Q:
New Races
There will not be a new race in Heart of Thorns. Anet has said this about adding new races:
Shacknews: You’ve added a new profession, however you did hold off on adding a new race. What led to this decision?
Johanson: For this one, we looked at what we would get out of adding a new race and what benefit it actually brings to the players from a gameplay standpoint. It’s very limited in Guild Wars 2. A new race adds a racial skill or two and a little bit of story, but it doesn’t give that much meaningful gameplay in the grand scheme of things. The race is more context for the early story that you experience. So we wanted to focus things that would provide a lot more gameplay and address parts of Guild Wars 2 that we felt like we really wanted to be able to make a better experience and grow. So right now, we didn’t feel that a new race was a key need for the game, whereas the other things that we’re adding really provide fundamental building blocks for the future.
It seems like they want to focus on expanding end-game first (i.e. specializations, masteries, challenging content, pvp and so on). In the future they might see more room for adding new races.
In terms of which races they would add. The Tengu seems like the most obvious choice. The Tengu are bipedal with a humanoid physique. They already interact with other races, have their own city, quite some backstory and so on. In fact, before the release of Guild Wars 2 they were considered as one of the playable races for the initial release. However we don’t know how far along their development was before it was decided not to include them. Oh and they also seem to be quite popular amongst the fans.
Three obvious reasons to avoid new races:
1) They’re entirely cosmetic. I love diversity of race choice and can completely understand why someone would want more. But a large proportion of the playerbase would find no added value in them.
2) They’re resource intensive. Each of the existing races has a capital and it’s own level 1-15 map. A new race would really have to have the same. I know they could half- kitten it and have them live in an existing race’s capital and use their starter area but those sorts of half measures pull down the overall quality of a game. Plus the story content, new combat animations for every ability, new graphics for every armour etc. etc.
3) There’s race-based story achievements. I’m guessing just about everyone inclined to play each race to 80 just for the story achievements has already done it. Add another race and suddenly many would feel like they’d have to level another character to 80 just for that.
That said, Tengu would have very been cool.
it’d be nice to have a new race, so as to spread the diversity out even more (i love going into towns and seeing all the different kinds of races) but I agree that it shouldn’t be a priority kind of thing (especially since i wouldn’t even play tengu/largos/kodans/other popular new race choices. my love for sylvari is too great!)
but maybe in the far future it would be nice to see more races
Druid main, 80 on all, Legendary ranked, Eternal and all that jazz (I go by Feyris in game)
but maybe in the far future it would be nice to see more races
GW1 = 1 race.
GW2 = 5 races. (+4 or x5)
GW3 = 9 or 25 races!
Three obvious reasons to avoid new races:
1) They’re entirely cosmetic. I love diversity of race choice and can completely understand why someone would want more. But a large proportion of the playerbase would find no added value in them.
2) They’re resource intensive. Each of the existing races has a capital and it’s own level 1-15 map. A new race would really have to have the same. I know they could half- kitten it and have them live in an existing race’s capital and use their starter area but those sorts of half measures pull down the overall quality of a game. Plus the story content, new combat animations for every ability, new graphics for every armour etc. etc.
3) There’s race-based story achievements. I’m guessing just about everyone inclined to play each race to 80 just for the story achievements has already done it. Add another race and suddenly many would feel like they’d have to level another character to 80 just for that.
That said, Tengu would have very been cool.
Replying to point 3 only: Racial story achievements end after the level 30 arc so you just need to level them up to 30, not 80.
I think maybe a new race will come in when we expand to a larger continent or something. For instance if maybe they introduced Cantha or Elona. That way you’d be able to have a new race starting from those zones.
Though I can understand if we never get one, especially if the Personal Story stays the same, there’s a lot of lines in the PS that focus on the existing races. They would have to do a lot of work to integrate the new race well into the game and it will have minimal impact compared to adding other pieces of content.
To be fair they don’t need to build an entire new area for a new playable race. The skirt for example since some have spoken of them. They are introduced through out the game. They are also one of the races that join the pact. So why would it be hard to make a Pact “training” grounds for the race. To help the race level to where they joined the pact and then put them into field work and then finally rejoining the main story line like all other characters do anyways. Thus not much more to be added really. And you could actually add any of the races that players worked to get to join the cause also. skrit, ogre, hyleck, …..quagon…ect. …. I’m not saying they should do it I’m just saying it is a possibility.
Replying to point 3 only: Racial story achievements end after the level 30 arc so you just need to level them up to 30, not 80.
Quite right of course, though come to think of it it’s not just story achievements. There are race-based achievements for unlocking cultural armours too. So that’d make it level 60?
What races should be playable in the next expansion(s)?
Will be hard to have new races because you’d then have to do an entire story campaign for that race. The only way they could do it is maybe they have only a few story missions spread out every 10 to 20 levels or have them reuse story missions from other races otherwise it would be too much effort for ANET.
As many mentioned already, HoT won’t bring any new races. I hope to see some new races someday, but I can definitely understand the decision to not include them with HoT – they wanted (and needed) to address some core concepts of gameplay before they could move on to just adding visual fun and diversity into the game. Once the mechanics of HoT are set in, though, I could very well see specializations leading them into being able to put more resources toward cosmetic variation like races or cultural outfits.
I believe he is asking the question in regards to the next expansion as in after HoT. If we ever get more races, Tengu would make the most sense and be the first to come. After that? Probably none, but I think it’d be awesome to play as Largos.
Replying to point 3 only: Racial story achievements end after the level 30 arc so you just need to level them up to 30, not 80.
Quite right of course, though come to think of it it’s not just story achievements. There are race-based achievements for unlocking cultural armours too. So that’d make it level 60?
I believe all you have to do is purchase the cultural armor, even if you can’t equip them because of their level requirement you can still unlock them for the wardrobe. Unless the achievement requires you to equip the piece? I never really looked into it but I know you can purchase them without waiting to be the certain level, just need the gold.