(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:
![[Image: DYW7UTD.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/DYW7UTD.jpg)
![[Image: hQQ3wOu.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/hQQ3wOu.jpg)
![[Image: lBwlZKn.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/lBwlZKn.jpg)
![[Image: twSKCQD.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/twSKCQD.jpg)
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.
