Remove or decrease race penalties

[Arcon]

I can't speak for others, to me HP is very much the only reason. And increasing HP across the board will solve fuck all. That's not a solution, that's wasting development time. Because all that will happen is new mobs will be released that deal even more damage and the balance is completely broken again.

I've heard all I ever want to hear from you in this sentence:

However, just because it sucks doesn't mean it needs to be fixed.

If you truly believe that you should not be allowed to live with or near people or associate with them, because that mentality is an absolute danger to society. This is one of the dumbest hings I've heard people say on here, and that's from a board that allows Pchan, Starcade and Rosina talk uncensored.

If something sucks, not only should it be changed, but it must be changed. If you don't see why you're beyond help.

[Llana_Virren]

I can't speak for others, to me HP is very much the only reason. And increasing HP across the board will solve fuck all. That's not a solution, that's wasting development time. Because all that will happen is new mobs will be released that deal even more damage and the balance is completely broken again.

I've heard all I ever want to hear from you in this sentence:


If you truly believe that you should not be allowed to live with or near people or associate with them, because that mentality is an absolute danger to society. This is one of the dumbest hings I've heard people say on here, and that's from a board that allows Pchan, Starcade and Rosina talk uncensored.

If something sucks, not only should it be changed, but it must be changed. If you don't see why you're beyond help.

You definitely misunderstood. I'm talking about the fact that some things suck (such as, Tarus get less STR) but that's the nature of the beast (read as: the choice you made). There's a difference between changing something because it is bad design, versus changing something because you dislike the design. If you willfully ignore that in attempt to make your rainbow world more realistic, then that's your right. But to somehow suggest that anything that sucks, even if it sucks based on your own choices, should be renegged is just unrealistic, immature, and equally dangerous to a society that has grown to believe that no action should have consequence.

[FrankReynolds]

There's a difference between changing something because it is bad design, versus changing something because you dislike the design.

Okay, but this is in fact bad design no matter how much you like it. Putting a decision on the start screen that will either enhance or fuck up your game play for the next 8-10 years is an incredibly mean thing to do. This is a video game. FFS it takes less time to change your major and move to a different college than it does to reroll from a friggin taru to a galka and rebuild just one melee job with a 90 e/r/m. You don't think that's a little bit too much pressure to put on a person the second they start a video game?

[Llana_Virren]

Okay, but this is in fact bad design no matter how much you like it. Putting a decision on the start screen that will either enhance or fuck up your game play for the next 8-10 years is an incredibly mean thing to do. This is a video game. FFS it takes less time to change your major and move to a different college than it does to reroll from a friggin taru to a galka and rebuild just one melee job with a 90 e/r/m. You don't think that's a little bit too much pressure to put on a person the second they start a video game?

I agree that re-rolling is unfeasible but the reason that it is more and more unrealistic is due to the tenure of the game. Don't get me wrong, I do not think anyone actually needs to re-roll to be good. If you're re-rolling because the lack of HP is holding you back, that's a game flaw. If you're re-rolling to get the extra STR... that isn't a flaw in the game, that's a personality issue where you want to maximize your potential while accepting no consequence or counter-positive.

Back in 2004-2005 re-rolling wasn't much of an issue... obviously with the amount of time the game has existed, re-rolling a character is a problem simply due to the amount of time needed to level the character's zone access and progress, let alone the job and gear.

Which leads me back to my point: mules should be able to share all gear (including Ex/Aug) because they all share the same account. I think mules also should, based on perhaps certain quests, share progress from the main account after meeting certain conditions (meaning you shouldn't have to redo RoZ/CoP for sky/sea, etc). And every race should recieve 5% HP bonus at a minimum. Personally I think 10% is more appropriate. Or, perhaps, the merits should be %HP rather than a static value (ie .1-15% versus 10-150 HP).

Re-rolling should be for name change or avatar change. The need to change race for HP is problematic, however changing race for the minor increase in another stat (such as STR or AGI) is not something that needs to be addressed as an issue.

Also, just to be clear, when I say "you" I am referring to any player; my intent is not to isolate you or imply a specific person.

[FrankReynolds]

If you're re-rolling to get the extra STR... that isn't a flaw in the game, that's a personality issue where you want to maximize your potential while accepting no consequence or counter-positive.

Where do you get these ideas? Is this game owned / run by some educational institution? Since when is it required that all video games include lessons about sacrifice and reward or that every decision should have consequences? I don't need a video game to teach me that I can't have everything in life. Life does a sufficient job of that on it's own and I was fully capable of grasping that long before I ever picked this or any other game up. I hope this is true of everyone else playing this game as well.

Which leads me back to my point: mules should be able to share all gear (including Ex/Aug) because they all share the same account. I think mules also should, based on perhaps certain quests, share progress from the main account after meeting certain conditions (meaning you shouldn't have to redo RoZ/CoP for sky/sea, etc). And every race should receive 5% HP bonus at a minimum. Personally I think 10% is more appropriate. Or, perhaps, the merits should be %HP rather than a static value (ie .1-15% versus 10-150 HP).

Re-rolling should be for name change or avatar change. The need to change race for HP is problematic, however changing race for the minor increase in another stat (such as STR or AGI) is not something that needs to be addressed as an issue.

Also, just to be clear, when I say "you" I am referring to any player; my intent is not to isolate you or imply a specific person.

Wouldn't it make more sense to just adjust the merits so that a fully merited taru has the same HP as a fully merited galka only it would take far more merits for a taru to reach that cap than a galka? If they did that for all stats, they could keep the Consequence / Benefit thing that people seem so in love with without making race choice a permanent pain in the ass. It would still be unfair to taru's because they lack in the only stat that people would really feel required to merit, but people seem to like the idea of getting screwed by picking a cute character instead of a big character so why not?

[Economizer]

Wouldn't it make more sense to just adjust the merits so that a fully merited taru has the same HP as a fully merited galka only it would take far more merits for a taru to reach that cap than a galka? If they did that for all stats, they could keep the Consequence / Benefit thing that people seem so in love with without making race choice a permanent pain in the ass. It would still be unfair to taru's because they the only stat that people would really feel required to merit, but people seem to like the idea of getting screwed by picking a cute character instead of a big character so why not?

This would be so great, everyone could merit everything to a super race level of stats too - you could have the HP and VIT of a Galka, the MP and INT of a Tarutaru, the STR/MND of an Elvaan, the DEX/AGI of a Mithra, and the CHR of a Hume. My only caveat would be that this should be a separate and new merit category from everything else.

And for game logic, here's this - you'd need to have beat CoP (and of course unlocked merits) to unlock these new merits, since you've "broken" your chains - the primary game logic for race differences if you will. There could even be a quest for it, and if it really kills people that hate Tarutaru or obsess about a game needing to be weighed down with morals and life lessons (aside from the standard "don't be a jerk" that happens when you play with other people), the quest or meriting could be harder for Tarutaru like everything else is in the game.

Flatlining the stats in this way, by bringing it to everyone's strengths, and by having a bit of game logic, will make the design easier to deal with since the devs won't have to worry about making another set of RSE at 99 that somehow is competitive with the wholly better gear we have now, nor will they have to worry about shutting out Tarutaru from entire events by making mobs hit too hard, nor have to worry about making Tarutaru actually have any amount of advantage to balance out the biggest disadvantage ever by making MP pools worthwhile or INT based magic damage competitive (although they should do this regardless) with melee jobs.

But I guess if making things even between races is so unpopular we can remove the quest and key items to open those weighted doors in Quicksand Caves, and start working on more ways to make life worse for anyone who isn't the Galka masterrace.

[Llana_Virren]

Where do you get these ideas? Is this game owned / run by some educational institution? Since when is it required that all video games include lessons about sacrifice and reward or that every decision should have consequences? I don't need a video game to teach me that I can't have everything in life. Life does a sufficient job of that on it's own and I was fully capable of grasping that long before I ever picked this or any other game up. I hope this is true of everyone else playing this game as well.



Wouldn't it make more sense to just adjust the merits so that a fully merited taru has the same HP as a fully merited galka only it would take far more merits for a taru to reach that cap than a galka? If they did that for all stats, they could keep the Consequence / Benefit thing that people seem so in love with without making race choice a permanent pain in the ass. It would still be unfair to taru's because they lack in the only stat that people would really feel required to merit, but people seem to like the idea of getting screwed by picking a cute character instead of a big character so why not?

You're still trying to sell me on the idea of making it possible for "Player A" regardless of race, have the same stats (not counting gear) as every other Player.
And that's the single idea that I will refuse to bend on. To keep it simple, a fully merited Taru should not, under any circumstances, be able to have equal HP or STR or VIT or whatnot, of a fully merited Elvaan. Period.

Yes everyone needs more HP.
Yes we should have better-organized and designed merits (I'm looking at you, RDM).
No, we should not make it so that race is purely cosmetic.

[Dantedmc]

No, we should not make it so that race is purely cosmetic.

Why is this a bad thing? Game changing, permanent stats should not be tied to physical appearance.

[Arcon]

No, we should not make it so that race is purely cosmetic.

You can't say what we should or shouldn't do, because this is simply a matter of opinion. You think variation is good, others think it's pointless. Yet others think there's a useful middle ground.

Increasing HP across the board would not help at all, it's not a solution to this problem. A solution would be to diminish the difference between the races. Leave some difference there for people who want to be special snowflakes, but make the races functionally similar. HP is the only outlier in this regard. The difference in HP is currently at about 30% while the MP difference is at up to 50% (between Galka and Tarutaru), while all other stats hover in the 10% range. And that's despite HP/MP being a lot more relevant and noticeable. If Tarutaru's advantage in MP would be reduced to 10% and HP disadvantage reduced to 10% it would already be a huge help, and it would still be a larger difference than all other stats.