Hydaelyn Role-Players
Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Printable Version

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

And further improvements have come in the form of hair styles and the like. It's not a complete overhaul, but we can probably blame the PS3 for that. I'm not sure what else there is to concede; Yes, others do it better. No, XIV can't right now. They're giving us what they can, and I've got enough trust vested to wait to see what else comes down the pipe.


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

Man, all this PS3 punching bag talk just reminds me when it came to my country, back in 2007, and it was absolutely the best thing ever, cutting edge graphics, to a point it took a while to get games. Nowadays, we talk about how much it's slowing FF14 down. I know, technology marches on and everything, all this just reminds me of when I was a kid and I thought GTA San Andreas looked perfect.


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

(04-29-2015, 04:14 PM)Melkire Wrote: Re: vanity, my God, I hope everyone else remembers the 2.0/2.1 days prior to glamour prisms. Tanks stuck in darklight tin cans, anyone?
I happen to have actually enjoyed my days as a Lala-tin can.


I guess my issue is that i'm fairly satisfied in terms of my characters looks. I can certainly agree that there are something I'd like more (being able to choose which parts are dyed etc or that shared armor glamors suck so much).

However, while it is also great to discuss the topic with other people, what is the purpose of making the voice heard, here, specifically. Would it not actually be more useful to try and get the voice heard on Reddit or the official forums where the voices have better chances of not just being heard but also commented on?


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

(04-29-2015, 04:35 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: And further improvements have come in the form of hair styles and the like.

And the like?

Just hairstyles. A couple facepaints.

It wouldn't kill them to add to face options, to remove face restrictions on special features, or to increase eye/jaw/nose/mouth options. Harder would be body types, but I know that is also doable, too (have seen an MMO add them after the fact).

Yes, FFXIV CAN do better.


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

Quote:Hello,
Lead designer Takeo Suzuki here.

We understand that you all care deeply for the detail and shape of your characters, and while the development team is really happy about this, we would like to keep the specifications for character’s butts as they are.

I’d like to explain a bit about why we changed the shape of character model’s butts. It all began when Yoshi-P and the character team sat down and reconsidered what should be prioritized for players when we moved from 1.0 to A Realm Reborn.

Based on this discussion it was decided to place emphasis on the below:
• New races (male Miqo’te, female Highlanders, and female Roegadyn.)
• Increase the amount of content and the amount of reward items (equipment and weapons)
(We want to make a team that can create more than four times the amount of rewards compared to what there was originally.)

As a result of thinking about what could be done to fulfill the above objectives all while converting everything over and optimizing all the data by completely remaking the graphics engine, we decided to reduce the cost by simplifying items that were too complex when making them. One aspect of this was the graphical display of waist equipment.

I deeply apologize for those of you who were really partial to what Miqo’tes looked like in 1.0, but this decision was made so we could relaunch with new races and a lot of new equipment. We will be implementing a wide variety of really cool looking equipment moving forward, and we appreciate your understanding on this.
This is f*cking beautiful. Lmaooooo! 

"we would like to keep the specifications for character’s butts as they are."
I bet he didn't say that with a straight face. I bet he didn't lololol.

I'm immature ATM but oh well I found this hilarious.


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

If I'm guessing right this will be a very different title in a few years. Which, is a blanket statement of sorts but...

It seems like they have a lot in mind for this, it's just a matter of manpower and hardware. They are clearly ambitious and want this to grow and I have every reason to believe they will do it given the time needed.

It's fairing a lot better than other titles are, that's for sure.

I'm guessing the next installment after Heavensward is going to be system improvements, existing world expansion and mostly what will be called a 'filler' expansion, but actually work out better in the long run. Lots of lore, lots of quality of life changes but lacking in 'new' content.


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

... It is true...

Like, there's only a certain specific lalafell face that I can get Kage's goatee on. That's super annoying because sometimes I can't even tell or remember what it is. So it's like, where's the goatee? Hey this isn't long where'd it go?

Goatees on all faces please.


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

[Image: 20130909033427a0dkpnn741gwz3df.jpg]


I can't stop laughing XD lololol.

Omg OK I'm done here. . . I needed this laugh,


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

(04-29-2015, 04:45 PM)Naunet Wrote:
(04-29-2015, 04:35 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: And further improvements have come in the form of hair styles and the like.

And the like?

Just hairstyles. A couple facepaints.

It wouldn't kill them to add to face options, to remove face restrictions on special features, or to increase eye/jaw/nose/mouth options. Harder would be body types, but I know that is also doable, too (have seen an MMO add them after the fact).

Yes, FFXIV CAN do better.
Well, yes they can. However you have to remember they have people dedicated to making hairstyles and outfits for the game part of the same team.

They dont just stop all the dungeon work to make aesthetics. Its why things come out slow. I personally think they are releasing enough for customization - sure, i'd love to see more cross-race hair options but to be honest? I'm more interested in the actual content of the game, not playing dress up.

Its a MMO, we as the roleplayers are the minority. They will cater to the players who pay to do all the content before us. Erry day.


RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Unnamed Mercenary - 04-29-2015

(04-29-2015, 04:45 PM)Naunet Wrote:
(04-29-2015, 04:35 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: And further improvements have come in the form of hair styles and the like.

And the like?

Just hairstyles. A couple facepaints.

It wouldn't kill them to add to face options, to remove face restrictions on special features, or to increase eye/jaw/nose/mouth options. Harder would be body types, but I know that is also doable, too (have seen an MMO add them after the fact).

Yes, FFXIV CAN do better.

There was a dev post following up on those exact things. I think in either the body hair thread or one for highlander male eyebrows. The gist of the message was that the way they store all those other face options limits being able to expand them. They probably never intended to make more options, and designed the characters with a limited set of static options.

Could it be expanded? Yes. It would only require a complete re-importing and upgrade of whatever current method of storing character data is used. And increased network load, because they might have grouped some features together into a single option server-side, which would then need to have them split back up. I'm not one of their staff and can only speculate.

Or in the PS3's case, perhaps it loads all the basic face models into RAM and then copies them to render? It could actually be running out of memory to continue doing this. Or it might severly impact the game when some super-unique character runs by and the PS3 has to have an "oh shit" moment, load the files from a slow hard disk, render them, and get them on the screen in time. Accessing an HD is about as slow as stored memory can get for these things.Maybe SE decided they wanted a steadier framerate, so they reduced the number of possible combinations to accomodate that? Anyone playing on PS3 or a low-spec PC can probably attest to horrible lag and crashes when too many people show up. Now let's make that too many -different- people and make it worse.


RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Gone. - 04-29-2015

Could character customization be improved? Sure. I definitely miss the dye system from Guild Wars 2 and some more parts and options to play with in the creator would certainly be welcome.

Should it be changed, especially right now? Not really. Square Enix has given the player base enough control so that each character stands out from the one next to it. That's more than most games will ever allow.

I'd also like to point out that some of the requests I've seen in the community are quite frankly unrealistic; take body sliders, for instance. The amount of work required to implement a feature like that post-release is insane. You're talking a complete rework of the player models, equipment models, the netcode that transmits this information to each player, adjustments to the creation UI, etc. Budget, time and resource constraints just don't allow for this sort of thing.

Even then, games that happen to provide this are often riddled with problems. Take a look at Saints Row; there's plenty of clothing that doesn't weight properly to the player's body. Take that camisole they added in IV with the broken bust. It looks awful. A complete waste of a clothing slot.

Honestly I'd rather just have one well-modeled body that doesn't come with clipping and weight issues than to have a plethora of options that will ruin the look of whatever it has equipped. There comes a point where too much customization is a bad thing and this is where it resides.


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

(04-29-2015, 05:18 PM)hauntmedoitagain Wrote: That's more than most games will ever allow.

What. Not... so. Which was kind of one of the points of people who dislike FFXIV's character creation; most other games allow much more.

You also presume that because one game does something bad, that necessarily means that all other games must sacrifice quality as well. This is an incorrect assumption.

@Meena: It's been explained several times that character customization is in NO WAY an RPer-only thing. It's not even something enjoyed primarily by roleplayers. Almost everyone appreciates high levels of character customization.


RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Unnamed Mercenary - 04-29-2015

(04-29-2015, 05:33 PM)Naunet Wrote:
(04-29-2015, 05:18 PM)hauntmedoitagain Wrote: That's more than most games will ever allow.

What. Not... so. Which was kind of one of the points of people who dislike FFXIV's character creation; most other games allow much more.

You also presume that because one game does something bad, that necessarily means that all other games must sacrifice quality as well. This is an incorrect assumption.

@Meena: It's been explained several times that character customization is in NO WAY an RPer-only thing. It's not even something enjoyed primarily by roleplayers. Almost everyone appreciates high levels of character customization.

I think the bad Aion characters image was linked earlier in the thread. There's two. And I saw my friend make the ugliest thing possible in Saints Row III. I'm sure I could go through a bunch of slider-based character creators and make something completely hideous in them all. Just like I could probably manage to do the same in static-option games, although it's significantly harder.

When given the choice to have -too much- customization, there will be a community of people who try to make the ugliest thing possible. Or the one that will look most out of place. We don't have to worry about that [as much] in FFXIV. Yes, the creator is limited, no, SE will probably never add in more sliders given the current design choices in play.

We pay them money to play what they think is going to be a good game. I'd even go so far as to speculate that most people who continue to pay for the game are rather happy with how it's turning out.

Could SE remake the character creator? I guess. They'd have to spend a lot of time and resources in it, detracting from actual game content. Then they'd have to probably give everyone another free fantasia, like 1.0 to 2.0 so that they can completely remake their characters potentially again.

...it's not that scary to be happy with what we have and look forward to what we can get. Roleplayer forums are not a in-game feature request page. I'd be amazed if FFXIV developers even know we exist, let alone visit.


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

(04-29-2015, 05:43 PM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote: I'm sure I could go through a bunch of slider-based character creators and make something completely hideous in them all.

Oh, I made the best wookiee ever in Star Wars Galaxies. They had a forehead slider, so it was this weird pinhead yeti thing. I never even played the game except a free weekend and she still makes me laugh years later.

There's something to be said for weeding out the stupid with limitations. But I'd say there's also a lot to be said for silhouette variation, and it's plausible to test out slider extremities to cap the ridiculous level that way. But for me, I think, all those extras are a luxury, and the models we have are luxurious enough. Still, who wouldn't like more luxury?

Plus, the danger of slider creators always make me think of this guy. Also still laughing years later.


RE: Character Creation: Assessment and Critique - Kaniko Niko - 04-29-2015

I've spoken about this several times, but never on a forum, and because skipping from Page 3 to Page 7 still had this on topic, I just have to ask...

Am I mistaken in believing that there's this sense that dropping the PS3 support will magically turn FFXIV from "Wolfenstein 3D" into "CRYSIS"?

Because that's the sort of gist I'm getting. And it's starting to get a little...

Antagonistic.