Traditional Fantasy Races
News Editor Garrett Fuller and Staff Writer Derek Czerkaski sit down to discuss the issue of Traditional fantasy races.
Editorial By Derek Czerkaski on January 13, 2007
Saturday Debate: Traditional Fantasy Races
News Editor Garrett Fuller and Staff Writer Derek Czerkaski sit down to discuss the issue of Traditional fantasy races.
Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily those of MMORPG.com, its staff or management.
Alright, sweet, a new MMO! THIS ONE is going to set the bar for MMORPG's for generations to come, I just know it! Let's get this beast installed, and get to playing it already. While I'm waiting, I guess I'll have a look at what races are available for me to play. Let's see here, we've got two human races, but who wants to be a human in-game and out of game? We've got 4 variations of Elves, that's pretty weak. They look like humans, except with pointy ears. Oh cool, Greenskins, yet they're basically just uglier, green variations of humans. Oh there are the Dwarves and Gnomes. Gee, a bearded, midget human race; how incredibly creative. Last, we have 2 Barbarian-like races, more super-sized humans.
What is this crap? Doesn't anyone have anything creative on their mind out there? Twelve unique races huh, because it looks like humans with palette swaps and varied skins to me. How come every race in the history of all fantasy worlds are nearly identical too each other, minus some simple lore details? Don't game developers have any cool ideas? I'd love to play as a spider-race, wielding six weapons at one time, and not being able to wear armor. How about playing as a winged race, where I can fly? Heck, maybe I'd like to play as a mole race, that's capable of burrowing to set up traps, or ambush their enemies by hiding underground. I'm sick and tired of running around playing as the same generic garbage in a fantasy setting. If you're going to offer me unique races, make them truly stand out from the crowd.
The biggest problem is that fantasy races have been with us for over fifty years now, ever since Tolkien used the myths of Norse lore and put humans, dwarves, and elves in a struggle again orcs, goblins, and trolls. Gary Gygax continued the tradition in gaming by making these races the basis for character creation in Dungeons & Dragons. The standard fantasy races have evolved into video games ever since.
One generation grew up with Tolkien, another with D&D, and now a new generation enters into gaming to see the latest take on the same familiar races. These races have been proven and people can relate to them. The Elves with their magic abilities and long life appeal to a certain type of gamer. Dwarves are the rough, tough, brawlers who drink beer and they can appeal to another type of player. These are just two examples, but I think the reason these races remain a solid tool for character development is because they appeal to certain sides of people.
Why haven’t new races been created? Are developers and programmers simply lazy? Obviously, such an undertaking would require a significant amount of time to balance out these abnormal oddities. It seems to me no one is bold enough to set out on such unexplored frontiers. However, it would add new levels of complexity to the game. With humanoid vs. humanoid, it's always going to come down to who has the higher level, and the better gear. However, I think if you incorporated different types of combat, players would have to develop new strategies to conquer their opponents. Think about it. Are you trying to tell me that every race and every battle in the history of every world was fought on two feet, with swords and shields, in an organized manner? I don't believe it.
Balance becomes a huge factor in games when you start introducing new races. Also, if you create new races you must create a theme, history, look, and personification. As much fun as it might be to run around as a spider-like creature causing havoc in a village, the actual development behind giving a player that ability is rather large. I do believe it to be possible; it just takes a lot of work.
The other issue MMOs face is that every game studio out there is trying to snatch up a fantasy or sci-fi based IP. Games like Star Trek, Stargate, Warhammer, and Age of Conan all have very established races and worlds that work within the IP, this way your lore is already written for you. You don’t have to create an entire new set of game mechanics to achieve balance in a lore that already exists.
In saying that, I would still love to see a game that creates an entire new set of ideas, history, races, and lore which distances itself from the humanoid mindset.
There are other reasons for this as well. The community would likely make such a feat damn near impossible to achieve. For example, I would expect that a spider race with six weapons would be able to easily demolish a guy with sword and a shield. But that is part of what is missing in today's MMO's. The fact of the matter is, you can't win every battle by yourself, nor should you be able to. By creating different races, I believe it would bond the community together, not necessarily by choice, but as a means of survival. Citing back to the spider race vs. the human race, I think it would be remarkable to watch a village of human players battle a small horde of the spiders. The battle would be intense, careful strategy would be required to win, but it would be impossible. On top of making the PvE experience more interesting, the PvP experience would be much more driven and intense. Natural in-game rivalries would likely spawn based purely off the player’s actions. Completely different experiences based on which race someone played as opposed to making alts and doing the same, boring thing over and over and over. It could also evoke some truly magnificent story lines and lore for each server. On top of that, crafting could be much more complex and interesting. For once, everyone would be wearing a chest-piece, or a helmet, gear would actually make sense, and won't merely be limited by the devs to try and create some form of difference between player characters.
It doesn't seem to me as though anyone understands this. But I think that to truly reach the next-generation of games, developers are going to have to allow simple MMORPG mechanics to evolve first. What better place to start than by creating truly unique game play experiences for everyone, by giving them truly unique races?.
Making a game mechanic especially with such a biased, 1-way view on a 1-on-1 combat situation is a formula for disaster. Even with games such as Warhammer that focus on a large scale war effort, there is still a sense of individual accomplishment and 1-on-1 PvP, at least that is what many of the previews have been hinting at.
The other issue with going crazy with making new races is the idea of being able to relate to them as humans. Humaniod races are easy to relate to, which is what makes them so popular. Even if they may be a color switch or a re-skin, Orcs are Green Humans with probably better strength, Elfs are taller and better with Magic, the whole nine yards.
The game, Shadowbane had many strange and "out there" races, even some races that had wings and could fly. Although it didn't really make much of a difference in gameplay at all. Especially for a game to be played by thousands of players, any "dominant" race that may have an unfair advantage will be exploited.
I still like the idea, but I don't see personally how it could make a significant difference in a new kind of gameplay experience.
The problem i see is the balancing issue, already there are huge arguments over differing levels of power between classes and races, and adding another dimension would add significant workload onto developers.
This is where Star Trek Online can stand out, i do not actualy know if it is going to be possible but if it is then i think that ip can bring forth many different races tho still somewhat familiar because of the movies/tv serie and what else but still their should be alott to choose from and make them destinct towards other classes. Klingons, humans, andorians, talaxians, romulan, you name the whole STAR TREK universe can be one heck of a game if they really take their time and work it out so that it really become Star Trek Universe and not just a episode feeling.
Also would like to see a real WW2 mmorpg , not like "WW2 Online" but more like BF1942 style graphics with every mmorpg feature possible, meaning all sorts of ranks(duh!) and their are many proffesions that can be taken. So this isn't really about races but i think it can also make a difference if people are getting tired of fantasy based mmorpg, tho you might also have those that are sick of WW2 games, but i think that terrain is still hardly touch in the sence of transforming it into a reall mmorpg.
As for Fantasy based games i really think its the game engine that limits races, if you look at regular single player games you hardly get to play anything else then either :Human, Cars, Mechs, they are basic structures and easy to implement and give body to for a game, for now we have to do with the Boss/Creatures that look complex but are game controled, but i do believe in time they will be able to let us play more complex kind of creatures/machines or anything that comes to mind. Technoligy has come a long way and isn't stopping yet, i bet in 5/10 years from now we get to play games we can not even imagin would be possible :D
I miss my tonk, with her tail spikes...it's just a skin, why would that bring additional balance issues? If you can balance elves, dorfs, goblins, and hoomans, why would adding an additional race make it more difficult? Most racial traits in the games I've played haven't been even close to character-breaking. At best they're a mild buff that only applies in certain situations.
I really liked playing a char whose only hoomanoid characteristic was the ability to walk upright.
Humans are obsessed with aesthetics. Using WoW as an example, most people would rather play a pretty race such as a human or night elf than an ugly race such as a troll or tauren. That's one reason why you get more Allies (the other being the whole "some people are attracted to good/some people are attracted to evil" thing).
Also, I agree, racial abilities that are extremely unique or overpowering tend to create balance issues.
Personally, I'm all for unique races, as long as they have two legs and walk upright.
Heh, that post acually got me to laugh out loud. You do make a good point, but since it isn't being developed by blizzard, sony, EA or NCsoft the majority of the MMO community are in deneil about its exsistence.
Pretty simplistic debate. Czerkaski wants non-primatial or even non-mammalian races because he sees any humanoid as 'just a weird human', seemingly ignorant of the lifetimes of research and development behind these archetypes and their firm validity on so many levels. He argues in favour of ridiculous new races like an eight year old draws monsters. 'Look! It's cool and creative and has artistic merit because it has a claw on its head for no reason! Also, it speaks Klingon and has four sexes. I have absolutely no actual thought behind this, no idea how it would evolve, live, think, mate, build, grow, or what it exists for at all, but it looks damn cool, doesn't it?'
Anyone who thinks that the deeply defined races of mediaeval fantasy are uncreative and that the use of them is 'lazy', yet somehow thinks that talking moles or spiders are creative additions... I would like to disembowel with a non-stick plastic cooking spoon.
I am not a traditionalist. I advocate anything but mortal stagnation. I do not stick with Elves and Men because they are the way things have always been done. I do it because they are strong archetypes with extremely worthwhile premises, distinct cultures, psychological dichotomies and antithetical aesthetics. I'm sorry, but it is the people who suggest races such as Czerkaski pines over who seem to be the uncreative ones. They are gung-ho about spastically creating things for the sake of creating them, but the reason or worth of creating them seems completely irrelevant in their thought processes. They seem in favour of going about the creation of races like a game of Mad Libs.
What? Sony isn't making the game?! OMGWTFBBQ this d@*& game!
Ok, sarcasism has reached critical mass, but in all honesty, there is this little thing on this website called the GAME LIST! Take a moment and look through it once in a while.
I'm all for unique, non-humanoid races.
The idea of a spider-beast being able to take on half a dozen or so humans is a good one, that sort of dynamic opens up a lot of different avenues for content.
Devs could take note of the systems used in tabletop wargames, where each unit has a 'points cost'. Overall balance could be achieved if each race was assigned a cap of how many 'points' could be online on a server at any given time. For example, if a spider-beast can take on six humans, then the server should be able to 'hold' six times as many humans as it can spider-beasts.
I think devs are too concerned with making things 'fair' on an individual basis (always irritates me when the need for 'game balance' makes an ogre the same as a human barring +1 strength and -1 intellignece, or similar). They need to start thinking of more dynamic ways to acheive balance than individual power.
Of course, the problem with introducing races which aren't equal, is that a good portion of players would gravitate towards the percieved 'strongest' race, which would naturally need to be the most limited one. So a large number of players would possibly be left unable to play their favoured race (or stuck in a queue waiting their turn).
Perhaps we need to change our ways as players too, before we can ask for more variety from the devs.
And to round of with a question: What would happen if we were given a 'sandbox' environment, with imbalanced races (no pop caps), and the possibility for one race to 'win'. Would we see the most imbalanced race triumph time after time, or do you think there would be enough players looking for a challenge to even things up (after the first couple of routs at least)?
EDIT: Just checked out Atriarch's site. Kinda has both sides of the argument in one. On the one hand, they aren't traditional races. On the other, four of the five are two-armed, two-legged (in other words, humanoid). I suspect the fifth plays as if it was, and that choosing a race will remain mostly cosmetic in that game too. I think we need to go further, different races should give a different game experience, rather than what we have now, the same experience in a different skin.
Why would a spider with 6 swords automatically have the upper hand against a shield and sword?
I am sorry, but if you try to be realist for 1 moment, all it take is 1 blow to win. Having 6 weapons only mean that your opponent can't play defensive. But a berserking viking could easily charge, use it shield to block most of the attacks and drive his axe into the skull of the fiend.
In a system with hps and very long fights, yes having more weapons would grant you an automatic victory, but it isn't realist...and it isn't fun. A viking who charge a 6 armed abomination can kill it, 1 shot. Now I don't say we have to make it 1 shot, but we have to make sure it remain interesting. I have nothing against an appealing and interesting system, but if you are automatically going to give the victory to abominations, I won't find this appealing, nor interesting. Unless there is something else to justify it...such as lives per month, where a spider who lose merely a life or two is out for the month, then sure, it can be fun....but the consequences must be there, otherwise there is no reasons to play the weaker side. Each side must be appealing...and honestly, I rather see humans always have a strong role in the MMOs, even if I nearly never play them myself.
I have no problems with a race wearing no armor and having a huge offense bonus, but you have to make sure the game remain interesting, a berserker is all in the offense, it would make no sense that you end up with a 1 way fight between two players sharing the same role, melee-offense. (even if personnally, I always play defensive vikings/barbarians, 95% of them are offensive bastards)
Is Atriarch ever going to actually get released though? Its been in development for almost 8 years...
Also, these are Role playing games... and face it... many people role play by identifying with their characters. Give the choice, many gamers chose to play humans, and the better looking the human the more likely they will play it. There are few female dwarf characters in WoW.... most women wont even consider playing them.... and most men do so only as a joke or to be unique.
Look at WoW's Gnome race...has an obvous advanatage a spell caster... yet many people play human mages/warlocks etc cause they hate the look of gnomes. Heck, Dwarf priests are a better example...almost no reason to play any other race.... yet there are more Night Elf priests out there... for athestic reasons only.
It would be interesting to see Starcraft become an MMO, just so we could see how many folks would enjoy playing on the side of the Zerg....
Most races these days play the same, except for perhaps some stat differences and different starting cities. Not really significant imho. Your better off doing a COH deal and just let people mod their differences with the character creator.
I think they want to increase the play styles difference by making the races different in how they play. This of course would mean having a more complicated world.
A spider race might have 4 arms (i think it might have trouble balancing on only 2 legs), but would be real short and squat. Its vision might be blurry and or very short sighted. It might not feel pain (no hp indicator for you!).
Now all of a sudden the game takes on a real different character.
Of course, all the talk about balance still applies. But i never viewed these games as races to the top, so it worries me less.
Centaur_01: Hey baby, check me out! Half-man, half horse! (wiggles eyebrows suggestively)
anyone remember a game that was made 20 years ago called Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, it was re-released with better graphics as Wizardry Gold. The game gave you your basic fantasy races but then also gave you Lizardmen, Faerie, Dracon (half-man, half-dragon), Rawulf (humanoid dogs), Felpurr (humanoid cats) and Mook (looked like a Wookie). It was quiet original for it's time, and built a great atmostphere even for a 2D game. Other original NPC races included Umpani (Rhinoceros men), T'rang (Spider men), and Ratkin (Rat men). It had alot of great content, if brought into an MMO would be quite cool.
I was so dissapointed, especially in comparison to EQ2's latest addition, the Fay. Has wings, can hover (won't die jumping down a cliff), but can't fly, as to not become too overpowered over other races. Now that is fun and different. EQ also has the frog race, but you don't see many playing them. Wonder why - lack of imagination by us players?
It doesn't bother me at all that games keep re-using the standard, traditional, fantasy races. What bothers me is that they keep remaking the same damn shallow, simplistic, linear game over and over again. Grind for levels and loot as you work your way through progressively higher level areas and then spend your time raiding at the end.
I still dream of the "world" mmorpg that makes you feel like your character is living in a fantasy world. As opposed to the currently over-used formula where you follow a predefined path to the "end-game" and then wait for the next expansion or the next new game to come out.
I use to Imm on several MUDs , those weird text based things that surprisingly are still around, lurking in the backwaters.. We had an insect race which had 4 limbs, balanced by the fact it had next to no hitpoints on each one, so yes in battle its offense was great, if you hit it you almost always cut of a limb..was mostly balanced and kinda fun to have to flee from battle carrying your legs in a sack..
The next lot of MMO's seem to be starting to take their influence from the asian myths (a lot of vanguard races look like the Japanese’s spirits etc) as our various cultures mix and class it seems that the next generation may depart somewhat from the Tolkien model. F
or better or for worse..
I think as humans we are taught that having 2 legs and 2 arms and walking upright is the best thing you can be. So its natural for us to assume races that mirror ourselves are "better" than a quadruped or serpent bodied creature..
On a pure work note:
Getting armour and weapons that work with extra arms, snake bodies, four legs means a lot more work has to be done in the game..
I remember when NWN came out they only had rangers with 1 weapon because the overhead of making each model carry the mixture of each weapon meant the overhead was too high. Now I’m sure that new mmo's have a better system than this but even games like Everquest 2 admitted it was having trouble with creating new gear because of the 16+ different models (est) they had to create for each item..
Mylin
Wise words from Neanderthal. Game developers want complexity, but game producers who tell them what to do want revenue, and the only way that the Producers can envision making revenue is by "Kill, Loot, Repeat". And to make the game last longer they give you a thousand character levels to work through and then they give you an enemy that takes 40,000 character levels to defeat. And there you have revenue, and players that hate you.
If you want players to stay you give them a world that they can live in, and don't limit what they can and cannot do. Most importantly the players and the producers have to remember that if there is an "end-game" then there's also an ending of the interest. Get to level 1000 and you're done, no more player, no more revenue.
Its the closest you are ever going to get... Unless SpiderRiders Online comes.
Interesting thread! And an old argument even outside of the gaming world. One basic problem is that any race, no matter how alien on the outside, would suffer from incipient anthropomorphizing from the get-go, since in the end it would have to conform to the all too human world of the player and the game universe itself.
Look at the Star Wars Universe as a example...all of the alien races in fact are really more like the humans (does anyone remember the days when Corescant was Corell or Corellia...i.e circa 1977) than unlike them...they share all the mercenary desires and wisecrack with the best of thems. (Remember the radical thing about Lucas' creation back in the day was that the 'droids did not conform to those tired Asimovian three laws of Robotics, and could feel and kill etc. with impunity, restrained only by the limits of their programming and crude mechano/electronic devices). Almost all the aliens in Sci-fi today are still roughly anthropmorphic...especially those who inhabit the pages of more militaristic writers. CJ Cherryh tried to create some alien sensibilities in her Compact Space novels of the 1980s (anyone remember that you cannot really understand a methane breather without a translator, but boy could they fly their ships...;-)), but even these had a human referent.
Any "real" archetypal departure must include a change in the way these beings are conceptualized, and has to work beyond mere game mechanics, but permeate the game. One little known example of how this has worked in the table top world is the World of Tekumel, aka Empire of the Petal throne, which sort of blends strange high fantasy with alien colonization elements (you have 2 six legged races to fight against there, at least...) and also in its human analogues is a strong departure from the Eurocentrism of most fantasy settings, the Tekumelese humans being sort of a cross between ancient Indian and Mesoamerica cultures, with a bit of other Asian or African cultures thrown in.) Part of its success is that MAR Barker, the creator, was another Tolkien (a linguist and anthropolgist) Has there ever been any attempt to create an MMO around Tekumel, or is the licensing still pretty locked up? It would be amazing if it could be pulled off, but my brief exposure to it makes me wonder that it is too alien, too complex for the average l33t d00d out there.
Maybe I should just stick to an elf...a naughty magic-addicted elf (now that's somewhat of a departure)
Just my $0.02
isn't ToA have a dragon or something that looks interesting and promissing
but it looks like its not gonna be completed for some time
and a question is their any other games like ToA?
Races being hominid, approximately. Well, that helps with reducing dev resources, increasing character empathy, and allows for cross race gear trading. Sure it could be avoided, but I've found out in other games that if humans aren't played, the other races devolve into stat-packages.
Ok, ignore the added resources to develope non-hominoidal species. And the limited gear usage thing. (Hey, a human tshort is pretty worthless to an arachnotaur, except as a white flag...) So there is this whole game balance thingie. The afore mentioned 6 weapon wielding freak would be a nightmare in combat, unless it's accuracy was a joke. Of course, then people would whine big time over not being able to hit anything. Without limiting, then combat with one becomes a freaking raid. We need a whole party to just one of them... Well, that doesn't work for game balance. In fact, it doesn't work for a game, unless that's the only race available. The munchins and combat monkeys, among many others will always go for the extreme power. Soon, if you want to play, you'd pretty much be forced to be one just to avoid being a laughing stock. The only people not playing them would be total noobs who don't know, and the wierdos who like trying something different or more challenging. This kind of situation isn't good for a game because it really limits your market.
Ok, so what do you do. The easy way is the tolkien/star trek way. Other than storylines and minor visual differences, they are pretty much the same. The hard way is to try and develop completely unique races that are not too powerful in any ability. With limited development resources and marketing swearing it'll be out fourth quarter, that's just not too likely to happen.
But wouldn't it be nice.
(I'm currently trying to do this in a pen&paper rpg, but there are gameplay issues that keep cropping up. So I can say that I've been thinking about this subject in general a whole lot recently.)
TTYL
That's a start, I guess.
Are those rases the flying dragons and some little sprite thingy? or just pets/mounts? I also know of the Fea but from what i tried in the trail it far from flying what they do its more hoovering, (i did not like the way the Fea where animated, but thats just a personal opinion ;)
Not enough to save that game though.
Dammit, I want a mythical Fae race to do my hoovering, I hate tidying up.
I personally am getting rather tired of the need for 'balance'. Why should every equally equiped race be as strong as one another? I would like to see distinct advantages, that force races to build up alliances to help defend themselves. For instance the much quoted 'Spider' race should be able to rip through humans like whirling dervishes, however when that clan of flame salamanders comes past the colony looking for sweet sweet ant honey... they are in for a severe burnination.
I also like the idea of locking various professions to certain races - or at least make them different between races. The point of different races is just lost when they just become cosmetic counterparts with one or two minor buffs to set them apart. I think it is a big step moving beyond humanoids though, since most game phjysics are designed around moving on the ground for balance purposes.
Personally I want a race of telekinetic pandas who attack using floating bamboo sticks and razor leaf attacks. Then proceed to maul the fallen opponents soul. Mmm delicious.
No argument, innovative new races would be way cool!
And an auto-balancing algorithm might do wonders for this scenario; i.e. the more players that play a certain race, the less powerful that race becomes, with maybe a small positive adjustment to the others. Not a complete nerf that sometimes happens to races/classes these days, but a gradual effect with maybe a bit of hysteresis added. And have the new "race co-efficient" be viewable somewhere so people can see what its value is and in which direction it's trending.
Bring on the new races!
That was my initial thought as well. Also, Ryzom had races that were different from the norm.
I have noticed that often when people say "somebody ought to add X element to their game," somebody already has, but the game wasn't commercially successful. In other words, just because something isn't in WoW, EQ2, CoH/CoV, etc. doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Sadly, I think that many people assume that everything new in an unsuccessful game must have been rejected by the market/consumers. Some of the most innovative game features have been in games that didn't make it, and not because of those features, but rather despite them. And rather than developers scavenging their remains and saying "hey, this idea was good, let's use it," we'll get more of what is in the games that sell. Hence, we will get WoW or EQ2 clones with different graphics.
Well, actually, everything is based on player opinion and if the players want to base everything they vote well on to the generic stuff, then games won't likely advance soon. If players find the guts to try something new then makers will too. The makers are too scared to try something new and imaginative and normally go make a WoW remake.
Although I'm all for the unbalanced races thing, finally making the game realistic in the smallest sense. If everybody doesn't need each other then there is no teamwork and then you're staring at four boring hours of killing the same old monster alone. But again, then people would take the super-somethings and ignore the more complicated species.
It all goes down to whether someone decides to try something new. And to those who don't, get a freaking life!
I don't think that the solution is to get away from roughly humanoid races. Rather, I think the solution is to do something unique with humanoid races. A fantasy game project that I'm involved with made the decision long ago to cut dwarves, elves, and the various other Tolkien and "traditional" races. Instead, the team is creating a number of unique and original races.
Personally, I'd love to see it. I only pick the "human" (i.e. dwarves, elves, gnomes, etc) races if it's a last resort. I'll take a tiger-man or lizard-man over a human, thanks.
An idea that might work would be to incorporate something in between an eight-legged freak and a human. What comes to mind is something like the werewolf ability in ES: Oblivion. Maybe a character that is hurt by sunlight and cant carry weapons but has great hand to hand and healing, etc., but also with a different point of view; say for instance heat vision, night vision, etc. Or perhaps a vampire species, something that operates as in Oblivion.
Possibly adding some way characters can "evolve" might also add extended gameplay and a hope for something more than just getting more hp or cool armor. Maybe when you get to a certain level or quest you can acquire the ability to become a werewolf or evolve some other physical transformation. That could help the balance issue as you would have to work to earn a unique quality...because we all know if a game inserts one vastly different race...it's hard to resist something shiny and new.