Stats defining cosmetics?

Velocinox

Would you play an MMO where your appearance was dictated by your stats?

So if you allocated points to your strength you would appear ripped.
Or if you were very healthy your body fat would go down and muscle definition became more apparent.

Think about this, this would preclude some choices that you would have otherwise. No more minimally statted strength wizard looking like Conan. No more women warriors looking like runway models.

Would you accept this or would desire to have cosmetics be entirely under your control win out?

Flyte27

Isn't that kind of how old games were to an extent.  If you played a troll or ogre you were really strong.  If you played an elf you were agile and wise.  If you played a dark elf you were intelligent and agile.  If you played a human you were pretty average in everything.  If you consider that each race kind of represented a different part of humanity then it was what you describe.  That's what made it interesting if you were say a gnome or hobbit and started out as a warrior.  You were already handicapped, but if you wanted to role play that combination you were welcome to do so.  With that in mind I am not against stats being tied to appearance.  I'm willing to bet a lot of people are though.

Pepeq

I think the only viable solution to this is to allow the players to define what everyone around them looks like.  Then you don't have to ever see a sexpot warrior wielding a peacock feather or Arnold Schwarzenegger in a dress trying to heal you.


The best stat system is one in which your play style affects their potency.  Like leveling weapons... you can equip that epic weapon, yessiree, but until you've actually used it a while, it's not epic yet.  All stats should follow that path... instead of instant potency, you have to actually use it for a while before it actually does what the tooltip says it does.   If you rarely use it, it really is that useless to you.

Velocinox

Flyte27 said:

Isn't that kind of how old games were to an extent.  If you played a troll or ogre you were really strong.  If you played an elf you were agile and wise.  If you played a dark elf you were intelligent and agile.  If you played a human you were pretty average in everything.  If you consider that each race kind of represented a different part of humanity then it was what you describe.  That's what made it interesting if you were say a gnome or hobbit and started out as a warrior.  You were already handicapped, but if you wanted to role play that combination you were welcome to do so.  With that in mind I am not against stats being tied to appearance.  I'm willing to bet a lot of people are though.

No I mean within your race.

For example if you picked human and you put points into strength your character would automatically look strong, no choice in the matter. Race only provides the foundation of what a 'weak' or 'strong' of that type look like, but your appearance would reflect your stats.

So to give you a race specific example a weak ogre (weak for ogres not compared to other races) would appear to just have a big frame but otherwise slim, while a strong one wouldn't just be big but also have large muscles. While a low con/health example might be fat, but a healthier one would have well defined muscle tone.

Flyte27

Velocinox said:

Flyte27 said:

Isn't that kind of how old games were to an extent.  If you played a troll or ogre you were really strong.  If you played an elf you were agile and wise.  If you played a dark elf you were intelligent and agile.  If you played a human you were pretty average in everything.  If you consider that each race kind of represented a different part of humanity then it was what you describe.  That's what made it interesting if you were say a gnome or hobbit and started out as a warrior.  You were already handicapped, but if you wanted to role play that combination you were welcome to do so.  With that in mind I am not against stats being tied to appearance.  I'm willing to bet a lot of people are though.

No I mean within your race.

For example if you picked human and you put points into strength your character would automatically look strong, no choice in the matter. Race only provides the foundation of what a 'weak' or 'strong' of that type look like, but your appearance would reflect your stats.

So to give you a race specific example a weak ogre (weak for ogres not compared to other races) would appear to just have a big frame but otherwise slim, while a strong one wouldn't just be big but also have large muscles. While a low con/health example might be fat, but a healthier one would have well defined muscle tone.

I kind of got that, but I was trying to show that races were in fact just a way to display weak humans, strong humans, smart humans, intelligent humans, evil humans, nice humans, etc.

If there are only humans in the game it would probably work fine.

If there are different races I still think something that is 3 to 4 times as big as another race should be stronger and a race that spends most of it's time studying to make up for a lack of physical attributes should have more intelligence, and so on and so forth.

Either way I have no problem with attributes being related to size or muscle mass.

khanstruct

We're doing this in X-Shift. Higher Strength will define muscles. Higher Agility will reduce body fat. Your character will also age, adding wrinkles to their skin and changing their hair to white.

NOTE: Your character will also move differently based on their stats and skills (high agility will allow you to hurdle small objects in the world while running and such).

sunandshadow

I've played games where appearance and stats are linked, and I disliked it. :P

muffins89

it's kind of a cool idea.  say in a survival game.  if you kill deer for food.  your character would look different than mine.  because let's say,  I only eat berries on my character.  so the world and your choices would matter more.

Wizardry

Well that is basically the kind of stuff i expect in games and not as some brilliant new idea,just an expected idea.
I am sure people could compile a massive list of expected ideas that should be in a role playing game and devs are giving us very little of it,geesh they are not even hand crafting worlds anymore either,devs  have got real lazy but paid big bucks.

Flyte27

DMKano said:

Wizardry said:

Well that is basically the kind of stuff i expect in games and not as some brilliant new idea,just an expected idea.
I am sure people could compile a massive list of expected ideas that should be in a role playing game and devs are giving us very little of it,geesh they are not even hand crafting worlds anymore either,devs  have got real lazy but paid big bucks.

I cringe every time I read something so removed from reality.

"devs got real lazy but paid big bucks"

/facepalm

An average game dev puts in crazy hours - many work 60+ hours a week, and are not paid big bucks.

A lazy game dev - I am yet to meet one - because they get fired.


The nonsense has no end.

I think what he is trying to say is everything is kind of at a mass production stage where generic frameworks are used.  You can still work hard in such an environment, but there is less room for creativity.  Usually the creativity comes when you are reinventing the wheel so to speak.  The work must be fairly boring at this point though.  It's just churn out more quests/items/dungeons/zones for players to play through.  I can't imagine that is fun after a while.

Anireth

The time spent on something does not always correlate with quality, especially not when talking about more subjective things. The individual developer, as in, person, might or might not work hard, the fact remains that the genre is (or was? We'll see once games like Crowfall, Pantheon or Camelot Unchained are released, though i woudn't bet on it..) stagnating

khanstruct

Flyte27 said:

DMKano said:

Wizardry said:

Well that is basically the kind of stuff i expect in games and not as some brilliant new idea,just an expected idea.
I am sure people could compile a massive list of expected ideas that should be in a role playing game and devs are giving us very little of it,geesh they are not even hand crafting worlds anymore either,devs  have got real lazy but paid big bucks.

I cringe every time I read something so removed from reality.

"devs got real lazy but paid big bucks"

/facepalm

An average game dev puts in crazy hours - many work 60+ hours a week, and are not paid big bucks.

A lazy game dev - I am yet to meet one - because they get fired.


The nonsense has no end.

I think what he is trying to say is everything is kind of at a mass production stage where generic frameworks are used.  You can still work hard in such an environment, but there is less room for creativity.  Usually the creativity comes when you are reinventing the wheel so to speak.  The work must be fairly boring at this point though.  It's just churn out more quests/items/dungeons/zones for players to play through.  I can't imagine that is fun after a while.

Devs may have just become more timid. Innovation is costly and risky. No one wants to pour millions of dollars into a "maybe" anymore.

Sovrath

I would play a game that altered appearance based upon things such as stats, or whether or not you delved too much into dark or light magics. If it was science fiction based it could alter appearance based upon implants or body replacements.

Also, like Fable, I would love it if a character could barely lift a large weapon if they didn't have the strength.

Deivos

You mean aside from not everyone wanting to play a meat-head?

I played the elf races specifically because they didn't look like they were assembled out of painted ham.

That a majority of players may lean the direction of wanting to be brawny isn't particularly surprising, but tastes vary as well as interest in themes. People like being the burly warrior swinging a sword or axe like Conan, but there ale also a lot of people that enjoy playing the rogue types.

As such, it wouldn't be all that unlikely to see plenty of players with more athletic builds resulting from wanting to be the free running nimble assassins.

What may be marginalized is those that are physically weak but capitalize on mental acuity, but that's not really changing the common disparity in gaming. Lots of people focused on being big, strong, and DPS, not so many picking the support and alternative options.

Feel like this would just extend the usual disparity in character types rather than causing any new slant.

Konfess

DMKano said:

Velocinox said:

[edit for space]

1. What does an intelligent person look like?

2. How does a super agile/intelligent/charismatic person look like?

1. Sheldon Cooper
2. Taylor Swift

Games have considered something like this before.  Minimal body morph customization.  Where Foods, and activities controlled the avatar customization.  Where Slow acting Foods, Drinks, and Potions lead to lean toned physiques.  Fast acting consumables rather lead to obesity.  Long Hard Raids would burn off calories.  Grinding weather for XP, crafting resources, or epic loot drops would be considered a sedentary lifestyle, and again lead to obesity.

In the system we tried, it was more a bottle kneck to combat.  Because the more powerful body types had slower longer recovery times.  The system demanded a large army of support characters to keep the heavy hitters going.  Since the support population is either the smallest, or unwilling to work with dicks (melee DPS classes, the largest population).  The system was scraped.

khanstruct

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

They did that to some extend in SW:TOR. If you went dark side, your skin would show some marks.

I agree attributes looking closer to the way the character looks is a cool idea on the paper, but then a game designer has to keep game balance in mind... you don't want the majority to flock to the badass looking races/classes leaving the other, less appealing but yet essential classes not played for the game to be balanced and viable.

Let's use a simple example... in WoW, why would anyone play an undead, elf or troll warrior if both the orcs and the tauren had respectively twice and three times the strength of the other races, according to their massive physical appearance?

I think you read this backwards. The idea isn't to base stats on physical appearance, it's to adjust physical appearance based on stats.

sunandshadow

khanstruct said:

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

They did that to some extend in SW:TOR. If you went dark side, your skin would show some marks.

I agree attributes looking closer to the way the character looks is a cool idea on the paper, but then a game designer has to keep game balance in mind... you don't want the majority to flock to the badass looking races/classes leaving the other, less appealing but yet essential classes not played for the game to be balanced and viable.

Let's use a simple example... in WoW, why would anyone play an undead, elf or troll warrior if both the orcs and the tauren had respectively twice and three times the strength of the other races, according to their massive physical appearance?

I think you read this backwards. The idea isn't to base stats on physical appearance, it's to adjust physical appearance based on stats.

It's the same thing though.  If appearance and stats have to correlate, it makes no sense for this law to apply to individuals within races but not between races.

khanstruct

sunandshadow said:

khanstruct said:

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

They did that to some extend in SW:TOR. If you went dark side, your skin would show some marks.

I agree attributes looking closer to the way the character looks is a cool idea on the paper, but then a game designer has to keep game balance in mind... you don't want the majority to flock to the badass looking races/classes leaving the other, less appealing but yet essential classes not played for the game to be balanced and viable.

Let's use a simple example... in WoW, why would anyone play an undead, elf or troll warrior if both the orcs and the tauren had respectively twice and three times the strength of the other races, according to their massive physical appearance?

I think you read this backwards. The idea isn't to base stats on physical appearance, it's to adjust physical appearance based on stats.

It's the same thing though.  If appearance and stats have to correlate, it makes no sense for this law to apply to individuals within races but not between races.

Ok, first, that's racist.

It's not at all the same thing. It is, by definition, the opposite. Unless, of course, you approach it with the cartoon, cookie cutter view of, "This is my strong race. They are strong, and nobody is as strong as they are." "This is my smart race. They are smart, cuz they are the smart race."

Even IF you were to take that approach, are we to assume every single "strong guy" race has the same strength? Are stats entirely pointless? Would there never be a character in that race that is stronger than the others?

"What's your strength?"
"Strong guy strength"
"oooooh. I'm a smart guy, and incapable of muscle mass."

SoloAnything

Velocinox said:

Would you play an MMO where your appearance was dictated by your stats?

So if you allocated points to your strength you would appear ripped.
Or if you were very healthy your body fat would go down and muscle definition became more apparent.

Think about this, this would preclude some choices that you would have otherwise. No more minimally statted strength wizard looking like Conan. No more women warriors looking like runway models.

Would you accept this or would desire to have cosmetics be entirely under your control win out?

That's how gender lock mmorpg are warrior looks like warrior and wizards look like wizards but that means no freedom to have your own character.

nariusseldon

Velocinox said:

Would you play an MMO where your appearance was dictated by your stats?

Would you accept this or would desire to have cosmetics be entirely under your control win out?

Cosmetics entirely under my control win out. 

waynejr2

Konfess said:

DMKano said:

Velocinox said:

[edit for space]

1. What does an intelligent person look like?

2. How does a super agile/intelligent/charismatic person look like?

1. Sheldon Cooper
2. Taylor Swift

Games have considered something like this before.  Minimal body morph customization.  Where Foods, and activities controlled the avatar customization.  Where Slow acting Foods, Drinks, and Potions lead to lean toned physiques.  Fast acting consumables rather lead to obesity.  Long Hard Raids would burn off calories.  Grinding weather for XP, crafting resources, or epic loot drops would be considered a sedentary lifestyle, and again lead to obesity.

In the system we tried, it was more a bottle kneck to combat.  Because the more powerful body types had slower longer recovery times.  The system demanded a large army of support characters to keep the heavy hitters going.  Since the support population is either the smallest, or unwilling to work with dicks (melee DPS classes, the largest population).  The system was scraped.

Sheldon Cooper isn't a real person and therefore can't look like a genius.  I doubt the person playing him is a genius.

Quizzical

This is an interesting idea.  I'm not sure that it's a good idea, but it's still interesting.  DMKano raises the obvious question, though:  what is the physical manifestation of, say, high fire resistance?  High charisma?

Sovrath

Quizzical said:

 what is the physical manifestation of, say, high fire resistance?  High charisma?

Depends on the game and lore I suppose.

One could have "high charisma" that affects npc's differently. Unlocks dialogue trees. Or, if there is a "dialogue mini-game" it could allow for bonuses in that game toward different dialogue choices.

As far as "fire resistance"? It could be a "sheen" to the skin. Or maybe whenever passing close to fire the fire gives a "flutter" as if a small gust of wind hit it. Maybe it even diminishes slightly in their presence.

I'm sure some imagination could be used.

midnitewolf

Velocinox said:

Would you play an MMO where your appearance was dictated by your stats?

So if you allocated points to your strength you would appear ripped.
Or if you were very healthy your body fat would go down and muscle definition became more apparent.

Think about this, this would preclude some choices that you would have otherwise. No more minimally statted strength wizard looking like Conan. No more women warriors looking like runway models.

Would you accept this or would desire to have cosmetics be entirely under your control win out?

I kind of get where your coming from but I don't really think it works well.  Let me try to explain.

Take a Wizard.  I want him to be super powerful in magic so likely I am not going to invest the few points I get into Strength so if things worked like wanted, my Wizard would have a weak and pathetic body.

However I envision my Wizard spending 30 minutes a day working out (which is enough in real life to become very buff, ie. benching 300lbs, curling 80lb dumbells, etc) prior to spending the next 10 hours of my day studying Tomes of Magic.  

Do you see my point?  Basically I can create a muscular looking Wizard, one that does this 30 minute workout each day, without sacrificing my magic stats because I can just create a muscular looking wizard.  Without that option I would have to end up with a gimped wizard if I wanted him to be physically fit.

So until they come out with a game that separates physical stats from skills, I don't want my character to appear as a reflection of my stats. 

BeansnBread

You could also base the physical manifestations on fewer stats. Not every stat needs to be represented.

Lokero

Since this is along the same lines as this thread, MMORPG did an article just recently on a new game that has a nice physical : stat system.  Their article wasn't exactly about the stat system, but I looked at their youtube channel and saw the following video and found it pretty neat.

Character Creation Video


Kind of the flip-side of what the OP was saying, but pretty relevant, imo.