Guild Wars 2

Time to make some money anet.

inb4 personal story
inb4 it cant happen
inb4 trolling
inb4 inb4

I believe the devs have said before that racial changes, due to the personal story and other coding aspects, are not possible with the current engine.

You know that writing “inb4 something” actually negate the point, right?

It’s very unlikely because the game sets a lot of ‘flags’ based on character progression; changing the race would require resetting all those flags with unknown consequences, requiring tons of troubleshooting even before such a feature launched.

In the meantime, you can achieve much the same effect by creating a new character and (sometimes) using name change contracts.

I agree. Just reset personal story. Once reset, they give no rewards at all, problem solved. But the ps rewards are so bad anyway, who would pay for a race change just to get a couple of gold and 3 keys?

I know they don’t have infinite money or resources but nearly every suggestion I see made someone has to bring up the fact that it’ll be “too costly” or “too hard” and sometimes even A.net themselves have done so. Does anyone else get tired of hearing that?

It makes them look bad in my view, like they can’t seem to do anything worthwhile in a decent amount of time and the fact that players seem to push that narrative is really troubling to me. It’s a tricky line to walk I admit… I dunno. Just get sick of hearing how things people want would be too hard etc. Most things worth doing aren’t easy. :P

So instead of trying to come up with a way to bypass the multiple problems with the personal story and cultural armor, you just post inb4 that stuff? Really doesn’t give me any reason to support your suggestion.

I’m not opposed to race changes, but I realize that ANet did not make the initial personal story easily changeable or even changeable without major problems. Just look at all of the problems that changing the order of the missions has brought to the game. I would hate for the problems to happen to players who spend a lot of gems to change their race.

So how would you solve the personal story problem? Saying inb4 does not mean you get to avoid answering questions regarding it before you say you don’t have to answer it.

anything worthwhile takes time, just because it takes time doesn’t mean it is a bad idea.
i personally think the PS’s are worthless but they still get made with allot of time and effort put in to it, i see no reason why a race change is any different.

Vyrulisse.1246:

I know they don’t have infinite money or resources but nearly every suggestion I see made someone has to bring up the fact that it’ll be “too costly” or “too hard” and sometimes even A.net themselves have done so. Does anyone else get tired of hearing that?

It makes them look bad in my view, like they can’t seem to do anything worthwhile in a decent amount of time and the fact that players seem to push that narrative is really troubling to me. It’s a tricky line to walk I admit… I dunno. Just get sick of hearing how things people want would be too hard etc. Most things worth doing aren’t easy. :P

You misunderstand the issue. It’s not a question of whether something is hard; the question is: what else can they do for the same effort?

There are over 6,542 suggestions on the web at any given time, with hundreds of unique & viable ideas among them, including a race change contract. ANet cannot possibly work on more than a handful and certainly not all of them. They have to make hard choices.

Which good ideas should they choose? Well, if the folks who work there have a good sense of the MMO business, they are going to use a variety of criteria:

• How many people would be interested?
• For those interested, how big a difference will it make to them? Will some non-paying players pay RL cash for such a feature or buy the game for the first time if it’s included?
• Are there existing tools or features that already serve as a decent proxy for the feature? How good/bad are those tools/features at approximating the idea?
• How much would it cost to conceive, develop, test, and implement the feature? How much would it cost to maintain it?

All things being equal (which, of course, they rarely are), ANet is going to look for changes that make a real difference to the gameplay of a lot of fans, with relatively ‘reasonable’ implementation & maintenance costs, and that, ideally, help increase revenue so that ANet can continue to produce the game as they see fit.

In the case of a race change:

• The demand is relatively light compared to other features.
• It’s clear that a solid minority would pay for a few race changes immediately, but unclear if there will be much interest on an ongoing basis, as it requires that people have a vested interest in something about the character as a different race and aren’t willing to start a new toon.
• There is already a proxy for the feature: new character slot. Obviously, it’s nowhere near as good or convenient.
• The costs are relatively high for the sort of feature it would be: there really are all sorts of things in the game that assume that a character’s race never changes and they would all have to be recoded. The impact of changing race is unknown and would have to be heavily tested … and as anyone who plays MMOs can tell you, it’s not possible for the developer to catch all the potential bugs, so all of those would require post-launch troubleshooting and repair.

In short, the costs are really high relative to the likely benefits to players and especially compared to the amount of gems that ANet would be able to charge.

It’s not a matter of being “too hard” — it’s a matter of whether it’s relatively hard compared to other things they could do with the same resources, for greater benefit to the community and to the game (and, of course, their bottom line).

What soul-bound items, etc. are so important one can not just make a new character? Perhaps, what should be sold is a bundle with Character Slot, Tomes of Knowledge or L80 Scroll, and Name Change Contract or two (or special contract). Or whatever else needs to be in bundle.

Voila, race change!

Sure. As long as it:

• Resets your character to level 1.

• Resets all story progression.

• Forces a name change.

• Cost 800 gems.

The amount of coding that would be required, compared to the number of people who want to perform a race change would mean that they would need to charge about 4,500 gems per race change to make it worth their while.

HOWEVER! With such a high price point, only about 15% of the potential customers would ever actually buy them, which means that they’d need to further increase the price to around 30,000 gems to make up for the lost customers.

This would again drive even more potential customers away causing them to need to do a CBA to find the sweet spot where they are losing money, but not so much that it is painful.

Long story short, it is impossible for them to ever recoup the money spent on recoding because the costs are far and away too high to ever be offset by any realistic price point with the number of potential customers that would be interested, which is why you will never get a race change item in the gem store.

I remember when Blizzard said they couldn’t do race changes or faction changes.

Their is a huge disconnect in this game compared to others in regards to how people play.

There are many different grouping of MMO players but the primary and most upfront one is the Altoholic and the single user. MMO’s typically cater to both crowds but GW2 unfairly sets everything to that of the Altoholic.

Many people don’t have a ton of active toons they have a main and play only that main. In GW1 they knew this and with the dual class system players could unlock skills in do many thing while retaining a single toon. Gw2 has nothing for the single toon user from lack of class/race change to mastery exp being set to spread across multiple toons. I know many people who gave up on mastery and HoT all together because they have no desire to run multiple toons through I grind post game. The people leaving and speaking of how much of a grind this game is aren’t Altoholics infact I’d say altoholics are the minority.

I see absolutely no reason why class and race change couldn’t happen the race related parts of the story lay no bearing on events in the later half of the game. The only thing race determines are a few NPCs in your home instance and simply letting people rechoose their three starting questions would fix that as well. It’s not like in HoT or anywhere post core your race based choices actually matter at all. If HoT or season 3 started to change because my Sylvari picked All things have a right to live then I’d agree but it doesn’t.

Furthermore many don’t care about story at all thanks to the lack of season 1. The game jumps from Zhatian to season 2 without no real explanation and that kills any dedication many people had with the story straight out. Your character goes from a hero to surrounded by strangers talking about events you never took part of and then expects you to care about them and the future of the story? If they cared about keeping in line with the story we’d have some sort of season 1 to introduce all the characters but their isn’t so bring on the race change.

Kahrgan.7401:

Time to make some money anet.

inb4 personal story
inb4 it cant happen
inb4 trolling
inb4 inb4

You missed “inb4 there are better things they can add to gem store to make them money and not worry about the mechanics of letting players change race”.

@Doam… I don’t see how choosing to only play one toon hinders a player. In fact, I would say the opposite: They have fewer distractions, so can accomplish more. Only map the world once, for example.

Yes, if they wish to access all crafting, they would have to pay some coin to switch when needed. But they wouldn’t have to keep track of which toon has which crafting maxed.

They would miss out on the level 30 (I think?) stories for each race, but they could easily complete that on one of their alt slots. Not an issue.

If they choose to only play one character, then what do they care about “unlocking other professions elites?”

About the only thing I can think of is if they wish multiple world completion rewards for crafting legendaries. Most legendaries can be purchased though, right? What else is really a factor?

Doam.8305:

I see absolutely no reason why class and race change couldn’t happen the race related parts of the story lay no bearing on events in the later half of the game. The only thing race determines are a few NPCs in your home instance and simply letting people rechoose their three starting questions would fix that as well. It’s not like in HoT or anywhere post core your race based choices actually matter at all. If HoT or season 3 started to change because my Sylvari picked All things have a right to live then I’d agree but it doesn’t.

Your character’s race is one of the older parts of the game code, and a lot has been built on top of it. As Anet has said, changing something that fundamental could have terrible results. Don’t you remember what happened when they changed the stories over to a chapter mode? Do you not see the posts which pop up from time to time saying, “Talk to this NPC to fix your story” etc.? There are even events which refer to your story’s code, and finding all such other references would be nigh impossible.

Just because you can’t see a reason, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Doam.8305:

Furthermore many don’t care about story at all thanks to the lack of season 1. The game jumps from Zhatian to season 2 without no real explanation and that kills any dedication many people had with the story straight out. Your character goes from a hero to surrounded by strangers talking about events you never took part of and then expects you to care about them and the future of the story? If they cared about keeping in line with the story we’d have some sort of season 1 to introduce all the characters but their isn’t so bring on the race change.

Of course they care. They added this NPC for you to talk to, and repeatedly prompt players to return to her for Current Events in case they have missed her. They also changed the story menu so talking to that NPC is the next step once you finish the core story. You not getting what you want doesn’t equate to Anet not caring.

Vyrulisse.1246:

I know they don’t have infinite money or resources but nearly every suggestion I see made someone has to bring up the fact that it’ll be “too costly” or “too hard” and sometimes even A.net themselves have done so. Does anyone else get tired of hearing that?

It makes them look bad in my view, like they can’t seem to do anything worthwhile in a decent amount of time and the fact that players seem to push that narrative is really troubling to me. It’s a tricky line to walk I admit… I dunno. Just get sick of hearing how things people want would be too hard etc. Most things worth doing aren’t easy. :P

…… You ever hear that old adage that it’s easier to destroy then it is to create?

Well that factors in, but your comment is just so rude and ignorant. It’s not directly malicious and you’re not trying to harm anything, but jeez. I agree fully that things worth doing aren’t easy, but thinking everything should be implemented in the game is just infantile.

Vyrulisse.1246:

I know they don’t have infinite money or resources but nearly every suggestion I see made someone has to bring up the fact that it’ll be “too costly” or “too hard” and sometimes even A.net themselves have done so. Does anyone else get tired of hearing that?

It makes them look bad in my view, like they can’t seem to do anything worthwhile in a decent amount of time and the fact that players seem to push that narrative is really troubling to me. It’s a tricky line to walk I admit… I dunno. Just get sick of hearing how things people want would be too hard etc. Most things worth doing aren’t easy. :P

So there are like hundreds of suggestions. Not every one can be done, which is logical. By my count they’ve released three new maps and about half a year. That’s pretty good. Another map presumably coming with another living story.

Will more people use new maps than houses? Most likely.

The stuff that people say that about is generally stuff they don’t personally care about. But it’s also true. Anet already had fractals coming out, raids coming out, PvP maps coming out, changes to WvW and there’s probably very little room to add new projects on top of that, particularly while working on an expansion.

rapthorne.7345:

I believe the devs have said before that racial changes, due to the personal story and other coding aspects, are not possible with the current engine.

And its still as stupid as the day they said.

Look, its real easy. We can do manual race change today in 5 minutes.

1) Move all your ascended gear/items/bags to bank. Salvage exotics, keep the runes/sigils.
2) Delete your character
3) Create your character
4) Insta 80 with tomes
5) Insta elite specced by heroics in WvW
6) Transfer back all your stuff in point 1
7) Done, race changed

What do you loose? Bagslots and the gold cost for replacing your exotics. Your personal story is gone. Your age is reset. But it still works just as good as anything. Most choose to skip step 2 – just create another char in a new slot. You already suffer the same limitations as a race change would. You cant equip your old human gear if you are charr for example.

Anet could easily allow this automatically

What would you be paying gems for?

- To transfer soulbinds on character (with the exception of race bound where you get gold per item mailed to you and the item destroyed)
- To keep the same bagslot expansions
- To set the same age
- To copy the same story progresses

Thats it. Its databases and numbers. Copy paste.

Anet can do this. Whether its worth the effort is another matter.

When developers say that something, “can’t,” be done for whatever reason, they usually (but not always) mean that it could be done but would be prohibitively expensive in terms of development resources for the potential return on investment to make it worthwhile.

Ignoring Dawdler’s rhetoric, that’s an intriguing option:

• Pay 800 gems (or whatever)
• Delete the chosen character.
• ANet gives you a token to replace the bag slots.

That much is easy.

The other stuff is not:

• Reset the age
• Reset the soulbinding
• Replace any other items
• And especially replacing the story progress

It’s not conceptually difficult — it’s simply that they didn’t code the underlying mechanics in a way that makes copy/paste possible, which means that they have to check everything that might be connected. And given how many bugs they miss (not counting the ones they caught) any time they touch progression … well, it seems unlikely that they can offer migrating the story.

Still, it might be reasonable for them to expedite some aspects of the delete/recreate/rename process for a pseudo race change.

Delete, your character make a new one with the race you want.

There you have your race change

Post Character Creation Race Change will and should never get implemented.
Simple because every player has more than enough time to think about what race they want to play when they create a character…

You must not play a charcter first through the whole game, to then have suddenly years later the change of mind, that you always wanted to play that character as an other race…

thats total nonsense and everybody knows that.
Because nobody plays for years a race, that they don’t like, just to then want to change it suddenly into an other race.
People want to change races in this game, because of fashion reasons and clipping errors.

ANet releases a new armor set, that looks on race X felt 10000 times better, than on race Y, which sadly naturally must be whyever the race, that you have decided to play with your character – dang, I want to change my race now ….

Anet releases a new Armor Set that you want to use, on Race A,B, C and D it looks perfectkly fine, but whyever on your chosen race E, the armor clips, due to your race having a tail, or or body specifics that lead to the clipping …. – dang, I want to change my race now …

THIS, this are the true reasons why people are begging like kids for years for a Race Change Option.
—-

I see it similar, if Anet should ever add a race change option, then using it should come together with a heavy consequence, because you as player pretty much want to kill off your character just out of visual reasons…

Because I don’t believe, that someone will ever say years after creation of the character, that they ewant to change races, because they don’t like suddenly anymore their racial skills or their personal story they have done long time ago.. no it has always to do with something visual, because only the visuals of races are something, that stand under constant change due to Anet addign new costumes/armors to the game over time or because a specific E-Spec looks under a certain race “cooler” in their opinion.
It has always to do with visual reasons somehow.

These heavy consequences should be:

• Race Change maximum only 1 time per Account possible
• Costs 2000 Gems
• Resets Character Progress completely to Level 1 as like fresh created and teleports it to Tutorial Start, means you have to replay with it everything again.
• Forces Character Rename and thus makes your old Equipment not useable again

With these consequences will people overthink it twice, if they really want to do a Race Change, just only for some visual reasons because changing a race isn’t just only changing a visual body model, its much more effort for Anet and thus should mean also consequences for the player, if they ever decide to make Race Changes possible.

Reason why race change won’t come:
I’m a human. I studied at metrics. My first invention was a serv-a-tron

It would be easy enough to just reset personal story as a condition of a race change.

Opopanax.1803:

It would be easy enough to just reset personal story as a condition of a race change.

How do you know that? The people who have actually seen the code and actually know their data structure have said it’s very tricky.

They stated before launch that they didn’t want an item like this for “reasons.”

They stated a while back, when asked, that it was technically impossible to do this for “reasons.”

Obviously things were coded with the initial stance in mind, and as such to make such an item now would require base structure changes similarly to why they can’t allow any class to use any armor skin as it so pleases. Its highly unlikely it would be a financially sound decision to try to change these things now.

If it were as easy as flipping some values in their database, I’m sure they’d be happy to oblige the people waving their credit cards at them. However, since they’ve stated there are things that are hard coded (cringe) and it seems like they are using NoSQL databases (based on their open position postings), its not quite that straight forward.

Of course, they could just change the race and keep everything else the same, even if the PS makes no sense. It’s not game breaking and it’s not like the races have any special abilities that would need fudging.

DoctorDing.5890:

Of course, they could just change the race and keep everything else the same, even if the PS makes no sense. It’s not game breaking and it’s not like the races have any special abilities that would need fudging.

We can’t possibly know what else this could potentially affect and bug though. There’s more to the workings that we can only make assumptions about.

Might depend how much it affects the hero panel and how tied the character is to it. As one small example, cultural armor. Maybe changing the race but leaving the personal story the same as the original race means that the char can wear the original races cultural armor but not the new race’s.

I’d be happy with the ability to wear cultural armor on a character of a different race. Cultural armor is the only reason that I would ever want to change races, but being able to wear any cultural armor on any toon would be kittening nice, and I’d even pay for that if it was a reasonable price.

Its very hard for them to do it. A better option would be to make an item that would make you level 80, unlock all specialization masteries and unlock all the maps/waypoints of any other character you choose in your account. I’m guessing that would be more viable as you are, in essence, making a new character. I can see that going for at least 2k gems.

Mea.5491:

I agree. Just reset personal story. Once reset, they give no rewards at all, problem solved. But the ps rewards are so bad anyway, who would pay for a race change just to get a couple of gold and 3 keys?

Not that easy. ANet have said it would take more time to do than they are willing to spend on it. Never going to happen.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

We can’t possibly know what else this could potentially affect and bug though. There’s more to the workings that we can only make assumptions about.

Exactly, and if we look at the mess of bugs that came when they reordered the steps and changed levels for the NPE then we can see that this isn’t as straightforward as one might think/expect it to be.

maybe anet needs to sell a package that has a level 80 booster and a world completion token where you accept the token and it unlocks all hearts, vistas, waypoints and points of interest (but you get no map or world completion rewards) in core tyria. Can’t be newer maps as it would unlock those maps for people who don’t own the expansion.. Delete your char. remake with new race and old name use the level 80 booster and the world completion token and your char is a level 80 with a new race, old name and has core tyria unlocked. You’ll have to explore the new maps again.

Greener.6204:

Doam.8305:

I see absolutely no reason why class and race change couldn’t happen the race related parts of the story lay no bearing on events in the later half of the game. The only thing race determines are a few NPCs in your home instance and simply letting people rechoose their three starting questions would fix that as well. It’s not like in HoT or anywhere post core your race based choices actually matter at all. If HoT or season 3 started to change because my Sylvari picked All things have a right to live then I’d agree but it doesn’t.

Your character’s race is one of the older parts of the game code, and a lot has been built on top of it. As Anet has said, changing something that fundamental could have terrible results. Don’t you remember what happened when they changed the stories over to a chapter mode? Do you not see the posts which pop up from time to time saying, “Talk to this NPC to fix your story” etc.? There are even events which refer to your story’s code, and finding all such other references would be nigh impossible.

Just because you can’t see a reason, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Doam.8305:

Furthermore many don’t care about story at all thanks to the lack of season 1. The game jumps from Zhatian to season 2 without no real explanation and that kills any dedication many people had with the story straight out. Your character goes from a hero to surrounded by strangers talking about events you never took part of and then expects you to care about them and the future of the story? If they cared about keeping in line with the story we’d have some sort of season 1 to introduce all the characters but their isn’t so bring on the race change.

Of course they care. They added this NPC for you to talk to, and repeatedly prompt players to return to her for Current Events in case they have missed her. They also changed the story menu so talking to that NPC is the next step once you finish the core story. You not getting what you want doesn’t equate to Anet not caring.

All these kill Braham and Jory comments we’ve seen on this site and other are due to a disconnect with the characters. From Zhatian to Season 2 there are a slew of characters without introductions who just show up and start calling you boss. People have no connection to these characters. New players I’ve talked to are invested up till Zhatian and the NPC they put in is a poor alternative. Furthermore a good book or movie doesn’t ask a person to look outside the material to fill in the holes and yet this game attempts to do the very thing.

All they need from Season 1 are the character introductions and growth as well as some interactions with scarlet the entire thing doesn’t have to be brought back.

Who said it’s not getting what I want the new player retention and low earnings report speak for themselves that more effort needs to be put in to smooth the game out before they keep trying to build on its foundation.

DeanBB.4268:

@Doam… I don’t see how choosing to only play one toon hinders a player. In fact, I would say the opposite: They have fewer distractions, so can accomplish more. Only map the world once, for example.

Yes, if they wish to access all crafting, they would have to pay some coin to switch when needed. But they wouldn’t have to keep track of which toon has which crafting maxed.

They would miss out on the level 30 (I think?) stories for each race, but they could easily complete that on one of their alt slots. Not an issue.

If they choose to only play one character, then what do they care about “unlocking other professions elites?”

About the only thing I can think of is if they wish multiple world completion rewards for crafting legendaries. Most legendaries can be purchased though, right? What else is really a factor?

The game forces alts by limiting the amount of gifts for mapping to two. The Mastery exp is balanced across alts a single toon can complete HoT’s story and map as much as they can and unlock achieves and they will have to grind the same content over and over again for some time to max out. They even have borders up so people can’t grind masteries in other regions. There is more but the fact remains these are all things a single player puts up with while the Altoholic gets a pat on the back and a free pass.

Altoholics aren’t a super majority and many players enjoy decking out a single character it’s just odd that a game that goes on about pushing horizontal progression doesn’t do much at all. GW1 did much more in expanding what a character can do and not what a character looks like not to mention games like FF14 and others.

All MMO players are split into too groups most players have a main that they stick too for years or months. They care about other things because people get bored with limited options and when people get bored they straight up quit and this is why other games add horizontal progression in the means of expanding how that single toon can be played. Even this game seems to be aware since your class isn’t brought up and even in HoT your elite specialization is never acknowledged either. Meaning they probably thought about horizontal progression through the classes.

In regards to race as the game gets older it gets longer for instance HoT played out differently whether you were Sylvari or not. For all we know Norn and Asura could get special treatment during the Jormag/Primord deal.

In addition new races and new classes added late in an MMO’s lifespan typically do poorly because people have established mains and thus developers really don’t put that much effort into them. No point when over half your base is going to take a quick glance and return to their 1-4 year old mains after all. A sure fire way used by many games to get a sustainable population of new additions is the race and class changes. I don’t know about you but the revenant phase has died down significantly as everyone has returned to their mains only a few main the Revenant which is sad for all the work put into it. If we had class change some people would have changed their long running mains. If they added tengu it too would hardly be played a year after release unless they allowed people to race change into it. Knowing a healthy population of new additions can exist and thrive will push them to put more effort before and after the specialization, class, or race is added to the game.

Race and class change in other MMO’s is about balancing out and keeping a thriving and healthy community the naysayers loose nothing if a slong standing player changes up his main for a breath of fresh air. If a new addition actually gets some usage and the face of teh game gets more diverse.

What was done by the old character is done.
Why can’t the new race start the personal story with the new expansion?
Once the move is done you simply make sure the previous story chapters are finished, because with a new race the past would be locked.
That’s doable is it not?

I’d pay for a race change option in the gem store. I have a human that really longs to be an asura.

This is actually a feature that ANet can collect revenue on directly — which is better than an unpaid feature.

Technical details are not relevant to the player discussion forums — only the developers and finance folks internal to ANet can comment on the profitability of the feature, including opportunity costs.

Hmm,

Sure, but only if it is restricted to being used by asura.

If technical details aren’t relevant to the conversation, then I suppose there is nothing left to discuss.

The devs have stated that they can’t do it due to technical reasons.

/thread

I’d rather they spend their time and resouces adding content, not flipping to a new class or race that we can create via a new character slot.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

If technical details aren’t relevant to the conversation, then I suppose there is nothing left to discuss.

The devs have stated that they can’t do it due to technical reasons.

/thread

^this

OriOri.8724:

I’d be happy with the ability to wear cultural armor on a character of a different race. Cultural armor is the only reason that I would ever want to change races, but being able to wear any cultural armor on any toon would be kittening nice, and I’d even pay for that if it was a reasonable price.

I assume you mean after they redesign the armours for the other races . Picturing charr armour trying to hang off of an asura rig is just too funny!

Anet would need to create:

• 4 other racial versions of each armour set
• 9 sets per race
• 5 races to do this across
• 2 genders to double all the work above

Which would give them 360 armours to be designed.

Speaking of armour, how the heck would racial change work when your character is wearing a racial-skinned armour at the moment of change? The hoops Anet had to jump through to do the level 80 boost was convoluted enough (full props to the devs who managed to pull that off).

Race change may be out, but racial tonics may be a possibility though. We’ve already seen that they have the ability to do that and there is clearly a market for something like that.

Greener.6204:

OriOri.8724:

I’d be happy with the ability to wear cultural armor on a character of a different race. Cultural armor is the only reason that I would ever want to change races, but being able to wear any cultural armor on any toon would be kittening nice, and I’d even pay for that if it was a reasonable price.

I assume you mean after they redesign the armours for the other races . Picturing charr armour trying to hang off of an asura rig is just too funny!

Anet would need to create:

• 4 other racial versions of each armour set
• 9 sets per race
• 5 races to do this across
• 2 genders to double all the work above

Which would give them 360 armours to be designed.

Speaking of armour, how the heck would racial change work when your character is wearing a racial-skinned armour at the moment of change? The hoops Anet had to jump through to do the level 80 boost was convoluted enough (full props to the devs who managed to pull that off).

I’m of the opinion that ANet should free up armor skins in general and let the players find outfits that don’t clip too bad (unless that’s what they want I guess). If Charr armor skins on an asura look like crap that’s fine, but at least any asura characters would have the option to pick those skins that look like crap if they wanted to.

Same thing with armor weights. I know they would clip and just generally not go well together. I frankly don’t care. I think its squarely on the players’ shoulders to find sets that go well together.

Lorewise, I understand why cultural armor exists. But gameplay wise it just frustrates me

OriOri.8724:

Greener.6204:

OriOri.8724:

I’d be happy with the ability to wear cultural armor on a character of a different race. Cultural armor is the only reason that I would ever want to change races, but being able to wear any cultural armor on any toon would be kittening nice, and I’d even pay for that if it was a reasonable price.

I assume you mean after they redesign the armours for the other races . Picturing charr armour trying to hang off of an asura rig is just too funny!

Anet would need to create:

• 4 other racial versions of each armour set
• 9 sets per race
• 5 races to do this across
• 2 genders to double all the work above

Which would give them 360 armours to be designed.

Speaking of armour, how the heck would racial change work when your character is wearing a racial-skinned armour at the moment of change? The hoops Anet had to jump through to do the level 80 boost was convoluted enough (full props to the devs who managed to pull that off).

I’m of the opinion that ANet should free up armor skins in general and let the players find outfits that don’t clip too bad (unless that’s what they want I guess). If Charr armor skins on an asura look like crap that’s fine, but at least any asura characters would have the option to pick those skins that look like crap if they wanted to.

Same thing with armor weights. I know they would clip and just generally not go well together. I frankly don’t care. I think its squarely on the players’ shoulders to find sets that go well together.

Lorewise, I understand why cultural armor exists. But gameplay wise it just frustrates me

I wasn’t talking about clipping. I was talking about armour pieces trying to be put on rigs they’re not programmed for.

For the cost it would take in gems compared to a Makeover Kit + Name Change Contract, you may as well buy a character expansion slot.

penelopehannibal.8947:

For the cost it would take in gems compared to a Makeover Kit + Name Change Contract, you may as well buy a character expansion slot.

I did just this. I created an asuran mesmer to replace my human mesmer. I had the tomes of knowledge, a ton of gold and I figured why not.
It didn’t take much time to get him full outfitted and the new HoT trait line.

No regrets.

Not to throw more fuel on this fire… but about cultural armor skins…

I do seem to recall, a long while back when the game first came out (or maybe it was still during the Betas) that you could look at any racial armor on any race.
It didn’t last long though before it was patched out and, my memory is fuzzy, but I do seem to remember it was /buggy/ as hell and left some characters completely naked! (Not that it showed anything. All the characters are just barbie dolls under their armor, after all.)
Plus, does nobody remember the original Flame Kissed Light Armor debatical? The utter, childish, kitten-storm tantrums that some people threw here on the forums over a set of armor that had the same -silhouette- as the T3 human female cultural armor, but was able to be worn on any race, forever nailed that coffin shut.

As for the more direct topic at hand, I just honestly don’t see a need for a Race Change option. As TheMountain.6204 pointed out above, it’s not hard to make a new character, get them to 80 and kit them out as you wish.