I feel like it would be cool if we could look at updating innate racial abilities since many of them are outdated and have low impact in modern EQ. New racial innates could make for interesting synergies with race/class combo. The Drakin was a really well made race with a cool little active ability that had some progression tied into it. I think other races could incorporate this same type of thing. The idea is that every race has an ability on a moderate CD (10-20 min) that has a short duration high impact window (20-30) sec Some ideas that I had for each race would be Ogre Bashing Time: All damage is increased by 20% Gnome Innovation: All ability, item and spell cooldowns reduced by 50% Dwarf Hardiness: All damage received is reduced by 40% Troll Regrowth: Recover 15% of your max HP every tick High Elven Sorcery: Reduce mana cost of all spells by 50% Iksar Battle Lust: Heal to then lock HP at 20% Wood Elven Nimble Dance: Dodge all incoming melee strikes Dark Elven Fury: Every mob with you on their hatelist fixates on your target Halfling's Pure Heart: Cure and become immune to all Debuffs Barbarian Subjugation: Melee attacks cannot be avoided Spells cannot be resisted I know I missed some races but this what was I could come up with off the top of my head
I'm a huge fan of racial benefits/detriments in EQ so long as they're of relatively equal value and that character grow/level out of their utility. Ex. Ogre frontal physical stun immunity seems like a must-have, but once you get good amount of AAs/hSTA you gain the ability effectively. Same with good vision, foraging, etc. If they make an "EQ Next 2, the Sequel Jr." I would hope they include these innate factors again. Also, if there is one thing I've learned in giving input and receiving feedback with the Dev group over the years, it's that multiplicative abilities really, really reduce the ability to add further improvements in the future. Bringing all that together, I think your ideas would be really neat as a "booster buff" for characters below a certain level. For example, the "Ogre Bashing Time" would be granted at level 1, but would disappear at level 90 or something. (Who cares about sub-100 balance on Live servers anyway?)
Yeah I can see how that might be an issue but for me the point of these abilities would be to create some interesting differences between the race class combos so they would be the same and maintain their power level as you level up. Like perhaps you like the idea of playing an highelf cleric because you can that extra sustain or maybe you prefer the dwarf style of cleric being extra durable for when you take aggro or maybe you want a gnome cleric who can fire off heals more often.
Probably but the thats not really the point. More so would the idea of races having interesting active abilities be enjoyable?
Gnomes wouldn't get one, their innate is tinkering. So, either everyone would have to get tinkering in order to fairly give gmoes an "activatable racial innate", or they can't have one. As others have said, these are nowhere near equal impact nor are they within the realm of possibility bc they're way overpowered(and drakkin racial is NOTHING like these in power) I agree that the racial innates could use some tweaking so they all at least have some use in late game, but some already do, like xp bonus, drakkin, gnome. That said, nothing is ever remotely equal in this game. Warriors have 20k fewer aas to grind than sks or shm for example. It was always war/rog were lowest and sk/shm/rgr were highest but sk and shm have far overtaken ranger, and war is far below every other class. The end result isn't that enormous though. If wars were only 2/3 as effective as sks at tanking(and idk what the actual grind numbers are after autogrants but I'm betting it's even bigger gap) there'd be a major riot. Sure, they don't have the utility, but their key job is still what they're best at. Other classes have multiple jobs or aren't so lucky to be best in show, but they grind a lot more to be jack of all trades, master of none. Adding in mega op innates would just make that worse.
Once you start making racial abilities more powerful, there becomes a "best race" for each class, severely reducing the variety of characters you see in the game, which makes it boring. This is why you see so many ogre berserkers, due to their frontal stun immunity. I'm open to minor abilities, but anything significant risks ruining character creation in this game.
Well here's what Vanguard had: Some are "useless" in the eyes of a raider, like the Woodelf ability. Nothing is extremely OP's, though Varnthari and Qalathari Human really fought over it for best tanking ability (Qalathari reads as a full invuln but it is only "combat" damage) In all of my time playing VG from Beta to sunset, no race was chosen over another for a specific role... unlike original/early EQ. What it did bring was a lot of desire for class diversity, especially in the melee and tank arena. Racial abilities were not limited to level issues, like many EQ mob immunities, and only immunity to stun ever came into play.
The innate racial abilities added alot (role play) flavor in the past which defined the races and made them special. Today everything is muddled which does even affect the classes. It would be good to revamp the innate racial abilities as most races do not receive any notable boni/mali today. As example, as the frontal stun immunity is still very powerfull ogres should also receive a real malus (like worse melee evasion because of their size) which currently is or was just higher food and drink consumption. Dark elves could have an innate resistance bonus to fear effects but a malus to stun effects. As an underground race they currently have the ultravision bonus which is outdated but they could also receive a ranged weapon malus during daytime in outdoor zones because of an unsharp eye sight at daylight and bright light generally.
