Nightborne: The Fixes We Need

Community General Discussion
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*NOTE: Original Topic is found at :

*NOTE: This topic’s OP is made by Lyaena <PewPewGankingCrew>

NOTE: This is a repost of Valquois US from May. Seeing as we’re going through BFA’s for quite a while now and many months without a hint of changes to Nightborne, I am posting this to again try to get developer attention on these issues. In this post, I will post her and my opinion on the matter.

While I believe everyone is glad this race was made playable, I think I speak for the majority of Nightborne players when I say the conversion from NPC race to player race went rather poorly and totally not to our expectations. In this thread, I will highlight the issues I have with the Nightborne model, heritage armor and racials as well as bring up suggestions to remedy these issues.

Foreword

Legion spent its first endgame story arc on the plight of the Nightborne. Understandably, its a very modern way of retelling of the Blood Elf storyline, the questlines of the Nightfallen, their rebellion and liberation of Suramar from Elisande and the Legion was amongst my favorite and most enjoyable parts of Legion.

The variety of the NPC’s is also amazing when you spend time and look through them all. Nobles, craftsmen, guards, arcanists, merchants and the very citizens; all have an incredible appearance and attitude (which is why I like them so much). They also have a variety of different armor types in different colorings which further contribute to the feel of Suramar city. Importantly, these armors are built in straight into the model, like Naga and Vrykul NPC’s.

When the Allied race system was introduced, and we learned this race that was so fleshed out, polished and contributed to a vast portion of Legion content was becoming playable, I’m sure everyone was excited. However, when the actual reveal and data mining happened, everyone saw how much Blizzard has changed the Nightborne from the NPC presentation, most of it not for the better.

Main issue #1: Lack of Options

Skin options: 3

Face options: 6

Hair options: 6

Hair color options: 6 (7 for males if you count no hair)

Earring options: 6 (including no earings)

Tattoo options: 4 (including no tattoos)

6 or less options across every field. Easily the least amount of variability or customizations of any race (except for Lightforged, which have similar if not less to these). There isn’t much to say about this. If you can find a way to give Void Elves 8 shades of blue/black/purple and 12 hairstyles (even though we didn’t spend any time of the Legion story about them) I don’t see why is it an issue to get similar numbers with Nightborne (considering the vast majority of Legion story was about them). The Void Elves even get 5 skin tones despite all being shades of blue/purple, similar shades that Nightborne use. After seeing the amount of fleshing out Dark Iron and Mag’har have received, Nightborne really fall by the wayside in terms of quality.

Considering the actual Nightborne that we unlock are the one’s we cure with the Arcan’dor fruit, I believe lore wise it wouldn’t be a problem if we can use the Nightfallen as customization options, similar as to how the Mag’har orcs work. In the images below I have added 3 more skin options as well as 2 more tattoo options for each gender. Which in turn helps to remedy the skin/tattoo limitations. Considering these models share the skeleton with the NPC Nightborne, it wouldn’t be an issue to implement them.

[Album] imgur.com

Main Issue #2: Differences from NPC counterparts

Barring a few specific examples (Blood Elf city guards), I don’t think any playable race has had to deal with regular NPC members of its faction looking so drastically different, and unfortunately better than, playable options.

One Image Summary:

Firstly, faces. Nightborne faces look almost directly copied and edited from Night Elven character counterparts. This is especially true with the males. When you compare a Nightborne male NPC to a male player, it’s not even remotely close. The Nightborne NPC males are very gaunt faced, with narrow features, yet stern looks. Player faces for males look fat, and their ears are far too wide, taking up nearly half the head. Also, all but the first face option for female Nightborne lack facial geometry, which is easily noticible on the character selection screen and barbershop.

Secondly, and probably the biggest complaint: eyes. While I understand that facial rigging needed to be added, there’s no excuse for making such a drastic departure from the iconic Nightborne slanted/slim eye shape, considering player races like Blood Elf males and Pandaren males use smaller eyes just fine. Nightborn eye shape emphasized and captured the regal and haughty, proud and proper flavor the Nightborne radiate as NPCs. On player characters, this is all but completely lost with big, bright, open eyes akin to Night Elves.

Thirdly, tattoos. While they are certainly a welcome addition considering their presence on the NPCs, they are so faint you can barely see them, and our heritage armor, especially on males, covers up so many of the tattooed areas that it doubles down on how invisible the tattoos look. A couple more pattern options wouldn’t be unwelcome here either…

Fourth, jewelry. Throughout the NPCs in Suramar, we see Nightborne dressed in 3 primary metal tones, Silver, Gold, and Bronze. Simple palette recolors for existing options would go a long way in increasing variability.

Also, while a minor nitpick, female Nightborne bust areas seem downsized from their NPC counterparts to the point that their sternums poke out further than their breasts, which looks really, really weird.

Lastly, Nightborne NPCs are shown to have things player models omit entirely, such as glowing arcane fingertips, arcane strands flowing in their hair, and a couple of ear directions (some Nightborne NPCs curve upwards, while some flow straight backward.

All of these issues on their own wouldn’t be consequential, but combined they all only serve to make the player version of Nightborne seem diluted and uncool. This should not be possible with how amazing their presentation was in Legion.

Main Issue #3: Herigate Armor

Even though the Heritage armor uses the palette established by the nightborne the overall armor look is extremely ugly in comparison to the other Heritage armors (such as Void Elves) and in comparison to the Suramar NPC’s.

Firstly, the chestpiece robe simply determines too many of the 3D “attachables” as I like to call them, the extra armor plates and bits and bobs seen in various new armors. In this case, the neck armor, chin cap, thigh plates and back skirt are ALL attached to the chestpiece. Also, the robe on males completely covers up the chest area, where Nightborne males and females typically bare their chest in this type of armor, or at least have the option, considering we have tattoos we’d like to show off. The Nightborne NPC’s have armors who reveal quite a bit of their figure with very subtle actual armor pieces, which are always enhanced by arcane magic.

Even though I appreciate the effort of creating something new as a Heritage armor, considering that you are supposed to complete leveling from level 20 - 110 to get it, to say that is underwhealming would be an understatement. The fact that you have to do old content in order to achieve the armor is fine, however it doesn’t feel rewarding at all to level so long for an ugly transmog outfit that doesn’t even properly represent the Nightborne. Below I have attached a few images of armors that would be great as Heritage armor for the Nightborne that actually feel quite special and representative to their heritage.

Male & Female Heritage Armor (suggestion):

[Album] imgur.com

Subsequently, heritage armor is a great addition to the Allied races, however players often find themselves difficult to transmog it with exhisting weapons, so my suggestion is why not add to the Heritage armor their respective weapons. Not only will that make the heritage armor more alluring, also considering it is purely cosmetic would give people a full transmog set.

Also there have been different color variants for the heritage armors that have been datamined, It would be great if we can obtain those, lets say through a challenging scenario similar to the mage tower one.

In addition, the scaling of Nightborne armors all seem to use the direct values of their Night Elf counterparts, leading the males having absolutely tremendous shoulders for their body size, and females having shoulders set extremely far apart, floating, and at a strange angle.

Main Issue #4: Racial abilities

I didn’t really want to open the Pandora’s box of discussing racial abilities, but here we are. In the original datamined, Nightborne had two abilities that sounded neat, and definitely appropriate flavor-wise for Nightborne: “Masquerade” and “Dispel Illusions”. These definitely sounded more interesting than what we got. For those that did not see the initial datamining, Masquerade allowed you to take on the appearance of another Nightborne (unclear if it meant NPCs, players, or both), and Dispel Illusions was a short ranged stealth and invisibility dispel, very much akin to the iconic ability Nightborne guards use in Suramar city.

Overall, I know racials have been getting a harder look at, considering how things like Mythic+ have made every little edge more important (why we saw things like the Arcane Torrent and EMfH nerfs).

However, I was under the impression that Blizzard learned the lesson from legendries, in that it doesn’t feel good for some abilities to feel super powerful or impactful in the same space (racial in this case) where some are subpar or useless. Racial, in my opinion, should be the place to shove the flavourful and the rule-of-cool abilities, and leave damage or crowd control abilities to the classes.

That being said, a racial like Masquerade, Dispel Illusions, or one we did get, Cantrips, are good. Flavourful abilities that make sense for the race that don’t affect DPS in a direct or impactful way, and are utility at best. Otherwise, you end up with Arcane Pulse, a damaging racial that is situational to the point of near uselessness. It’s a joke; a racial Arcane explosion that does pitiful damage, and a near-usless AoE slow.

When I think of what fits Nightborne flavor-wise? Wine. Masquerades. Illusions. Arcane. We got one Arcane ability and that was the end of it, and it’s not even a cool or powerful one. If you ever lose your disguise in Suramar, many of the guards do a really cool ability called “Arcane Charge” or “Arcane Rush”, where they go transparent and blaze towards you, ending in a small Arcane Explosion when they reach you. That would’ve been way cooler, and more of a polar opposite to the Spatial Rift ability Void Elves got, and also been useful on both melee and ranged.

Closing Thoughts

Considering the Allied Races are a special BFA feature, I believe more effort should be put into them and their respective racial and heritage armours. I’d rather have the existing Allied Races all be brought to a similar level of standard (comparing Nightborne, likely one of the first Allied races worked on, to something like Dark Iron or Mag’har, one of the later ones, shows how limited Nightborne options really are) than continue to see more and more Allied Races packed into WoW haphazardly.

Thank you so much for reading if you’ve come this far. Please share your support or thoughts bellow, and I’ll pretend that Blizzard will read this or any of the numerous posts made about Nightborne and hopefully action is taken.

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Nightborne are so glamorous, so extravagant, so rich in lore, that its a shame that we have them playable at this state with lacking haircuts that look like halloween wigs when Void elf a new race got the best customization and racials in game.

I say that Nightborne should get a rework and a racial similar to the void elves to make them have an arcane glow !

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The fixes we need, but blizzard dosent care, im trully sorry to say this… I dont see anything happening ever, wow is on life support just getting those last dollars while it lasts giving us only repainted scraps

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You are out of touch with reality, WOW is making massive profits for Activision Blizzard. I dont know how it is right now in 2019, but in 2018 they had record earnings and made more money than wow has ever made before. Its not on life support.

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When you stand next to a Nighborne in Suramar you realise how they could have looked :frowning:

I do like my Nighborne but simple things like making the eyes the same would be a great improvment. It really feels like a blue nelf.

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The whole Suramar storyline was done so well it’s a shame the allied race is a bit poorly turned out compared with all those Nightborne we interacted with . I made one but never did anything with it as I just found it a bit dull. Maybe it’ll join the ever growing list of races that get given a makeover but given it’s not a core race it may be quite a wait.

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I fully support this.
I was so hyped for Nightborne, I loved Suramar, their lore, the entire feel of the place!
Plus Nightborne looked AMAZING!
I was so disappointed with what we got as playable options…faces, hairstyles…just horrible :frowning:
They really need more love.

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Too much effort for bli$$ard.

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They made those money from the game sell cuz the bait was very good with allied races warfonts and island expeditions, ppl went all in bcs it was something fresh, and we needed that badly, the outcome tho… well thats an old stoy by now.

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And for female ones having young/pretty faces would also help

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I think you all exaggerate how much difference there is.

For one, NPC models always have ‘funky’ proportions compared to player models (because they can be more free as they only have to work with a small amount of animations and armour rigging).

Reel that in, as is always going to be required, and really the only difference of note is how narrow the eyes are. I suspect the reason for that is because they spent the budget for this race on creating unique models, stances and running animations instead of reworking the face to work with EVERY expression on both sexes.

It’s not a small amount of work you know, modifying the Night Elf eyes so they don’t clip or break.
It may also be Blizzard simply decided they prefer them to look a little more like their Night Elf cousins, as they are meant to be closely related.

I prefer the playable versions, but I have no big objection to them changing the model slightly, as in specifically the eyes. My objection is people overstating, and overreaching (oh what a new thing to do on the internets) and saying things like ‘fix it’ as if anything is broken.

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I think you all exaggerate how much difference there is.
I prefer the playable versions, but I have no big objection to them changing the model slightly, as in specifically the eyes. My objection is people overstating, and overreaching (oh what a new thing to do on the internets) and saying things like ‘fix it’ as if anything is broken.

I didn’t make this post because "oh what a new thing to do on the internets) but you would know that If you actually spent time to read the actual post. As I said in the post and I quote "As the major selling point for BFA - Allied races SHOULD be made to a certain standard, just like anyone with more than 2 cells in their head can tell that more time was invested into the void elves,zandalari and kultirans in comparison to the nightborne, lightforged and the highmountain. That is what the post is about, and the rest is suggestion of how that can be fixed. But I guess you would know that if you weren’t trying to post a reply as "oh what a new thing to do on the internets.

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No actually, far more time was put into the Nightborne than the Void Elves. Void Elves are a repaint of Blood Elves, they do not have unique animations at all like Nightborne have over their Night Elf base model.

So you are wrong here.

Again, you fail to comprehend. Just because you don’t like what Blizzard did with the playable Nightborne, that doesn’t make them broken. That means using words like ‘fix’ is a complete non-starter because you are talking about how you don’t like them from an aesthetic angle.

In order of most work done (because new animations are FAR FAR more time consuming than simply rexturing).

  1. Kul Tirans
  2. Zandalari
  3. Nightborne

All the rest are in fact repaints so there’s no point listing those. Kul Tirans have the most work, but that is offset by the fact Horde has two races with unique animations, with the addition of Highmountain unique Druid forms and much more notable Zandalari Druid forms (which are far more unique than KT ones).

The ‘standard’ in fact is not the amount of work put in by demand of concept design (Kul Tirans will naturally need more work than Lightforged because they have a different body shape)-- but rather a work standard that is free of bugs and glitches.

It seems you have two issues. You can’t distinguish opinion from fact; and related to that you think ‘standards’ mean it should take a certain amount of time and resources.

Now I certainly think resources should be 50/50 Alliance and Horde, but that isn’t the argument you’re making is it.

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I have this suspicion that there are gonna be additional customization options for nb elves. About the time WoW is gonna go “free” to play and you’ll pay 1 month’s sub worth for a new skin.

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Do we seriously need to follow wow usa on every topic ? Bring some originality people . If I want to read wow usa threads I will go there to read them .ughhhhh…

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What unique animation did we get as Nightborne? Just curious :wink:

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Idle stance and movement are different from the classic Kaldorei, I believe.

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I will have to pay greater attention next time I go on my hunter. Thanks :slight_smile:

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Also when you turn on wm nightborne dances like somebody has given her free milk and cookies :fortune_cookie:

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That I have to see xD

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