Arelith

Sandrow wrote: Wed Sep 07, 2022 2:58 am I'm pretty sure that one reason that there are more Stone Giants than any other giants is because everybody is talking about builds of them. It's simple to follow what others had write down and follow.

You're right. A lot of these Stone Giants on the live server are a result of less build savvy people simply following the sheep herd, possibly, but at the same time, there's a reason why the more build savvy players have been like guided missiles honed on this race and talked about it way more than other new races. I consider myself guilty at this. Whenever something new comes up, my brain is practically wired to find the best setup for it that squeezes out as much as possible out of a character sheet. Stone giant gave me a lot of possible builds to consider. Other races were/are all better than human just for 1-2 classes and only by a slight margin.

Zanithar wrote: Wed Sep 07, 2022 3:55 am It is hard to provide an entirely objective position because frankly you are guessing at what the heck happened.

Dude it's arelith and you're not a tourist around here. You should always assume "I guess it was overpowered for some reason I'm not seeing right now and probably enabled some abomination". This is the answer to "what the heck happened" 99.9% of the time.

+4 con with extra DI is wonderful for edr builds. However, water genasi HOrc is +2 str, +2 con, -4 cha, still with a major gift and a minor gift, together with 5%DI, they were matched in many builds except Hexblade. I highly recommend water genasi HOrc now if you want to spend a greater and play a Di stuff. That's a stable race not going to be nerfed soon anyway.

Even though it's Anecdotal, I would like to advocate for appearance playing a much larger role in popularity of Stone GIant's over Fire or Frost Giants rather than mechanics.

Back when Giants' released, I had an initial creation of each type, even weathering the dwarf phenotype there was what I consider a major aesthetic hurdle. You couldn't see/select your head or skin.. Making your character logging in, then it flips to a different head is very jarring. "I didn't want to be bald with an eye patch!" I remember saying... and quickly /delete_character to try again. A patch was later added that would allow Giants to re-edit their appearance, but this still is after the phenotype change force selects your head.

Additionally:

Accounting for a phenotype preference through active server populations makes good sense, but I would think due to the cost payment of the Major reward it would be more accurate to consider the phenotype selection of a players "FIRST" character, rather than any additional/free characters they may also make. Point being, if a player may only get one, comparing the importance not wanting to feel regret in the choice would pivot players to choosing something they're more likley to be comfortable looking at. For this, the disparity between choosing Human vs Dwarf phenotype should expect to be exaggerated.