Could we get a confirmed list of requirements for potential future playable Species?

[PSVEindhoven]

Requirements are as follows.

 

It will have to be alive/living.

It must have skin.

It must have eye's.

It must have some sort of mouth.

it must have some sort of appendages/limbs.

 

No sh*t....

[JediRelentless]

... having a list made by a Gold it would help narrow down people's hopes .

 

Considering the toxic nature of this game's community "narrowing down people's hopes" is also known as "giving many players another excuse to dislike your product."

 

Instead of knowing which species are ruled out as future additions, I'd rather hear from BioWare which species could be added to the game without us having to wait two years.

Edited May 14, 2015 by JediRelentless

[MaximusRex]

There doesn't have to be an actual "Princess Leia kiss test" to realize that the romance option precludes every current non-player race I can think of except Voss, which people say won't work for other reasons, and Togruta, which apparently are on their way.

 

Voss won't work because they are very tall, it's easy not to notice in the game because in a MMO we typically play in third person, making it harder to judge perspective.

 

I do have to wonder how many species you have noticed to only think Voss and Togruta can work for romance options. For romance to work in this game the species must have a flatish face like humans do, so as to no break the cutscenes. There are tons of Star Wars aliens with flat faces that can work, several are in game already, like Weequay, and Chagrians.

 

As a side note to the whole topic, at the last Cantina Tour, some questions were asked about adding of other playable species, like Wookies, and the answer given seemed to indicate that BioWare might have a willingness to divert form their previously stated requirements, though I wouldn't get my hope up until they add in a species that breaks the rules, as there might be other technological hurdles that make it too difficult.

[TheSeventhJedi]

You wanna know what the requirements are for future playable species? It's one thing, one simple thing. Would the species require Bioware to go back and alter any cutscenes? If the answer is yes then they're never going to be playable.

 

I have no doubt that you're right, but I have no idea what they could or couldn't make possible in cutscenes.

[Ayradyss]

Is this restriction exclusive to TOR?

The reason I ask is because... http://www.starwars.com/databank/gungi

 

Generally speaking, no, it's not exclusive to TOR at all. It was, at least for some years, a blanket moratorium on Force-wielding wookiees made by George Lucas. (There had been 2 or 3, I think, before he made that call, then none, until a few have now started appearing again without any seeming explanation from Lucas. Of course, now that Disney has the reigns, it's anyone's guess.)

 

See this page in the Wookieepedia, scroll down to the 'Behind the Scenes' section and you'll find this:

George Lucas once decreed that there can be no more Wookiee Jedi in the Expanded Universe.[59][60] Notably, Obsidian Entertainment was forbidden to make Hanharr a Dark Jedi because of this restriction. Kirlocca, Lowbacca, and Tyvokka are the only existing Wookiee Jedi characters (though an unnamed Wookiee in Edge of Victory: Conquest appears to be an unknown Jedi student rather than Lowbacca), as they were developed before this policy was enacted. The Dawn of the Jedi series which was published years after the policy was enacted introduced the Wookiee Je'daii Ruhr. Lucas himself went back on the "no Wookiee Jedi" rule by including a Wookiee youngling, Gungi, in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode "The Gathering" and its proceeding story arc.

[Darth-Obvious]

Instead of knowing which species are ruled out as future additions, I'd rather hear from BioWare which species could be added to the game without us having to wait two years.

 

That's easy to answer. None.

 

Species aren't a high priority and never will be. The Togruta would have to sell insanely well in order for them to put more focus on doing more species and despite the demand for Togruta you're probably still not going to see a large majority of people using them. For instance it's extremely unlikely that there will be a 50% attach rate of the player population using them, heck, 25% would be an insane number.

 

When you look at specific items sold on the Cartel Market the only ones (off the top of my head) that for sure have a high attach rate are Treek and the Eradicator set. Treek makes perfect sense as she fills the two most needed/used rolls for a companion, thus the high attach rate. Now you'd think that would mean they'd make more companions given Treek's success, but when Treek is a Healer/Tank hybrid what other companion are you going to put out there that offers a value over what Treek provides. In other words they would have to come up with a companion that would provide something that people who already have Treek need. I guess the GSI Droid offers a benefit over Treek in that it's a DPS/Tank/Healer hybrid and doesn't make annoying sounds constantly.

[Darth-Obvious]

Voss won't work because they are very tall, it's easy not to notice in the game because in a MMO we typically play in third person, making it harder to judge perspective.

 

The Voss are just Body Type 2 at a different scale. They're totally doable as a playable race because the playable version of them would use the 8 existing body types as they are now. They wouldn't make the playable Voss as tall as the NPC versions.

 

Lord Scourge is a Sith Pureblood that uses Body Type 3, but he's scaled to be taller than the player Body Type 3. That doesn't mean Sith Purebloods can't be playable now does it?

 

https://live.staticflickr.com/5229/13455028334_c0c3a4a0fc_z.jpg

 

As a side note to the whole topic, at the last Cantina Tour, some questions were asked about adding of other playable species, like Wookies, and the answer given seemed to indicate that BioWare might have a willingness to divert form their previously stated requirements

 

No they didn't. They straight up said that playable Wookies were on the wall of crazy, which is basically a list of things they'd like to do but generally don't end up happening. They then followed up that statement by saying something similar to the effect that people don't want to listen to Wookie speak.

 

Everything they said about them at the Cantina Tour pointed to Wookies not happening.

 

though I wouldn't get my hope up until they add in a species that breaks the rules, as there might be other technological hurdles that make it too difficult.

 

There's only one rule. Would the species work within the game as it's currently designed and the answer for species like Wookies and Jawas is no.

 

The amount of work it would take to make something like Wookies playable, which includes reframing most of the game's cutscenes, redoing all the armor sets, rigging class animations to their skeletons, making them work with the existing human sized mounts, etc, etc, is way too much of an undertaking for the process to be worth it in the end. There's no way to return an investment on the time, money, and resources it would take to accomplish that. That's why Wookies won't ever be playable. It doesn't matter how badly Bioware wants to do them or not.

Edited May 15, 2015 by Darth-Obvious

[SteveTheCynic]

There's only one rule. Would the species work within the game as it's currently designed and the answer for species like Wookies and Jawas is no.

It's a shame, really. I'd go for a Jawa Commando, HBG (Honking Big Gun, duh) and all.

 

(Although watching one of my Commandos running around with Aric showed something interesting. He's bigger than she is, and, even though I equipped the same model of HBG on him and her, his is bigger than hers, so there's clearly some character-size linked scaling going on. I think the Jawa Commando would end up with a scaled-down

HBG, a sort of Honking Small Gun.)

[SteveTheCynic]

Not going to lie, I'd pay a silly amount of money to be able to play as a Voss...

 

(If there's one thing that will motivate them, it's money!)

Yes, Voss would be really cool. The lore stuff shouldn't be a huge deal: there are in-game lore issues with Cathar being playable characters - create a Cathar character on Ord Mantell and you get to hear a soldier tell your Cathar what Cathar are...

[SteveTheCynic]

Personally, I think anything that could be a companion should be a playable species.

So we could have playable Republic Battle Droids? (M1-4X is a companion, so I should be able to be the same sort of droid if you apply that reasoning.)

[branmakmuffin]

There are plenty of races that fit just as well as the Voss and Togruta:

 

Nautolan: Humanoid faces from the nose down, eyes are weird but not romance-incompatible.

Maybe, given the Nautolan dancer (Nik Delaru's mate) you encounter on Coruscant. If guys of various races will pay money to see a female Naughtyone, I mean, Nautolan pole-dance in a bikini, I suppose romance is not out of the question.

 

Chagrian: As humanoid as Togruta

Nothing that spends its youth as a "larva' is romanceable, IMO.

 

Devaronian: Only issue is a lack of female examples

If we can romance a Cathar (pity the poor female Trooper, cursed with bad voice acting and an ugly cat man as a mate), I can give Devaronian a strong "maybe." And in fact I find them less grotesque than shark genital-faced Sith PB.

 

And a few human-variants:

 

Arkanians: White humans

Zeltron: Pink humans

Hapan: Prettier humans

Are there even any of these in the game? Obviously, any race that is nothing more than "Human with funny colored skin" would be fine.

Edited May 15, 2015 by branmakmuffin

[DOHboy]

 

if we can romance a cathar (pity the poor female trooper, cursed with bad voice acting

 

oh no you didn't!!!!