support overhead when dealing with people that race-changed and some of the above questions didn't turn out the way they expected them to? You might not care about the consistency of your character's story or the rewards those steps give, but I guarantee there's people that will flood support because re-doing the story on another race didn't give them another blacklion key on lvl 10 or allow them to choose another order to gain access to that order's skin vendor. You might shrug and say "tough luck", but somehow I doubt ANet would want another wave of "company and support are evil" threads because people expected something else.

[Vayne.8563]

2 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

... thats what I said.

 

But your follow up point is wrong. If you delete a human character today and create a new charr character with the same name in that slot, does your unlocked racial armor skin go away from your wardrobe? No it does not. Sure you have to create a new human of correct class to use it unless you already have more, but thats irrelevant. There is no "in theory" here.

If you make a human, and you have all the racial armor unlocked, you then have the achievement for unlocking it. If you then change the human to a charr you have all the racial armor unlocked for human. You simply don't have the human. You still have the achievement.

[Astralporing.1957]

41 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

If you make a human, and you have all the racial armor unlocked, you then have the achievement for unlocking it. If you then change the human to a charr you have all the racial armor unlocked for human. You simply don't have the human. You still have the achievement.

He has a point in here, actually. In this specific case, the race change is functionally no different from deleting the human character and making a a charr. Which you can easily do with no problem whatsoever. It's still not an argument that race change is not problematic - i bet most of the problems are going to pop up in places noone even thought about (and it will be exactly because noone thought about them). Still, this specific case is pretty much irrelevant to the discussion.

Edited June 7, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

He has a point in here, actually. In this specific case, the race change is functionally no different from deleting the human character and making a a charr. Which you can easily do with no problem whatsoever. It's still not an argument that race change is not problematic - i bet most of the problems are going to pop up in places noone even thought about (and it will be exactly because noone thought about them). Still, this specific case is pretty much irrelevant to the discussion.

I see a difference though. If I change a character I lose nothing, but keep what I unlocked. If I delete a character I lose the character.  At the end of the day this is entirely a pointless conversation. I'm convinced Anet won't be making a race change contract. My point was to point out one single thing the OP didn't think about, but there are likely countless others.

If Anet could have done it, they probably would have done it already. They're not allergic to making money. That they didn't do it means they won't do it. None of us knows how hard it is, all of what would be involved, and what problems would inevitably arise from a race change contract. But it's all moot because it's highly unlikely Anet will do it anyway.

[Astralporing.1957]

3 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I see a difference though. If I change a character I lose nothing, but keep what I unlocked. If I delete a character I lose the character. 

You don't have to actually delete that character, though. You can just make a new one and name-change. That's first. Second, there's only one cultural armor skin that's tied to story, from what i remember - and when unlocking all others, you don't actually need to be of the correct race to buy/unlock them - you just can't use neither the skin nor the armor piece on other race character. Third, you are actually wrong - there's no way to make a race change without losing something in exchange (what exactly would be lost would depend on exact method used, and i bet some of the things you might end up losing - like story progression - might end up exactly the things people asking for race change would want to retain)

 

3 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

At the end of the day this is entirely a pointless conversation. I'm convinced Anet won't be making a race change contract. My point was to point out one single thing the OP didn't think about, but there are likely countless others.

Yes. I already mentioned that to you. The cultural skin unlock is completely unrelated in any way to potential Anet's decision to make (or not make) a race change option.

 

3 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

If Anet could have done it, they probably would have done it already. They're not allergic to making money.

Agreed.

 

3 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

That they didn't do it means they won't do it. None of us knows how hard it is, all of what would be involved, and what problems would inevitably arise from a race change contract. But it's all moot because it's highly unlikely Anet will do it anyway.

Yes. And that is (and always was) the main issue here. Not some wardrobe unlocks.

[Game of Bones.8975]

Anything is possible with the right people, enough money, and the right technology. 

 

It would be easier (and more profitable for ANET) to have you buy another character slot and start from scratch.

 

 

[mindcircus.1506]

Just a word to those proposing solutions.

 

For everything one thing you think is "easy" for a game developer to do there are 12 reasons you never thought about that makes it difficult.

If it were as easy as you think and the company could put a price tag on it, it would have been done.

[lezbefriends.7516]

Simple solution to the race story problem: only allow race change at level 80.

[Manasa Devi.7958]

Maybe a rather expensive "Last Will and Testament" kit? If a character uses one, it will be deleted, and all its soulbound possessions will be sent by mail to another character on the account, soulbound to that character.

 

I'm not really serious by the way, just spitballing a goofy concept.

[SoulGuardian.6203]

On 6/4/2021 at 2:31 AM, Linken.6345 said:

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.

Yeah.

I was looking fowards for that list... but it never came.

 

Ok, I neither agree nor disagree with this topic.

It's one of them things that if it was there, I'd make use of it, but I'm not going to lose sleep over because it isn't. 

 

Sure, it's annoying to reach level 80 with a specific human character, only to realise it'd been much better as a Sylvari.

Having to delete it and start all over.

 

Oh well... maybe someday... who knows!?