Do you think CF will have a mock up of racial passives ready

for the next update?

Would like to play around with those passives.

 

As I understand it, racial passives will be restricted to racial armors. Which any race will be able to purchase from racial merchants. That way, no 1 race has an advantage over the other.

 

Except recent Twitch streams have pointed out that there is a possibility for passives not tied to armors too...

 

Will anything related to racial bonuses be in the update in a couple weeks? No, not even a little bit.

As mentioned a couple times this past week, racial bonuses are still an idea they are open to exploring, but they have not begun development on them. (they are over a hundred other things that are higher priority)

I posted this just a couple hours ago:

Edit - Tiyuri's exact words here: http://www.twitch.tv/chucklefishlive/b/680676045?t=1h4m37s

Edit 2 - A verbatim transcript:

Tiyuri: "We've been discussing [racial bonuses] a lot recently. So, we're planning to add a few racial status effects that allow you to do different things. The most obvious example is that the Novakid would glow. It's really really hard to balance those status effects though. Because, Novakid glowing is a pretty big one, you know, a really good status effect. And then ones that make sense for other races, like the Hylotl may be swimming faster or breathing underwater longer, maybe aren't quite as useful as often.

But that doesn't mean we don't want to do it, it means that we need to find the right way to do it. And I think the way we're going for is to have the armor that you craft give you a lot of those status effects. So, you know, obviously Hylotl craft Hylotl armor so that would give them their status effects. But also you can go to a Hylotl Village and buy Hylotl armor. So, if you're a member of another race you can still get those attributes."

 

This was what I was referring to.

 

I never really liked that idea on it's own, however. I recently suggested to healthire that having core racial traits and back items which accomplish the same effect (ex. Novakid glow and Xenon pack), and I consider that a far better suggestion than either individual idea. Varixai appreciated the idea too.

 

Wouldent that run into the same issue as abilities locked to species? Since you would have to select a certain species to be able to make certain ability combo's (Having one species ability and one backpack ability).

The only difference being that people that min/max would want a certain ability combo that suits them best instead of just wanting one racial ability that suits them best, aka they still have to choose a certain species (or one out of two options if all species abilities have a back item that does the same thing) to get what they want.

Btw, personaly i couldent care less if the abilities were locked to species, i like stuff like that since it adds replayability. But im just pointing out a flaw with the idea using their old argument to why they didnt want species locked abilities.

Edit: Or would the backpack item disable the normal species ability? Becuse then it could work.

 

Some racial passives will be better than other racial passives just by how life works. It'd be nice if a single race could have access to all of them though. I wouldn't mind the armor or even weapon tying of passives.

Rather not have everyone just play Floran because they have the best passive.

 

If there will be passives, I don't think we should be worried about if one has an advantage over each other. Let's say Glitch had night vision in the next update (keeping this hypothetical, remember), and Floran regenerated health in the sunlight. Or something like that. While both of those ARE a bit overpowered, it's not an "advantage" anyone should stress over, it's how often it's going to be useful, and not how useful. At least that's what I think. As long as any passives aren't completely terrible (which I doubt).

 

We've got ideas and can implement some of them. However, this is still a source of debate and fist fights in the office. Well, maybe not fist fights. Or... maybe fist fights. We like to fight with our fists.

Anyways, the trouble is balancing them and making them all relevant or irrelevant at the same times. I'd love it if we can balance it to a point where there's no race that's clearly just better than another by the "end game". Doing that is a bit tough with seven races and with the stats and buffs we have. If we make one race jump a bit higher, run a bit faster, glow a bit more, etc it'll just be really difficult to balance. But as we've said, we're trying.

When you'll actually see that in the game? I'm not sure.

 

What about Mackinz's idea? Making sure there was a back item or two that accomplished each racial effect would allow players to mix and match, thus greatly offsetting the balance concerns.

 

How is that any different than putting the effects on the armors? If you are going to make items for other races to get the effects, why not just cut out the middle man and put it on the armors to begin with. Races get their special effects, but all races can eventually get any effect by getting the other race armor.

 

Because you can not wear any armor at all and still have a bonus, cutting out the need to dictate which armors you need to wear to obtain a certain effect. Restricting additional effects to back items prevents the player from getting super-duper OP up in the hizzouse while still giving the player a choice in how they want to equip their character (it's not like back items serve any functional purpose in vanilla any more anyway).

 

Why would you ever go nude and yet still need the buff? Also, vanity armor to hide armor like many many many many other games do. Get your nude look while not sacrificing protection.

 

The beginning of the game when you don't have access to even Iron Armor yet. Not technically nude, but starter clothing pretty much only serves the purpose of decoration sooo...

Also, it's not like racial armros need the buff anyway. There is already very little reason to wear any other kind of armor, and adding special bonus effects on top of that furthers that imbalance.

 

So put the effect on the racial starter clothing, then you can have the effects get stronger with the different armors. Its more balanced to do that than to give each race a static effect that is either significant enough to cause imbalance itself, or weak enough to not matter at all.

As was said:
"If we make one race jump a bit higher, run a bit faster, glow a bit more, etc it'll just be really difficult to balance."

Allowing all races access to all effects assists in balancing the issues because no race can inherently be better because no effect is permanently fixed to one race.

 

I know you're a big fan of this idea of clothing and armor holding all these magical benefits, but how does cloth made of plant fiber enable one to "jump a bit higher, run a bit faster, glow a bit more, etc."?

My suggestion is more plainly logical. Clothing is not capable of enhancing ones attributes, aside from attractiveness.

Not to mention better balanced. With my suggestion, each character would have access to two abilities at all times (with back items craftable by every player, on top of an ability imbued by a player [in other words, combinations that can be copied]) and doesn't further emphasize already-overly-emphasized armors over other possible armors.

 

I would sugest something akin to a Splicers Salon, just a genetic lab where you could get swap your racial buff for whatever other one you might want, or heck, just add it to your own.

Make it costly to aquire, thematicaly sound with the tech and lore( assuming that the buffs would be something that could be translated through physical modulation), and bam, problem solved and a new fresh idea to add to the game.

Heck, outpost can still grow a bit, expand the area above the teleporter shop and ya could have both a Mech Bay and a Genetics lab there.

 

Hmm, i realy like this idea.

Having a gene lab that can change your racial ability for a fee, perhaps with one free change as part of a early quest chain.

Its simple, functional and it makes sense.

 

You are under the impression that every game balance idea must be realistic in design. This is a fallacy. For the sake of gameplay, realism can be sacrificed.

But since you are so keen on it... Lighter material can allow for higher jumping, faster running, and if you use a reflective material, glow a bit more. There is a whole science behind the design of specialized clothing to aid in movement which has lead to Olympians breaking work records time and time again. And for the glowing, the physics behind light refraction.

Static abilities is not the answer, especially if serverside characters becomes a thing. Ill be damned if I am forced to have a crappy ability on a server just because I want a particular race. U?sing back items to double up on abilities still limits you because one of your abilities will be static, meaning somone out there will work out what the best combination is.

Yclatious's idea would work too. Id be ok with that. Really anything that ensures that abilities are in no way static to their races so that no race is ever able to be "the best".