Guild Wars 2

Dear Arena.net dev team and fellow players..

Here is my idea of the…. drumroll

“Racial Transformation Tonic”

Before you think back to the other requests and reply “Not gonna happen” allow me first to explain my suggestion, and how it addresses current potential issues with implementing race change.

This would be a tonic, by lore, developed in an Asuran lab experiment, allowing whoever drinks it to mutate their genes and thus race.

This conserves the integrity of the lore. Also, this would mean personal story is NOT reset, as a race change would only offer the cosmetic benefits (and racial skills/armour) of the new race. The current story of the character would remain exactly the same, as if they never changed race. To experience another race storyline a player would have to create another character.

This addresses the issue of ruining the feel of the game or the integrity, as well as any Personal Story or Achievements problems.

The only other issue I see is racial armour. I suggest that this armour is simply made not equippable, as people would be aware of this compromise (mention it in the item description)

As for other changes, Racial Skills could just refund skill points and Home Instance / Map Areas etc would NOT change at all. Again, this “Racial Transformation Tonic” would be for players bored or dissatisfied with the look of their character, after having completed storyline quests. I know this is the majority of the people wanting a race change. As for people wanting to experience another race storyline, they would have to roll another character. This makes the tonic more of an item for PvP, WvW and Guild players who have been level 80 for a while and of course have already completed the storyline; and are perhaps considering investing a lot of time to craft a legendary weapon. But of course to want to do this your character would need to be perfect, and if your initial race is the cause of imperfection it can create a bit of a bottleneck for players and perhaps discourage them from playing.

As for the financial consideration for A-Net as a business, this tonic could be priced same as (or even higher) the extra character slot. This means that if my suggestion, if implemented,would provide no financial compromise to A-Net whilst supplying countless players who want to change the appearance of a character they invested hundreds of hours into. All whilst not ruining, technically nor aesthetically, the Personal Story, Lore, Home Instance, etc.

The only change it could add to the Personal Story tab could be an addition like:

“I drank a mysterious tonic, transforming myself into a [insert race].”

I imagine the in-game description to be something like this:

“Racial Transformation Tonic”

“A single character may modify their race, as well as, appearance settings for height, physique, skin color, markings, face, hair, even gender for their new race. Name and profession will remain the same. The character’s personal storyline, home instance, achievements, etc are not reset. Any owned or equipped soulbound racial cultural armour will no longer be wearable by this character. The kit is consumed on accepting a new race and appearance. "

I believe a fair price for this could be 800 gems, the same as a new character slot, but I’m sure lots of people, including myself, would pay up to 1600 gems or even more for this ability, because after investing a lot of time into a character (e.g. 500 hours with 100% Map Completion) and then not being satisfied with the race style is not enough reason to roll another character of same profession but different race, however is enough to discourage commitment such as legendary weapons or cosmetic purchases from the store (so this tonic would indirectly also bring money!), etc.

Who else thinks this would be a good addition of this into the game? I think this would offer a great option for players, without the compromises previously suggested simple “Race Changes” would.

/discuss

Your solution only creates even more problems.

If your Personal Story continues as normal and is not reset to your new race’s story then they will have to go through, edit EVERY dialog scene for each race to utilize every other race as the player model, get the voice actors for each to come back in and re-voice thousands of more lines per race, per story line.

All-in-all your looking at at-lease a year’s worth of changes that would have to be made for your solution to work.

Also, rather than refunding skill points on Racial Skills, replace with the appropriate racial skill of the new race. If you took the T1 Charr Racial (Shrapnel Mine), changed to Asura you would now have the T1 Asura Racial (Pain Inverter) in it’s place.

And as for Cultural Armor, simply auto re-skin to the new race’s Cultural…

Your suggestion just like all the other ones for a Race Change simply will not work, in-fact your’s create unnecessary amounts of work for ANet and quite honestly, if Race Changes get offered in the future this will most certainly NOT be how they are handled. A Tonic perhaps, but the rest of your suggestion is just riddled with unnecessary issues and work.

The only valid problem you pointed out was voices. Well in that case make it available only after the storyline is finished, simple!

VolkovTheGreat.8324:

The only valid problem you pointed out was voices. Well in that case make it available only after the storyline is finished, simple!

allow me to clarify why the other 2 are still problems

IF you refund skillpoints:
Only 5 skills unlocked in T1, 1 is the racial and they have 5 skills in T2, now you refund them their T1 racial skillpoint, then now they have T2 unlocked with 4 skills in T1, when T2 requires 5 T1 skills to be unlocked.

IF you disable cultural armor:
First off, i’m uncertain of how your intending this from how you worded it… do you mean they lose access to ALL cultural armor including their new race? if so Why? if you mean only lose access to their old races cultural, then what happens if they were already wearing that armor? It’s better to just auto reskin it to their new race’s cultural armor of the same tier.

That’s true about the skill points than. Well that’s why I asked for people to discuss, to refine the idea. What I meant about the armour is that you just can’t equip the old races armour if you already have it.

An option could be that you can only transform into the other race if you have not equiped a culural armorpiece/weapon at this time.
Since the cultural stuff has a “required race: xx” text on it, you just have to buy a new one.

Yes that’s what I meant by auto-unequip any current racial armour. Because its a compromise a player should be willing to take to switch races.

I like how your suggestions evades conflict with the Personal Story. I would imagine there are some, both community and developers, who believe that resetting the Personal Story would negate, and undermine both the actual impact of making a choice, and the effect the player feels when making a choice within their story. I know I for one have ruined playthroughs of Mass Effect for myself by reloading the game to cheat tough choice. However this could be an issue if in future content the developers decide to pull elements or NPCs from your Personal Story, and reintroduce them. Imagine your friends’ surprise from your Personal Story or lack of surprise when they find you to be of a different race. It would also be very awkward I’d imagine for the player.

This is why I would push for a Personal Story reset, and the removal of associated rewards for completing the quests within it. While the amounts of Skills Points gain would be very small, and anything gained from the loot would be unnoticeable, I still think it would be a fair enough penalty. Also you could block achievements that are gained that are tied directly to a Personal Story option. Read the second paragraph below this before jumping all over me Achievement Hunters. :P

I was going to write my own suggestion for a Race Change. I would include a preview window, similar to the Character Creation window, that would allow the player to see what their character would look like prior to confirming the purchase, so that the player does not have a reason to complain about being unhappy with that purchase, especially if they decide they do not want to change after all half way in. Something that could be used whenever.

I would also suggest requirements being added before you could use the feature/complete the purchase on a character. Such as the character must be level 80, and or have completed the original story line quests. So this way the developers know more or less that the player has seen a number of armor sets on that character, and gone through enough content to be able to say that they are truly unhappy.

I think those ideas combined would make for a very fair feature that would prove to be both popular, and profitable. Additionally the fact that nothing is gained other than a change of appearance, and a reset of the Personal Story path would keep the Gem Store being fair, one of the things that I applaud Anet for. Players can not buy an advantage over others, and this feature would fit perfectly in with that concept.

^ This! It would bring money, and if done right, won’t disadvantage anybody, so why not?

VolkovTheGreat.8324:

^ This! It would bring money, and if done right, won’t disadvantage anybody, so why not?

At this moment I am hoping that such a feature is not be worked on in favor of new content. I am sure there members of the player base that would love this feature but not at the cost of new content. Now once more content has been added, for example, quests, playable zones, dungeons, ect, then I could see little reason to not release a race change option.

If nothing else I would like to see a Personal Story reset, as I am personally picky about my character’s Personal Story, and would rather not delete say my level fifty-seven Charr Guardian to change his story, but that is another discussion for another thread.

I hope to see more comments on this thread. If we want to see a race change option we must keep the topic alive, and show Arena Net that there are community members that would like to see a race change feature. If we show no interest in such a thing Arenanet has not reason to change their initial decision to exclude one.

I agree that other content should be prioritised over this. But not plush backpacks haha

Bumpity Bumpty Bump