Sneak Preview: Races

[Raditzu]

Originally posted by Borgos

Originally posted by Raditzu
Did you seriously think we wouldn't have things balanced out?

WoW always tells everyone THEY have things balanced out, and you know damned WELL the Horde are PWNing every server known to man on that MMORPG....

Just goes to show you, even people who get PAID to provide kickass service can sometimes overlook something that would tip the scales.

The races having their racial traits is not the issue. My main question is this:

What will the Humans/Custom Race(s) have that will make them on an even keel with, say, Saiyans?

The fact that we're not getting paid should tell you that we're not going to glaze over something. We're going this because we want and we're going to do it right.

Like Burter said, we're not giving out specifics. The races are balanced. Either believe us or don't, but that's what you're getting.

"Humans" are something of a special case in the races. They will probably comprise the largest percentage of the population, in terms of player-made characters and so we need to provide the most versatile set of abilities and powerups as we could. Its damn easy with saiyans, because we can say "their hair turns yellow, eyes turn green, and they get a bunch of power." Not all "humans" will have hair. Hell, there could be a bunch of humans without eyes.

The point I'm getting at is this: "humans" will probably seem very "blah." They're not. Saiyans will probably seem too strong. They're not.

Statistically, Saiyans probably have an edge over most of the races (no, I haven't done the exact math and no, I'm not going to) and we'll probably get a bunch of people immediatly whining about how Namekians and Changelings aren't as strong as Saiyans because they're not willing to look at anything other than the raw numbers that they see by glazing over the "powerups" section of the abilities page.

Regardless of the stats, or racial abilities, or anything else, there is always going to be a factor that we have no possible way of taking into account: player skills. If you're just flat-out a better writer, then yeah, you'll probably win. We have provided most races with plenty of opportunities for players to exploit their writing abilities. In generaly, those opportunities have come at the cost of raw statistical power. So, saiyans may have the strongest powerup, but they'll probably seem far less interesting to a talented writer than, say, Arlians will.

EDIT: Something I want to point out. Max, you phrased your question as if Saiyans are better than "Humans." They're not. No race is the best and no race is the worst. If you think in terms of Saiyans being the strongest for no reason other than you think Saiyans are the strongest, then there's a good chance that nothing we say will change your mind. We have provided no one with any statistical information that would lead you to believe that, for example, Saiyans are stronger than "Humans" so please don't think like that. As we have said (many, many, many times) are the races are on equal footing. It will be up to the player, however, to find that footing for themselves.

EDIT2: Please, for the love of my sanity, don't make any assumptions based on what I just said. I used saiyans and arlians as an example earlier. Does that mean that saiyans are, for a fact, stronger than arlians? No. It means jack shit. It was an example. I'm usually pretty good at knowing when to be blunt. Unless I go out of my way to say "saiyans are stronger than everyone else" then I don't mean that. None of you are psychic and none of you know exactly what I was thinking as I wrote any of this, so I really don't want to see any quotes of this posts followed by "well I guess this means there's no reason to be an Arlian" or any other nonsense like that. Thank you.