Forced background? Pure crazy, if you ask me…
- August 12th, 2010
- Posted in Opinion . Rant . Roleplay . Star Wars . The Old Republic
- By blur
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In the recent Forced Species article at Massively, there’s a comment:
I do not know all the details at this time, but I do know that — as it stands — there is only one backstory choice which allows for a non-Human for each class. If we take the bounty hunter, for example, the choices are currently Outlaw, The Merc, and Gladiator. If you choose the Outlaw or The Merc backstory, you get a Human; whereas, if you choose the Gladiator backstory, your species will be Ratattaki.
I’ve read through the article once, twice, three times and it doesn’t get any better. The decision is ridiculous. It’s like Bioware, who always harp on about understanding RPGs, don’t actually understand RPGs at all.
For example, if you want to be a Ratattaki you MUST have the Gladiator background?!? Excuse me?!? Where is the diversity and imagination and everything else we associate with roleplaying in that decision?
I don’t even WANT to be a Ratattaki Bounty Hunter but, for those who do, I imagine some might like the option of the Outlaw or Merc background instead. Yet, they get wedged into being the Gladiator background only.
Crazy.
Pure crazy.
Who sanity checked all these ideas? Or was it just a group of guys sitting around a table too scared to disagree with one another for fear of being the odd one out (not dissimilar to the way the Star Wars prequels were made — and look how they ended up???)
And now some dummy, over on the TOR forums, has said to me that players still “have control over their character” in response to me making the point that this takes some of the control over a player’s character out of the player’s hands.
I mean, in what universe? How wrong can you be? If your race is dictated by the background you want… or your background is dictated by the race you want, YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL. That is so obvious. Sheesh. The Bioware fanboi’s are out in force today, I can see.
Since Baldur’s Gate, BW has not made RP games in the sense any P&P RP would use it. You follow someone else’s story, not your own.
I’ve long accepted this, and so this bit of info comes a little surprise: specie is a background option, with some different appearance thrown into the mix.
Disappointing, to say the least. I thought we were well past the days of being locked into specific race/class combinations. Heaven forbid someone want to play a Gladiator-style character and NOT be a Ratattaki…
I think they should borrow from Aion’s character generator system a little and let you have character design sliders to make and tweak your character however you see fit, but if they want to eliminate by race, then to not allow certain features or designs for certain classes. (As an extreme example, don’t have a “fur” slider for classes that wouldn’t allow for a Wookiee.)
All in all, though, it makes me glad I chose Human and Bounty Hunter for my first character; it seems I’ll have more flexibility that way.
Yeah, my BH is human, so it seems I get to choose two backgrounds. Merc seems the most likely, unless Outlaw has some sort of cool vibe going for it.
Very interesting, lets hope that this might be changed through game testing.
Appears by the time I got to reading the article they pulled down the part relating to this issue.
Editor’s Note: Some information in this post was NDA-breaking and was consequently removed. It’s Massively’s policy to not break the NDA on any game’s beta. Once we confirmed that it was leaked, unofficial information that broke NDA, it was removed.
Really disappointing. seems like one of two reasons:
1. BioWare, for reasons relating to coding or some other computer magic hocus-pocus that I don’t understand, cannot program the full range of options before the release window. (Would they put them in later? WHo knows?)
2. BioWare is really, really dumb. Like, they don’t understand the basic thing that Blur’s laying out abofe, that is to say, that these kinds of decisions on game mechanics on their part PROFOUNDLY LIMIT our stories, and this goes against their RP?Story-centric ethos that they CLAIM is driving the development of this game.
They seriously need someone in there, like me (and by that, I don’t mean “me”, but someone with the same attitude as me), who will sit there at meetings and then feel comfortable enough to tell everyone why their concept is stupid — with examples — and why the need to rethink it. From what I can see, however, such people aren’t allowed to exist in Bioware.
All i can say is, you do know that its still alpha/early beta. More Races / back stories are likely. Also there may end up being choices within back stories. We are still so far out its hard to tell if we are looking at a moon or a space station! Just a thought from a random dude
Btw, Howdy
Greetings from crossbones, I’ve found your theories and opinions to be quite interesting so I thought You might here my opinion better here.
While it is true that there has background determines race or vice versa BioWare have hinted/spoken about the likelyhood of a system that will allow you to open up new races, upon achieving a certain goal with that race with another character.
Now before you say that forces us to play through again – this is true we get to experience a whole new story with a new character, it has also been stated how there are more races to be announced so maybe there will be more backgrounds/races to choose from at release.
Also providing there is enough diversity for each class I think the backgrounds/race specifics could mean more story unique contents rather than replacing a few words in conversations.
Anyway, I hope you appriciate my post – loving your website and a big Yarr! from the Crossbones crew, loving what I’m seeing from your leadership blur.
according to teh dev’s the game is already doen and they r jsut adding polishing. Since it would require signifigant programming to add another background story they won’t.
On a similar note they REALLY neeed to add an option to change pitch/tone for character creation. That way you still use the same voice over however no two toons will sound alike. Remember it is ONE voice per class.:(