Guild Wars 2

EDIT: For clarification, since there has been a lot of people asking the same question, when you remake your character your personal story starts over if you picked a different race. Any order gear you get stays the same until you pick an order again. If you pick a different order it changes the model of the gear to that orders respective armor. This change wouldn’t be effecting you if you don’t choose to purchase this additional feature it would only effect the people who are paying for the feature because they want it. Keep in mind that just because you don’t want something doesn’t mean other people don’t.

A character remake that you could purchase with gems from the Black Lion Trading Company. It would allow you to take an existing character and choose a different race if you wanted, customize that character, allow you to rename that character, and restart your personal story. Skill points put into racial utility and elite skills would be refunded. Character level, map completion, and crafting progress would be kept through the process.

If you’re only changing appearance or gender of your character and not changing races it wouldn’t reset your personal story.

Any order gear (IE: Vigil, Durmand Priory, Whispers) obtained before the transfer would remain the same until you picked your order again. If you picked a different order than the gear you had it would change the model of the gear to that order’s respective order. For example, if you had vigil gear and you chose whispers after you changed races it would change the vigil gears model and name to the whispers gear. The stats would stay the same.

This addition to the store would make a lot of players including myself happy and would make Arenanet more money to spend on this amazing game.

Thank you for taking the time to read my suggestion.

I think changing race and personal story details might be a really complicated thing o ask for… But I definitely think they should add the ability to change gender and looks. I’m bummed out I picked such a subtle glow on my Sylvari., and wouldn’t mind a darker skin tone either!

Nozgeth.9638:

I think changing race and personal story details might be a really complicated thing o ask for… But I definitely think they should add the ability to change gender and looks. I’m bummed out I picked such a subtle glow on my Sylvari., and wouldn’t mind a darker skin tone either!

The ONLY complicated thing about the whole transfer be would what to do about people with order gear already before the remake… I think you could just let them keep that gear until they chose a different order (if they choose a different one) and then change the model of the gear to that of the order they chose.

Changing personal story is extremely complicated.

Being able to change your race only after you finished your personal story is a way to do it, without messing with your story.

K Cross.3458:

Changing personal story is extremely complicated.

Being able to change your race only after you finished your personal story is a way to do it, without messing with your story.

Ugh. Ask me ANY question about your said “difficulties” with changing personal story and I’ll tell you how it could and should be done. Seriously there is NOTHING difficult about it.

I would definitely pay gems for a race change.

/bump

Character Restyle is all I’d like

bumping for more feedback

The probability of having an option to change your gender/look is high, we had this option available in GW1.

What if you change race while in the middle of a quest? log out in a personal instance and do it? without knowing the structure of the code there could be all kinds of weird bugs waiting to happen by messing with these things.

And asides from the purely technical issues the game is built around having a personalized RPG and narrative feel. This would be shattered by basically “starting over” If you really wanted to see all the stories, just make a new character. The only reason I can think of to change race are a bit lazy; not wanting to re-level up a craft or just log into another character that can make what you need… and not wanting to re-collect way points. Granted that latter is a bit of a pain, but I don’t feel like it worth the complications.

I’m all for changing gender and looks though!

I don’t think we should be able to change a character’s race, gender or profession. Those sort of decisions should be permanent as far as I’m concerned. Any character re-customisation should be limited to adjusting a particular character’s appearance and name. Otherwise it just cheapens the game.

Nozgeth.9638:

What if you change race while in the middle of a quest? log out in a personal instance and do it? without knowing the structure of the code there could be all kinds of weird bugs waiting to happen by messing with these things.

And asides from the purely technical issues the game is built around having a personalized RPG and narrative feel. This would be shattered by basically “starting over” If you really wanted to see all the stories, just make a new character. The only reason I can think of to change race are a bit lazy; not wanting to re-level up a craft or just log into another character that can make what you need… and not wanting to re-collect way points. Granted that latter is a bit of a pain, but I don’t feel like it worth the complications.

I’m all for changing gender and looks though!

It could just teleport you out of the instance… The reason people would want a race change is because they are tired of the race they are playing… For example at the time I was making my engineer I thought a human would be pretty cool… around level 30 i decided it would be much better to be a charr and that that race was what I really wanted my engineer to be. It would still be a personalized RPG your character would just restart personal story as the race they chose… Think of it like this, its the exact same as making a new character except instead of being level one they are level 67 or whatever level they were before the change and they retained their items… It doesn’t break immersion… It doesn’t break anything. It’s just an added option for people who made a mistake or are tired of their race…

Think about it. It doesn’t effect you AT ALL if you don’t choose to use the feature… So your guild mate changed races. How does this effect you? It doesn’t. They payed for it because they wanted it. Who are you to say this shouldn’t be added when it doesn’t effect you?

There could be a complete different option to just change the appearance of your character without changing race or gender.

Seriously stop being selfish…

Garenthal.1480:

I don’t think we should be able to change a character’s race, gender or profession. Those sort of decisions should be permanent as far as I’m concerned. Any character re-customisation should be limited to adjusting a particular character’s appearance and name. Otherwise it just cheapens the game.

Please explain to me how it “cheapens the game”. It doesn’t effect you at all if you don’t choose to race change. If someone else race changes it has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on you whatsoever.

I would love the option of changing your characters visuals.

This is quite a tricky one to sort out really.
Chaning races is problematic for the game, particularly as it keeps track of your choices and your character’s past. Restarting your personal story is no different to making a whole new character. If you’re worried about crating levels and skill points you’ve collected, they’re easy to do as you go along with your character. i.e. there’s no point keeping your crafting level at 200, if everything else is reset because then you couldn’t get to the area’s where you farm the correct level crafting materials. If you meant that you keep your level also, then the resetting of your personal story would just be a load of quests aimed at a lower level then you.
Quite… problematic already and that’s without all the coding, and game mechanics that the programmers would have to sort out.

Name changes I feel should be limitted, like you get one free name change on each character, any more than that you have to pay for with gems.

Appearance ought to be free, apart from ingame gold. It could also be ingrained into the game. As in to change your appearance you go to a hairdressers as a human or something.

It has been bothering me that as a sylvari, in all the information I read about them priot to release it seemed they grew their bodies into hair, armor, specific shapes that they could then cut off and regrow. I would have liked it if this was reflected in the game more, like when you go to a sylvari cultural armorer instead of selling you armor they give you a book with instructions of how to grow your body into different shapes.

That would probably take some work implimenting since it might confuse some players. But as a keen roleplayer I and others like myself would certainly enjoy a feature like this.

Bit side tracked there…. :p

I need my hair did.
Let me get my hair did.

I agree an option to at the very least change skin tone and hair style would be awesome. in the haste of release my wife jumped into the game quickly with a look she thought she liked but the more she plays the less happy she is with how her character looks, I can imagine this will be added eventually because it was an option in GW1 but it would be great to have!

Half Tooth.1867:

This is quite a tricky one to sort out really.
Chaning races is problematic for the game, particularly as it keeps track of your choices and your character’s past. Restarting your personal story is no different to making a whole new character. If you’re worried about crating levels and skill points you’ve collected, they’re easy to do as you go along with your character. i.e. there’s no point keeping your crafting level at 200, if everything else is reset because then you couldn’t get to the area’s where you farm the correct level crafting materials. If you meant that you keep your level also, then the resetting of your personal story would just be a load of quests aimed at a lower level then you.
Quite… problematic already and that’s without all the coding, and game mechanics that the programmers would have to sort out.

Name changes I feel should be limitted, like you get one free name change on each character, any more than that you have to pay for with gems.

Appearance ought to be free, apart from ingame gold. It could also be ingrained into the game. As in to change your appearance you go to a hairdressers as a human or something.

It has been bothering me that as a sylvari, in all the information I read about them priot to release it seemed they grew their bodies into hair, armor, specific shapes that they could then cut off and regrow. I would have liked it if this was reflected in the game more, like when you go to a sylvari cultural armorer instead of selling you armor they give you a book with instructions of how to grow your body into different shapes.

That would probably take some work implimenting since it might confuse some players. But as a keen roleplayer I and others like myself would certainly enjoy a feature like this.

Bit side tracked there…. :p

…. Changing your race has nothing to do with crafting… EVERYTHING would be the same except for personal story and your characters race… Nothing else would change… Sigh… I don’t understand why this is such a hard concept for you all to grasp.

I’d love to see a character-change item

A name-change item would be more appreciated. Which comes with the release of all those reserved and linked character names that still aren’t in use.

Give me my name back! :<

I don’t know about a race-change, but I would really like to be able to alter appearance and character name post-creation like I coul d in GW1.

Liraz.8062:

I don’t know about a race-change, but I would really like to be able to alter appearance and character name post-creation like I coul d in GW1.

Whats wrong with race changing?

Searingarrow.4637:

Liraz.8062:

I don’t know about a race-change, but I would really like to be able to alter appearance and character name post-creation like I coul d in GW1.

Whats wrong with race changing?

Do you know how hard that is going to be? You have a personal story to consider and the intial choices.

Expansions will be coming with content packs, adding a race change feature will guarantee that bugs will be present as people start to get their previous race’s “DE Hero” talking to them as if they were still that race.

Either way, it is a huge thing to ask for with the personal story / world. How are you going to make those level 10/20/30 choices in the personal story? Especially the 10/20 choices which focus on your bio questions.

I am all for a character re-customisation, such as new skin tones, face, hair maybe even gender but race would be near impossible and would cause more problems than fix.

Dear ArenaNet, Throw in a way to change my hair (even better if its some new options.) and I will likely toss money at you.

Kaveck.1532:

Searingarrow.4637:

Liraz.8062:

I don’t know about a race-change, but I would really like to be able to alter appearance and character name post-creation like I coul d in GW1.

Whats wrong with race changing?

Do you know how hard that is going to be? You have a personal story to consider and the intial choices.

Expansions will be coming with content packs, adding a race change feature will guarantee that bugs will be present as people start to get their previous race’s “DE Hero” talking to them as if they were still that race.

Either way, it is a huge thing to ask for with the personal story / world. How are you going to make those level 10/20/30 choices in the personal story? Especially the 10/20 choices which focus on your bio questions.

I am all for a character re-customisation, such as new skin tones, face, hair maybe even gender but race would be near impossible and would cause more problems than fix.

Are you really asking me this? I’ve said this atleast 3 times in this thread… It would restart your personal story. It would be the same as making an entirely new character except instead of being level 1 it would be level 67 or whatever level your character was before, Your map completetion would remain the same, and you’d keep your inventory and whatnot…

The only things that would change are the race and personal story… Please read my comments before you tell me theres something wrong with them. Thank you!

Yes ANet, please add race change.

Personally, I would like to see a Gender Change option, at least through Black Lion Co. for gems or something, I hate my male character, I wish it was female, armor looks much better on the female toons!

I didn’t read all of the posts..

But RE the complexity of the suggestion… I don’t think it will be difficult.

WoW had it so that X item/choice turned into Y item.

For example… the cultural human tier 2 chestpiece could then be turned into the cultural sylvari tier 2 chestpiece upon finalization of the character creation.

RE the storyline… Maybe it’s possible that they allow for a story reset up until the point of when you venture to Lions Arch and everyone is on the same page storyline.

Either way, I am in support of race changing and character re-customization. I hope they add this very soon, if at all possible.

-Pinchy

I don’t agree with race change just because I believe it would be too complicated of a task to undertake. However, I fully support character appearance recustomization. Like someone else in this thread said, I NEED MY HAIR DID. I wouldn’t mind paying for this option.

Searingarrow.4637:

Garenthal.1480:

I don’t think we should be able to change a character’s race, gender or profession. Those sort of decisions should be permanent as far as I’m concerned. Any character re-customisation should be limited to adjusting a particular character’s appearance and name. Otherwise it just cheapens the game.

Please explain to me how it “cheapens the game”. It doesn’t effect you at all if you don’t choose to race change. If someone else race changes it has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on you whatsoever.

Flawed logic. There’s a real sense of accomplishment and even achievements surrounding playing through each race’s personal story. Effort should be required and rewarded. I don’t see much point in allowing people to change their character’s race or profession and it’s not hard to invest in an alt considering how a lot of the essential stuff is account bound.

I support this thread, I would enjoy changing some aspects of my Character.

K Cross.3458:

Changing personal story is extremely complicated.

Being able to change your race only after you finished your personal story is a way to do it, without messing with your story.

What do you base this off of? Youre own confusion?

It would be quite simple. You make a list of crap that you got from each race storyline. You then compair them and point to tradeoffs that would happen in the database. The only ‘hard’ part would be the hour or so it would take to decide what tradeoffs go where.

How exactly do you think the TP works? Its trading off numbers for other numbers. Its the same stuff to a database. This would be no more complex on the coding end than buying items.

Reseting your personal story has no difficulties, their are simple instances. If u can recall, anything happens, logout or even if u leave the area the mission resets.
But Im against it, totally, as Garen sad it just cheapens the game. ANet sad that they wanted people to coop, so find friends and tag alone with them in their story, why do u think they invented level cap.
And a YES for cosmetic changes.

Being able to redo my characters appearance would be very nice. Hope they add things like that to the gem shop soon.

I don’t agree with any race or story change. But I would like to see a character recustomize option.

Even if race-changing was to become an option, I hope we get the ability to rename a character first, since many character names wouldn’t make sense as their new race.

So you’d be a Charr who had a Silvari’s storyline?

What’s the point of race specific traits at that point?

Not to mention it completely removes race specific stereotypes. IE Norn are supposed to be viewed as the viking drunkards while asurans are the tinkering gadget makers.

So you’d pick a Norn, pick his warrior spirit, what he did at that party, and then run around the map there after as an Asuran?

I don’t like this idea, it kills the entire feel of the fantasy world you are supposed to be a part of, and completely eliminates Race specific benefits.

IE norn get to shapeshift as part of their racial benefit. Asuran get to conjure up golems. What you are suggesting would allow anyone to visual look how they want and then choose what traits they benefit from, which completely goes against the whole “choice” methodology the game is founded on.

If this was ok, then people would ask that they be allowed to wear whisper agent armor as a vigil member. Again, this shouldnt be allowed. The whole point is you make a choice and reap the benefits of those choices. If you want to look different, or be a part of a different order, make a new character and experience the game from a different viewpoint.

It’s not like classes are restricted by race. If you want a Charr warrior, go make one. Asking for a way to reskin your asuran character as a charr just because you got bored will only ruin the games look and feel.

Alviss.1256:

So you’d be a Charr who had a Silvari’s storyline?

What’s the point of race specific traits at that point?

Not to mention it completely removes race specific stereotypes. IE Norn are supposed to be viewed as the viking drunkards while asurans are the tinkering gadget makers.

So you’d pick a Norn, pick his warrior spirit, what he did at that party, and then run around the map there after as an Asuran?

I don’t like this idea, it kills the entire feel of the fantasy world you are supposed to be a part of, and completely eliminates Race specific benefits.

IE norn get to shapeshift as part of their racial benefit. Asuran get to conjure up golems. What you are suggesting would allow anyone to visual look how they want and then choose what traits they benefit from, which completely goes against the whole “choice” methodology the game is founded on.

If this was ok, then people would ask that they be allowed to wear whisper agent armor as a vigil member. Again, this shouldnt be allowed. The whole point is you make a choice and reap the benefits of those choices. If you want to look different, or be a part of a different order, make a new character and experience the game from a different viewpoint.

It’s not like classes are restricted by race. If you want a Charr warrior, go make one. Asking for a way to reskin your asuran character as a charr just because you got bored will only ruin the games look and feel.

Please read the original post before asking questions, as I have already addressed the majority of your concerns. Thank you. It wouldn’t ruin any feel for anyone. If your guildmate changes from asuran warrior to charr warrior it wouldn’t ruin YOUR game or even effect it at all. The only people it would be effecting is the people who buy it and they are buying it because that is what they want.

Honestly I like this Idea because I made a charr Warrior I would LOVe to turn into a Norn, I just think the Norn have better skills, and I am willing to go through the personal again just to be Norn.

I really hope this becomes an available feature. I would gladly pay up, gems or cash or whatever to redo my higher level character… I feel I screwed up with her facial structure but there’s no way I’m remaking her at this level. x_x

Please oh please, GuildWars people. Make this a purchasable feature! Or at the very least, add a barber shop or something. :P

Yes, please! I hope this comes out as soon as possible…

Restyle maybe, but you will never see a race change and probably not a gender change either. It just doesnt make sense to allow you to completely change your race. Just re-roll if you dont like what you have. There isn’t much content after 80 to do anyway, you go through the content while you level. They will want you to do it again, from a different point of view to get the full story.

Yes, please! I hope this comes out as soon as possible… (2)

They will be looking into that if theres a big demand, I believe.

Just a recustomization, same race and gender. Maybe name change. I’m also hoping for paid guild name change as well. I do understand the issues that would come along with a full race change.

Just reset new races story to the start, done. Wanna change my sylivari to a norn, but put too much into it to just delete it.

I agree with and support the idea of being able to change character’s looks for gems or coin or $. I’ve played the free-to-play GTA-style game All Points Bulletin (APB: Reloaded), and you can change/customize your looks at any time in exchange for in-game $.

Searingarrow, what you don’t understand is the way they track your progress. None of us do. You can’t simply claim “IT’S A SIMPLE SOLUTION!” when you don’t know the way variables are handled.

This is almost certainly completely unfeasible at this stage. Had they planned for such a feature from the start, it would be completely possible, even easy, but at this point there is probably too much information scattered around different parts of the database that restarting the personal story and simply “changing out” some of your choices for new ones would require a complete restructuring of the way they store your data, and even then would only function for characters created after the restructure.

For example, your order’s armor. Once you have the armor, it’s very unlikely that the actual item is tracked in any way by the personal story system. If there is no reference to the item, you can’t modify it.

Second, your claim that “If it doesn’t affect you, you can’t oppose it!” is completely flawed. If someone suggested that they add an item to the gem store that gives you instant levels and skill points or added all of the existing legendaries to the gem store, you can bet there would be a great deal of opposition, and rightfully so, as it would cheapen the effort everyone else had put into their accomplishments. In this case, however, the majority of the posters here aren’t opposing such an option as much as they’re telling you that it’s unrealistic.

I think it’s more selfish to ask that Anet implement race changes, than it is for players to not support them. This would be an ENORMOUS undertaking. Assuming they did offer this as an option, you have to consider that they would effectively be breaking the game. With this there would be bugs/complications.

Not to mention there would be players with “buyers remorse”, resulting in people opening trouble tickets asking Anet to restore their former character, when they realize they didn’t like the new races storyline.

This isn’t even considering how unbalanced it is to other players if you have a level 80 character you swap out everytime you’ve completed a storyline to plow through the NEXT storyline and see what happens, if they can’t afford it or find it IMMERSION BREAKING while they level 6 unique characters to progress through those storylines themselves. While you say it doesn’t effect the other players, I could see people being resentful of their friends with money being able to do that for a gemshop item. You presume that everyone holds the same mentality as you in that regard, and I can assure you this is not the case.

Many of us would regard this as “cheating”. In this case, presuming these variables, it’s about balance. Changing your race with gemshop items would make this “pay to win”, even if it’s just in regards to storyline. (Though story missions reward experience, so would rebooting your character that way negate the XP gained from those as well?)

So basically, you’re asking to restart the game while maintaining your level, why not just level another character, it doesn’t take that long and it’s less of a hassle for Anet so they can focus on the existing bugs and work on the elements of the game that are actually making the game unplayable in some instances?

I’m all for makeover tokens or what have you, changing hair color etc. I think the fundamental elements of your character should remain the same. If not to be fair to the players, to be fair to Anet.

Don’t get me wrong. I want the option to re-customize my character. But you are going down a path that may as well include changing class.

All I want is to be able to change my cosmetic features within the race/gender I’ve already chosen. Don’t reset the story. Don’t change any gear or skillpoints or traits. Just let me change my haircut, or skintone, or edit my height / bulk ratios. That’s all we really need.

You start letting people take their lvl 80 female Sylvari Mesmers into male Norn Guardians in the process of resetting the personal story and I think it’s just too much / not worth it / not realistic. You want it that bad, roll a new character at that point.

The option should be there for us to TWEAK fine details on existing characters, not completely reinvent them into new people but somehow keep our lvl 80 progress.

I would love to change one of my Toons names, but resetting the personal story would imply that one character got double quest rewards through their character play time, and i think that would be a bit unfair… although, i guess i wouldnt gripe much as long as it could only be done with paying real money…

i think it would be Easier, and slightly more balanced, or, ‘Fair’ if you could only reset your appearence and your name. Personaly story reset would be kinda buggy.

Plus, its easy and fun enough to level another toon….

I’d like to throw in a big giant Yes to this suggestion. I made a similar post on a gw2 suggestions site I found. I likened it to the NEWGAME+ options that exist in a lot of single player rpgs. I would love to replay my characters and see the other options they could have taken. I personally would prefer that it be an item in the gem store (maybe a tome like the ones from GW1 that record the missions you’ve done) but I would even be satisfied if it worked like Nightfall where after you finished the game you could go back and do the missions you missed due to your characters choices.

I agree for the most part with people who say that it’s not that hard to make a new character. I’ve got 8 characters I’m currently trying to level up pretty evenly and it’s fun to switch to a new class when I want to change it up. My main concern is that since I have a character of each class it’s kind of hard for me to justify making a new character when I’ve already got the bases covered and I certainly don’t want to deleted one of them.

For anyone concerned with double items and whatnot I’m totally fine with not getting any reward items (I’m already 80 by the time I NEWGAME+) or simply not getting reward items from things I’ve already done on the character once.

To Ebhilin: I totally agree with your point about Anet having more important things to be doing and I’d hope they would get these things resolved before working on something like this. The ‘buyers remorse’ thing wouldn’t in any way be a result of this new option. As we’ve already seen there are plenty of people who feel that way about the character they’ve created. I might even suggest that forcing a player to reroll the same character to experience their alternative storyline would be even more likely to upset people because there’s no way back, with this system you can change back if you like. I think suggesting that people might resent the fact that some people use real money to by it is a bit strange considering you can buy gems with in game money. I don’t really see a problem with it the game rewarding experience from the missions you haven’t done, you’re still playing the game and investing time but I would totally want to leave that up to Anet to do the math on cause after all they have all the numbers. I think a lot of this is basically people (and I think there are plenty who feel this way) wanting to have more of their game experience to be ‘account bound’ instead of ‘character bound’. Also I’m curious if you could elaborate on how you feel this would make the game ‘pay to win’.

To shroommage: I agree that it’s probably not a simple solution, but would add that that’s certainly not a reason to pass on the idea. also I’m not sure your example works, because giving people an item that gives them all of those things DOES affect you/them. Changing ones race/gender/class/storyline really shouldn’t have any impact on anyone else in the game any more than seeing a warrior in hot-pink chainmail.