Guild Wars 2

is this something really hard to do for this game? we already have name change, hair change and gender change. why do you think anet not doing it? i wanted to change couple of my toons, but i dont wanna delete them and start over. they all 1 year old and some 2 yrs already. wish anet would look into this and see if this will be possible in the future.

I’m pretty sure they said that the things they would never do are profession change and race change (note: I am more sure about the latter than the former).

Because when you think about how much “race” stuff is involved with one character it becomes a lot of work to change.. work that imho should go else where.

Armour, personal story etc etc

0% possibility

We have been told that nothing is off the table but this particular option seems unlikely to see the light of day.

Race change involve personal storyline change and that storyline has a huge impact to your character progression. Unless, they reset your storyline entirely when you do a race change.

It’s about 0% possible.

Watch the south park episode where Kyle’s dad gets plastic surgery to be a dolphin and tell me if you still think race change is possible. XD

Nothing is really 0% in regards to appeasing a player base. Especially something that isn’t a core aspect. As Skyshroud mentioned, the only real way to do it, is to reset the storyline and also you would have to unequip all cultural items. Outside of that there is not much binding a character to a specific race.

its 100% possible

here is how u do it.

make sure all important things u own are not on the char u wanna race change. make her him naked. empty his bags. Make sure u have another alt in case u need more Bank Space.

so after everything is safe somewhere.

Go to ur Char selection screen and pic the one u wanna race change. Than delete him

Now u need hurry

create a new char with the desired race and gender name him the same way as the just deleted one.

here u go race change complete

Pro tip if u have a lot Level up Books from Spvp u will get him to level 80 in a minute.

U welcome

From a designer standpoint it would be really hard to code something to re-code the game to change something that is set into the game like stone.
I hope that makes sense, I tried to keep it simple but was hard to explain.

Most games have story based off your class with little to no impact on race, making race change cosmetic. GW2 has story exclusively based on race. They also do not have the tools necessary to effectively edit the story on the fly, as indicated many times. They didn’t get the tools they needed until Season 2, but they’re not retroactively effective. So it simply is not able to be performed. It is also very low on their priorities so it probably isn’t going to be a thing in any time period more meaningful than never.

SkyShroud.2865:

Race change involve personal storyline change and that storyline has a huge impact to your character progression. Unless, they reset your storyline entirely when you do a race change.

A huge impact?

I don’t see it. At level 80, the game seems to assume I’ve completed the personal story whether I have or not. I’ve run into a small amount of dialogue in the LS that caters to my race, but doesn’t reflect any of the small number of choices I made during the personal story, including whether I stopped half way through or ever started it to begin with. The only thing it really impacts is my story journal, which could be wiped if I choose to race change.

As far as cultural armor, it all costs the same per tier no matter which race, right? So it could just convert to the equivalent armor of your new race. Or it could become account bound and no longer equipable by your character after race change.

As to racial skills, hero points could be refunded to a race changed character so they have to respend on the reward tracks and make the choice of whether they want the new race’s skills or not.

Maybe people are right, and the coding for race goes too deeply into the game to be easy to change, but I have no idea why that would be true. It’s largely a cosmetic difference.

A race change would be complicated, because the personal story is based on race. They would have to rework a lot of code to change it. It’s possible, but i doubt it would be first on their priorities.

As for the Total Makeover Kits, i wish they would introduce a barber shop system in-game. They could let people change the basics for free, and then they could charge gems for the newer changes. This would actually let people preview them without having to buy a kit first. It would also entice more sales. A system like swtor could work.

Riku.4821:

From a designer standpoint it would be really hard to code something to re-code the game to change something that is set into the game like stone.
I hope that makes sense, I tried to keep it simple but was hard to explain.

Yes and no, its all dependant on how race is coded into GW2, so it differs really depending on the games architecture and flagging. It can be very simple or a royal pita.
Without knowing that its really just speculation on the difficulty.

I recall someone saying it was hard coded and not an easy task in gw2’s case. Cannot remember who said such thing though.

There is a race and profession change, its called Tome of Knowledge, if you have 80, reroll, and Rock’n Roll :P

It’s hard coded and won’t be happening. It’s not impossible. But it won’t be happening.

I like pupi’s Idea lol

I probably post this quote every few weeks. Thanks again to Astral who compounded all of these links into such a handy thing to quote.

Links (from devs) regarding race change:

ANet so far has said no.

Race changes:
1) I am afraid that the team does contemplate different possibilities and new features for the future but this one is not among those. Source
2) There are a lot of far-reaching consequences of allowing one character to play through every race’s personal story or equip any cultural armor/weapons. For now, we feel that it would take away from the experience of Guild Wars 2 for the majority of players. Source
3) Thanks for asking. To change the race in the Gem store will not be an option in Guild Wars 2. Source

Not hard if you do it right: for example, just wipe all personal story progress if you want a race change. And if there’s concerns about getting PS rewards multiple times this way, just make gem cost high enough to compensate (or even add a karma cost, or whatever).

That said, Anet won’t bother to do it, even though people have been asking for this for three years.

Just reset personal story!

Just swap out racial skills!

Just check for race-specific armor and force the player to unequip first!

Just erase standing with your chosen Order!

Just reset your home instance so that it forgets past events!

Just whip up a quick interface for overturning concepts that the game has always regarded as permanent and unchangeable! Wow, so simple!

….or, you know, just roll a new character like everyone has been doing, for years. I get it, losing the map completion sucks. But with all the account-bound items and achievements, level-up scrolls and skill points, GW2 must be the world’s easiest MMO to catch up if you do decide to re-roll.

Like others have said, I would much rather have ArenaNet apply their efforts elsewhere.

Fyrebrand.4859:

Just reset personal story!

Just swap out racial skills!

Just check for race-specific armor and force the player to unequip first!

Just erase standing with your chosen Order!

Just reset your home instance so that it forgets past events!

Just whip up a quick interface for overturning concepts that the game has always regarded as permanent and unchangeable! Wow, so simple!

….or, you know, just roll a new character like everyone has been doing, for years. I get it, losing the map completion sucks. But with all the account-bound items and achievements, level-up scrolls and skill points, GW2 must be the world’s easiest MMO to catch up if you do decide to re-roll.

Like others have said, I would much rather have ArenaNet apply their efforts elsewhere.

If your character is one of your main crafting ones, you’re going to end up spending a ton of gold. Not to mention hard-to-get (or discontinued!) recipies that can’t even be bought, but must be grinded for.

How about a Comsumable Potion that has some Barbie Doll customization ?

Find the hidden asura lab where they can perform gene-splicing and turn you into a norncharrsura with tree leaves for hair.

felzero.8526:

is this something really hard to do for this game? we already have name change, hair change and gender change. why do you think anet not doing it? i wanted to change couple of my toons, but i dont wanna delete them and start over. they all 1 year old and some 2 yrs already. wish anet would look into this and see if this will be possible in the future.

They have said they can’t do it dew to how much of the game it tied to your toons race. And that changing it can “brake” aspects of the game, mostly in PS/LS. That can forever block progression, the same reason that the PS is not replay able. Not to mention cultural armor and so on. If your toon was waring it when you did the change that would also “brake” the game. In short it will never happen as ANet have said everytime one of these threads pop up, “it’s not possible” AKA “too much work for a feature that most people will never use”

Not to mention, they want you to buy toon slots. You know you can have a max of 64 right? Just buy.one and roll a new toon, if you cant be bothered to level one, just use ToK. They are really easy.to farm, not to mention we get them from log in rewards.

Most(if not all) people would rather see more content and bug fixes than a race change.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Fyrebrand.4859:

Just reset personal story!

Just swap out racial skills!

Just check for race-specific armor and force the player to unequip first!

Just erase standing with your chosen Order!

Just reset your home instance so that it forgets past events!

Just whip up a quick interface for overturning concepts that the game has always regarded as permanent and unchangeable! Wow, so simple!

….or, you know, just roll a new character like everyone has been doing, for years. I get it, losing the map completion sucks. But with all the account-bound items and achievements, level-up scrolls and skill points, GW2 must be the world’s easiest MMO to catch up if you do decide to re-roll.

Like others have said, I would much rather have ArenaNet apply their efforts elsewhere.

If your character is one of your main crafting ones, you’re going to end up spending a ton of gold. Not to mention hard-to-get (or discontinued!) recipies that can’t even be bought, but must be grinded for.

If that’s the case you probably should have realized you didn’t like the race a long time before hand.

1. Due to the Personal Story Anet is not going to allow this.
2. Due to Personal Story rewards, resetting the PS for a race changed character is not going to happen.
3. Per the post above, it’s not that difficult to rebuild a new character if you want a race change (I did it on a LVL 60 Sylvari thief).

Lord Kuru.3685:

Fyrebrand.4859:

Just reset personal story!

Just swap out racial skills!

Just check for race-specific armor and force the player to unequip first!

Just erase standing with your chosen Order!

Just reset your home instance so that it forgets past events!

Just whip up a quick interface for overturning concepts that the game has always regarded as permanent and unchangeable! Wow, so simple!

….or, you know, just roll a new character like everyone has been doing, for years. I get it, losing the map completion sucks. But with all the account-bound items and achievements, level-up scrolls and skill points, GW2 must be the world’s easiest MMO to catch up if you do decide to re-roll.

Like others have said, I would much rather have ArenaNet apply their efforts elsewhere.

If your character is one of your main crafting ones, you’re going to end up spending a ton of gold. Not to mention hard-to-get (or discontinued!) recipies that can’t even be bought, but must be grinded for.

Then use name change contract on that crafting character, and continue to use it for crafting while you explore your new race (and old name) on a different character.

Brother Grimm.5176:

2. Due to Personal Story rewards, resetting the PS for a race changed character is not going to happen.

Wrong. Just make the cost of resetting high enough to compensate for all the rewards you’ve gotten. And that doesn’t even have to be just gold. You can have karma cost, skill point cost, etc.

Astralporing.1957:

Then use name change contract on that crafting character, and continue to use it for crafting while you explore your new race (and old name) on a different character.

But a new character means going through NPE.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Astralporing.1957:

Then use name change contract on that crafting character, and continue to use it for crafting while you explore your new race (and old name) on a different character.

But a new character means going through NPE.

The trait part (which is the real problem of the NPE) is going to be changed soon anyway, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Also, there’s something called tomes of knowledge.

Without recreating the character, it would be impossible. The simple reason why is because of the Personal Story and how hard-coded that is into the character. Because of bugs, Anet have been unable to make the PS replayable, and even if you party with someone from a different order to do the same story steps, you’ll end up getting treated like you’re of multiple orders (theoretically you can kill all three mentors in one go during The Battle of Claw Island!).

So you can’t change race for the same reason you can’t change orders.

Theoretically, only profession and looks can be changed. That is, without completely rebuilding certain systems – primarily known to us the personal story – from the ground up (but to be honest, doing that would fit quite a few issues and allow catering to various demands).

BrooksP.4318:

Nothing is really 0% in regards to appeasing a player base. Especially something that isn’t a core aspect. As Skyshroud mentioned, the only real way to do it, is to reset the storyline and also you would have to unequip all cultural items. Outside of that there is not much binding a character to a specific race.

It IS 100% impossible when Anet has specifically stated that upon character creation, your character’s race, profession, and storyline choices are hardcoded values to your character’s data. For those that dont get what that means, it means they cannot and will not attempt something that can utterly kitten your character beyond recognition. You know, on the level of “sorry guys, apparently this service has a bug that corrupts characters to an irretrievable state no different than deletion” kittened.

No one was referring to ingame reasons for why it was impossible, because all of that is easily fixed. What makes it impossible, is everything above on the backend of such a service. For starters, it’s going to be a massive undertaking to make a hardcoded value into something that can be altered. Especially because they need to make sure nothing inadvertently kittens it up somewhere else in the code. Imagine if TF items permanently altered your character’s race instead of being temporary gimmicks?

Frankly, anything involving the alteration of race or profession would for all intents and purposes require the involvement of the character’s deletion and replacement.

anything is possible but they are not going to waste time doing it for few ppl when they dont even have time to put in old pve content on Tuesday.

Plus u can level a new char to 80 in eotm in 1 week anyway.

The only people who quote the phrase “anything is possible” are those who havent seen what a rat’s nest code development can turn into. It’s already pretty messy when you’re doing something as “simple” as a crafting calculator* for an MMO. A full scale GAME including client and server? You’re talking about thousands to millions times more code, maybe even billions.

*roughly 50,000 lines of code before being parsed by a syntax “beautifier” to make it readable, think it was about 95,000 lines after

Astralporing.1957:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Astralporing.1957:

Then use name change contract on that crafting character, and continue to use it for crafting while you explore your new race (and old name) on a different character.

But a new character means going through NPE.

The trait part (which is the real problem of the NPE) is going to be changed soon anyway, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Also, there’s something called tomes of knowledge.

It might actually be worse. At least right now you can tome yourself to 80 and spend ungodly amounts of gold to buy all the traits (which then get reset when the new trait system hits).

In the new system it looks like grinding 65 skill challenges is going to be mandatory.

It’s been almost 3 years now, I doubt we’ll ever see a race change kit.

There is a chance that the moa race will come back. Therefore we could see race changes in the daily activities. The adventures will also provide races against the clock. Many opportunity to change between them to avoid monotony.

For race changes I am not very confident that this will ever happen.

pupi.2465:

There is a race and profession change, its called Tome of Knowledge, if you have 80, reroll, and Rock’n Roll :P

Yep, I did this to my thief a month or two ago. :P She had 100% map too. Didn’t take long to get the gold star back :P

Basandra Skye.4031:

It IS 100% impossible when Anet has specifically stated that upon character creation, your character’s race, profession, and storyline choices are hardcoded values to your character’s data. For those that dont get what that means, it means they cannot and will not attempt something that can utterly kitten your character beyond recognition. You know, on the level of “sorry guys, apparently this service has a bug that corrupts characters to an irretrievable state no different than deletion” kittened.

No one was referring to ingame reasons for why it was impossible, because all of that is easily fixed. What makes it impossible, is everything above on the backend of such a service. For starters, it’s going to be a massive undertaking to make a hardcoded value into something that can be altered. Especially because they need to make sure nothing inadvertently kittens it up somewhere else in the code. Imagine if TF items permanently altered your character’s race instead of being temporary gimmicks?

Frankly, anything involving the alteration of race or profession would for all intents and purposes require the involvement of the character’s deletion and replacement.

As I stated in a later post, it is really dependent on how it is coded. However even things that are hardcoded can be worked around or even changed, so it isn’t 100% impossible. What matters is the residual effects of the changes and the difficulty vs reward. Though it seems odd to me that it would be hardcoded in the first place tbh, but thats a differant story.

Personally I don’t think race should be changeable, but saying that allowing the ability to do so is impossible is false. It may not be worth the effort and potential fallout, but impossible, no.

Even if there was a possibility of it happening (i.e. was codeable), the way that A-net have responded to previous suggestions would also be an obstacle.

From what I understand and infer from developer opinion, being able to change your race would result in a loss of depth and quality of characters in GW2, ultimately reducing immersion and character development. As such, it would cheapen the GW2 experience.