The "Races Next Timeline" Thread

I figure the collective wisdom/opinion of the player base will do a better job of this than imms deciding things, so lets use this thread to talk about race balancing.

What races are over played and why?

What races don’t get played and why?

What should the free races be?

What races have bad level spreads? What races have overpowered level spreads?

What races should just get removed?

What other relevant race issues are there to discuss?

At this point I’m more concerned about tweaking the races we have, not adding new ones.

Zabrak are overplayed, probably because they’re free and have great combat levels.

Dunno, seems like a lot have been used this TL. Don’t recall any Lanniks, but then I missed 90% of era 2.

I like the free races as it is now.

Humans have a bad spread under the 18 base stat.

Kushiban.

Dunno.

The main thing I’ve noticed that drives race selection is a character that is important in the current era.  When Rarsek started becoming more infamous, the Iktotchi’s were made.  the Dominion kicked up, and with the added price reduction of the Arkanians and Offshoots, that became a more used race.  Perhaps making a bonus for certain races that aren’t played as much, like a few free classes already leveled a bit or gear that isn’t as easily obtained by certain classes for said races, would be a good incentive to make under utilized races.

Kushiban need to go. Would like to see droid races that aren’t app only and aren’t HK-47 clones.

Some races could use better levels compared to others. It’s why they don’t get played a lot. I rarely saw Draethos, Aqualish, Devaronians and Sullustans. There may be other races with weird levels too – understandable for Gamorreans, but even they got interesting levels.

I’ve always wanted more love and attention for my favorite race.
Wookiees.

What races are over played and why?
-I think most races go through phases. Nothing can really be done to get around this.
What races don’t get played and why?
-I don’t often see people play Bith/Kubaz/Aqualish/Draethos. Not sure if it’s because of their level spread, points cost, or lack of interest, but whenever they get played, I never see them around for long, so I’d guess the latter option.
What should the free races be?
-I really like the free races we have available now. It’s a large selection of human flavors with quite a few common aliens in the Star Wars verse. It’d never hurt to swap out some of them every once in a while with some of the other inexpensive races, like Mon Calamari, Quarren, Sluiisi, etc.
What races have bad level spreads? What races have overpowered level spreads?
-Vanilla humans make me super sad. I’m of the opinion that they’re utterly worthless.
What races should just get removed?
-I hate Jawas. They should go away. I’m probably a minority in this opinion, however.
What other relevant race issues are there to discuss?
-I’d really like to see Umbaran put in. And maybe Killiks, but only as a full era event. Also? Additional available droid races would be cool. And make Jawas go away.

If there is some kind of stat tool to see how many active races there are then you should create a system where points races have a cost based on points with a points modifier increasing or decreasing the cost based on its popularity. Some races are unnecessarily expensive.

Mirialan, Zeltron, etc are all expensive when they don’t seem to have any glaring bonus or reason to not exists in the galaxy in numbers.

Of course there is special cases like Lorrdians should be rare for the current timeline for certain IC reasons.

I would roll a Draethos if they weren’t so expensive.

Wookiees are fine as they are. Trandoshans, on the other hand, seem to get the shaft compared to an equally priced race. I can’t think of it off the top of my head, but I know I looked at both Trandoshans and Weequay and saw that for the same price, Weequay were better hands down.

What races are over played and why?

Twi’leks and Zabraks are very common but I don’t think they are over played. Races like Humans, Twi’leks, Zabraks and Duros especially are -supposed- to be common. I think that canonically common races need to be free for good reason.

What races don’t get played and why?

Any race that doesn’t specifically excel at a certain role. This can include not being good, or not being apparently good.

What should the free races be?

The current free races are pretty good. I would like to see all of the Human non Echani variation races made free, as well. Corellian, Alderaanian, Naboo. That way, people can specialize if they’d like.

What races have bad level spreads? What races have overpowered level spreads?

Underpowered: Quarren, Gran, Bith, Neimoidian, Trandoshan, Sullustan and Falleen

Overpowered: Gand, Weequay, and Omwati.

What races should just get removed?

Miraluka, Kushiban

What other relevant race issues are there to discuss?

We need to think about other ways to make races good than just levels. There’s quite a few ways you can do this, including making sure affects are properly applied to them. Quality of life stuff like making certain races able to see in the dark, racial communications, water breathing and the like. I would be more inclined to play certain races even if they had poor level spreads.

I would like to throw my support behind taking a look at Bith and their levels, or at the very least their points. I wanted to roll a Bith earlier this timeline to play as a musician, but 1500 points for a character that would have been mostly for RP did not seem worth the cost to me. (1000:500 vs 500:1000?)

On a similar note, I think Devaronian are overpriced, and Trandoshan should be looked at.

The few droid characters I have seen have all been played well, though realistically they must be difficult to play as they usually have a reliance on someone to be their owner/master. This being said, if a different variety were to be opened such as a battle droid, they should cost but not be app only.

Why are Naboo free and Alderaanians 500:1000 when they get the same level spread, and Naboo are arguably better?

I think Omwati’s price justify their level spread. They make a good support character.

Rolling a Lorrdian slicer main and not getting 150 slicer was depressing. I do not know how it happened, but I know I was not the only one that it happened to. Their level ranges all say “3”, but I feel like they must be on the low end of that. I also believe that for being such a dextrous people, they should get better piloting levels than they do!

Wookiees need love. They have very little use aside from being armrippers, which I find to be a shame. Their racial stats are debilitating, and further enforce that stereotype.

Do something to Miraluka to make them “less awful” than they presently are. Are they intended to be applied for only if you want them to be a Jedi or Sith, or would they ever be granted for purely background characters?

Will Kiffar be opened?

As a final note, what Zeromus said about certain races having their racial affects applied making them more appealing than any level spread, I agree. A brief list:
Wookiee+Whiphid – cold resist
Mon_Calamari+Quarren – water breath
Falleen – skincolor
Verpine – telepathy variant
Besalisk – 4 arms (only can wield with 2?)
Givin – auto-navigator feat
Toydarian+Hutt+Defel – force immunity against mind trick skills such as unfamiliar, hate, fear

Sorry for the length, this topic was important!

No one is going to agree with me but I think most of the races need a significant point drop. Almost everyone saves up to buy force…and the result is a flood of stock humans because most of the interesting races cost points they’d rather save for said force purchase. More races should be free too, Zeltrons for example, I don’t get their cost in any capacity. Or Sluissi. Or Quarrens. Or Falleens. Well, you get the point. Even a deposit is enough to turn people off rolling one a lot of times. You want more racial diversity, increase the free races and lower the cost of the collective of the rest of them. With some exceptions.

Except Jawa’s. They can burn.

I agree with you, Ocerion

first i just want to bring this up again: firrerreo and chagrian? 1000 points and….      1 deposit? what?

ok

ideally, the point system (IMO) should allow easy access to the lower cost races, making them more “expensive” by raising the deposit price, this way players (especially newbies) can cultivate a higher rate of return and will be able to play the races they want without fear of losing all their points. as you move up the tiers the model becomes inverse, at the highest tier the point cost would be at or just above what the potential return is and the deposit should be lower. this would probably look like:
1/500

1/1000

500/1000

500/2000

1000/3000

1000/4000

2000/3000

3000/3000

4000/2000

5000/1000

What we have here is an effect akin to diminishing returns, races are affordable but the highest tier ones will yield little to no point profit. I believe that this system (or a similar modified one) could work in both limiting races that shouldn’t be too plentiful while also giving people who are afraid of not getting enough points to play the race they want a little security so they may be apt to be more adventurous

also: didn’t you guys have some sort of statistics counter to show you which races are being rolled and how frequently?