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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
[Feedback] Racial identity feels like it's missing; races don't feel visually unique.
Fippy
Member, Alpha Two
I've noticed that, to be honest, I can't tell what race anyone is, unless it's a Dunir, or a Kaelar wearing heavy armor. The only reason I can tell the heavy armor apart is because I'm a Vek who wears heavy armor so I know what it looks like if I'm wearing the same armor set as a Vek. But even then, it's *only* because I already have the knowledge of what it looks like on me to compare to. I have literally no idea what race someone is beyond that very specific instance, and I've spent at least 100 hours in game.
I know we're not using generic fantasy races here, but Vek seem to be "troll" coded. If I'm not holding anything, I do this very unique hunched forward kind of posture, and I love it. In the concept art for the Vek race, they are also doing this. But, as soon as I hold something, I just sort of... stop doing that? I suddenly have good posture? It feels jarring.
I know this game is constrained by being more realistic, but for all the criticisms of WoW's art style, it communicated a LOT of information visibly, and had incredible visual identity. Could a human and an undead technically have stood the same way? Yes. Did they? No. Even wearing the exact same armor, you knew which was which immediately. Posture was an integral part of WoW's visual racial identities, but we seem to be missing it completely here beyond "It's small, so it's a Dunir." meanwhile "it's vaguely human shaped so it's and ...? I don't know?" When Nikua are added, what will readily distinguish them from Dunir?
Am I the only one who feels this way? I don't mean this as any kind of negative feedback, I just want to be a scrungly little troll whacking things with my hammer, and right now I just feel too proper. Let me know your thoughts!
I know we're not using generic fantasy races here, but Vek seem to be "troll" coded. If I'm not holding anything, I do this very unique hunched forward kind of posture, and I love it. In the concept art for the Vek race, they are also doing this. But, as soon as I hold something, I just sort of... stop doing that? I suddenly have good posture? It feels jarring.
I know this game is constrained by being more realistic, but for all the criticisms of WoW's art style, it communicated a LOT of information visibly, and had incredible visual identity. Could a human and an undead technically have stood the same way? Yes. Did they? No. Even wearing the exact same armor, you knew which was which immediately. Posture was an integral part of WoW's visual racial identities, but we seem to be missing it completely here beyond "It's small, so it's a Dunir." meanwhile "it's vaguely human shaped so it's and ...? I don't know?" When Nikua are added, what will readily distinguish them from Dunir?
Am I the only one who feels this way? I don't mean this as any kind of negative feedback, I just want to be a scrungly little troll whacking things with my hammer, and right now I just feel too proper. Let me know your thoughts!
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Comments
Not really true for all the armour sets, the human, emp, and Vaelune all look the exact same with their armour models to about 90%, I couldn't tell them apart if they stood in a line Infront of me, even the race shapes without armour are basically the exact same
This is true in some sense, but functionally, unless those armors are side by side for comparison, many of them are marginally different at best. The Ashen Haunt sholders for instance, on Vek are slightly more pointy on top, and on Kaelar they're a bit more bulky. It's still the same armor set skin, wrapped around a slightly different shape. This is true for most all of the unique armor sets. *vaguely* different shape. The generic armors are different. Yes, Kaelar have a completely different look to the 2nd sword armor, and aelan chain, but as a player that's something I have to learn over time. It's not obvious. Especially not from a distance.
Meanwhile the four available medium sized races look so similar that even up close I can't tell the difference between them. The vek's hunched posture is the exact kind of thing that gives racial identity, but again for some reason it goes away as soon as we're holding something? It feels weird to lean into that sort of difference, but only .1% of the time. Why even have it at all at that point?
I hope over time they do add in posture differences and other things to make the races more distinct, because right now the vague armor model differences don't seem to achieve the visual identity at all.
I was idly thinking about this while I was at work, and realized I wanted to push back on it a bit.
EQ literally had every single race have a unique armor. I'll grant that was likely due to tech limitations, but the same armor on different races looked completely different, so it's not like that's at all a unique concept here.
WoW didn't have unique armors per race, but each race was its own unique rigged model that had *completely* different dances, jokes, flirts, weapon swing animations, running animations, mounts, jumping animations, idle posture, etc. Racial identity ran extremely deeply in WoW.
Final fantasy races are all visually distinct even when wearing the same armor.
As Crazysam said:
Everquest had unique skills and vision systems for different races. Iksars started with 100 swimming skills because... lizard. They also had forage across the board. Ogres had frontal stun immunity. Trolls had base health regen bonuses. Multiple races had bonuses to their vision systems. Gnomes were the only race who could access the tinkering tradeskill. Every single race had a different base stat allocation.
WoW races all had unique abilities for increased base resistances, stuns, CC breaks, combat speed bonuses, gathering bonuses, attack power boosts.
Picking my race has felt important in every other MMO I play, but it hasn't felt like it mattered at all here.
How is having some armor be slightly different sometimes, everyone having the same dances, and literally no racials existing the MMO that's taken racial identity the farthest?
I highly agree, I feel like intrepid are diving so deep into systems and forgetting as MMO players a big part of why we play is immersion and for the people saying ashes isn't a high fantasy game because of the realism aspect I disagree, I think everything about ashes is extremely fantasy driven, from the lore to the distant planets and magic, I just think intrepid are absolutely terrible at bringing this to life in their game and would rather it looks like earth for what ever reason, with character models just mimicing humans, bears and wolves and frogs and oaks and willows some how all being native to a distant magic planet just makes no sense to me
I think that the only armour that even looks slightly different so far is the level 1 armour sets you find from the goblins, but past level 10 sets the differences are so miniscule that you can hardly notice them
As was mentioned in post above, this is Fantasy MMORPG, dont be afraid to go for non-logicil body building, walking.
Some ideas:
Kealar - Basic human, classic one. Give them various type of skin, but not much into dark, this should be for Vaelune. (To make them look a bit different).
Vaeulune - Make them a bit smaller then Kaelar, just a bit. Mostly options for Darker type of skin.
Here Armor appierence should play role, between two Humans.
I will skip the Dwarfs, since due to their Height its easy to separate that.
Empyrean - Tall figures, mostly very light skinned, their gait should appear light, you can use a reference from Lord of the Rings, Legolas or invent your own way. Identity should be in light gait and the tallest character in the game. Their stance should be straight, almost proud, confident.
Py'Rai - Horn should be visible enough so we can clearly see difference. Here the gait should be similarly light but less lofty. A little smaller than the Empyrean, and they shouldn't be as upright as the Empyrean. Different clothes but also sitting/resting.
Vek - Second maybe even tallest race in the game. However their stance, gait should be clumsy, uncoordinated. So even though they would theoretically be the tallest figure, due to not being straightened like elves they would be just as tall or shorter. I think Vek is one of the best race when you can use your creativity.
Renkai and Tulnar will be easly regonizable, however here you will have to be careful to separate them enough between each other. For Renkai I would take inspiration from Lineage, or Warcraft Movie.
Fully agree with everything here, but especially the parts I've quoted. A LOT can be done just by stance and how the races hold themselves. I don't agree vek need to be clumsy, but look at both Undead and Trolls in WoW. Hunched forward posture, racially unique, yet it looks natural for them. As near as I can tell from watching videos since the game is down right now, and from memory, all of the character models move exactly the same way regardless of race, stand in the same way, swing their weapons in the same way, etc.
And then we've got the already distinguishable Dunir for some reason doing front flips, which is an example of an animation that makes a race stand out. Now, I will argue until I die that this should be an animation for Nikua and has NO PLACE being a Dunir thing, but regardless, the point still stands.
We have two example of racial specific animations existing, only one of which is actually in the game because the Vek one only happens during *very* specific instances, but more are sorely needed.
I do agree there are differences in the gear, but the differences are either marginal, like the shape of the armor on Kaelar vs. Vek when the armor has a unique graphic, or they're something you have to spend hours and hours playing to learn are significant differences of the same armor set on different races. For instance, I did not make the connection that some Kaelar players were wearing the *exact same heavy armor set* as my Vek Tank until I rolled a Kaelar Fighter and wore the same armor and it looked totally different. That was after at least 50 hours of play, and before that moment, I just assumed it was some other piece of armor. It didn't ever communicate "oh that's a Kaelar" until I independently learned for *that specific set* that it meant Kaelar. Still couldn't tell you for cloth or leather tbh, and I must be in 200 hours now.
IMO there just needs to be something that communicates racial identity that we don't have to individually learn for every single armor set. There's just SO much room for racial distinctions that seems to be completely lacking right now, and I really do hope the vision includes implementing them, but a game shouldn't feel less vibrant and unique just because most people are going to play in 3rd person.