Imagine a new player who knows nothing of MO2 or its systems yet.
Why do they pick the race they do? Usually it's things like appearance, or lore snippets, or what they're used to picking in other games, or whichever one sounds the coolest in the moment. What they normally aren't thinking is: "If I pick this, I won't be able to play many playstyles effectively."
We, as more experienced players, can say that they should've looked up a race guide—but I think that first requires knowing that the game would permanently punish you for something as simple as liking the way that Kallards look and wanting to play a viking-flavored mage (though that isn't a picture of her, there's a very powerful one in the lore). External knowledge shouldn't be required to make a decision before you even enter the tutorial, and because of that a large amount of people fall into these unintentional traps that do not serve to enable or challenge players, but to restrict and punish them.
New players might put in weeks worth of time only to be shown by the game that they rolled wrong.
But let's say they rolled right, and rolled a STR/CON Kallard. If a Kallard player who's played for 9 month decides they really want to try out magic after a magic update drops, are they supposed to delete everything and start over if they want that to be their main playstyle? We have to really think about the implications of the current system of one character. Consider the long term playability of the game here, and content updates adding new weapon types, new magic schools, and so-on. Should a player, new or old, have to delete everything (or pay an extra $15 a month) to be able to enjoy a playstyle that's the opposite from what their race is geared towards?
From my perspective, all of the different hard cap numbers for different races don't serve to enable players, but to limit them without any clear benefit—except for flavor. The intention is clear: Alvarin are supposed to be fast and magical, Oghmir are supposed to be sturdy and smart and strong, Thursar are supposed to be strong and sturdy. And so-on. This is perhaps too successful in that while it creates a sense of your choice of race mattering in your playstyle and how you approach the world, the way it is right now means that if you want to play a certain playstyle well you have few options—and some you should absolutely avoid at all costs—because the stat differences can be extreme. These are things that may not be clear to a new player until it's far too late, or are an impossible-to-overcome problem for any experienced player looking to change their playstyle.
And the playerbase's choices very sadly reflect this. We see very very little of certain races, and a lot of others.
My proposal is creating differences through very different leveling rates, but everyone having the same hard caps.
Gameplay-wise this creates a very strong push towards a race being a certain way, but doesn't keep certain races from certain playstyles. Everyone could max out STR to be the same number, but while a Thursar might be able to do that very fast, an Alvarin might have to spend weeks of purposefully using skills that level STR to get there and suffering through being bad for a while. It has to be long enough to discourage people from feeling like their choice doesn't matter. (And the Clade Gifts system really helps with making them feel different as well.)
For my example below, I'm going to use the ratings Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Difficult, and Very Difficult. "Very Easy" represents gaining the skills extremely easily, where the points seem to naturally roll in all the time with hardly any effort. If you don't lock a "Very Easy" stat, it'd go up fast without you paying much attention to it. "Very Difficult", represents something that requires a great deal of effort and active attempts to raise it, instead of something that comes to the choice naturally. Trying to level a "Very Difficult" skill should be a challenge so that there is still clearly 'best race' to pick if you have a certain playstyle in mind. We'll be able to see people who are very passionate about a race stick to that race with any playstyle they want to pick without being restricted so long as they work hard enough, and I think that's a huge bonus that the current system lacks.
And really think about this sort of thing too: Are there really meant to be no powerful Kallardian mages in all of Nave?
Yes, you would see the occasional race in a role that's opposite of what's intended, but most wouldn't do that because it's very challenging and takes a lot of extra time for someone to get those stats when there's an easier option out there. The purposeful exception to this strong push in a certain direction is humans, who I'll explain below.
- Alvarin - They're fast, they're most certainly not elves, and they've got a whole lot of soul energy kicking around. The Veela are approached as an option that isn't as extreme as the Sheevra in the implied Mage role.
- Veela
- Very Easy
- DEX, PSY
- Medium
- INT
- Difficult
- CON
- Very Difficult
- STR
- Very Easy
- Sheevra
- Very Easy
- DEX, PSY
- Easy
- INT
- Very Difficult
- STR, CON
- Very Easy
- Veela
- Oghmir - Strong, Stout, Smart, and Slow. Their stats as-is are actually pretty hard to differentiate, so I took some liberties to give them some notable differences in a similar way to the Alvarin option. Huergar are more versatile and can be mages easier than Blainn, but Blainn naturally fall into STR/CON roles.
- Blainn
- Very Easy
- CON, STR
- Easy
- INT
- Very Difficult
- DEX, PSY
- Very Easy
- Huergar
- Very Easy
- INT
- Easy
- STR, CON
- Difficult
- PSY
- Very Difficult
- DEX
- Very Easy
- Blainn
- Thursar
- (Risar Element, Human ancestry would shift these)
- Very Easy
- STR, CON
- Medium
- DEX
- Very Difficult
- PSY, INT
- Very Easy
- (Risar Element, Human ancestry would shift these)
- Human - An important thing to note here is that no human has a 'very easy', but at the same time none have 'very difficult' for any stat. This, along with the heavy weighting towards 'easy-medium', allows humans a very large amount of versatility as nothing will be extremely difficult to them, while preserving their 'specialization'. You'd likely see more Sarducaan mages, but some Sarducaan strength/constitution-based warriors here-and-there wouldn't be surprising. Humans would be the best race to pick for anyone who may want to switch up their playstyle frequently, and would likely be the best race to pick for a new player who doesn't know anything about the game.
- Kallard
- Easy
- STR, CON
- Medium
- PSY, DEX
- Difficult
- INT
- Easy
- Khurite
- Easy
- DEX, CON
- Medium
- STR, PSY
- Difficult
- INT
- Easy
- Sarducaan
- Easy
- PSY, INT
- Medium
- CON, DEX
- Difficult
- STR
- Easy
- Tindremene
- Easy
- INT, DEX
- Medium
- PSY, STR
- Difficult
- CON
- Easy
- Sidoian
- Easy
- INT, STR
- Medium
- CON, DEX
- Difficult
- PSY
- Easy
- Kallard
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