I was just thinking with the current trend of customizations going into base races such as wildhammer dwarves and darkfallyn customizations that it would be neat if they could had their own racials to reflect that, if only they had been their own races to reflect it…
But then i started to think of the new talent trees for classes and started to think that maybe, if they implemented racial trees and condensed some races (hmt, dark iron dwarves, mecha gnomes, etc) they could create a racial talent trees and have that reflect what subrace you represent (depending on the tree, your race name would change)
Like for example there would be a row for active talents for dwarves, fire form, stone form and thunder hammer, you can choose one of those depending on what dwarf you want to be, and your race name will reflect it.
If you choose thunder hammer; your race name would be wildhammer dwarf.
I think you misunderstand, I do not mean race specific spells for classes, i am talking about customizing racials baised on races that has sub races like with bronzebeard/wildhammer dwarves.
I disagree that racial ‘culture’ needs to be reflected mechanically. I’ll use FFXIV as an example here; performance is approximately identical across any race/class combo save for EXTREME edge cases that ultimately don’t impact high-end clears. Each of the races still has a very distinct flavor to them however. Roegadyn are loud and boisterous, Humes are opportunistic, Lalafells are schemers and dangerous, Elezen are stoic and traditional, Miqo’te are wild and chaotic. Au Ra are regal and reserved. I’ve not gotten to ShB content yet but Viera seem mystical and mysterious and Hrothgar are skilled intellectuals maintaining the pride of ancient empire. Yet even among them are cultures and individuals that have gone their own ways.
Racial culture works when the story reinforces it, it doesn’t need mechanical prowess.
Hate to say this, but ffxiv’s races are a bad example. Most of their races don’t even have a culture, their dragon one being a big example as i heard they simply replaced existing human npc’s with them.
The individual racial cultures aren’t as pronounced as in WoW, but they are still quite present. Primarily because the races intermingle and live together in city-states, whose cultures are ABSOLUTELY on display. Which is what WoW should also be doing since, Stormwind and Orgrimmar are metropolises for a multitude of races. The races present there SHOULD all share roughly the same mannerisms save particular quirks.
A Roegadyn would still usually be pretty heavy and boisterous, but would more reflect whether they’re business-minded and miserly (Ul’dah), free-spirited and snarky (Limsa), or reverent and conservative (Gridania).
There are no single-race cities because that doesn’t make sense, they’re friendly with each other. If trolls and orcs get along well, there’s no reason they wouldn’t just naturally congregate and mix in cities across Durotar. Not just because they’re on friendly terms with one another, but for common defense, trade, all manners of reason. That the cities are so harshly segregated is very, very unusual considering.
Also, how often would you receive these ‘talent’ points? Could you respec? Would they rival class abilities in terms of usefulness? How do you avoid BiS syndrome and pressure? These concerns are why I’ve argued against racial mechanical benefits, or at least mechanical benefits that aren’t cosmetic. If the option of Mage opens to Tauren, I don’t want to be side-glanced for playing a Tauren Mage instead of a Blood Elf Mage.
I am trying to think of how it can work. I don’t think it should he as interchangable as actual talents for balance reasons.
I think it should be changable in the cities where the races are represented in though, through individual npc’s, like say in stormwind, humans can swap racials by speaking with stromgardion, kul’tiran, and stormwindian npc’s to switch their racials with a gold cost. Maybe they can lock player customization behind it although i am not 100% decided on that for example.
The biggest mistake, in my opinion, with the Allied Races is that they all should have just been customization options for their respective base classes. As customization options to the base races they still could have had individual heritage armor but it would have also allowed the base classes to earn the respective heritage armor as well.
The only legitimate Allied Race would be Vulpera and they could have gone the Panda route with them in regards to faction choice.
I am thinking if they condense the ones that could be race customizations, it would leave VE (which would be renamed thallasian)/Vulpera in their respective factions and open up room for other AR’s to replace them like furbolgs, jinyu, hozen for some examples.
The current AR’s would obviously need to be replaced with something after all.
Edit: horde will still have nightborne too, forgot them for a second lol.
That seems fair. Its a choice on a sub race so I wouldn’t want to see it as interchangeable either though I also wouldn’t want it to be locked in forever. Making you have to go back to a city or a specific NPC makes sense to me. (Even just the barber might do.)
I was thinking one of the racials to represent wildhammers is being able to summon a gryphon to save you from fall damage or deadly falls like falling off the edge of outland that you could activate.
I’m not quite sure I get it, it sounds more like adding character customisation options which change your player tooltip for race.
Which honestly I don’t understand the need for, and if Blizzard did allow for the tooltips to be changed I would imagine they would just as be able to make it so choice 1-4 player skin says x race, and choices 5-7 say y race etc.
Same for if you added tattoos for Dwarves for example.
But perhaps I’m simply not understanding correctly.
What you be hopin to accomplish that de current racials not already accomplish?
I be open to more customization…alot of Trolls tribes to be choosin from for unique racials but what be de difference in de end? Are you just askin for essentially what we be havin already but split further into sub cultures?
So a Gurubashi Troll and Sandfury Troll both be havin de same regeneration but a different active racial?
