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Zhavi · **04-07-2014, 12:17 PM**

I like how the dudes go from chic to rough but all the girls are variations of soft facial features and big eyes.

That said, hot damn.

yic17 · **04-07-2014, 12:38 PM**

(04-07-2014, 12:00 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote: ...Just going to leave this here.

Wow ... this is some impressive character creation. Awesome graphics and the variations it produces .... sweet!! O__O

Lost River · **04-07-2014, 12:45 PM**

That looks amazing and watch this... it'll never come stateside! x.x

Naunet · **04-07-2014, 01:22 PM**

Glitchy trees and lighting aside, Black Desert certainly looks beautiful certainly looks beautiful. However, I'd be wary of a game that touts its graphics so much. All the amazing graphics in the world can't save a game from horrible mechanics. Hell, even nice combat can't save it if there's nothing to do withÂ that combat, and/or what little there is to do is RNG-flooded and unsatisfying (hello, TERA). This is the same issue with Bless Online. Incredible graphics but by all accounts absolutely dull gameplay.

Black Desert is supposedly a sandbox-based MMO, though. So who knows. The footage at the end with the sieging of the castle reminds me of TERA's Federation patch and the horrid lagfest that was. >_<

ArmachiA · **04-08-2014, 01:30 AM**

(04-07-2014, 12:00 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote: ...Just going to leave this here.

While I like the idea, all the female options are just making different girls from Girls; Generation

Pretty as they are, MAYBE JUST MAYBE I don't want my character to look like a Kpop princess.

Clover · **04-08-2014, 03:13 AM**

Wow @_@
The lack of character customization was what kept me away from Black Desert, but now I'm interested again.

My only complains right now are:
1-Lack of hairstyles. True, you can modify the existing ones in a very deep way, but I don't personallyÂ like any of the base onesÂ to start with.
2-Females look very Asian and cute (which I love), while males look very Western and rugged... can we have young, cute looking males as well? ._.

In any case, that looks really promising, much better than Bless Online... and than anything I've ever seen, really. It's also just a beta, so I guess they'll improve it further with more hairstyles, hopefully. Thank you for sharing!

Ignacius · **04-08-2014, 07:02 PM**

(04-08-2014, 03:13 AM)Clover Wrote: Wow @_@
The lack of character customization was what kept me away from Black Desert, but now I'm interested again.

My only complains right now are:
1-Lack of hairstyles. True, you can modify the existing ones in a very deep way, but I don't personallyÂ like any of the base onesÂ to start with.
2-Females look very Asian and cute (which I love), while males look very Western and rugged... can we have young, cute looking males as well? ._.

In any case, that looks really promising, much better than Bless Online... and than anything I've ever seen, really. It's also just a beta, so I guess they'll improve it further with more hairstyles, hopefully. Thank you for sharing!

Honestly, I kind of wonder about that. Â I mean, detailed character creation is great and all, but it seems like a relatively vast waste of system resources. Â How closely do we honestly look at other people's characters, but having sliders for proportions means every single character in the game has to be custom made and calculated by the system.

I mean, it's nice to have, but I wonder if it's something that isn't as necessary as maybe being able to play with more clothing or weapon options if we're just talking about cosmetics.

Ildur · **04-09-2014, 08:54 AM**

I doubt in depth character sliders take any more computing time than shadows or reflections. While I don't know how a MMO does it and my knowledge of the required programming skills are pretty bad, I'd wager that they just slap a very lenghty code somewhere to the character. When they appear in the vecinity, the system reads that code and models their face until they leave. This would be no different nor more lenghty than drawing armor, boots, gauntlets, helmets or a weapon. It would also not take considerable space in the server. It's just one more variable for the character. Like quests.

Don't worry about it because it's a non-issue. Shaders, reflections and textures is were all the resources will go.

Ignacius · **04-09-2014, 09:09 AM**

(04-09-2014, 08:54 AM)Ildur Wrote: I doubt in depth character sliders take any more computing time than shadows or reflections. While I don't know how a MMO does it and my knowledge of the required programming skills are pretty bad, I'd wager that they just slap a very lenghty code somewhere to the character. When they appear in the vecinity, the system reads that code and models their face until they leave. This would be no different nor more lenghty than drawing armor, boots, gauntlets, helmets or a weapon. It would also not take considerable space in the server. It's just one more variable for the character. Like quests.

Don't worry about it because it's a non-issue. Shaders, reflections and textures is were all the resources will go.

Well that's just it. Â FFXIV is showing, for example, 4 or so nose types. Â Essentially, when drawing a character, it calls up nose3 or whatever, which is loaded on everyone's version of FFXIV. Â It's fairly quick. Â Conan had a slider for the nose that allowed you to lengthen, hook, crook, flare, and more to your nose until it was just the way you thought you wanted it.

While highly customizeable, I can't remember ever noticing a character's nose in that game. Â Or any game. Â But that means in a major city, everybody's nose has to be rendered individually as a scalar unit. Â So instead of nose3 for several characters, everyone has a 6-part variable function for just their nose.

Not sure that's essential to modern gaming.

Naunet · **04-09-2014, 10:34 AM**

[quote pid=83344 dateline=1397048960]
Not sure that's essential to modern gaming.
[/quote]

What's nonessential to you is clearly of high importance to many. While I maintain my earlier stance that a game which over-markets its graphics might be hiding an extremely thin gameplay experience, I do think that character customization is important. These are our personas, not just some pixels but characters we play often for years. For a roleplayer, the connection is arguably even deeper, and many of us appreciate the opportunity to modify our character to get them as close as possible to what we imagine in our heads.

I for one spend absurd amounts of time looking at my character and others'. xD

Ignacius · **04-09-2014, 12:12 PM**

(04-09-2014, 10:34 AM)Naunet Wrote: [quote pid=83344 dateline=1397048960]
Not sure that's essential to modern gaming.

What's nonessential to you is clearly of high importance to many. While I maintain my earlier stance that a game which over-markets its graphics might be hiding an extremely thin gameplay experience, I do think that character customization is important. These are our personas, not just some pixels but characters we play often for years. For a roleplayer, the connection is arguably even deeper, and many of us appreciate the opportunity to modify our character to get them as close as possible to what we imagine in our heads.

I for one spend absurd amounts of time looking at my character and others'. xD
[/quote]

As a roleplayer who had to imagine what characters look like in book games for years before we got MMORPGs, I'd much rather the game spend its resources making the world interesting, variable, and the AI more realistic than making sure we can crook our noses ever-so-slightly to the left.

I can imagine someone broke your character's nose five years back and it healed crooked, but I can't imagine that the endgame combat is more interesting than it actually is. Â In the grand scheme of limited resources, character customization is probably not where the games industry is missing most of its opportunities. Â When we have a game where the world is truly engrossing, the combat is truly exciting, the story is truly captivating, and the enemies are blisteringly difficult, and they have a little bit of space left over before the median system starts to graphically chug and some time to implement it, then we can have the nose slider.

It seems like focusing on graphics and highly specific character customization in your MMORPG is a little bit like paying very close and detailed attention to the interior stitching on the upholstery in a car whose engine runs like crap and dies after two years. Â It doesn't matter how nice the interior is if nobody's driving the car anymore.

Personal opinion.

Naunet · **04-09-2014, 02:18 PM**

We're saying the same things, Ignacious... or you're ignoring the first half of my second sentence. >_>

Ildur · **04-09-2014, 02:43 PM**

So the problem isn't character customization per se but the focus on photorealistic graphics and engines. We can agree on that. We don't need any more shinny graphics.

I still want to repat myself: No matter how many variables you put on a nose (or character's face), it's still not the same complexity as casting shadows and rendering reflections in real time (which often means rendering the whole objects two times), textures of any size, any model or any animation. The sliders only modify the polygons already in the face, so the game had to load them anyway to draw them. Placing a face-showing helmet is probably more resource intensive because then you are giving the computer a new set of polygons to draw and textures to place on top of the model.

ArmachiA · **04-09-2014, 02:45 PM**

Character Creation is basically the only reason I'll start looking at a game. It's just that important to me. I dun care if other players are looking at Armi's nose, I AM. And I matter. Tongue

Clover · **04-09-2014, 02:57 PM**

(04-09-2014, 10:34 AM)Naunet Wrote: I for one spend absurd amounts of time looking at my character and others'. xD

Hahaha, same. Also, I must say I LOVE photorealistic graphics. Good graphics and good characters are a must for me to have fun, otherwise, I don't even touch the game.

Likewise, games that don't offer more than that become boring pretty fast, but at least they have still served for great RP since I was able to like the characters (Tera, I'm looking at you).

I've been following Black Desert from the very first trailer that was released, since the setting and atmosphere was pretty much of my liking; I wasn't inspired by the lack of character customization, but that's changing now. However, I doubt I'm going to like it more than FFXIV because FFXIV has spoiled me good, and because Black Desert's classes are character/gender-locked, which lacks freedom. My guess is that Black Desert will be like Tera and Blade and Soul to me: I love the RP, I love the characters, yet the game is forgettable.

I'm fine so long as I can play with that character creation, really *laughs*.

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RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes