CoX, Champions ONline, AoC, Rift, Aion, APB, Perfect World. These are some of the games with indepth character customization. Anything less than that should not exist. The more sliders the better
edit: Rift being at the bottom because only the face has modifiers not the entire body
EVE online has the best character maker currently on the market , its compleetly useless as you can only hide in youre own ship at this time but stil
APB has a great character creator, its not as good as Eve's when it comes to sculpting the facial/body features but its tatoo and cloth texture layer system is one of a kind, it might take a otehr 5 years before we see that become mainstream.
less good but in no way bad , just fitting for the game / time the game was made.
SWG used to have for its time a great creator
Fallen Earth, even tho its more preset sliders then sculpting sliders FE allouws for a quite nice characters
CoX, highly outdated these days but lots and lots of choices how you want to look, basicly the same for any Super MMO tho, Champions online got a great system to, and DCUO aint to bad either.
all the above have or had a very large range of cloth options and it was/is very hard to ever find a clone of youre character
AOC,WaR,WoW,GW,RIFT. basicly any themepark gear based game.. CloneBars Online. ...some had decent slider options, some decent clothing options, but most suck in one or both of them.
Character customization is very important to me as well. I like sliders, but I am ok with presets as long as there are lots of options and those options are aesthetically pleasing to me. I tend to play whatever gender looks the best. I don't use asian or african featured faces, or intentionally ugly faces, so that cuts down on the number of options avialable to me.
I loved how my character looked in SWG and APB. Those were probably my two favorites for character creation even though SWG is dated now. I felt both afforded me a wide lattitude in designing my character.
I like appearance tabs, lots of hair styles, and the ability to color items. I understand that stats are the most important aspect of a piece of armor, but if I don't look good I am unhappy. I like a good looking character
I guess I am the only one here who really does not care about character customization. I generally just press the random look button until I see something I like and go with it. Heck in SWTOR I actually managed to randomly generate two characters who looked almost identical. I quickly realized that it did not really bothered me.
I 'customize' my characters after I start playing them. As I play them they gain unique personalities based on what I do with them and this I find much more immersive than playing with face shapes and skin colors. I guess I never got out of the Pen and Paper RPG mindset.
I would argue that character customization is much more directly linked to what you do in a game as well; merely looks won't get you far, but the general look and feel of your character would bring you much further: roleplaying is just one such outlet. In that case, EVE would rank far above LOTRO and others.
But in EVE no-one ever sees your character, just a snapshot. You may as well upload an image with a picture that you made with another game. Personally, I don't find that immersive at all.
Just so you know, they are slowly implimenting Exploreable Spacestations. guess what you do in these stations, Interact with other players that you can see.
Because i can. I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out. Logic every gamers worst enemy.
EVE no-one ever sees your character, just a snapshot. You may as well upload an image with a picture that you made with another game. Personally, I don't find that immersive at all.
Just so you know, they are slowly implimenting Exploreable Spacestations. guess what you do in these stations, Interact with other players that you can see.
Well we all know about CCP's good ideas .. it may take over a decade to get them into the game. During 2006 fanfest they already showed impressive content about walking into bars in stations and minigames ..
Now it's 2012 and we can still just walk around in our captain's quarters without being able to do anything that can't be done outside the CQ, let alone interact with other players. Then I ask myself: what's the use?
Since WoD is delayed the engine is also put on hold/slowed down so there's not much hope we'll get it before 2016.
Rift has very stale looking characters and you can only pick one face per race/gender, which is really very, very poor. The clothes are ok but don’t look very spectacular either. My score: 4.5/10
Did you play the right game?
There's a tool that changes the shape of the face and not to mention 10 preset faces.
I'm sorry but as Timeout77 already guessed, I played the trial version. But in spite of the slider bars I still wasn't very impressed by the options, for instance the jaw was very perculiar and couldn't be adjusted. But yes, perhaps the full version would get a better rating. Sorry for that.
do you prefer premade faces or the slider type? i tend to prefer premades, i can never get good faces when i mess with the sliders.
Premades have my preference as well. Sliders are nice for length or colour depth though - and width. And I'm always hoping thet one day there will be a game that also supports fatter characters. :-)
You can have fatter characters, plus chars of variable height from tiny to really tall, in Aion, which is now f2p. Lots of options for face and hair, too. It's a game where I spend hours creating my character, but then once I get playing, think "meh".
Loved your post, btw; your tastes and views regarding character customisation seem similar to mine. I felt exactly the same about LOTRO. Played on release, and tried again recently now that it is f2p, but just can't stick with the look of the character, and the run animation is purely horrible! Chars run as if they are also squatting, which is extremely strange to look at.
Regarding WoW which I'm back playing atm whilst waiting for GW2, I don't like most of the character models and hope they upgrade them at some point (I think I read somewhere that they were planning to?). Humans are blocky, and move clumsily (the female jump particularly). What I think they really got right (apart from the somewhat clumsy humans), is the fluidity of movement of character which I have yet to experience in any other mmo.
Nearly forgot to say, I agree with posters above that the best character customisation I've experienced has been in City of Heroes. Fantastic. I played around in char creation for hours lol.
I think the customization is really important cause when you create someone to your tastes u get inside the game like its you like you living another life. I spend hours creating a character that is similar to me thats my way to get into the game.
I think the customization is really important cause when you create someone to your tastes u get inside the game like its you like you living another life.
I spend hours creating a character that is similar to me thats my way to get into the game.
You can have fatter characters, plus chars of variable height from tiny to really tall, in Aion, which is now f2p. Lots of options for face and hair, too. It's a game where I spend hours creating my character, but then once I get playing, think "meh".
Loved your post, btw; your tastes and views regarding character customisation seem similar to mine. I felt exactly the same about LOTRO. Played on release, and tried again recently now that it is f2p, but just can't stick with the look of the character, and the run animation is purely horrible! Chars run as if they are also squatting, which is extremely strange to look at.
Regarding WoW which I'm back playing atm whilst waiting for GW2, I don't like most of the character models and hope they upgrade them at some point (I think I read somewhere that they were planning to?). Humans are blocky, and move clumsily (the female jump particularly). What I think they really got right (apart from the somewhat clumsy humans), is the fluidity of movement of character which I have yet to experience in any other mmo.
Nearly forgot to say, I agree with posters above that the best character customisation I've experienced has been in City of Heroes. Fantastic. I played around in char creation for hours lol.
Sounds good! Too bad CoH isn't really my type of game though .. but I think a lot of developers underestimate the importance of character customisation. A lot of people voted "extremely important" and I don't think most developers expected that it is the case. I'd even think that even if a game has mediocre gameplay, having a unique character that you truely love and feel dedicated to makes up for a lot.
Character costumization is quite important for me. I want my character to look unique. So far I only played D&D Online, LOTR Online, Guild Wars, Rift and Tera, and Tera's character costumization is my favorite one at the moment.
This is my character. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My char is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
My char, without me, is useless. Without my char, I am useless. I must use my char true. I must click straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must kill him before he kills me. I will...
My char and myself know that what counts in this war is not the buttons we click, the effect of our skills, or the loot we make. We know that it is the skill that counts. We will hit...
My char is digital, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its skills, its talents, its weapons and its armor. I will keep my char clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...
Before God, I swear this creed. My char and myself are the defenders of our guild. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.
So be it, until victory is ours and there is no enemy, but loot!
so yes, we might all start the same, but without having the possibility to make it truly ours.... customs i like
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
This is my character. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My char is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
My char, without me, is useless. Without my char, I am useless. I must use my char true. I must click straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must kill him before he kills me. I will...
My char and myself know that what counts in this war is not the buttons we click, the effect of our skills, or the loot we make. We know that it is the skill that counts. We will hit...
My char is digital, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its skills, its talents, its weapons and its armor. I will keep my char clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...
Before God, I swear this creed. My char and myself are the defenders of our guild. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.
So be it, until victory is ours and there is no enemy, but loot!
so yes, we might all start the same, but without having the possibility to make it truly ours.... customs i like
Within minutes all of your efforts at body customization are covered up anyway, as you will be wearing the same non-customizable armor/helmet/hat as everyone else. I always thought that more armor/clothing customization options would be a better choice.
I think it's important when it has a purpose. That hasn't been the case since SWG for me, every game since then it makes no difference what I look like, by the time you get a load of ott armour on with no reason to remove it again I just don't see the point.
Having said that all of the superhero character creators (CoX, DCUO and CO) are fun in themselves and at least give distinguishable characters.
Anyway I voted not important, at least not in the type of game we've been getting lately.
----- The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
i think you should have voted rift higher. i dont remeber the character creation part, but i loved the fact that you could dye the armor. they also have a wardrobe feature so you could essentially transfer stats from youre endgame gear to any armor.
The dying part is indeed a nice feature - hence no 2/10 ;-) But the fact that you can only have 1 face really makes me subtract a lot of points because if you don't like the standard face you can't make any nice looking character of that race/gender at all, which is really bad in my experience.
Um..I'm sorry but i really feel like you didnt spend the time to look into how to make your character. Rift has a bunch of 'premade' faces using the head shape slider, then you can switch eye orientation/ nose size, and facial features to make a whole crap ton of different faces.
You really didnt look into this if you think there's just one face sorry. And Unless your running low graphics i really cant imagine how you call the item modeling bland.... im sorry i just dont see anything of what your saying in the Rift game i play...
Comments
CoX, Champions ONline, AoC, Rift, Aion, APB, Perfect World. These are some of the games with indepth character customization. Anything less than that should not exist. The more sliders the better
edit: Rift being at the bottom because only the face has modifiers not the entire body
EVE online has the best character maker currently on the market , its compleetly useless as you can only hide in youre own ship at this time but stil
APB has a great character creator, its not as good as Eve's when it comes to sculpting the facial/body features but its tatoo and cloth texture layer system is one of a kind, it might take a otehr 5 years before we see that become mainstream.
less good but in no way bad , just fitting for the game / time the game was made.
SWG used to have for its time a great creator
Fallen Earth, even tho its more preset sliders then sculpting sliders FE allouws for a quite nice characters
CoX, highly outdated these days but lots and lots of choices how you want to look, basicly the same for any Super MMO tho, Champions online got a great system to, and DCUO aint to bad either.
all the above have or had a very large range of cloth options and it was/is very hard to ever find a clone of youre character
AOC,WaR,WoW,GW,RIFT. basicly any themepark gear based game.. CloneBars Online. ...some had decent slider options, some decent clothing options, but most suck in one or both of them.
Character customization is very important to me as well. I like sliders, but I am ok with presets as long as there are lots of options and those options are aesthetically pleasing to me. I tend to play whatever gender looks the best. I don't use asian or african featured faces, or intentionally ugly faces, so that cuts down on the number of options avialable to me.
I loved how my character looked in SWG and APB. Those were probably my two favorites for character creation even though SWG is dated now. I felt both afforded me a wide lattitude in designing my character.
I like appearance tabs, lots of hair styles, and the ability to color items. I understand that stats are the most important aspect of a piece of armor, but if I don't look good I am unhappy. I like a good looking character
I guess I am the only one here who really does not care about character customization. I generally just press the random look button until I see something I like and go with it. Heck in SWTOR I actually managed to randomly generate two characters who looked almost identical. I quickly realized that it did not really bothered me.
I 'customize' my characters after I start playing them. As I play them they gain unique personalities based on what I do with them and this I find much more immersive than playing with face shapes and skin colors. I guess I never got out of the Pen and Paper RPG mindset.
Just so you know, they are slowly implimenting Exploreable Spacestations. guess what you do in these stations, Interact with other players that you can see.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
TSW's charater customization potential is one of the main reasons im looking forward to it.
I've got the straight edge.
But you can give that 2D avatar a very expressive and distinctive look. There are some pretty scary pirates, hard-line tycoons etc. out there.
In Vanguard, I had a Gnome Blood Mage.
I tried playing him from time to time, but OH MY GOD IS THAT GUY UGLY was always the result.
I tried editing him right and left, but he still looked awful no matter what I did.
Finally I gave up, and made a Darkelf Blood Mage instead. Any massively enjoyed playing that character.
So yeah, Looks are very important to me. Sadly they nerfed Darkelves into Oblivion later.
Well we all know about CCP's good ideas .. it may take over a decade to get them into the game. During 2006 fanfest they already showed impressive content about walking into bars in stations and minigames ..
Now it's 2012 and we can still just walk around in our captain's quarters without being able to do anything that can't be done outside the CQ, let alone interact with other players. Then I ask myself: what's the use?
Since WoD is delayed the engine is also put on hold/slowed down so there's not much hope we'll get it before 2016.
Cast your vote: The importance of character customisation
I'm sorry but as Timeout77 already guessed, I played the trial version. But in spite of the slider bars I still wasn't very impressed by the options, for instance the jaw was very perculiar and couldn't be adjusted. But yes, perhaps the full version would get a better rating. Sorry for that.
Cast your vote: The importance of character customisation
You can have fatter characters, plus chars of variable height from tiny to really tall, in Aion, which is now f2p. Lots of options for face and hair, too. It's a game where I spend hours creating my character, but then once I get playing, think "meh".
Loved your post, btw; your tastes and views regarding character customisation seem similar to mine. I felt exactly the same about LOTRO. Played on release, and tried again recently now that it is f2p, but just can't stick with the look of the character, and the run animation is purely horrible! Chars run as if they are also squatting, which is extremely strange to look at.
Regarding WoW which I'm back playing atm whilst waiting for GW2, I don't like most of the character models and hope they upgrade them at some point (I think I read somewhere that they were planning to?). Humans are blocky, and move clumsily (the female jump particularly). What I think they really got right (apart from the somewhat clumsy humans), is the fluidity of movement of character which I have yet to experience in any other mmo.
Nearly forgot to say, I agree with posters above that the best character customisation I've experienced has been in City of Heroes. Fantastic. I played around in char creation for hours lol.
I think the customization is really important cause when you create someone to your tastes u get inside the game like its you like you living another life.
I spend hours creating a character that is similar to me thats my way to get into the game.
Me too ^^
Sounds good! Too bad CoH isn't really my type of game though .. but I think a lot of developers underestimate the importance of character customisation. A lot of people voted "extremely important" and I don't think most developers expected that it is the case. I'd even think that even if a game has mediocre gameplay, having a unique character that you truely love and feel dedicated to makes up for a lot.
Cast your vote: The importance of character customisation
Character costumization is quite important for me. I want my character to look unique. So far I only played D&D Online, LOTR Online, Guild Wars, Rift and Tera, and Tera's character costumization is my favorite one at the moment.
Website: http://www.emrendil.com
TwitchTV: http://www.twitch.tv/emrendil
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Emrendil
the MMOlers creed:
This is my character. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My char is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
My char, without me, is useless. Without my char, I am useless. I must use my char true. I must click straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must kill him before he kills me. I will...
My char and myself know that what counts in this war is not the buttons we click, the effect of our skills, or the loot we make. We know that it is the skill that counts. We will hit...
My char is digital, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its skills, its talents, its weapons and its armor. I will keep my char clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...
Before God, I swear this creed. My char and myself are the defenders of our guild. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.
So be it, until victory is ours and there is no enemy, but loot!
so yes, we might all start the same, but without having the possibility to make it truly ours.... customs i like
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Nice......
Within minutes all of your efforts at body customization are covered up anyway, as you will be wearing the same non-customizable armor/helmet/hat as everyone else. I always thought that more armor/clothing customization options would be a better choice.
I would take more variety in armors / clothing over character customization any day. Since whole body is covered in armor most of the time.
I think it's important when it has a purpose. That hasn't been the case since SWG for me, every game since then it makes no difference what I look like, by the time you get a load of ott armour on with no reason to remove it again I just don't see the point.
Having said that all of the superhero character creators (CoX, DCUO and CO) are fun in themselves and at least give distinguishable characters.
Anyway I voted not important, at least not in the type of game we've been getting lately.
-----
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Um..I'm sorry but i really feel like you didnt spend the time to look into how to make your character. Rift has a bunch of 'premade' faces using the head shape slider, then you can switch eye orientation/ nose size, and facial features to make a whole crap ton of different faces.
You really didnt look into this if you think there's just one face sorry. And Unless your running low graphics i really cant imagine how you call the item modeling bland.... im sorry i just dont see anything of what your saying in the Rift game i play...