I've been watching the steady stream of info for a while now, and one thing that strikes me is the skills/attributes that each race gains. It's fair enough that each race essentially has a pigeon hole catch-all for the general players that dont necessarily care about character feel or immersion that much, but I think for the player that really is interested in the lore, it can feel like a bit of a punishment unless you have picked the matching race for your class.

I suppose so far I havent been particularly articulate, and have started back to front by explaining the effect first rather than the cause.

Let's say for example that you really want to play a stealthy archer (watching the youtube vids, this seems like an overwhelmingly popular choice). If you want to go with a stealth archer, then you're basically punching yourself in the nuts by picking any race except a wood elf. Wood Elves not only have an inherent sneak bonus, they also get more damage from stealth attacks, gain on their bow skills faster, and then wrap that up with some generally useful abilities such as stamina gain in combat.

Say you pick a Dark Elf though.....well you're on your own. You get a dual wield bonus which doesnt affect your bow. No stealth bonus at all, a lot of magicka focused abilities, and then some fire resistance, which is fairly useful all round.

Now, sure, if you're really into the lore and all and say you really want to play a dark elf stealthy archer, then you can go nuts and do it. But the unfortunate side of it is that you will never be as good as a wood elf stealth archer. I think this is fair in a way, lore wise, as wood elf archers are meant to be the best.

The reality remains though that two things will happen:

1. Those that want to play a stealth archer are punished if they dont pick a wood elf.

2. If you do pick a wood elf, then you can say goodbye to ever being required in a dungeon in that role, because there will likely be a queue of a billion others ahead of you.

I've picked 'stealth archer' in this post, but it really applies to any class. Some more so than others, some less.

So why should we care? Well, because I think it's going to create an overwhelming population representation of certain class types for certain races. There will always be those who want to be different, or just pick something else, but you'll really find that the majority of your dual wielders will be dark elves, your archers wood elves etc. This can be fine for PVP as you're all going to get stuck in and fight anyway, and it will be interesting to see how these trends balance out when pitched against each other.

In an otherwise seemingly very free and open game, we're actually quite hamstrung by our choices, unless you happen to have picked the 'right' choice of course.

With soft cap, most of the bonuses race get are really minor. The only one that do seem strong is carnage from the khajiit, 3% crit 15% crit damage is not bad.

You are best served to chose a race you like more then for its passive as it can easily be countered with the correct gear.

It seems like you're saying that, people who choose a certain weapon must use races that they gain more experience with using the weapon. I don't think you've tested the beta yet, or have done much research. The experience bonus for weapons doesn't really mean much at high level as everyone can only level up to so much for one weapon. If you based your argument more on the other more beneficial racial passives than that would make more sense.

Using your example for a stealthy archer, ignoring the extra exp for weapons, the only thing bosmer has going for them is a stealth bonus, stamina regen, and poison resist (not really much poison damage anyways).

Dunmer on the other hand gets increased magicka + stamina and increased fire damage + resistance. I believe some of the bow skills has some fire damage and when it comes to stealth, medium armour passives makes much more of a difference than the bosmer racial passive. On top of that, as a stealth archer, the only time you'll get bonus to your damage as a bosmer is when you open from stealth. That's basically only one hit. 99% of the fight you'll be out of stealth, which is where the dunmer racials of increased magicka and stamina and their fire damage + resistance becomes much more valuable than a stealth bonus/poison resist. Besides with more magicka, it'll allow you to use more of your class skills which are generally much better than weapon skills anyway.

This can be applied to all the other races whose passives are beneficial ALL the time and not only when you're stealthed. For example, argonians get passives from potions, helps you to stay alive while keeping your distance, bretons have magicka resistance, red guards have more stamina + stamina regen, orsimers get a bonus to sprint.

These passives are much better as they are useful in ALL situations, and not only when stealthed. Medium armour passives is where the stealth play style get's it's bonuses, not from the racial passive which doesn't have much benefit.

You could pick the Altmer as an archer & use the benefits of the increased magicka for using skills more often.

Khajit has stealth & health regen which will be very useful for an archer.

Breton has magicka attributes & spell resistance......excellent for dealing with spellcasters.

Orc has more speed,HP/stamina bonus & HP regen in combat...would be great of an archer.

Redguard has stamina & stamina recovery, excellent for the sneaky types, since sneaking costs stamina with movement.

Point being, they all have great attributes that will work for an archer, although it might depend a little on play style.

And the elitist attitude of "say goodbye to ever being required in a dungeon in that role, because there will likely be a queue of a billion others ahead of you." is bullcrap & can stay out of the game.

People should not alienate a race because of race via class choice. Any race can do extremely well in a dungeon regardless of class choice.

Eso plays differently to WoW dungeons, and won;t be tied down to specific meta-gaming.....unless idiot players start forcing that style of gameplay.

1. Racials won't matter much in the big picture.

2. Despite that, I agree. I've mentioned before I'd like to see zero racials, everyone a blank slate. Lore reasons don't matter. You can play a Bosmer with no bonuses and have your people still known as being good archers. Your one, single, player character isn't a representation of an entire people.

3. I do think the experience point racials are okay. They give a sense of skill without really impacting choice. A Bosmer picks up a bow and learns with it faster, but it isn't really going to influence your choice over, say, a Nord archer. I've yet to see any posts basing one's race choice on the experience increase racial.

Actually Khajiit seems to be the favourite among the archers, due to their carnage ability. That being said, these passives make little difference. They're not as OP as you might think. The only people who will be bothered by these choices are min maxers; certainly not people who are more encouraged by an immersive playstyle.

I for one will be playing the very class you're describing; a stealthy bow user; though I'll be rolling as Imperial, because I like Imperials. That's all there is to it.

thanks for the responses all. clears some things up. I'm less concerned than I was when I posted at first.

Just how many stealthy bow users are there? I've seen a good spread of archetypes mentioned or in videos etc, but what I see by far the most of is stealthy archers. If anyone's made a video of them playing ESO, it's nearly always a stealthy archer. In a game review site of dungeon crawling, three out of four party members were primarily bow users. Even trawling the threads on here, I see a lot of stealth archer references.

Then again, Hunters and Rogues were always popular in WoW on launch. Cant be too surprised I suppose.

It's very popular. One of the most popular builds actually, probably because it's rather awesome. Nothing more rewarding than one-shotting an enemy from afar, only to disappear back into the shadows afterwards. It doesn't at all bother me that I'll be playing the most popular architype; I'll have more people to theorycraft and share notes with. Obviously not everyone shares my view here; some people like being their own little unique snowflake, but as for me; not so much.

i keep changing my mind on what I'll end up on. Any given day or mood seems to u-turn my choice lol.

Then again, I'll be on the PS4 or Xbox1 version, so I wonder if the demographic there will change. I mean, I expect a lot of your average console players to be full on into the sword and board stuff, and there will be a lot of the Skyrim playerbase there who may just roll up another Nord to carry on where they left off.

Wood Elves are supposed to be the best archers in all Tamriel, according to their lore. So as it is, gameplay matches lore, exactly what you want.

But the racial skills svck anyway. They're much inferior to Class and Weapon skills, so they won't be doing too much of a difference.