Character Customization Options

[Phi]

i say sliders for everything, sliders for hair, sliders for beards, sliders for body weight/height, sliders for every facial feature. Also removable and reapplication warpaint would be cool too

[Freche]

I'd like to see character customization like Age of Conan or Everquest2.

Height (long legs, short body, short arms, huge head, a different slider for each limb/part of the body please?)

This would make some ugly shit. One slider for height (imo) to keep proportions.
Muscles
Body fat
Eye shape
Eye colour
Facial hair
Hair colour
Hair length (facial, arms, legs, head)
Skin tone
---
Cheek
Mouth
Nose
Eyebrows
Ear size

Some things I'd like to see to be changeable in-game.
Hair, Warpainting. (social clothing(same design different colors or the other way around))

[Zathosi]

Customization is a very important part of an mmorpg.
Sadly, many new mmo focus their customization options around the head of our character and use sliders.

The head is the less visible portion of our character, normally hidden beneath an helmet, a hat, a hood... Taking AoC customization as an exemple (I trully was disapointed by Funcom "most advanced mmo customization system"), more than 80% of the customization options focus on the head. So, everyone look the same with their head covered. Customization should focus on the body of our character, not the face.

Secondly, sliders... Sliders are good when the range they have is large. Quoting Lialith:¨

I do not want to choose between anorexic to skinny and cup size D to F! I also do not want to choose between: ugly face, more ugly, Liv Tyler, most ugly ... (yes, AoC has scared me) If I had to chose between that or no costomisation at all, i seriously would choose the seconed possibility...

Sliders tend to limit customization (coloring is an exception), especially for the body. Normally, each character, in mostly all mmo, are of the same physical build with minor modifications (all human male looking physically the same...) The problem with a fully customizable character's body is connected to the limit of the stretching that ingame armor and clothing mesh could support. So body sliders can not have wide range (D to F cup...)

The solution to this problematic could be to create many physical builds that are linked with specific style of items (mesh). The character customization system asking the player which physical build would be is toon. This choice should limit customization options in some area and opening other options linked with the build choosen. Also the build could require unique look and style for items (especially armor and clothing.) This solution is sadly, costly. Each armor/clothing in-game needing a lot of different mesh (and so skin) but could at the same time customize greatly our character with having wide range of body proportion options and so, armor and clothing style fitting our character's build. Also, some build could require new set of animation...

With many builds, sliders for body customizations could be very wide (A to F cup, for exemple) but limited by the build chosen. These builds could then also be limited by the choice of our class and race, racial physical norms and physical predisposition. For exemple, a lady with a frail build should not have chosen an soldier path, but a more masculine build could. These two builds having different limits to their customization options. The masculine build having a higher range for heigth, muscle, but also a smaller limit on breast size slider, the frail one having a very low limit in the muscle (body mass) but a lot higher in the bust area. The armor/clothing mesh of the masculine using the mesh of male characters and the frail build using more girly looking armor/clothing.

[Lialith]

well, talking about the technical aspect, i know that the more advanced 3d modelling programs (maya for example) do give you the option to tween shapes. Just like you can do it in flash with 2D objects. (form-tween) So basicly what you would have to do is to set 3 or more keyframes (you called them builds: thin - exercised - fat) and let the tween do the rest.

well yes, its somewhat more work for the 3d-modelling department, especially if you do not only have different races but also a very large variety of armour models (most of the armour you find in games have the same models with just different textures though) but it surly isnt a problem to implement such an important feature. Its just a little more work and well, it also "costs" a little more hdd-space (i can life with that ^^).

oh and: what Zathosis said about different professions should be limited to different parts of those sliders, i think that would top that feature and make it really great!

[Zathosi]

Thanks for the info concerning 3d modeling Lialith. I only know very basic stuff in 3d modeling

Concerning the builds, you are quite right with your thin-exercised-fat expression. I would prefer a four step progression

For the female:
Thin (from anorexia to a lean and agile body)
Exercised (from athletic body to a body builder look)
Curvaceous (from a more curvy body to a really busty look)
Overweight (from a fat body to an obese look)

For male:
Just replaced Curvaceous by Sturdy (from a robust build to a very dense body)

The builds should at the core have different bone structure, especially for the extreme builds, as overweight and thin.

For the customization creation, these builds should adjust the limits of a most of the sliders. An thin man could for example, adjust the waist slider from 0% to 50% of the range, as the exercised would have an 20% to 65% range, or 65% to 100% for the overweigth build (even going beyond the normal limit, to 130% for example for really obese one). Each of these build could have unique range on specific slider as my example of the obese character.

These 8 builds (4 for each gender) could be linked with specific items’ mesh, the physical body and general appearance of our character influencing the style and look of the clothing and armor worn. I am not only referring to just adapt the item to the character build but also to maybe change the style of the item. A thin man will certainly dress in a very different fashion than an obese one or an exercised. Same item, but different meshes and so look.

Those builds could also have unique set of animations, an obese woman does not walk as fast and elegantly than an athletics person (exercised build).

The builds could also logically restrain professions, creating immersion and a gender separation that is not total.
Taking the soldiers path as an example:
Male builds that could choose this path: exercised, sturdy and maybe overweight
Female build: Exercised
The professions gender separation should overall balance itself too, having professions that are more adapted to female builds.


Then come in my mind the worst slider ever created, the height slider. Why ? Because all games that include this option only do a overall proportional increase in size. But the human body doesn’t work that way, the physical proportion of a midget, of a normal human and 7’ tall man are totally different. So, the slider for height should only adjust (amplify) core sliders, as torso length, wideness, legs and arms length for example. The head could also increase or decrease but not proportionally (7’ man have a smaller head compare to their body than normal one, and midgets got a huge head compare with their bodies.)

[Ördög]

i would like it to be as Age Of Conan. As customizeable as possible. The more the better. But ofc, for those who dont care as much about it should have the "random" button.

I also would like to have the opportunity to let the char evolve, if thats the right word. That as time pass he become skinnier if you dont eat as much, fat if he eat ALOT, more butch if he train alot, get a beer gut if a drinker, etc. And get scars from battles (maybe nice if each player can choose to have or dont have scars?).

Even if armor may end up making most look the same (if its like in WoW) i like beeing able to customize my char as much as possible.

EDIT: also the customize thingie. i would like if you could get tattos and such in-game, not just when you create.

[Phi]

age of Conan really wasn't that customizable, it was pretty over hyped. Its just like WOWs but with some added sliders really, nothing special.

[lokius]

I would like there will be a lot of customalization and I agree it doesn't have to mean a lot of lag. I wish mages won't look like body bulders. Attributes affecting your apperance were mentioned here before a good idea ihmo ( a bit like fable ) , also diffrent postures would nice. Im not sure if face creation should be like oblivion, I think it should be a bit less complex hoping it will result in less freaks. I don't have much against freaks but making a normal character shoudnt be a challenge.

Whats more important imo there should be as many as possible post creation custamalization options, changing hairstyles, facial hair, adding tatoos, dying clothes, some trinkets, make up, maybe morphing your body or face by some magic means.

[kabeus]

I would love to see fully customizeable characters, I for one am getting tired of seeing WOW-like customization in MMOs

[Myst]

I voted for an Oblivion-like character creator.

But the most important thing for me is that MO avoid clones war as in every F2P where you clearly identify who's who, because everyone of the same level wear the same stuff :\

[telmehow]

i love the ability to change my characters having many options as possible. but easy enough to manage and easy to customize is a must. If it is easy enough to customize and is easy to move threw the options then it can be very fun, otherwize it could get frustrating or people may not want to spend a lot of time making their characters.

[hpsysteme]

For full custom ...

[niblick]

I think a degree of customisation is great but if too complex then it will limit the size of large scale battles by hammering the client computer.
I'd be happy to differentiate myself through my items and possibly guild insignia.

[Kreeper]

I agree, I definately like to spend time on making my character and hope that the devs spend some serious time on letting players customize characters. Although we all know that the way your character looks doesent mean much after all is said and done but it gives people a uniqueness that we all want to have when were building our character and spending all our time gearing and pvping / pve

[hotix]

Most people love to show off there characters new weapon or tough armor. If you let people have more customization they will be happy.

[Lioness]

I love being able to completely do my character Up..It gives more origanality in game instead of having everyone from a race LOOk the same with just different color hair and clothes So having it to where we can make our character our own would be Awesome!

[la griffe]

I love customize my character with any aspect, but it will be so good to be abble to make it evolve !

you eat too much -> you're going to be fat
you drink -> you turn red :P

cut your hairs, let your hair grow, loose an arm in battle ... oops ! too rp !

[Svii]

As much customiyation as possible please, more then AoC even. Being able to cut your hair would be cool as well.. but I guess that's for a future game hehe

The more customization you have the more attached I become to the char, and looking at a bunch of clones isn't really fun.

[Hereshk]

Yes for a complex customization of the characters...

feeling unique is good, even in a mmo, haha

[CallMeZionn]

I say as much customization as possible but dont over do it, give a lot of options for place people will see often for example face hair arms etc.

[ccoa]

You know, sliders are good and all but how often will you actually notice the difference? I think it's fun and I enjoy doing it but I think the real thing that will distinguish people from one another is hair. Most MMO's offer few hairstyles with only 2-3 really good looking/popular ones. Another distinguishing feature of players would probably be facial features like warpaint or scars. Implementing tons of scars would be great, that way not every one has the same scar with the same story to tell behind it.

[twistedurges]

Without decent customization options this game isn't going to do as well as it could. Just think about it, when you have a character in an MMO, it's an extension of yourself. I definitely don't want to run into a field with 40 other people that look exactly like me. Shit, with thousands of items WoW still has that problem, hah. A skill based system leaves so much room for designing characters, we can hope that the devs realize this.

[monteefyster]

I do also agree with the idea that if MO is to move to the nxt level of mmorpg, it seems only logical that characters be fully customizable. I also feel if you can customize it, it really does feel like you. It would be awesome to be able to customize, even like in Perfect World.


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[Prototype]

Yeah completely customizable would be cool than we won't see so many same faces like in Wow

[Lxx]

Completely customizable-YES..to the degree it does not affect the game itself.

[Prototype]

Originally Posted by Lxx

Completely customizable-YES..to the degree it does not affect the game itself.

I agree with you

[Lendaril]

I've voted, as the most of the other posters, for Completely customizable characters, too.
But i wanted to say, that it would be very cool, if you could change ingame some of your appereance, like Hairstyle, Beard and Warpaintings.
I think, that would be very cool and easier to make your Character more unique^^.

Greetz

[Cye]

I come from SWG where the customization was VERY detailed. You could change every aspect of height/weight/physique/color. You could also change the size/shape/color/position of virtually every facial feature. It made for some generic looking characters, and other very interesting, personalized characters. Because the clothing system was also completely customizable, there was a wide range of clever possibilites. (Including characters that looked like Cpt. Piccard and characters that looked like Adolf Hitler.)

I personally took alot of pride in my avatar's appearance. His exterior was as menacing as his repuation. So, having said all that, I strongly suggest the maximum amount of customization.

[skeaser]

I would like everything about my character to be customizable, however, above everything else, I'd like for my character to look good. I've played so many games, where it doesn't matter what you do, your character will end up looking "special". For example, look at WoW humans or EQ2 High Elves. (Males only for those)