Racial Rework

[Detective Useless]

I feel as if the race system in this game needs a rework. It's not entirely that it's bad, but I feel as though there's a lot of things that it gets wrong. I will be splitting this into two parts: General and Race-Specific.

General changes: Really, the big one is a rework of shopkeeper affinities. Instead of a blanket hostility to anything not human or automaton, I would split their preferences into tiers:

• Friendly is Humans, Automatons, and anything wearing the Merchant Monocle. Merchants will trade as normal with them.
  
• Skeptical is Goblins, and Goatmen. Merchants will trade, but at an increased price. This price increase scales inversely with your trading skill. At the lowest trading stat, it doubles the price.
  
• Unfavorable is Skeletons and Insectoids. Shopkeepers will refuse to trade with you.
  
• Hostile is Succubi, Incubi, and Vampires. Shopkeepers will attack on sight unless charmed.

Also, with the shopkeeper changes, all monstrous races lose their starting polymorph potion.

Race-Specific: Really, there's two or three big ones I would change:
Succubi and Incubi would be merged into the same race and have the same starting spells, same resists/weaknesses, and same selection of classes. As they are in different DLCs currently, the L&P race slot can be taken up by a new race (catfolk sounds interesting)

Goblins are the one I want to change more. The current version doesn't seem goblin-y enough. I would wipe their current traits and instead give them this:

• Replaces all melee weapon and unarmed skills with a single "Melee" skill. This skill starts at the highest melee skill of your class and ranks up whenever you would rank up a melee weapon skill. Any weapon that would use one of the replaced skills instead uses the Melee skill
  
• Melee weapons break 33% faster
  
• Non-Shaman Spells cast 25% faster and deal 10% more damage but use 25% more MP

This would let the goblin's current "level all melee skills at once" concept mesh better with how the game currently functions. Currently, you're still encouraged to stick to one weapon thanks to the starting skills of each class. With these changes, you aren't punished for switching to a different weapon, but would have to do so more often as your weapons break faster. Also, this would give spellcaster goblins a niche and free them from relying solely on books and staves.

[LazyTavi]

I really like where you're going with the shopkeeper changes. Honestly sometimes it just feels like collecting gold isn't worthwhile at all if you're playing a monster. Although, I'm not sure how I feel about increased prices, I don't think it would help the whole monster-shopping problem much at all. If I was a shopkeeper, I wouldn't want to be selling my best weapons to potential threats, (especially goblins, considering their occasional takeovers,) so maybe monster races could be denied access to the most valuable items in their stock?

I give the thumbs up on the race changes myself. Those three in particular don't seem to be all that unique compared to the others. The proposed goblin changes sound like they'd make him a bit more chaotic and fun, as any good goblin should be!

[Hanariel]

I have another suggestion.
Succubus and Incubus should not get nourishment from food, instead they should be able to drain life from an NPC ally and get food from there.

[Detective Useless]

Originally posted by Hanariel:

I have another suggestion.
Succubus and Incubus should not get nourishment from food, instead they should be able to drain life from an NPC ally and get food from there.

That would be a pretty hefty nerf, and might even make the two near-unplayable. NPC allies already do a lot, but having to rely on them for food would be a slow death for anyone who didn't get lucky with finding and charming them and keeping them alive.

Succubi and Incubi are strong options because they are less affected by the general nonsense the game throws at you. They gain boosts from cursed gear and can charm enemy Succubi, which are pretty good boons for early game. Making it so they have to rely on NPCs to eat would force them into a very specific niche of support classes and force them to engage in a mechanic that some people just don't want to deal with. They would turn from "reliable race with a spellcasting niche that finds opportunities from otherwise bad rolls" to "play healer and find an ally or you starve".

And we already have something for players that want to rely on NPCs, it's Conjurer.

[Hanariel]

Originally posted by Detective Useless:

Originally posted by Hanariel:

I have another suggestion.
Succubus and Incubus should not get nourishment from food, instead they should be able to drain life from an NPC ally and get food from there.

That would be a pretty hefty nerf, and might even make the two near-unplayable. NPC allies already do a lot, but having to rely on them for food would be a slow death for anyone who didn't get lucky with finding and charming them and keeping them alive.

Succubi and Incubi are strong options because they are less affected by the general nonsense the game throws at you. They gain boosts from cursed gear and can charm enemy Succubi, which are pretty good boons for early game. Making it so they have to rely on NPCs to eat would force them into a very specific niche of support classes and force them to engage in a mechanic that some people just don't want to deal with. They would turn from "reliable race with a spellcasting niche that finds opportunities from otherwise bad rolls" to "play healer and find an ally or you starve".

And we already have something for players that want to rely on NPCs, it's Conjurer.

Maybe them an option to do that?
I feel like those races don't play into their fantasy enough.

If you are playing a succubus barely feel like one, except if you play as mesmer, but them is the class that is doing all the heavy lifting.

[Nut]

Skeletons getting nerfed to oblivion in this rework

[Shirasaka Yoko (Hat World)]

I think doing this to Goblins would suck. It'd lose a lot of the EXP gain you have from being melee, and losing weapons faster is also pretty sad.

[Old Shoe]

I understand wanting to add depth but this adds unnecessary complexity to something that is simple for a reason.
Humans are automatically hostile towards monster races as they are to them in return. Instead of reworking the system I'd say that they should just add more human friendly races which is what I believe is planned for DLC 3.

Humans being hostile immediately towards you is the major downside to playing as a monster, reworking it to be more generous sounds like a change that would only happen to make it easier on noobs. The game is fine as it is, no need to change it so drastically after all this time.

[ChiefBeef]

i think it's fine especially with polymorph but maybe they could add a shady trader that dealt just with monsters at a rarer spawnrate or sold some things normal traders don't

[The Shadow]

Originally posted by Old Shoe:

I understand wanting to add depth but this adds unnecessary complexity to something that is simple for a reason.
Humans are automatically hostile towards monster races as they are to them in return. Instead of reworking the system I'd say that they should just add more human friendly races which is what I believe is planned for DLC 3.

Humans being hostile immediately towards you is the major downside to playing as a monster, reworking it to be more generous sounds like a change that would only happen to make it easier on noobs. The game is fine as it is, no need to change it so drastically after all this time.

I think the same, it's too overly complicated. Also, the changes proposed for the Goblin suck hard, it's much, much better as it is now. Other races need changes more imo.

[Detective Useless]

Originally posted by The Shadow:

Originally posted by Old Shoe:

I understand wanting to add depth but this adds unnecessary complexity to something that is simple for a reason.
Humans are automatically hostile towards monster races as they are to them in return. Instead of reworking the system I'd say that they should just add more human friendly races which is what I believe is planned for DLC 3.

Humans being hostile immediately towards you is the major downside to playing as a monster, reworking it to be more generous sounds like a change that would only happen to make it easier on noobs. The game is fine as it is, no need to change it so drastically after all this time.

I think the same, it's too overly complicated. Also, the changes proposed for the Goblin suck hard, it's much, much better as it is now. Other races need changes more imo.

I'm sorry, how is the current goblin better? The only part remotely useful is the durability increase, and that's not worth an inability to learn spells and hostility with shopkeepers. Most melee classes start with high values in a particular weapon class, so being able to level up all melee stats at once doesn't change the fact that you're better with one weapon. And if that's the case, then I'm not going to appreciate the slower leveling. I legitimately do not know what goblins are good at.

[LazyTavi]

Originally posted by Detective Useless:

I legitimately do not know what goblins are good at.

This right here. I feel the same way. The best I can say about them is that they're friendly with goblins (no early game fireball deaths), and that they can supposedly wrest more charges out of a staff than others (which I don't notice at all). It's pretty clear to me why somebody would pick a skeleton or automaton or vampire or insectoid, but I don't understand goblin at all.

[Nut]

Originally posted by FluffyBubbles:

Originally posted by Detective Useless:

I legitimately do not know what goblins are good at.

This right here. I feel the same way. The best I can say about them is that they're friendly with goblins (no early game fireball deaths), and that they can supposedly wrest more charges out of a staff than others (which I don't notice at all). It's pretty clear to me why somebody would pick a skeleton or automaton or vampire or insectoid, but I don't understand goblin at all.

Not a goblin player outside getting the shaman class, so I wouldn't personally get the appeal, but all Non Humans have large downsides/sidegrades in addition to whatever upsides they have no? IDK if that's a strict design philosophy the devs follow with their non human races but it's there.

Skeleton's horrible regen,

the Demon's reversed curse/bless system, really helpful in the early game but as other races you forget about it the moment you find a bless/uncurse scroll for you to remember and then continually craft or a uncurse spellbook. You'll definitely have to go out of your way to learn how to get a source of cursed water less your equipment be less relevant in the endgame (looking at the 3+ blessed weapon/armors I had in some runs)

Goatmen drunk shtick

Insectoid energy

Vampire's limited food options

The Goblin's in this case is their inability to learn spells, a big downside for their ability to heavily spec into any melee weapon, keep in mind, every weapon skill has a unique legend bonus aside from their +atk, so a goblin that is able to level some of them into legend levels gain some spell like qualities to their melee, from paralyzing, to knockback to bleed.

[Detective Useless]

Originally posted by Nut:

Originally posted by FluffyBubbles:

This right here. I feel the same way. The best I can say about them is that they're friendly with goblins (no early game fireball deaths), and that they can supposedly wrest more charges out of a staff than others (which I don't notice at all). It's pretty clear to me why somebody would pick a skeleton or automaton or vampire or insectoid, but I don't understand goblin at all.

Not a goblin player outside getting the shaman class, so I wouldn't personally get the appeal, but all Non Humans have large downsides/sidegrades in addition to whatever upsides they have no? IDK if that's a strict design philosophy the devs follow with their non human races but it's there.

(...)

The Goblin's in this case is their inability to learn spells, a big downside for their ability to heavily spec into any melee weapon, keep in mind, every weapon skill has a unique legend bonus aside from their +atk, so a goblin that is able to level some of them into legend levels gain some spell like qualities to their melee, from paralyzing, to knockback to bleed.

Goblins do have a restrictive downside, but the issue is the upside is tiny. As I said, leveling all weapon skills at once isn't that useful when most classes start with large values in one or two of them, which isn't affected by the racial ability. It's especially bad when you level them all slower than a non-goblin could level the one they use the most. Since being a goblin sabotages both melee growth and general spellcasting, the only thing I could see them being usable for is ranged builds, and even then the only positive is firing like 5 more arrows from your bow.

[The Shadow]

When you find artifacts of other weapon types, it does matter. Besides you can freely recruit goblins which is already a very good thing. And the goblin downside is forgettable if you plan on using mostly melee, and even as caster you still get the 2 most powerful spells in the game by going 100 Int, so even going Wizard it's still doable, and spellbooks are still usable. It is a downside, but other races are MUCH WORST imo in terms of downsides. Goblin is basically a more useful human for melee classes, it's already strong. Actually my go to if I play anything that's not caster focused.

In any case, your changes suck. Melee weapons break 33% faster, how is that good? Current goblin has better use of low durability items than any other race in the game, and you want to destroy goblins. Why? It's not very RP either.
And the last change is so random, you're not telling what you're trying to accomplish with it.
First change is functionally almost the same, it's a pointless change. You're just making it so goblins have no downsides compared to the others.

And I won't even go to the changes proposed for other races for the shopkeeper, which is way too complicated.

As someone said before, the best change I've seen proposed so far is to make more "human friendly" races in the future. Goblins are fine as they are, and if they're not, those changes certainly won't make it better, most likely the contrary actually.

EDIT : I think it's strange how nobody have thought about it so far, but what about making monster shops, to make polymorph more useful for humans too? Like goblin merchants? Or something else. Such a simple change could be good without too much effort I think.
Or automaton shops, since automatons are friendly with almost every race. There's so many simpler to implement and better changes than this imo.

[Detective Useless]

Originally posted by The Shadow:

And the goblin downside is forgettable if you plan on using mostly melee,

I'm sorry, how is leveling slower forgettable in a game where the amount of xp per run is limited?

Originally posted by The Shadow:

In any case, your changes suck. Melee weapons break 33% faster, how is that good? Current goblin has better use of low durability items than any other race in the game, and you want to destroy goblins. Why? It's not very RP either.
And the last change is so random, you're not telling what you're trying to accomplish with it.

The overarching goal is to make a race that prioritizes flexibility and speed over efficiency. Use more resources, but spend those resources faster. I realize now that 33% may be too much, but 20% might be enough.

Originally posted by The Shadow:

First change is functionally almost the same, it's a pointless change. You're just making it so goblins have no downsides compared to the others.

Functionally similar, yes, but with the key difference that your starting skills aren't skewed towards one weapon type. That's something I've been hammering home this whole time. Also, you just said i want to destroy goblins, and now you say I want goblins to have no downsides?