Guild Races Lists: GAs, post your guild's!

Moi

The cantors are currently going with:

--[ Recommended Races]--------------------------------------------------------
dracnari  elfen     furrikin  kephera   merian
dwarf     faeling   human     lucidian  trill  

--[ Neutral Races]------------------------------------------------------------
aslaran      krokani      mugwump      tae'dae
igasho       loboshigaru  orclach      taurian

--[ Restricted Races]---------------------------------------------------------
illithoid  viscanti

What's your guild picking?

Daraius

Doesn't this make things really awkward from an RP standpoint? How soon after starting do you choose your race?

Estarra

FYI, restricted race means that you can't choose that race as a newbie through the newbie race process. You could still get that race through reincarnation, etc. (if you feel like facing the rp music). However, we're letting guilds restrict races for newbies so the newbie won't have to go through the hazing or whatever.

Hiriako

Interesting! I think I will have to do this in a moment or two. I already can figure out what I'm going to propose though.

Karlach

I think you should consider both races that RP don't fit, but also mechanically are poor choices, for Cantors you should be taking poor charisma races and going "We're going to protect you from yourself, you don't want to be a Taurian/Orclach/Loboshigaru Bard."

Hiriako

This is what I have right now:

--[ Recommended Races]--------------------------------------------------------

aslaran      elfen        krokani      orclach

dwarf        igasho       loboshigaru  tae'dae    

--[ Neutral Races]------------------------------------------------------------

dracnari  faeling   furrikin  human     kephera   taurian   trill

--[ Restricted Races]---------------------------------------------------------

illithoid  lucidian   merian     mugwump    viscanti 

Illithoid and Viscanti are for Serenwilde purposes, mostly. The other three make poor warriors. I wouldn't recommend furrikin or faeling, or female keph, but they're not awful. 

Karlach

Keph's a weird one, because of the different gender based stats =/

Ayisdra

Hiriako said:

This is what I have right now:

--[ Restricted Races]---------------------------------------------------------

illithoid  lucidian   merian     mugwump    viscanti 

Illithoid and Viscanti are for Serenwilde purposes, mostly. The other three make poor warriors. I wouldn't recommend furrikin or faeling, or female keph, but they're not awful. 

I personally wouldn't restrict the ones that make poor warriors (those I would put into neutral, but still tell them it would make a poor choice). Sure they may end up changing still, but out right denying them the choice I don't think is that great...

Karlach

That's really poor pastoral care though for your newbies isn't it? You aren't going "You should pick this race because it's the best race and no other race is worth playing" with this, you're stopping them from picking a race that is going to be just awful for playing as because they're too new to know better. There's still plenty of choice left for them, you've just stopped them making a terrible decision.

It's babyproofing sure, but you're doing them a favour. If it's selectable, someone is inevitably going to choose it and then quit because they find it too frustrating to get anything done.

Xenthos

--[ Recommended Races]--------------------------------------------------------
aslaran      human        krokani      orclach
faeling      igasho       loboshigaru

--[ Neutral Races]------------------------------------------------------------
dracnari   elfen      illithoid  merian     tae'dae    trill
dwarf      furrikin   lucidian   mugwump    taurian    viscanti

--[ Restricted Races]---------------------------------------------------------
kephera

Hiriako

That's the decision I haven't made yet Ayisdra. I don't think it's good for them to play those three races, they just are poor warriors across the board. (Unless you're Sentinel for LUcidian, or Paladin for Merian)

I'm talking it over with a few people ICly, and we'll decide which way to go.

Hiriako

Estarra! Is there any chance we could get a fourth category? Restricted being those not allowed, and 'Discouraged' being ones that are simply poor choices for the class, with a warning that it is harder to play a character of those races in this guild?

Ayisdra

Morkarion said:

That's really poor pastoral care though for your newbies isn't it? You aren't going "You should pick this race because it's the best race and no other race is worth playing" with this, you're stopping them from picking a race that is going to be just awful for playing as because they're too new to know better. There's still plenty of choice left for them, you've just stopped them making a terrible decision.

It's babyproofing sure, but you're doing them a favour. If it's selectable, someone is inevitably going to choose it and then quit because they find it too frustrating to get anything done.

Of course I talk from my own experience.  While you could argue that warrior is more setup to be pvp outright than the others, maybe they will like the challenge (be it in PvP or PvE). Or maybe they like a race despite it being sucky for the guild.  I picked Lucidian because I thought it was an awesome race.  I picked druid because I liked the idea. Sure, my race and guild are not as awful as some other choices, but I like being lucidian to much to chance my race. In the almost 7 years I have been around, I still have my free reincarnation.

Hiriako

This is why I'm asking for the fourth category, where I'd put a few races that are less than ideal, but would be acceptable within the guild.

Vivet

Can we have a "discouraged" category, for races that are bad mechanically, but we don't necessarily want to outright ban just because?

In that same vein, can we get Kephera (m) and Kephera (f), to distinguish between the genders? It does matter a lot in this instance.

EDIT: Oops, I do not refresh before posting.

Moi

My theory was to treat Restricted as "!!FORBIDDEN!!", Neutral as "These are terrible ideas." and Recommended as "Choose something from this list.", since that's how I would have read the options back when I was a novice.

Hiriako

I thought about that, but there are races like furrikin and faeling which are less than ideal, but can come into their own a bit with things like expand. 

Kaimanahi

Not to over complicate things, but I might suggest allowing the ability to write a short comment about each race, so that newbies can make a more informed decision and better understand why some races are categorized in a certain way. So the list might instead be more like:

--[ Recommended Races]--------------------------------------------------------
merian: native Celestian race, suggested with Sacraments skill
aslaran: good warrior race
...

--[ Neutral Races]------------------------------------------------------------
faeling: poor warrior race
...

--[ Restricted Races]---------------------------------------------------------
viscanti: Tainted, antithesis to Celestian ideals
...

Shaddus

Sentinels

--[ Recommended Races]--------------------------------------------------------

aslaran   lucidian  tae'dae   trill   

--[ Neutral Races]------------------------------------------------------------

dracnari     faeling      igasho       krokani      mugwump      viscanti

dwarf        furrikin     illithoid    loboshigaru  orclach

elfen        human        kephera      merian       taurian

--[ Restricted Races]---------------------------------------------------------

None.


I'm really tempted to ban Illithoid and Viscanti, but don't think I'd get away with it.

Moi

Wait, what? Tae'dae makes the cut, but Krokani, Igasho and Human are all just neutral?

Karlach

If Tae'dae make the cut as a good strength/racial resistances/weapon bonus race, so should Igasho, Krokani and Dwarf.

Vivet

Shaddus said:

--[ Restricted Races]---------------------------------------------------------

None.


I'm really tempted to ban Illithoid and Viscanti, but don't think I'd get away with it.

Pretty sure I'm going to vehemently oppose the banning of any races for the Institute, myself.

Shaddus

@Vivet:That's more of a "I love Isune" thing than anything else. Like I said, I really don't think I'll be able to pull it off.

@Everyone else: I'm not going to suggest races which do well at certain weapon specs, aside from Tae'dae because we need more cavaliers. >.>

Hiriako

Don't forget Orclach, Mork.

Shaddus

Iytha said:

The cantors are currently going with:

--[ Recommended Races]--------------------------------------------------------
dracnari  elfen     furrikin  kephera   merian
dwarf     faeling   human     lucidian  trill  

--[ Neutral Races]------------------------------------------------------------
aslaran      krokani      mugwump      tae'dae
igasho       loboshigaru  orclach      taurian

--[ Restricted Races]---------------------------------------------------------
illithoid  viscanti

What's your guild picking?

@Iytha, why these? Tae'dae bard is pretty good for influencing, Mugwumps can lay down aurics really quickly, and Lucidian/dracnari unspecc'd bards aren't that great.

Karlach

Hiriako said:

Don't forget Orclach, Mork.

Excuse me while I hang my head in shame.

Shaddus I disagree with being selective on weapon spec races, especially if you're aiming to push people towards a certain spec


With warriors while there's the obvious optimal levelling races (with levelling weapon spec races) and the Aslaran Masterrace, outside of those 6, and the org races (which are all really good) you've got Loboshigaru/Human and Taurian, all of which bring different aspects to Knight playing/levelling, and don't suffer from poor stats. Ideally a recommended list isn't just focused on PvP or bashing, nor is it only selecting the best of the bunch, because then you might as well just leave Aslaran there alone and forget the rest.

Moi

Shaddus said:

@Iytha, why these? Tae'dae bard is pretty good for influencing, Mugwumps can lay down aurics really quickly, and Lucidian/dracnari unspecc'd bards aren't that great.

Tae'dae are bad due to their poor EQ time. Mugwumps are bad due to poor Charisma.

Karlach

Influencing EQ isn't based on your general EQ recovery, it's faster (or slower) based on your charisma stat. Tae'dae bards are brilliant influencers.

Shaddus

Iytha said:

Shaddus said:

@Iytha, why these? Tae'dae bard is pretty good for influencing, Mugwumps can lay down aurics really quickly, and Lucidian/dracnari unspecc'd bards aren't that great.

Tae'dae are bad due to their poor EQ time. Mugwumps are bad due to poor Charisma.

Except that auric/discordantchord damage isn't based on Charisma, IIRC. 

Moi

Morkarion said:

Influencing EQ isn't based on your general EQ recovery, it's faster (or slower) based on your charisma stat. Tae'dae bards are brilliant influencers.

My Recommended list isn't based on "What races go well with Cantor when optimizing a race/class build to do great at one part of the game?", but rather on "Which Cantor/race combos would let a new player try out every part of the game without mechanical frustrations?" Any race/class combo that is only good at one aspect of the game does not make that list, since the theoretical Tae'dae Cantor newbie might end up not liking influencing and be frustrated when they try to go bashing only to find out tae'dae bard bashing sucks. I am confident that anyone who is picking Tae'dae specifically for the great influencing or Mugwump specifically for the faster aurics and DCC eqs knows what they're doing and is well informed enough to make the right choice regardless of whether something's on the recommended list or not.

Riluna

It seems like you guys are putting a lot more races on the recommended list than I understand. I've put elfen and mugwump on for MD's and thinking about faeling for RPs (and they're not bad as far as playable, either). Forbidden is pretty much just ickytaint.

I've left 'hard to play' ones alone... do you guys mind sharing why you picked as many as you did? I feel like reading this maybe I should change a minimalist approach.