Defiance and "Racial Abilities"

[Arkamenitas]

spurred on by a comment in another thread, I've been wondering about people's opinions here

picking your race: should they have racial abilities or characteristics? Should the choice be purely aesthetic?

I've ever been a fan of purely aesthetic race choices in games, so i can pick the one I prefer instead of the one with the "best ability" etc (in terms of mmorpgs, i felt rift handled it well by allowing abilities to be primarily flavour and not really effect pvp, though many disagreed with this when the change was made in beta)

what do you guys think?

[Arkamenitas]

i also wanted to add that if anything, i feel only non-combat racials are about as far as defiance should go.

[Ravallian]

I don't know how it may be done but I know it won't be easy but what I like to see is for them to have some thing unique to each whether it's an ability or stat buff BUT for this not to be so OP that it forces players to run a certain race.

[Arkamenitas]

that's pretty much why im thinking that if they exist, it'll be out of combat stuff only