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+--- Thread: Umbrals - The Flavour (/showthread.php?tid=10275)
Umbrals - The Flavour - WaifuApple - 05-28-2023
Hi, Appo here.
I'm one of the few people to play an Umbral in consistent capacity, and after months of doing so I've come to a bunch of observations, both mechanical and flavour-wise, that I'd like to share with the class. This post here will be focusing solely on the flavour of an Umbral. That is to say this is isolated from the mechanics and PvP / PvE of the game, and solely focused on how their identity is conveyed.
So let's get into it!
Racial Features:
So, what are the racial features of an umbral?
"During night, Umbrals can become very difficult to see."
This is the one that people most often know about umbrals in theory, but the one that goes the least acknowledged in the actual RP environment. This is because there is no indicator distinguishing an Umbral from a human or other ambiguous race at night. You'll find yourself relying on a person's profile or their emotes to tell you that they're an Umbral, and that they're meant to be harder to see at night. This is a pain, because some people aren't looking, and the Umbral will probably have to inform every successive person who arrives to a location about this, or it will simply go unacknowledged where it could otherwise draw RP towards people wondering 'what the heck is happening here?' ICly.
Now, the most thematic thing is to reduce their opacity when the server says that night falls, and return it to normal when the sun rises again. It doesn't have to be by much, to avoid serious concerns about being able to too easily hide OOCly, and if that's still a hard sell, could be replaced with an aura to at least indicate something. A reduction of opacity is just the most on-theme thing I can imagine.
"Physical features of the umbral include pale skin, slightly pointed ears, and a black marking of differing design somewhere on the face."
Pale skin is available to anyone, so that's no issue. An umbral can look pale if they want to. However, when it comes to slightly pointed ears (kind of like a weaker version of an elf) and black markings on their faces, they have nothing. Black markings, of course, would require sprites that we don't have, so I understand on that front, but I feel like the Umbral should be given access to elf ears at the very least. Something to show their pointed ears on sprite, so they can be confused with elves instead of humans, if nothing else.
Yeah, that's about it. I want this race I've been playing to be able to show itself more innately. The Shaitan have their claws represented, the Papillion their butterfly wings. Theno get fish parts and Oracles, well... they get the quirk of actually being able to hear the past. Umbrals have no racial parts and don't even visibly change at night, very much underselling their quirks. This sucks, and I'd appreciate any support for changing this!
RE: Umbrals - The Flavour - Poruku - 05-28-2023
Part of the issue with night in game is that often you'll have a whole cycle happen during a scene that did not last that long. Like an event with a few battles lasting 2 days "in game".
I still think making them transparent would be awesome though
RE: Umbrals - The Flavour - Autumn - 05-28-2023
Umbrals could probably use pointed ear parts like Doriads have and also not having to rely on beards to get face markings. I agree with making them harder to see at night time, I could also see light level diminishing this effect if an interaction like this is in the cards.
RE: Umbrals - The Flavour - Snake - 05-29-2023
It could be funny if they actually could use a command or whatever to go transparent, in so to simulate their cloaking ability. That alone would be a great IC buff for them.
Mechanically they're fine.
RE: Umbrals - The Flavour - renowner - 05-30-2023
100000% Think turning ephemeral at night would be kickass.