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

Which would you choose?

Hello to my fellow community. I think it's way passed time to post a discussion about my favorite topic "The character models/looks for Shroud of the Avatar.............

Now I was a bit dismayed to hear only that there would be touch ups, body alignments, beards etc, and adjustments oh my.

Oh sheesh, while being an avid champion for the 3D map, I am just as strong on this subject, if not even a bit stronger.

Please say it isn't so that these character models are here to stay ...to be touched up and styled up a bit.

If so PLEASE give me a mask to put on her poor homely face.
or a lovely new hairstyle, beard, glasses or whatever. OMG what would that do for this poor woman, ..............oh yeah maybe a gorgeous mask so I can pretend to be a georgous female avatar, but no peeking lol????
** majoria calls for help**hey anyone got a spare I can borrow?

So who wants to talk about characters for our wonderful game? Me, Me, pick me lol

I do mean a character that DESERVES to be in this game. The homely flexing one does not.

Perhaps someone, Such as for example, the character on the left, not of this tiype of game of course, but as an example.

She's a mean machine but still feminine and beautiful. Maybe if we were lucky someone like this could be in our game. Hmmm should we ask her price??? She might kill us if we do lol

I am opening a friendly discussion to get good points out so we can make a difference in the characters we will play. It is so very important for the game and I do care very much about this game. I want it to be the best it can be.

I vote for scrapping the current characters, give them a nice RIP, but what do I know? I don't know what I don't know about the plans or even yet the system issues involved etc, but we can discuss away as with every important subject and this is very important.

***We can't be running around with that horrible woman flexing away, SOTA will be the laughing stock of the gaming community. ****

So lets be constructive and I do know we all have different opinions, I for one don't care about realistic but realistic is great if it is well done and my character gets to be lovely still.

So I didn't yet show you my vampire girls but to some they are not realistic lol, so I will stay on constructive.

***Cheers fellow community, and cheers developers**** majoria raises her glass..........

 

During the deep dive for character customization Chris said there is more to come in character customization.

 

Knell, I am not being negative, I love this game. lol yes I did make note that more is probably coming above and we did get small hints about adjustments,

but it was so very vague, so let the community speak about what we like. What would you like to see is my question?

 

As much as i would like to hold out hope that there really going to address the avatar's , i wouldn't count on it. Its a lot like the map, i don't think any thing less then a slap to the back of some ones head ,well they get it, No, we don't like it no matter how much you color it up .Its way out dated , ugly.

What Richard showed in his video's is a far cry from what they want us to be happy with. Even the Avatar's from Ultima 25 years ago are 100% better.There is tons of art out there with no copy rights that could be imported.

 

What game is that you're comparison posting from ? Titanfall ?

I know what you mean and I think we can definitely do better than on the right lol, but...

yeah, we're not probably going to achieve AAA title 50-60 million dollar budget graphics on an indie game budget. ever.

unless something miraculous happens

 

I thought my avatar was really quite beautiful actually-



Some body parts do need some work, particularly during animations-



I think it is a good thing that the customizer allows us to run through various levels of what would be considered 'attractive.' Everyone has their own ideals of beauty, and some may also opt for a certain look for their character. I would like to see more customization or more presets.

I do not have a problem with the more stylized/cartoonish look vs. the more photorealistic version you posted.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Of course, this may be related to this being from my favorite game ever-





LOL

 

You couldn't be Asian in the early ultimas ! It was the one major ethnic group they missed

 

One thing you can say about "the homely flexing one" is that at least she's not wearing the equivalent of boobplate...

I don't think we're going to get characters as good as your other example (although that would be great!), but I do hope and expect that the models are going to improve a lot over the coming months. With our budget I don't think we can expect the level of customisation that's been seen in some of the 'character creation' videos that people have posted elsewhere, but I really hope that before launch our avatars will look less 'plastic' and have a lot more options. (I did see some improvements between R4 and R5 (the only ones I've played), so I have confidence in the team.)

Options are always a good thing, and some people no doubt want to play plump or 'homely-looking' characters and not slender beauties (or the male equivalent) - the ability to tailor the look of your avatar to the sort of person you want to be in-game would be great, and both ends of the spectrum should be catered for. (Same with clothing, but that's another topic altogether and has been covered (no pun intended) elsewhere!)

If I could make my in-game avatar look like the girl in my signature, I'd be very happy. If not, I guess I'll have to live with whatever we're given. I think they do plan to improve them (and I don't know what difference the newer Unity engine will make to the looks, when they get that), but they have a lot of other things to think about as well. We just need people like you, Majoria, to poke them now and then to make sure they don't forget about this!

 

I just say Black Desert

 

Black Desert is a really cool looking game. If they ever let people who aren't Korean play it

Asian RPGs, while pretty, don't usually do it for me. But this one is on my radar. Time to use Korean Proxy maybe ? lol

 

The Mass Effect render is nice, but... is that actually an in-game screenshot? It looks like a promo graphic of some sort, so it's not really a fair comparison.

They have a ton of work to do on the characters, but I fortunately think they have some low-hanging fruit there; some off-the-shelf solutions have recently appeared since they started work on Shroud that they could probably leverage if they figure out how to integrate them.

 

Remember the ability to change the nose is just to test the ability to change something. There is a lot more coming.

They do need to fix the basic skin shader, but that's pretty much a "known" technology, so it's not like they need to do a lot of R&D.

 

You're making a ton of assumptions there. I think it's worth reiterating: this is pre-alpha, this is pre-alpha, this is pre-alpha.

 

lol Karrolanth.........**majoria hunts around for something sharp** Yes it is the utmost importance to make this statement.

We don't have to settle and believe it or not I could not find anything without boob armor quickly and hey this girl had clothes on at least sheesh. I'm talking about facial features anyway plus grace and a certain way about her.
I don't agree the avatars are fine or fixable, but please if the developers can prove me wrong I will bow down to them.

I have looked at unity and I believe the avatar we have is the 'sport model', but who knows for sure.
We have to think for the success of our game. These Avatars will not cut it in todays market, well as they are now. Show me better please is all I'm asking.

This woman is a unity Asset and she doesn't have to be without clothes. I'm talking facial and with the option to have homely facial features, chubby features whatever people like. I speak for options.

 

and just in case anyone has missed seeing my gorgeous vampire lady here she is, not as to what we will have but just because I like her gorgeous armor, well maybe I 'm a bit gothic lol.

 

LOL Darkmoon yes Black Desert is going to have wonderful character creation.

 

If you have Dev+ access, you should try to check out some of the hints that have been flitting about. There are lots of fundamental issues they're dealing with for characters that go way beyond cosmetic. They might not have anything for you to check out in R6 but something is coming along, I just can't really point you to when it will be coming. I don't know if it will be as awesome as Tera or anything (budget!) but I'm confident that things will get much much better.

 

This is good news.

I know that we aren't going to have AAA graphics or anything, and that doesn't bother me, but there is such a thing as making the most of what you've got. Thinking back to EQ2, in terms of spending and processing requirements their characters were super advanced, and way ahead of their time, but absolutely awful in appearance and animation with few exceptions (ratonga).

Spending huge amounts and having high system requirements doesn't mean you'll get great avatars. Spending little and having low requirements doesn't mean you'll have lousy ones. Much of it goes to the talent and resourcefulness of the development team.

Most of the examples people give these days when they say graphics today are of a certain quality tend to be from games that not only have graphics as the main selling point of their game, but also have had extremely talented people perfecting them over years of effort. Black Desert clearly has the highest quality of graphics proposed in an mmo currently, matched only potentially by star citizen in my opinion, but I feel I'd get bored playing black desert after about 45 minutes.

 

As with all game features, it's about tradeoffs. While I agree that the characters need work, a creation tool like Tradyblix has shown is a HUGE undertaking, unless they can find something with reasonable cost that they can bolt in. My question for you is what game features are you willing to sacrifice to see a re-worked character creator?