Showing Posts For PlausibleSarge.2318:
A Sylvari choosing avatar of Melandru, hm, okay.
An Asura changing his “religion” (?!) and then transforming into a werebear? o_O
Some work and some are just plain wrong.
I see your point. Surely there is some way they could remedy this. Maybe change the shapeshifting forms per-race to something that makes more sense but have the same functionality.
I have to say I really love your idea. Maybe it could be called a belief, rather than a religion though. The charr and Asura don’t really have gods, but they do believe in their guns/technology.
Good point. Beliefs or Traditions or Disciplines whatever is fine. I am more interested in discussing the mechanic than the name.
Especially if we leave it out of sPvP, the situation would be more or less unchanged in balance, while making character choices even more aesthetic ones.
I can understand the need to keep the game balanced, however I have thought about the balance of sPvP and IMO it could work, since it would be trivial to allow players to simply choose which bunch of skills they want to use before a match starts.
The races are generally designed to be mainly cosmetic – it is why the racial skills are so useless and why a racial trait line was discussed and rejected. I have a thread about it in the suggestions forum
(edited by PlausibleSarge.2318)
I also agree with this. This problem would be somewhat less annoying if “Automatically summon pets when combat begins” was added to the options menu so that we could turn it off.
I know this is a long read. Please read it through to the end. It isn’t your standard “WHA WHA RACIAL SKILLS SUCK MAKE THEM BETTER NOW” thread.
Hi. I am reasonably new to the game (I am level 40) and, as such, have little experience with the most important and fundamental gameplay mechanics or how they work. As a result, I am likely to get something wrong in this thread. If so, please correct it without dismissing the entire post as stupid. Thank you.
I am very disappointed with the implementation of racial skills (racials) in this game. I understand that racial skills were designed to not have much use, so that players would not be forced to choose a particular race over another when making a character in order to be effective, allowing combos such as Sylvari Warriors, Norn Elementalists and Charr Mesmers without making them any more or less effective then their counterparts from other races. I think that, while the current idea works, it doesn’t completely fix the problem, and is a messy solution – it simply results in a bunch of useless abilities which nobody ever uses which just take up space. In the few cases where a racial ability is useful, it’s existence works against the efforts of the developers. It is effectively a catch 22.
I think a far more elegant solution would be to detach the racial skills from the races altogether, and instead tie them to the religion or culture that a specific race generally follows. (the human gods, the animal spirits, the pale tree etc). Each race would be identified by these gods, similar to how they are now, and all characters of that race would be associated with that religion by default. This means the skills associated with that deity are available to purchase with skill points from the beginning like they are now. Throughout the world a new type of NPC, the priest, would be available to change your religion for a small fee (40 copper * the number of skill points invested in racial skills), which would remove all your current racial skills and allow you to choose ones associated with a different race. When this happens, all skill points invested in racial skills would be refunded.
Of course, with this change, the skills can be made just as powerful as regular utility skills and elites, as they are now effectively usable on anyone without having to sacrifice or change the visual representation of your character, and would allow people to have access to abilities they would otherwise never use (I despise the look of the Norn, so I will never ever get to use any of their abilities under the current system). It also allows the developers to safely add features like Racial Trait Lines, racial passives etc because it would no longer clas with their original goal. This system also has the added benefit of allowing these skills in PvP and WvW, since the player could now have a choice of which religion they choose to follow in PvP and WvW independently of their PvE character, which means any potentially overpowered skills are available to everyone, regardless of race, putting everyone on the same footing.
What are your thoughts on this idea?
(edited by PlausibleSarge.2318)