SOTA Characters...Please don't stick a fork in it

I am glad the topic was brought up. It is nice to discuss how we as the players perceive the current system, regardless of if they are working on it or not. This has been the case for every system they are working on. People bring their thoughts up about housing, PvP, PvE, combat, rare items, etc. Even when we knew little about it, and even after information about it was seen, we talk about what we do/don't like about it.

This falls under the same category as those other talked about systems. There is nothing wrong about it, and it is nice to bring insight into how we feel about it. It shouldn't be hushed up or told 'they are working on it' because they are working on everything and people are still talking about what they do and don't like about all the current systems and implementations in the game.

The only thing to keep in perspective for the ones wanting it is that there are limited resources, but most already know that are are just trying to point to pieces to give the devs inspiration and insight into their thoughts of the current way things are handled.

 

I didnt know that Skyrim was an MMO.

 

Majoria70. Perhaps you misunderstood me. No matter. I DO think we should talk about this and let the Devs know where lie the community's priorities. I only warn against taking too seriously what we see today. Take the aforementioned female arms. There is NO WAY that something like that will make it to release. Yet is difficult to say what they might look like without some dev pointing to an equivalent example of what they're aiming for.

Chris once mentioned that the only difference he sees between pre- and post-launch is that they stop wiping the world. I interpret this to mean that development will continue at the same pace that it is now, with new content and systems added, followed by a round of polish. Characters need to look good, at least not off-putting, before release. I hope that that will not be final. I'd love to see a robust character creator on the level of we've seen in in previous posts, but I realize that something like that could take many months of dedicated development.

 

To answer the question in the first post, I'd take the top one. She's wearing high-tech armor that looks like it can shrug off anything currently in the game, up to and including lich goo. She's got a high-tech ranged weapon in one hand, and an even longer ranged high-tech weapon slung over her back. Lastly, she's holding what looks to be some high-octane nuclear beer in her left hand. I picture her walking through the SoTA world shooting from the hip at everything, terminator-like, all the while pounding nuclear beer.

 

I've seen people spend months and months trying to get one human model looking right.

It looks like they've spent more time working on a well rigged male model and I assume the female model will get some polish and love next.

 

OK, I officially vote that a beverage called "nuclear beer" must appear in SotA (whether it's "period" or not).

 

As an aside, there's a fantastic, easy-to-use open-source character model creator:

http://www.makehuman.org

Interested parties can dig into the code and data and check out details.

 

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The internet is *fast*.

 

My serious post for this thread is to mention MakeHuman, as well. That, and to give the developers time and a few more iterations of the game to see where the character models are at.

 

Thank you for that JayBee13. It is so great to see the kinds of resources that are out there.
Hopefully the dev team knows about it and the many resources that are out there.

 

Fantasy majoria70 actually Pat Benatar in real life...

You be the judge, there's something uncanny about this...



~Time Lord~

 

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I do give a cheer for your thoughts majoria70.

I also wish they would sacrifice a bit of that visceral darkness, in favour being able to see some of the improved features. I've been going bananas, boosting my monitor's gamma and brightness to max, every R* weekend.

I do believe that Unity5 is going to be a big factor in improving our Avatar's looks.

This pic, copied from the Unity5 website, looks pretty smick.

I reckon that the delay till February+ will also allow the time to help integrate Unity5 into the release, and beyond that I expect that Episodes 2-5 will make further improvements to our toon's looks.

I think it's also important to maintain a 'cartoon-like' appearance for both players and NPCs. The more realistic you try to make things look, the more that any little deviation tends to stand out.

Nevertheless, it's all relative. I recently re-played Ultima Underworld I, which is about as chunky and pixelated as it gets, but I still really enjoyed that game - which I first played in 1992.
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I hope they have an elbow slider! I like my dark white "women" with a little more elbow!
What's that lump doing down there? Woot! Woot! Doot looks like a lady!.


Let's lower the chroma on that headband while we are at it...not sure if it is even possible in that lighting.

What's up with the 21st Century life vest clashing with the Renaissance Festival pants? If she's going swimming wearing that belt she will need the life vest. The buckle weighs more than she does.

Looks like she pounded her fists through a couple blue paper cups and called it bracers. Do we need a giant wrench to take those boots off? Why the hexagon cuffs?

Cheers to polishing her up.

 

I am very confident about the future look like in terms of my avatars.

 

Here is a picture of a female avatar in Second Life

 

I'm just going to come out and say it, SotA has horrible graphics for a game made in 2014, and while it's not released yet, that's kind of the point. It's this bad already, and it's target date is "in the future" where it will be competing not with the games of today, but of tomorrow. By the time SotA ships, it will be sitting next to Black Desert that has finally found that US publisher and come to the States, for example. Desperately hoping that the dated and ugly engine SotA is using will get some upgrades in general, and then that SotA will actually make use of them, and that then all the SotA art assets will also be updated to use them (especially when they have the community doing some of them, already , since the game devs don't have time for it), and that the update is actually comparable to competitive high end engines that it will be compared against...I men, really? I hate to break it to you guys, but this is what it is...

SotA has a look of a game 10 years ago, and in my opinion, struggles to compare even to World of Warcraft with it's recent additions. If you have been fortunate enough to have played in any other alpha or beta's recently of upcoming MMORPGs, while you might have found them also not finished, you will be forced to note at how amazing some of them look, nonetheless.

It saddens me to say it, but this game currently looks and feels like a Steam Greenlight game from a very small indie developer and or a re-hashed game from a publisher that picked up someone's back catalog and is trying top republish it as a "new" game.

Now all of this is NOT to say that SotA won't be fun to play. I well understand the whole game play vs. graphics debate, and I have more than few graphically inferior games I enjoy, but in my opinion, SotA has been failing at game play as well, and the fact Richard Garriot has been thinking about role-playing games since he was 12 doesn't make this release of a game a shoe in for an excellent RPG, especially given his past hit and miss track record.

What SotA does have is an excellent community. I really like reading some of the posts here, and the people on these forums. You guys are awesome. Really. I wish I could transport you guys to another game that is doing both excellent game play and graphics, so we can be engaged, entertained, and have avatars that we can bond and identify with. I also wish we could somehow turn the boat around on SotA and scrap Unity, and move to some other game engine that has more fidelity so threads like these about concerns at how ugly the character models are just wouldn't come up. Neither is going to happen, I'm afraid.

In the post-WoW, "me too" flood of MMORPGs, the bar is very high these days and SotA seems to just not be making it, lobbying up the excuse that they have a "small budget", which is a pitiful consolation, all things considered. There's really 5 things that have to come together to make an outstanding MMORPG in the 21st century that I think most of the industry recognizes:

1. An engaging, innovative, challenging, and fun to play combat system. (telegraphing, real-time maneuvering, skill based targeting, etc.)
2. Excellent, cutting edge graphics with detailed, diverse character models.
3. Flexible, content rich, semi-open world system. (...it needs to take at least one step away from traditional theme park MMOs)
4. A good community (reason to make guilds & parties, resources for them, and reasons to use them that matter).
5. Meaningful, fun, engaging PvP that encourages balanced, challenging matches.

I'm going to add one more thing, which is the inclusion of Oculus Rift support for cutting edge, personal immersion.

I keep checking in on SotA because they have my money, and I'm not willing to accept I totally wasted my hard earned cash yet, but it's becoming increasingly discouraging. Especially when 10+ year old games like Second Life are out pacing them.

 

You must have missed this recent post from DarkStarr https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...elease-5-impressions-release-6-revised.10408/ They agree that the graphics are not good enough and are working on making them competitive with todays games. Now will that mean we will get the best graphics you can get? No but I think they will be significantly improved especially once they switch to the new Unity 5 engine. Not to mention having the most cutting edge graphics might not be the best idea anyway. I mean sure if you have the computer to run it it is great but if you don't have a very nice computer well guess what you don't get to experience those super nice graphics!


Also another thing you seem to be missing is we are not in an Alpha and we sure as hell are not in a beta. It is nice no doubt those other games you mentioned look real good in their alpha and beta stages but SOTA is not at the same stage of development as them. I think the problem is people are not used to seeing a game until it is at least in the official Alpha stage and even then unless your a member of the team making the game you likely won't see the game until it is late in the Alpha stage. SOTA as far as I am aware is still considered to be in the prealpha stage. So at this stage you really shouldn't expect the gameplay to be good yet. Personally though *and this seems to be true for many others* I am still having some fun in these releases despite the fact that the game is not even close to being a finished game.

Also the budget believe it or not is a limiting factor. Personally I am actually quite impressed at all they have done and are still looking to do on the TINY budget they are working with. That is something people also need to remember when comparing this game with others games *besides the whole fact that those other games you are seeing are likely in a far more advanced stage of development* is that these other games in most cases have budgets that are FAR larger then what SOTA has to work with.

 

here is my avatar in Second Life (basic shader, no aliases and all that jazz...)

 

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LOL How did you guess? I have been found out. (just kidding) I love that song. Thanks for the fun.