What does more to make your character feel unique? Is it the ability to tweak basic appearance right down to the nosehair, the stats and looks that increasingly powerful items give you, or the personality you give your character?
While character customizability and novel schemes to split clothing and stats are nothing new in today's MMOs, one game seeks to add personality and depth to your character beyond its appearance and level. We'll explore the ways in which games, past, and future foster a sense of uniqueness today in Loading... Unique (Like Everyone Else).
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Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle Editor-in-Chief - The Ten Ton Hammer Network
From what I've seen of CO, I do see the potential for all that customization to seem a bit too front-loaded. Character creation alone (in other words, not counting the power customization options) has gone far above and beyond what Cryptic achieved with CoH, almost to the point where I wonder if players won't even feel slightly intimidated with just the sheer number of options available.
While there's the option to keep clicking on the 'random costume' button until you find something to your liking, I'm almost hoping that there will at some point be a list of themed sets you can select to kind of build upon from there if you'd like. So say you're after a pirate or ninja theme (and really, who wouldn't be?) you can select one of those which will load up all the base costume pieces that would work for that theme. From there you can alter things to your liking, but it might save some players quite a bit of time rather than having to go through each individual menu to find a peg-leg, then an eyepatch, then a ruffled shirt etc.
Beyond that point though, the biggest changes you'll likely see will be the addition of new customizable powers as you level up. I have a feeling that in place of visual customization a lot of players will focus on setting up their various builds; tweaking those to make the strongest character possible for the role they aim to fulfill.
Chances are, STO will be the game that takes all of that one step further since you'll continue to gain bridge officers and ships as you level, and can customize each of those along the way. The biggest carrot in that department in CO will likely be the whole nemesis system, since I believe that doesn't kick in until a bit later in the game. Beyond that though? Hard to say really, though I won't be surprised if future content updates or a first expansion introduces the base / lair concept which opened up a ton of options in CoH.
The WoW example is an interesting one though. You start out as a carbon copy of Class + Race X, but then as you level you turn into a much more individualized character based primarily on what equipment you pick up along the way. But then you hit max level and it becomes a game of trying to work your way back into that carbon copy state again. To obtain Raid Set X or PvP set Y that everyone else in your class is wearing.
What does more to make your character feel unique? Is it the ability to tweak basic appearance right down to the nosehair, the stats and looks that increasingly powerful items give you, or the personality you give your character?
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I like to be able to combine both and make my very own unique char appearance in the virtual game world of my choice.
A game that gives me the stage to adjust my avatar to my likings as much as possible is a game I want.
In a way it can be fun to work within the design and create a appeareance in the attempt to break the limits and make it more to your liking (Ultima Online and clothing for starters).
In the end, how you play and how you interact with players and the world add more to your char than any look and pixels you arrange.
Imagination needs room to shine, but to much detail in appearance can limit this room and leaves you with a peacock you start to hate.
As for champions online, I like the idea about creating your own ability/skill effect outlook and I am curious how it may play out in release.
I am pretty sure that we will see a lot of annoying effects, since most players are dipshits anyway and want just to piss off other players as part of a valueable gaming expirience (damm suckers)
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I don't know if it comes from playing FFXI, but I really don't care too much about uniqueness in games. I ran into so many clones of myself in that game that I think I ended up not noticing them anymore.
I use the appearance tab in games that offer the feature more to hide some of the goddamn ugly armour models than as an attempt to cling to some hope of creating a unique look for my characters.
What does more to make your character feel unique? Is it the ability to tweak basic appearance right down to the nosehair, the stats and looks that increasingly powerful items give you, or the personality you give your character?
While character customizability and novel schemes to split clothing and stats are nothing new in today's MMOs, one game seeks to add personality and depth to your character beyond its appearance and level. We'll explore the ways in which games, past, and future foster a sense of uniqueness today in Loading... Unique (Like Everyone Else).
I would say a bit of the three mentioned combined. I really like to stand out from the crowd in visual appearance, in stat and item and appearance and the personality of my character. Looking like everyone else is just bland for me. I have been gaming all these years because I enjoy immersion. I want to escape from the real life (RL) grind and be someone or something uniquely different in the virtual world that is supposed to entertain me.
I think with WOW for example, it took some time for me to get used to the limited character creation we had (this goes back to early beta as well). Once I finally came to terms with the issue, then it took me longer to adjust to the clown outfits we wore. I say clown because half the time in WOW your adoring so many colors you might as well be part of the monthly fair.
I think EQ2 had some great customizations and I always felt as though I was noticeably different in DAOC. I am curious to see if CO can actually pull it off. I was part of the Hellgate beta and I had such high hopes for the game. Every time I here Roper speak now for CO, I have to take it with a grain of salt. However, in his defense, I am doing this with every developer today as us gamers have been lied and deceived to far too many times to continue to fall into the hype. Seeing is believing as they (who the hell are "they" anyway? ) say.
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OneEyeRed
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Character appearance customization is huge for me. I won't drop a game just because that aspect is limited, but it has to really shine otherwise or I'm not interested.
I see no reason why all 3 aspects of character personalization can't be relevant in any game. There is a major bonus to allowing a player to make exactly what they want and adding to the attachment factor that a player often feels for their character. Games like SWG and CoH took customization of appearance to a whole new level, so much so that I have actually known people who spend hours making characters in CoH then get bored when they actually have to log in and play.
Customizing a character should be a mini-game in itself. EQ2 had it right when they gave fans pre-order packs that let them create and save character skins. Loved that thing.
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It's a simple world for complicated people!
OneEyeRed
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams
I place high importance on customization. I want to look different than everyone else and look good (or at least what I think looks good) as much as I loved wow that was one thing that drove me crazy. For each race there were only a few faces that I thought looked good. And apparently a large number of people agreed because I always saw myself everywhere. Now add to that armor looks/restrictions and often times you had exact twins. And although the armor got better looking and (imho) more powerful looking as you leveled, there was always the “best” gear for each level so again everyone looked the same.
So I do like extensive customizability from the get go, but I also want more as I progress. I want to be different looking as far as actual physical appearance and I want to have geer that is increasingly more powerful looking as I get more powerful without it being the one set that everyone has to have to achieve the best stats for that level.
One of my favorite features in the original EQ was spell effects actually got bigger as you leveled. As an example a druid cast her low level heal spell and it has a modest little blue affect. When you reach level 20 and cast that same spell the effect is much larger and add a couple different colors and particles. So when a high level character ran by and through you a heal you would actually stop and say “wow that was cool”. Unfortunately SOE fixed this feature with their first “enhancement” to the particle system.
So basically I want to look hot and unique, I want to start off looking good and I want to get more powerful looking as I progress and still remain unique looking.
And to top it off I want variance in skills and stats. I want specialization and the like, so I am not necessarily the exact same abilities of that other healer right next to me, and I love Hybrids I want all characters to be a hybrid of some sort where you can specialize (or something) to combine multiple roles / play styles and still remain viable or stay focused on a single role and be insane in that role without it being considered gimped to not be focused.
In today's gaming environment, there's really no excuse for your avatar to be a clone of tons of others. It's the same with graphics -- IMHO, no matter how great and attractive the game design, yesterday's graphics is a turn off.
Also a non-starter for me is ANYTHING cartoony -- I want life-like. So Champions, WoW -- anything with cartoon-like avatars and NPCs -- becomes an also ran -- I don't care if, by design, the game is otherwise attractive. I convinced myself I dropped WAR after sticking with Mythic for more than a year of testing for other issues, but, in the end, even though the "cartoony" graphics were true to lore, the cartoony aspect did indeed carry considerable weight in my decision not to go retail with WAR.
In fact, I worry about TOR's graphics a bit, given what Bioware has said and shown us so far.
Cartoons are fine for comic books, The Sunday Funnies, and for kids to watch on TV Saturday mornings.
Realistic graphics and life-like player characters which offer a plethora of customization options -- that's what I want and expect.
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