A Proposal for Race Changing: A different Approach

[Affinity.7253]

I think anyone who has been around for a while has requested or seen a request for some form of (probably paid) race changing. The answer given by ANET as to why this is not really possible is due to the core Tyria story. Since many decisions and choices are made by the player, ANET has come to the conclusion that it would be too challenging to automate a system that reconciles a character and all of the decisions made by them with an entirely different story path.

 

So here is my proposition: When something seems to be too challenging, go back to basics and see what works. In that sense, just let someone remake their character, and reset the entirety of their core story progress. Wipe the slate clean.

 

Wipe clean all of their decisions, all of the paths they took, and plop them back into character creator. They will be able to remake their character entirely, including race and story choices (reserve their name when they do this though). Then, they spawn in to the prologue at level 80 with all of their gear, skillpoints, map completion, non-core story, and everything else preserved. The only thing reset would be their core story progression. Since it has been made clear that the branching core story plot points is the problem, then the easy solution is to just remove it from the character's data.

 

I have also heard the argument about the game being more alt-focused, so why bother? Well, while I and many others have a bunch of alts, we all tend to have a main. A character with 2k+ hours on them. Letting someone make their main character exactly how they want to is a good decision for some player longevity, and having the system in place to be able to reformat any aspect of a character is a good investment for future-proofing the game. If GW2 is going to rise up as the frontrunner MMO, not having some of the account service aspects that most expect from an MMO these days may hurt its appeal.

[Farohna.6247]

Resetting the core story would be a solution, but ultimately isn't that like making a brand new character?  I get not wanting to re-do stories just to remake a character or complete the map again. Ultimately yes they would say just make another one, insta 80, and buy some more character slots.  

 

I'm curious as to why you played one character so many hours then decided you didn't like the choices you made.  I too have a main with the majority of hours played on it.  I can not imagine now that I would wish to reroll it.  2k hours later, sorry I think sylvari are boring, I want to be a norn?  Nah, I'd make another character.

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

Some time back there was a bug where people got Achievement Points and titles they weren’t supposed to get. It took ANet over a year to fix that bug and remove the Achievement Points and titles. It still periodically bugs out and removes AP from random individuals (it returns the AP after a few minutes but the people will get a message that they had AP removed). 

 

If it took a year for ANet to fix that bug, I wonder how long it would take for them to rewrite the code so that a character could be wiped clean of some progression but not other progression and turned into a different race as well.  Even if it could be done and not turn in to a giant bug fest it undoubtedly would be much more expensive than people expect. 
 

You could always make a new character, use tomes or a level 80 unlock and buy waypoint unlocks for core Tyria and it would probably be a lot cheaper than paying what ANet would charge for a character redo. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2021 by Just a flesh wound.3589

[mindcircus.1506]

43 minutes ago, Affinity.7253 said:

I think anyone who has been around for a while has requested or seen a request for some form of (probably paid) race changing.

I noped out right here.

[Danikat.8537]

I may be remembering this wrong but I thought the problem wasn't trying to decide what to change your story to but that changing it at all could break the character and make it impossible to do certain things, or potentially make it impossible to log into them at all.

 

A bit like how they still say if your display name is changed (the account name, not the character name) it may prevent you from joining a guild or using chat so they'll only do it in serious situations where it's worth the risk (like if someone has used their full real name). Anet don't object to being able to change it, they want to offer the option but so many things are tied to it that's the best they're able to do for making it work.

 

Whenever it's come up in the past many people have said they don't care about the story choices and would be happy with random ones, so if it was just a matter of deciding what it should be changed to I think Anet would have offered the option by now.

[DeanBB.4268]

Even if you've played all the stories so far on one character, nothing prevents you from picking up any new story with a new character. Yes, you may not have all the way points unlocked, but how hard is that? Especially with all the portal scrolls.

Would a race change contract be nice? Sure. Is it needed? No.

[Pifil.5193]

The simplest solution would be to allow the user to create a new character,  copy the relevant parts from the original character's database entries and then delete the original character once the character creation is complete. 

 

So you would copy map completion, level, date of birth (probably the most important piece of data), the inventory (changing the character id for any soulbound gear, of course) but not any story progression. 

 

That way there's no chance that your character's story could be corrupted by choices made for the previous character as it's really just a new character. 

 

ArenaNet must not see this as a worthwhile gemstore opportunity. 

 

Edit: oh yeah, also copying bag slots, build and equipment templates and so on. 

Edited August 2, 2021 by Pifil.5193
Post below mentioned bag slots.

[Trebuidoi.4701]

I recently deleted my Human Ranger to make a Charr Ranger. Losing bag slots and character age sucks, but goddamn was I getting tired of 90% of my characters being Norn or Human. I think it's a great suggestion, but there have been some really great counterpoints and explanations.

[DeanBB.4268]

Well, that's a good point: individual characters are getting expensive with both bag and build slot upgrades. I can see not wanting to lose those investments.

[Dante.1763]

47 minutes ago, Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

Some time back there was a bug where people got Achievement Points and titles they weren’t supposed to get. It took ANet over a year to fix that bug and remove the Achievement Points and titles. It still periodically bugs out and removes AP from random individuals (it returns the AP after a few minutes but the people will get a message that they had AP removed). 

 

If it took a year for ANet to fix that bug, I wonder how long it would take for them to rewrite the code so that a character could be wiped clean of some progression but not other progression and turned into a different race as well.  Even if it could be done and not turn in to a giant bug fest it undoubtedly would be much more expensive than people expect. 
 

You could always make a new character, use tomes or a level 80 unlock and buy waypoint unlocks for core Tyria and it would probably be a lot cheaper than paying what ANet would charge for a character redo. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

I mean, we truly still have bugs in game that showed on launch. They cant fix everything, and when they do fix things it can break other things. Something so tied to the story/choices at character creation would probably be on the verge of impossible to code a reset mid way through said story without breaking the entire game for that character.

[Zephire.8049]

Without seeing the actual code, it's impossible to say how easy or hard it is and have to rely on what devs, past and present, have said about the engine. Even if it's as simple as changing/removing flags for story progress, what of everything that's connected to those flags? Depending on how the engine is set up, it could easily spiral outward and have repercussions that can't even be predicted because a dev 5 years ago tied something to the story choice and never said anything because it was how they managed to get an NPC in a LW story to move, so now you have the core story borked and LW progress borked.

 

And the Nuhoch Warbler has returned to crashing everyone on the map if someone uses it.

 

They would also have to add in extra code to prevent people from double-dipping on rewards and hope that doesn't break things given that the personal story was never meant to be replayed in the first place, unlike LW2, 3, 4, and IBS.

 

Changing the race adds further complications and places a character/account/the game could break.

 

Is it possible? Probably, with a lot of time and resources. Is it worth it? Honestly not really as players can make a new character and it's a feature very few people would use. The risk:reward ratio is far too small to even attempt.

 

Deleting a character that has gemshop upgrades sucks but rather than race changes I'd go with something like your account gets credited with X amount of Y character upgrades that you can apply to another character without having to rebuy everything. Doesn't mess with the core code and it's easier to flag an account for free items than deal with something that's such a mess, looking at it funny results in something breaking. Also tying birthday milestones to account rather than character (still having character birthdays, but achievements and one-time presents like the armour and weapons are tied to the account's birthday).

 

It's not as easy or straight forward like clicking a button and having everything done for you, but it would be an improvement over what we have now and (probably) doesn't affect the core of the game engine that governs the player character.

[Dawdler.8521]

This isnt a new approach. I have argued for years in race change threads that a race change is technically just a new character with the same name and character bound unlocks (gemstore) as the old character. Character bound gear is trash and accountbound use the bank. Map/story? Redo it, alternativly automaticly unlock at defaults.

 

Anet could easily automate that process, reserving the name and transferring unlocks.

 

But people dont really want to hear it. And it doesnt really matter. Just make more characters.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[xenon.3264]

i would pay the same price of a new character slot for a race change in the blink of an eye.

 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Don't forget what happened last time they tried to change the Personal Story. 

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Don't forget what happened last time they tried to change the Personal Story. 

This.