Backgrounds

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Backgrounds in Ashes of Creation house character benefits that are traditionally tied to race in other games.[1][2]

Backgrounds are similar to "racials" in other games. Instead of the race you choose giving certain benefits, players will select a "background." We want players to have the freedom to choose the race they want to play because they're excited about it, and avoid situations where players feel forced to play a specific race because of gameplay benefits.[3]
One thing we've talked about in the past is replacing the racial abilities with more of a background style, where you get to select your background regardless of race; and so those two aren't tied intrinsically.[2]Steven Sharif

Racial benefits

Character benefits in Ashes of Creation are tied to that character's background rather than their race.[1][2]

We want players to have the freedom to choose the race they want to play because they're excited about it, and avoid situations where players feel forced to play a specific race because of gameplay benefits.[3]
info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Racial influences

Alpha-1 Village node layout.[8]

We have essentially sets that exist across all races; and each race that dons those armor sets is going to have their own racial influence on the presentation of those particular sets. So that's something that's unique in how each of the races get diversified. Additionally, the more that one particular race contributes to a node's development, it's going to manifest in that particular node's architectural influences. You're going to see the architectures of those races become manifest within the nodes as well: That's another way that we diversify each race and we present each race's culture in the game as through those architectures, through those props that exist, through the tailoring of the armor sets that the NPC might wear, to the different factions that exist. Factions will have their own affiliation with different races as well. Each race will also have some different nomenclature when it comes to the lore, or comes to locations in the world. They're going to have their own language influences as well: The way they speak is something that's going to be distinct between races; when you have dialogue trees with particular NPCs. So all of those things really go into setting an immersive world where the cultures have their own identity.[9]Steven Sharif

Cultural influences manifest in many ways, from node and gear aesthetics to NPC languages and lore.[9][10][11]

There is an attrition and that attrition on experience and influence is heightened based on the performance of the race in the world. So if all these nodes are Orc nodes then their attrition rate is very high to compete with the cultural establishment of new nodes because they have more influence in the world and a popular opinion is against them in their outlying regions that they do not have influence in.[12]Steven Sharif

See also

References