Portly characters, potbellies, how nice would it be?

[Banesama]

... an image if a obese elf and an anorexia dwarf pops into my head.

[RHMG Animator]

To make have the customisation, and not needing dozens of the same thing.
You could have a base body of each size.
Then morph the body to a race, and body type.

So if there is 12 medium sized races and 12 body types, using swap it'd require at between 72 to 144 different versions of the same part.
Where as if it's morphing you only need to make it once.

[Tyncale]

Now that Dwarves are mentioned, if potbellied characters are not available, I think a Dwarven Innkeeper could work well. Look at the video below, I can see him serving beer no problem.

I hope I am not offending any Dwarves here. :)

At 3.19 in this vid the line up of a lot of armors and Races will be shown, the dwarf will come up too: Line up of armors on several Races

[LordDaeron]

Maybe a way to solve the size/shape issue is the devs making armours in different sizes/shapes and creating a possibility/need of converting armors to other shapes/sizes to fit different characters (such as a human armour adaptation being required to be used by dwarven, for example).

This adaptation would be performed by skilled people (armoursmiths, leather workers etc).

[Pax Shane Gifford]

Thanks for the link, Tyncale. I don't remember seeing that video before, but I'm actually surprised they had that many armor models made that long ago.

[Andius]

I've mentioned this before but in real life I'm 6'7" (2 meters) tall. That's a strong part of my identity and I really enjoy bringing it to avatars that are meant to be somewhat reflective of myself.

The problem with height sliders though, is apparently everyone wants to be tall, and max height becomes average height. In real life when I see someone else near my size I'm like "Woah! That guy is almost as big as me!!!" Because that doesn't happen often. In game I become desensitized to it and start to think of my character as average height.

I really would like to see an attempt made to keep exceptional features exceptional. What I mean by this... there should be features available for character customization that you have to pay for, and the higher the % of characters with those features the more expensive they should get.

I'd really love to see a population not solely made up of characters who are 7 feet tall featuring the bodies of Greek gods, but I don't see why there shouldn't be at least a few characters like that.

[RHMG Animator]

@Andius

I can somewhat get where your coming from, but given the swap Method GW is using I don't think it'd be a balanced system.
If the character customisation was morph based, then it'd be easier to balance one feature the others.

[LordDaeron]

Lets at least have a good variety among the NPCs, so this feeling of "all greek gods around" will be atenuated. If most NPCs are average or even low size and/or fat or very thin etc. we will have some balance.

[Andius]

Eh. Am I the only one who generally pays about as much attention to NPCs as shrubberies? I mean most games do vary up the NPC height a bit but I mainly just come to think of them as a race of halflings living among giants.

[RHMG Animator]

Andius wrote:

Eh. Am I the only one who generally pays about as much attention to NPCs as shrubberies? ....

I don't think your the only one.

[LordDaeron]

I'd like to see very fat, incredbly thin, very very ugly, legless, armless, blind etc. folks among the NPCs

Also breathtaking beautiful women of course! LOL

[Nihimon]

Andius wrote:

Eh. Am I the only one who generally pays about as much attention to NPCs as shrubberies?

I've frequently had folks point things out to me - like the funny face certain mob makes when it gets hit - that I probably never would have noticed on my own. I realize some people really appreciate it, but it's not important to me. Maybe it's because I cut my teeth on Text MUDs...

[DoomedPaladin01]

Regardless of what models are available I have no doubt that a female elf dancing in her skivvies in a town square will quickly net a fine pocket of gold just like in most other MMOs. Not so much the dudes or "unattractive" body models.

[CosmicKirby]

Sadurian wrote:

Yes, I did mention that the races would multiply that number.

However, it wouldn't be seven. Most races wouldn't need any change to the basic human form; elves, half-elves and half-orcs are essentially human in appearance when looking at the body. The gnome and halfling could share body models, basically scaled-down humans. The dwarf is a slightly different category, however, especially the typically barrel-bodied version beloved of RPGs.

That makes three different torso models for the base races. It is still 36 different models, however, which is why I mentioned that it was unlikely.

Simply copying the skeleton of similar races isn't always the case though.

FFXIV and WoW for instance, despite having similar humanoids, use different skeletons and animations for every different race/gender combination. Granted, in Golarion there is much more in common between elves, humans, and orcs than there is in the Warcraft universe, but being able to tell what race someone is by their silhouette would be much more interesting than having to stare at their model for a moment before you realize they have pointed ears. Although simply giving the same skeleton a different set of animations to distinguish race would accomplish this, it would also feel a bit cheap.

@ Andius: I'm in a different boat. I'm taller than most in the real, but I find myself constantly playing the short races in pretty much any setting or game.

[RHMG Animator]

@CosmicKirby
So your the reverse of Akatsuki from Log Horizon in that you are taller then your character.

I'm thankful that I'm near to average height, though still on the taller side of it.

Being taller or shorter, each has it's own advantages and disadvantages.

[CosmicKirby]

RHMG Animator wrote:

@CosmicKirby

So your the reverse of Akatsuki from Log Horizon in that you are taller then your character.

I'm thankful that I'm near to average height, though still on the taller side of it.

Being taller or shorter, each has it's own advantages and disadvantages.

Ooooh, another .hack-esque anime I wasn't aware of, I will make a note to watch it. You could also pick a character from the .hack//Quantum OVA.

[Andius]

I enjoy my halflings, gnomes, goblins, etc. but my mains are usually roughly based around me.

[RHMG Animator]

Log Horizon just finished it's season run (25 eps), and will return in the fall, and Sword Art Online season 2 (likely another 25 eps) will be aired in the summer.

Note: I'm a major fan of the Dot Hack series, Sucks that Link did not get localized along with a few other things, and waiting on the Dot hack Movie+Game+OVA to be localized.

-----------------

Back on topic

True letting get race have it's own skeleton would be great, but it means a sacrifice is made somewhere.
You could say one of the universal laws is "Give and Take" as to gain something you have to lose something

[Andius]

I think the law of give and take only applies to games to keep things balanced. Not all people have "dump stats" even if they are incredibly gifted in one or more attributes. I'm sure you've all met at least one person who is physically fit, intelligent, wise, and charismatic. Given with real life your options are play the game or die, that's not a problem, where in PFO if someone got 14-20 on all their stats and someone else got 6-12 people would start rage quitting due to imbalance.

But with cosmetic abilities there is no need for balance and that law need not apply.

There is not give and take between Natalie Portman and Rosie O'Donnell's appearances. One of them is quite simply more visually appealing to 99.9% of people who aren't pretty much blind.

I think it's very reasonable to say to people, if you want your character to have exceptional traits like being unusually tall, certain eyecolors, certain desirable names, (such as surnames associated with iconic characters) , certain racial subtypes etc. available to them in character customization you need to pay for it in skymetal bits.

So yeah, I'm going to up my character's height slider to 6'7", make his human half Ulfen, and I'm not going to take a warty nose or make him 500 lbs. to do so. A lot of people might think my character looks cooler than one who used no skymetal but you have no disadvantage stat-wise, and you can go make your 7 foot tall Greek God if you pony up the skymetal for it.