Guild Wars 2

Alright alright we all know this topic well.

Skritt as a playable race.

Lets get it over with and say it has been mentioned before. Here, Here, And Here for example.

However this post isn’t necessarily about the idea being pitched, granted i’d like to give my own views on it, it is more or less a simple question. I’d love an Arena-Net response; Even a passive “We cant say yes or no.” would be sufficient.

All things said and done, Community Members, What are your opinions? If the Devs took their time, balanced them out right, and made the Skritt the next playable force for good what would you think? And please dont refer to any other game’s sucess or failures here. We all know Arena-Net prides them self on NOT being a wow or any other game clone.

Below Is my personal pitch, opinions, and more references. I would rather not have illegitimate remarks of “It won’ wurk cuz skritt am stoopid. U am stoopid two”. However I would love to have critique with legitimate observations based in fact.

V——————My Opinion and Ideas——————V
________________________________________________________________

Should it be done?

Skritt, Skaven, rat-men, Master Splinter; What ever you call them Humanoid Rats have been, and continue to be a popular theme in MMOs. And on many occasions requested to be a playable race. Aside from being the prime target of choice for Charr in WvW/S-PVP I think they have a lot to offer in terms of lore expansion, character diversity, play style customization, and dare I say it potential RP deviants who could inject some much needed life and zaniness into any and all situations.

In conclusion, Yes, I think it should be done.

My opinion on how it should be done;

First things first; Introduction into lore. A touchy, and often times difficult subject for Devs working on new races/classes, This one isnt that hard to handle if you put some thought to it. The impacts on other lore, Asura specifically in this case, could be minimal; Or it could be epic. But damages could be minimal.

Option 1: We already know of their hive-mind mentality, and how some Asura are experimenting with it and testing it; one simple solution would be a break through in Skritt, hive-mind harmonics. A sort of Wider ranged ESP for the Skritt hive mind collective. Skritt heros who have already proven themselves smarter, and more battle ready could be chosen for this elective operation. Be it a device like a bracelet or ear-tag would be put on these Skritt and the magics attuned to the frequency of other hero Skirtt with this sort of equipment.

Of course one could also implement the stipulation of “limited transition via bandwidth restrictions” where their intellect is stabilized at a tolerable level instead of growing exponentially any longer. This removes a plot hole most others have in place, such as 2 of the links that aforementioned the race having racials based on amount of skritt around. Not capping the intelect and haveing it play in as a modifier could be seriously good or bad depending on balancing so why bother when there are other solutions? Granted it is an interesting idea; But often ideas like this can run a muck and get out of hand very quickly.

Option 2: Self defined Skritt Heros grow tired of being pushed from their homelands, and decide to fight for the right of existence much like all the other races. This one idea can go so many directions it is so very malleable. Be them heros from one specific settlement, tribe, or sub-culture, or just a rag-tag band of random skritt uniting under one banner; this possibility allows more unique play styles such as “Skritt hive mind buffs”; Or as one post mentioned playing as a small horde of skritt 3-5 in number. while this idea would take a vast amount of time and resources to ensure it worked right i feel that the lee-way for other changes gives it a vast potentiality to do both great good, or great harm.

What about Raicals?

Racials could be handled in a multitude of ways. Briefly stated i’ll present some of the already mentioned posts, and then present my own.

‘’Shouts.’’

‘’Hive-mind mentality.’’ See also The Gibberlings Of Allods for an example of the multi-character play system.

“Physical abilities” -Defined latter by me

Defined:
“Physical abilities”

1: “Toss shiny!”
|1 Skill Point|
| Range: 500-1000|
| Cool down: 20-35 Seconds |
|Cast time 1 Second|
"Throw a random ‘shiny’ at an enemy. Cause random condition for 3-5 seconds, or explosion. Ideas: Engie grenades, thief type thefts items, random improvised weapons. Alternately “Shiny!” Obtain random improvised weapon for 15 seconds.

2: “Steal Shiny!”
|3 Skill Point|
|Range: 200|
|Cool down: 30-45 seconds|
|Cast time: 0.5 seconds|
“Leap at your foe stealing a section of their armor, stacking 3 -6 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds on foe and causing you to gain protection for 2-3 seconds.”

3: “Stuff, Stuff, Stuff!”
|6 Skill Point|
|Range: N/A|
|Cool down 45-60 seconds|
“Spotting random loot out of the corner of your eye, you remove all crippled, slow, and immobilized, and start running in a random direction for 1-2 seconds evading all attacks along the way.”

“4:Skritt I’m hit!” alternately “Nap time!”
|10 Skill Elite|
|Range: N/A|
|Cool down: 60-120 Seconds|
“Feign death and force your enemy to drop you as a target (As if stealth or actually dead). While down you cleanse 1 burning, poison, or bleed every second. After 2-3 seconds of feigning death you will stand up and resume your fight with renewed vigor, swiftness, and regen. for 3 seconds each.

5:“More Come Yes!?”
|30 Skill Elite|
|Range: 1000|
|Cool down: 120-180 seconds|
“A small horde giggeling of skritt (5-10) come from all directions and unleash attacks on selected foe. These Skritt are untargetable, and only persist for 1-3 seconds each.” These skritt are a random group; Meaning most (2/3) will just use 1 “toss shiny” before running off. And some rarer skritt will drop a random class AOE, or 1 engineer turret/ pack of 3 bandages.

6:“Want shiny? Have shiny!”
|30 Skill Elite|
|Range: 500-1000|
|Cool Down: 120-180 Seconds|
|Channel time: 2.5 seconds|
“Spin around for 2.5 seconds tossing 2 items per half second. Each batch tosses a random harmful shiny on near by enemies causing one random condition and dealing [X] Damage on impact. And also tosses useful trinkets on allies granting 1 helpful boon to allied units. 10 tosses in total, 5 foe, 5 friendly.”

Yes some of these sound a bit Over Powering. But in the long run the ideas themselves could be useful, and hecka’fun if tuned right.

Please feel free to post your observations/critique on these ideas, and say if you do or don’t support the idea of Skritt being playable at all.

I feel that they should be a sub-species of Skritt that have a natural higher intelligence. If there is anything I dislike it’s the group mechanic into one playable character such as with the gibberlings in allods.

I suppose a large hive of Skritt just invented a way to always be connected to the hive-mind would be decent, but it’s hard to not overlap with the Asura (genius theme) with that. Skritt are all about being rats and it should thematically stay that way. Forage, have nests and solve local problems in a large (underground) city (nest).

I don’t dislike your idea, but honestly I prefer other playable races like. My preference list in order of “want the most”:

1 Tengu - Empire of Winds, varying clans, the emperor serves the people, what is behind that wall?

2 Dwarves - Large underground zones, rich history and lore in tandem with the arch enemies of the game world, what kind of Dwarven races are still alive?

3 Skritt - There simply isn’t much mystery about them, which can be what you like about them, but it’s not my thing.

4 Centaur - Can be fun and rich in story, but are arch enemies of Humans, so they can’t be put in.

5 Dredge - Even more boring. Nevermind.

LOve those ideas, as you states yes some of them might be a bit on the OP side, but with some tweaks and such could be a VERY good base for a Skritt race. Also for me if you look at the map it should be very doable to fit in a lvl 1-15 skritt area as well as a skritt capital (okay hive might be better word here :P) at the NW/W of brisbane wildlands if you ask me, perfect amount of space for it and brisbane is the most prominent skritt heavy area too.

Should Skritt ever be a playable race i would diffenatly make one RIGHT away, where tengus, kodans all those others a lot of ppl seem to like, im kinda meh maybe sometime but not sure i would make one the moment they came out.

Callynn.1684:

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I feel that they should be a sub-species of Skritt that have a natural higher intelligence. If there is anything I dislike it’s the group mechanic into one playable character such as with the gibberlings in allods.

I suppose a large hive of Skritt just invented a way to always be connected to the hive-mind would be decent, but it’s hard to not overlap with the Asura (genius theme) with that. Skritt are all about being rats and it should thematically stay that way. Forage, have nests and solve local problems in a large (underground) city (nest).

I don’t dislike your idea, but honestly I prefer other playable races like. My preference list in order of “want the most”:

1 Tengu - Empire of Winds, varying clans, the emperor serves the people, what is behind that wall?

2 Dwarves - Large underground zones, rich history and lore in tandem with the arch enemies of the game world, what kind of Dwarven races are still alive?

3 Skritt - There simply isn’t much mystery about them, which can be what you like about them, but it’s not my thing.

4 Centaur - Can be fun and rich in story, but are arch enemies of Humans, so they can’t be put in.

5 Dredge - Even more boring. Nevermind.

That is a response I can respect. Everyone has their own view and i’m happy you shared yours.

I agree there isn’t much mystery left to them, but that is not to say there are things we don’t yet know about Skritt lore. For all we know Arena-Net could toss a curve ball at us quicker than we can blink, and instantly restore the Skritt’s mystery.

Tengu are a VERY popular, but already widely believed upcoming expansion race. There is much evidence to support they will latter be incorporated; so that’s why I don’t mention adding Tengu. There is little to support that there are any current thoughts of putting skritt in our character roster any time soon, so I and my friends would be thrilled to see any iteration of the furry little nutters become playable.

GummiBear.2756:

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LOve those ideas, as you states yes some of them might be a bit on the OP side, but with some tweaks and such could be a VERY good base for a Skritt race. Also for me if you look at the map it should be very doable to fit in a lvl 1-15 skritt area as well as a skritt capital (okay hive might be better word here :P) at the NW/W of brisbane wildlands if you ask me, perfect amount of space for it and brisbane is the most prominent skritt heavy area too.

Should Skritt ever be a playable race i would diffenatly make one RIGHT away, where tengus, kodans all those others a lot of ppl seem to like, im kinda meh maybe sometime but not sure i would make one the moment they came out.

I know me and my gamer pals are not the only people wanting Skritt, and now that you mention it that dose look like a suspect area. Even a nice hint being the big circle on the map to the south-west of Brisbane Wilds. As for me, since i have one of every class, i’d loathed to delete one of my level 25+ characters but i’d delete most of them in a hear beat for a skritt. <3

Thanks for your input!

I think that 8 classes need 8 races to balance out. I’d love from them to add more classes later.

Skritt, Kodan, and Tengu would be my choices to add to the 5 we have.

I think that Quaggans, Skrit can have their own sotry line.
Mayble Tengu, if they make there city open.

Skritt are stupid without groups. Unless the player is twenty separate skritt models with animations working together, haha no.

The Asura are experimenting on their intelligence, yes, but they would never make all the Skritt smart. That would be idiotic. They’re less of a threat when kept nice, stupid and predictable. Every player can’t be a test subject, too, I’m afraid that the one lab doing the testing hasn’t the space to produce 139,493 player-character skritt test subjects.

I’d much prefer model-improved Dwarves, since Ogden states that they’re alive and down there somewhere. There’s a lot of potential for an interesting race there, especially if they’re still stone.

Tengu also make for an interesting race, but their models need updating. The whole ‘beak moves a tiny bit when talking’ thing wouldn’t do for a tengu’s personal story.

In response to title, Fantasy. They have no real structure or main city. For a personal story, unless they run with a group of skritt you will just laugh at their poor grammer and think “who am I kidding, this is a waste of programmer time”. Maybe a transformation part or dungeon or event to become a skritt outfit but not playable entirely.

There’s only one way I’d see skritt working. And that’s having at least 3 working as a single character. They’ll split the armor in 3, equipping each 2 pieces, grab each one weapon with dual wielding, grab 2-h weapons between two of them, the third being the going ‘directing’ utility skills…

Of course, they’ll racial skill would all summon more skritt to perform an action, like summoning a bunch of skritt that act like vines and immobilize a target until hit or the time expires.

On top of that, there would have to be a better skritt city than the one in Brisban. I’m guessing an undeground city would do, as skritt lived there in the first place.

Also, skritt are seen as a ‘lesser’ race, as there’s a racial friendship storyline step for them for some races.

These things make skritt highly unlikely to be playable.

Katz.5143:

I think that 8 classes need 8 races to balance out. I’d love from them to add more classes later.

Skritt, Kodan, and Tengu would be my choices to add to the 5 we have.

IAWTP. Skritt, Kodan, and Tengu are the 3 races I’d like to see fleshed out. I really want to play as Skritt.

Personally I think playing as skritt would be a fun idea, besides tengu I would really like to see the skritt as playable learning more about the lore behind the skritt would be enjoyable for not just myself but for my little brother as well since he loves getting into the lore of the game, plus the thought of a skritt thief in and of itself just sounds fun.

I will agree with some of the others here that some of the ability ideas proposed are a bit on the op side but after some tweaking and consideration they seem very sound as it is and the ideas of how to bring them into this if you think about it like the asura thy have been driven out of there underground homes as well thanks to the fire dragon and (spoiler alert here) they do become part of the pact fighting against the elder dragons anyway that opens a bit of opertunity to bring in skritt characters since they are getting a bit more involved in the world.

All over I think this is a nice idea I say bring on the skritt characters (ps and tengu too lol)

I don’t think A-Net will want to spend so much time in redesigning every bit of armor for the Skritt, after all, all they did for the Charr was stretch most of the player armour, so I can’t see this happening.

On a side note I’d rather see the Hylek, less work and there seems to be more Hylek running around LA, plus I can see some of the Hylek banding together to make their own city somewhere just above Sparkfly Swamp.

Kainthefox.1230:

Personally I think playing as skritt would be a fun idea, besides tengu I would really like to see the skritt as playable learning more about the lore behind the skritt would be enjoyable for not just myself but for my little brother as well since he loves getting into the lore of the game, plus the thought of a skritt thief in and of itself just sounds fun.

I will agree with some of the others here that some of the ability ideas proposed are a bit on the op side but after some tweaking and consideration they seem very sound as it is and the ideas of how to bring them into this if you think about it like the asura thy have been driven out of there underground homes as well thanks to the fire dragon and (spoiler alert here) they do become part of the pact fighting against the elder dragons anyway that opens a bit of opertunity to bring in skritt characters since they are getting a bit more involved in the world.

All over I think this is a nice idea I say bring on the skritt characters (ps and tengu too lol)

I don’t think skritt are viable based on their intelligence. Skritt operate with a hive mind (sort of). Without multiple other skritt within hearing distance of them their intelligence is extremely low. Other raw are viable – I am still pushing for the Tengu or the Kodan to become playable. I am somewhat cautious about this though. We don’t know about the technological development of the Tengu or the Kodan over the last few hundred years and it is possible that they are quite low. That means that engineers are not viable for those races.

Interesting fact! Engineer skritt makes more sense than Norn engineer.

Just sayin’, Kodan are like awesome Polar bear dudes, what more do you want? Have you seen how awesome polar bears are? They are like bears, who literally just run around in the snow and eat seals and stuff, have you tried running around in the snow eating seals and stuff? It doesn’t sound easy does it, and have you seen how massive Polar Bears are? They’re huge, they just run at dudes and are all like “Hey I’m a Polar Bear, DOOF!~” and stuff just gets destroyed. I’m pretty sure that’s all the justification I need to give.

Fantasy.

Skritt are a minor race, and more importantly, they’re pretty stupid when they’re wandering around alone, which contradicts what would make a good playable character.

A “horde” character where you play 3~5 skritt simultaneously would be interesting, but I doubt that’s something within ANet’s skills or scope of interest.

The likelier candidates are:

• Tengu, Largos, and Kodan.

But, But, Quaggan Loves you!