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Evolving Races

Just some minor criticism beforehand: FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE FIX THE FORUM. I just wrote this entire thing and it just vanished. Oh and im landing on random peoples profiles when clicking on my own.

Hello everyone!
When talking to my fellow guild comrade on discord yesterday, whe came to the conclusion that all the races currently confirmed are rather basic and since the two non confirmed races are probably just subraces, this fact wont change. So we thought of a fun system that could bring some variety to the game.
When you reach a certain point in the storyline or a certain level, you would be able to accept a quest of one of the four types of nodes that are out there. Economic, divine, militaristic, and scientific. So if you were to be an elf for example and you would choose the divine quest, you could maybe become an angel after finishing it. If you were to be a human completing the scientific one you could maybe become a werewolf, through the militaristic quest a reaper and a demon when you finish the economic one.
I havent thought of a specific race for every combination of starter race and quest yet, but I like the idea of being able to further improve your race even later in the game and I am sure you guys have some input. Let me know what you think of this system. I would definetly love some more variety so that we dont have the standard RPG races running around everywhere :D

Comments

  • Here's hoping my reply and this post don't mysteriously vanish...

    I agree with you that subraces have the potential to be very boring. Certainly forest dwarves, a theorized race from the concept art, are immediately lesser than their mountain-dwelling kin, and variations of humans sound like vanilla and french vanilla to me.

    As far as the idea of "standard Fantasy races," which is to say, Tolkien-derived races, however, I think that's fine. These preexisting templates allow for an immediate sense of identity without even needing to read the lore for most fantasy buffs. They also pay homage to the tradition of Fantasy, its roots, much in the same way that Fantasy class systems do. So it makes a sort of literary rhyming sense to populate a medieval, sorcerous world with elves and orcs and dwarves, if not iterations thereof.

    As for the proposed mechanic of race swapping, or race evolving, that I find very jarring for immersion. What is the connection between elves and angels? Why would an elf become an angel? Why would they want to? What is an angel within the context of Ashes of Creation? It seems a cheap way to slap wings on someone that flies in the face of world building and storytelling. Why would humans want to become werewolves? Isn't lycanthropy a hellish curse? Aren't werewolves monstrous figures from old stories that stalk the shadows of forests at night? Would we want to see them, or angels for that matter, created en masse, swapped into like a pair of shoes? It cheapens the very nature of these creatures to make it this way.

    Maybe lycanthropy could exist in some form within Ashes of Creation, but to do so in a way that upholds its lore, it should be incredibly rare to encounter, incredibly difficult to contract, and then, should a player manage to survive with it, should confer penalties equitable to its benefits. Otherwise werewolves just become a skin swap with some small stat adjustments. They lose meaning.

    Nobody should be turning into angels though. Not no way, not no how.
  • Thank you for your reply!
    Of course I cant know how well angels or werewolfs will fit in the lore of AoC since there is so little known about the story, moreover the given examples are only ideas of my own and can obviously be changed. I can see why you wouldnt want people turn into angels but thats your view, some people would love to play a demonic or angelic race. The evolved races are only meant to be a kind of upgrade to the primary ones and are by no means a necessaty, players who want to stay human can stay human. Furthermore I think that, with the right questline, people like mad scientists maybe could want to turn into werewolfs. Of course all the evolved races should be balanced and not stronger than the primary races, I only want them to bring something new to the game, maybe even affecting interactions with NPCs, since nobody wants to talk with a transformed werewolf.
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