NOTE: This is a repost of mine from May. Seeing as we've going through BFA's launch and many months without a hint of changes to Nightborne, I am posting this to again try to get developer attention on these issues.
While I believe everyone is glad this race was made playable, I think I speak for the majority of Nightborne players when I say the conversion from NPC race to player race went rather poorly. In this thread, I will highlight the issues I have with the Nightborne model and overall flavor, as well as bring up suggestions to remedy these issues.
Foreword
Legion spent its entire first endgame story arc on the plight of the Nightborne. While it's very clearly a modern day retelling of the Blood Elf storyline, the questlines of the Nightfallen overthrowing Elisande and liberating Suramar were among my most enjoyable in Legion. Suramar as a zone is bar none the most ambitious and beautiful cityscape WoW has ever brought to life. Ports, a bazaar, noble estates, dinner parties, gardens, a zoo, a vineyard, a royal court, etc, all surrounding the Nighthold palace proper. The aesthetic of the Nightborne is reinforced through the architecture and is simply stunning.
The variance in the NPCs is also amazing when you actually look through them all. Nobles, craftsmen, city guards, merchants, down to everyday citizens; all have an incredible amount of variety in appearance, despite all having white hair and dark skin. There are multiple armor and cloth types in full display in multiple colorings across the city, and it's breathtaking considering they don't use any actual equipped armor like other NPC races like Vrykul or Naga; everything is built into the model.
When the Allied Race system was announced, and we learned this race that was so fleshed out and polished in Legion was becoming playable, I'm pretty sure everyone was excited. However, when the actual reveal and datamining happened, everyone saw how much they changed from the NPC presentation, most of it not for the better.
Main Issue #1: Lack of Options
Skin options: 3
Face options: 6
Hair options: 6
Hair color options: 6 (7 for males if you count no hair)
Earring options: 6 (including no earrings)
Tattoo options: 4 (including no tattoos)
6 or less options across every field. Easily the least amount of variability or customization of any race, allied or otherwise, in the entire game. There isn't much more to be said about this. If you can find a way to give Void Elves 8 shades of blue/black/purple and 12 hairstyles, I don't see an issue with asking more similar numbers for Nightborne. They even get 5 skin tones despite all being shades of blue/purple, similar shades that Nightborne use. After seeing the amount of fleshing out Dark Iron and Mag'har have received, Nightborne really fall by the wayside in terms of quality.
Main Issue #2: Differences from established NPC counterparts
Barring a few specific examples (Blood Elf city guards), I don't think any playable race has had to deal with regular NPC members of its faction looking so drastically different, and unfortunately better than, playable options.
One Image Summary: https://i.imgur.com/cGvLXas.png
Firstly, faces. Nightborne faces look almost directly copied and edited from Night Elven character counterparts. This is especially true with the males. When you compare a Nightborne male NPC to a male player, it's not even remotely close. The Nightborne NPC males are very gaunt faced, with narrow features, yet stern looks. Player faces for males look fat, and their ears are far too wide, taking up nearly half the head. Also, all but the first face option for female Nightborne lack facial geometry, which is easily noticible on the character selection screen and barbershop.
Secondly, and probably the biggest complaint: eyes. While I understand that facial rigging needed to be added, there's no excuse for making such a drastic departure from the iconic Nightborne slanted/slim eye shape, considering player races like Blood Elf males and Pandaren males use smaller eyes just fine. Nightborn eye shape emphasized and captured the regal and haughty, proud and proper flavor the Nightborne radiate as NPCs. On player characters, this is all but completely lost with big, bright, open eyes akin to Night Elves.
Thirdly, tattoos. While they are certainly a welcome addition considering their presence on the NPCs, they are so faint you can barely see them, and our heritage armor, especially on males, covers up so many of the tattooed areas that it doubles down on how invisible the tattoos look. A couple more pattern options wouldn't be unwelcome here either...
Fourth, jewelry. Throughout the NPCs in Suramar, we see Nightborne dressed in 3 primary metal tones, Silver, Gold, and Bronze. Simple palette recolors for existing options would go a long way in increasing variability.
Also, while a minor nitpick, female Nightborne bust areas seem downsized from their NPC counterparts, to the point that their sternums poke out further than their breasts, which looks really, really weird.
Lastly, Nightborne NPCs are shown to have things player models omit entirely, such as glowing arcane fingertips, arcane strands flowing in their hair, and a couple of ear directions (some Nightborne NPCs curve upwards, while some flow sraight backward.
All of these issues on their own wouldn't be consequential, but combined they all only serve to make the player version of Nightborne seem diluted and uncool. This should not be possible with how amazing their presentation was in Legion.
Main Issue #3: Heritage Armor
While overall, I think Nightborne get one of the cooler Heritage armors among Allied Races, there are problems with it that I think are worth addressing.
Firstly, the chestpiece robe simply determines too many of the 3D "attachables" as I like to call them, the extra armor plates and bits and bobs seen in various new armors. In this case, the neck armor, chin cap, thigh plates and back skirt are ALL attached to the chestpiece. Also, the robe on males completely covers up the chest area, where Nightborne males and females typically bare their chest in this type of armor, or at least have the option, considering we have tattoos we'd like to show off.
It would be much better if the thigh plates and skirt were attached to the belt or the pants, so that people who don't want to use a robe can still rock the hip and thigh armor, and have choices regarding pants, like many of the warrior-like Nightborne models use.
In addition, the scaling of Nightborne armors all seem to use the direct values of their Night Elf counterparts, leading the males having absolutely tremendous shoulders for their body size, and females having shoulders set extremely far apart, floating, and at a strange angle.
Secondly, on both males and females, the belt clips. The problem is worse on females where, despite the belt floating an entire fist or two away from the body, it still clips with the robe. While I normally wouldn't care about armor clipping, these are heritage armors. They only have to work for ONE RACE. One! The fact they aren't tailor-made to work from all angles is a little silly when you think about it.
Thirdly, and this is a statement for many heritage sets in game, there is a second coloring, also in proper Nightborne colors, that as of yet has not been made available through any means thus far revealed. It seems Mag'har got multiple colorings of their heritage armor when they hit 120. Can we get a confirmation or a method through which alternate recolors for our heritage armors can be earned or obtained? Considering some Allied Races have THREE other recolors, it would be sad to see these sets just sit unused, as is the case for all unused sets in the game.
Lastly, and again this sort of applies to Allied Races as a whole, where are those sexy weapon skins? Your artists already went out of the way to make some really great swords, glaives, shields, staves, maces and the like for the Nightborne. The guards in the "phased-for-Nightborne" Nighthold (a rare instance of NPCs using the playermodel) are using our heritage armor along with these weapons. Why taunt us like this? I know there were also a small, basic set of Void Elf and Dark Iron weapons datamined as well. These really should be some achievement or planned inclusion for players of these races to use.
Main Issue #4: Racials
I didn't really want to open the Pandora's box of discussing racial abilities, but here we are. In the original datamine, Nightborne had two abilities that sounded neat, and definitely appropriate flavor-wise for Nightborne: "Masquerade" and "Dispel Illusions". These definitely sounded more interesting than what we got. For those that did not see the initial datamining, Masquerade allowed you to take on the appearance of another Nightborne (unclear if it meant NPCs, players, or both), and Dispel Illusions was a short ranged stealth and invisibility dispel, very much akin to the iconic ability Nightborne guards use in Suramar city.
Overall, I know racials have been getting a harder look at, considering how things like Mythic+ have made every little edge more important (why we saw things like the Arcane Torrent and EMfH nerfs).
However, I was under the impression that Blizzard learned the lesson from legendaries, in that it doesn't feel good for some abilities to feel super powerful or impactful in the same space (racials in this case) where some are subpar or useless. Racials, in my opinion, should be the place to shove the flavorful and the rule-of-cool abilites, and leave damage or crowd control abilities to the classes.
That being said, a racial like Masquerade, Dispel Illusions, or one we did get, Cantrips, are good. Flavorful abilities that make sense for the race that don't affect DPS in a direct or impactful way, and are utility at best. Otherwise, you end up with Arcane Pulse, a damaging racial that is situational to the point of near uselessness. It's a joke; a racial Arcane explosion that does pitiful damage, and a near-usless AoE slow.
When I think of what fits Nightborne flavor-wise? Wine. Masquerades. Illusions. Arcane. We got one Arcane ability and that was the end of it, and it's not even a cool or powerful one. If you ever lose your disguise in Suramar, many of the guards do a really cool ability called "Arcane Charge" or "Arcane Rush", where they go transparent and blaze towards you, ending in a small Arcane Explosion when they reach you. That would've been way cooler, and more of a polar opposite to the Spatial Rift ability Void Elves got, and also been useful on both melee and ranged.
Closing Thoughts
While I know many of you are more focused on High Elves or San'layn or which side gets those Vulpera, I wanted to get my words out there for not only fans of Nightborne, but fans of Allied Races and their customization options going forward.
I'd rather the existing Allied Races all be brought to a similar level of standard (comparing Nightborne, likely one of the first Allied races worked on, to something like Dark Iron or Mag'har, one of the later ones, shows how limited Nightborne options really are) than continue to see more and more Allied Races packed into WoW haphazardly.
Thank you for reading if you've come this far. Please share your support or thoughts below, and I'll pretend that Blizzard is reading the thread if it gets big enough.
Ru-shanna shal'dorei.
322 Likes
Can they just fix that chin/chest piece on the heritage armor? K thanks!
16 Likes
The idle animation loop is busted, at least for female nightborne.
They'll glance to the left, then turn back, then glance to the left again and snap back like a CD that skipped.
They'll glance to the left, then turn back, then glance to the left again and snap back like a CD that skipped.
29 Likes
10/06/2018 10:54 AMPosted by YvetteThe idle animation loop is busted, at least for female nightborne.
They'll glance to the left, then turn back, then glance to the left again and snap back like a CD that skipped.
I was gonna point this out as well, there's a new problem with the animations involving the idles.
Other than that, I showed my support due to the very well written OP last time involving the changes on their post about how the Nightborne had "gotten lost in translation. That being said, I show my support again and think the nightborne in general need some help. There's some things very wrong here. They don't need new things. But the things they have definitely need to be fixed. Some of it is clearly busted.
9 Likes
I really with I had a face option that didn't look like either I'm a week off from dying or I'm perpetually angry.
Edit: This was made back when I was a nightborne. I recently race changed.
22 Likes
I second this thread.
13 Likes
The eyes should be slits like the NPCs, not wide open. We have the Nelf faces too instead of the NPC faces. The shoulders are way too wide, unlike the NPC models.
All they did was slightly alter Nelfs. And it shows.
All they did was slightly alter Nelfs. And it shows.
28 Likes
Get these Elves a plastic surgeon, stat!
7 Likes
I made little (painted, mot modeling) edits on one of the male's faces
https://i.imgur.com/I1vque0.png
different eye shape, longer nose, lower mouth, and softer wrinkles/jowls to make him look younger
I also made some hair colour mock ups:
https://imgur.com/a/eCBlQ
Note: This was done before their release, the faces WERE changed since (for the worst, why did they give them the female worgen snarl? everyone hates the female worgen snarl!
https://i.imgur.com/I1vque0.png
different eye shape, longer nose, lower mouth, and softer wrinkles/jowls to make him look younger
I also made some hair colour mock ups:
https://imgur.com/a/eCBlQ
Note: This was done before their release, the faces WERE changed since (for the worst, why did they give them the female worgen snarl? everyone hates the female worgen snarl!
7 Likes
What do Nightbornes racial even do.
I completely forgot.
Doesn't it root?
I completely forgot.
Doesn't it root?
10/06/2018 10:45 AMPosted by Valquois
Lastly, and again this sort of applies to Allied Races as a whole, where are those sexy weapon skins?
[/quote]
i agree with you on this fake elf
i would also love weapon skins
10 Likes
I'm fine with my character.
Good luck you Nightborne players, YOU NEED IT
10 Likes
I leave my 1+ and my comment.
Yes to all, totally. I love my NB, but i cant get her working because of the race design.
Also, a side note but they meed a lil work in the butt, no living being has a butt like that, it just looks like the gluteus are pushed to inside, like doing this
----> ) <---- if you look from the sides.
Yes to all, totally. I love my NB, but i cant get her working because of the race design.
Also, a side note but they meed a lil work in the butt, no living being has a butt like that, it just looks like the gluteus are pushed to inside, like doing this
----> ) <---- if you look from the sides.
5 Likes
Goblins and worgen still dont have new models 5 years later what makes you think nightborne will ever be anything but reskinned night elves?
3 Likes
I had wonder about why they did not base the night borne model of the night elves originally. Still giving them something unique, but showing that they are so close as a race still.
With some of them being alive at the time when they split and all.
That when they become a playable race, and then basing them off the night elves model seems so weird.
It does seem that maybe they come so much latter in development, and now they are only just making races in a similar way to the players.
With some of them being alive at the time when they split and all.
That when they become a playable race, and then basing them off the night elves model seems so weird.
It does seem that maybe they come so much latter in development, and now they are only just making races in a similar way to the players.
10/06/2018 11:42 AMPosted by SharaelineI had wonder about why they did not base the night borne model of the night elves originally. Still giving them something unique, but showing that they are so close as a race still.
With some of them being alive at the time when they split and all.
That when they become a playable race, and then basing them off the night elves model seems so weird.
It does seem that maybe they come so much latter in development, and now they are only just making races in a similar way to the players.
NPC's probably dont have all the rigging and whatnot in place. Every allied race so far is just a reskin of another race. A quick cash grab to get end of legion subs and race transfers. Id be amazed if they gave allied races a polishing pass or rework. Too busy working on content people are going to hate, look how much resources are going into islands and warfronts.
6 Likes
The main question is did you find the illusion and what was it hiding?
14 Likes
I would prefer that Nightborne males weren't so deathly skinny and that their faces didn't look like they ate something sour or were majorly pissed off.
Shouldn't the Forsaken get an update first? They look terrible. Worgen and Goblins look way better then Forsaken imo. Forsaken look like original art to me with a lack of detail.
10/06/2018 11:38 AMPosted by ZepidelGoblins and worgen still dont have new models 5 years later what makes you think nightborne will ever be anything but reskinned night elves?
Shouldn't the Forsaken get an update first? They look terrible. Worgen and Goblins look way better then Forsaken imo. Forsaken look like original art to me with a lack of detail.
2 Likes
Bump