Divorcing stats from race

My recent attempts at combat have been reminding me how much better I could do if I just bit the bullet and took Keorin xoran, so I figured I’d vent my frustrations by opening up this subject again. The last thread on this (this one) was about a year ago now, and since then we have new producers, and @Makarios suggested there might be some openness in addressing mechanical problems with races in the last IG Q&A, so maybe something will come of it.

The current problem, as I see it, is that stats have a huge effect on combat viability, while being virtually negligible outside of pvp and hunting. People might roleplay a race’s best known trait, but I’ve never seen someone actually roleplay to their stats, and there’s no mechanical significance to them beyond combat/hunting. But in combat, a 2 point difference in a stat has serious influence in one’s fighting, and is the equivalent of a 1250 credit artifact (and stacks with other stat artifacts, even). And for any given class, it’s usually a damage stat and con that matter, while the rest are far more marginally useful. As an atavian monk, for instance, my extra point of dexterity is basically never going to be relevant.

The races aren’t even particularly well balanced when it comes to the needs of various classes, either. While the races are split up so there are an equal number with a bonus to each stat, seven of eighteen classes rely primarily on strength, five need int, five don’t scale as heavily with any, and one takes dexterity. 

All of this makes for plenty of situations where someone can be stuck between picking a race that fits their character’s roleplay, or their viability in combat. Either you end up with someone who’s at a fairly significant disadvantage when it comes to fighting (and as it’s often pointed out, combat is a huge aspect of roleplay itself), or you have someone who’s forced to pick a race that they might not be so interested in being or roleplaying as, which isn’t very fun as a player, and only discourages racial roleplay for the game.

There are lots of different solutions that would at least partly help address this problem. Stats completely divorced from race would obviously do the trick, but just making it so the penalties on some races aren’t quite as prohibitive would help a lot too. For the sake of discussion, I’ll stick some of the more interesting solutions I’ve seen brought up in the spoiler below.

Race-independent stat packs:
Simply completely divorcing race from mechanical stats would make race a choice for flavor and rp, without mechanics having nearly so much sway. Practically speaking, this would likely look similar to Aetolia’s implementation, where any of the currently available stat/race sets could be chosen by anyone. There are a few potential problems with this. The first is that racial abilities, which aren’t particularly balanced currently, would take on much bigger importance with the absence of stats. This would most easily be fixed by balancing out the abilities better, which would probably be a good thing anyways. The other big issue I’ve seen brought up is that evening out the races might make them feel too bland or homogenous. While I don’t personally think this is a huge issue, given what a small roll stats already play in differentiating the races, there are certainly things that could be done to give them more flavor, such as providing more flavor abilities, or, as @Synbios suggested in the thread linked at the top, give everyone a racial trait slot and a set of combat-irrelevant racial traits to choose between.


Have an artifact do it:
Instead of separating stat from race entirely, there could be an artifact that lets you adopt the stats of another race, either as a one-time, permanent thing, or as a worn item, or something of the sort. This would avoid totally removing the stats as a form of differentiation, while reducing how much they limit someone who was interested in pursuing combat. The main issue here, as I see it, is that you’d effectively be price-gating being able to choose one’s race for roleplay purposes, which obviously isn’t ideal. If it were cheap enough, that might not be the worst thing in the world, though.


Lessen the possible mechanical penalties:
If having race choice have an impact on combat is deemed desirable, then the issues with the current system could be at least lessened by addressing how prohibitive it can be to choose a race with a penalty in your key stat. @Tesha had an interesting suggestion here (again in the thread at the top) which was to make it so specializing into the stat your race is penalized in would result in a +3 gain from the base, instead of just +2, at least bringing those races on par with the bulk of the others, while keeping the optimal choices optimal. Obviously this still has a lot of the same issues, but they’d be much less pronounced, so at least you wouldn’t have to feel that certain races were just off limits.

This post is long enough as is, but in the hopes that this discussion might tread some new ground, I’m going to put responses to the issues people usually have this idea in another spoiler here. Hopefully it’ll help start things, if nothing else.


Don’t current stat already packs do this, when compared to the old system?:
The current system is certainly much better than the old one, but that doesn’t mean that all the problems it has don’t apply. Not being as bad as it could be isn’t justification for not making it better, and the current system has maintained plenty of problems from the old one, even if not as pronounced. Also, combat itself has changed since the move from the old stats to what we have now to become more technical, which if anything has only made the difference of one or two points in a stat more pronounced.

Racial stats help guide how people roleplay their race:
I don’t think this is actually true, in practice. I’ve seen plenty of people roleplay their race’s most notable attributes (strong trolls, nimble rajas, hearty dwarves), but only to the extent that it’s a part of that race’s lore or stereotype, rather than in a way that’s guided by stats. Mechanically, a race that specializes in strength will be as strong, or stronger, then the average troll, but that’s not really reflected in how people roleplay it. Further, I virtually never see people roleplay their lower stats out, often because it’s difficult or not fun. You just don’t see people roleplaying being clumsy because they have low dex, or being more prone to illness/less able to jog cross-continent if they have poor con, or not be able to be a good debater because they have poor int. Where people do roleplay is the traits that the game says their race has, and there’s no reason people wouldn’t continue to roleplay their troll as being strong if stats were further divorced from race.

Also, as a smaller note, many racial stat arrays don’t even have any lore/racial justification at all, sometimes because they were changed from the old arrays to match the new system. Atavians, for instance, used to have the same stats as humans but with one lower dex, to represent moving about with huge wings on your back. Now, for whatever reason, they’re more dexterous then average, and less strong, despite denizen atavians seeming fairly likely to engage in martial pursuits. Rajamalas had the same thing happen with intelligence, making stats even less relevant to roleplay for those races.


Having a race’s attributes represented in mechanics help to make those differences meaningful:
In other games that have race effect one’s stats, those stats have actual mechanical significance outside of combat. Strength might affect carrying capacity and dexterity might affect movement speed, or stats overall might affect out of combat skills and abilities. In d&d, for instance, you can minmax and tank your charisma, but it’s going to lead to plenty of situations where your character is terrible at social interactions. All of that helps to make a race’s traits meaningful, but here, stats solely affect fighting. In any other sort of roleplay or interactions, they’re completely meaningless numbers, and so have little actual bearing on someone’s experience of playing a certain race.

And artifacts, of course, only undermine this further.


Racial stats make it so people who choose to fight with a race in spite of its stats stand out:
When people bring up this point, they seem to cite either long-gong combatants who fought in a different era, or current fighters who don’t find the current system actually fun to play in themselves. How many people who participate in combat play a race with a penalty in their key stat and like the way things are? And how many people with sub-optimal races have artifacts to substantially make up for the disadvantage? It seems like watching people go against their race’s stereotype is something people enjoy seeing, but not actually something that’s usually enjoyable to play.

Even where it’s possible to stand out, it’s still heavily limiting in terms of actual viability. I personally can’t think of a single major fighter that plays a race that penalizes their primary stat, and the really good fighters seem to, unsurprisingly, usually play the ideal race for their class. For anyone who wants to roleplay overcoming their natural limitations, a changed system would still make it possible to select a stat array that wasn’t ideal, and then roleplay out those stats. It would just make it a little less obvious for someone who doesn’t know your character.


Racial abilities are balanced around their stats, so removing stats would unbalance things:
While this may be true to some extent, it certainly doesn’t fully fit. Atavians, mhuns, and horkval have the best racial abilities, generally replicating small artifacts in their power. But atavians and mhuns both are +dex, making them ideal for serpents, who have as much a need for flight and celerity as anyone. Given that every stat has some class that will generally specialize in it, then having a better racial ability isn’t really balanced by stats, it just makes that race less than ideal for some classes but not others. Horkval seems like it may be an exception to this, their int penalty makes them less than ideal for magi, which trades off with magi getting the biggest advantage from their racial ability.

In any case, all this means is that some racial abilities might need to be looked at a bit if stats were divorced from race. Really, given how unevenly balanced they already seem to be, that’s probably not a bad thing in itself.


If you interpret X stat differently, then it makes sense that it doesn’t come up so much in roleplay:
Most often, this is brought up in reference to intelligence, claiming that it represents magical aptitude but not actual smarts, but people have also interpreted other stats away from their common meanings. The problem with this is it usually fully separates that stat from any real roleplay application, which begs the question of why there need to be differences across races. If intelligence is magical aptitude, for instance, and it only comes up in combat, then tying it to race would only create combat disparities. And if intelligence is magical aptitude, why couldn’t strength be an aptitude for physical combat, or skill at striking someone more effectively. Under this logic, there’s even less reason for races to be the determining factor.



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Comments

  • I just skimmed most of your post, but please divorce stats from races. Stat packs seem a perfectly viable solution, to me.
    Omor Ceberek - Targossas

    got gud
  • I'm in favour of the idea, but I don't really see the point of having yet another thread on it. There's not really any new ground to be covered on this topic.
  • KayeilKayeil Washington State
    This has been asked for many times and seems unlikely the admins will change their minds. However, not impossible! I do believe we were told something along the lines of a new class being too much work and not happening, but then the Depthswalkers came!
    What doesn't kill you gives you exp.

  • the more RPGs I play, the more they've moved away from this system. Allowing players to just pick their race and go to town has taken over, and it's just a positive thing all around. Min/maxing would still be possible if you were to consider racial differences, and I'm always keen to see those fleshed out instead of "you picked mhun? suck on a con loss, loser!" I'll never touch tsol'aa, I like the race,  but losing a con just isn't worth it, even with arties I would rather lose a dead stat and grab that con up good. 

    I mean, look at human, it's as divorced as it gets, you can get 14 for anything, not 15, but it's solid, a nice spread, you get nice traits in sip and crit. Overall, it's a great race for everything! Atavian? Fun race, lots of people RP it, but 15 dex, so serpent only, 14 int, so not terrible for caster, but 13 str? If you don't have serpent, you are INFINITELY better in going human and saving up for a RoF IF you plan to play melee. 

    I'd be more keen to see advantages and disadvantages re-added to races, and balance it that way. Stats themselves would be the kicker, but troll casters have slightly lower max mana? I dunno, as I definitely agree that races need to have something to make them all flavourful, and if stats were divorced we'd go for the racials.  I guess, in this sense, should we divorce everything but flavour stuff, and allow people to select them ala traits? Gem is still useful for respeccing class and stat points then I guess...

    TL;DR Divorcing stats is great, but I don't want races to just feel "pick the arr pee one!" I kind of like knowing siren isn't going to be bulky strong, but if I could be, I wouldn't mind something like physical blows deal 1-5% less damage or something to keep the flavour of the race.
  • I've a feeling we won't be seeing a lot of the "uglier" races within the playerbase if these changes were implemented. It's a population balance check of sorts.

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  • I've a feeling we won't be seeing a lot of the "uglier" races within the playerbase if these changes were implemented. It's a population balance check of sorts.
    I'm going to assume you don't mean us awesome dwarves.  :o
     <3 
  • ShirszaeShirszae Santo Domingo
    Mathilda said:
    I've a feeling we won't be seeing a lot of the "uglier" races within the playerbase if these changes were implemented. It's a population balance check of sorts.
    I'm going to assume you don't mean us awesome dwarves.  :o
    I doubt he means dwarves, since a lot of people genuinely like roleplaying them. I actually can't think of a race that people would suddenly drop from playing if stats were divorced from them. Horkvals, maybe.

    And you won't understand the cause of your grief...


    ...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.

  • If I could substitute horkval armour for real armour, I'd use horkval over any other race, despite the stats. Just the 'no armour' bit that gets me.
    Omor Ceberek - Targossas

    got gud
  • Horkval isn't played for its stats. You either want the racial armour or you don't, and leap is a really nice bonus if your class doesn't already have it. Horkval is already crap for most classes though since you can't wear armour.

    I have mixed feelings as to the OP. On one hand, the way it is now has forced me to RP races I probably never would have if not for combat reasons, which I actually think is kinda cool and creates more diversity. On the other hand, my own annoyance tends to stem from multiclass.

    I'm a racial rp purist. I hate the idea of changing race like you change clothes. Farrah is and will always be xoran. And while I chose a race that worked well for my initial class, and don't really have an issue with doing that, the problem is when you either change class or take up additional classes and have to then play all those classes as that race too, which can be awful depending on the race/classes. And I have a gem of reincarnation, I just have no interest in changing race because I always found the concept weird.
  • I wouldn't mind stats being completely separate from races, but I kind of like that you sometimes do have a choice to make now.

    The good news with the way it is now, is you're losing at most 2 points to a stat. Before you -had- to be specific races to play specific classes. Now you can be a Grook Runewarden if you want, or a troll serpent without the extreme penalties you would have faced before. Grook had 9 strength before, which meant that if you were a strength class that race was not an option at all. Yeah, you are still penalized a little bit, but there are very few race/class combinations that are a 'no, sorry, you can't do that'. 

  • JonathinJonathin Retired in a hole.
    Cooper said:
    I wouldn't mind stats being completely separate from races, but I kind of like that you sometimes do have a choice to make now.

    The good news with the way it is now, is you're losing at most 2 points to a stat. Before you -had- to be specific races to play specific classes. Now you can be a Grook Runewarden if you want, or a troll serpent without the extreme penalties you would have faced before. Grook had 9 strength before, which meant that if you were a strength class that race was not an option at all. Yeah, you are still penalized a little bit, but there are very few race/class combinations that are a 'no, sorry, you can't do that'. 
    This made me think of my multiclass choices and I inwardly cringed at the thought of not having even the statpacks that we have now.
    I am retired and log into the forums maybe once every 2 months. It was a good 20 years, live your best lives, friends.
  • I'm kinda between two minds on this. 

    I mean it makes sense to me that a midget frog-man is likely not adept at swinging a bastard sword or a lumbering troll isn't gonna be sneaking about playing the pick-pocket.

    But I am at times frustrated at my inability as a troll to play an int-monk to any great effect.
         He is a coward who has to bring two friends as backup to jump people hunting.

  • I'd say to make races lose their negative.

    Race are still optimal for certain professions due to stat bonuses, but the gap between an optimal race and a sub-optimal race is halved.
  • AerekAerek East Tennessee, USA
    Cooper said:
    I wouldn't mind stats being completely separate from races, but I kind of like that you sometimes do have a choice to make now.

    The good news with the way it is now, is you're losing at most 2 points to a stat. Before you -had- to be specific races to play specific classes. Now you can be a Grook Runewarden if you want, or a troll serpent without the extreme penalties you would have faced before. Grook had 9 strength before, which meant that if you were a strength class that race was not an option at all. Yeah, you are still penalized a little bit, but there are very few race/class combinations that are a 'no, sorry, you can't do that'. 
    While I am not unsympathetic to the OP (and she knows it), this is about where I fall, too. I do like that race has a tangible impact on the world and class demographics; while I know people chafe at the restrictions, I kinda liked the reality that--back in the day--you might be able to tangle with human and rajamala Knights all day, but you respected that Troll Runewarden packing axes, because he'd lay you out. That brought a very table-top feel to an MMO for me, and while I don't miss those days and am very glad we got stat packs, I do miss that aspect of race mattering. These days, I don't even notice most characters' race, because it matters so little.

    There are a few classes that suffer more than others, and I don't dismiss their plight, but for the most part I think any race can play any class they wish reasonably well, and if you really do want to push a certain character concept, there exist artefacts that can make up that difference. (L1s aren't an unreasonable cost for established players/characters) I realize that's not ideal for all parties, but I think it's a fairly reasonable middle ground between player freedom, RP/lore obligation, and game world diversity.
    -- Grounded in but one perspective, what we perceive is an exaggeration of the truth.
  • KyrraKyrra Australia
    My character has been an Atavian from the very beginning and it's just a massive part of her identity that I'm likely never going to change. In saying that, it's not a great race for a knight class and even after investing into level 3 stat arties, I feel like I'm still sitting on an average level compared to the races that are ideal for the archetype and end up with a higher advantage from the same arties.

    I chose my race for RP reasons and it'd be nice if people had the opportunity to do that without the sometimes massive penalties. Something like a grook knight is a bit of a stretch but I don't know why I can't be a bad ass warrior like the ones in Arcadia.
    (D.M.A.): Cooper says, "Kyrra is either the most innocent person in the world, or the girl who uses the most innuendo seemingly unintentionally but really on purpose."

  • edited March 2017
    Xaden said:

    I mean it makes sense to me that a midget frog-man is likely not adept at swinging a bastard sword


    Pff, Chrono Trigger's Frog says otherwise!

    I'm sympathetic to the problem at hand, as I think I'd be much less effective if it weren't for a lucky wheel spin. But I do agree with the points that a 1-point stat difference's impact can be mitigated without too much effort,  there's probably certain niche cases where it does just kind of suck more (any -con race like @Minifie mentioned, or that DSB scales on str but scales noticeably more on 2 str intervals). Not undo-able, but takes more effort/investment. From a business perspective it does feel very fair in my mind that you need to chip in some $s if you want to have every advantage that you can get as any race you want, especially since the gaps are so much smaller.

    I like @Farrah's suggestion of in-game training, but it'd probably need to be temporary/non-stacking in some way or it'd be a free stat handout, and giving everyone a few hundred cr arti just because. Maybe some in-game process that lets you have an additional stat point boost as a major trait? Could even tie it to achievements so new players have some long-term quest to go on (like x% explored, x denizens killed, etc). More reason to make people run around!

    Regarding people not roleplaying their stats, that's more on them than the system. I feel in the same vein as @Aerek mentioned with them mattering so little overall, but we don't have a GM over our shoulder picking at small RP choices we make, so it's up to us to make the world consistent with how it's laid out - however we're not punished for diverging. Stats aside, I love the small RP things attached to certain races - being able to eat bodies satisfies my gore kick, but I can still roleplay being bubbly and cheerful. Would be cool to have more of those things - even differentiating what people are talking in when they speak racial languages you don't understand rather than it just being blanket 'unintelligible'.

    (but being -con tsol'aa really does suck)
  • @Vallie HIS NAME IS GLEN

  • KresslackKresslack Florida, United States
    I'd much prefer stats to be more of a player choice and not strictly tied to race. Maybe you get a base stat sheet for each race, but also a set of points to distribute however you'd like, with reasonable caps.


  • edited March 2017
    Yay everyone go Atavian for flying
    Deucalion says, "Torinn is quite nice."
  • I've sucked up playing one of the crappiest races (Tsol'aa) for Paladin just because s'pretty! Not a terribly good fighter, but most of that is because I don't practice as much as I should (and don't automate), not because the -1 Str/Con makes Paladin unplayable for me. 

    I've met a few other people who take race seriously enough to have a sub-optimal one instead of taking the munchkin route for a fighting advantage, too :D 

    In terms of the OP, I don't mind either way, though a flat 15/13/12/11 statpack you can assign however you want, or something, seems a bit boring. I'm also not entirely sure I'd be super happy with everyone who can just con-spec having 15 as a base, that's an annoying thought. 
  • Personally, racial roleplay is one of my favorite aspects of the game world. I love trying to make my character's race part of who they are, and I often try and tie them into specific cultural groups within the game. This has made reincarnation pretty unimaginable for all of my characters so far, since it'd separate them from a big part of their identity, and pretty fundamentally alter their roleplay in my mind.

    When I made Keorin, I had no plans to get involved in combat on her. I had other characters with skills and some artifacts, and so combat wasn't a factor when I picked her race/class combo. I chose basically entirely on the basis of the flavour I liked, and both her race and class are pretty big parts of who she is. But fast forward an IG century, and now it feels like I'm being punished for not letting game mechanics factor into her class creation. I either keep her as she is, with a race that's purely a disadvantage, which limits my ability to be a successful fighter (which is pretty significant for roleplay when you're in a combat house), or I take her xoran, and remove an aspect of her roleplay that's pretty central to her as well. Neither seem like great options.

    I actually do like that races have mechanical differences, I just wish they were focused on affecting day to day roleplay and not my kill strategies in combat. Races having different base stats isn't a terrible problem in itself, but having no way to adjust them, be it through some sort of retraining, or artifacts, just makes the wrong race a permanent penalty.
  • AodfionnAodfionn Seattle, WA
    Go troll, people. I need more troll friends.
    Aurora says, "Are you drunk, Aodfionn?"
  • Aodfionn said:
    Go troll, people. I need more troll friends.
    We could have been bros :'(
         He is a coward who has to bring two friends as backup to jump people hunting.

  • Xaden said:
    Aodfionn said:
    Go troll, people. I need more troll friends.
    We could have been bros :'(
    Still can, just gotta stop being a softie.
  • The stats as they are represent the bare minimum of what that race excels in. It is much better than it was before, that is for sure, but they still need to represent what that race excels in, which means they cant completely remove it. Intelligent grooks and tsol'aa, strong trolls and dwarves, these are qualities the race represents and if they just snip it out then the races will become equivalent to blank figures with different splashes of paint.

    Achaea isnt strong on RP per other games and most dont really care for much other than "how much will this make the damage increase". The base stats at least highlight on a mechanical level what that race is known for and it actually transitions to a combat mechanical level. If you bring up high int mages, the convo will drift to grook and tsol'aa for their naturally high intellect.

    Im not saying to suck it up and accept it though. I liked the idea of quests that would let you min max to a point, at least this way the individual would have played out how they became more fit/faster/etc
  • AodfionnAodfionn Seattle, WA
    Xaden said:
    Aodfionn said:
    Go troll, people. I need more troll friends.
    We could have been bros :'(
    wherefore art thou, bromeo 

    :'(
    Aurora says, "Are you drunk, Aodfionn?"
  • AerekAerek East Tennessee, USA
    Don't be foolish. Of course you'll always be 2 points behind a Troll, but you're not required to max out a stat just to fight effectively. An Atavian Runewarden with 17 STR will struggle, but an Atavian Runewarden with 20 STR instead of the maximum 22 is still a scary mother fucker. 13 STR on a Monk doesn't quite get it done, but 14-15 STR is respectable, so an L1 or L2 artefact allows an Atavian to find the same success that a Human or Troll would starting out. By virtue of choosing a sub-optimal race in the first place, I think it's already clear that @Keorin is not overly concerned with min-maxing stats, she just wants to be able to compete on a serious level, which is achievable.
    -- Grounded in but one perspective, what we perceive is an exaggeration of the truth.
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