Guild Wars 2

So I know we already have six racial skills to choose from based on our toon’s background, but I still feel a little robbed of the culture my toons should be wielding. Is there any chance we could get some nice racial buffs in HoTs or a future patch? It couldn’t be anything crazy that would ruin game balance and force everyone to play one race over the other, but I think it would be awesome to have a constant, passive effect based on your character’s race.

Maybe something like:

Sylvari – red insects/plant mobs (excluding Mordrem/events) are turned yellow
Norn – permanent speed boost in all Shiverpeak territories

and so on. Just nice, little buffs that remind you your race is different from the others.

It would be nice, but it leads to the chance of some races being seen as better than others. ANet wants the choice to not have a “right” or “wrong” answer, that’s why racial skills are fairly weak most of the time.

Technobabble (Asuran racial) with the 5 stacks of vuln because of the daze with mesmer is plenty awesome to me… Almost makes me wonder what other classes are best with a certain race.

Well, with my sylvari Engineer, I use turrets. And I love the sylvari racial elite that pops up 5 plant turrets. They might not be as powerful as real engineer turrets, but they all do damage. It may not be the best tactical choice, but it’s fun.

I mean I get what the guys saying, maybe an additional racial trait that gives them a bonus in the pre 80 “home turf” maps or something.

I mean this isn’t something like one race gets magic bonus, another gets archery ect meaning if you go X class you must go Y race or be kitten, even if its a slight kitten .

In the end, these are suggestions that are kinda…moderately…interesting…would it be worth the programming cost to do something that has almost no effect on gameplay, other than a brief stomp through certain pve maps?

why is…gim…p…ed…censored? whats next censoring the word nerf?

Palador.2170:

ANet wants the choice to not have a “right” or “wrong” answer, that’s why racial skills are fairly weak most of the time.

Yeah. I do wish there were a “win-win” though – some way that race choice is not going to make-or-break without the skills almost all being trash. Subtle differences are overlooked by most players already – dungeon runs might not want you if you’re the “wrong” class, but I haven’t heard of them booting charr characters for taking up too much screen space.

That said, I’d gladly take blocking racials entirely in WvW and “serious” PvE (fractals, explorable dungeons, maybe even raids) if they could be fun again when I’m just messing around in open-world PvE.

StrangerDanger.3496:

I mean this isn’t something like one race gets magic bonus, another gets archery ect meaning if you go X class you must go Y race or be kitten, even if its a slight kitten .

I think I’d like to be kitten, even if it’s only a slight kitten.

But yeah, I get what you mean. I mean, PVE (not PVM or PVD) wouldn’t be ‘unbalanced’ if each ‘home race’ got some special stuff (maybe like additional movement speed?) on their home turf.

NekotTheBrave.2013:

StrangerDanger.3496:

I mean this isn’t something like one race gets magic bonus, another gets archery ect meaning if you go X class you must go Y race or be kitten, even if its a slight kitten .

I think I’d like to be kitten, even if it’s only a slight kitten.

But yeah, I get what you mean. I mean, PVE (not PVM or PVD) wouldn’t be ‘unbalanced’ if each ‘home race’ got some special stuff (maybe like additional movement speed?) on their home turf.

Could even make the racial skills stronger on their home turf in PVE, dungeons and other things are excluded of course, just open world PVE.

I would actually like it, if the racial skills were brought more in line with the other skills available in the game and if they were available in all game modes (provided they were balanced properly).

To prevent people from chosing a race based on the racial skills available, I would add one questline for every race, so that every player – regardless of race – can learn the racial skills from all other races. That would also add some content and could even be interesting, depending on the story behind it.

Heres what I would suggest:

Norn: much faster than other races.
Asura: smallest but slowest.
Sylvari: more vulnerable to fire and ice.
Charr: second fastest, but couldn’t wear certain helmets or footgear.
Human: no pros or cons.

StrangerDanger.3496:

I mean this isn’t something like one race gets magic bonus, another gets archery ect meaning if you go X class you must go Y race or be kitten, even if its a slight kitten .

This is more along the lines of what I meant. I don’t know if any of you have tried TERA (I did for a very short amount of time), and one of the (only) things I really liked in that game was how they gave each race a buff that didn’t screw over the other races. This is a link to some of their “race buff” examples.

http://tera.wikia.com/wiki/Racial_skills

Some of these would be bad (less stun damage, etc.) but others would be nice. Maybe free tele to racial capital, faster gathering based on race, less falling damage, etc. I was thinking more along the lines of buffs rather than skills

I agree that character race should have a greater involvement in gameplay beyond making jumping puzzles harder for the larger races. I think that there could be either racial specializations (traiting racial skills) or racial masteries (buffs/bonuses in home regions); either of which would fit into the current development framework and philosophy.

As to whether one race/profession combo would be better than another, I think much of that could be handled with careful balance. If they chose to go with an elite specialization they could afford to strengthen it since there is already a sacrifice of other traits to select a racial elite spec.

*Edit for auto-correct

I suggested a mastery a while back. Grant the other race’s racial skills through a mastery, and the final tier of any racial mastery buffs those skills to a power level similar to a class skill. Give the mastery some additional crafting recipies or armor at each tier so it’s still valuable to train your own race.

This way everyone has access to all of them so it’s not a mechanical hurdle, and it allows more pve build craziness without breaking PvP

Gynok.1756:

Heres what I would suggest:

Norn: much faster than other races.
Asura: smallest but slowest.
Sylvari: more vulnerable to fire and ice.
Charr: second fastest, but couldn’t wear certain helmets or footgear.
Human: no pros or cons.

So norns are flat out buffed.
Asuras, Sylvari and Charr are nerfed.
Humans stay the same.

I think you play a norn.

PopeUrban.2578:

I suggested a mastery a while back. Grant the other race’s racial skills through a mastery, and the final tier of any racial mastery buffs those skills to a power level similar to a class skill. Give the mastery some additional crafting recipies or armor at each tier so it’s still valuable to train your own race.

This way everyone has access to all of them so it’s not a mechanical hurdle, and it allows more pve build craziness without breaking PvP

I don’t think that would be a good solution, since it makes no sense in the setting.

Imagine a norn babbling about laser rifles, an asura turning into a bear, a sylvari shouting stuff about Ascalon, a human using seed turrets and a charr summoning avatars of human gods. That’s horrible! :P

Then again, no matter what, all my norn will always take the bearform elite…it just feels right!

Christina.7926:

StrangerDanger.3496:

I mean this isn’t something like one race gets magic bonus, another gets archery ect meaning if you go X class you must go Y race or be kitten, even if its a slight kitten .

This is more along the lines of what I meant. I don’t know if any of you have tried TERA (I did for a very short amount of time), and one of the (only) things I really liked in that game was how they gave each race a buff that didn’t screw over the other races. This is a link to some of their “race buff” examples.

http://tera.wikia.com/wiki/Racial_skills

Some of these would be bad (less stun damage, etc.) but others would be nice. Maybe free tele to racial capital, faster gathering based on race, less falling damage, etc. I was thinking more along the lines of buffs rather than skills

I accept that you said some of them would be bad for the health of GW2. But just to point out some of these….

“Active: Restore all HP. 2hr cd”
“Active: Restore all MP. 2hr cd”
“Passive: Your stamina cannot drop below 20%” <- this is on the same race with restoring all hp.

and then other races get uber lack-luster ones like: increased movespeed out of battle, or “increase critical chance by 1% while attacking from behind”.

There are a few thematic ones, and some fluff like faster gathering speed, but I wouldn’t personally call these racial passives/actives balanced, especially not for different classes/professions. I much prefer the current racial skills to anything in tera.

That said, I wouldn’t mind if they increased the effectiveness of the racial skills we have by a little bit, or perhaps gave faction/reputation groups we could earn utility skills from (calling back to GW1:EotN)