Aquatic Races and their absence in MMO'

TeemEmurica

So, I was talking to a buddy of mine and got onto the discussion of aquatic races and why you never see them in MMO's. Would the ability of breathing underwater and swimming faster be too broken of a racial? I bring that up because that is the only reason to truly have the [aquatic] tag. Every MMO that has come out, no matter how big or small, never explored the concept of aquatic races. Are Merfolk truly so unpopular an idea as to test the waters, I don't think so. In my opinion Merfolk are a truly untapped gem worthy of being a consideration in AoC later down the line.
The ocean being confirmed to have its own variety of content I think just adds to how much FUN a Merfolk race can bring to the game. Imagine being a pirate Merfolk so you hire a bunch of Merfolk players with fast water mounts to ambush traders in route. Or maybe you can be a salvage crew that helps other players recover items lost at sea, for a fee of course. Who knows maybe the salvager hired the pirates for easy customers.The point is I and my buddy think that Merfolk should have a true consideration into becoming a race at some point. Let us know what ya'll think!

Caww

It almost sounds like merfolk would have to be gimped by definition for overland play which is the majority of AoC.

Shoelid

#1) I don't think people really like aquatic content that much. What they like instead is 'naval' content, even if that means doing some diving now and then. I say this because a large portion of people actively disliked the Vash'jir zone in WoW, which was entirely underwater.

#2) I don't think those racials are broken or anything. It would make them too skewed to a single type of content, though. How often are players really going to be at/near the ocean, and how much of their power budget would be put toward ocean-only content? Any merfolk would be heavily incentivized to play on a coastal node, but if their friends all play elsewhere, they might find themselves torn.

There are possibilities of course, and some people have been asking for a naga/jinyu playable race in WoW for a pretty long time now. I just think that they're not very popular, so there's not much of an incentive to make it happen.

Dygz

Aquatic player races?
Fish out of water?

The natural ability to breathe underwater seems to be a prestige character perk. As would flight as a natural ability.
Plus decent underwater biomes are challenging to design.

Talents

TeemEmurica wrote: »

The ocean being confirmed to have its own variety of content I think just adds to how much FUN a Merfolk race can bring to the game. Imagine being a pirate Merfolk so you hire a bunch of Merfolk players with fast water mounts to ambush traders in route. Or maybe you can be a salvage crew that helps other players recover items lost at sea, for a fee of course. Who knows maybe the salvager hired the pirates for easy customers.The point is I and my buddy think that Merfolk should have a true consideration into becoming a race at some point. Let us know what ya'll think!

Why wouldn't players just use the Aquatic Mounts that are already planned to be in the game? They'd be faster than a racial passive.

TeemEmurica

Talents wrote: »

TeemEmurica wrote: »

The ocean being confirmed to have its own variety of content I think just adds to how much FUN a Merfolk race can bring to the game. Imagine being a pirate Merfolk so you hire a bunch of Merfolk players with fast water mounts to ambush traders in route. Or maybe you can be a salvage crew that helps other players recover items lost at sea, for a fee of course. Who knows maybe the salvager hired the pirates for easy customers.The point is I and my buddy think that Merfolk should have a true consideration into becoming a race at some point. Let us know what ya'll think!

Why wouldn't players just use the Aquatic Mounts that are already planned to be in the game? They'd be faster than a racial passive.

Talents wrote: »

TeemEmurica wrote: »

The ocean being confirmed to have its own variety of content I think just adds to how much FUN a Merfolk race can bring to the game. Imagine being a pirate Merfolk so you hire a bunch of Merfolk players with fast water mounts to ambush traders in route. Or maybe you can be a salvage crew that helps other players recover items lost at sea, for a fee of course. Who knows maybe the salvager hired the pirates for easy customers.The point is I and my buddy think that Merfolk should have a true consideration into becoming a race at some point. Let us know what ya'll think!

Why wouldn't players just use the Aquatic Mounts that are already planned to be in the game? They'd be faster than a racial passive.

Because I imagine we won't be able to to breathe underwater as the other races and also I did say for them to be on water mounts. Also Why does the race have to be gimped on land? Just because you give a race a racial that is good doesn't mean you need to take something away. Another thing about its popularity is it doesn't /have/ to be the most popular but I think it would be popular enough to give players a way to explore and play the game a different way. Nothing wrong with more options.

Atama

Merfolk are absent from MMOs for the same reason that Aquaman was the lamest member of the Super Friends.

Birthday

To me it sounds like a good idea. Intrepid might already have this planned but they've set it aside for the far future in some expansion of the game. It's only logical because they have Naval content and I believe I remember Steven saying somewhere that he wants the oceans to be something really valuable.

Lore-wise I see it as a problem to include an aquatic race which is on par with all the races we have now because supposedly all the races are made out of the ancient gods who split themselves up in tiny pieces thus creating all the races.

We still have some lore missing and some gods unrevealed so with new information we'll get to theorycraft more. It's hard to believe that all the gods split and not a single one of those gods wasn't a aquatic god. It's even harder to believe that if there was an aquatic god his splitting up would have created only the Nikua(I mention them because they are the closest to sea-related race we have right now).

Intrepid is definitely leaving secrets untold to us so that they'll reveal them when the time is due.

I'd like to see how they row out the expansions considering that Steven said that there are multiple different endings to the main storyline and it's all about the server's population's choice what they'll get.

CROW3

heh - I'd love to see 10-15% of the player population with fishbowls for helmets...

Sylvanar

Anything that merfolk would be used to achieve can be done to the same degree using an aquatic mount and naval content. Introducing merfolk would come with a lot of complications wrt to balancing races. Tbh it makes little sense to do this else it would have been done at least once in the hundreds of the MMO released till date as it won't serve any purpose past the novelty of it.

rikardp98

I haven't played that much DnD or know that much about it, but apparently Merfolk exist in DnD lore and according to the DnD 5th edition wiki Merfolk can breath air.
"All merfolk can breathe air or filter oxygen from the water, and they can walk on land or swim with equal ease."

Since Steven is a big fan of DnD I can see Merfolk being added in a future aquatic expansion. Similar to Tulnar that fled to the Underrealm, Merfolk fled to the underwater-realm, or something like that?

rikardp98

Sylvanar wrote: »

Anything that merfolk would be used to achieve can be done to the same degree using an aquatic mount and naval content. Introducing merfolk would come with a lot of complications wrt to balancing races. Tbh it makes little sense to do this else it would have been done at least once in the hundreds of the MMO released till date as it won't serve any purpose past the novelty of it.

I don't think this is true at all, naval content is sea level content, and aquatic mounts have mainly been shown to be sea level content as well. I can't remember what they have said about underwater/deep ocean content but merfolk would be a cool edition to that.

Vaknar

Birthday wrote: »

Lore-wise I see it as a problem to include an aquatic race which is on par with all the races we have now because supposedly all the races are made out of the ancient gods who split themselves up in tiny pieces thus creating all the races.

We still have some lore missing and some gods unrevealed so with new information we'll get to theorycraft more. It's hard to believe that all the gods split and not a single one of those gods wasn't a aquatic god. It's even harder to believe that if there was an aquatic god his splitting up would have created only the Nikua(I mention them because they are the closest to sea-related race we have right now).

This is a very interesting observation and idea (that's not me confirming it. I know about as much as you do when it comes to the lore ^_^) I wonder what other races the gods could've created?

Songcaller

Birthday wrote: »

even harder to believe that if there was an aquatic god his splitting up would have created only the Nikua(I mention them because they are the closest to sea-related race we have right now).

Vek are also tied to the sea through navigation on the open seas. I don't see either Nikua or Vek as seaborne, mermaids and stuff come to mind with seaborne.

Anyway, Vek navigation trait could change.

daveywavey

TeemEmurica wrote: »

So, I was talking to a buddy of mine and got onto the discussion of aquatic races and why you never see them in MMO's.

ESO has Argonians?

Dygz

rikardp98 wrote: »

I haven't played that much DnD or know that much about it, but apparently Merfolk exist in DnD lore and according to the DnD 5th edition wiki Merfolk can breath air.
"All merfolk can breathe air or filter oxygen from the water, and they can walk on land or swim with equal ease."

Since Steven is a big fan of DnD I can see Merfolk being added in a future aquatic expansion. Similar to Tulnar that fled to the Underrealm, Merfolk fled to the underwater-realm, or something like that?

Merfolk would be a prestige character.

"Can you be a mermaid in D&D?
Officially, no. Merfolk haven’t yet been added to the growing roster of official character races. Of course, you and the DM can always work out a homebrew option. And if your heart is set on playing an aquatic race, note that Tritons are an option via Volo’s Guide to Monsters.

Can merfolk survive on land?
Yes, merfolk can breathe air as well as water, though they are slow on land (10 ft movement) and very reluctant to venture out of sight of the shore."
https://thedungeonrats.com/dd-merfolk-playable-race/

In D&D, Tritons became a player race 15 years after launch.
Also... Ashes needs to avoid scope creep as much as possible.

TeemEmurica

Dygz wrote: »

rikardp98 wrote: »

In D&D, Tritons became a player race 15 years after launch.
Also... Ashes needs to avoid scope creep as much as possible.

I agree with avoiding scope, which is why I was thinking the Merfolk could be an "Expansion/Update" race later down the line. Also with the race reveals we have seen so far, I believe Intrepid would do the race justice in aesthetics at the very least. Can't say anything on feel because well I haven't played the game.