First look: Player races. My thoughts.

[Havok40k]

Just finished watching the and had a few thoughts I wanted to share and discuss with you guys!

I’ll start with facts we know now.

Short race
Color: Grey
Height: 1 block
Race: unknown
Specialty: mining faster, Fits in 1 tall doors. Destroys common blocks faster. Collect more dropped resourses

Average race
Color: Green
Height: 2 blocks
Race: Unknown
Specialty: Faster movement speed, 200% jump height

Tall race
Color: Orange
Height: 3 block
Race: “bird/eagle”
Specialty: Reduced fall damage. Builder, can “place more blocks”

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My ideas for each race after this point! Please share your thoughts!

Short race
Race: Mole man (Needs an interesting name!)

Reason: Fits the roll of a subterranean miner race that would be right at home in small tunnels. Excellent at digging or mining. Also, I’d prefer to NOT use the typical dwarf race and keep races more anthropomorphic.
Possible additional perks: Night sight. Higher rolls on tool durability and speed. This race excels at both mining and crafting mining tools! Can carry extra ore, or get bonus to gathered ore from nodes. Stands at 1.5 blocks high, but crouch to 1 block high. Can walk at normal speed while crouched, but can not run or jump while crouched.
Imagery: Pointed nose, large eyes, stubby arms and legs with large clawed hands. This creature doesn’t so much walk as it does waddle. Cute as a garden gnome!

Average race
Race: Feline, Mountain lion, Khajiit (This one knows Khajiit is trade marked, but it conveys the image nicely, yes?)

Reason: A fast, light and mobile race adept at scouting, exploring, and raiding. This race can cover lots of terrain and even vault small barriers even without the aid of grappling hooks.
Possible additional perks: Feline reflexes. This race attacks more quickly with daggers and other light weapons. When moving over one block high steps, does not need to jump, but rather vaults the block smoothly like a parkour runner. This race might have a tiny affinity for skooma… this one can not say.
Imagery: sleek, lanky race that moves with smooth graceful movements.

Tall race
Race: Raptor, Avian, Large predatory flightless bird. Arakkoa (Shadows gather!)

Reason: This race is either on the cusp of evolving flight (Raptor) or has since lost the ability to fly (Arakkoa), either way, it has the ability to slow it’s falls. It does not fly, it falls. With style. This race has taken building it’s nests to an art form, and so is now a master architect with building perks like greater reach when placing blocks
Possible additional perks: Gliding. Can direct it’s forward momentum when falling, making turns, moving forward or backwards like a flying squirrel. When crating basic building blocks, they can get additional blocks from from the base material (1 log = 4 planks, but for this race 1 log = 5 planks). This race has extra bag space for building materials.
Imagery: whether the race is raptor-like or more avian like the Arakkoa, this race will have colorful plums of feathers around it’s head and arms. Has long powerful legs for absorbing fall damage, with knee’s that bend in reverse to normal.

[Lilem]

This sounds nice, some avian creatures like Arakkoa can be interesting, especially if something like passive vulnerabilities/resistances is implemented for each race.

As for the races in general, I think implementing some not-so-obvious races could be cool. Amphibians is one of the races that I saw many players ask about, because it gives a unique opportunity to experience the world from another point of view (if they have a penalty for staying from the water for too long, that’d be even more cool). I think the main deal with races should be not just height/run speed differences, but more subtle ones, that affect gameplay in a less obvious but much more deep way.

[Brook]

My fear at this point is that Oort Online might become the same as every other game out there–because the incoming suggestions seem to be based on picking items from the vast game buffet already out there. (I had to look up “skooma,” by the way. Oort Online–in fact, no game–needs narcotics.) So far we seem to be more interested in the chrome than in the steel underneath.

To me, it looks like Oort Online is an exercise in economics. Breathing underwater or leaping over obstacles is interesting, but the ability to lay down territorial barriers and deal in materials of varying values implies that each race should have something by way of skills in the economy. The shortest block type clearly works on the supply side, which implies that the tallest block type would have to work on the demand side. Perhaps the tall type is a good overland explorer, but a terrible digger; the shortest type is a great digger but slow overland (particularly going over mountains). Right in the middle is the two-tall, with average skills in both.

I see teams of tall and short working across the worlds, with the talls laying claims and the shorts working them. That leaves the mids scrambling a bit, doesn’t it? Obviously there’s some balance issues to work out here, otherwise no one will play the mids. I’d thought about giving the talls some sort of trading bonus skills as well, but haven’t thought about how to balance that out among the other two types. (Considering that it’s not yet 7AM where I live, I’m amazed that I’ve done this much thinking.)

[Lilem]

I did read somewhere that you’ll be able claim a territory rich with resources (a crystal mountain for example) for youself and build a shop to sell it to other players, this seems like an interesting opportunity (especially if the amount of Beacons per player is limited and territory out of Beacon range will degrade to its original state).

As for the sizes, I think it’s interesting, but not THE most interesting feature that having different races suggests. Passive characteristics (maybe even hidden passives) sound truly promising to me, though — the penalty for staying away from water for too long for amphibious race that I stated above, for example. This suggests a whole different playstyle for this race, which revolves around being near the water most of the time, and promotes interesting solutions, like underwater towns, building aqueducts to make travelling across the continent possible, etc.

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