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So, before this subject matter gets dragged out in the open, I'd like to make a couple of things clear:
Massive has always had a complicated relationship with some of the lesser played races. Generally speaking, there exists a massive upper layer of often played races: Elves, Humans, Orcs, while there is always an under layer of underplayed races: Maiar, Slizzar, Allar. And then there is a bottom variety: The solo-play races, races that are so rarely seen in Regalia that one could practically say only a handful of players actually portray such a character. Now, I'm not going to go into lengthy detailed explanations as to why this is a bad thing, we've already had many threads about this whole idea, and it's never really been realistically disprove aside from the typical "but my character" responses. Note, that doesn't mean we don't think this is a valid response. Players are obviously entitled to feeling like their character is being pulled away from them by the lore, but ultimately when it concerns running Massive as a whole, business decisions prevail in importance, while we try to make sure that the people who suffer the collateral damage have some comfortable medium to see some benefit in the situation.
What this thread particularly aims to do, is expose the players to the inevitable wave two of racial revisions, what races are up for deletion, which are up for changing, and which could be improved. We have made a very short analysis as followed:
As one can conclude from the above, there are some serious problem cases:
- Rage replies at the content of this thread will simply be deleted. If I consider any of the replies just pointless grief at any potential decisions that may be taken, the post will be deleted within 24 hours.
- We are not looking for more/new races. We want to slim down the racial varieties, while potentially boosting internal racial variety. That's to say: This thread is not form new suggestions. That being said, we are open to new niche suggestions. For example "I am a furry and I have trouble finding my Dog niche" or "I love Japan, but can't find any real Samurai niches". Those are permissible.
Massive has always had a complicated relationship with some of the lesser played races. Generally speaking, there exists a massive upper layer of often played races: Elves, Humans, Orcs, while there is always an under layer of underplayed races: Maiar, Slizzar, Allar. And then there is a bottom variety: The solo-play races, races that are so rarely seen in Regalia that one could practically say only a handful of players actually portray such a character. Now, I'm not going to go into lengthy detailed explanations as to why this is a bad thing, we've already had many threads about this whole idea, and it's never really been realistically disprove aside from the typical "but my character" responses. Note, that doesn't mean we don't think this is a valid response. Players are obviously entitled to feeling like their character is being pulled away from them by the lore, but ultimately when it concerns running Massive as a whole, business decisions prevail in importance, while we try to make sure that the people who suffer the collateral damage have some comfortable medium to see some benefit in the situation.
What this thread particularly aims to do, is expose the players to the inevitable wave two of racial revisions, what races are up for deletion, which are up for changing, and which could be improved. We have made a very short analysis as followed:
As one can conclude from the above, there are some serious problem cases:
- Solang
- The Solang concept relied heavily on something Lore staff were internally never opposed to, but externally, players hated: Having to be slaves. Slave RP is something that is really niche-y, and turned out to be hugely unpopular. While the Solang native ability can be fun to play around with, the limited player freedom caused the Solang to be practically unplayed. Since there is now also a red-haired Songaskian race, the Solang are up for deletion with 100% certainty.
- Wulong
- The Wulong have long been a problem child race with notable powergamers and combat-rp fanatics simply min-maxing the combat juices. This race has no actual redeemable aspects and as such, is up for deletion with 100% certainty.
- Wolathar & Saivalthar
- Wolathar and Saivalthar suffer from the fact that they are not unique enough, the former can just be a Vilitatei Altalar, and the latter is just a more pale Altalar. Their cultures are also not distinct enough from Altalar or Avanthar, so their race are just generally underplayed. Their general theme concepts and abilities will be merged into a Void-Worship cult with 100% certainty, so the races will cease to exist separately.
- Lampar
- Lampar suffer a sad case of staff hate, that crippled their racial design despite the fact that they remain very popular. We will not remove the Lampar race, but remove a lot of their racial weaknesses and limitations very soon with 100% certainty.
- Maiar
- Maiar as a race are underplayed firstly, and over min-maxed secondly (I am guilty too, I know). The race is meant to be very flexible and open, but eventually ends up being boiled down to a selection of muscle-killer-sharks. This not only dilutes the racial design as a whole, but sort of funnels them down to a singular design choice, that seems even too foreign to really work in Regalia, especially with the very few people that actually play Maiar. There are no realistic options available or decisions in the making for the Maiar, but there have been some tangible ideas to turn them into a merged race with the Allar.
- Al-Allar & Sa-Allar & Mu-Allar
- The Allar are the oldest non-revised race. What this means is that they just generally feel weak and useless in comparison to all other races. They are uniquely cucked out of the combat and intellect schools and have no innate racial qualities that makes them actually useful in a questing group beyond being comedic relief because of their heightened anxiety. The sub species of Allar suffer equally tragic design decisions that make playing them really unappealing, which makes the race as a whole feel under powering. That being said, they are still very popular, and we intend to boost this popularity by increasing the internal diversity of the race by folding all sub races back into the race, and maybe merging them with the Maiar to give them a more unique ability spectrum to compete with the other popular race choices.
- Rashaq
- Rashaq are a tragically badly designed race that was pulled into production way too quickly on a whim. The whole pride concept collapsed as soon as it came out, and it's now practically the least played race (to our public knowledge, only a single player plays one). This race is up for deletion with 100% certainty.
- Racial ability ideas for the races that were underlined above as being weak.
- Suggestions on how to compensate players that are going to lose characters for specific races (but not being given a permission slip to keep playing their character - that will just confuse other players).
- Personal testimonials of how a certain race was too limited that was defined as such above, and suggestions on how to scale up play ability.
- Personal testimonials on why people who commonly play Ailor or Elves specifically don't play any of the above underplayed races, and how it could be fixed in their eyes to make them consider playing one.
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