I think custom slots are proven to be a good idea for permanent races. It demonstrates racial differentiation, as you say, and it provides unique cool things to hunt for, and it actually creates physical limitations based on item availability.

I think the issue (with Centaurs) is that there are many more slots, and they won't be around long enough to populate the MUD with satisfactory selection of options for all those slots. Instead, we get more unique slots, less options, and not a lot of opportunities for more. It's clear the gear is sparse, and there's only really as much out there as there 'needs' to be, due to time/etc. - otherwise why wouldn't there be fine leather armor? Not having that is fine - but it seems to suggest certain things about the state of centaur gear - i.e., probably it's in an early stage of proliferation and isn't going to expand much.

That's fine - early on, that's what these races look like, and as knowledge spreads and more areas are edited, the gear becomes a little more "part of the world". But Centaurs are temporary. Their equipment is always going to be relatively rarer than it really should be, and then they're not going to be around long. So all the work I spent finding it has no staying power. Plus I have so many slots - 5, not just 1-3.

Not that I care about gear - but others do, so I can see why this rachets up the barrier for entry to some. Did you intend gearing centaurs to be hardmode?

As a casual player, it looks like you're suffering from two good ideas ('lots of unique gear slots', 'temporary races') that together, equal something that looks kind of gross to deal with.

Just my opinion. And the supposed vulns maybe create a vicious Love Triangle of good ideas. My point being - Centaur is pretty challenging to play, and will require a lot of work (exploring with vuln_boat, vuln_climb, to fill 5 unique slots with the right kind of gear across all levels). Maybe that was by design. But I would like the challenge more if it wasn't temporary. As a temporary race, 1-3 unique slots was probably enough to achieve a semblance of racial differentiation. As is stands, I think it was alittle much.

Unless there's WAY more centaur gear out there than I guess. As in - roughly as many pieces for each unique slot as any of the other permanent races, plus or minus x% depending on how rare you actually want that stuff to be. That's not the vibe I'm getting, though.

Edited to add: So if "THE WORLD WERE MY WAY," I'd be a lot more excited to try a centaur if I knew you were on a spree of centaur gear proliferation, and if they were around for maybe another six months to a year, so that I could play a couple of them. Otherwise, I play way too casually to compete for 5 hard-to-fill slots for just a couple months from newbie to hero and on. That's an explorevet's territory. Is an extension a thing you're interested in?