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Racial Shoehorning - Druby - 08-05-2024
While there's a lot of discussion I've seen floating around about how only certain class combinations allow one to play a dodge or not, one thing I don't see mentioned is how races often lock or heavily incentivize players to build their characters a certain way.
There are a good number of races that heavily push players to build them as either dodge or tanks, through both their base racial stats and racial traits. Quick examples are Papillion, who's racial stats lean heavily towards celerity, Felidae and Oracle who's base stats and racial traits lean them heavily towards celerity and dodge, or Lupine who's base stats and racial trait lean them heavily towards tanking. There are obviously others, but these are just the ones that come off the top of my head.
Well now, Dragonruby, some people might be saying. Base stats and racial traits don't define a build. Nothing's really stopping you from building a Felidae as a tank if you really wanted to. And, in some regards, you're right. And, theoretically, you could do so, and the build would work perfectly fine for like 90% of the content in the game. A lot of the issues that this sort of thing brings really comes into play primarily when optimizing characters, fine tuning them for harder content in the game such as Boss Rechallenges, or PVP.
However, it's exactly at this level where this stuff REALLY matters. Hit and Evade are basically in a state of constant cold war, where you hit or evade gouge as high as you can to try and nullify the other. Optimization here can be make or break for a lot of evade builds. It's not as strict for tanks in general, as constant DR is a bit more reliable than gambling whether or not you take a 300 damage crit to the face every other turn, but similar optimization happens at this level, when you start trying to take into account alternate sources of DR, or reaching certain break points the same way one might try to hit certain levels of evade.
Now, consider all of this from the perspective of a new player. You've never seen SL2 before, but it seems fun! You like RP, and you like turn based strategy games, it all meshes! You hop on, and pick a catgirl, cause fuck it, catgirls are cute, and then you find that... Well, you don't like playing dodge. Okay, well you'll retune your character to be tank, and then later on, when you want to get into more proper end game content, you find that suddenly, you're not quite as good as all the other characters and the only way to get around this would be to just completely remake your character from scratch. That's a bit disappointing isn't it? Especially if that's a character you've invested a lot of time in, and you still want to keep playing them, but now you're basically told that to keep up with everyone else, you need to go back to playing something you don't like, or just make a new character entirely.
Of course this is entirely hypothetical, but it's something that I'm sure has happened before, and highlights the issue at hand. People are free to swap around their classes to mix and match and experiment things that do or don't work, but... Your race? That tends to hard lock you into certain numbers in ways that might not be intuitive or is too restricting. Why does every dodge character need to be a Papillion, or an Oracle, or a Felidae?
Of course, I'm not saying to get rid of racial traits or equalize all base stats, part of the fun of the game comes from optimizing numbers, figuring out interesting mechanics that work with different abilities and racials. However, I'd like to suggest that some (if not all) races get new Traits available that can help tweak some of their base stats around to better optimize them for certain roles that break the mold of what their race might usually lock them into. Traits that modify how certain racial abilities work could be great too. After all, an Oracle's racial, which gives them a bonus 10-20 Evade every 2-4 turns (based off whether or not you take certain traits for it) is useless as a tank! Maybe as an example, a trait lets you convert it to something that, every now and then, converts a hit to a glancing blow, which would still play into Oracle's futuresight, narrowly avoiding an attack they see coming, while allowing people more freedom to build them how'd they'd like. This is just an example, and people are free to suggest their own ideas, or other possibilities, but I think it's a general consensus that there aren't enough Traits in the game that make people have to make a decision, and people often have spare trait points that they just don't use. Filling out Traits with some of these options could help to improve build variety and alleviate that situation as well.
RE: Racial Shoehorning - Sawrock - 08-06-2024
I think this could work particularly well if paired with History traits. An additional trait that lowers the race's highest and second highest base stats, and then raises the base stats of the chosen History trait.
RE: Racial Shoehorning - Rendar - 08-06-2024
I don't want to say "What if there was a free trait that gave you a certain stat pack" so you can live out your dreams of being a dodgy Wyverntouched (Slippery snake!)
But.
Maybe having that would be cool.
RE: Racial Shoehorning - Ray2064 - 08-06-2024
(08-06-2024, 01:43 AM)Rendar Wrote: I don't want to say "What if there was a free trait that gave you a certain stat pack" so you can live out your dreams of being a dodgy Wyverntouched (Slippery snake!)I do somewhat believe that we could use having a way for sub-races to have their base race's stats/ heck, even features and vice versa, with things such as Grimalkin and Felidae, somewhat going in the direction of the Birth Certificate (Which I do think being a one-time thing is a bit of a shame, but I guess it's currently expected to treat your race as a commitment, which is fair)
But.
Maybe having that would be cool.
RE: Racial Shoehorning - Poruku - 08-06-2024
If no race had below 4-5 in ski and cel it would be a start, the rest matters less imo. Especially cause oracle is better as a melee tank
RE: Racial Shoehorning - TheCommonNoob - 08-06-2024
I'd finally be able to make Mr. Krabs and dodge my taxes...
Jokes aside, I'd love some kind of alternative to how you build your character. As it stands, your race is incredibly important (and maybe TOO important) in how you'll end up building your character single-handedly because of how their funny statistics line up, even ending up with innate racials as an afterthought at times.
(Insert long winded rant about the silly number besides your race's CEL/DEF/RES determining whether you can be a functioning (xyz) build or not here).
I don't think that should be the case though. I think most would agree that IC/RP should always take priority to whatever you end up doing, but sometimes the game itself would never support your idea. From Felidaes who want to tank with their 1 DEF and RES to Wyverntouched who want to dodge with their 1 CEL and the many 0 FAI races who want to priest, (etc.), it just won't ever be in their favor when compared to someone playing an "optimal" race for their build.
Traits would be an interesting way to see about remedying this. Though I personally think it might just be a curse of the game's structure itself alongside needing to tip-toe around PvP balancing.
...Take for example Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition; while your race can surely help guide you to what class you should play, you aren't ever entirely shoehorned into playing a specific class or set-up. Not to mention the races there only come with cool benefits because of the race you chose rather than dissuading you with debilitating downsides (looking at you, Homonculi). At worst, you get maybe slightly less movement speed and/or IC racism (which could turn out to be fun).
Sure that's not a game that (usually) has PvP to balance but my point should stand...
TL;DR: There's almost too much weight behind one of the first choices a SL2 player has to make with no way to change it later down the line (ignoring humans) if they made a mistake or realize it's not what they want, along with a lack of flexibility/player expression because of how rigid races and their stats work on a fundamental level.
RE: Racial Shoehorning - MothEnthusiast - 08-06-2024
I can't even begin to describe how nice it would be to not be stuck with aggressively 'meh' stats on certain races. I'd take either suggestion, really. Race-specific traits, or just some generic traits that anyone could pick up. Anything that'll get me out of this racial base 0-2 hellscape.
RE: Racial Shoehorning - Snake - 08-06-2024
On my end? I feel like both Skill and Celerity are trained statistics rather than natural statistics. Your Felidae can be as fast as it naturally wants, if you don't spend points in CEL (i.e, "not train it"), it'll not make use of its potential to be faster. In the end, I don't think races should have such an imbalance on those two statistics in particular, and also LUC.
It'll be way more interesting if all races had 5 base SKI/CEL at minimum, and those extras got removed from other statistics for balance sake. That way, while certain races can dodge really good, there is a baseline for that number that does not outright cripple your stat point investment.
Then for specific races that had such a boon of having a higher base? Give them traits. We're in need of more racial traits, because those are what make one person different from another.
Like for example? Give Felidae something that lets its it cap the enemy's Hit at 95%, for example. It'd reflect their natural quick reflexes.
RE: Racial Shoehorning - Ray2064 - 08-07-2024
It could be something like deducting points from your highest stat to give them to ANOTHER stat that's below a certain treshold ? I'm not sure
RE: Racial Shoehorning - Sawrock - 08-07-2024
(08-07-2024, 12:22 AM)Ray2064 Wrote: It could be something like deducting points from your highest stat to give them to ANOTHER stat that's below a certain treshold ? I'm not sure
I've suggested that prior in the thread. I DEMAND you like my post, as a great-minds-thinka-like tax.