Character Creation: Assessment and Critique

Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Printable Version

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RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - FreelanceWizard - 04-29-2015

(04-29-2015, 11:04 AM)Hyrist Wrote: I'm sorry to say, but that sort of design is kind of intrinsic in all character/race design systematically in roleplaying games.

After all, if you don't, you don't appeal to your base and you hurt your bottom line. Games like Dark Souls get away with having more grotesque designs because they appeal to their player's niche. Bethesda has such widely variant design because it appeals to their more western targeted audience. Everyone makes targeted decisions on character design based on what they feel their target base feels appealing.

Then difference is that Yoshida went out and said it plainly, rather than cover it in some corporate PR distraction that waifs the scent of finely minced and measured feces.

Oh, I don't disagree. The video game space is by definition very conservative, which means not taking a risk on an artistic decision when you could make a finance-driven one. SE has a bit more freedom than, say, someone being published by EA, but ultimately they're still beholden to their shareholders. If Heavensward doesn't produce a sub bump -- even if it retains the current player base -- it's not going to look good, despite XIV being a wild, runaway success for the company. The artistic choices are the ones you're more likely to see in indie gaming.

That said, I'm still unhappy about it. Tongue

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Warren Castille - 04-29-2015

I think there's also a modicum of attention paid to the fact that, as per the game's story, you're creating a legendary hero type. Sure, there's some challenges in someone playing a demure teensy lady type or child-looking lalafell boy as The Warrior Of Light and all, but ultimately that still works better than allowing me to make, say, Carl from Aqua Teen as the WoL.

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Zhavi - 04-29-2015

(04-29-2015, 11:11 AM)FreelanceWizard Wrote:
(04-29-2015, 11:04 AM)Hyrist Wrote: I'm sorry to say, but that sort of design is kind of intrinsic in all character/race design systematically in roleplaying games.

After all, if you don't, you don't appeal to your base and you hurt your bottom line. Games like Dark Souls get away with having more grotesque designs because they appeal to their player's niche. Bethesda has such widely variant design because it appeals to their more western targeted audience. Everyone makes targeted decisions on character design based on what they feel their target base feels appealing.

Then difference is that Yoshida went out and said it plainly, rather than cover it in some corporate PR distraction that waifs the scent of finely minced and measured feces.

Oh, I don't disagree. The video game space is by definition very conservative, which means not taking a risk on an artistic decision when you could make a finance-driven one. SE has a bit more freedom than, say, someone being published by EA, but ultimately they're still beholden to their shareholders. If Heavensward doesn't produce a sub bump -- even if it retains the current player base -- it's not going to look good, despite XIV being a wild, runaway success for the company. The artistic choices are the ones you're more likely to see in indie gaming.

That said, I'm still unhappy about it.

My hope is that if Heavensward does really really well maybe the next xpac will have more breathing room in terms of art direction. Though, really, I suppose it might be grounds for a "keep doing what you're doing" mindset.

Argh. It's frustrating to me because I picked catgirl because I wanted a runty street kid. And I like cats. And it was something that was very different from what I normally played: tall, muscular badasses (WoW troll 4 lyfe!). I was inches away from picking a roe, but in the end they were too big for what I wanted to do with this character. It pains me that Zhi is part of the problem. And now with the xaela being nomads, I'm being hooked for them.

I think I'm gonna have to make a highlander or roe to even out my character creation karma. :<

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Max - 04-29-2015

I'm OK with it for the most part, albeit a little disappointed with the lack of diversity. I agree with Unnamed Mercenary; if they're able to add new hairstyles all the time, then some eyebrows or new faces every once in awhile shouldn't be out of the question, I think.

I played games like Aion where you could make a million different unique looks, yet the game was filled with deformed Gumby lookalikes. I'm glad FFXIV's character creation isn't like that.

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Zyrusticae - 04-29-2015

(04-29-2015, 10:48 AM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote: [...]

The FFXIV character creator kinda sucks when it's compared to other ones that offer more options. But you know what we get out of it? Better looking characters. Ones that work well with motion capture. And I like that.

Sure, there's still the armor/hair clipping. But please show me an MMO that allowed for more diverse characters that doesn't have that issue, AND rivals FFXIV in terms of players and lore. I don't think one exists. And certainly not as a cross-platform game between the PS3, PS4 and PC.

With regards to the bolded, I disagree. This is what Blade & Soul's characters look like:

Show Content

Character model quality is a function of art style/direction and technological know-how. Advanced character creation adds to artist workload but it does not necessarily decrease the quality of the models.

People keep bringing up Aion but the only reason Aion lets you make such monstrosities is because the sliders have enormous ranges. There is a happy middle ground to be found here (and I would argue Blade & Soul finds a pretty good place).

(04-29-2015, 10:51 AM)Warren Castille Wrote: Nobody brought up money. I referenced resources but I'm talking manpower and time-between-patches-not-spent-on-new-armor-or-dungeons-or-whatever.

Warcraft spent an entire expansion cycle redesigning the old world to be consistent with new standards. That expansion was considered to be severely lacking on arrival by the fanbase.

Then Warcraft redesigned the existing character models to make them all hi-res. That expansion was missing an entire raid tier compared to previous models. People complained.

I understand wanting more options. I miss Warren's ass, and I like people having options. Bitching that it doesn't meet the standards of the incredibly-competitive Korean MMO cycle is... misguided, I'd say.

Resources are functionally the exact same thing, really. Either way, we don't actually know the amount of resources required to build these things out. That being said, I would not argue that adding character creation options after the fact is an easy endeavor whatsoever. I know it would be a major undertaking, especially for a game this late in its life cycle (yes, first expansion is pretty late considering most character creators are built waaay before release).

However, at the same time it is clear that Blizzard has some serious management issues going on internally. The tiny amount of actual content they release for WoW is hugely at odds with the size of their team and the amount of revenue the game obtains on a regular basis. FFXIV's content schedule completely dwarfs WoW's and that is without considering the expansion content. I believe Squeenix would do a much better job than Blizzard at a task like this, should they ever decide to undertake it.

(04-29-2015, 10:55 AM)FreelanceWizard Wrote: [...]
One wrinkle in all of this is knowing that the au ra female design was heavily informed by gameplay data. I have to say, I'm not a big fan of a dev's vision being "whatever is likely to get a lot of players." I'm a believer in the school of thought that says you should create what you want, not what you think others want to see. That the au ra female design was informed by people wanting to play characters of that body style, as opposed to some strong lore reason or even just Yoshi-P thinking that's cool, irks me. It feels like a cash grab, which really rubs me the wrong way.

THIS. This is exactly how I feel. It's building a creative project through focus group testing, something I will always disagree with. It feels completely wrong. I'd much rather see what they think is cool and adds to the game and its world than what they think players want more of.

(04-29-2015, 11:06 AM)Steel Wolf Wrote: Right, so yea, there are a few games that have done or are doing customization a LOT deeper...but this isn't news here. It wasn't during XI. It wasn't during 1.0, 2.0 and it damn sure shouldn't have been come 3.0. This is so old hat you could schedule prisoner feeding time around it.

Genuinely stunned this is a thing/topic of conversation or consternation...but I guess some will bitch about anything...

The Au Ra coming around and being disappointing to me only puts the weakness of the game's character creation in sharp relief.

Expect me to bitch again if the next expansion's race is similarly disappointing.

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Warren Castille - 04-29-2015

Edit for not locking this in under an hour:

Those proportions are questionable. We're now comparing subjective opinions of what looks "better." I love the female figure as much as anyone else, but those are inhuman to me.

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Desu Nee - 04-29-2015

(04-29-2015, 10:46 AM)Zyrusticae Wrote: I still do not understand why people insist on justifying these things monetarily. Look, Square Enix's finances are not your or my problem. They can handle that side; it's their ball to roll. Justifying decisions "because capitalism" is only an after-the-fact explanation for how things are, not a justification for why we can't have nice things.

We don't know how much things cost. Unless someone among us is one of the higher-ups in a video game development company that is making a game in a relevant genre, none of us can know how much any of these things cost. Therefore it is a pointless tack to take when discussing ideas for what we, as players, want that is not in the game currently.

All we know is that all things take time and effort to produce. We can decide what to prioritize because we know not everything can be prioritized, but simply taking things out of consideration because you think they'd be too expensive when you don't have any facts on expenses is foolhardy to me.

But since the point was brought up already: Phantasy Star Online 2. It's one of SEGA's most successful franchise operations in ages, and it's purely because of the character creation and the dress-up. Believe it or not, there is a huge potential revenue stream there and I do not believe SE is sufficiently tapping into that as of now. Not that that matters to me. I just want better character creation purely for selfish reasons.

Quote:I'm not looking for a Dark Souls, extremely detailed character creation method.

I'm sorry. This is just... incomprehensible to me. Dark Souls is your benchmark for an "extremely detailed character creation method"?

Look up Dragon's Dogma. That is an extremely detailed character creation method.

Yes, it is. You literally can do close to anything with the character, bordering ridiculous, while DD is more about the details.

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - FreelanceWizard - 04-29-2015

<magicAdminHat>
Whoa, hey, let's not start going down a bad road here. I think we're having a good discussion here, but it's going to quickly turn bad if people start being dismissive.
</magicAdminHat>

With that out of the way, I personally would like to see just a wider range of options, so long as they fit with the lore and the overall aesthetic. What would be great, IMO, is if we had a "basic" creation option and then a checkbox to go to "advanced," where you'd have more slider options. Random would never touch the advanced options.

However, alas, we have that boat anchor of the PS3 holding us down. Sad

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Zyrusticae - 04-29-2015

(04-29-2015, 11:26 AM)Warren Castille Wrote: It's impossible to take you seriously when you say Garuda's boobs are too big and SE's design team is a disappointment and then post scantily clad mousegirls and a woman made out of hourglass and hips with the tiniest head and most obscene proportions I've seen in recent memory.

I'm sorry... I don't recall ever saying Garuda's boobs are too big. I do recall saying something along the lines of her being a bird-creature and as such shouldn't even have boobs to begin with, however. Smile

The character you mention is an NPC. The point was to show the graphical quality of the character models, not what I personally prefer.

If there's something you're confused about, it's probably the fact that I want options and the ability to express my characters in unusual ways, especially non-gender-conforming ways. Blade & Soul is not perfect in this regard, not by a long shot, but they're still better than Square Enix, especially since they have a race specifically for people like me (the Lyn, who are completely androgynous by default while not being absurdly stylized like the Lalafell are).

As a matter of fact... if the Lalafell were more like the Lyn, I probably would be playing one right now. Ho-hum.

(04-29-2015, 11:29 AM)Desu Nee Wrote: Yes, it is. You literally can do close to anything with the character, bordering ridiculous, while DD is more about the details.

But that is exclusively tied to the face.

A huge part of any character creator is what you can do to the body. Everyone of a particular race-gender combo having the exact same body is just weak, IMO.

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Warren Castille - 04-29-2015

(04-29-2015, 11:36 AM)Zyrusticae Wrote: If there's something you're confused about, it's probably the fact that I want options and the ability to express my characters in unusual ways, especially non-gender-conforming ways.

If there's something you're confused about, it's that you're trying to do this in a triple-A MMO.

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Zyrusticae - 04-29-2015

(04-29-2015, 11:38 AM)Warren Castille Wrote: If there's something you're confused about, it's that you're trying to do this in a triple-A MMO.

Fine, I will stop trying to assert my existence in the virtual worlds I use for excapism and accept the fact that I will forever be marginalized and treated as a third-rate customer if I am accepted at all. Undecided

(edit: you are being very mean right now, and I think I am going to cry. seriously cry. I am not even joking. good job, you're really something.)

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Blue - 04-29-2015

Going to paste here what I said in the first thread, since in there it was probably out of place, but here's my feedback on Au Ra CC:

Overall rate: 6.9/10

My major peeve is that the difference between the two clans are pretty abysmal, so I will split my list of opinions on gender rather than on clanâ€¦

General:
- I am HIGHLY disappointed that faces and horns are tied together, with only four options at that, and absolutely no sliders whatsoever for horns.
- I think scales should have been given a colour pallette, even a small one, with dark shades for the Xaela and light shades for the Raen.
- I like that tails have different shapes, but I am horribly disappointed that we cannot change their colour.
- Some hairstyles seem to give extra horns. It's something that bugs me because we can change hairstyle in-game. How are we going to explain the appearance/disappearance of new horns on our heads?
- The limbal rings are very interesting. Happy they don't have odd-colouring. Four-color eyes would've been too much.
- The "special features" (renamed 'scales' for Au Ra, even though it includes eyelinersâ€¦) category is again dependant on what face you select. It's something I was never fond of even with the previous races.
- I really like their emotes. They are a lot more tranquil and serious, something we really needed after the overly vivacious spree most of races (I think, except Elezen) displayed in 2.0. Great fodder for serious/gloomy characters.

Females:
- Love the shortness.
- Their dance emote is very sweet and elegant, it reflects them awesomely.
- Their voices are mostly atrocious. They can't laugh, and their /no's are too vocal. Their /angry is scary <_< some make me think of harpies.
- Their hairstyles are elaborated and interesting, though they all seem quite "fancy" and not quite how I'd do my hair for everyday activity.

Males:
- Their hairstyles are all freaking amazing. Perhaps too amazing, to the point the older hairstyles all look kind of "meh" on them, wasted.
- Their voices are all very awesome.
- Their danceâ€¦.. what is thatâ€¦.?
- Their idle stance is awful.
- Their tails are a bit shorter in comparison to female's proportions. Myeh.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a general note, some people seem unhappy the males are too tall or the females too short, but personally I think that is one of the scarce things this race has to offer that the other races do not have. I know I will be rolling a female Au Ra to finally RP a child that can look like a child and save me from all the flirting and hitting on that other characters seem to make me receive (seriously, I cannot RP checking the marketboard in a full Immortal Flames Set on an Elezen woman that someone will walk up to me and start talking about wanting to play with my bosom, ugh). That I dislike sexual-related RP is no mystery by now, and I see Au Ra girls' shortness as a brim of hope to get away from it.

Last and not least, I'd love if whatever race came next had some feminine, short, anime-looking guys. This game still has none of that unless you appreciate chibiness and roll a Lala, which I do not. I'm talking about short height, long limbs, small shoulders (ALL our males have outrageously broad shoulders, excluding Lalas), big eyes, pointy chins. In short, anime boys.

[Image: anime-boy.jpg]

It would've been much more of a novelty than Au Ra are, even without scales and horns.

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Qhora Bajihri - 04-29-2015

(04-29-2015, 11:33 AM)FreelanceWizard Wrote: However, alas, we have that boat anchor of the PS3 holding us down.

As FFXI still has the PS2 essentially causing its demise (and age, but not much room to improve when nobody develops PS2 anything).

How I would love to see a FFMMO with all the bells and whistles, 1.0's massive zones and zone line free cities, character creation with both style and options. It'd be so lovely. I don't see them ditching the consoles without seriously significant motivation, though.

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Harmonixer - 04-29-2015

I feel a bit safer speaking up on the subject now that this is a thread dedicated to such, so thank you for providing that.

Unless I'm mistaken, the primary reason we don't have customization is because of the PS3. There's simply not enough space and power behind the system to handle all of that, while also providing the MMO we play today. Plenty of features are 'dumbed' down in the game to compensate for this and it's almost daily that I find myself going 'man I can't wait till they drop that goddamn console'.

In a way, I feel bad because I know plenty of people still play on PS3s and I even have friends that do because they have no way to upgrade for the time being. But it really holds back what this game could be.

Another point I want to bring up, and this might be somewhat of an unpopular opinion in these parts but 1.0 was what I consider to be a 'bad' game. It was rich with story and thematic elements and ambition, but absolutely the most unengaging pile of pixels I've encountered in a long time. It did however have some merits that are messing from the current version. Some animations are just gone, or baked into other skills, yet toned down, the list goes on and on. In order to make it into what it is today, some things had to go because again, PS3. Space, power, all that stuff.

Onto the character creator itself:

Someone mentioned this in another thread, but there is a slight 'issue' with a fully open character creator. That being that people just straight up aren't very fucking creative. It's rude, I'm aware, but let's look at Guild Wars 2. You've prolly seen this image I'm about to reference, but it's a collection of people, all different races and classes ALL with greatswords, and the color scheme of black and red.

All of them.

There are literally hundreds of these people with black and red, and greatswords. Casters, Melee, all of them are almost identical. I saw this on ever server, (when we actually had those) without fail you could throw a rock into a crowd and hit at least one of them. Even I was a scumbag and had a human 'main'. My charr and sylvari never panned out, I tried though. Didn't enjoy the classes as much as Guardian.

PSO2, which Zyru likes to bring up often, is another game in which creativity is actually more of the same. You'll likely see hundreds of lolis, all featuring the same outfit, haircut, voice and weapon pallet. They do tend to vary a bit, but generally speaking they tend to be more of the same. People love smaller characters with huge tits in that game, slap on the biggest weapon and you've got money raining from the sky for SEGA.

This is not to say that there isn't people who make genuinely interesting looking (bias, I know) or different characters. They can and sometimes do vary greatly! You see some fantastically put together sets and color schemes with some really cool characters but it doesn't change the fact that a large amount of it is the same.

My point is, even when given choice it's very likely that people will make the same things. In TERA I only saw the same 3 elin and humans running around. Just copy pasted everywhere. Sprinkle in a few castanics and 1 aman for every 30 or so elin and human and even less for female aman. Which is a shame, because female amani were really cool looking! I only met 2 of the stonemen race. Popos were always people who thought they were funny.

Now I'm just repeating myself at this point. I would like to see people actually follow through with 'unpopular races and combos' themselves before saying something about how there isn't this and this and this and that doesn't look like this and that. It seems counter productive to say things like 'I don't like how this ended up like this' and then proceed to be very similar to what everyone else is playing. I do not, by any means think this somehow makes you less of a person, or ment as an attack. But it certainly makes me think you might be somewhat less creative then the rest, since you are so strongly crying out for change.

I would also like to point out, that with somewhat less options people tend to make more stand out characters. It happens in Phantasy Star Online 1, Phantasy Star Universe, this game too! I can list a few other examples but it's unneeded. I've seen some really cool characters on this game! Plenty of people even make cats and highlanders that look different from their peers but it's super rare.

All of my non RP friends are absolutely elated to play Au Ra. Nearly all of them played cats, or humans. I think one of them played a female roe and is going to make a male au ra. I heard repeatedly 'Omg, the females are so elegant and pretty! And like, a little mysterious? I loveeee i!' I couldn't help but laugh when I heard it. Not a single one of them said 'ew why are they so short, that's gross!' or 'wow how come they can't look like huge monsters?'.

At least we have some sliders, and face options. We have nicely rigged hairs, which a lot of games don't have. We have INSANELY detailed armor. We have actual meshes and not just textures. Weapons bounce at our sides, books and vials. OUR BOOKS OPEN FOR FUCKSSAKE. We have animations for ALL of our skills. Stuff that wouldn't get much more than an aura in other games gets a full on effect here. There's a fair amount less recycled here. So yeah, we 'suffer' a little when it comes to sliders, but I'm willing to be there wouldn't be a whole lot of variation anyway because people straight up don't bother when given the choice.

RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Warren Castille - 04-29-2015

(04-29-2015, 11:41 AM)Zyrusticae Wrote:
(04-29-2015, 11:38 AM)Warren Castille Wrote: If there's something you're confused about, it's that you're trying to do this in a triple-A MMO.

Fine, I will stop trying to assert my existence in the virtual worlds I use for excapism and accept the fact that I will forever be marginalized and treated as a third-rate customer if I am accepted at all.

(edit: you are being very mean right now, and I think I am going to cry. seriously cry. I am not even joking. good job, you're really something.)

I don't understand your argument. You're pointing out that that other game has so much better (for you, even) character allowances, yet you're here trying to escape. I'm missing something here.

"These cookies would be so much better if they were brownies."