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My video rant on current MMO player race options SUCK !
kaz350
Member UncommonPosts: 130
One day a game will stop playing it safe and we will get some truly unique races !! We are going backwards !!
Comments
I'm actually thinking most modern concepts of 'race' are a culture and a language breakdown.
Once you establish what they mean by 'race' you see they are talking about civilizations. The last true race diversity option came with Star Wars and Star Trek where there were multiple worlds to allow for multiple dominant species. It is surprising dimensions in games never opened up more true race uniqueness but true, our MMO's look very much to Tolkein and similar minds to define their 'races' or civilizations.
I can't view your video.
Races are purely cosmetic in modern MMOs. If they were actually different they would have strengths and weaknesses.
In early SWG, the different races had bonuses and restrictions that offered unique flavors of gameplay for those that wanted them. By the time of the NGE, all of that was taken away, and everyone was more or less they same (they even took away the languages that each race spoke). Like everything else in MMO gaming these days, things have been dumbed down and homogenized to the lowest common denomination, and something was definitely lost along the way.Yeah sadly min-max'ing killed all that kind of thing....back in the days Ogres were better fighters...why? Because they are Ogres !! Sure you could roll a gnome but you knew going in you were doing it for Roleplaying and back then everyone was JUST fine with it.
Nowadays you could NEVER get away with something like that.
The game to get away from all of that in the early days was asheron's call. It had its own fantasy world with olthoi and lugians and tumeroks and tuskers and virindi etc. Wizardry did the same thing back in the day umpani detache.
A game doesnt need to have elves. Wildstar is one of the first games in a while to get away from the concept at least a little bit.
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The thing that annoys me is the side-point. I like races to be meaningful. I want races to even have skills that come into their own over the levels and/or have their own whole racial tree to pick and choose things from that other races do not have the option of. Maybe an orc wizard could have some actual combat skills in that tree but elves have skills that could compliment being a wizard.
Years of experience has shown that most players lack the imagination to make race anything but a cosmetic choice anyway.
Sure. Let's make a break away from humanoids, entirely.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
"My video rant on current MMO player race options SUCK !"
I bet it does...
I guess you wanted to add at least the word "why" to that title.
Kinda sorta. Devs want to make all sorts of humanoid and non-humanoid races (I havent met one yet that jsut wanted humans in their fantasy or sci-fi MMO), but players have shown that the more you deviate from humanoid, the less the players connect with the character. So they stick to humanoid. Now, there's no way you can make different colored races or any kind of background that reflects modern history, especially with the NA crowd, primarily because of the sheer number of busybody martyrs who have nothing to do with their lives other than get offended on behalf of others.
As for physical properties, tall and skinny is the elf, short and stocky is the dwarf, tall and stocky is the ogre or orc. Players pigeon hole certain builds into specific races and, in some cases, even into specific classes.
On the dev side there's the argument that a universal base body shape makes it easier to build armor and gear for. This was one of the challenges that the Shadowbane devs faced, having minotaurs and centaurs as playable races. With the amount of gear needed for a modern MMO, it could become very cost and time prohibitive to have to build to accommodate a wide range of body shapes.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
this, developrs have take their lazy asses and implement a modular system which allows to put the gear on any body, except in some cases, for example, a centaur using pants?, that's silly
You mean like this?
"WHY my video rant on current MMO player race options SUCK !"
I'm joking. I liked the video. Nice job. lol
Interesting takeaway. Not at all what was written, but interesting nonetheless.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre