Racials are better than a personal story.

I get that most people are worried about the meta, but I wouldn’t be.

There’s only going be a small handful that extrapolate the full benefits of racials. Even then they won’t always have conditions where they can optimize them.

But they almost always seem to give better flavor than personal story.

Guild Wars 2 has personal stories, they serve no purpose or utility.

ESO has racials, people still try to follow the meta and will never be able extrapolate the full benefits, they’re just a better flavour.

Ashes spin on racials seem to be the best yet, especially if it stays in respect to racial lore.

And I think that’s the key, having racials in respect to racial lore. Flavorful and only a few can extrapolate the full benefits, but not all the time.

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Comments

George_Black

As someone who played Imperial when they were shit, and redguard and the orcs where meta for stamina pvp, I could not care less about a races passives; I'd still pick the basic humans.

But I also dont understand the fascination people have about passive stats.
I could understand it if the discussion was about active racial abilities, whether in combat or otherwise, but why the F cares about passives tied to races?

There aren't even race locked classes, which mmos should have btw.

Dark Elf Paladins..... Tulnar Clerics and Knights....

Anyway...

BeOwningU

No matter which racial you choose it shall not save you from the wrath of the "power outage posse".

The next time your power goes out at the perfect wrong time; when you're progressing or trying to defend a node and are abruptly interrupted know it was us.. because.. we will do anything to win.

Take solace only in the fact that our actions are a last resort to your amazing perseverance and drive for we do not enjoy taking your air conditioning away, but must do what we must to succeed against all odds.

Lash

Ashes could easily have racials that tie into their design philosophy where some things are better in 1 situation and weak in another.

Something like a racial augment that lets a spell ignore the effects of rain. It would never really be OP but it gives a nice flavor to your race choice. I hope they go more along these lines instead of putting it all on the backstory concept. I am with you in that it is more interesting than some personal story choice.

People should not hyper focus on finding a meta in a game that is being designed to not have 1 overarching most effective way to play. They need to give players places to shine and places to let others shine.

Solvryn

Lashing wrote: »

Ashes could easily have racials that tie into their design philosophy where some things are better in 1 situation and weak in another.

Something like a racial augment that lets a spell ignore the effects of rain. It would never really be OP but it gives a nice flavor to your race choice. I hope they go more along these lines instead of putting it all on the backstory concept. I am with you in that it is more interesting than some personal story choice.

People should not hyper focus on finding a meta in a game that is being designed to not have 1 overarching most effective way to play. They need to give players places to shine and places to let others shine.

Yep, which is why I like racials better than a backstory, there will be only a few instances where that racial will be able to be used at a optimal level.

TheDarkSorcerer

Racial passives plays 0 part in ESO. Makes 0 difference unless you're the 1% on the trial leaderboard.
I loved the story aspect of personal stories in GW2, especially the intro of letting you choose X different back stories.

Chonkers1

Tulnar could pick and choose racials

hahahaahahahahahahha

TULNAR MASTERRACE

Chonkers1

Tulnar Clerics and Knights....

Anyway...[/quote]

ACHSTUALLY TULNAR WOULD BE THE BAST CLYRYKSS

Solvryn

TheDarkSorcerer wrote: »

Racial passives plays 0 part in ESO. Makes 0 difference unless you're the 1% on the trial leaderboard.
I loved the story aspect of personal stories in GW2, especially the intro of letting you choose X different back stories.

Yes that’s why I like them better than GW2s backstory thing. It offered nothing other than some quest dialogue.

Azherae

If they don't really do enough to be part of mid-level metagaming, why are they better flavor specifically?

I'm not really understanding how 'I resisted that effect because I am a Ren'Kai maybe since that gave me an extra 2% resistance' is better flavor because you'd need a way to notice it, wouldn't you?

Maybe some text that explicitly says that your racial bonus is the thing that cause the resistance this time?

Dygz

I think I would be trying to stack/max my Passives, so...I wouldn't need text telling me that an extra 2% made the difference.

Azherae

Dygz wrote: »

I think I would be trying to stack/max my Passives, so...I wouldn't need text telling me that an extra 2% made the difference.

Right but, in MMOs it's usually a little different, right?

The "Critical Focus" skill in Cardinal makes it so you full_crit on a 19 as well as a 20.

But you can also see your roll results. If you couldn't, you wouldn't 'know that you crit because of Critical Focus'.

Cardinal Trolls in my current test campaign don't have natural Critical Focus, but just streakily/randomly happen to Nat 20 crit really often. So one might 'assume that Trolls have a racial bonus to crit' when they don't, if you couldn't see the roll results.

If you stacked your passives and then your Racial was just '5% chance to resist Sleep' when you already stacked up to 35%, you probably aren't going to 'know' that your racial effect did anything. You could 'RP claim every time it happens' that it happened 'probably because you're a Vek', but you could also get into that annoying space where the Empyrean next to you always seems to resist the sleep and you don't despite your racial bonus.

So I'm trying to understand at what point it becomes information you can use for anything. I guess 'flavor' doesn't imply any real effect, but I'm then trying to see 'how is this better than a backstory?'

If I, the Empyrean, claim that I resist sleep more than the Vek because I trained it, and the RNG bears this out, the Racial Bonus of the Vek isn't contributing anything in my opinion.

Noaani

I'm of the opinion that having both is best.

Essentially, both are just bonuses that you can apply to your character. Whether players will min/max them or not is more related to the value and nature of the bonuses, not to whether they are handed out as racial or personal story based.

MachadoDeCarvalho

TheDarkSorcerer wrote: »

Racial passives plays 0 part in ESO. Makes 0 difference unless you're the 1% on the trial leaderboard.
I loved the story aspect of personal stories in GW2, especially the intro of letting you choose X different back stories.

I also loved the personal stories in GW2, it was a nice touch! That surely enhances roleplaying and immersion.

As for the racial passives in ESO, I wouldn't say they play 0 part. They are not extremely impactful, but can definitely be handy while optimizing your build.

Caww

Racials ruin your own personal immersion in the sense that now you may be concerned that you short-changed yourself instead of just playing the toon you envision being, I hope they are milk-toast at best.

Spif

My main character in ESO was planned a vampire Dunmer sorc, and I started the idea before the game released so nobody had any idea how it would work out. Fire resist to counter the vamp vulnerability to fire, and also the vamp stealth benefits for RvR. Always used a fire staff of course, but it was difficult to beat a DK with the vamp fire vulnerability.

None of the passives themselves were very impactful, but they can give you a base to guild your character on. The bigger things like fire resist to counter fire vulnerability (it was impactful at release with the way resists worked, and allowed me to roll with one less fire resist jewelry than other vamps). The little things like Dumner having a skin shade that hides your vampireness

My point is that racials can be rolled into a character concept. Even if you don't role play or do anything with a character story (I don't), race having an impact helps you build that concept.

I'm fine with low to medium power racial traits. But please make them hold the same power through the life of the character. IE, don't make a racial be +2 STR, when at level 15 we have 20 STR and at endgame we will have 200 STR. Instead make the racial +5% STR

Dygz

Azherae wrote: »

Right but, in MMOs it's usually a little different, right?

If you stacked your passives and then your Racial was just '5% chance to resist Sleep' when you already stacked up to 35%, you probably aren't going to 'know' that your racial effect did anything. You could 'RP claim every time it happens' that it happened 'probably because you're a Vek', but you could also get into that annoying space where the Empyrean next to you always seems to resist the sleep and you don't despite your racial bonus.

In RPGs - and I'm including Tabletop D&D - I don't need really need to see where I got the extra 5% from each time the Passive helps me. I know that it's included in my build. So, I just need to know the total %.
It's a Passive so I should expect my Passives to have an effect. If for some reason, I thought there was some bug, I could test it.
I'm not going to compare my Sleep Resist to some other character. I'm going to assume that they stacked their Sleep Resists differently than I did. For all I know, that Empyrean has Sleep Resist Passives from the Scolar's Academy. I'm not competing with other players who have SR. I just need my Sleep Resistance to work well enough that it does for me what I want it do.
The only competition I would need to worry about is whether my SR is high enough compared to my opponents Sleep.

I might expect to see some UI text telling me a Racial Active skill failed or succeeded, but I would not need UI text telling me that Passives are helping me because - they're Passives.

Dygz

Caww wrote: »

Racials ruin your own personal immersion in the sense that now you may be concerned that you short-changed yourself instead of just playing the toon you envision being, I hope they are milk-toast at best.

What???

Solvryn

Caww wrote: »

Racials ruin your own personal immersion in the sense that now you may be concerned that you short-changed yourself instead of just playing the toon you envision being, I hope they are milk-toast at best.

Racials are fine, most people are not going to get the full value out of them, because they aren’t playing at that high skill level.

Just like they’ll never use the “meta” at maximum efficiency. Especially if they’re using the streamer meta, which is usually behind.

CROW3

“Both. Both are good.”

- Tulio & Miguel

Caww

Dygz wrote: »

Caww wrote: »

Racials ruin your own personal immersion in the sense that now you may be concerned that you short-changed yourself instead of just playing the toon you envision being, I hope they are milk-toast at best.

What???

So, to clarify my statement with an example of where I think racials can be a detraction to immersion rather than an addition. Some races, such a dwarfs, are known to be more physical with their traits but if you want a fire-throwing mage in a dwarf toon, you may be sacrificing efficiency of build and feel that your dwarf just isn't smart enough to be a great mage thus reducing your level of immersion. For this reason I hope racials don't affect the combat/spell aspects of any race, so that all races can be just as effective no matter what combo race and class are used.

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