Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, as mentioned, I'm really not a big fan of the idea. In a ROLE-PLAYING about the worst thing you can do is remove the players control over thier own character....especialy when it comes to things involving behavior.
But this is very much about control--secondary, diachronic control. I love this idea--how strong, fast etc. I am is dependent on my choices. And to the degree that these are visible features--hard to see how intelligence is eye visible--it would be awesome to see your character emerging because of your choices. Like how cool would it be to have people with high constitution that have all their teeth, full head of hair, but then maybe sparse hair, missing a few teeth as a visible consequence of your choices about your character?
You have a specific RP concern--how you manipulate your performance for social reasons. An easy answer is a disguise skill--maybe your character is a hale, powerful young woman, but wants to manipulate her appearance to look older/more haggard/sickly. That would be totally bad-ass.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can see the physical stats having an effect on your character, that makes sense. But charisma and the other mental shouldn't affect your appearance. I mean your head isn't going to get bigger the more intelligence you have.
And not to be a downer but you can make a muscular, fit and handsome fighter. But aren't you just going to put him in full plate and put a helmet over their head? Which covers everything anyways.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If something like this could be implemented, I think that what should happen is that when you gain a character ability that carries with it a potential visual appearance change you have options on how that change is implemented. So instead of using sliders at character creation, you get sliders throughout the character's life.
Perfect. I look forward to hearing more about this system when the artists get some time to work on it but for now I think it sounds like you guys have some great ideas to work from.
personally, while i like the idea of stat-tied appearance, i'm more of the opinion that everything should be at the hands of the players to decide how their character looks, not limit them to certain types from their stat layouts (because the justification of their appearance in comparison to their stats is only limited by the player's imagination).
what if someone wants to make a "muscle wizard"? or a dude who's sickly but works out to try and 'break even' on it (sickly appearance, decent muscle definition), or wants to make a really tough (high con) tub of lard character (great muscle definition from the high con would sorta ruin the idea in this case)? 7 CHA half-orc with pink hair and floral tattoos (he likes the color, don't judge him)?
I just say give everyone their sliders and appearance stuff from the get-go and let them make who they want to be their character. I mean, there's barbers and gyms and tattoo artists in the setting, right? let them go there if they wanna mess with their appearance further--make an adventure out of it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I just say give everyone their sliders and appearance stuff from the get-go and let them make who they want to be their character.
Having a 7 STR character that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime doesn't seem like the kind of thing that a character modeling system would want to support.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I just say give everyone their sliders and appearance stuff from the get-go and let them make who they want to be their character.Having a 7 STR character that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime doesn't seem like the kind of thing that a character modeling system would want to support.
Well you are meaning someone with no physical stregnth merit badges to look like Arnold. Stats are natural aptitude, so someone with 7 str, who spends 24/7 at the gym eating protein shakes will look like Arnold, while the 18 str guy spending his days in the library, may in fact look like screech from saved by the bell.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well you are meaning someone with no physical stregnth merit badges to look like Arnold. Stats are natural aptitude, so someone with 7 str, who spends 24/7 at the gym eating protein shakes will look like Arnold, while the 18 str guy spending his days in the library, may in fact look like screech from saved by the bell.I just say give everyone their sliders and appearance stuff from the get-go and let them make who they want to be their character.Having a 7 STR character that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime doesn't seem like the kind of thing that a character modeling system would want to support.
If someone with a strength 7 takes the time to train a massive amount of strength based skills or someone with a strength 18 spends on their time training int based skills, I say let them go for it. That will be such a tiny minority of the game's population I would consider it a non-factor. It's easier to reconcile stat on your character screen somewhere not matching up with how your character looks than someone who looks like a prisoner of war smashing boulders with a hammer that has a head the size of a microwave oven.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well you are meaning someone with no physical stregnth merit badges to look like Arnold. Stats are natural aptitude, so someone with 7 str, who spends 24/7 at the gym eating protein shakes will look like Arnold, while the 18 str guy spending his days in the library, may in fact look like screech from saved by the bell.I just say give everyone their sliders and appearance stuff from the get-go and let them make who they want to be their character.Having a 7 STR character that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime doesn't seem like the kind of thing that a character modeling system would want to support.
I would counter that both those proposed conditions are physically impossible in humans.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well you are meaning someone with no physical stregnth merit badges to look like Arnold.
Actually, I wasn't. I was attempting to speak in the same reference frame as the person I quoted. He referred to "stat-tied" appearance, and I felt I would be better understood if I didn't first go off on a tangent about stats and merit badges.
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Well you are meaning someone with no physical stregnth merit badges to look like Arnold. Stats are natural aptitude, so someone with 7 str, who spends 24/7 at the gym eating protein shakes will look like Arnold, while the 18 str guy spending his days in the library, may in fact look like screech from saved by the bell.
Someone with 7STR spending their time in the gym and someone with 18STR spending all their time in a library will probably find their respective scores switching, or at least averaging out.
The game may be different, but there is no way in the real world that any human being that weighs less than 100lbs will have a strength score anywhere near 18.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well you are meaning someone with no physical stregnth merit badges to look like Arnold. Stats are natural aptitude, so someone with 7 str, who spends 24/7 at the gym eating protein shakes will look like Arnold, while the 18 str guy spending his days in the library, may in fact look like screech from saved by the bell.Someone with 7STR spending their time in the gym and someone with 18STR spending all their time in a library will probably find their respective scores switching, or at least averaging out.
The game may be different, but there is no way in the real world that any human being that weighs less than 100lbs will have a strength score anywhere near 18.
You are forgetting a key detail, attributes in PFO are a character's ability to advance in that part of development. A 7 str can look like arnold, but it will take 20x longer than the 18 str character. So having a high attribute means you will advance faster, you do not start higher.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You are forgetting a key detail, attributes in PFO are a character's ability to advance in that part of development. A 7 str can look like arnold, but it will take 20x longer than the 18 str character. So having a high attribute means you will advance faster, you do not start higher.
Not forgetting, apparently I did miss the line where I mention it will indeed take him noticably longer than an 18 str fighter attempting the same. I also have no clue of what the rate of difference will be though I do doubt it will be anywhere close to 20x, probably more like 2-3x. Judging by the fact that GW has little intention of respecs being implemented within 5 years, I can't say I can read their mind, but I don't think they want to make taking wizard as your 2nd job after barbarian to have a nice change of pace to be mechanically impossible (2.5 years x 20 = 50 years... which in my book is mechanically impossible within the context of an MMO)
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Tieing looks to physical stats is interesting but really I want looks to be more representative of the character I am trying to play rather then their stats.
Besides many of the scores represent multiple things and thus can be expressed in different ways. For example I have a 6 for Cha in real life but I still love to express myself in many creative and colorful ways, I just can't convince people that it's daytime when the sun is out. I also have a high con score, because I almost never get sick, have above average resistance to poison oak and such, and pressure points that make others nearly pass out have almost no effect on me, yet I look weak and sickly (to the point that people feel insulted and disgusted that they lose matches to me). Obviously there is more to these stats then meets the eye.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You are forgetting a key detail, attributes in PFO are a character's ability to advance in that part of development. A 7 str can look like arnold, but it will take 20x longer than the 18 str character. So having a high attribute means you will advance faster, you do not start higher.
Well you are meaning someone with no physical stregnth merit badges to look like Arnold. Stats are natural aptitude, so someone with 7 str, who spends 24/7 at the gym eating protein shakes will look like Arnold, while the 18 str guy spending his days in the library, may in fact look like screech from saved by the bell.Someone with 7STR spending their time in the gym and someone with 18STR spending all their time in a library will probably find their respective scores switching, or at least averaging out.
The game may be different, but there is no way in the real world that any human being that weighs less than 100lbs will have a strength score anywhere near 18.
Because of that though, we can assume that any rational person with a Strength of 6 and a int of 20 is going to spend very little training on strength based skills and a considerable amount on int based skills, and that if those stats are switched the opposite will be true.
Is it POSSIBLE to do things differently? Could some guy do it just to prove a point? Yes. But honestly who would do that? Especially if we were to use this system or one like it. It's not like your attributes will be randomized.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In the other thread: LOOTING, AND SALVAGING, INTELLIGENT AND YES, SIZE SHOULD MATTER.
Ryan provided a FUNCTIONAL description using the lesson from EvE of what is lootable/salvagable:
In the end, the place where the game design has to balance is between making death meaningful and making it so painful that too many people quit in frustration when they die.
EVE moderates this problem a bit with ship insurance, but that works because a HUGE portion of what you invest in when you leave port is your ship. Insuring the hull allows you to recoup a good bit of that investment if the ship is destroyed.
In a fantasy game there's nothing that really approximates the relative value of a ship hull in EVE. We could use armor but then we'd have to come up with all sorts of equally expensive armor-slot stuff for everyone to wear. In EVE, you fly a ship to mine, you fly a ship to explore, you fly a ship to transport, and you fly a ship to fight. So everyone is flying a hull and those hulls get more expensive as you advance your pilot in skills.
This COMPARISON between AVATARS gave me pause for thought. In a lot (all?) of Fantasy mmorpgs, the avatar is humanoid. A LOT of people I notice therefore put emphasis of importance on how the avatar therefore looks: An expression of their indviduality/personality.
Yet, perhaps being very critical, if you watch ANY mmorpg vids of any fantasy mmorpg what is noticeable is the LACK OF LIFE in the avatars. Which I think boils down to the "Uncanny Valley" problem. The movement and stiffness and jerkiness of movement and statue gait etc of lots of players in an area reduces immersion with the avatar.
The blessing of ships (& maybe the curse?) is that this problem does not arise. What is EASY to concentrate on is the "GAME UTILITY" of the avatar from building it based on HULLS which represent FUNCTION much more than the player's sense of personal self immersing in the world via a body.
So,what I'm driving at, with customization, I think the paramount importance is the functionality of visuals has to make sense, has to impart significance, has to convey USEFUL INFORMATION ABOUT THE GAME PLAY >>>> than aesthetic pleasure.
I already set my stall if this is a debate, but I think it's important to emphasis the above, given the problem of humanoid avatars in mmorpgs actually are one of the biggest detractors for immersion over a long period of time. What lasts in my opinion is functionality of the game character, so the more the appearance conveys history, utility, personality -> things that lead another to be able to make judgements about another based on what they look like as well as what they do and what they say, I think this is the right approach for avatar customization. Too much free-form customization like dressing a mannequin I think would ultimately do a disservice to the immersion qualities of avatars imho.
I set my stall out early, I'm not that concerned about visual customization, though appreciate fully many people are. But I like the sounds of visualization <-> information <-> skills. So you can access what sort of threat another player might pose in what directions. The nice thing about this information "processing" is that it then can be reversed so that disguises and the ilk are misinformation. :)
Even a few pointers such as tossing knives when lazing around is sufficient to inform an observer about another player. Imperfect information is definitely an interesting addition when there potentially are lots of skills and items and attributes to access from a visual pov. Imagine coming across a rival party and checking all members with a quick, sweeping glance?!
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Goblin Squad Member
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@AvenaOats,
I think it comes down to what type of game PFO wants to be. If it's primarly a wargame then you are probably right. If it's primarly a ROLE-PLAYING game then it really has to allow a high degree of creative freedom in the player customizing thier avatar. If it's going to be balanced between both then it has to reach some acceptable level of compromise.
Admitedly I'm biased as I am more interested in the RP elements. I can accept a certain degree of logical restriction on my characters (I tend to play pretty close to stereotype anyway) but take away too much creative control and it kills a large portion of the games appeal for me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@AvenaOats,
I think it comes down to what type of game PFO wants to be. If it's primarly a wargame then you are probably right. If it's primarly a ROLE-PLAYING game then it really has to allow a high degree of creative freedom in the player customizing thier avatar. If it's going to be balanced between both then it has to reach some acceptable level of compromise.
Admitedly I'm biased as I am more interested in the RP elements. I can accept a certain degree of logical restriction on my characters (I tend to play pretty close to stereotype anyway) but take away too much creative control and it kills a large portion of the games appeal for me.
That sums up the situation.
But I think players or developers even would do well to take the usual spare rope of customization of avatars in other games and spin it through a bunch of pulleys and levers and make it a lot more taunt than is often the case. Still flexible to feed into a form that players want but in a sense working within a SYSTEM of ratchets to create a form that is tied to the laws of the game world AND game play and the consequences of that to inform RP. Ultimately I think all players will enjoy the avatars more (lastingly) in all types of interaction if there is a way to make them make sense in the game world and it's rules.
In the game spore, it's cited as a big disappointment because the creature generator (I remember them releasing a stand-along demo of it) was incredible fun creating anything, but these creations did not tie in with the game in the unique and interesting way that the generator was capable of making them look as if they could. I think creating a purdy avatar or otherwise may be a fun initial process but it could and I think does lead to a disconnect when what is created fails to do the things it is said or looks to be designed to be doing?
Ah, I'm rambling (just had a few emergencies) ok, what I am pointing for is that RP as a form of pretence is excellent and valid fun and aided by customization, but what I believe, is that if the avatar and the world have a much tighter connection then I think THAT would actually enhance the "acting"/role-play by having more basis to work with and within?
It's worth debating ie trying to persuade others of a different position to their own, because other Fantasy MMOs have mostly failed (I suspect; perhaps as spore has) in generating a reality that makes character stories take more account of the virtual world, they are set in.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I see what you are saying but I don't agree with strengthening the idea of stereotyping people based on what you see. Doesn't work in reality, so why should it work in a game?
Unfortunately as I said, I've not really been too passionate about customisation in other mmos, I am not good at producing tactical examples. ^_^
To go back to what Ryan was hinting, what was roughly outlined, about your history creating some of your visual appearance as various markings (possibly with sliders). What I really like is that your avatar may start very plain and your choices and what happens to your avatar shapes your appearance. Why is this good? To borrow a concept, it is a great was of connecting "the local with the global". So you might make a little choice now that leads to either strong direction later or that in conjunction with other small decisions reflects your character's story, visually and what sort of person they are gameplay actions <-> appearance. In other mmos you look for cool looking armour (& hope not too many other ppl can get it!) Maybe different types of armour are different types of cool for different ppl. But the above is already telling a story not making a fashion statement, is one way to compare it?!
I'm reminded of Team America when Matt Damon came out half-baked, so the makers ran with it and every time Matt Damon the puppet pops up, he comes out with "Matt Damon!!"
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Goblin Squad Member
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When it comes to body sliders, i would love to have it, but i think a lot of games are not implementing them because of performance issues. I think it's easier to render a lot of characters that has the same pre-made shape, than everyone having different shapes. Maybe it depends on the engine, or i could be wrong :)
Having diversity in face appearance and body shape really helps immersion. Usually tho i am fine with lesser focus on character customization if there are many ways to dress your avatar.
there is one mmoRPG that has load of character sliders
You-tube: "phantasy star online 2" or PSO2.The characters are extremely customisable and the game runs at a good frame rate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Doesn't work in reality...Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but this doesn't make sense to me. It's actually pretty easy in the real world to look at someone and figure out whether they've earned Merit Badges for working out at the gym.
Not neccesarly, I personaly know guys who don't look particulary strong or tough who are remarkably so....and I also know guys who look big and imposing who fold with a single punch and who can't even beat me in arm wrestling and I'm a pretty average looking (and strength) guy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Avena,
I think you've got to be very carefull with that. Fable tried that and it back-fired on them pretty heavly as people really disliked the game taking control over how thier characters looked...and that was a SPRPG.
You may be ok doing it a little bit, if you offer something like a dozen different options for each potential changer, including one that is "No Change" or "Minimal Change".
One of the big appeals of a FPRPG is it gives the players control over things that they don't neccesarly always have control over in real life. Take too much control away from the player and you are going to kill that very quickly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel, not to get into too detailed a discussion of wiry strength versus bulky body-building, my point is that the "Body Building Merit Badge" would result in very obvious appearance traits. Likewise, someone who has pursued a "Physical Stamina Merit Badge" will actually have an appearance within a certain window of Excess Body Fat and Muscle Tone.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Avena,
I think you've got to be very carefull with that. Fable tried that and it back-fired on them pretty heavly as people really disliked the game taking control over how thier characters looked...and that was a SPRPG.
You may be ok doing it a little bit, if you offer something like a dozen different options for each potential changer, including one that is "No Change" or "Minimal Change".
One of the big appeals of a FPRPG is it gives the players control over things that they don't neccesarly always have control over in real life. Take too much control away from the player and you are going to kill that very quickly.
Yes, I've overstated the case, and Fable is good eg of trying to over-plan for players' sense of freedom. :)
I just have the notion that humanoid avatars are actually a lot harder to do with longevity than perhaps is realized, given the uncanny valley list of problems. The way I see to avoid this, is the more "game-information" the avatar represents that is integrated into the game (eg analogy of kung-fu forms: of Tiger, Crane, Eagle Claw etc) that feeds into the gameplay, the more longevity these avatars I guess will have.
I've definitely overstated the case ;) and agree with you that the avatar works partly because players have HIGH control over it and what they want to express.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@AvenaOats,
I think it comes down to what type of game PFO wants to be. If it's primarly a wargame then you are probably right. If it's primarly a ROLE-PLAYING game then it really has to allow a high degree of creative freedom in the player customizing thier avatar. If it's going to be balanced between both then it has to reach some acceptable level of compromise.
Admitedly I'm biased as I am more interested in the RP elements. I can accept a certain degree of logical restriction on my characters (I tend to play pretty close to stereotype anyway) but take away too much creative control and it kills a large portion of the games appeal for me.
Amusingly I actually think it works the other way...if it is strictly a war game, who cares, let people look like whatever they want. All that matters is the size of ones weapon.
If it is a ROLE-PLAYING game then you should have to deal with the consequences of your role playing. If you think your role is as a Conan type barbarian, then you will need the muscle necessary for swinging large weapons and crushing skulls with your hands. That muscle necessarily adds mass to a base character. The use of light hyperbole and stereotypes with an avatar allows other players to see what would be probably be obvious to their character...allowing them to role play logically and in kind.
I am not against being able to hide those features, there is after all a disguise skill for those who do not want to show others what role they play in their roleplay.
Given enough variation, none of this precludes a player being creative in character design/creation.
@Asfrith, 100% agree. Well said.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The more variety and options the better. I don't mind limiting some of the really weird stuff (purple hair, different colour eyes, etc.) or more likely than that, make stuff like that only available through a micro-transaction in the cash shop. This is Pathfinder still and should be about role-playing definitely, but I do not for a minute believe that means I shouldn't have to look like every other human, elf, or whatnot out there. You should be able to make the character yours and reflect what you imagine them to be in their appearance. That means lots of options and the capacity to really tailor their appearance. I really don't think it should be tied to stats (especially charisma but that is a whole other can of worms in its own).
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I hate the idea of stats predetermining character appearances based on a set of stereotypes. You do not have to be freakishly muscled to be freakishly strong. It's a misconception.
Now that Pathfinder RPG has created the Advanced Races Guide (APG). If the Devs used a variation of this with a very robust character creator (like SWG's) Then mechanics would no longer be tied to appearance. Each ability/ stat can have a weighted value and be place in specific categories with the potential for prerequisites to ensure game balance. While at the same time allowing players to create core races, sub-races and uncommon races and backgrounds/ back-stories without being tied to the mechanics. This type of system would increase the diversity of the game and I believe would only enrich the player experience.
This is an MMO and as such there will be a mechanically superior stat/ ability array based on race/ class combination unless the mechanics are removed from the race. While there are many role-players here on these forums there are far more roll-players (min-maxer's) in the MMO community. We can never remove the possibility of a "best build" without making everything exactly equal (and boring), but i would much rather see multiple races running around with "best builds" because they wanted to play the half-orc Paladin then the majority of wizards are elves because it is the "best wizard".
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Goblin Squad Member
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Character customization is a tricky issue with MMO's. Detailed customization adds identity and customization the characters but restricts how much else you can have going on.
You see character customization isn't so a rendering issue, that would be polygon count and texture resolution. Character customization is a bandwidth issue. The more options you have for character customization the more data you need to send over the internet to each client, data that could be used to send more useful information. This isn't to bad if you only have a few people visible at a time, but when in large groups this becomes highly restrictive. Depending on your bandwidth that can do things like highly restrict your view distance and the distance at which one can engage in ranged combat needs to be reduced to keep balanced for those with low view distance. You are also sacrificing all sorts of combat data transfer.
While this sounds bad for you as a client the server side has it much worse. The client only experiences a linear increase in bandwidth usage as the number of visible players increases. The server in the other hand experiences an exponential increase in bandwidth usage as it needs to send all of the data for all visible players to all players. If you have to much character detail it can become prohibitively expensive to maintain the kind of bandwidth levels needed to keep a good view distance going for the players.
And that is pretty much why you don't have a lot of character customization choices in most MMO's. Bandwidth is at a premium, and detailed character customization can use up a lot of it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Has Ryan's post from the previous page already been mentioned?
If something like this could be implemented, I think that what should happen is that when you gain a character ability that carries with it a potential visual appearance change you have options on how that change is implemented. So instead of using sliders at character creation, you get sliders throughout the character's life.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Character customization is a tricky issue with MMO's. Detailed customization adds identity and customization the characters but restricts how much else you can have going on.
You see character customization isn't so a rendering issue, that would be polygon count and texture resolution. Character customization is a bandwidth issue. The more options you have for character customization the more data you need to send over the internet to each client, data that could be used to send more useful information. This isn't to bad if you only have a few people visible at a time, but when in large groups this becomes highly restrictive. Depending on your bandwidth that can do things like highly restrict your view distance and the distance at which one can engage in ranged combat needs to be reduced to keep balanced for those with low view distance. You are also sacrificing all sorts of combat data transfer.
While this sounds bad for you as a client the server side has it much worse. The client only experiences a linear increase in bandwidth usage as the number of visible players increases. The server in the other hand experiences an exponential increase in bandwidth usage as it needs to send all of the data for all visible players to all players. If you have to much character detail it can become prohibitively expensive to maintain the kind of bandwidth levels needed to keep a good view distance going for the players.
And that is pretty much why you don't have a lot of character customization choices in most MMO's. Bandwidth is at a premium, and detailed character customization can use up a lot of it.
Customization doesn't have to be bandwidth extensive. Most of the time (if not all) the models are stored on the client's machine as well (as for everything else.) MMOs, and heck, PC games in general, take up a LOT of hard drive space. As far as I know, servers should just simply be sending a small bit of data telling what files the software needs to render on the screen. Simple enough, and then placement of the object/model should appear on screen at what coordinates.
In my opinion, I just hope to have settings more visible and easily explained. On one MMO (Mabinogi), I hear of many people asking me/others not to use a skill because it makes them lag, but when I see some actual gameplay from players (mostly on youtube), they are lagging in game (not recording software-wise) and have it rendering the higher-quality effect. There was two effects: One was just a simple semi-transparent white overlay over their character, while the other was the character having several semi-transparent images of them rotating around them, meaning the character was essentially rendered multiple times at once. Most had the second option. It's still not perfect, but I lagged about as much in extremely populated areas with several different characters as I did in some other games where the characters look similar and where grouped up together. (The engine, however, could stand to get some more optimization, it's been in use for about almost 10 years.)
Of course, this is as far as I can tell, what happens in that game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hate the idea of stats predetermining character appearances based on a set of stereotypes. You do not have to be freakishly muscled to be freakishly strong. It's a misconception.
I don't think anyone here is really arguing that point, or that the devs are really pushing that point. That's why they are talking about sliders. Because while you may not need to look like the incredible hulk in order to be a pretty brawny dude, you need to be pretty strong to look like the incredible hulk, and someone who is incredibly strong is not going to be skin and bones. They at least need to be tone.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've played with a few character creation systems, some were simple others were advanced.
PSO2 Character Creator install
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@Asfrith
I agree, but to use the stats as weight for determining the range of muscle bulk.
As there is strength trained bulky muscle (Conan), and endurance trained compressed muscle (Monks), both could have the same strength score, but the size of the muscle is different.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Customization doesn't have to be bandwidth extensive. Most of the time (if not all) the models are stored on the client's machine as well (as for everything else.) MMOs, and heck, PC games in general, take up a LOT of hard drive space. As far as I know, servers should just simply be sending a small bit of data telling what files the software needs to render on the screen. Simple enough,...
That is exactly what all MMO's do. It still is prohibitively expensive on bandwidth.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Customization doesn't have to be bandwidth extensive. Most of the time (if not all) the models are stored on the client's machine as well (as for everything else.) MMOs, and heck, PC games in general, take up a LOT of hard drive space. As far as I know, servers should just simply be sending a small bit of data telling what files the software needs to render on the screen. Simple enough,...That is exactly what all MMO's do. It still is prohibitively expensive on bandwidth.
But it isn't the majority of the data being sent. It's everything else from what is that player doing to monster movement. And even so, I believe it only sends the data once for a character, and then again if a new one shows up.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm far from an expert on the subject, but this is far from the first sandbox mmo I've been involved in. And it has always been that bandwidth limitations are the reasons for limitations in character customization. Positional data and movement are the big things parts of data transfer.
If you aren't afraid of not having anybody that still runs on dial-up speeds you can get a lot more, but you are still paying through the nose with with server side bandwidth.
And remember we aren't just talking facial data here. We are talking about the details of everybody's equipment too.
If PFO is a success it isn't unreasonable to assume that character customization levels may increase as GoblinWorks can afford to implement them and can afford greater level of bandwidth.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It has never been character customization that has caused latency issues.
I'll mention it AGAIN that it doesn't matter if there is very little or a load of character customization options, that has no effect on latency. This isn't even just sandbox MMOs, I find this true for every MMO. It isn't the character customization that there is bandwidth issues, it's everything else, mostly AI and timing of things.
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I could be wrong, I honestly would like to hear what a developer has to say on character customization and latency because in my experience, character customization is never the reason why there's latency issues, but rather it's combat, positioning, and whatever. I've played a MMO that had 50 different eye styles, 50 different hairstyles, 50 different mouths, and then 20 different colors for the first two options. On top of that, there was upper body weight, lower body weight, and something else that would vary by character. Then there could be 50 characters on screen at once or more, and each would have a HUGE variety of weapons, armor, gloves, hats, and shoes of varying color (about every item in the game has randomized colors) The only lag I had in those areas was framerate-wise, which has NOTHING to do with the server.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Character costumization limits what an MMO can do with its bandwidth. It is kept lot to free up more bandwidth room for other things. Even then you try to keep the bandwidth usage low to account for other issues.
The more information that needs to be sent for game mechanics the less room there is for personalization of character appearance. You can see this very clearly in FPS's where there is very little in terms of character customization. This is because all of the bandwidth is going to positional data. Character customization just cuts into bandwidth that has more important purposes, including providing a buffer in case something would slow the connection.
I believe is was for Star War Galaxies I once had a dev explain why they would not have asymmetrical character experience. It wasn't that they didn't want to or even that it would be difficult to do. It's that it would double the amount of character data being sent per character.
Also remember while it might not be huge hit on your end, character data is costing a huge amount on the servers side. If you can see 10 characters the server only receive you ten times as much character data, but because the server needs to send data to all ten players it so the server multiplies the data send out 100 time. If you are in an area with 100 characters, you only see a your bandwidth usage increase 100 time, while for the server this increase is 10,000 the usage. Suddenly that tiny little amount of character data being sent become a huge number.
Bandwidth for a server isn't cheap, so you cut it where you can.