(Bland) Character Creation!

I enjoy following along and am looking forward to seeing the game more evolved down the road.

I have concerns as of now with the bland character creation, the horrible plastic looking hair (IE: dreads) Why does it look like plastic?

Now, these concerns would not be here if we were NOT allowed to create a character in alpha and we were all using a pre made avatar. But since there IS a creator and it can be used to create your custom avatar I have to JUDGE it as I see it now.

It is missing simple things like adjust height, weight, arm, leg length. So no short or fat people in this world?

My main concern is facial features. I am hoping that this game will allow players to change ones facial features to better suit what one may be looking for. Right now there is 1 face and you can change the color (which is another issue we will touch on here in a minute). of the face but it is the same face. 2 me the face looks like a Caucasian Male, so if I add color to his skin he looks like a white man that has different colored skin. But he does not look like a different race or even what I am trying to make him look like.

We need to be able to change the facial feature (IE: cheeks, nose, foreheads, chins) so we can create any race or ourselves we so choose.

Now about the color options for character creation. 3 choices :/ and white was actual WHITE 0_0 Thank god you didn't make black BLACK :/

Any how there needs to be a color selector or slide bar. Not 3 basic option that fit 3 different people s skin tones. I assume there are thousands of players of various colors and sizes and sexes playing this RPG. And if you like to recreate yourself or other characters from other mediums in RPGs you need a better and more in depth creator.

I am assuming this will all be taken care of and that this is Pre-Alpha but I wanted to get a note out just in case.
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I'll be back with more critique soon! Great job to this point ALL of you! I appreciate being able to experience this game at this point and will deliver the best information i can to help it grow

 

It's not the most important thing to me. But if you want a game where decorating and housing are important, you need to invest heavily here as well. Doing many things halfway isn't helpful.

 

Please read through this:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/early-access-schedule.3875/

They are expanding customization through alpha, this is just very early/basic systems. One thing they weren't able to get in that they were shooting for was head shapes, a lot more options will be coming in later alpha releases. You should have everything you are looking for by Jan. per those release notes. If something isn't in that they expected to make it they will mention it.

 

What Mishri said. The Character Creation process is FAR from complete and will undergo several improvement passes between now and launch.

 

I found it pretty hilarious that I had to choose dreads instead of the flowing mane I have always chosen to coif my UO characters with. I clicked through the options the first time, did a double take, and went back through to make sure I hadn't just overlooked long hair. When it became apparent that there was no option for long male hair, I chose dreads and selected a dark brown hoping that maybe it would just look like long hair.

I finished up at work later that night and decided to log on to my R1 install from my work PC. A co-worker walked up behind me, regarded my Avatar's absurd locks, and began laughing heartily.

 

I want a black eye! Haha. #joke

 

Topics like this emphasize that gamers come here with expectations of a polished beta, and don't realize that the game is still in pre-Alpha phase. I suspect that is emphasized with some because they are pledging, and then expect a lot for it. It make me wonder if posting a write up of the crowd-funding and development process and what to expect over time would be helpful. Does this exist somewhere now in one place?

For me personally, I'm ok with character appearance customization being well down the list. While it is important to me, honestly there are many games that do that well, and it is not the selling point of SoTA to me. If the dev team needs to prioritize, I'm more interested in seeing the game vision brought to life first, then the characters being crafted to run around inside of it.

 

Necro Thread, but I think it is allowed now, as we just had R2...

I do hope they will add more styles and customizations, including colors. There weren't sufficient skin and hair colors to pick from, and only hight and nose-size don't cut it for customization...

Instread of premade faces we should be able to modify things like head shape, mouth, chin, nose and eyes, as well as a reasonable number of hairstyles (skull and facial!)
I think moustache and beard should be 2 separate options to chose, as that more than doubles the options you have for customizing facial hair...

Also, along with height we should be able to modify (based on gender) hip, waist, chest and/or shoulder widths too. I don't mind that clothing and armour magically adjusts, so it will always fit, as long as it is the right gender, but if everyone has the same proportions, based on relative height, it will just not look as convincing.

 

Yep, I'm hoping the character creator gets more options. I think the height selector is good, I really liked the different face shape options, really different looking. I hate spending a bunch of time on my character's face though. I think skyrim and many games have just too many options. I don't want to spend 30 minutes making my character and RG said he doesn't want players to either.

Hopefully there is some happy medium between skyrim's 50 options and what we currently have.

 

"arm and leg length"?? lol, personally I don't even want that bologna in game. I agree with Mishri above, character creation options are very nice, but when it takes half an hour to tweak the eyebrow hair length and ear lobe density, its way too much. I think a few more options on top of what we currently have, more detailed character models in general, and hair that doesn't look like Play-Doh would do just fine.

 

A potato-head system could work

 

I was happier when playing with the character creator during R2, that the female asian face actually looked asian. Still need more skin tones (she ended up white) but the progress is definitely nice in relation to more diversity. Apparently there were more hair options, but as far as I could tell from memory the only one was adding in a mohawk? That and red hair. That was definitely a welcome addition.

I don't think we need sliders or dozens of options for everything. But hopefully we'll have more variation as it goes on.

 

I was a bit under whelmed by this as well but I totally understand that it's not top priority at this point in time because lots of other things are being worked on in the actual game that need to be finished before R4. I really hope to have an awesome character creation at launch I would say an amassing example that the Devs should look at when it comes to character creation (as well as other things including dynamic weather) is Phantasy Star Online 2 that has so many amazing options if you haven't seen that game it's amazing.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

Long (blonde) hair for male avatars, please

 

We got clarification that the $2.5 million stretch goal of VR support was likely not going to happen (despite reaching the funding goal) but I never saw a clarification if they were making good on their promise of the $2.25 million stretch goal of expanded character creation options. If the game nears $4 million before release (as I expect we will) and they don't even honor the $2.25 million stretch goal, I will feel disappointed.

 

Anything achieved after the initial KS campaign (beyond the $2M goal) has been dropped / delayed / de-prioritized. We will have to wait until after the game launches to see what they plan for Ep2.

 

They said that specifically in relation to VR, but didn't clarify if we were getting the expanded character creation. And they didn't make that announcement until after $2.5 million was reached.

Some people were continuing to pledge or increasing their pledge specifically in hopes of helping to reach those further stretch goals. So I hope they will at least honor part of the $2.25 million level.

Edit: This is a fantastic opportunity for crowdsourcing further art assets. Look at what modders make for Skyrim and such in the way of additional faces, hair styles, etc. If I knew Portalarium was accepting those assets from the community, I'd be tempted to reach out to the Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim modders and suggest they submit such assets.

 

Im thinking going into the fortune teller wagon would be a nice addition to character creation.

 

I totally second this!

 

It seems like Arabella is serving the role of the gypsy. Whether or not she is a gypsy in a wagon, she seems linked to character creation and which of 3 virtues we choose to determine where we start in the world.

http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/sota/Arabella