Guild Wars 2

Selecting a Nierr Character will start players off in the tutorial “The Broken Seal of Daikaku” , where players will fight Mordrem and their Arch Enemies, the Krait.

During Character Creation, a player can customize a Nierr’s physical appearance and answer three race specific biography questions which affect their personal story:

• Which Chakra Flow do you feel is the strongest in your Body? — (Natural, Physical, Mental, Spiritual)
• What is your Nierr Family Tribe you belong to? — (Nyan, Niera, Nin, Nyrr)
• What do you like the most about the Nature? — (Animals, Plants, Weather)

The Nierr home instance is the “Shrine of Silence” in Niarre

Nierr Racial Skills center on the Paths of Zen.

Not very much about the culture of the Nierr is known so far.
The Nierr are a new fresh found ally to the Pact and thus for the rest of the superior Races of Tyria that formed Pact, they are seen by the other races naturally as a welcome help in the Battle against the Elder Dragons and treated with the same respect, like when the world of Tyria got to know about the existance of the Sylvari, just with the difference that the Asura wouldn’t make any experiments with a Nierr, because a Nierr would just shred the Asura easily into pieces just for thinking about that due to the telepathic powers.
The Scholars from the Durmand Priory have found out a really long time ago something about the existance of this race, which led to a bigger researching and finally to a mission for an exploration group of well experienced adventurers, that led to the point of finding this race deep in the Magus Falls, surrounded by Mordrem being able to survive there without getting corrupted by Mordremoth’s natural and mental powers.
However, one thing is for sure by just looking at the Nierr.
Despite looking very ferocious and tribalistic, the Nierr are a very intelligent race, able to speak the same language like the other supreme races of Tyria, yet it is unknown, how they were able to learn it.
The Nierr do own the the power of Telepathy to also communicate among each other without speaking, just through a mental connection.
Nierr are also known to be able to speak with animals too through their telepathy.

Nierr are either very lazy, or can be also very hyperactive as a controverse.
They do hold winter sleeps normally at peaceful times as part of their culture, but its no must for them to do that. Sleeping is just their most personal state of enjoyment at peaceful times. While sleeping, they can get into Trance, a state in which they shift between reality and nothingness to find true enlightment and inner strength through the Teachings of Zen.

In regard of social behavior, due to living for a very long time completely isolated from the rest of the world in the Magus Falls, they social skills aren’t that well developed.
Nierr are very introverted, thoughtful and don’t show very much emotions towards strangers, which is only something that they do show among themselves, unless they learned to trust you, which is easy for them to decide, due to their telepathy lettign them know about it, if someone has harmful intentions towards them. You simply can’t belie a Nierr, they simpy scan and read your mind while you have’t spoken out your words to an end like reading a book.
This ability is a blessing and curse together in regard to their sociological acceptance among the other races. The Nierr do feel, like their is a kind of connection to them and the Norn as they do feel, that the Norn are in touch with the nature -not as strong as they are, but strong enough to be very much interested in their bondings with the Animal Spirits to to feel through their telepathic ability also their connections to those spirits.
The Nierr get tolerated and appreciated as allies in the battle against the Elder Dragons very much for their abilities, that are agaisnt the Dragons very helpful for everyone to gather intel and spread information very quickly out for everyone to keep everyone informed in a matter of no time and that even over larger distances with the help of some special Pact Technologies to improve the telepathic powers of the Nierr even more.

The Nierr follow their own faith of the Path of Zen.
Zen is all imbued within the life of a Nierr and part of their very nature every single day.
Martial Arts and mainly Meditation are the ways of the Nierr to hone and practice their Teachings of Zen that describe the Paths of Zen to follow.
Each of those Paths has an incarnated Animal God after which their Martial Arts come from and to which the Nierr pray daily to at least once in the morning and at least once before going to sleep into their personal trance state in which they can meditate even, while they sleep.
The Path of Zen includes five Animal God Incarnations, which are very strong beasts found living deep in the Magus Falls, which are holy to the Nierr.
One of them was even bonded to the powerful magical protective Seal of Daikaku, one of the most powerful Nature Rituals, which protected the hometown of the Nierr – Niarre, until the Mordrem corrupted it, after it was weakened by the Krait to be not able anymore to withstand Mordremoth’s corruption, what led to the seal to break. and the Nierr to come out of their isolation and getting helped out by the Pact right in time.

The remaining four Animal God Incarnations from the Nierr are:

• Shinigami, the Nine Tailed Fox of Souls
• Ispharin, the Radiant Deer of Meditation
• Pardoux, the Shadow Cat of Voidness
• Leylafyell, the Golden Rabbit of Agitation

The fifth Incarnation was before of its corruption by Mordremoth:

• Xionxess, the Adamant Turtle of Volition

The Nierr are governed through four Family Tribes, which were the first four of five Family Tribes that ever existed.
The fifth Tribe went antagonistic after the loss of the Seal of Daikaku and left the homelands of the Nierr, as they got banned.
Each of the remaining Family Tribes is responsible since the accidents of losing Xionxess to Mordremoth to protect the remaining incarnated Animal Gods from any further harm, be it from the Mordrem, the Krait or any other threat to them.

The four Tribes are called the Nyan, the Nin, the Nyrr and the Niera.

• The Nyan are the Family Tribe of Shinigami.
• The Nyrr are the Family Tribe of Pardoux
• The Nin are the Family Tribe of Ispharin
• The Niera are the Family Tribe of Leylafyell

Each of the Family Tribes has 1 Head Leader, which represents their whole Family Tribe.
Important Decisions that have to be made for all Nierr, are being made in special Meetings of the four Heads of the Nierr. Those Leaders are called by the Nierr as “Sages of the Path”, or more commonly also “Zen Dailama”

The Names of the Nierr are influenced by buddhistic names, as the whole culture of them has been inspired by me from alot of the buddhistic culture, so there should be also their names influenced by that.
—-

In the Attachment is followed an inspirational Artwork that led me into making this Concept, after reading that other Thread about, which race I would design.
This is my more detailed out version

Nothing wrong with any of your post, but might be an idea to merge with https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-GW2-race-would-you-create/first#post4588642 to avoid duplication, and also keep that thread a d your ideas more prominent

I’m all for proper catgirls, not the hunchback cowgirls GW2 has!

Don’t think they’ll ever be added before the lore-friendly races, though. Heck, we don’t even get cat ears and tails – only bunny ones! Still, a nice post to read

If you want this type of thing go play a different MMO. It’s bad enough that Norn, Asura, and Kodan exist at all; we don’t need anime catgirls to de-class the game any further.

Little too much generic-traditional-Asian-melange-stereotype for me.

At this point any content they add is good in my book

And after the cute cat people, how about cute panda people.

Orpheal.8263:

-snip-

You might want to correctly attribute that image to the Breath of Fire 2 game as Katt from the Woren tribe. Source of inspiration maybe, but hardly an inspirational artwork. Concept Artwork at best, derivative artwork by a fan at worst.

As far as whether a race is worth considering for gw2, if they were not in the game’s lore, or not even in the lore of Guild Wars 1, then no, the race is not worth consideration. Frankly the whole idea of “the krait are their mortal enemy” is painfully forced. Moreso than Scarlet ever was. And the idea is forced by an unimaginable amount when you completely disregard the fact the krait are ocean dwellers. How the hell are the krait anywhere NEAR Magus Falls?

You have personified the idea of a Mary Sue as an entire race. Good job.

narwhalsbend.7059:

If you want this type of thing go play a different MMO. It’s bad enough that Norn, Asura, and Kodan exist at all; we don’t need anime catgirls to de-class the game any further.

Way to go in shunning a person’s idea for improvement.

To the OP, I like this idea myself.

Malkavian.4516:

narwhalsbend.7059:

If you want this type of thing go play a different MMO. It’s bad enough that Norn, Asura, and Kodan exist at all; we don’t need anime catgirls to de-class the game any further.

Way to go in shunning a person’s idea for improvement.

To the OP, I like this idea myself.

How is it an improvment to invent and shoe horn in a totaly new race when the lore already have atleast 1 race to add Tengus

We already have cats…
plus if this game goes manga, many ppl would go crazy

I vote no.

Besides….. it already reminds me of this, which I would much rather see as a playable race than anime cat people:

narwhalsbend.7059:

It’s bad enough that Norn, Asura, and Kodan exist at all; we don’t need anime catgirls to de-class the game any further.

“It’s bad enough that boring unimaginative generic humans and boring giant humans with ugly medieval brute force and no pretty looking magic exist at all; the game has been declassed by warrior profession and absence of elegant cat-people and fox-people already.”

See what I did there?

While we’re at it lets add Young Adult Genetically Modified Samurai Kappa.

No.

@ Aidan:

You seem to have never played Guild Wars 1, did you?
Only because the Krait are currently in GW2 mostly seen only in water heavy areas doesn’t mean, that this must be the only territory, where they live.
The Krait in GW1 lived in the Tarnished Coast, very near to the Maguuma Jungle.
They are a metemorphobic race, which are able to evolutionize their appearance fitting to the territory they live in.

If you played GW1, then you would know, that all the Krait that we battled at the Tarnished Coast were not living in the water, we battled them all on land where they had like five different evolutional forms and tranformed themself even in while being in combat

Its unbelieveable, how shortsighted and narrowminded people can be here in this forums. Next time inform yourself first, before you open up your mouth for just complaining about things about which you seem to know nothing at all about !
http://wiki-en.guildwars2.com/wiki/Krait

The krait are humanoid from the waist up, with a lizard-like head with protruding horns and scaly skin, and have snake-like tails. They prefer to live underwater, where their tail allows them to be flexible and excellent swimmers, but they are equally able to live on land and are reasonably mobile there

Means just, they can live everywhere on land as like in water territories, deal with it, if you like it or not!
They were forced to leave also their favored home territories mostly by the deep sea dragon.

They already had a presence on the Tarnished Coast. Fifty years ago, however, they were forced out of the Unending Ocean’s deepest trenches, their former homeland, by the deep sea dragon’s forces

So who the hell are you to tell me, that none of those many Krait refugees that got forced to leave their original underwater home search for a new home in the Maguuma Jungle to get then into war with the there living Nierr over that territory, cause the Krait don’t care about what other races need, they just take what they want by force, unless there is a bigger force like the deep sea dragon that can easily defeat them…

If you have nothing constructive to say, other than to flame me by telling me I would have “Mary Sued” my concept, when you clearly know nothing about the Krait what is ridiculous and insulting, then please stay out of this thread.
If the Krait are for you and your personal universe of understanding nothing else, than “Ocean Dwellers”, fine, but don’t dare to tell others what a race is, when you clearly don’t have the full understanding about the race you are talking about, viewing them only from the angle, how the race got implemented so far in GW2, when the race has a much longer history in the game and existed already in GW1 clearly showing everyone, that this race is no solely “Ocean Dweller” as you seem to believe, especially when the Krait Lore confirms easily, that they can live everywhere, but just prefer only to live in the water, because out of simple moveability reasons!

The picture I put into the attachment should also help only people to get a simpler understandign about, how the Nierr could LOOK LIKE, not how they definetely should look like. It was an artwork, that simple inspired me, nothing more, nothing less.
That people must complain really over every single tiny bullcrap instead of staying for once constructive and just say what they would personally change about a made “concept” (I hope really people know what this word actually means), which is much more useful criticism

I don’t particularly support the idea of creating a ‘new never seen before’ race that has appeared out of nowhere, when we have several incredible already built up races from which to choose from in-game. At least not before they, you know, find things hinting towards a new race.

Kodan is the most obvious choice. Followed shortly after by Tengu.

If you want to try it, there is also the Skritt and the Hylek.

All four of these races in the world have immense back-story, supporting lore, and more importantly:

Animations, voice acting and models/textures already completed in game from which to form a base off to start a ‘player’ race.

My apologies to you, but your idea for a new race does not seem very original or fitting to the world/tone of guild wars. Furthermore telepathy is a NIGHTMARE to write for story wise.

Once you introduce a telepath, so much flies out of the window and you end up in massive plot holes. How would this new race survive? More importantly, if they are telepathic, they would surely suffer from the influence of the dragons.

The sylvari as a race are semi-telepathic in the way that they have the dreams and the tree, and that has corrupted several of them to the darker paths. I cannot imagine a race that is naturally telepathic surviving the influence of the elder dragons.

Lastly, a lot of your lore relies on the ‘unknown’ and that alone is a significant plot hole. I have worked in game design, and on the document itself you cannot say ‘we dont know how this player race learned how to speak the languages of tyria’ you MUST list in detail how things like that happened, because the design team needs to know.

While you may not want the players to know, you simply cannot have such glaring holes in a races mythology/back-story for it to be successful.

Orpheal.8263:

@ Aidan:

You seem to have never played Guild Wars 1, did you?
Only because the Krait are currently in GW2 mostly seen only in water heavy areas doesn’t mean, that this must be the only territory, where they live.
The Krait in GW1 lived in the Tarnished Coast, very near to the Maguuma Jungle.
They are a metemorphobic race, which are able to evolutionize their appearance fitting to the territory they live in.

If you played GW1, then you would know, that all the Krait that we battled at the Tarnished Coast were not living in the water, we battled them all on land where they had like five different evolutional forms and tranformed themself even in while being in combat

Its unbelieveable, how shortsighted and narrowminded people can be here in this forums. Next time inform yourself first, before you open up your mouth for just complaining about things about which you seem to know nothing at all about !
http://wiki-en.guildwars2.com/wiki/Krait

The krait are humanoid from the waist up, with a lizard-like head with protruding horns and scaly skin, and have snake-like tails. They prefer to live underwater, where their tail allows them to be flexible and excellent swimmers, but they are equally able to live on land and are reasonably mobile there

Means just, they can live everywhere on land as like in water territories, deal with it, if you like it or not!
They were forced to leave also their favored home territories mostly by the deep sea dragon.

They already had a presence on the Tarnished Coast. Fifty years ago, however, they were forced out of the Unending Ocean’s deepest trenches, their former homeland, by the deep sea dragon’s forces

So who the hell are you to tell me, that none of those many Krait refugees that got forced to leave their original underwater home search for a new home in the Maguuma Jungle to get then into war with the there living Nierr over that territory, cause the Krait don’t care about what other races need, they just take what they want by force, unless there is a bigger force like the deep sea dragon that can easily defeat them…

If you have nothing constructive to say, other than to flame me by telling me I would have “Mary Sued” my concept, when you clearly know nothing about the Krait what is ridiculous and insulting, then please stay out of this thread.
If the Krait are for you and your personal universe of understanding nothing else, than “Ocean Dwellers”, fine, but don’t dare to tell others what a race is, when you clearly don’t have the full understanding about the race you are talking about, viewing them only from the angle, how the race got implemented so far in GW2, when the race has a much longer history in the game and existed already in GW1 clearly showing everyone, that this race is no solely “Ocean Dweller” as you seem to believe, especially when the Krait Lore confirms easily, that they can live everywhere, but just prefer only to live in the water, because out of simple moveability reasons!

The picture I put into the attachment should also help only people to get a simpler understandign about, how the Nierr could LOOK LIKE, not how they definetely should look like. It was an artwork, that simple inspired me, nothing more, nothing less.
That people must complain really over every single tiny bullcrap instead of staying for once constructive and just say what they would personally change about a made “concept” (I hope really people know what this word actually means), which is much more useful criticism

Don’t you dare even try to compare krait to anime catgirls.

Aren’t the Kodan already kind of a zen focused race ?

I am not opposed to the basic idea presented by the OP but it seems to have a bit too much overlap with existing races IMO. Cat-like is somewhat Charrish. Zen focused is similar to the Kodan IMO.

My suggestion to the OP would be to try to de-emphasize the areas of overlap with existing races and focus on what makes the race different. Also give the race a distinctive interaction hook. Asura are mad scientists, Norn are a valhalla seeking vikings (with a touch of greek hero hubris tossed in), etc.

A hook needs to be very distinctive and immediately recognizable to differentiate members of one race from another and very much needs to go beyond the visual.

Nice start though.

Tyria really needs some orcs in this game too

@ Kitsunami:

I thank you for this constructive criticism, that clearly shows people the difference of what is “useful” criticism and what is not.

I agree with you about the plot hole.
My only “excuse” here is to say basically only, I wrote this text yesterday very late in the night and I had at that moment no idea how to briefly describe how they learned New Krytan also having the word limit in back mind, because I wanted to make sure, that the rough concept just gets shown in maximum 2 posts so that people give it at least a chance to read and don’t start the thread with silly TL;DR comments that are of no help at all.

However, this concept should naturally work mostly only as a basic frame for Anet.
I naturally expect out of this concept nothing at all and surely not, that Anet would just copy everything 1:1 lol I know also too that this doesn’t work this way.

I’d be just glad, if we get to see a more elegant, smaller beast hybrid race to see becoming playable in GW2, that isn’t as like Lishtenbird said so “bulky”.
I don’t care how the race is named later, what they enemies they have later, be it Krait or not

Just the buddhistic style paired with the simple concept of an elegant more humanoid hybrid beast race is enough for me what i#d like to see Anet taking as key elements into the sketch board for making a new playable race and I think, the Magus Falls would be a nice place for having a hometown there

Sure, I’d give the Tengus also the higher priority before implementing any complete new race, but unlike you I see no problems with addign a complete new race, especially in an area, that hasn’t been explored yet very much.
Large parts of the maguuma jungle weren’t neither in GW1, nor now in GW2 explorable, so we can’t know, if there exist any yet unknown races and in the end, its still Anets game.
Whenever they decide that there might be a place for a complete new race over adding something like the Tengus first, then it is so and we have to deal with it.
I personally wouldn’t say no to it, if Anet would give us a complete new race over something else first, when thats their decision and where I have no right to tell them, what they should add for playable races to the game and which not.

Also thank you about mentioning the Telepathy “Issue”
I knew I forgot to describe something important

The Nierr are by nature immune to Mordremoth, same as liek the Sylvar are immune to the influences of Zhaitan. Their Path of Zen allows them to have a much stronger volition, than other races, which makes it impossible for the Dragons like Mordremoth to break their wills and to corrupt them.
The natural chakra in combination of their strogn wills they have from their Path of Zen, that flows through their bodies also helps them to stay clean and protected from the dragons negative corruptions, but this has also somethign to do with their incarnated holy Animal Gods, which are powerful magical beings, that work as “Seals” that protect the Nierr, granting them also in their near the natural Chakra Flow.
If any of the Elder Dragons would corrupt of of their Animal Gods, the Nierr would lose their faith and their strogn will, which comes from their Path of Zen and in this state, they would then also suffer from the influence of the Dragons and could get also corrupted. Thats why it is so important for the Family Tribes to protect their holy incarnated Animal Gods from any harm, because only as long as at least one of them still lives, are the Nierr safe from the Dragon’s Corruption.

Those incarnations basically work as multiple shields from the dragon influence, but they aren’t invincible. When massively weakened, those incarnations can get corrupted, as like happened with Xionxess as like I’ve described it.

@ BlackLeech

rolleyes No comment ….

/no

While your class is cute, it doesn’t fit into the GW world.

1) It’s far too anime

2) No race even remotely similar exists in lore, it would have to be retconned in (good way to really kitten people off)

3) The charr are already a race of cat people. I’m sorry you don’t like their design, but they are true to their GW1 counterparts.

@ Ashen:

No, the Kodan are very different.
They share some buddhistic religious things, so far yes, but the Kodan are all about “Balance”, while the Nierr aren’t.
The Kodan don’t meditate. The Nierr are not in search of Balance to the point that they even tell other races how to get into balance.
The Nierr only are in search of Enlightment, to strenthen their volition and faith in and with their Path of Zen. They don’t care about it, if any other races do understand their faith to get into any kind of “balance”, like the Kodan do.

Alos I used here the Incarnation System in a completely different way.
The Kodan believe of themself, to reincarnate and being the highest form of reincarnations.
The Nierr instead believe not in personal reincarantion. They just believe that their Animal Gods that are very powerful mystical beasts simply incarnated manifestations of their faith of the Path of Zen, which is all about the Teachings of Void and Nothingness and not about reaching some kind of Balance with youself and everything around you in the world.
The Teachings of Zen is about learning, that there is no sense of life and that trying to search for one leads you only into a void of living your daily life simply, being always focused on what you do actually now in the present. You mind is set on nothing but what you are actually doing, not getting distracted by anything like a flood of thoughts or emotions or anythign else.
When you reach the state of pure voidness, thats the essence of Zen, then you will find enlightment.

On your analogy with the other races, take this as answer:

Asura = Mad Scientiests
Norn = Valhalla Vikings
Charr = Fearsome Legionnaires
Human = Jacks of All Trades
Sylvari = Naive Dreamers
Nierr = Telepathic Battle Monks (living in a deep jungle to be in touch with the nature being for a long time isolated)

I think this should be a hook, which is clearly distinctive and immediately recognizable enough to be very different from all the other races, cause no other playable race uses meditation to get into Trance. No other playable Race uses Martial Arts as part of racial skills based on Zen making usage of their unique agitations and quick elegant bodies, that are smaller and more gracile, than that of a human.

@ Lanfear:

Could people for gods sake please get this “anime stuff” out of your heads???
Only because I used an anime like concept art to make it easier to understand, what a kind of picture I had just in mind, when I thought about this race concept?.
Really? Are you serious??
Come on, when you already complain, then come up with serious arguments, other than “its too far anime”, when the only thing about this concept being anime was just only a little picture of inspiration, that is no where near it, how the race might look like in the end really in the game. A picture, that can’t be taken as a guaranteed saying, that the race would look like this at all later after Anets changes here ‘n’ there to make the concept fit into the game somewhere, somehow in Anets own stylized kind of way.

Orpheal.8263:

@ Ashen:

No, the Kodan are very different.
They share some buddhistic religious things, so far yes, but the Kodan are all about “Balance”, while the Nierr aren’t.
The Kodan don’t meditate. The Nierr are not in search of Balance to the point that they even tell other races how to get into balance.
The Nierr only are in search of Enlightment, to strenthen their volition with their Path of Zen. They don’t care about it, if any other races do understand their faith to get into any kind of “balance”, like the Kodan do.

Alos I used here the Incarnation System in a completely different way.
The Kodan believe of themself, to reincarnate and being the highest form of reincarnations.
The Nierr instead believe not in personal reincarantion. They just believe that their Animal Gods that are very powerful mystical beasts simply incarnated manifestations of their faith of the Path of Zen, which is all about the Teachings of Void and Nothingness and not about reaching some kind of Balance with youself and everything around you in the world.
The Teachings of Zen is about learning, that there is no sense of life and that trying to search for one leads you only into a void of living your daily life simply, being always focused on what you do actually now in the present. You mind is set on nothing but what you are actually doing, not getting distracted by anything like a flood of thoughts or emotions or anythign else.
When you reach the state of pure voidness, thats the essence of Zen, then you will find enlightment.

On your analogy with the other races, take this as answer:

Asura = Mad Scientiests
Norn = Valhalla Vikings
Charr = Fearsome Legionnaires
Human = Jacks of All Trades
Sylvari = Naive Dreamers
Nierr = Telepathic Battle Monks (living in a deep jungle to be in touch with the nature being for a long time isolated)

I think this should be a hook, which is clearly distinctive and immediately recognizable enough to be very different from all the other races, cause no other playable race uses meditation to get into Trance. No other playable Race uses Martial Arts as part of racial skills based on Zen making usage of their unique agitations and quick elegant bodies, that are smaller and more gracile, than that of a human.

---

@ Lanfear:

Could people for gods sake please get this “anime stuff” out of your heads???
Only because I used an anime like concept art to make it easier to understand, what a kind of picture I had just in mind, when I thought about this race concept?.
Really? Are you serious??
Come on, when you already complain, then come up with serious arguments, other than “its too far anime”, when the only thing about this concept being anime was just only a little picture of inspiration, that is no where near it, how the race might look like in the end really in the game. A picture, that can’t be taken as a guaranteed saying, that the race would look like this at all later after Anets changes here ‘n’ there to make the concept fit into the game somewhere, somehow in Anets own stylized kind of way.

I’m sorry, people usually provide images (as you stated) of what they have in mind for what the race to look like. We don’t need a bunch of cat girls with jugs because that’s what you feel the game needs. Please go see Tera for animal girls with jugs.

I gave 2 additional valid reasons why such does not fit with the game. As I stated previously, we have a feline race. However, Anet chose not to overly sexualize the females and I applaud them for that.

I appreciate you take so much time and thinking out a concept for a new race. Butttt this race looks exactly like the cat race in ArcheAge. And I don’t approve of a cat/dog/bunny/fox race.

Nicely done OP. That was a cool read.

Sorry to say as much as I enjoyed your effort as a Tengu I have to unfortunately state that I hope we get introduced to the game first. My plumage is looking sensational and I just sharpened my beak.

Tengu or Kodan is prolly gonna be played by a small minority because they look too much like animals, like what happened to charr. Majority doesnt wanna look bulky and animal like, and if you played gw2 you know its true. I would also feel bad for the developers who put effort into it. Therefore i support this race that is humanoid.

all the races we got now are humanoid aswell mate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanoid

More generally, the term can refer to anything with uniquely human characteristics and/or adaptations, such as possessing opposable appendage (thumbs), binocular vision (having two eyes), or biomechanic bipedalism (the ability to walk in an upright position).

name one playable race that dont have or cant do those thing

Oké thanks for the info but i think my message came through.

@Orpheal

Good job constructing the basic concept. There’s certain issues that should be addressed, like others mentioned. You’d have to pick some way to fit them into the lore, maybe using a name mentioned somewhere, that was a mysterious clan of something that ended up isolated…find some link that existed, even if you have to completely change the aesthetic, but your last resort should be retconning them in (i.e. oh! we’ve always known about them! it just never came up in conversation! and they’re just quiet!)

My personal beef with the idea though, someone mentioned Mary Sue earlier? When it comes to races, there should be glaring flaws. No person is perfect and if they are perfect, they are very hard to relate to or explain why they aren’t the dominate race. Asura are brilliant and sometimes cute but they’re cruel and can be cold and calculating. Norn can be jolly and good in a fight but they suffer from hubris to a fault. You can tend to pick any race and highlight the good but also bring up the bad which a lot of times is emphasized by that race’s ‘bad faction’.

So what is this race’s faults?

Also, usually granting a race a special trait or ability is balanced with an equal or even stronger fault. You can save Skritt have a form of telethapy limited to a form of hive mind which can situationally make them the most intelligent race of all but they have to remain together, and when alone they are pretty dense.

So your race has telethapy. Isn’t that kind of a Mesmer thing? Is there some sort of limit or cost to it? You gotta make it interesting.

fireflyry.7023:

Nicely done OP. That was a cool read.

Sorry to say as much as I enjoyed your effort as a Tengu I have to unfortunately state that I hope we get introduced to the game first. My plumage is looking sensational and I just sharpened my beak.

Haha, I eagerly await your people’s arrival!

What would you say to a dark plumed brown raven-type Necromancer? Too cliche? XD

A nice and bright red and blue Ranger or Guardian robin-type would be swell, IMO.

luzt.7692:

Tengu or Kodan is prolly gonna be played by a small minority because they look too much like animals, like what happened to charr. Majority doesnt wanna look bulky and animal like, and if you played gw2 you know its true. I would also feel bad for the developers who put effort into it. Therefore i support this race that is humanoid.

The community has been screaming for Tengu for a long time….the only issue with Charr are the animations but I see more Charr warriors and rangers than I do any other race. Subjective to be sure but minority race options to minority players often dictate a huge role and flavor to such games.

All human = boring.

luzt.7692:

Oké thanks for the info but i think my message came through.

And your message was what then mate, since it clearly wasent races being humanoid

if you want boobs play norn or human problem solved

fireflyry.7023:

All human = boring.

5 sylvari, 2 humans, 1 asura.

…but it doesn’t mean I will be playing Tengu straight away. I don’t like birds, they have no appeal in my view (just as Kodan). I deleted charr and norn (too bulky and brute for me) and rerolled sylvari for that reason. I would instead prefer another “exquisite” race, and some oriental agile animal people fill that role perfectly for me.

It’s very nicely presented and all; and I can see that a lot of time and effort went into this… but no.

This race, nor nearly any of its background lore or traditions, fit into Tyria. This really is a case of “if you want cat girl things, go play one of the many, many asian MMOs that cater to that crowd”. I know others have suggested improvements, but I’d honestly say that you should cut your losses here. A new race is a lot of development time and won’t really draw in new players: but I’m certain that it will lose existing players… these things just don’t belong.

Yes, let’s bring more Asian anime crap that has absolutely no background in the GW world.

You already have 4 races that are animal enough (Kodan, Skritt, Tengu and Krait) and a mysterious humanoid-enough race (Largos) that would satisfy the “Iwantmorehumanlikechars” people.

And then let’s bring Earth religions into this too, by name, shall we?

Nope. Nope. Nope. Go play an Asian MMO that has catgirls if you want cute big-boobied big-eyed catgirls. There are plenty out there for your “special entertainment” if you get my jist.

I have to fully veto the race. Nope, nope, nope. But I highly praise the amount of thought you put into your proposal. Nice level of detail.

Some explanation on Strengths & Weaknesses, otherwise people keep on thinking this Concept would be about them being “too good”
The Weaknesses being alot more detailed to explain better, because the Strengths and Characteristics about what makes a Nierr a Nierr should be obvious by now.

Strengths/ Positive Characteristics

• Telepathy and the Ability to talk with Animals
• Martial Arts based on their Path of Zen, being very focused on what they do, once they are fully concentrated on something.
• Trance State when being in Deep Meditation
• Immunity to the Corruption of just only Mordremoth as long their Animal Gods live and thus they can feel Natural Chakra flowing through their bodies which cleanses them from impurities and negative Influences from Mordremoth due to Meditation and being one with the Nature.
• They are very adaptive, once they see how something gets done, they learn quickly.
  Like for example how to wield a Rifle and use it. Especially those that follow the Path of Voidness are known for beign good adaptive Engineers for example,

Weaknesses/ Negative Characteristics

• Using Telepathy is very exhausting so longer you do it. If you try to overexaggerate it, it might even kill you. Only with the help of M.E.N.T. (Mental Expanding Neuronic Transmitters) from the Pact it is possible for them to use Telepathy over long distances and even then not for very long time.
  Only those, known with a very strong mental Chakra Flow among the Nierr are able to endure the exhausting telepathy for the longest time.
  Telepathy among the Nierr is mostly only used to quickly warn other Nierr and to gather intel from the environmental living animals all around of Tyria to be able to see, what they see.
• Nierr can be sometimes very lazy and stubborn like mules as their negative characteristics, especially when something forces them to stop meditating and getting in touch with nature. Its hard to convince them for something, once they have set up their minds as a collective Tribe after a Meeting of the four Zen Dailama.
• Ex-Fifth Tribe the “Nyarr” have lost their old faith and got obsessed by negative emotions of hatred, wrath and revenge going basically berserk and out of control not knowing anymore, whos friend and whos enemy if their emotions overwhelm them.
  Due to them becoming a danger to basically everyone else, they got banned out of Niarre after an accident in which Nierr from Nyarr had killed under their rage other many other Nierr of other tribes in midsts of Niarre.
  The deep hatred makes them unable to think logically anymore, thats why they’d just attack everybody, be it Human, Asura, Charr, Sylvari or Norn of whom they are thinking about is responsible for the the death of Xionxess and their loss of their faith.
  Their emotions turned them basically into fanatics.
• The reproduction of Nierr is slower than that of other races.
  Compared to a Human with 9 Months of Reproduction Time it takes for a Nierr roughly 2 years and they always give guaranteed only birth to 1 Child, not like other races, which could give birth to more childs at the same time or like the Sylvari, which reproduce alot faster than all other races, that they had within 25 years already a huge population!!
  So their popolation is by nature in a state, in which they aren’t able to be at all the dominant race at all.

• The Nierr possess no War Technology, like the Charr or the Asura with their lots of alchemagical inventions. So their value in the Pact lies heavily mostly only in Support and massive improvements for Communication and Scouting for the Pact.
  The only thing that the tribalistic Nierr know good how to make are Traps and Nature Rituals to influence their enviroment. The only good thing to say about this is, that they are willing to learn new things from the other Races…
  ——

Just to make sure, that they fit also into the Classes:

Nierr Class NPC Names

Warrior > Fighter
Guardian > Monk
Thief > Marauder
Ranger > Seeker
Engineer > Pioneer
Elementalist > Naturalist
Mesmer > Mentalist
Necromancer > Spiritualist

Cat people.
With a tribe called Nyan.

There’s really only one song that could be used for the BGM for their starting zone.

Filaha.1678:

There’s really only one song that could be used for the BGM for their starting zone.

That’s totally not the song I expected.

I agree with what most people have said here already.

I love the amount of time you’ve spent on fleshing out your race proposal. It’s lovely to see somebody who is so enthusiastic and creative.

But I feel that we already have the “cat people” in game. I also feel that A-net/NCsoft wanted to break the mould with Charr; even though they are a feline race, they aren’t the cutesy, possibly sexualised, anime cat-girl type character.

I’d rather that they implement a race that we already have seen, like Tengu, Kodan, Skritt or the elusive Largos. These race already have some back-story so fit into the game (and the current geography) very well. I think they’d only be able to introduce a race we haven’t seen yet if they introduce a new continent, where it would make sense that we haven’t met any of them yet.

Here is my feedback and suggestions to add depth to your interesting story:

On a personal level, I like basically all of your proposal except the anime cat-girl-like nature of the race. The back story seems interesting, but I do find the ex-fifth tribe very cliche though… it’s very common in a lot of stories and currently seems very bland and 2-dimensional. We see this kind of back story a lot in Guild Wars (like the Flame Legion, Sons of Svanir etc) but their stories are fleshed out and make sense. What they have in common though is a lust for power, but their methods are pretty different and that’s what makes it interesting. Explain why the Nyarr are overcome by negative emotion, why they are fanatics. Perhaps increased emotion increased their power, strength and mind powers? How did this affect their society?

Another personal suggestion would be to change the names of the tribes. All these words beginning with Ny or Ni are very difficult to remember. I understand that this might be down to the linguistics of these people, but it’s important for players to get a feel for the language and culture without being confused. I’d also personally steer clear of “nyan” because of its placement in pop culture… but then if you really want to stick with cutesy anime catgirls I guess it makes sense….

I also noticed that the place names you used (Shinigami, Leylafyell etc) come from real-life words. That in itself isn’t a problem, but I do find it odd that Japanese and Scandinavian come together in this way.

My recommendation to you (in order to further develop and add depth to your race) is to start devising a simple language for these people. Start out with just a few key sounds that are distinguishing to the race and form a few words that might often be used. I’d suggest devising some greetings, some terms of endearment, some exclaimations and some insults as these can be thrown into dialogue easily without confusing the reader. Use this language along with English (and maybe your language+English combined) to devise place names that are meaningful. This increases the realism of your race by removing the mishmash of real-life references from different cultures.

Here come the questions….:

What are their relationships like within groups? How do they organise themselves in terms of heirarchy? Do they have monogamous life-long relationships? How does one of these people choose another for a relationship- what do they find attractive? How do they raise their children? What are their traditions? How do they believe their Gods affect them- can they be blessed or cursed? How do they age- do they live shorter or longer lives compared to humans? What do they eat?

What are their jobs like? What kind of technology do they have, if any?

What are their buildings like? What is their surrounding environment like? Do they have any problems like famine, drought, floods, disease, hot/cold?

What was their history like? Where did they originally come from? How does the current world connect to them to discover them?

What would their racial skills be like? What would their cultural weapons and armour be like (and what stat combination)? What kinds of things would you be able to change in character customisation except the normal (e.g. fur pattern and colour, ear shape, tail length/shape)? What would their 3 pet options be for ranger creation? What would their biography choices be like clan, chakra…? How would these affect their personal story?

What cultural “nuances” do they have (e.g. norns like to party)? Do they have any common fears (e.g. I think I’ve heard that Asura dislike water)? Explain the origins for these!

I hope you enjoy filling in their whole story as much as I’ll enjoy reading about it Sorry if I asked too many questions… I wanted to be thorough!

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

/no

While your class is cute, it doesn’t fit into the GW world.

1) It’s far too anime

2) No race even remotely similar exists in lore, it would have to be retconned in (good way to really kitten people off)

3) The charr are already a race of cat people. I’m sorry you don’t like their design, but they are true to their GW1 counterparts.

/agreed

The design for Neirr looks like it came right out of a generic Korean game. I would much rather have Tengu or Largos.

I like the effort put in to all of this, but none of this really fits Guild Wars.
To be honest, i don’t even think they would fit Cantha, and that’s Asian themed continent.

I also really don’t think the game needs a generic humanoid japanese cat people (that have a tribe called ‘Nyan’.. really?). There are so many other mmo’s out there that have them.

^

Why Nyan for heaven’s sakes. That’s the sound Japanese cats make. You might as well have named them Meow. Calling any Japanese anime cat person Meow/Nyan trivializes your suggestion to the point of parody.

While new races would be neat, we already have a clear abundance of other races already in-game that are not playable that already have lore tie-ins. Maybe we could put the catgirl race on one of the new islands, I would totally play a catgirl.

Besides, asking for another race of cat people when we already have big cats (Charr)? I mean, would people rather play a character that looks like a tabby or a Persian as opposed to say a snow leopard / tiger / cheetah / panther / jaguar / lion.

That being said, it would be nice if the Charr character models were less hunched. Anyone who played GW1 would remember that the caster Charrs walked upright unlike the warrior and ranger Charr who were hunched. I’m sure anyone who has seen a cat rear up on their hind legs would also agree.

Quick aside: the fact that you pulled the Nine Tailed fox is also a big tell of anime influence, although the concept of a nine tailed fox is of course very prevalent in many east asian cultures, Gumiho in Korea, the Kyuubi in Japan and Jiuweihu in China, etc. But it’s a bit too derivative. I’m surprised you didn’t pull the divine creatures of the four compass points, the Seiryuu, Suzaku, Genbu and Byakko (in Japanese)

Back on the topic.
Much of the background you’ve tried to include is covered by the Tengu already. They might be more considered Shintoist than Buddhist.

If you’re gonna design a race, go all out.

How about a dual race of symbiotes? One cannot live without the other. One provides a host body with great strength while the symbiont provides the will and direction. That would give you a rationale for a powerful telepathy within their race but not such that it affects other races. Then you could also do away with the whole gods business.

First off, you seem to have put a lot of energy into this so I appreciate that you care enough and are excited enough about the game to develop your post. But now the criticism.

Your lore about the Nierr being “isolated from the whole word” already has too much crossover with the Tengu backstory. Which is itself a total stereotypical regurgitation of feudal Japan tropes.

If they ever plan to release Tengu as a playable race the delay is probably in part because they’re gonna have to do a lot of work on the lore to make it so Tengu aren’t just a racist stereotype of Japanese people and the “generic Asian culture” stereotype.

Blegh @ exotifying other human cultures.

WTH? I just don’t get it.

WHat’s next, the Fahr?

so whats next then? The allmighty bun buns from the far off lands of playboya? Come on..leave the catgirls and stuff like that to mmos where they fit in\belong

Looks a little too similar to the Miqo’te and Mithra from the FF mmorpgs.

I don’t know about adding in new races that don’t already have the lore foundation. It would be criminal if something like the Tengu was passed over in favour of something new.