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.
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.
