Overall, Freeblood is a poor race

[NrthnStar5]

I decided to roll a Freeblood since I got it with the last winter reward. This is my feedback.

Pros

1.) Unique combat animations

Cons

1.) Most hair styles were already available, the new ones were not very "vampire" in nature to me. 

2.) Eye color - When I saw the palette of colors I was excited, only to find that only bright greens and blues really show up in the eyes. The other colors were far too muted. I'd like blood red eyes as a Vampire, or black empty eyes. 

3.) Skin tone colors - Too much like the Dark Elves or the Erudites

4.) Flexibility with features - Many features hardly make any changes. Some of the eye sliders and nose sliders hardly change anything. 

5.) Would have liked to see a more unique color palette of hair colors

Overall, I'm sad to say this race seemed rushed, and not up to par with the other races. Even the newest races of Fae/Arasi and Sarnak seem more unique and polished. 

I'm also not a fan at all of just plopping in a new race and having it put on the market place. My suggestion? If you are going to make a new race, implement it in the game with a more organic setting. Add it to a game update or an expansion pack, give us lore, and a proper starting area with fleshed out lore. 

It saddens me as it seems this is just another down step in quality for the game. I don't mean it to be putting down the people that worked on this. It just seems like quality is not what it used to be, and It just seems to me like it's due to smaller dev team, smaller resources. 

[Brigh]

skin color shouldn't vary much from any in-game vampire.

[NrthnStar5]

Brigh wrote:

skin color shouldn't vary much from any in-game vampire.

I would have liked to see more pale/white tones. Vampires should look cold and pale, not dark brown/blue.

[Hoppytehubah]

NrthnStar5 wrote:

I decided to roll a Freeblood since I got it with the last winter reward. This is my feedback.

Pros

1.) Unique combat animations

Cons

1.) Most hair styles were already available, the new ones were not very "vampire" in nature to me. 

2.) Eye color - When I saw the palette of colors I was excited, only to find that only bright greens and blues really show up in the eyes. The other colors were far too muted. I'd like blood red eyes as a Vampire, or black empty eyes. 

3.) Skin tone colors - Too much like the Dark Elves or the Erudites

4.) Flexibility with features - Many features hardly make any changes. Some of the eye sliders and nose sliders hardly change anything. 

5.) Would have liked to see a more unique color palette of hair colors

Overall, I'm sad to say this race seemed rushed, and not up to par with the other races. Even the newest races of Fae/Arasi and Sarnak seem more unique and polished. 

I'm also not a fan at all of just plopping in a new race and having it put on the market place. My suggestion? If you are going to make a new race, implement it in the game with a more organic setting. Add it to a game update or an expansion pack, give us lore, and a proper starting area with fleshed out lore. 

It saddens me as it seems this is just another down step in quality for the game. I don't mean it to be putting down the people that worked on this. It just seems like quality is not what it used to be, and It just seems to me like it's due to smaller dev team, smaller resources. 

I concur. I was excited to recieve this as a reward, and quickly created my own.... only to be greatly disappointed in my character creation selections. I was unimpressed and after playing the char for  a half hour or so.. I deleted it. Not worth it to me, I could basically make an erudite look about the same just not as ugly. Just disappointed. Also - I agree that this could have been rolled out with a game update to include more background, and content such as ?new starting zone? or even its own questline within a few of the existing starting zones. Just my 2 cents.

[Firecracker]

You know the designers of them was wanting them look like zombies more then vampires? Is why the colors options are more for zombies then what most of the player base thinks vampires should look like. My biggest complaint is they actually lied about how we the players would have more ways to customize them to how we would want them to be, but as you can tell you can only make them look like zombies, zombies and zombies!

…and yes I am being sarcastic about this for I want some things fixed about them. They even structurally look disfigured which makes them look weak and wouldn’t take but a light pull to yank the arm out.

Really they should call them Zombloods instead.

[Laiina]

You realize that vampires are not real, so any speculation about what they look like is a bit... speculative

And who's to say that there are not vampire ogres and trolls?

[Stormflint]

Laiina wrote:

You realize that vampires are not real, so any speculation about what they look like is a bit... speculative

And who's to say that there are not vampire ogres and trolls?

This an internet forum, how dare you bring logic here!

[Hoppytehubah]

Laiina wrote:

You realize that vampires are not real, so any speculation about what they look like is a bit... speculative

And who's to say that there are not vampire ogres and trolls?

Actually, this supports my original feeling that there were not enough customization options to these! If the race is vampire - ok... but isn't a vampire a being that is infected and TURNS into a vampire?? This could be ANY race! So the fact that you can only create what looks like a weak diseased high elf is ridiculous!

[Atragon]

It was a cheap and fast way to get people to pony up 20 bucks.  Take existing character model with some minor adjustments and bam - profit.

[Barq Bandit]

Hoppytehubah wrote:

Laiina wrote:

You realize that vampires are not real, so any speculation about what they look like is a bit... speculative

And who's to say that there are not vampire ogres and trolls?

Actually, this supports my original feeling that there were not enough customization options to these! If the race is vampire - ok... but isn't a vampire a being that is infected and TURNS into a vampire?? This could be ANY race! So the fact that you can only create what looks like a weak diseased high elf is ridiculous!

Creating vampire version models for every race in the game wouldn't have been a good use of time, perhaps.  Plus, there'd be the same issue as having Standard and Alternate character models for all the races present at the same time.  Too many character models makes the client cry.

They did mention in the lore for the Freebloods that only Humans and the elven races seemed to turn without perishing during the process.

[Lethe5683]

Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Plus, there'd be the same issue as having Standard and Alternate character models for all the races present at the same time.

I am so sick of seeing people say this, it's not true at all.

[Rainmare]

Hoppytehubah wrote:

Actually, this supports my original feeling that there were not enough customization options to these! If the race is vampire - ok... but isn't a vampire a being that is infected and TURNS into a vampire?? This could be ANY race! So the fact that you can only create what looks like a weak diseased high elf is ridiculous!

The Freebloods actually did get some decent lore to them. they are an experiment gone bad, so to speak. the D'ryil, the Neriak vampires, using notes from Taserrina/Mayong were trying to learn how to 'turn' others without using the Ewer of Sul'dae (thier previous method of turning). they tried on several races...only elves and humans surivived the process, probably due to them not only trying to 'turn' them, but 'enhance' the bloodline, make it stronger.

the first real partial success was the Freeblood originator, Sarkon (same vamp from NoTD house) he survived the turning process...but was physically weaker, his regeneration was poor/non-existant...and most annoying, he was not naturally subserviant to his 'creator' or bloodline. (This last bit is also what happened with Tserrina, which mayong never puzzled out why exactly, as far as we know)

however Sarkon's escape bothered them most, because apparently the offest to his supposed 'weakness' is he can roam about in the daylight. The Freeblood race are basically human/elvish adventures that tried the NoTD house and got eaten.

As to thier look...yeah I was disappointed that while you can make a pretty attractive female Freeblood...males can't seem to get past the face that looks like they just tried to suck on a lemon...and look far older/mummified in the face as well.

[Kamimura]

NrthnStar5 wrote:

Cons

1.) Most hair styles were already available, the new ones were not very "vampire" in nature to me. 

2.) Eye color - When I saw the palette of colors I was excited, only to find that only bright greens and blues really show up in the eyes. The other colors were far too muted. I'd like blood red eyes as a Vampire, or black empty eyes. 

These are my only real issues with the Freeblood. More unique hairstyles would have been very nice (personally, no issues with the colors we have though).  The eye colors were a real dissapointment. The bright blue and green are nice and vivid - but there's no way to get a true red even though it looks like you should be able to. I think their eye colors need a bit of tweaking to be able to get a few more options of brighter eyes like the blue and green.

[Lethe5683]

They still seem like a beta race.

[Barq Bandit]

Lethe5683 wrote:

Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Plus, there'd be the same issue as having Standard and Alternate character models for all the races present at the same time.

I am so sick of seeing people say this, it's not true at all.

How so?  I could be wrong, of course, but I'm only stating what I've gleaned from dev posts and interviews.  Let me explain my understanding of the issue, and perhaps you can show me where you think my thinking has gone astray.

I think most people point to a Alternate Human male standing next to a Standard Human female and say, "Look!  See?  They CAN be in the same zone!".  This is not the issue.  It's not that they are oil and water somehow.  They're just character models.  Technically, you could spawn a Standard model male Human next to a Alternate model male Human with no issues.  But the devs have to think about extremes, not just standing two Humans next to each other.

Right now, we have twenty playable races.  Standing in a zone with two of every race (one female, one male) right now would mean the game loading and animated 40 unique character models.  That is a lot of work already.  (Trust me, I know.  Standing in a crowd out in Antonica during Antonia Bayle server's "Festival of Unity" each summer slays my FPS.)  Eleven of these races have Alternate model choices, so say you implement this feature of having Standard and Alternate for every race/gender combination that features them present at the same time, and now you have twenty-two *more* unique character models running around in the zone.  Sixty two?  Seriously?  With EQ2's engine?  Mass crowd gatherings (such as we experienced the day of the Aether Races, for example) would bring quite a few people's systems to a screeching halt.

Player character models are much more complicated than the models for house items or even mobs.  Mobs are all one piece.  Player character models involve settings and armor and weapon choices.  From what I gather from reading dev posts, implementing this would frequently lead to issues in crowded areas.  It could be done, technically, but you'd need to insure that every single player out there had really, really good hardware to run it.

Similarly, making a vampire race version for every playable race, while very cool in concept, would probably be impracticable, at least, to my understanding.

[Brigh]

My point was that when you look in-game the majority of vampires are dark-elf looking. It might be in the lore. Dark elves were created by Innoruuk from torturing a high elf king and queen for centuries. I don't know if EQ vampires came out of dark elves. If I remember correctly non-vampires like Xalgoz and/or some other one were created as an experiment by another race (VS?).

[Lethe5683]

Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Lethe5683 wrote:

Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Plus, there'd be the same issue as having Standard and Alternate character models for all the races present at the same time.

I am so sick of seeing people say this, it's not true at all.

How so?  I could be wrong, of course, but I'm only stating what I've gleaned from dev posts and interviews.  Let me explain my understanding of the issue, and perhaps you can show me where you think my thinking has gone astray.

Sorry if my previous reply sounded a bit rude, I'm sick and not in a good mood.

Anyways, the reason that having more character models doesn't cayuse much change in performance is that the game renders every model separatly regurdless of what type it is.  It's the number of people that's the issue not the variety of races.  You could have 40 human males in a zone and the lag would be pretty much the same as if there were 1 of every race/gender.  There is only one difference with having more variety of models and that is the texture memory, which having more races will use marginally more memory.  But considering the vast majority of memory used for loading a character is the character's equipment, having all the same race with a variety of equipment would use much more than all different races with a couple different equipment setups.

[Barq Bandit]

Lethe5683 wrote:

Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Lethe5683 wrote:

Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Plus, there'd be the same issue as having Standard and Alternate character models for all the races present at the same time.

I am so sick of seeing people say this, it's not true at all.

How so?  I could be wrong, of course, but I'm only stating what I've gleaned from dev posts and interviews.  Let me explain my understanding of the issue, and perhaps you can show me where you think my thinking has gone astray.

Sorry if my previous reply sounded a bit rude, I'm sick and not in a good mood.

Anyways, the reason that having more character models doesn't cayuse much change in performance is that the game renders every model separatly regurdless of what type it is.  It's the number of people that's the issue not the variety of races.  You could have 40 human males in a zone and the lag would be pretty much the same as if there were 1 of every race/gender.  There is only one difference with having more variety of models and that is the texture memory, which having more races will use marginally more memory.  But considering the vast majority of memory used for loading a character is the character's equipment, having all the same race with a variety of equipment would use much more than all different races with a couple different equipment setups.

I wonder if they've tested this internally, spawned 40 Human males in a room, noted the impact, and then spawned 40 characters of gender pairs from every race and noted the same.  I'm having some trouble wrapping my head around the idea that the impact would be about the same.   I could be imagining it, but even with simple models like house items, I've often felt like there was a noticeable difference between a full house that used a theme and used many of the same few house items over and over versus one that used one each of as many different house items as possible.  Just seems to me like it gives the video card more to do.

I'd love to hear a current developer's comments on this.  I suspect there's probably more to it than either of us have a handle on.

[d1anaw]

Hoppytehubah wrote:

Laiina wrote:

You realize that vampires are not real, so any speculation about what they look like is a bit... speculative

And who's to say that there are not vampire ogres and trolls?

Actually, this supports my original feeling that there were not enough customization options to these! If the race is vampire - ok... but isn't a vampire a being that is infected and TURNS into a vampire?? This could be ANY race! So the fact that you can only create what looks like a weak diseased high elf is ridiculous!

Did you read the lore that was attached to them? They are not called vampires, they are called freebloods, a specific RACE. And I like mine.

[Beef_Supre]

From the perspective of a player uninterested in playing one, but very open to new races in general:

I think they're pretty decent, with the females looking great, but the males looking terrible. Skin tone is a bit too bluish/gray whatever, but outside of that I think they did pretty well.

[Tigress]

when i see the vampires/freebloods, i think dark/high elf.  there is nothing unique about them.  it appears that they took Race A and made some minor changes to make Race B. 

i was a bit disappointed with the look. the boys look very ugly.  the girls do not look like a vampire.

• why can't i have pale skin with grey eyes? 

• why can't i customize my teeth and have larger canines?

• why can't vampires track?  isn't that what vampires are supposed to be able to do?

• why don't vampires hover or float as they fall?

i am left wondering why their racial traits are for scouts/mages bc they fight with their hands.  why couldn't they have been given STA as their trait and then pick whatever as the back up?  (STR would make the most sense, if you consider how they fight.)

they get teleport to friend but do not have the ability to float in the air.  really?  lol.   safefall doesn't make sense.  they should get hover.  isn't this the race that at level 90 doesn't need a mount?

on a positive note-->the combat animation of a bruiser vampire is nice. 

[Lethe5683]

Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I could be imagining it, but even with simple models like house items, I've often felt like there was a noticeable difference between a full house that used a theme and used many of the same few house items over and over versus one that used one each of as many different house items as possible.  Just seems to me like it gives the video card more to do.

That's because different house items use all different textures and your video card has to load every texture.  It has to do this with characters as well, however most of the textures loaded is for the character's equipment not for anything to do with that race specifically.  All races use the same texture for most items, there are a few that are different for different races but mostly the only race specific textures being loaded would be any part of their body that is not covered.

[Lethe5683]

Tigress wrote:

when i see the vampires/freebloods, i think dark/high elf.  there is nothing unique about them.  it appears that they took Race A and made some minor changes to make Race B. 

i was a bit disappointed with the look. the boys look very ugly.  the girls do not look like a vampire.

• why can't i have pale skin with grey eyes? 

• why can't i customize my teeth and have larger canines?

• why can't vampires track?  isn't that what vampires are supposed to be able to do?

Many of the racial traits in this game don't make sense, SoE and logic do not mix.

• why don't vampires hover or float as they fall?

Um... why would they?

[Valentina]

I agree that the models are only so-so at best, and that SOE missed out on a real chance to show how they could do a next-gen player model. You might want to change the post subject though... it's not that the Freebloods are a poor race, it's that they have a poor player model.

[Chulanowa]

None of the Soga, or soga-based models (Freeblood, Fae, Arasai) have any meaningful customization options besides hair (and all hairstyles are pretty much identical between all the models) and coloration. With standard models, you could make a well-detailed and attractive character, or one that looks totally derp. With the soga-based stuff, all you can get is some vague variations on a rigid model that are only noticable in the character creation screen.

So, of course you're not getting a lot of customization options with the freeblood; Their model structure has about the same fluidity as EQLive's Luclin models.

'Course, what did you expect for a Smedbucks™ creation? Sparkles, perhaps?

[Pakhet]

Not sure what people were expecting... look at all the vampires in game, they all kind of look like elves. Most of them are high elf. Of course the freebloods are going be elvenish!

We never got fine detail customization - ever.

They don't get hover, but they get a flying mount option in bats.

Yes I find them horribly ugly, they are basically half-elves in racial traditions... but some people like them I personally don't like dark elves either, or ogres, or trolls... to each their own.

[d1anaw]

Beef_Supreme wrote:

From the perspective of a player uninterested in playing one, but very open to new races in general:

I think they're pretty decent, with the females looking great, but the males looking terrible. Skin tone is a bit too bluish/gray whatever, but outside of that I think they did pretty well.

I will give you that one. Mine looks hot and my husband's looks like Emperor Pallantine.

[Lethe5683]

Pakhet wrote:

Yes I find them horribly ugly, they are basically half-elves in racial traditions... but some people like them I personally don't like dark elves either, or ogres, or trolls... to each their own.

Yeah I don't like: humans, barbarians, half elfs, erudites, gnomes, kerra, dwarfs, fae, frogloks, halflings, high elfs, wood elfs, arasai, dark elfs, iksar, ogres, trolls or sarnak.

[Blakkmantis]

Rainmare@Oasis wrote:

Hoppytehubah wrote:

Actually, this supports my original feeling that there were not enough customization options to these! If the race is vampire - ok... but isn't a vampire a being that is infected and TURNS into a vampire?? This could be ANY race! So the fact that you can only create what looks like a weak diseased high elf is ridiculous!

The Freebloods actually did get some decent lore to them. they are an experiment gone bad, so to speak. the D'ryil, the Neriak vampires, using notes from Taserrina/Mayong were trying to learn how to 'turn' others without using the Ewer of Sul'dae (thier previous method of turning). they tried on several races...only elves and humans surivived the process, probably due to them not only trying to 'turn' them, but 'enhance' the bloodline, make it stronger.

the first real partial success was the Freeblood originator, Sarkon (same vamp from NoTD house) he survived the turning process...but was physically weaker, his regeneration was poor/non-existant...and most annoying, he was not naturally subserviant to his 'creator' or bloodline. (This last bit is also what happened with Tserrina, which mayong never puzzled out why exactly, as far as we know)

however Sarkon's escape bothered them most, because apparently the offest to his supposed 'weakness' is he can roam about in the daylight. The Freeblood race are basically human/elvish adventures that tried the NoTD house and got eaten.

As to thier look...yeah I was disappointed that while you can make a pretty attractive female Freeblood...males can't seem to get past the face that looks like they just tried to suck on a lemon...and look far older/mummified in the face as well.

This^^^  1010111011

[sorwen]

As I said before it would have been great if they would have taken the opportunity to create some type of racial modifier that allowed you to take a character of any race and assign it a different racial page. The reason is if this did well then they could implement others. Were-creatures, other undead, etc. If it had the flexibility to use any racial template then the options were limitless. They swear that Freeblood were not just thrown together so they could have spent their development time on them better.