Goblin Squad Member
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I'll look at the Eve character creator, and compare it to others I've looked at.
I once thought Age of Conan had a great character creator, then I ran into a PSO2 character creator demo, and it blew Age of Conan out of the water with a freaking nuke and in my opinion the best made so far.
EVE's character creator makes AoC characters look like shop dummies. If the game wasn't so ship-based (and sci-fi, not my area of interest), I would happily sign up for it.
My only niggle is that the videos of the character creator that I see show the same old problem of avatar weight. If you want a frighteningly skinny character then you don't have a problem, but if you want a fat character you are out of luck.
No Friar Tuck or opera-singing Brunhilde then. It's a problem with every single MMO out there, and was also an issue with metal miniatures until relatively recently. If you want to play skinny you are catered for, but not if you want to play fat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'll look at the Eve character creator, and compare it to others I've looked at.
I once thought Age of Conan had a great character creator, then I ran into a PSO2 character creator demo, and it blew Age of Conan out of the water with a freaking nuke and in my opinion the best made so far.
EVE's character creator makes AoC characters look like shop dummies. If the game wasn't so ship-based (and sci-fi, not my area of interest), I would happily sign up for it.
My only niggle is that the videos of the character creator that I see show the same old problem of avatar weight. If you want a frighteningly skinny character then you don't have a problem, but if you want a fat character you are out of luck.
No Friar Tuck or opera-singing Brunhilde then. It's a problem with every single MMO out there, and was also an issue with metal miniatures until relatively recently. If you want to play skinny you are catered for, but not if you want to play fat.
Then PSO2 is better than EVE in that you can make any character, even fat ones, you can youtube for it or try it yourself using the links below.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If the game wasn't so ship-based (and sci-fi, not my area of interest), I would happily sign up for it.
One also needs to be prepared for EVE's much-vaunted "simulation of anarchy". There are almost no rules, and thus there can be much casual--or deliberate--cruelty; many players find that unpleasant at various points of their experience with the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Looks good, not as 'gritty' as EVE but, as you say, you can actually change the body shape! For the love of god, though, please don't have the anime-style BESM character look!
Ran through the Eve Character Creator
And looking at the abilities of the systems, not the content.
Looks like PSO2 Wins over EVE and by a good margin.
PSO2 gave you more control over the look of each area of the character,
and gave you a interface to know if you hit a limit, and you could adjust one axis of a morph at a time for areas with two or more morph controls.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I couldn't actually use the creator demo because it is 32-bit, so I had to trawl various Youtube clips and screenshots. Obviously what I see is what is uploaded, but yes, I was impressed by the depth of possible avatar appearance alteration in PSO2.
I do so hate anime BESM, though.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I ran the PSO2 Demo on my Win7 (64-bit) machine with no problems.
The anime BESM style does fit with the Phantasy Star setting, but with PFO I would imagine that it would be a lot closer to the artwork found in the PF books.
If PFO had the PSO2 character generation system, but PF style content I would be in heaven.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I didn't look long and hard at City of Heroes, but what I saw suggested that the face was neglected - the avatars looked very doll-like. Might have been just the creator and they 'came alive' in play, or possibly a compromise had to met to allow for the rather fabulous range of costume enhancements.
In any case, probably an artwork issue rather than creator.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would have to agree on that, and I know why the head was made as simple as possible.
The head of most 3D characters, (Like in Unreal and Half-life 2) is about one-forth to one third the poly count of the whole model.
That and I believe is is also the camera position and play style that would have you rarely with a face close up.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It always seemed to me that it would be reasonable to not display the full high-poly models in the game world, but to require a special command to inspect someone in such detail that you see that high-poly model in a separate inspect window.
I wouldn't be surprised if that's not a popular opinion, though. I expect there are a lot of people who actually enjoy seeing the detail in the wild, as it were.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is a technology that allows High and low detail models called LOD or (Level of Detail), the closer a model is the higher the detailed model that is used, the farther it is, the lower detailed model is used.
Most games use it now a days, as it helps in rendering and performance.
I hope they don't skip out on body customization. While most people might just create characters with muscular or athletic bodies, I know people who would what to give their character a heavy set body (as in fat) or a very gauntly body.
As for hair. It would be interesting if you could select different parts instead of a single hair style and then allowed to lengthen or shorten those parts. So instead of having "Noble Hair" You have long on the sides, pulled back top, parted long bangs, long back. And instead of "Samurai Hair" you have pulled back sides, bald top, no bangs, top-knot back.
Even if you remove the ability to morph hair lengths, I think my suggestion would allow for a lot of variations in hair styles. Though I could imagine certain swaps would take over multiple slots. Like a beehive style (back and top) or a pompadour (bangs and top).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Morphing can do more than just lengths, it can also do hair styles.
But I believe morphing hair should not be used at all or kept to a minimum.
Though I do like the idea of swapping hair parts, it'll add restrictions on hair designs and it's parts depending on how they do execute making and using it.
I'm just hoping for the big, overarching character choices:
- elderly characters
- child characters
- ability to declare "family" relationship with other PCs
- disabled characters (one arm, scar, limp, etc.)
The only one of those I agree with is the ability to declare family relationships. If you're a child why are you adventuring? Better yet, where are your parents? As for an elderly, again, why are you adventuring? Disabled characters, again, why are you adventuring. Plus animating characters with major disabilities is a lot of work when maybe ten percent (probably less) are going to use it.
Scars are okay. Especially if you can move, rotate, and re-size the scars and have multiple scars. Also tattoos. And not just limited to the face.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can see a child sorcerer working, and a child thief, of course. It might be weird facing them in PvP combat, but I suppose stranger things happen in RPGs.
I do like the idea of being able to have a family, but I doubt that it will happen. I would like formal marriage arrangements, siblings and even parents and children. I suppose this could all be worked out socially rather than through the software, but it would be nice to have some sort of in-game recognition of character's emotional attachments.
It does bring up the delicate subject of in-game PC-on-PC romance and horizontal gymnastics. I hope we don't need 'adult' emotes, but a kissing and embracing emote would be nice. The more energetic stuff I hope is best left to 'fade-to-black' player imagination.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can see a child sorcerer working, and a child thief, of course. It might be weird facing them in PvP combat, but I suppose stranger things happen in RPGs.
I agree and it could add a creepy factor and attract certain unwanted persons.
It does bring up the delicate subject of in-game PC-on-PC romance and horizontal gymnastics. I hope we don't need 'adult' emotes, but a kissing and embracing emote would be nice. The more energetic stuff I hope is best left to 'fade-to-black' player imagination.
I think they should leave out the horizontal gymnastics, and 'adult' emotes. If they do include them, then it should do the 'fade-to-black' like in the fable games. And adding it would increase the Age rating for the game.
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I do hope that they do get around to giving us a character creation demo to test their system
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I'm just hoping for the big, overarching character choices:
- elderly characters
- child characters
- ability to declare "family" relationship with other PCs
- disabled characters (one arm, scar, limp, etc.)
The only one of those I agree with is the ability to declare family relationships. If you're a child why are you adventuring? Better yet, where are your parents? As for an elderly, again, why are you adventuring? Disabled characters, again, why are you adventuring. Plus animating characters with major disabilities is a lot of work when maybe ten percent (probably less) are going to use it.
Scars are okay. Especially if you can move, rotate, and re-size the scars and have multiple scars. Also tattoos. And not just limited to the face.
Child characters are some of my favorites to play and I don't see why they should be disallowed. (Aging would be interesting too, though it should not be too quick, perhaps a year of aging per 6 months)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't disagree that having child characters killed by monsters or other PCs is not going to be acceptable.
I do find it interesting how we have gone from the early source of fantasy - fables and folk and fairy tales where children are often the protagonists - to the situation where they cannot appear. Even in a game where death is a temporary inconvenience, the equivalent of being sent to your room, I doubt that it would be a popular move to see a ten-year-old rogue avatar get cut in half by a barbarian.
We also need to acknowledge the unfortunate existence of weird people who would actively seek such scenes.... No, we can't prevent everything that might cater to specialist and underground sexual tastes, but it is worth trying to limit them where possible.
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Mabinogi has this as an integral part of character generation (even has benefits for choosing a kid) and I have never heard of these problems despite having played for a long time (the game itself has been going for a very, very long time, and is multinational) I honestly have no clue where you are getting these seemingly ridiculous notions.
Somehow this reminds me of one hundred and fifty people petitionning to get rid of Derpy and nearly fifty thousand people petitioning to bring her back. I really hate when people get overly worried about that itsy bitsy 150.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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I don't take MMOs from Korea, where borderline pedophilia is on abundant display as a serious starting point for this debate. (Doubt me? Here's images of the Elin race from the biggest Korean MMO in the US market, TERA Online)
And TBFH, advocacy in favor of children in Pathfinder Online creeps me the hell out.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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@RHMG Animator - at first it's going to be incredibly simple. You'll pick from a selection of bodies, heads, and hair.
It'll iterate from there and over time could become hugely complex, if that's where the Crowdforging process takes us. We don't have the time, money or staff to begin with a more complex system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can't help with the technical details, but a Swap system uses a menu of preset features, from whole heads with faces down to eyes, nose and so on. The level of individuality you can get is dependent on how many body parts you can swap, and how many choices each part has. A basic one might have three body shapes (thin, average, muscular) plus maybe five different heads. DDO uses a system like this.
Morph is where you can alter the appearance of each feature by 'stretching' and 'morphing' it. You might take a head and alter the shape of the jaw, the length of the nose and so on. It is much easier to individualise a character but the limits of the morphing will limit what can be achieved. In addition, it might be difficult to get exactly the look you are trying for because each part is infinitely adjustable.
A hybrid starts with preset features, but you can morph them. This means that you can choose a grumpy-looking face and tweak it to suit exactly what you want to look like. Obviously, this is the best option, but I assume it is also the most resource-hungry.
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Goblin Squad Member
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(Doubt me? Here's images of the Elin race from the biggest Korean MMO in the US market, TERA Online)
Funny, the first thing I thought when I saw the first picture at that link was "Is that Pedobear?"
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Goblin Squad Member
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... I hope you grant backers an appearance upgrade each time it under goes a major overhaul.I hope they make appearance changes fairly trivial all the time.
If you are paying monthly for a game it has to look good or this game will tank. You can't have F2p MMO's that look 10 times better than what you are paying for. They have said they want it to look as good as the original artwork and they want us to make characters that look the way we want them and I am taking those promises to heart.
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I don't take MMOs from Korea, where borderline pedophilia is on abundant display as a serious starting point for this debate. (Doubt me? Here's images of the Elin race from the biggest Korean MMO in the US market, TERA Online)
And TBFH, advocacy in favor of children in Pathfinder Online creeps me the hell out.
I find tera to be creepy in general.
And unlike tera, mabinogi has an aging system, so no one stays looking like a child the entire time, but rather you get grow up, of course with those graphics no one picked looks for looks sake.
Perhaps that is where we are not meeting, I want to portray a child character, not simply have a character that looks childish. Perhaps this is just another aspect that is dissappearing in the storm of the new generation of RPGers.
Honestly, I don't see how pedophilia has anything to do with it.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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@DarkLightHitomi: Then you're willfully blind to the problem.
So no, we won't, ever, have little children in our game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So, I had occasion to download TERA, and found this rather startling:
I had commented earlier that something reminded me of Pedobear, but this almost seems intentional.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The only one of those I agree with is the ability to declare family relationships. If you're a child why are you adventuring? Better yet, where are your parents? As for an elderly, again, why are you adventuring? Disabled characters, again, why are you adventuring.
Because the River Kingdoms don't have an effective National Health Service, Old Age State Pension, Disability Living Allowance, or other hallmarks of a modern civilised society?
I agree with everything said upthread regarding why child PCs won't be present. It may feel odd to walk into a town that resembles a reverse John Whyndam novel, but if that's what it takes, you can't argue with that.
It's sad that it's necessary, but they have to do what's best.