Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO
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Burns
Avatar of War Slayer
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Human and Ogres are the only races I really like and the size of ogres look like they are going to continually have the same clipping and access problems that EQ had (so wouldn't play ogre until better shrink options/potions). I think the whole too dark to play unless you want to clutter up an already limited inventory with light bullshit is retarded. If I was on the fence about playing this game, the night bullshit without the current gamma slider would be the deal breaker.
Edit: Even with the gamma slider maxed on a Human, you cant really see shit in Wyrmsbane or some of the outside zones (FP and one of the Elf areas, I think). I avoided underground on my first character because I heard it was dark, didn't have money for a lantern, and inventory/weight was extremely limited be be carrying around extra logs for torches when I need them all for camp fires.
Edit: Even with the gamma slider maxed on a Human, you cant really see shit in Wyrmsbane or some of the outside zones (FP and one of the Elf areas, I think). I avoided underground on my first character because I heard it was dark, didn't have money for a lantern, and inventory/weight was extremely limited be be carrying around extra logs for torches when I need them all for camp fires.
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Kirun
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That argument assumes the problem is player choice instead of bad constraint design. If 80% of players all land on the same race-trait combo, that's not evidence that a point system failed, it's evidence that the traits themselves aren't balanced or interesting enough. Locking power behind race is just a blunt instrument to paper over that.
Hard racial bonuses don’t actually "spread" diversity in any meaningful way - they just predetermine it. You don't get organic variety, you get spreadsheet-mandated race/class pairings where everyone already knows what the "right" answer is. Seeing 80% Ogre Warriors isn't healthier than seeing 80% Deep Elf whatever. It's the same outcome with less flexibility and more dead races.
A point-based system lets you tune traits directly instead of pretending race identity is doing the work. If something becomes overrepresented, you adjust costs, add competing options, or introduce situational strengths. That's actual balancing. Static racial stats just freeze the meta forever and call it diversity because the models look different.
And "who cares if no one plays Ogres" cuts both ways - why is the solution forcing people into them with stats instead of making Ogres appealing through visuals, lore, animations, or unique flavor that isn't raw throughput?
The goal shouldn't be to spread players out by force. It should be to give them real choices with real tradeoffs and let race be an identity decision, not a math problem you solve once and never revisit.
Players who just "want pretty pixels" are going to play whatever race they find most aesthetically pleasing no matter what traits you do/don't offer. This option at least gives the min-maxers out there an aesthetic choice as well, without being forced into the 4 "mandated" races.
Quaid
Trump's Staff
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If your homogenization of racial bonuses leads to players relying on aesthetics only for race selection, 80% of the choices made will be for 20% of the options. You need competitive desire to outweigh aesthetic preferences. Not force. If you don’t have this desire, go ‘gimp’ yourself for aesthetics. But if the carrot isn’t there
, people won’t willingly accept the stick.
Whether or not racial variety is ‘organic’ is irrelevant to the conceit of the game world, which should be paramount in this game. Theres plenty of board-room flattened Trion McRPG slop out there already.
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Quaid
Trump's Staff
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TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Ogres are cool. When I finally played an Ogre Shaman during a TLP it was absolutely wild that getting hit by stuff had zero effect on your casting. I had played Dark Elf all through EQ.
Presuming every single person plays min max to the core is kinda dumb anyway. Even if minmaxing is generally more prevalent.
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Hekotat
FoH nuclear response team
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Just in general, I see a lot of them running around. I saw one with an arrow quiver on his back (First time I've seen one) and it was ridiculously massive and made me want to play an Ogre Archer.
Female ogre warriors look sick.
Quaid
Trump's Staff
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There’s 7 races so far and not even 10% of players are choosing Ogre, and the pretty races aren’t even in yet. It’s not like EQ either where Ogre only had 3 class options and a racial xp penalty.
Hekotat
FoH nuclear response team
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Quaid
Trump's Staff
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Honestly that's pretty good for an "ugly and huge" race. I expect it'll trend upwards a touch. Their racial warstomp has some potential for meta cheesyness, and while they toned down the stats, they are still quite good for melee or tank classes. Ogre monks having another stun is pretty sick.
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
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Have they revealed or tested any of the end game? I can’t remember but did EQ show any of Naggy or Vox in their testing? Only thing I remember in the last phase was some kind of GM event but that’s it. We didn’t really have a lot of developed, raiding guilds at that point I guess…
Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
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This is still built on the assumption that aesthetics automatically dominate once you remove hard power locks, and that simply isn't borne out unless the system itself is shallow. Players don't choose purely on looks when meaningful tradeoffs exist - they'll choose based on expression. If 80% of players collapse into 20% of options, that's not because aesthetics "won," it's because the remaining 80% of options aren't offering compelling identities, mechanics, or situational advantages.
You're also framing "competitive desire" as something that can only be created by rigid racial power hierarchies. That's backwards. Competitive desire comes from optimization within constraints, not from being told at character creation that you picked wrong forever. A point-based or modular system doesn't remove the carrot, it makes the carrot contextual. You still sacrifice something to gain something else. You're just not forced to accept a permanent gimp because you liked the way your character looked.
As for "go gimp yourself for aesthetics," that's exactly the problem people are pushing back against. That philosophy doesn't deepen the world. It just externalizes bad design onto the player and calls it roleplay. A world feels coherent when choices make sense in-universe and in gameplay, not when players are punished for wanting their character to look a certain way.
And invoking "board-room flattened slop" misses the mark. Modular systems aren't inherently corporate or flattened, they're tools. What makes modern RPGs feel soulless isn't flexibility, it's the lack of meaningful friction and consequence. You can have strong world conceit and player agency at the same time. Hard racial stat locks don't protect the soul of a game, they just fossilize one interpretation of it and pretend that's depth.
If the only thing holding racial diversity together is forcing competitive players to eat aesthetic penalties, then the diversity was never real to begin with. It was just enforced symmetry dressed up as worldbuilding.
Valorath
Vyemm Raider
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What level of trade off are we willing to accept? I think racial differences are important and should be both meaningful and impactful. What is the point otherwise?
was the cheeseburger photo earlier a “you can get it your way at Wendy’s” comment? Make your own burger, make your own MMO?
was the cheeseburger photo earlier a “you can get it your way at Wendy’s” comment? Make your own burger, make your own MMO?
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Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I was fine with the original EQ "vision" (oops) that had racial stat differences, good and EVIL, harsh death penalties, xp penalties for ogres, another xp group penalty for being a SK, faction penalties, etc. I even would be fine with boons and penalties for whatever deity you pick. I like all that stuff. The fatties had to farm that shrink wand or whatever it was just to get into small areas or bribe a shammy iirc.
It causes lots of headaches for the devs, i know. And lots of confusion / drama with the playerbase. But that just makes it better. Not being sure if that guard was going to stomp me or not because I forgot to con it kept me engaged. And I liked farming dwarves for giant faction, even when it got a little tedious. Crushing those little fuckers was endless fun.
it gives the game character and creates all kinds of niche power / weakness situations in content that gets very boring very fast if everyone is the same.
All these little bitches that can't stand that an Ogre has more natrual strength and durability than a Gnome really fucked every modern game that could have been much better if the devs hadn't folded.
Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
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That's the right question to ask, because some tradeoff is absolutely necessary. If racial differences aren't meaningful, they're just flavor text. The tension is deciding where the impact lives and how permanent it should be. The mistake a lot of old systems made wasn't having strong racial identity. It was front-loading irreversible power at character creation in a way that permanently brackets viability. That turns "meaningful" into "solved," and once it's solved, it stops being expressive and just becomes homework.
The tradeoff also needs to be situational, not universal. If a racial bonus is always correct in every context, then it's not a choice it's a rule. Impactful differences should shine in some environments and fade in others. That preserves identity without creating a permanent tier list that everyone internalizes by level 5. Permanence matters too. Long-term commitment is good, lifelong punishment is not. It's fine if races lock you into certain tendencies, but the system should allow mastery, compensation, or specialization over time. Otherwise you're not choosing a race, you're just choosing whether you want to be optimal or stubborn.
Modularity helps because it decouples identity from optimization pressure, which is exactly what makes the tradeoff tolerable instead of coercive. Right now, fixed racial packages bundle together three different things whether you want them or not: Visual/narrative identity, mechanical identity, and optimization leverage. When those are hard-locked, the strongest mechanical lever wins every time, and the "choice" collapses into a solved problem. That's how you end up with four viable races and a graveyard of lore.
Modularity breaks that bundle. Instead of "Ogre = this entire stat block," you get a limited budget of racial power that you allocate into traits. The tradeoff still exists, but it's explicit and local, not global and permanent.
Here’s why that matters for the tradeoff you asked about:
First, it lets the game cap optimization without deleting differentiation. If everyone has, say, the same total racial power budget, the ceiling is controlled. You're no longer stacking Ogre + Warrior + Meta and getting a 25% advantage everywhere. You're choosing where you want your advantage to live, and accepting weakness elsewhere. That naturally keeps the difference in the 5-10% band instead of runaway gaps.
Second, it shifts racial impact from throughput to profile. Instead of "this race is better at damage, period," modular traits can create situational strengths: vision, sustain, resistances, travel, recovery, utility, information. Those matter, but they don't dominate every encounter. Two characters can be equally viable while being better in different contexts.
Third, it turns "wrong race" into "different build," not "mistake." With fixed racials, picking the wrong race is a permanent tax you pay forever. With modularity, it's just a different allocation. You didn't choose poorly, you chose a different set of tradeoffs. That's psychologically huge, and it keeps people from feeling punished for aesthetic or RP choices.
Fourth, it prevents meta collapse without forcing diversity. The fear that "everyone will pick the same race" assumes the race is the optimization vector. With modularity, the optimization vector becomes trait combinations, not character models. You'll still see metas, but they'll be distributed across races because the power isn't locked to the silhouette.
Fifth, it gives designers a tuning knob instead of a sledgehammer. If one racial trait is too strong, you nerf that trait, not an entire race. If one combination is dominating, you adjust costs or interactions. Fixed racials force devs into brutal reworks that feel like identity theft. Modularity lets them fine-tune.
Modularity makes the tradeoff visible, intentional, and bounded. You're not accepting an invisible lifelong penalty because you liked how your character looked. You're making a conscious exchange: "I want X strength, so I give up Y." That keeps racial identity meaningful without turning it into a spreadsheet-enforced caste system.