Leveling in LOTRO makes me feel like I am in battle of the clones

Trevorion · May 2007

As opposed to other MMOs I clearly find LOTRO as great for casual gaming and real rp. What really bugs me however is the poor selection of faces in the character buildup screens. Fair enough, skin color and nose adjustments might do the job, however I find that overall it is like building different emotions on the same face. Hey I would have expected to find a range of decent facial skins, from dark and sinister to ugly to beautiful to mischevious ... I find that important for the extra touch of rp. Perhaps I am too much of a perfectionist however even Oblivion provides much better. Warcraft is terribly limited in such choices too however at least there is a difference between the faces and I feel they do the job. I am a bit disappointed, Turbine put so much effort into world detail and yet they ignore the small bits which do make a difference. Thumbs up for the environment! Sigh thumbs down for individualisation.

cyberlettuce · May 2007

I can see your point to an extent. I mainly found the elven faces to be very similar especially as there are very few details [no scars or age effects] you can add to change the face a bit. That said however you might be being slightly over pedantic as it is very hard to notice much difference facially from other characters anyway no matter how many options you are given. Clothing is usualy the most noticable thing and possibly hairstyles and facial hair to a certain extent. I tend to be a bit picky when making my characters as well but its only the elven faces that I am having problems making individual enough for my tastes, a few more options on the 'detail' list couldn't hurt for them. The fact that players can actually dye clothing in this game does add a lot of options on the clothing front at least. MInd you I will say whatever short comings exist in the character customistation I think the game itself is fantastic!

Trevorion · May 2007

Hey I think the LOTRO world is awesome too, however lets face it if Turbine did not include the use of dyes, the characters would have been even more alike. Coloring your armor is a big plus. In other MMOs I for one take great pain to wear armor in style sometimes refusing to have better stats just for the sake of looking cool and unique. Hey I am no paranoid :P I just relish in feeling different and unique. I would rather appear a newbie and be happy with my character rather then having the best tiers and look like others or like shit.

Hairysun · May 2007

I do understand where your coming from. More options with character creation would be nice. I'm sure Turbine is aware of this issue many people have and would be inclined to think it's something they are working on.

I've heard they are currently converting over to DirectX 10 support with LotRO. When this takes place a tremendous amount of resources will open up to fine tune things and not create additional lag. Imagine LotRO with better graphics.........can't wait.

DrinkMilk · May 2007

Its a typical Turbine MMO game feature. They just dont give a hoot about customization....it was like this in DDO, Asheron's Call +2.

It's strange really....they are pretty good at game content, but making their players FEEL and LOOK like individuals seems to be out of their league.

Jenuviel · May 2007

There have actually been a few developer comments on this. What they basically come down to is that, due to the decision to include facial animations, they had to base those animations on a skeletal foundation. Essentially, all characters of a given race and gender had to use the same skull; altering the bone structure with sliders would mean they'd have to come up with nearly an infinite number of animations. By limiting it to the one skull per race and gender, they still had to come up with 55 different sets of animations to cover what was in place (7 Classes * 4 Races * 2 Genders, -1 since there's a single dwarf model).

Whether their decision to go with those animations at the cost of individuality was a good decision or a bad decision is up to you to decide. They didn't just say "Hey! Let's scrap variety!," though. They put something in, and had to balance the cost in system resources and development time by taking something out.

vulgrin · May 2007

I definitely see your point. Last night, I and another dwarf came to the same NPC to finish a quest at the same time, and he looked 100% my double, which is mildly entertaining and annoying.

That said, while I wish the faces or character creation would allow for completely unique toons, I really don't know how much I care as far the game play is concerned. I think its an acceptable loss if making characters more unique would have made other parts of the game suffer. I'd love it if they added the capability to change your character up more in a later expansion, but its not going to stop me from playing.

Yeebo · May 2007

Having played SWG and EQ II, which allow you to tweak every minute detail of your face, it's a nearly pointless feature. 95% of the time all you or anyone else sees of your character is the armor that you are wearing. After that hair color/ style and skin tone are biggies. Eye color makes very little difference, others can rarely see your face closely enough to tell what color eyes you picked. Minute facial details are almost pointless. Having a jillion different sliders for every tiny detail of your face kills your frame-rates in any sort of town setting, for details of your character that almost no-one will ever notice. Not remotely worth it imo.

There are three things that make a big difference imo: 1. Being able to dye your armor (we have that), 2. being able to adjust your weight/ build (we have that), 3. being able to adjust your height (we don't have that, and I personally think it was a stupid decision). None of these hit the performance nearly as hard as having ten sliders attached to your head would, and make far more of a difference in how distinct characters look.

Jackdog · May 2007

I guess I am the odd man out but I could really care less. I figure I spend 99.9 % of the game looking at my character from behind. I played SWG and EQII a lot and once the 15 min of character creation was over I was more worried about my armor than I was whether my nose was long or short or whether I had a pony tail or a comb over under the helmet. COH was neat, because the details of the costumes really stood out, unlike a characters cheekbones.

nemo38 · May 2007

well this is the biggest drawback for me with this game. everyone gets the same looking armor. if anything why cant they allow characters to purchase dye or go to a tailor to change the color of ypur armour. it's pretty bad around lvl 28 when everone is wearing red boots in the lone lands.

Yeebo · May 2007

Originally posted by nemo38

well this is the biggest drawback for me with this game. everyone gets the same looking armor. if anything why cant they allow characters to purchase dye or go to a tailor to change the color of ypur armour. it's pretty bad around lvl 28 when everone is wearing red boots in the lone lands.

You can dye your armor. Historians (scholars) can make dye. The low level dyes are pretty inexpensive. Olive Green doesn't look too bad, and it's only in the second tier of scholar (so it's not horrifically expensive). Check the auction house, or level up a historian (I did the latter).

I don't know if few players know about this, or few players bother...but regardless I've noticed very few other players with dyed armor.

Suplyndmnd · May 2007

Originally posted by Yeebo

Originally posted by nemo38

well this is the biggest drawback for me with this game. everyone gets the same looking armor. if anything why cant they allow characters to purchase dye or go to a tailor to change the color of ypur armour. it's pretty bad around lvl 28 when everone is wearing red boots in the lone lands.

You can dye your armor. Historians (scholars) can make dye. The low level dyes are pretty inexpensive. Olive Green doesn't look too bad, and it's only in the second tier of scholar (so it's not horrifically expensive). Check the auction house, or level up a historian (I did the latter).

I don't know if few players know about this, or few players bother...but regardless I've noticed very few other players with dyed armor.

Well, I dont think lower level characters are doing it simply because armor changes so fast in the lower levels. I rotate a piece out about every 3-4 levels (that's about 1 1/2 days to me) and buying dye every single time for every piece could be cost prohibitive quickly. When I get my end game/end raid/end crafted armor and look all super uber, I'm going to dye it a nice blue and green mix. Also, not everyone gets the same looking armor to the point that it looks like attack of the clones. Is it widely varied? Not WIDELY varied but just wait until you get to the end. They got more stuff coming out soon as well so I'd just give it time. I think most people fail to realize, the game hasn't been out a month yet and they got brand new content coming out soon. Wait for about 6 months and let everything simmer.

Leodious · May 2007

Originally posted by cyberlettuce
I can see your point to an extent. I mainly found the elven faces to be very similar especially as there are very few details [no scars or age effects] you can add to change the face a bit. That said however you might be being slightly over pedantic as it is very hard to notice much difference facially from other characters anyway no matter how many options you are given. Clothing is usualy the most noticable thing and possibly hairstyles and facial hair to a certain extent. I tend to be a bit picky when making my characters as well but its only the elven faces that I am having problems making individual enough for my tastes, a few more options on the 'detail' list couldn't hurt for them. The fact that players can actually dye clothing in this game does add a lot of options on the clothing front at least. MInd you I will say whatever short comings exist in the character customistation I think the game itself is fantastic!

You aren't allowed to use the word pedantic if you don't know that shortcomings is only one word.

Otherwise I agree with you.

fiontar · May 2007

It's all about balancing the game with in the asset budget; Polygons, Textures, Animations, etc... In an MMO, with tons of other players running around and the possibility of dozens in one place at one time, character assets have to be limited and not subtract too much from the world you play in.

That being said, there could and should be more face textures and hair styles at a bare minimum. They have hinted that they are working on these things. I would also like to see more of the armor take better to dye and for there to be a dye preview system in game. Many armors have very small areas that are effected by the dye.

As far as greater modifications to the heads, their engine design or even their model designers must be limited in some way that it seems they need not have been. I work with unimesh models i.e. 3d models that share the same base model and texture maping, but allow great variation by morphing the base model. Body modifications require morphs for clothing as well and in extreme cases modification to animation. However, when it comes to the head, articulated eyes, lips and mouth, you can have a lot of variety in morphs and still use the same animations.

I think with additional hair models and face textures, LotRO's character variation could be extended without much trouble. To be fair, at the level of polygons and viewing distance common for MMOs, the facial variation has to be fairly dramatic to be very noticable. EQ2 has tons of sliders, but unless you are extremely close, two characters of the same sex, race, skin color, hair style and hair color look pretty much identical. The subtle changes aren't very noticable with out careful inspection.

Better dye options and new hairstyles would have the largest benefit at the lowest resource cost in the short term.

fiontar · May 2007

Just to provide an example (not my own artwork) of the level of variation that can be achieved using the same 3D model, shared facial animations, using morphs and face textures and hair:

(Click the thumbnail for larger view)

Kyleran · May 2007

Originally posted by Jackdog

I guess I am the odd man out but I could really care less. I figure I spend 99.9 % of the game looking at my character from behind. I played SWG and EQII a lot and once the 15 min of character creation was over I was more worried about my armor than I was whether my nose was long or short or whether I had a pony tail or a comb over under the helmet. COH was neat, because the details of the costumes really stood out, unlike a characters cheekbones.

I'm with you Jack... since I play with scroll wheel at max range, I never see my characters face, nor can make out the details of anyone else's.... toss a helmet on or a hooded cloak, and who cares.

I wear gear for the stats... could care less what it looks like....... COX was great for those who loved "creating" their character.... I spent about 10 minutes on it and was done with it....

Yeebo · May 2007

Fiontar:

I second the motion for a dye preview system. Badly needed. Higher level dyes are far too expensive for us to have to just guess.

I've only figured out one trick so far. This won't work for everything, but on some peices before you dye it a color is listed in the description. Look at the bits of the peice that are that color, that is generally the area the dye will hit. Of course that still doesn't give you any way to know what the shade of the dye actually is without blowing it...

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Leveling in LOTRO makes me feel like I am in battle of the clones

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Leveling in LOTRO makes me feel like I am in battle of the clones

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV