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Do MMORPGs really need that much Char customization?
Czzarre
Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 3,742
Heya All, I posted this on the WAR forums, but I wanted to get opinions from all players of MMORPGS
I have played MMO's since EQ. And over the years, game designers have added more and more into the customization of your character. I have never understood the reason for this. Once your in game, most of these very subtle differances are lost due to being covered by armor or just the fact that nobody looks that close to see the differences. IN the end its all about if your mainhand weapon is glowing, and what letters are floating above your head.
Also, could you list what MMORPGs (Either F2P or P2P) that had GREAT character customization. How did it help that game?
Thanks
Torrential
Comments
to me, char customization is very important. Some people want to look DIFFERENT. I want different height, body construction, lots of tweaks in face and hair. Also, armor dying is very important.
Uniqness, is what people want.
I agree with your post. I never understood having a massive amount of out-of-game character customization.
What I mean is changing your face, your ears, your nose, eye shape, etc... On the scale that EQ2 did it was just unnecessary (same way I feel about AoC). You barely ever noticed the difference when it would have saved a lot of time and money just making 20-30 choices available, instead of allowing all of the fine tuning.
Then there's in-game customization, which you touched on with the glowing sword, etc. This I feel is way more important to the look and feel of your character. The more weapons and armor the choose from the better.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Czzarre, I agree with you completely. Vanguard went totally overboard with customization (including forehead sizes, etc). In the end it did not make one bit of difference. I played Pirates of the Burning Sea last month, and it has less extensive customization but still does provide thousands of combinations. How did I make my character? By hitting the randomize button about 50 times and eventually seeing one I liked. I will say some characters look pretty cool in POBS, and some female avatars look downright hott. But, since it is very much a soloer's game, you rarely see anyone with any regularity.
I think the time spent by devs to permit character customization should instead be spent on gameplay or content. It doesn't matter how cool I could potentially make my POBS character because I completely lost interest in the game after three weeks.
/edit. Notice how all choices still leave you with a slim avater? What about making some fat slob of a guy, or pear-shaped woman?
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
I like the trails my glowy sword leaves behind me when I fly, also the ones my hat does too.
It's something to goof off to.
City of Heroes on the other hand, and Eve online have positively glorious character customisation. Both games frequently have impromptu beauty contests.
In a game with a lot of other players online, individuality is essential. I want to be a recogniseable face, not just a name.
Most games don't offer too much customisation and gear dependant games frequently end up with everyone looking the same, or changing look to fast to ever get idiosynchronised.
Dyes help for armour.
But best of all is City of Heroes and Eve.
When I play City of Heroes, everyone knows it's me. My mum can even recognise me. My avatar is my avatar.
I agree with you Czzar.
To me character customization isn't very important, I could care less what my characters face looks like, when im just going to be putting a helmet on.
Honestly I cant think of many games that has had great character customization, Vanguard seemed to have a pretty good character customization, but the downfall of that is, 1 yr later helmets are just now getting implemented....
As for free 2 play, I havn't found many that has had more then 5 hair choices lol.
I think it is an important part of the games. I wrote a piece about this topic on this website, check it out if you get a chance you might find it useful. You can find it HERE.
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Everyone has their likes and dislikes, however for me, if there isn't much character customization, often times has been the breaking point for me, and I quit the game. I don't want to play an mmo with a bunch of clones. Being unique and different is what makes the experience that much better. If I am going to pay $15 a month, which is considerable for a game, it should not be that much to expect, to have incredible game play and depth, but also the little things, like customization.
From what I've seen AoC is setting the standard.
I'd rather look like I want to look, than to end up with some Koreangrinder 3 faces, 10 hairstyle, 1 gender per class type o game...
But then again, I am a player that is all about the character... I care. But I doubt that PvP'ers that are all about the kill, or the grinder who's all about teh loot would care if they looked like a Tinky winky or a Clown... We kinda see that in games allready with these players wearing "clownsuits" of mish mash colors.
I'm not surprised tho, and respect that some of ya's don't care how you look. What does surprise me, is that "glowing sword"... Why the heck do ya want your screen to look like some carebear induced drug related high..With colors flying everywhere just cause your character farted (or whatever he did...)...
I really do not see the point in these psycedelic pixel wank offs, that makes the game world go from "gritty/pretty/realistic/wartorn/etc" into a fireworks display a la drugz highz.
10 million WoW subscribers say no.
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im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
LOL!!
I personally love customization. Its the entire reason I played CoH, and the reason I'm going back to play it again.
I like for the guy on screen to appear just as I think he should in my head. Gear based games have destroyed imagination entirely by making the appearance of the character pointless. I want MORE of it.
mmo games are all about player freedom and choices.what class/template,race..and of course character
appearance. the early mmo games were all about choices..freedom of play. it is no accident so many people
lament the untimely passing of creativity among development companies and pine for the UO/pre-cu days...
without these facets of gameplay we might as well be playing super mario brothers...
http://www.soesucks.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=10
Define "that much"....
For some reason I don't count/care about in game customization as much as I do character creation customization. Devs can only add so many unique items to the game before the DB becomes bloated and has laggy access.
EQ2, COH, EvE & AO come to mind as having good character creation customization. I've timed out many times in some games( AO, EvE ) creating chars. EQ2 even had a pre-release char. creation tool that saved the appearance configs, so they could be loaded when the game went live.
Forehead sliders, boob sliders and the like are, IMO, just over kill. Can you really notice if that is boob setting 200/200 or 199/200? ( LOL, some of you probably can.
).
The whys:
EQ2: I liked the "live" braids. The braids were animated using PhysX, I believe.
COH: Costumes galore!
Eve: A ton of options for what would become a static portrait you would only see at full size during char. creation.
Anarchy Online (AO): My first MMORPG. What I will compare all MMORPGs against. Lot's of faces, and lot's of social clothing.
How did it help these games? They got my money!
It's like a relationship: Looks get you interested, Gameplay keeps you interested!
------- END TRANSMISSION
I remember back in SWG Image Designers could change your appearance but were also used to change your base stats. When "I don't care what I look like" PvP kiddies would get ID'ed and be rude to the ID'er, sometimes they'd mess up their face while waiting on the timer to make the change. And since these guys were always wearing a helmet, it would be a long time before they ever noticed. When they did, they'd always suddenly get an interested in their toon's appearance
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http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/rejad
For me the character customization is really important. SWG did it right. But one thing that always have made me angry is this: why do need to have those neon name tags above the head? Thats alone takes all meaning with the character customization.
The look should be there to identify the character. But it sure helps when you role play : )
I dont agree with you that customization isnt important. Perhaps its not the most important feature in an MMO, but for me atleast, its up there. You made a good point saying that most of the time your face is covered by armor and that no one really looks that close to you anyway. For the most part thats true. Fortunatly for vein players like myself, alot of games give you the option to hide you helm. As for no one looking at you. who cares. the person who will spend the most time looking at you, is you. If you dont like the way my toon looks, often i'll get annoyed and end up rolling a new one (unless theres some way to tweak it in game, IE in SWG). The truth is that many people dont pay much attention to the character customization screen while creating a toon. I for one, can spend hours tweaking and modding my face and features till i get it exactly how i want. I know im not the only one out there. I would actually like MORE options, not less
Some combination of the suit an the name (less or more) must make an image that is recognisable. If this is not the case then i can hardly call it a mmo.
And I can't really remember names...
In SWG you could turn off the floating nametag...
Before 90% Composite armor and incurse of teh PvP and teh Grindz0rz, I could identify each and every one of my friends, just by the appearance of their characters.. The clothing style and the face.
Even unknown persons that I ran into more than once, I recognized because of the customization of the characters.
Try to turn off the floating names in WoW, LOTRO, or any koreangrinder out there... I bet that you will NEVER be able to reognize a single person... Thanks to "a few faces, a few hairstyles and nothing more" gfx.
Heh.. So we need less customizaton, and more psycedelig mary jane rainbow farts floating around yer character, yeah!
Character customization is very important. I think that they are too limited in most every game as it is. I think that your appearance should have nothing to do with abilities, and that you should be able to change it whenever you want, not just when you create your character. If you could make your character look any way you want and have appearance have nothing to do with abilities it would bring a whole new level to unpredictablity to the games that they currently do not have. When you see an elf , wizard, ranger , warrior ect.. you know what their strengths and weaknesses are and can prepare to counter. If you have no idea what they are capable of it would bring alot more excitement to pvp. You would have to react on the spot without preparation, which would make pvp less boring.
Yea they do need that much char customisation ,and more even !
I just hate these asian mmorpg where it's a clones war
Syndy
ill take good gameplay over linear/instanced bad pvp boring grind and great character cust
COh has it NGE has it but the gameplay just sucks COh just is repetive
I think gameplay can be enhanced by characterization by giving the element of unpredictability as long as the appearance has nothing to do with abilities.
I would like a decent amount of customization in my games. Nothing like Oblivion where you can change practically every feature on the face, but a big variety of eyes, hair,nose, mouth and coloring would be good. I really dislike FFXI's character creation where it was pre-made faces. Just one of the things I really hated about FFXI.
I care very very little for how a character looks. but I want my character to play differently than everyone else.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
This is just my opinion but I think if someone doesn't care about their character appearance in an MMORPG, they're only there for the MMO and not the RPG emersion.
Character customization is very important in a world where thousands gather... why would I want to be a carbon copy of everyone else? I'll just go play Battlefied 2 or something if I want that... and if you don't notice the difference you need a better video card or something because I have never had trouble noticing how my friends look different in a good MMORPG with lots of customization options. They stand out right away.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.