LF charms, RP, customization, and a hodgepodge of other things

Xhieron

So, yeah.  I have found myself unwittingly gameless and jonesing after a stint with GW2 (I'm on the loved-your-vision-hate-your-lies side of the ascended armor thing), and I've found myself unable to digest the sheer volume of games out there in order to make a decision.  However, I've managed, I think, to distill my focus into a list of factors by which I could weigh games, and so I'm going to throw them out in the hopes that you all might be able to point me somewhere I might not have considered.

Currently on my HD this week are GW2, Rift, SWTOR, Tera, and Aion.  I'm willing to settle in and make myself comfortable in any of these if I can find a good RP community to play with.  I have some other things I'd like from a game that they don't meet, though.

That's factor number 1.  I miss being able to RP (and my experience with online RP arises out of the old FFRP rooms in AOL back when--well when AOL was a thing that people admitted to using), and a few months ago I recently had an encounter in GW2 that rekindled that desire, so I'd genuinely like to be able to find some folks wherever I land to do it with.

To that end, I'm looking for a game with a reasonable amount of character appearance customization, along with accompanying RP support features.  And by character appearance customization, I mean real customization--not "big human, little human, pink human, and human with tail."  So that's number 2.  This (the character types thing) has been a bit of a turn off for Aion, SWTOR, and Rift despite the things those games have going for them in other areas (to say nothing of the otherwise phenomenal character creation in Aion), and I know Aion and Rift both have housing, which is terrific.  I also am not so naive as to believe that my taste for the exotic is representative of the market people are developing MMOs for.  Really, though, the less human-looking my character, the better.  GW2 did okay there, but I'm still mad at them.  Anybody know a game where I can play a mind flayer, or better yet a feyr/fihyr?

Number 3 is playability.  The game needs to be sustainable to play.  It's an MMO, so I expect it to be time-consuming, but that means the time needs to be engaging.  The big turn off for Rift so far has been the fact that I can literally run any solo content my cleric can handle with two button presses (a nuke macro and a self heal macro).  Tera has no problem here, although the questing leaves a little to be desired, and I don't even know where to begin to find RPers on that game.

Finally, I'll just throw this out there and see if anything bites: Anybody know a game that has a charm system like the Beastmasters from FFXI?  (I would absolutely go back to FFXI, but I understand it's gone a long way from the way it was when it came out in the US).  I'm looking for a game that's preferably a little (okay, a lot) more group-focused than the current vogue, but that mechanic is one that I always found... well, charming, and somehow it seemed like FFXI did it better, mechanically, than EQ, for example.

 

Anyway, I know this is long for a LFG post, but I figure I'll never get any insight unless I ask.  Thanks anybody that can offer any suggestions.  I realize this may come down to just having to bite the bullet and stick with something--and I'm prepared to do that, but it seems like the last few days I've been in a different game every day, and never staying on for more than a half hour at a time anywhere, so I want to make a decision.