Guild Wars 2

If there is no playable Charr .I won’t be bother with this game in the first place.

What’s the point of MOAR skin when I don’t have my favorite race to equip it :>?.

Charr models are a nightmare/disaster in terms of development cost. I concur with the OP, humans should have been the only race.

I have 14 cha, across all class all race. But if i want to play a certain class seriously, i will end up make a human or reroll. Am i sound i support human for the only choice?

No, althought i prefer MY CHA to be human, i DO WANT to meet other playable races during my story, party play, pvp or wvw. All other races got things i don’t like which stop me from playing them seriously.

I hate Charr 4 leg run as it look so slow motion to me. Their head is too big and they lack slim body.

Asura i think it is too cute for my taste.

Sylvria i think their shoulder armor are too huge.

Norn also like slow motion in running, male body type is too bulky.

But thats just me, i don’t play them seriously but i want to meet someone enjoy them.

I highly doubt having multiple races actually causes issues with armor design. The reality is the majority of armor is designed on a human model and then shoehorned on to the others. It’s only really a problem on Charr, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they use a script to snap human armor onto a Charr and then possibly try and fix some clipping… Given how most of the armor looks like butt on a Charr, I highly doubt they actually build and model each armor by gender and race separately. There are a few exceptions where Charr get some special features like the tail dragon or fiery tail, but not enough where I’d consider it a real possibility. I think most people simply state that to make excuses for Anet dragging their feet on armor. If they want to weigh in and tell me I’m wrong than I’m all ears and I’d like to know why Charr tails clip so badly.

I don’t fully buy the “Well, making armor is too hard because of all the races” excuse. Back around launch they didn’t seem to have any trouble cranking out 3 new sets of armor (one per weight class) every couple months for the gem store. I’m not saying they could necessarily keep up with that pace nowadays since they probably have less people working on the game now than they did at that point, but I really don’t think it should be such a huge problem if they chose to focus on armor sets.

Rather, the greater cause of the issue is that they’ve chosen to focus more resources on outfit creation than on armor. I mean, fair enough, I can see making that decision since a single outfit can appeal to every player with any type of character whereas armor sets have to be released in groups of 3 with one per weight class. I’m not saying its the wrong choice. Its certainly not the one I’d personally prefer, but there are undoubtedly those who prefer it this way as well, and in a vacuum its a better “bang” for the development buck.

To relate that to the topic at hand… I don’t feel that the races are the main cause of the cosmetic issues. The issue of outfits vs armor would exist exactly how it does today even if humans were the only race. There might be less work involved in creating armor AND outfits, but outfits would still be the more overall efficient development choice.

As for the general question of whether I’d trade every other race for more armor choices… no. Not even a little bit. The races provide FAR more variety than armor sets ever could, in my eyes. Even aside from the obvious different aesthetics of the different races which humans could never duplicate (you’re never having furry humans with horns or tiny humans with big ears and crazy techno hairstyles) there’s also different voices, different mannerisms, different animations, different cultures. Being able to slap a few dozen more armor sets on humans doesn’t even compare.

And as someone who always plays non-human races in any game where its an option… well, I’m not going to claim I would have NEVER picked up GW2 if it hadn’t offered me options. But I may not have picked it up as quickly or stuck with it as long.

Harper.4173:

The game is struggling with the production of cosmetic items and one of the main reasons is the fact that it has too many races.

It’s simply not true that the game is struggling with the production of cosmetic items. ANet might not be producing as many armor sets or backpieces as people are insisting on, but they keep producing them nonetheless. And certainly, among the reasons that this game produces less are the number of dissimilar races.

Other reasons include consistently high-quality skins (I think most of them are UGLY, but there are often great details), the amazing animation (one of the new BL weapon skins has a little surrender hankie, which i hate, but the animation is fantastic), and a huge assortment of dyes for the 2-4 dye channels.

Perhaps the only reasonable comparison we can make is how many BL weapon skin sets compared to how many other weapon skins: the weapons aren’t dyeable (so use fewer resources to produce) and don’t change much for tall/short toons (mostly just scale) and we have a total of three dozen BL skin sets, or about three per quarter (4 months). The HoT released 3 new legendaries (&1 after), auric, chak, machined, specialization, reclaimed, and updated skins for some old legendary precursors.

tl;dr there are lots of reasons we don’t get as many new skins as we’d like; the existence of charr & asura playable characters is just one of those reasons.

Coyote.7031:

I highly doubt having multiple races actually causes issues with armor design. The reality is the majority of armor is designed on a human model and then shoehorned on to the others. It’s only really a problem on Charr, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they use a script to snap human armor onto a Charr and then possible try and fix some clipping… Given how most of the armor looks like butt on a Charr, I highly doubt they actually build and model each armor by gender and race separately. There are a few exceptions where Charr get some special features like the tail dragon or fiery tail, but not enough where I’d consider it a real possibility. I think most people simply state that to make excuses for Anet dragging their feet on armor. If they want to weigh in and tell me I’m wrong than I’m all ears and I’d like to know why Charr tails clip so badly then.

I actually agree with this post very much. Charr armour is just a rip off of human armour. We should embrace charr for what they are, big cats. I think Charr armour should be cat skins or tweaked to enhance features unique only to the race, such as their tails. Most armour have skirts or butt-wraps that just cover up their pretty tails or fur markings. Don’t even get me started on female outfits on charr

I side with what most people are saying here; as a veteran gw1 player, its strange to think that something almost purely cosmetic would take so much excitement away from the game… I created my first human character about a year ago because yes, they are the most boring and uninteresting race of them all… Especially since the game hasnt clung to traditional fantasy races such as dwarfs, elves etc as playable races. Honestly, like a lot of people i am disappointed with the amount of skins in the game & especially the pitiful number that came out with HoT release.

Okay so charr are obscenely difficult to armor in some cases (god help those medium pieces), but i couldnt imagine the game without them – same with asura even though i, not particularly fond of them. I just hope that anet can deliver on the skins in the near future

PS sylvari master race! Forget them asuras

Takoyakii.2146:

What’s the point of MOAR skin when I don’t have my favorite race to equip it :>?.

Boom! My ears, how accurate.

In any case I find there are more than enough armour skins for me to mess around with for asura – never got bored yet with all the light armour options.

And besides I have more than enough fun with the character, voice, animations and so on that I don’t care if there are a limited number of armour sets.

Instead of less races, how about only race bound armor from now on. (yes WP said that too).

there would be no need for fixing clipping issues, you just make 6 individual armors in the first place

I mean if you spend weeks to change an armor to fit certain race, you could make a new one from scratch instead,
only costumes and special armor like Fused Gauntlets would be multy race.

Obviously the OP meant it should have been asura only.

I have 25 characters and 8k+ hours played, but wouldn’t buy human-only GW2 at all.

Harper.4173:

The game is struggling with the production of cosmetic items and one of the main reasons is the fact that it has too many races.
…
This is a problem because armor and cosmetics are the primary driving force that keeps people going in GW2. It’s not gear grild – it’s skin grind – and we’ve got very very little skins.

The game released with a good abundance of skins – but ever since we’ve had too little come into the game either through the gem store or other means.

That aside I also feel the story could have been much more interesting, focused and well written if they didn’t have to write a neutral 5-race story and by doing so distanced themselves quite a lot from the franchise’s original lore and setting.

So as I understand it, the issue is that you think there are to little cosmetic items, armors etc. and that the personal stories are bad (as it is discussed in many other threads),
and you “think” it would be much better when there were less races since that is what seems to be the root of the problem.

If that is true or not, who knows, maybe it was a marketing thing, somebody in the higher ups said they need many playable races, you can cut on the story, or something, doesn’t matter actually since it is done.

What can still be done is voicing the desire to get more cosmetic items, better personal stories, and getting money in the direction of A-net,
make a Kickstarter Project, collect hundreds of thousands Dollar to send to A-Net with a letter saying “pls implements that”

You know, like doing something instead of complain about something that can’t be changed anyway.

This ! Human and asura only

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

tl;dr there are lots of reasons we don’t get as many new skins as we’d like; the existence of charr & asura playable characters is just one of those reasons.

That still means it is a reason and by Anet’s words it’s one of the bigger ones. But it really doesn’t matter, does it? …because the game has been released with multiple player races so nothing people discuss here will change that.

However, I would be interested to see the percentages on how many hours are played on human (and norn since they are very close) characters vs the other races. Depending on how high or low these percentages are we could see if it was worth the investment and continued investment in all those player races or if it actually holds back the game. Without those numbers though it’s really just anybody’s guess.

We do have numbers:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/POLL-Race-Gender-Profession-demographics/first

Old Data though and nothing pulled from the servers directly,
maybe someone should start a new one

Edit:
Here some newer data, not 3 years but only 1:
http://i.imgur.com/S5G0i6j.png

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3dcvf0/here_are_the_classesraces_that_people_actually/

And lastly we have this (no idea from when)
http://guildwars2viz.com/

Griffin.5379:

We do have numbers:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/POLL-Race-Gender-Profession-demographics/first

That’s just a forum poll. It’s anecdotal at best.

Rauderi.8706:

Doubt I would have gotten into GW2 if it were nothing but boring human things. The lore is much richer for the variety. I can just hope they’ll get around to advancing the other races in storyline now that Mordy’s deaders.

And, while I’m having trouble finding “good” skins, that’s not a fault of the development cycle and needing to fit several races. It’s the fault of buttcapes and chainmail skirts and too many armors looking similar to one another or just ranging in bad-to-godsawful. It’s looking at half of the outfits that came out in the past year and wincing, because bird-shoulders, junk plate armor, and boob wings. And if there are numerous “good” skins for an armor weight, they don’t dye the same way or their gloss makes them different, so the lauded mix-and-match ideal just gets more difficult anyway.

I don’t want more armor skins, I want better and more coherent armor skin design.

The lore could have been just as rich regardless of what races we could or could not play. This is not an argument.

GW1:EOTN had rich asura, norn and charr lore without the PC being either of those races. Parts of the story were specifically fixed on these races and there was a very lore-rich narrative there.
In a way I feel it was much more interesting to experience these races as the odd one looking in. They felt somehow unique and more interesting back in GW1 particularly because you couldn’t be a part of them. Being able to make a character of that race feels kinda odd to me.

A human-only choice of playable races doesn’t mean the other races don’t exist lore-wise – that they can’t have stories or meaningful impact. It just means they would have an easier time as developers making skins.

And yes – having fewer races to put armor on means that you could make MORE armor but also better quality armor. We’re not getting either at this time.

Galtrix.7369:

Night elves, humans, draenei, blood elves, trolls, tauren, goblins, worgen, orc, undead, pandaren, gnomes, and dwarves. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard anyone complain about the lack of armor or variety of armor in WoW… and they have many, many more races than GW2 has.

It’s not the races in GW2 that slow down the production of armor. If I had to guess, I would say the reason we receive so little armor additions is because Anet is spread too thin. One of the developers mentioned that it takes upwards of 9 months to create one armor set in GW2… and meanwhile Rift, Lineage, WoW, Aion, and many more MMO’s (including F2P) pop out an armor set every couple of months. The only logical explanation is that the armor people at Anet are working on something else.

Well mate – let me explain it like this. Blizzard is HUGE. You know what WoW has? It has many, many employees working on the game.

Their game is also less complex from a developer standpoint so I would argue making armor in WoW is easier than making armor in GW2 but even if that wasn’t the case the two studios are very very different in size.

So yes – for Blizz it isn’t an issue making armor and skins for a lot of races because they have the manpower to do it. Anet doesn’t – and never did.

I feel it was a mistake to think they could pull it off.

I know they are working on something else but here’s the catch – they can’t really afford to.
There’s a reason we call this game “Skin wars 2” – because the game’s progression here is horizontal – cosmetic. It’s the chase for more skins. You know what you need to make a lot of in a game where the end-game is skins? You guessed it – it’s skins.

zengara.8301:

2 things:

1.
Human race most popular race? Like any proofs that it is true or just guessing?

2.
Gear have gone from something that would look good in a fantasy mmo, to something that reminds me of Power Ranger suits……I would personally rather have them focus on content rather than endless skin grinding

3.
Practical reasons? no offence, but if this game only had 1 playable race.. then there might have been a massive chance for me and a whole lot more not playing or even noticing this game, which would put it in what I would call the “Wildstar zone”

1.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3dcvf0/here_are_the_classesraces_that_people_actually/
http://www.pcgamer.com/guild-wars-2-designer/
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/john-smith-on-the-state-of-the-guild-wars-2-economy/

You can also go in-game and try to do your own observations at world events and whatnot.

While no new statistics have been released there is little to no reason to believe humans are not the most popular race since all the evidence we have points to it being so and there is nothing I’ve found that points to any other race being more popular.

2. GW2’s progression is skin grinding. That’s what it was promised to be – cosmetic driven horizontal progression.

3. To assume that GW2 would fail just because you and others might not pick it up is silly.
I can easily assume that if it was human-only MORE people would have bought it and the reason more people didn’t get it is because there are more races.

Wildstar failed for a lot of reasons – please don’t compare apples to oranges.

niea.7504:

Why Human only? If your (rather silly) reasoning is that it’s so much easier to make skins when there’s just a single race, then it should have been Asura only. Asura master race.

No it should not have.
Humans are the most popular and the easiest to identify with. If you want to sell you sell to the biggest demographic you can – which is players that play humans.

Glacial.9516:

Upon clicking this thread I assumed it would be a troll thread attacking the other races and I am glad to see it was not. I think the OP has a point – designing armors and outfits for multiple different races surely slows down the development. Perhaps it doesn’t take 5 times as long, but I would venture a guess of at least double? (No data backing this up, purely speculation and assumption).

I don’t think the story would be drastically different with one race vs multiple, except in our interactions with other races (ie. If the Pact commander were always Sylvari, HoT would have been very different and very interesting). It still has to encompass both genders and a wide variety of personalities. Perhaps it would have been fun to have played more on the Ferocity – Dignity – Charisma aspects and have different voice actors and/or variants on scenes for each (rather than small, nearly irrelevant choices).

All of that said, I love the different races of Tyria. There is something about each that I find fascinating. I really enjoy playing through the personal stories and learning about the cultures. They are each unique but still share similarities that make them relatable to one another.

I’m quite happy with the way GW2 is and I don’t think I’d trade the other races for more outfits and a more involved story, but it is interesting to think about what could have been.

Thanks for understanding.
And here’s a thing you mentioned which I had initially missed – you’re right about HoT.

HoT on a sylvari is really no different from HoT on a human. The only major differences in stories are in the PS that came with core GW2 – and that was a long time ago.

Unfortunately they’re not making things much more different in the story now based on what race you are. So a lot of the “flavor” argument is lost.

Frankly, I wonder how much of the bias towards humans by the playerbase comes from the complete disregard the developers have for the Asura and Charr’s armor models. It’s hard to be excited to play a race if it’s going to end up looking ugly.

That said – I strongly suspect that Charr, Sylvari, and Asura players make up a much larger portion of the playerbase than they used to. Not because the situation’s improved, but simply because those who play human-only have left for newer, shinier games. If all the whining on the forum is anything to go by, a lot of people have left because of mechanics, development, dated graphics, etc. Those who play humans have a whole swath of other games to play if GW2 does something they don’t like.

But for those of us who value “Able to play as a kitten steampunk god-slaying hellcat” above any trivialities like development cycle or new maps or mechanical changes or ditched legendary weapons or no end game or lack of developer communication or introduced raids or toxic community or (you get the point), there aren’t any other options out there.

Coyote.7031:

I highly doubt having multiple races actually causes issues with armor design. The reality is the majority of armor is designed on a human model and then shoehorned on to the others. It’s only really a problem on Charr, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they use a script to snap human armor onto a Charr and then possibly try and fix some clipping… Given how most of the armor looks like butt on a Charr, I highly doubt they actually build and model each armor by gender and race separately. There are a few exceptions where Charr get some special features like the tail dragon or fiery tail, but not enough where I’d consider it a real possibility. I think most people simply state that to make excuses for Anet dragging their feet on armor. If they want to weigh in and tell me I’m wrong than I’m all ears and I’d like to know why Charr tails clip so badly.

You don’t really get how armor is made do you? There isn’t a “Script” that transfers human armor on charr.

And yes – the 5 races means it takes significantly longer to make each piece of armor.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Harper.4173:

The game is struggling with the production of cosmetic items and one of the main reasons is the fact that it has too many races.

It’s simply not true that the game is struggling with the production of cosmetic items. ANet might not be producing as many armor sets or backpieces as people are insisting on, but they keep producing them nonetheless. And certainly, among the reasons that this game produces less are the number of dissimilar races.

Other reasons include consistently high-quality skins (I think most of them are UGLY, but there are often great details), the amazing animation (one of the new BL weapon skins has a little surrender hankie, which i hate, but the animation is fantastic), and a huge assortment of dyes for the 2-4 dye channels.

Perhaps the only reasonable comparison we can make is how many BL weapon skin sets compared to how many other weapon skins: the weapons aren’t dyeable (so use fewer resources to produce) and don’t change much for tall/short toons (mostly just scale) and we have a total of three dozen BL skin sets, or about three per quarter (4 months). The HoT released 3 new legendaries (&1 after), auric, chak, machined, specialization, reclaimed, and updated skins for some old legendary precursors.

tl;dr there are lots of reasons we don’t get as many new skins as we’d like; the existence of charr & asura playable characters is just one of those reasons.

First of all I’m talking about armor skins here – not weapon skins.

Second of all they’re not really producing them at a “good” pace at all.
Compare how many armor sets the core game shipped with against how many armor sets have been added since in an almost 4 year period and you’ll see what I mean.

The existence of 5 races instead of one is the main reason we don’t get more armor more often.

I wish a dev would comment on this.

Griffin.5379:

We do have numbers:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/POLL-Race-Gender-Profession-demographics/first

Old Data though and nothing pulled from the servers directly,
maybe someone should start a new one

As I said this is a forum poll and that is not generally a reliable source of information.

Griffin.5379:

Edit:
Here some newer data, not 3 years but only 1:
http://i.imgur.com/S5G0i6j.png

Nice picture. Anyone can make that. There is no indication of where the numbers come from so again, this means nothing. In fact this means even less.

Griffin.5379:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3dcvf0/here_are_the_classesraces_that_people_actually/

This one is a bit more interesting but it’s still a survey and not actual numbers pulled from the game. People don’t always tell the truth and they can change their minds on top of that.

Griffin.5379:

And lastly we have this (no idea from when)
http://guildwars2viz.com/

If you look further it looks to be set up 4 years ago. But as we cannot determine the source of his info, this means nothing.

All in all I mentioned that I wanted to see figures on time played with each race and that question you have given zero numbers for. I also don’t expect you to give them, but really this stuff you link here is useless because it’s either a poll or the source information is unknown. I think you best leave these numbers alone really.

Harper.4173:

zengara.8301:

2 things:

1.
Human race most popular race? Like any proofs that it is true or just guessing?

2.
Gear have gone from something that would look good in a fantasy mmo, to something that reminds me of Power Ranger suits……I would personally rather have them focus on content rather than endless skin grinding

3.
Practical reasons? no offence, but if this game only had 1 playable race.. then there might have been a massive chance for me and a whole lot more not playing or even noticing this game, which would put it in what I would call the “Wildstar zone”

1.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3dcvf0/here_are_the_classesraces_that_people_actually/
http://www.pcgamer.com/guild-wars-2-designer/
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/john-smith-on-the-state-of-the-guild-wars-2-economy/

You can also go in-game and try to do your own observations at world events and whatnot.

While no new statistics have been released there is little to no reason to believe humans are not the most popular race since all the evidence we have points to it being so and there is nothing I’ve found that points to any other race being more popular.

2. GW2’s progression is skin grinding. That’s what it was promised to be – cosmetic driven horizontal progression.

3. To assume that GW2 would fail just because you and others might not pick it up is silly.
I can easily assume that if it was human-only MORE people would have bought it and the reason more people didn’t get it is because there are more races.

Wildstar failed for a lot of reasons – please don’t compare apples to oranges.

Fun fact from that very first link you posted: Male Charr Warrior is the fourth-most popular Class/Race/Gender combo, losing only to Human Female Elementalist, Human Female Mesmer, and Human Female Thief. Unfortunately, Charr Females don’t show up until the very bottom (With Charr Female Mesmer being dead last)

Fun fact: add up the stuff- human stuff is by far the most popular.

Regarding the whole armor skin issue:

I’m surprised no one bothered mentioning the portion of the video talking about having racial armor skins instead of armor class skin, i.e. rather than making 3 sets of armor (light, medium and heavy) then on top of that augmenting those designs for each race, cut out the whole light/medium/heavy and just make skins for armors that are designed specifically for that race (around 23:00)

Honestly, since the gem store does sell skins and outfits that blend the the armor classes, I don’t think it’d matter your Asura Thief could wear the same look as an Asura Guardian.

Saying that there shouldn’t be more races other than Human is only going to anger people while overlooking the larger workload: the armor skins themselves.

I’d wager that the inclusion of the various races brought in enough players to be worth far more than the work put in to make it possible. I just don’t think Anet made the wisest choice with how they implemented their armor system in general.

Same with the voice acting. They ended up putting far more heavy a workload on themselves than necessary and now they need metric tons of voices to implement some of the simplest of updates.

That picture
http://i.imgur.com/S5G0i6j.png
is from that page
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3dcvf0/here_are_the_classesraces_that_people_actually/

I gave both links, so others do not need to read through all the text on that page.

Of course all data is not accurate, can’t be, could only be if they release another new article like that,
but they give us trends, and if all the sources say more or less the same as the only (old) official source:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/john-smith-on-the-state-of-the-guild-wars-2-economy/

then it is safe to assume, that humans were and are still the most played race.
Fact>Assumption/Educated Guess>Guess
__________________________________________________

Harper.4173:

The existence of 5 races instead of one is the main reason we don’t get more armor more often.

That is simply not true, the problem in the race/armor equation is that they try to fit every armor on every race and gender, if they would only make “cultural” armors it would reduce the time for each set immensely.
Also, what Leo G said.

This game definitly needs more butt capes for the super original human female meta.

Griffin.5379:

Of course all data is not accurate, can’t be, could only be if they release another new article like that, but they give us trends, and if all the sources say more or less the same as the only (old) official source:

No they don’t give us trends. You really don’t seem to get how this works. If you have a sample size that is big enough to be relevant, like the reddit one, then if you make multiple measurements the same way over time with the same group of people, then you can see trends.

Getting some random things together from 3 different sources that are questionable at best only make you feel better because it fits your belief and so I wouldn’t call that data.

And it still doesn’t even go into time played element because even if you made a variety of characters of different races, people generally do not give all their characters equal play time. So what if I made a charr and leveled it to 80 but then rarely play it anymore because I prefer my asura or human? This is why I am not so much interested in the amount of characters made of each race but how much time they are actually being played. It’s where people spend their time that matters in my view because apparently that’s what they enjoy the most for whichever reason. The reason why would be the next thing to investigate.

But really, just leave the anecdotal statistics alone. It only detracts from the conversation.

We have a game that has multiple races in it that can be played. That is a fact and it will not change because someone doesn’t like it. This does have consequences of course for the resource allotment in the development area. Whether or not this is warranted or worth it, we cannot know. For that we need actual data that shows what people are actually doing in game.

We probably won’t get actual data so we can only hypothesize. I see the following possible hypotheses:

1) In hindsight it was a bad idea and now it’s a millstone that’s dragging Anet down in development.
2) It was clearly a good idea that warrants the investment but it does put a burden on development.
3) It sort of hangs in the middle and it’s not a decisively positive item which makes it a necessity to keep putting resources into it but not with the desired return.

I think that only in option 2, it can be seen as a successful idea. In option 3, it could serve a greater good, which then makes it a positive or it could be something that makes Anet wish they hadn’t gone for it because it’s a lot of trouble for very little return.

As I don’t expect Anet to share their metrics, I also don’t expect that this discussion will bring forth anything that could make any of the 3 options more plausible than the others.

I do hope it was successful because I like games that give as many options as possible, but if the reality is different, then it’s a shame because it’s a lot of resources that could’ve been spent on other things instead.

The OP is of course worried about the last part. All I can say is I don’t know, but if it is the case then I agree. I just don’t know if it’s the case and I don’t believe anyone here can prove it either way.

Harper.4173:

Basically I’m just getting a lot of “I like X race” but do you think that it’s worth it in the long run? Look at how pitifully few armor skins HoT came with?

and how many less skins would there have been if there was only one race?

I only played GW2 because of multiple playable races otherwise there are tons of other completely the same MMOs to play.

Harper.4173:

Watching WP’s recent video about new races really made me crystallize some thoughts that I’ve had for a long time.

Watch it yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oVADcOSTeY

The game is struggling with the production of cosmetic items and one of the main reasons is the fact that it has too many races.
The main culprits here are the Charr – but every race’s particularities have some part in slowing down the process of creating new armor.
This is a problem because armor and cosmetics are the primary driving force that keeps people going in GW2. It’s not gear grild – it’s skin grind – and we’ve got very very little skins.

The game released with a good abundance of skins – but ever since we’ve had too little come into the game either through the gem store or other means.

That aside I also feel the story could have been much more interesting, focused and well written if they didn’t have to write a neutral 5-race story and by doing so distanced themselves quite a lot from the franchise’s original lore and setting.

I don’t hate the non-human races – In fact they could have had just as much story and lore expanding their stories in the game but the only playable race should have been limited to humans – for practical reasons.
Humans are already the most popular race in-game and were so even close after launch.

I’m actually curious how others feel. Do you like the fact that we have 4 other races even if it means we get armor very very very rarely? Do you think it was worth it?

This thread is pretty pointless honestly.

If you want more gear then ask them to hire more staff, or restructure, to work on gear.

Something that is shown in the data – There are more non-human characters than human. And I strongly suspect that the Charr and Asura numbers are largely so low because of the developmental neglect they’ve suffered.

Harper.4173:

Watching WP’s recent video about new races really made me crystallize some thoughts that I’ve had for a long time.

Watch it yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oVADcOSTeY

The game is struggling with the production of cosmetic items and one of the main reasons is the fact that it has too many races.
The main culprits here are the Charr – but every race’s particularities have some part in slowing down the process of creating new armor.
This is a problem because armor and cosmetics are the primary driving force that keeps people going in GW2. It’s not gear grild – it’s skin grind – and we’ve got very very little skins.

The game released with a good abundance of skins – but ever since we’ve had too little come into the game either through the gem store or other means.

That aside I also feel the story could have been much more interesting, focused and well written if they didn’t have to write a neutral 5-race story and by doing so distanced themselves quite a lot from the franchise’s original lore and setting.

I don’t hate the non-human races – In fact they could have had just as much story and lore expanding their stories in the game but the only playable race should have been limited to humans – for practical reasons.
Humans are already the most popular race in-game and were so even close after launch.

I’m actually curious how others feel. Do you like the fact that we have 4 other races even if it means we get armor very very very rarely? Do you think it was worth it?

The main reason why i bought GW2 were the charr and norn. Without them i had never bought the game.

‘Options’ was always one of the big draws to GW2 for me (and I think for a lot of people.) It was sold on the premise of having choices in terms of how, where, when you played, rather than being tied to linear progression and storylines or a single mode of play (eg solo-only or raid-only.) Having a diverse pool of race and class options tied into that as well, particularly with the personal story quests. The ability to play as a sentient humanoid plant intrigued me as it is not something you get in a lot of other games (same reason I always play an Argonian in Elder Scrolls games.)

I think limiting the game to humans for the sake of more armor designs would not have been worth it, personally; for me the racial options are a net gain and not a net loss (particularly since I don’t care for the human models much, especially the female model.) YMMV of course.

By the same token, it would no doubt be easier to implement skins if there were only one class/profession (less armor weights and less weapon choices.) You could argue that it isn’t worth it to include the option of non-2h-sword-warriors, but I think you’d struggle to convince people that having multiple professions and flexible weapon choices wasn’t a draw.

TLDR: people like choices and options, and more races is part of that.

Harper, I agree with your opinion. Maybe if each race had their own armor sets which were designed around their structure completely, it would had been different.

Harper.4173:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Harper.4173:

The game is struggling with the production of cosmetic items and one of the main reasons is the fact that it has too many races.

It’s simply not true that the game is struggling with the production of cosmetic items. ANet might not be producing as many armor sets or backpieces as people are insisting on, but they keep producing them nonetheless. And certainly, among the reasons that this game produces less are the number of dissimilar races.

Other reasons include consistently high-quality skins (I think most of them are UGLY, but there are often great details), the amazing animation (one of the new BL weapon skins has a little surrender hankie, which i hate, but the animation is fantastic), and a huge assortment of dyes for the 2-4 dye channels.

Perhaps the only reasonable comparison we can make is how many BL weapon skin sets compared to how many other weapon skins: the weapons aren’t dyeable (so use fewer resources to produce) and don’t change much for tall/short toons (mostly just scale) and we have a total of three dozen BL skin sets, or about three per quarter (4 months). The HoT released 3 new legendaries (&1 after), auric, chak, machined, specialization, reclaimed, and updated skins for some old legendary precursors.

tl;dr there are lots of reasons we don’t get as many new skins as we’d like; the existence of charr & asura playable characters is just one of those reasons.

First of all I’m talking about armor skins here – not weapon skins.

Second of all they’re not really producing them at a “good” pace at all.
Compare how many armor sets the core game shipped with against how many armor sets have been added since in an almost 4 year period and you’ll see what I mean.

The existence of 5 races instead of one is the main reason we don’t get more armor more often.

I wish a dev would comment on this.

Illconceived knows what you are talking about, reread the comments and put it in context…

Your thread is pointless.

carabidus.6214:

I think playing through the personal stories of all the races is an essential feature of the game. That being said, Charr are impossible to clothe. They are large, hunched and have a substantial tail. Anything I put on them looks awful, which is disappointing for a game so heavily rooted in chasing skins.

The same can be said for the Asura. Their compact, little bodies don’t carry most skins and armors well at all.

This is a big reason why I main human characters exclusively…

Agreed but I think making armor designs unique to each race would solve that. That’s what other games have done (notably TERA). When you design an armor set specificially for an Asura’s tiny body instead of fitting a design made for a human onto them, they’ll look so much better. Same for Charr. Just like in real life, different body shapes look better in different clothes. Why can’t we treat our GW2 races the same way? Give each race their own designs for each set and people will be happier. It might even be easier to create.

Harper.4173:

The lore could have been just as rich regardless of what races we could or could not play. This is not an argument.

It is so. Nyeh.
Also, arguing against something that has already happened and cannot be reversed seems like something that’s actually “not an argument”.
Seriously, what’s the action item you’re proposing with this hypothetical?

GW1:EOTN had rich asura, norn and charr lore without the PC being either of those races. Parts of the story were specifically fixed on these races and there was a very lore-rich narrative there.
In a way I feel it was much more interesting to experience these races as the odd one looking in. They felt somehow unique and more interesting back in GW1 particularly because you couldn’t be a part of them. Being able to make a character of that race feels kinda odd to me.

But the PC is still an outsider. The lore can build, yes, but it’s deeper by having the character experience it directly.

A human-only choice of playable races doesn’t mean the other races don’t exist lore-wise – that they can’t have stories or meaningful impact. It just means they would have an easier time as developers making skins.

And yes – having fewer races to put armor on means that you could make MORE armor but also better quality armor. We’re not getting either at this time.

Quality armor starts in the design phase. The concept phase. Considering the number of questionable items that have actually been released, I’d say the concept phase is experiencing some failures. No amount of manhours invested on the execution on bad concepts is going to produce results. Three quality armors that I will actually use means much more than twelve lip-curling, shoulder-cringing armors that are more easily produced. Those twelve armors take the same time and effort as the three really-awesome ones.

meh … too late to change now anyway so why does it matter at all?

I think cutting out asura in favor of tengu (same frame) would have been better is some aspects.

Griffin.5379:

That picture
http://i.imgur.com/S5G0i6j.png
is from that page
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3dcvf0/here_are_the_classesraces_that_people_actually/

I gave both links, so others do not need to read through all the text on that page.

Of course all data is not accurate, can’t be, could only be if they release another new article like that,
but they give us trends, and if all the sources say more or less the same as the only (old) official source:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/john-smith-on-the-state-of-the-guild-wars-2-economy/

then it is safe to assume, that humans were and are still the most played race.
Fact>Assumption/Educated Guess>Guess
__________________________________________________

Harper.4173:

The existence of 5 races instead of one is the main reason we don’t get more armor more often.

That is simply not true, the problem in the race/armor equation is that they try to fit every armor on every race and gender, if they would only make “cultural” armors it would reduce the time for each set immensely.
Also, what Leo G said.

My point is this. If you only had humans as a race that would be the situation in which you would have the fastest possible output of new armor skins. Anything on top of that – more races – means less armor overall.

If all players played humans then making ONE set meant you’ve covered 100% of the player base.

Your “all sets cultural solution” is only a half-fix – because if you make one norn set for example you only cover the norn part of the player base.

So in order to bring sets to ALL the players you must make 5 “cultural” sets. Instead of one.

Get my point?

Even if it takes much less time to make ONE cultural set – having 5 races means the last race to get a set has to wait 5 times while other races get sets. You’re changing the situation from: Everyone waits X time – to some people wait X time and others wait less.

Nausicca.6038:

This game definitly needs more butt capes for the super original human female meta.

The super original human female meta is there because that’s what most people like.

Gehenna.3625:

Griffin.5379:

Of course all data is not accurate, can’t be, could only be if they release another new article like that, but they give us trends, and if all the sources say more or less the same as the only (old) official source:

No they don’t give us trends. You really don’t seem to get how this works. If you have a sample size that is big enough to be relevant, like the reddit one, then if you make multiple measurements the same way over time with the same group of people, then you can see trends.

Getting some random things together from 3 different sources that are questionable at best only make you feel better because it fits your belief and so I wouldn’t call that data.

And it still doesn’t even go into time played element because even if you made a variety of characters of different races, people generally do not give all their characters equal play time. So what if I made a charr and leveled it to 80 but then rarely play it anymore because I prefer my asura or human? This is why I am not so much interested in the amount of characters made of each race but how much time they are actually being played. It’s where people spend their time that matters in my view because apparently that’s what they enjoy the most for whichever reason. The reason why would be the next thing to investigate.

But really, just leave the anecdotal statistics alone. It only detracts from the conversation.

We have a game that has multiple races in it that can be played. That is a fact and it will not change because someone doesn’t like it. This does have consequences of course for the resource allotment in the development area. Whether or not this is warranted or worth it, we cannot know. For that we need actual data that shows what people are actually doing in game.

We probably won’t get actual data so we can only hypothesize. I see the following possible hypotheses:

1) In hindsight it was a bad idea and now it’s a millstone that’s dragging Anet down in development.
2) It was clearly a good idea that warrants the investment but it does put a burden on development.
3) It sort of hangs in the middle and it’s not a decisively positive item which makes it a necessity to keep putting resources into it but not with the desired return.

I think that only in option 2, it can be seen as a successful idea. In option 3, it could serve a greater good, which then makes it a positive or it could be something that makes Anet wish they hadn’t gone for it because it’s a lot of trouble for very little return.

As I don’t expect Anet to share their metrics, I also don’t expect that this discussion will bring forth anything that could make any of the 3 options more plausible than the others.

I do hope it was successful because I like games that give as many options as possible, but if the reality is different, then it’s a shame because it’s a lot of resources that could’ve been spent on other things instead.

The OP is of course worried about the last part. All I can say is I don’t know, but if it is the case then I agree. I just don’t know if it’s the case and I don’t believe anyone here can prove it either way.

You want the real, hard data? Here’s my suggestion – go in-game – do stuff in the open world and count what race each person is.
I’ve done this a few times over the past months. I’ve also done it in groups. Humans are by far the most common thing you’ll see.

As for what’s going to happen – nothing will – the 5 races are set in stone at the moment – I just hope they don’t make the mistake of adding more and straining their already thing resource management even further.

They have a history of overreaching and instead of delivering some limited stuff of great quality trying to deliver too much stuff and end up having to cut corners on quality.

General Health.9678:

Harper.4173:

Basically I’m just getting a lot of “I like X race” but do you think that it’s worth it in the long run? Look at how pitifully few armor skins HoT came with?

and how many less skins would there have been if there was only one race?

I only played GW2 because of multiple playable races otherwise there are tons of other completely the same MMOs to play.

There would have been MORE skins. Because in the time it took fitting the HoT skins to 4 more races they could instead have made MORE.

Harper.4173:

You want the real, hard data? Here’s my suggestion – go in-game – do stuff in the open world and count what race each person is.
I’ve done this a few times over the past months. I’ve also done it in groups. Humans are by far the most common thing you’ll see.

As for what’s going to happen – nothing will – the 5 races are set in stone at the moment – I just hope they don’t make the mistake of adding more and straining their already thing resource management even further.

They have a history of overreaching and instead of delivering some limited stuff of great quality trying to deliver too much stuff and end up having to cut corners on quality.

Thanks for the pointless suggestion but also that data would be anecdotal.

Also I mentioned more than once that I do not expect this data, but that real data is needed to make any real point here and therefore anybody who claims to know what’s going on is per definition guessing.

Swagger.1459:

Harper.4173:

Watching WP’s recent video about new races really made me crystallize some thoughts that I’ve had for a long time.

Watch it yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oVADcOSTeY

The game is struggling with the production of cosmetic items and one of the main reasons is the fact that it has too many races.
The main culprits here are the Charr – but every race’s particularities have some part in slowing down the process of creating new armor.
This is a problem because armor and cosmetics are the primary driving force that keeps people going in GW2. It’s not gear grild – it’s skin grind – and we’ve got very very little skins.

The game released with a good abundance of skins – but ever since we’ve had too little come into the game either through the gem store or other means.

That aside I also feel the story could have been much more interesting, focused and well written if they didn’t have to write a neutral 5-race story and by doing so distanced themselves quite a lot from the franchise’s original lore and setting.

I don’t hate the non-human races – In fact they could have had just as much story and lore expanding their stories in the game but the only playable race should have been limited to humans – for practical reasons.
Humans are already the most popular race in-game and were so even close after launch.

I’m actually curious how others feel. Do you like the fact that we have 4 other races even if it means we get armor very very very rarely? Do you think it was worth it?

This thread is pretty pointless honestly.

If you want more gear then ask them to hire more staff, or restructure, to work on gear.

This thread is here because I want to discuss these issues. I also want to point out that I feel more races would be a mistake.

And before people go crazy – yes I would like more races in my game but I’m also grounded in reality enough to notice Anet is already struggling and would only dig themselves even deeper into kitten they can’t get out of.

Sartharina.3542:

Something that is shown in the data – There are more non-human characters than human. And I strongly suspect that the Charr and Asura numbers are largely so low because of the developmental neglect they’ve suffered.

Yes – but there are 5 races. Obviously there are going to be more of the other 4 combined than any one of the races.
But the fact that there are more humans than any other races and the fact that the second closest is norn – which are literally bigger humans does say something too.