Bioware: Please re-design player races

[Jxspyder]

Canon.

 

Wookiee vocal chords are incapable of imitating Basic. The only Wookiee that can "speak" Basic in the lore is Lowbacca, a Jedi Knight in Luke Skywalker's New Jedi Order and a friend of the Solo children. But he used a droid, M-TD, to translate for the benefit of everyone else.

 

Wookiees can't speak Basic. Period.

 

Not true. There is one wookiee who can speak Basic...but it's not Lowbacca. It's Ralrracheen, who has a serious speech impediment, allowing him to speak Basic.

[Yukondoit]

Not true. There is one wookiee who can speak Basic...but it's not Lowbacca. It's Ralrracheen, who has a serious speech impediment, allowing him to speak Basic.

 

False. Ralrracheen had a speech impediment in his Shyriiwook which made him easier for non-humans to understand compared to other Wookiees.

 

Ralrracheen could not speak Basic. No Wookiee can.

[TheDetour]

I am more than satisfied with the currently available races. I hope that BioWare will have the good sense to make any additions to the playable roster speak basic. I think Togruta should be the next playable race. Edited February 7, 2012 by TheDetour

[Jxspyder]

False. Ralrracheen had a speech impediment in his Shyriiwook which made him easier for non-humans to understand compared to other Wookiees.

 

Ralrracheen could not speak Basic. No Wookiee can.

 

Well crap, my bad, lol.

[Costello]

All of those, with the exception of Weequay, cannot imitate human-like facial expressions. That's the other prerequisite for playable races.

 

Could be said that Trandoshians and droids don't have the option either but both make fine companions. With many people finding the Jawa the most endearing of all the species available to travel with you. So I don't think human-like facial expressions is a necessary pre-requesite for playable races. Darth Baras wares a mask in nearly all dealings and yet his full animated and understandable and with the cartoonish graphics I am hard pressed to find any facial experession overly readable on my human characters above smiling when happy or frowning when angry.

[Noxsabe]

I can't say I disagree with the heart of the complaint in the original post. For a Star Wars game, I'm just really disappointed with how few (and weak) the race choices are. I expected a lot more, and sometimes just can't figure out where all their development time was spent. Character creation as a whole is just extremely disappointing on many levels, especially for an MMO that released just weeks before 2012.

 

yep my thoughts exactly !

 

and i wanted to play and awesome Droid Race so much cool droids ingame yet none i can play :/ why can't i be a Droid or a wookie or a JAWA .... why oh please why bioware

[StormWulff]

People keep bringing up things like "But the main characters of the Movie are..."

 

What we're playing here is something the designers want us to be immersed in, if you ask -me- who I remember most from Star Wars it's Blik, Hovrak, Bin Kohal, Phlik, Severian, Caet Shrovl, Lak Sivrak, Tagg Sivrak...Shistavanen, because it's my personal favorite race and I happened to love the Characters...one of which was in a romantic entanglement with a crazy worm alien-race. The excuse of "Due to Romance" is kinda BS considering how many times in the SW Universe it's already been done.

 

Every person who loves Star Wars loves it for their reasons, everyone has characters that are what they want to play and want to embody for their own reasons. Everyone should recognize the fact that different people relate to things differently, and for some of us, the differences those Aliens have makes them -easier- for some people to become immersed in.

 

Star Wars has always had a huge variety of Races, and I can guarantee you every single Star Wars game many people thought at some time or another how they wished their Main Character could be some other race.

 

That said: I do agree in some aspects the races were done lazily, the Cyborg should have simply been an option on all the races for "Cyborg Enhancements", I still am trying to understand why they chose to limit the Cyborg Enhancements to the different Classes...if you go through the Classes and Empire/Republic, you won't find many of the same options. And tbh....I find many of them ugly, so not having any of the "Cool ones" available in my preferred Class irks the heck out of me and makes no sense whatsoever.

 

I'm one of those people who believes TOR probably did their Character Creation in a bad way...it would have been better to simply get several different Voice Actors, and basically have the "Race Creation" be more like Dragon Age, where it's modifiable AND you can choose between voices. Some Class Voices with the Appearance the person chose are horrible and just don't seem to fit which hurts immersion rather than helping it.

 

Before people go on about "But then they'd have had to have those Voice Actors do every Quest Line" I will point out that my "Voice Options" repeat. A lot. It would not have been difficult or added much to what is already in place.

[Izorii]

Could be said that Trandoshians and droids don't have the option either but both make fine companions. With many people finding the Jawa the most endearing of all the species available to travel with you. So I don't think human-like facial expressions is a necessary pre-requesite for playable races. Darth Baras wares a mask in nearly all dealings and yet his full animated and understandable and with the cartoonish graphics I am hard pressed to find any facial experession overly readable on my human characters above smiling when happy or frowning when angry.

 

Exactly. If I have the sound turned off I can't tell what my character is thinking, if his angry or sad or thoughtful. At best all I can tell is if he is talking and that's not always a sure thing as sometimes the mouth animation fails.

 

If it can be a compaion who's appearance changes with standard gear it should be possible to make it a playable species.

[CygnisJunior]

If you want to play a humanoid character, then freakin play one.

 

If they added more races, i cannot think of a single way that it will hurt you, unless seeing a mon calimari trooper would obliterate your immersion somehow. Though i doubt this, because there are jawa heroes already.

[Jxspyder]

People keep bringing up things like "But the main characters of the Movie are..."

 

What we're playing here is something the designers want us to be immersed in, if you ask -me- who I remember most from Star Wars it's Blik, Hovrak, Bin Kohal, Phlik, Severian, Caet Shrovl, Lak Sivrak, Tagg Sivrak...Shistavanen, because it's my personal favorite race and I happened to love the Characters...one of which was in a romantic entanglement with a crazy worm alien-race. The excuse of "Due to Romance" is kinda BS considering how many times in the SW Universe it's already been done.

 

Every person who loves Star Wars loves it for their reasons, everyone has characters that are what they want to play and want to embody for their own reasons. Everyone should recognize the fact that different people relate to things differently, and for some of us, the differences those Aliens have makes them -easier- for some people to become immersed in.

 

Star Wars has always had a huge variety of Races, and I can guarantee you every single Star Wars game many people thought at some time or another how they wished their Main Character could be some other race.

The problem is finding a significant portion of the population who also want to be Shistavanen. Then making the various customizations all fit. Then make the armors work. Then making the story work...because it's kind of unlikely that your average Shistavanen Trooper has the same story, backstory and settings as the other races available. There's a reason they didn't use blatantly alien races. And it's not the "kiss princess Leia" jest that Daniel Erickson made. You can find it in the dev blog he wrote back in 2009, about the Bounty Hunter.

 

 

 

That said: I do agree in some aspects the races were done lazily, the Cyborg should have simply been an option on all the races for "Cyborg Enhancements", I still am trying to understand why they chose to limit the Cyborg Enhancements to the different Classes...if you go through the Classes and Empire/Republic, you won't find many of the same options. And tbh....I find many of them ugly, so not having any of the "Cool ones" available in my preferred Class irks the heck out of me and makes no sense whatsoever.

 

I'm one of those people who believes TOR probably did their Character Creation in a bad way...it would have been better to simply get several different Voice Actors, and basically have the "Race Creation" be more like Dragon Age, where it's modifiable AND you can choose between voices. Some Class Voices with the Appearance the person chose are horrible and just don't seem to fit which hurts immersion rather than helping it.

 

Before people go on about "But then they'd have had to have those Voice Actors do every Quest Line" I will point out that my "Voice Options" repeat. A lot. It would not have been difficult or added much to what is already in place.

 

The only major difference between TOR and Dragon Age, is the option to choose between voices. Which, given the amount of voicework, is simply not an option. Yes, you have a lot of minor ones that repeat. You've also got a significant amount of VO that doesn't.

 

The problem with being on the outside looking in, is that we really don't have the knowledge of why they made these choices. To be honest, I really doubt that it was simply to limit our options.

[Costello]

While I am a big fan of Chiss I must admit it isn't as much the lack of species but the similarity between them all. As the OP pointed out the choices available are all human or human like, it would be very nice to have some more alien looking species in the game.

 

I dislike saying that it is a lazy option but its not really giving people as much choice as you might think if told there are 8 or so different species. As such I really hope BW do add more variety in the playable species so it doesn't seem like a half finished option. Where any thoughts about 8 unique races is only true from a certain point of view and most people quickly come to realise its 8 varieties of human.

[Kaisernick]

That still doesn't answer the question of why the heck these unknown human look alike races are added as playable races. And just because wookiees and rodians or any of the other races that WERE in the movie were just small players doesn't mean they wouldn't be VIABLE playable races in TOR. Hell, TOR is set 3k years before the 'movies'. I really don't see how that's relevant to this discussion.

 

unknown?

 

twileks were in every film

milirans were in episode 1 to 3

zabaraks well maul obviously

chiss-ok so not in films but one of the most recognisable races in the EU

rakattai- well ventress one one till the clone war changed that.

 

since most of you don’t know this but bioware picked human looking races for many reasons

 

all species needed to speak basic as races like wookies who cant would either break Sw lore or be tiresome listening to wookie speak to lvl 50

romancing- this is the same reason that certain races are romaceable(if you notice the romanceable companions are almost all from the playable choices) they didnt think it would work as a mon cal engaging in romance for example.

Armor- wookies don’t ware clothes and trando don’t wear boots so they had to limit races based on what armor they could wear.

 

I think that Chagrian Togruta devaronian and zeltron maybe be a strong candidate for new species added next.

[Acushla]

Sad fact is that we tend toward a bit of Hubris, we tend to think that in order to be intelligent an alien life form must be more or less human in appearance. I am not absolutely certain but iirc Yoda was virtually the only force user in 6 movies that was not pretty much human in appearance.

 

Never mind that Class not species dictates much of the story.

 

Never Mind that at least on the Imperial Side anything except Human and Sith are considered 'at best' second-hand citizens. And that current Sith 'purebloods' are in fact Sith/Human Hybrid.

 

In my opinion they 'could' have spent more time on designing the playable races, but I suspect no matter how much time they spend they will still be 90% 'human' in appearance.

[jollycynic]

I'd like to see something like barabel, omwati or gand added.

[ZachSDMF]

I didn't have time to read through all 14 pages but I saw this thread and thought "hey, wow have I thought this before."

 

I made a short (or not so short) list of suggestions and figured I should post them here!

 

-Nautolan

-Chagrian

-Lannik

-Kiffar

-Cerean

-Togruta

-Faleen

-Devaronians.

 

A lot of these races are already in the game and look good. Just allow us some customization options and we'd be golden.

 

I also LOVE the idea of an age/wrinkle slider. Why do all my sagely/aged Jedi/Sith have to be babyface'd!? Come on, now...

Edited February 9, 2012 by ZachSDMF

[Robrocop]

It's moreso just the fact that they recycled the face models for literally EVERY race.

[FoxNemhauser]

I don't really care for non humanoid races, in most games I tend to stray away from them mostly because they just seem random and without personality/heart.

 

However I would not mind to play as a Jawa - they have that special something in them.

Still, they were probably an exception to my rule.

 

 

Until I visited Hoth and met Ortolans. Mad props to whoever made them the way they are in the game. The moment I saw them (and heard them) I just wished that there would be an option to play them (or at least have them as companion). They are just that great.

 

I was playing republic but with dark side alignment and I just could not blow up their heat station, not to mention to leave that poor little Ortolan on the other side of the closed doors.

 

I might be too melodramatic, but whoever did blow the building and whoever let that poor Ortolan behind closed doors - just simply does not have a heart.

 

 

TL-DR version: give us a choice to play Ortolans or at least make it possible to have an Ortolan companion

[Tripnyc]

Ichiki chiski nawi ejomata bom bompa!

[Izorii]

It's moreso just the fact that they recycled the face models for literally EVERY race.

 

I sometimes wonder if the reason for this is the mouth animation when the character is speaking, Mine seems to just go up and down a lot when sound comes out and sometimes not even that. But maybe someone with a better graphics card can actual lip read what they are saying? I doubt it. Probably just lazy design to re-use the same faces, which is odd when they put so much time selling the replay value.

[Aelther]

Yeah I always wanted to create a Kel Dor Sage, but instead we got a bunch of humans with different skin colors. They might as well split Humans into Caucasians, Asians, African Americans and so on, like Bethesda does in The Elder Scrolls xD

[Fomorii]

What races where the main "players" in the Star Wars movies... oh....

 

NECRO POST WHEEE! What kind of kittening kittened opinion is that? There weren't main "players", just main Characters. There were plenty of non-human Main Characters. R2-D2, C-3PO, Chewbacca, Yoda *though he's admittedly a minor character*. Half of the main characters aren't Human. The only reason the majority of the Rebels and the Imperials were human was, *Drum roooollll!* because of budgetary and aesthetic concerns! BADUMPCHA! Too many aliens pre-CGI would have been hell on makeup and costume personnel, not to mention their wallets. Too many non-humans means too many characters who don't speak English; movies have to avoid those kinds of concerns for the sake of the masses.

 

However, as an individual player, who are responsible for their own choices, the hundred and one sentient species has way more to offer than recoloured humans with different markings and minor facial attributes. I would have killed to get the chance to play a Jedi Consular who was a member of that crazy sentient tree or fungus species from the datacron in one of the graphic novels.

 

This is a universe of diversity, wonder and enigmatic beings. To try and defend the very bland, very human, 99% identical customization choices for models that already look almost exactly like every other model, with the opinion that the "Main...Players" v_v in the movies were human or looked like humans, is downright foolish, ignorant and absolutely wrong hahahaha! Half of the cast are very different from aliens. Even the crappy new trilogy has a bunch of non-Humans, even armies and planets ruled by robots and very not-human aliens. That's just one of the least intelligent attempts to defend an obviously lazy and pitifully, homogenously boring decision, though understandably so considering how much of this game is focused on the face and how much time and money went into it. That was, before their financial backers pushed the release deadline from being months and months away to being just two months away, if I remember correctly.

 

I really wish Bioware had signed on with anyone other than EA, because those buggers only care about making money as quickly as possible. They've still, yet, to learn that they need to stop interfering with the development process of the games they're financing. They don't know how to make good games, so they end up butchering whatever comes their way, when patience and a bit of freedom would have given SWTOR the release it deserved. I consider RotC to be the state that SWTOR should have been at it's release.

 

Here's hoping EA is removed from all future decisions. The way Free-to-Play has been implemented, for instance, is a shameful, miserly disgrace, one that insults anyone who wants to become a subscriber, because giving any money to a company with so little respect for it's audience feels shaming and dirty, not the fun kind, either. By making just about every single aspect the game has to offer, from the tiniest convenience to full on content, cost real money, it's shown the world that the people in charge of finances and of the implementation of F2P had absolutely no confidence in their game, in their ability to please the F2P crowd with the content they developed for their market, in their ability to stay above water without doing their damnedest to force us to become subscribers, etc... It's almost as if these people don't understand even basic psychology or business practices. The reason why F2P MMOs do so very well is because they honestly treat their game as F2P, not Nickel&Dime-to-Death-to-Play, making new and returning players feel free, unfettered, at their ease and a part of the game and it's community. SWTOR was taken in the exact opposite direction. All you needed to do was look at games like League of Legends and Guild Wars 2 to see why they make soooo much money! Those kinds of F2P/B2P done right offer tons of great deals for unique, aesthetically pleasing, and interesting items, new play styles, costumes, boosts, clothes, pets, mounts, etc... That's why people spend money, because they don't feel pressured to pay even one cent for a game that they enjoy, for items that they want to show off or simply indulge themselves with. I'm not sure how the guys in charge here managed to screw that up, but that seems to be what people do with this game.

 

Please, folks in charge, figure out that trying to force F2P players to subscribe is the antithesis to a successful F2P model and, even if 50% of the F2P players subscribe for a month or three, it's no where near as profitable as pumping out content for the Market, because you aren't releasing enough end game content to make subscribing for more than a few months all that desirable. I guess that's part of the reasoning behind making just about every aspect of SWTOR off limits or diminished for F2P. Really now, -25% xp income for EVERY part of the game on top of NO rested bonus? Getting to 50 purely by questing wasn't even an option at release, we had to do dailies and PvP and dungeons to get the last level or two, for little Jiminy Cricket sake; may he rest in whatever paradise awaits alcoholic talking gentleman crickets. Having 25% less exp and almost no access to Warzones? Leveling from 1-50 as F2P must be insanely slow and a huge pain in the kitten.

 

I really want SWTOR to become more than a hollow WoW-Clone in a Star Wars shell. One of the reasons SWTOR stopped seeming like a bad joke pre-beta to me was one of the devs in an interview saying that they wanted their galaxy to grow and grow and grow over the years to come, even saying that potentially hundreds of planets might be added. That kind of progressive content, exploration, growth and potential was enough to let me overlook the obviously cliched MMORPG that they were building. I had hoped that they were just setting down a skeleton for something faaaar more intriguing and complicated: a galaxy in turmoil and steeped in mystery and esoteric secrets for us to explore and find adventures within. Instead, we've been handed a theme park with very little content released in the past year. One planet and it had to be released in a half-expansion, instead of being treated as the basic content patch that any other MMO would have treated it as.

 

I'm hoping that RotC exists as some sort of test to see whether or not the player base is going to make real content updates worth the time and resources put into it and that it does well, so we can start seeing waaaay more planets popping out every 3 months, massive events with a new dungeon + raid and/or Warzone + world PvP *done well...not Illum v_v* Let's get some classic nerdy designers with high expectations and a brilliant imagination and methodical work ethic so we can get genuinely amazing, beloved content. I swear, the current population of MMO developers are emo hipsters who think they can do no wrong, yet seem to be unable to do anything right.