Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
Ehhhh idk from what I've seen "recognizable silhouette" is a pretty common design goal. And my understanding is that the point of a silhouette is to be recognizable even after players start equipping gear. An orc and a dwarf will look different no matter what gear they wear. That design goal wont "cease to be a thing the minute players get gear" because the Py'Rai horns will stick through any helmet they put on.
I think players like you who don't care about character appearance create all the more reason to have unique race silhouettes, so that a bunch of characters in full BIS don't all look the same like in OSRS.
I said that each race having a unique silhouette is a pointless design goal.
If you want to talk about appealing to players vs not appealing to them, what you don't do is put horns on your wood elves.
Having the base race (Orcs Elves, Dwarves and Humans) all have specific and unique silhouettes is great - it would happen with normal development. Having a design goal that requires each of the two human races to require a different silhouette, each of the Elven races to have a different silhouette etc - this is a pointless design goal.
As to your point about the horns showing through helms - consider a look like Wrath's Legacy. Are Py'Rai going to have two sets of horns now? How distinct is their silhouette going to be when standing next to an Empyrean wearing this set?
To be clear, the silhouettes don't have to be super unique. My expectation is that the human races and the Empyrean elves will likely look very similar to each other. Other races might look similar depending on how they're customized/the armor they're wearing. I'd actually thought about the Wrath's Legacy set with the Py'Rai. What about the Muscarian Marshals set? I don't know whether or not horns should show through either of those sets. Personally, I would have horn show through Wrath's Legacy and not through Muscarian Marshals. Point being, I agree that doing things blindly in the name of the "design goal" would be dumb.
IMO, there's a sweet spot with how many races look similar, and I think the horned wood elves lets them hit it. The humans should look largely the same. The Empyrean are shaping up to look just like humans, too. I think that adding a fourth race to the lookalike gang would be a tad too much. The Py'Rai sprouting horns sets them apart, even if they might conditionally look similar. I expect the Vek to be similar. With a full set of armor and a face-covering helmet, you probably couldn't tell the difference.
I'm aware many people dislike the Py'Rai design but I'm pretty happy with it. Probably because I never got into Everquest/Neverwinter.
There are so many other means to differentiate a race (color palette, lore, stats, abilities, even runes or some such).
There's just no need for it.
Also arnt there 2 elves arnt empyream more traditional looking elfs just go them if u want a traditional elf its good to have options here if you dont like traditional elfs u have these one for a different look and so on.
Humans we have europeans/Arabs
"Dwarfs" we have drawfs and halfings/gnomes (Atleast thats whay they remind me of)
"Orcs" we get orcs and trolls
Elfs we get high elfs and wood elfs (or horned elfs depends on how u see it ive played game where the woodelfs get horns so thats why they resemble woodelfs for me)
2 species of the "Same race" with exception of humans are all quite a bit different although with humans not much you can do to humans to make them very different from eachother and still be seen as human :P
You shouldn't. The rest of us should. Have a nice life!