So after having a quick look at the suggestions forum

Scientifically, no.
Appearance-wise, maybe?

Edit: Make that a no.
A pig looks nothing like a walrus.
An ape, though different, resembles a human in many ways.

 

...Wow yeah, sorry, I meant dugongs, and or manatees, not walruses.

They share a common ancestor, they evolved in different places.

And really, you seem to be mistaking 'ape' for 'great ape'.

Only the great apes are even in the damn Hominoidea family. Ape can mean anything from lemurs to baboons.

 

1 word for you on the race issue

MODS

there,
let the mod makers fill out there own story, right now there are many out like Fox, Dog, kangaroo(I think), cat, elves, argonians, and much more

have a go and look at the mod race tagged posts

 

I'm quite happy this game already includes a bird race, a rarity in science fiction. See this topic about the Pkunk. Had it not, I might be inclined to suggest such a thing because this game is still at an early stage of development, especially if you expect continued content updates after release day, and the lore is currently very thin. Not that I am necessarily advocating including more species, but how is a forum post and ten codices so much lore that including another race would thin out drastically?

I'm less likely to suggest the addition of an avian race to The Elder Scrolls to follow its Argonians and Khajiit because there are novels upon novels of the established lore of the Elder Scrolls universe and five games. Were this a suggestion form for The Elder Scrolls in 1993 or Starbound that did not include the Avians, I'd definitely point out how awesome it would be to encounter bird-people in an open-world game.

The races cover broad categories in their biologic makeup and human culture. We have two mammals, birds, fish (who I think look like reptiles), plants, and robots. The mammals are pretty close together leaving it understandable that someone would suggest a non-primate mammal as a playable race. Of course, then it could be problematic to pick which one it would be or face multiple suggestions for others using the premise of the first one's inclusion, say felines and pachyderms because you already have canines. It wouldn't be hard to find a human culture to steal their lore from either; the existing six races just scratch the surface of human history.

 

...Even so, lemurs and baboons are closer to us than a pig is to a walrus.

 

...Yeah but a walrus is closer related to an otter than we are to lemurs.

Seriously, divergant evolution leads to whacked up stuff, plus, the point I was trying to make is: APES ARE ANIMALS.

If I wanted, I could have just said, "No, apes and humans ARE both mammals and animals, asking for a more 'animal' looking animal is like asking for a more rock looking rock, when given a rock. They're animals. That's what animals look like. All of us are animals, you, me, apes, all animal-like animals."

Seriously, while I may have been up at 7 am last night...or well I guess it was morning by then, that doesn't change the fact that asking for a 'more animal like animal' is silly, especially when in no way should 'one of every animal type' be included in the game. That would just turn it from an interesting variety of very creative and well thought out races, to "Yaaay! animals!" which would honestly take away from the current impressive amounts of mould breaking fictional race building in the game.

 

...You seem to have missed the point entirely, also what is with everyones insistance on "There should be one of every animal type" like...where does that idea come from??

The races avaliable are what they are because it gives a nice mix of variety of science fiction based life forms.

If half the races were based of animal types, the game would end up looking LESS creative and interesting, and more like animal crossing.

Heck, the 'fish' people, aren't even necessarily 'fish' people, they're AQUATIC people. I dont know about you, but I dont know too many fish that look anything like the hylotl. Maybe an alien fish might, but when you start having to make distinctions between the two, you're probably a bit far off.

Also who cares if the 'mammals are pretty close' they're mammals? why do we have to have three types of mammals, but only one type of fish? Seriously I dont get why people keep saying monkeys and people dont count like...what is that all about? It'd make MUCH more sense to include an insect like race, and even then it would be silly, because, as I mentioned before, the races do not exist to fill every clade of the animal kingdom.

Secondly while your first paragraph was...well, difficult to understand to say the least, I assume you were asking how including a new race would take away from the scant lore?

Cause if so, I just have to wonder if you know WHY the lore is thin, the lore isn't thin because there isn't enough going on, in fact, it's almost the opposite there is HEAPS going on, there is a huge story going on currently behind the scenes, and piiles and piles of lore to read up on, and by the looks of it, heaps more to come. What I am saying, is that if you were to include a new race, suddenly they either have to include that new race in all the lore previously made somehow, work it in there, so to speak. Or, they have to have it be seperate up until that point, and then explain that somehow.

Either way, it will look somewhat clumsy and will disrupt the momentum and flow of the story thus far, and will cause things to change that were not originally planned to do so, which tends to lead to either plot holes or poor story structure.

What I am saying is: Most of the suggested races do not fit into the general feel of starbound, would seem ill fitting in context, and the idea of 'putting in a race so every animal is included' is such an incredibly poor idea it makes me want to cry.

 

I'm not advocating including each type of animal, but if you wanted to cast your net wide enough to cover as much as possible with six then maybe two primates wasn't a good idea.

I was saying that if you were to include a seventh or eighth race, better suggest to or do so now while the lore is in its infancy. You mistake the scope and scale of the established lore for its volume; I could record everything canonically established so far in the Starbound universe on ten pages or so. There won't be a better time to suggest a new race, so stop being surprised or distraught that so many people are doing it now.

 

I totally get your point, I was just nitpicking.
May I ask for your impression of my own race? They're an animal race, but that's not the reason I chose to make them.
Link

 

Okay, now you're definitely right there, sooner is much better than later, but while it's in beta, with all the vast numbers of things on their plate, I dont imagine they're going to be putting in new races past novakid anytime soon, and by the time all that is done, I would hope that a solid amount of lore would have been established.

Really, I dont think there's ever a good time to rewrite lore. Earlier is better than later, obviously, but whenever possible, it's generally better to simply not.

It's just sloppy.

Also I dont think they put the apex in as another animal person choice, but more of a straight referene to planet of the apes, and 1984, at the same time. The race is a homage to classic sci fi.

And I dont think they're trying to necessarily cast their net as wide as possible, that's not what the races are for really. The races have been made often to counter expectations. An example could be the floran, usually, when you see plant people, dryads and the like, and so on, they tend to be 'very in tune with nature' and 'peace loving' sorta things, while in starbound, floran run about eating people.

The robot race, usually known for being amoral, futuristic and assimilative. Are Stuck in a medieval theme with old timey values, friendly behaviour and general peacefulness.

It's kind of a new take on sci-fi, while at the same time, paying homage to the classic.

The races aren't designed to appeal to every type of person, but more to create it's own style, and thus it's own place in the genre of sci-fi.

 

Anyone hoping for limited races is fighting a losing battle. I have read too many developer comments (ok.....2.....with one being in this thread) indicating that more is coming. First dev comment was something along the lines of "I would like to see as many different races as there are players and you should be able to create the race you want" (this is not really a quote, because I couldn't find the original thread......close enough) and TvK saying as long as it fits.

The fact that you are playing within an entire universe and there is only 6 or 7 intelligent races in that universe? That has to be the weakest idea in Sci-Fi history.

I could come up with 1000 ideas (ok, maybe 10) as to why a single character has to start over in the universe.

 

I guess it's a bad time to suggest some creative tools like for example a space race creator. But that way anyone could build the race he wants and writing his own lore for it. Of course it would need loads of bodyparts, maybe even from the other creatures, since it's time for something none-biped. And there already has to be something like a dungeon creator where you can create race-specific buildings. Why not make this game the thing that SPORE should have become? Why making me a small miner with a pickaxe if I could become a mad scientist who populates whole planets with the new space locusts he just created from cell material?

 

Meh. The CF devs aren't stupid. They aren't going to be putting in any more races that don't have merit. Of course, it's up to them to decide what "merit" means, not you or me (unfortunately).

As far as adding more core races goes, I think you're safe on that one. The way I figure it, there will be the seven core races, and any more races CF want to officially add will be done so via DLC. It's very, very doubtful that DLC races would ever become core.

As far as the suggestions forum goes, I think your specific issue (furry races) stems from a lack of specific vision for the game thus far:

Half of its players want it to be Elder Scrolls-esque (lore heavy, emphasis on quests, ability to go anywhere and do anything you want).

The other half want it to be Terraria-esque (sandbox building game with mining and RPG elements, emphasis on more elaborate RPG elements, the ability to go on quests).

So, the forums are going to be divided up between people that want creative. lore-heavy races (that's what's fun for them) and people that want aesthetically pleasing, lore-light races (that's what's fun for them). And they're going to stay that way until CF has released enough of the game to us to reveal its specific vision.

Personally, this makes me very happy because I want a Terraria game over an Elder Scrolls game.

(Plus I've seen quotes like this, too. Sorry, Neonir! :/ DLC, remember.)

 

Just because there is a lot of bad/weak suggestions doesn't mean we should never get new races.

Lore? It's a whole universe full of unexplored planets, you don't need to shoehorn anything into that. We are still finding new forms of life on our own planet, running into something new in a far corner of a galaxy is not stretching anything. This is also mostly a sandbox game, I'd bet most players don't really care about lore or story beyond the general theme of what race they are playing. Carnivorous plant race that likessss to talk like thissss. Ok, that's all I need to know, off I go on my own adventure.

There are likely going to be very few, if any, mods that add full races. Adding ears and a tail on the human sprite and dumping it in the game is not adding a race IMO. Things like a full set of cultural armor with unique bonuses and weapons and a racial spaceship are what makes each race special. I really don't care what kind of new races they add in the future, furry or abstract, I'll likely just replace the sprites with modified human sprites which I've done for the existing races. It's the new armor styles and racial themes (towns, dungeons, racial furniture) I am interested in, the things modders aren't likely to go into, it's a lot of work.

Surely it's not going to happen until after the beta is over, but hopefully after release there will be a whole bunch of new races filling out the universe and offering everyone something they want to play as. I would not mind if each race was a DLC either, $2-5 for a new race would be worth it.

 

An insect race would make sense. They are some of the most resilient multi-cellular organisms. It's easy to imagine one eventually evolving into a sentient race.

 

I wanna play a Schmoo...

 

Melmacian

 

I'm gonna assume they're going to add one or two more races FAR after release, this is so we can have a nice 3 x 3 square of race, cause I'm weird like that. Though I do get where people are coming from, I'm confident that Chucklefish will make well done races with lots of lore if they do add more then just that. Ty has already said they don't want to make Furrybound, they're just trying to make interesting aliens, which is why the Novakid got put up, because they're sun people.

 

You're probably worried over nothing. Have you seen the League of Legends champion suggestions forum? It's almost 60,000 pages long. Let's just say maybe 3 champions in the 5 years that game has been out have been somewhat inspired by player suggestions. For the most part, suggestion forums are there to absorb the thousands of bad and/or poorly thought out ideas that nobody wants to see flooding the general channels.

Someone already made a kangaroo race mod. And it is actually quite good. Outrageous.

 

Mods, Mods and... can I say it a third time for fun? You bet... Mods.

Even though I'm normally a vanilla player in most games I play, I LOVE the fact that Starbound is open and in fact eagerly encourages you creative folk to invent fantanulous mods for this game that enhance the pleasure of gaming and (will eventually) allow each individual member to create their own universe, including all the goodies they happen to want in it.

Want to be a ponyman/horsechick (sorry Sarah Jessica Parker) /manateelass/waspman? Well, these mods can make it happen!
Want to build your own ship, and fill it full of a harem of sultry chipmunks? Here ya go, hot stuff!!
Feel like equipping yourself with the most bad-assed lazerbeamrifleswordhatchet clip-on pen? Hell yars!! *click click*

Let the game devs provide us with a sturdy reliable base of lore, characters, worlds, environments, quests, etc... let the modders fill in the rest of what we dream our world to be.