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Hot Take: Why waste time on races no one is going to care about?
Vhaeyne
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
Talking mostly about Niküa here. We know they are never going it see their architecture in a major node. I have already seen people complain about it and propose wacky systems to make the node architecture more balanced. Tulnar and Empyrean will dominate, and we will see a good amount of humans. Only Dünir if they fix them.
It's like, why not just scrap Niküa? Less than 5% of the player base is going to pick them... The orcs and wood elves are going to be less than 10% for sure(better but not great). They could hold off on these races for now.
Instead of having things come in pairs for no reason. Why not just scrap the races and put stuff in, people like actually later? Or not put them in at launch all together to save budget and development time?
We all know in our heart of hearts that some of these races are a just not going to see much play, and better races could be put in their place after launch.
I would rather see more exciting races down the line in an expansion personally. They could do polls to see what races to add or remove from the game. We don't need nine whole ass races at launch, when realistically only five are going to be hype.
Feel free to tell me how crazy and wrong I am.
It's like, why not just scrap Niküa? Less than 5% of the player base is going to pick them... The orcs and wood elves are going to be less than 10% for sure(better but not great). They could hold off on these races for now.
Instead of having things come in pairs for no reason. Why not just scrap the races and put stuff in, people like actually later? Or not put them in at launch all together to save budget and development time?
We all know in our heart of hearts that some of these races are a just not going to see much play, and better races could be put in their place after launch.
I would rather see more exciting races down the line in an expansion personally. They could do polls to see what races to add or remove from the game. We don't need nine whole ass races at launch, when realistically only five are going to be hype.
Feel free to tell me how crazy and wrong I am.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
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Comments
elves, orcs, dwarves, humans ...
we see this in all the games, it's boring, it's not interesting.
for this reason i will play tulnar, it's the only race that stands out from the crowd and that is unique to ashes of creation
I would have liked to see something else
races never seen before
original things ...
not a copy and paste of what you've seen before.
less breeds, more originality
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
I'll give you an example of what I think motivates a lot of peoples decisions.
Elves are almost always popular... unless you get them wrong. Then you are wasting time.
A perfect example:
http://www.vhpg.com/ffxiv-races/
The "elf" in FFXIV has a neck that is just too long, and they are too tall. It puts people out. To the point that the most popular elves in the game are NPCs with unobtainable looks. People would love square allowed you to make elves that look like "The twins", but because they look awful only 7.5% of the player base put up with it.
Hrothgar and Viera can't wear hats because their heads were ignored to save development time. In a game where people care about fashion... This stuff is pretty damning.
WOW added Nightborne to the game... And they all look like methheads so no one likes them...
https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/49862-wow-demographics-for-class-race-and-faction-infographic/
Night Elf, Human, and blood Elf are the most popular WOW races, Void Elf and Nightborne were added at the same time. Void Elf quickly became popular while Nightbone never did... because they are ugly AF.
I don't think people care about original as much as not being ugly and being more customizable. WOW humans got an extra boost in popularity recently when they gave humans a million more options than any other race...
Tulnar sounds like it's going to have more options. Thus, it will be the most popular Ashes race by a landslide. I can't see anyone picking "Polynesian Dwarfs" over Normal dwarfs or Tunlar... Niküa might make an interesting NPC race, but I can't see many people wanting to really play them. If cat person was on the table, people would say: "screw Polynesian Dwarfs! I want Polynesian Khajiit!"
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
OP is having a hard time waiting for the game to launch.
Not really.
I am fine waiting.
It just pains me to see the same mistakes made game after game.
It's added work that could go into polishing other areas of the game.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
That don't matter. Steven changes his lore on a whim. The death animation is a prime example. He put that in the game because he thinks it's cool. I am extremely skeptical what his original table-top games had anything like that going on. As a lifelong table-top player and DM. I have never heard of anyone altering death in such a bizarre way. I would be amazed to learn that the OG table-top stories he had used death animations like that.
It's the rule of cool in full force with Ashes.
Which is something that could be applied to races. Right now, only a handful of the races are remotely compelling. Tulnar still sounds like it's going to be superior in every way from a customization standpoint.
Keep in mind that the decision to have the visual aesthetic of gear is locked to each race is still in play. Even if you liked the facial features of a Niküa the theme could be a put off. Dulnir will be wearing steal and stone while you are walking around in bamboo and bone. Again, I just can't see it being popular enough to exist as a player race out the gate.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Races require art assets. The art team is probably pretty far ahead of the rest of development anyway. Nikua probably have the same if not similar animations to Dunir (or they might as well use the ones from the Alpha where people complained and make new Dunir ones).
The fact that they are considering Tulnar at all implies that they intend to have enough artists and animators to do all that long before most main systems, so why not build the world with the lore one wants?
Races require more than "art assets". They require modeling, rigging, animations, voice acting, and lore. Lets talk about the Nikua, even if they use the same exact model as the other dwarves they will still require their own animations, art assets, voice overs, and lore. Sure modeling and rigging are cut out but the rest are by no means easy to do in totality.
Though I am not advocating for removing races, @Vhaeyne is correct that these extra races will be underplayed and take up considerable resources and time to create.
My bad then, I didn't know those things were difficult to that level because the people on my team who do them never seem to think they're particularly difficult.
I've only helped with defining animations a few times, it didn't feel like it took that long. Sure, it's no 'I'mma bang out a whole flow in a day' but that's where my perception comes from.
I admit to not knowing how many artists and animators are on staff, Steven makes it sound like there's a considerable number of them, when talking on streams, and I'd figure with all the random creatures we see, that the animation portion of races is moreso about making sure things don't clip or look terrible (which, again, I'm used to the process being extensive, but not necessarily time consuming, QA handles most of that, it doesn't seem to drain too much time from the animator in my life).
I wasn't aware that there was going to be voice acting, and I thought all the lore was already 'finished', in the sense that you are probably referring to.
A developer may as well keep with what we all know with races, and do something interesting with the world instead.
As to it being a waste of time with some races, I am not so sure. While I expect to only see 3 or 4 races get a metropolis, I do see all races having level 3 and 4 nodes at times.
Since a lot of the work is developing the architecture, rather than using that architecture to create buildings, I can see the work put in at least getting used.
Why knowing create any race that only a few people are going to like when you know you could create another race that everyone finds tempting instead?
We have Tulnar, let's be real with ourselves here. We are all going to at least look at the Tulnar customization options. (Even the Tulnar must die folks...) I don't think very many people are even going to look at the Niküa unless their stats and abilities are really good. In which case, they don't like the race for its style, they just want to min/max. Which is fine, but I don't think we should be making races that won't be popular just to use their stats to make them tempting.
I did not make a "hot take" thread thinking everyone would agree that races should be removed, but I think most would agree that people should want to pick a race for its aesthetic before its stats.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
There are few things that I as a business person would feel obliged in receiving a refund on my investment on. Nikua was one of the PRIMARY reasons along with summoner that I felt comfortable enough to drop money on this project on. So yeah I'd be demanding a refund but it's more about the 'why the did that' more than the missing Nikua itself.
They have already been super sketchy about summoner. Removing Nikua to 'save resources' would have a lot of implications this far in the development cycle. Lore for them is basically done ENOUGH that it'd be MORE work to take them out than put them in without the over all world feel being off. They already made a decent amount of buildings for their architecture. The rigging isn't /that/ different from the Dunir. That leaves what. The modeling and voice acting? If their animation and art team is really hurting for resources that they need to cut a core race due to low expected player population making it 'not worth it' they have FAR more problems.
I am definitely planning to be a Nikua main. I liked the idea quite a lot. I thought it was pretty unique execution and in line with the type of characters I like playing in rpg settings. 5% while a made up number isn't exactly anything to sneeze at even if we take it at face value.
Unused or low used assets in a game is a big deal especially for an indie game. I agree with you on this point. But real talk that's going to be a problem no matter what in their current system.
The flaw is the way they plan on implementing the architectural cultural bias. Not the size of player population or chosen architecture styles. Their current system creates the homogeneity in town/city builds as a result of racial preference population which is inherently skewed already. On the other hand 'where people want to live' has a much larger impact on what kind of architecture they'd be interested in than their actual player race.
It's not a hard problem to fix. They could just make architecture style preference just another choice on creation. 'What type of architecture you'd like to live in' and 'what type of terrain interests you' is a lot easier to decide without further considerations about the rest of the game. Therefore this would likely increase spread in preference, it'd also let niche architecture styles like the Nikua's become more likely to occur in the biomes they suit best like beaches because people who like beaches are more likely to congregate to them and more likely to find Nikua architecture immersive and favorable to their vibe. It's up to Steven if they want to fix it in a way that doesn't break other parts of their game. 'Giving an unpopular race a skill that is more attractive than others to encourage player pop in a race' on the other hand is definitely one such method of 'fixing the problem' that will have a ton of dumb unintended consequences.
So overall my main contention with your line of thinking is more so 'you are trying to solve a problem that is only a problem because of a completely mutable part of the game's design' and then you want to solve it by removing content that has already had a fair amount of work done on it. As opposed to just 'changing the way they implement the architecture biasing'. Given they haven't even gotten close to finishing the Node work, it's not like they'd have to redo a lot of work to implement a better system. Where as in this case 'scrapping Nikua and other unpopular races' would be literally burning already created assets and burning sentiment with those '5%' of players. Not to mention the level of pr confusion it'd create if you did delete a race like that. Altering core concept stuff costs resources since it has an effect.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
We also haven't seen that much of the nikua and as they get flushed out, they may become more popular.
At the end of the day, we are not in the position to make these kinds of calls so making threads like these come across as un-necessary negatively for those who are interested in the feature you are talking about excluding.
So sure the majority of this node was built by Dunir and has dunir architecture but there was a huge secondary population of ren'kai so the node has a ren'kai district in it.
Kind of like a Chinatown area
-passing by tulnartown- "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy"
Just the way we like it!
Your numbers, like most things on the internet, are made up obviously, but even if we accept them as true, I would still want them ingame at launch. Setting aside the whole "they've been promised, a lot of work is already done on them, and people have bought cosmetics for those races already" arguments, which are important and valid, I think it's important to have content like races in the game that isn't going to be among the top 3 or 5 that most people choose.
Having the Niküa especially, which are a deviation from the classic dwarves, is one of the better design choices IMO. It gives the game a twist and adds width and scope in a positive way to the overall world. It sets the game apart in a meaningful way IMO, and makes it more interesting.
Sure, we could remove all the uncool races like the kaelar, vaelune, ren'kai, vek, empyrean, py'rai and tulnar and still have a really good game, but I think keeping those lesser races are necessary to get a great game.
I mean...all of that is certainly an opinion one can have. I'm not calling it bad, necessarily, but I assure you that the other races will see plenty of play. I, and MANY people I know, are heavily looking forward to Vek. I mean the first two characters I create are going to be Vek.
Sometimes the classics are a solid starting point. Let the original body of work get out there while they dream up more options.
As for death animations...there is literally no such thing as a death animation in a ttrpg campaign unless you wait at the table while someone pulls out an iPad and says "As you die, this happens" (clicks button) "and you turn to ash. Cool, amirite?!?" How often has that happened in any of your TABLETOP campaigns? I stress that word because we're not talking about the age of Foundry, etc with graphical representations on your computer.
It's like adapting a book to a movie: you need to add visual aspects to the scene to dazzle the eye. Else, you might as well not have a video game. Or you might as well play games from 1998 because those combat effects are "good enough" and "properly represent" the simplistic combat motions you imagine happen. You have to admit that the flashy stuff they have added to some games (minus those that go into over-the-top explosion overload, of course) make it feel much more interesting.
When it comes to games of any kind, the rule of cool wins out in most people's minds more often than not.
For what it's worth, I agree on this. Locking an armor appearance to race would be awkward. What if my character left the Nikua because I hate the beach and fish bone lifestyle? Maybe make it an option, but I think each armor should be made in the spirit of who created it, not who is wearing it. That's why you have cosmetics.
Maybe give crafters an additional function by allowing them to alter one piece of gear to different racial appearances for the cost of some resources?
This is far more apparent with the aesthetic choices of the cosmetics, they aren't creative, just disconnected from a consistent overarching theme. They're honestly gross.
"B-b-b-but that's the pooooint, each pack is a different theme!" I understand that, but aesthetically, their quality is so turbulent it's gross. They go from looking interesting, to outright Google Play, mobile MMO.
It's a very strange decision. I don't get it, personally, especially when the game is still so early into development. They should definitely look into changing it because the only reason they'd keep it would be to promote cosmetic purchases.
Most people that will play the game eventualy, proberly didn't participate in poll (if there is one). It doesn't have to be evenly devided.
@JustVine has the best argument. I mean, I would hate for them to have to refund the six people that like the race... XD Jokes aside. The race is kind of a promise. I can't be mad at that.
@Nerror I like the spirit of having more verity, but it could be better verity. It's why I used Khajiit as an example. People like their cat races. Why not just give them that Polynesian flavor? Something people would be excited about.
@insomnia I linked the metrics for popular races for other games. I have been on this forum for a while and seen plenty of polls for races with Ashes. Niküa always come out on bottom. It's common knowledge. I am not speaking for everyone by making a "hot take" thread... I know it's a hot take. XD
@Virtek death animations it table tops... It's pretty simple. As a DM do you think Steven was describing character and NPC deaths to his players with the way the death animation works in Ashes in the OG table-top custom setting? I don't. Just thinking as a DM, the world would be entirely different if people turned to ashes when they died. Cultures and beliefs would change in mass to account for such a thing. Its no trivial change. Not if you want your world to feel believable.
@Merek The race armor thing is one of the few things I hate about Ashes... Thant and family summons. Most things I am happy to put up with. I don't think it's going to ever change, but thinking about it really showcases how much extra work a single race is. If they are going to put forth all this work, I would want them all to be bangers.
To all: I had a lot to respond to with this one, so if I missed some finer points of your post, I apologize in advanced. I am not trying to discredit anyone's argument by ignoring a point. Realistically, I don't expect a random "hot take" thread to change any minds. I just wanted to put it out there to see what others think. Justvine is ultimately the winner here. More than anyone, I think his post illustrates why nothing should be done about my take. I still wish all nine races were so cool, it would be hard to pick one... Right now, I am looking at two, maybe three of nine... I have also never player a MMO where all the races are compelling choices... If the faces were not so ugly on every race, ESO might be that game. XD
Anyway, thanks for the responses.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
This point will really decide which race we will play.
devs can make sure that all races are played
example
i don't like elves, but i want to play archer, and only elves have the bonus i want on the bow, so i will be forced to choose that.
my consolation will be that the armor will hide the appearance.
It's been brought up. I just think the primary reason to like a race should be the aesthetic. At least for MMORPGS.
Why play an Eleven ranger if you like dwarfs? Maybe Elves have better accuracy, but Dwarfs might use bows that require more strength to aim. The stats and abilities could be balanced to the point that people should be picking the thing they want to look at for the next few thousand hours they are going to spend with their character. Not what plays better.
If the game had awful graphics, I would care less. Since, ashes looks fantastic playing as a race you don't like the looks of will be more noticeable. I would be pissed as a tank to learn that Niküa make the best tanks by a margin that makes other races an awful choice. I think most tanks would not like Niküa's style when they are trying to be a big armored mofo...
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Please someone have to do it?
What about you?
Oh nono
Yeah? Sounds cool!
Except, undead in Ashes will likely just a swirl of dust because we turn into a pile of dust instead of a corpse on death...
So unless you want to be like a dust elemental of some kind, I don't think it's going to happen. XD
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Steven owned the September 2019 release date broken promises really well.
Steven also promised 8 +1 (KS $2.5M) races. A lot of people would be entitled to 'bait and switch' refunds if Intrepid don't deliver 8+1 races. Intrepid is 'wasting time on races no one is going to care about' because they would damage their relationship with the community if they didn't keep another promise. How many promises can a developer break before the community loses faith? Not many, I think.