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Was board, ranked MMORPG character creators. Lets talk about it.
Vhaeyne
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
"If I had to give a comparison, I would use BDO as an example of what our Character Creation is going for. – Steven Sharif"
Never played BDO until today because it looked cringe AF. Also I our right refuse to play any game that gender locks classes in 2021. I did load it up today to see what I was missing out on. As I do like a good character creator. Let's just say I was disappointed. To be fair it may not be BDOs fault. It may just be people in the MMO community over hyping BDOs character maker. Now that I have seen most of them. I decided to rank them.
This is all opinion and for fun. Obviously I want Ashes to exceed all of these games. As far as customization options.
[S-Tier]
Nothing (Ashes maybe?)
[A-Tier]
"MetaHuman Creator(Epic Games Tool)","Phantasy Star Online 2 NGS","Phantasy Star Online 2", "City of Hero's"
[B-Tier]
"Black Desert Online(B+", "Final Fantast XIV(B-)","Aion"
[C-Tier]
"Dungeons and Dragons Online(C-)", "Lord of the Rings Online(C-)", "Elder Scrolls Online", "Tera(C+)", "Mortal Online 2", "ArcheAge(C+)", "Guild Wars 2", "Star Trek Online", "EVE online", "Rift", "Ever Quest 2", "Star Wars: The Old Republic", "Neverwinter Online","Balders Gate 3 (Currently)"
[D-Tier]
"World Of Warcraft(now)", "Wild Star", "Mortal Online 1", "Guild Wars 1"
[F-Tier]
"Final Fantasy XI", "Dark Fall Online", "Crow fall(Currently)", "Lineage 2", "Dual Universe(currently)", "Star Wars: Galaxies", "Dark Age of Camalot", "Ever Quest 1(F+)", "Rune Scape (OG)"
*Note: I could not be bothered to load them all up. I based this on how good I remember the customization being. Some games may have improved since I played them. WOW would be F-Tier for sure pre Shadowlands. Most of this is based from memory. Also I did not fault any game for poor graphics. "City of Hero's" would be way lower, but I have spent days of my life making new hero's. This is all based on how much customization I felt I had within the games aesthetic, and how much I enjoyed making a new character.
I really just wanted to get the juices flowing on a thread that I think everyone will enjoy talking about, but will not be at each others throats about. Since this is all subjective It should be a fun conversation. Do you disagree or have a list of your own?
*Edit: Moved some games around based of feedback and discussion.
Updated 6/15/2021
Never played BDO until today because it looked cringe AF. Also I our right refuse to play any game that gender locks classes in 2021. I did load it up today to see what I was missing out on. As I do like a good character creator. Let's just say I was disappointed. To be fair it may not be BDOs fault. It may just be people in the MMO community over hyping BDOs character maker. Now that I have seen most of them. I decided to rank them.
This is all opinion and for fun. Obviously I want Ashes to exceed all of these games. As far as customization options.
[S-Tier]
Nothing (Ashes maybe?)
[A-Tier]
"MetaHuman Creator(Epic Games Tool)","Phantasy Star Online 2 NGS","Phantasy Star Online 2", "City of Hero's"
[B-Tier]
"Black Desert Online(B+", "Final Fantast XIV(B-)","Aion"
[C-Tier]
"Dungeons and Dragons Online(C-)", "Lord of the Rings Online(C-)", "Elder Scrolls Online", "Tera(C+)", "Mortal Online 2", "ArcheAge(C+)", "Guild Wars 2", "Star Trek Online", "EVE online", "Rift", "Ever Quest 2", "Star Wars: The Old Republic", "Neverwinter Online","Balders Gate 3 (Currently)"
[D-Tier]
"World Of Warcraft(now)", "Wild Star", "Mortal Online 1", "Guild Wars 1"
[F-Tier]
"Final Fantasy XI", "Dark Fall Online", "Crow fall(Currently)", "Lineage 2", "Dual Universe(currently)", "Star Wars: Galaxies", "Dark Age of Camalot", "Ever Quest 1(F+)", "Rune Scape (OG)"
*Note: I could not be bothered to load them all up. I based this on how good I remember the customization being. Some games may have improved since I played them. WOW would be F-Tier for sure pre Shadowlands. Most of this is based from memory. Also I did not fault any game for poor graphics. "City of Hero's" would be way lower, but I have spent days of my life making new hero's. This is all based on how much customization I felt I had within the games aesthetic, and how much I enjoyed making a new character.
I really just wanted to get the juices flowing on a thread that I think everyone will enjoy talking about, but will not be at each others throats about. Since this is all subjective It should be a fun conversation. Do you disagree or have a list of your own?
*Edit: Moved some games around based of feedback and discussion.
Updated 6/15/2021
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
1
Comments
But I also played it like in 2013 so I might be blinded by nostalgia
I played it back in like 2009-2010. I don't remember anything particularly good or bad about the character creator. I remember it being about average. Honestly my favorite part of that game was getting a Lineage 2 S-Grade Skin for some dumb event. Just having Lineage 2 armor in another game was cool to me at the time. Otherwise it was a ok enough game to keep me interested for like half a year. Open world PvP was fun, I heard the expansion killed it.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I played it for barely 3 days because it didn't grab me much but I do remember spending some quality time in cc (pic from googling 5 seconds ago)
Sliders are good. Remembering more as I see this. The problem I think I had with Aion was that a lot of the sliders took the looks out of the realm of what I would consider useful looks. "Ark: Survival Evolved" is my prime example for this. Purely from an aesthetic point of view a lot of the sliders in Ark and Aion just make the character look way worst. It is not the end of the world, just allowed for a lot of ugly characters. Aion did have a number of preset faces that you could then delicately adjust the slider. Too much adjustment just made things worst.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Was ranking MMOs, but I always like to hear about good character creators.
I have seen a little Code Vein. It is pretty good for a anime aesthetic. I hate the gas masks, but I did like what I was shown.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I'm not fan of mass sliders, more the time it's barely noticeable appearance or lead to a lot of uncanny stuff if its go in extreme values.
I prefer to have a lot of hair style, eye color, tatoo/scar, eye color, skin color, and actually visible feature without hyper zooming the character.
Nose angle, check width, ... can make you spend a lot of time in character creation but are barely noticable in game.
I hope we will see some skinny/fat/muscular slider, and small/tall slider, again focus on what is visible instead of what is barely noticeable.
Edit: Help me understand the PSO2 rating. I tried to play the game last year with a friend and it was a hassle to try to do a basic function like adding a friend or inviting to a party so I ragequit. The combat looked ok but it looked like it would be an instanced game. I think GW1 was a really good instanced mmo for its time and its still pretty fun to play through with some friends. Any reason why PSO2 is in B tier? What makes it good?
And also prayer circle for "Save appearance" option !!
That is a fair point. I did not take the gender locked classes to be a fault of the character creator.
You are right, some of the values are not noticeable. I only Tried BDO because of Stevens quote in my OP. Was not very impressed, but I did spend a good hour playing with it. It is clearly a step above C-Tier for me.
I rated PSO2 on the character creator alone. I spent hours making my character. I really like the fine control it gives you. It even allows you the option to make some obese characters that don't look insane. It has a lot going on if you dig into it. Otherwise yes the game is crap.
You can click on the part you want to grab in BDO and use the sliders on the left. I just was doing it yesterday.
It allowed my to get a unique proportion that did not look bad. I also hate when people abuse character creators to make ugly characters.
Save Appearance is in quite a few games now. I am glad it picked up.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I also disliked the gasmasks, but the gameplay and combat mechanics were really cool to me. + There's some real tricky mindboggling puzzley stuff like the Cathedral area. I recommend
It's by no means the greatest though, I played that game for the insanely good pvp.
Yeah, I never gave blade and soul a shot. I remember the trailer looked alright before it came out. I refuse to give NC Soft any money at this point. They have ruined... Lineage 2, Aion, Exsteel, WildStar, and City of Heros. Those are just the ones I liked off the top of my head. I think there are more.
I don't mind hair unlocks, but I would rather have them all available from the start. FFXIV has hair unlocks, but they are all trivial, and changing your hair is super easy.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I might have to check it out. I am not normally a fan of turn based video games anymore, but I am willing to make an exception for D&D and a good character creator.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
They have done a great job with it so far, obviously its early access so they should be churning out more options but the best part imo is how fluid and natural they make the characters look.
Here is an in-game close up of one of the main npc characters. She is a Githyanki
here is a player made character. He is a Half-elf
⇻ theNILV ⇺
@nilv I ain't played Aion since launch. I feel like I would remember it being better. That said I might have to download it again just to give the character generator a re-review. Since two of you have brought it up and its f2p anyway. S-tier is big words. I would like to refresh my memory on that game.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I did take the time to load up Aion just to see the character maker. It feels like it has been updated.
It is better now than I remember, but still lacks some things. I am willing to put it at "B Teir".
There are some some good customization options, but some major flaws.
The amount of hair styles is fair, but I did not find a single male or female style I liked. Normally when starting a MMO I make the best male and female character I can, then look at them side by side and see which one speaks to me more before playing. I just did not like any of them.
The colors are very limiting. Not being able to have proper dark black hair is a common issue in MMOs that should not be. I have my color settings on my monitor biased darker than what most people would like and the blackest black I could get was a dark gray. I can only imagine how bad it is for a normal color profile.
The sliders are good, but they give too much room for bad choices and you can't zoom to the body, you zoom to the face. So you can't get the precision with the sliders that you would want without guessing.
There are some trade offs between Aion, BDO, and FFXIV. To me they are on the same Tier after this review.
It is not bad.
I was actually tempted to level a little but when I realized I could not move the UI around I just uninstalled.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Oh yeah I think I remember having to go more purply blue black in it. And many sliders with too much power is a plus in my book hehe. Thank you for your service!
I'm so surprised you put ffxiv so high. It's my favourite mmo but the cc is a Bit limiting for my tastes. Still you can manage to create some very lovely characters in it but I wish it allowed for more individuality.
....which reminds me about Justice online which has..... I would say 1.5 hair colors. Black and very dark brown with skin colors that make your typical picrew look good. Its such a pretty (pay to everything) game but this made me turn it off immediately.
I guess FFXIV's spot does disserve some explanation . While it is not my favorite MMO, I do enjoy it. There are some things that really piss me off. Playing a male mithra forces you to have some dumb marks on your face whilst females don't (this makes male Mithra unplayable to me). There are other examples of dumb quirks for other races. Overall though I put FFXIV up there because there is a solid amount of verity and customization, but it is also difficult to make something derpy. They give you all of the choices that matter.
The hairstyles are good enough where you really have to think about what one you want. The same goes for most of the races, lots of options that all lead to useable characters. Outside of lalafell I could honestly see myself playing almost any race. Sure there is only a few face options per race, but none of them look so bad you would not want to choose it. A lot of the face options in other games are not playable to me. Unless you are trying to make a bog hag or the male equivalent of bog hag. There just will be faces that look like they belong to someone who does not see sleep or food as a priority in their life style. FFXIV really doesn't have those face options. I feel like every time I play with the FFXIV character maker I make a handful of useable characters, and don't feel like I am that limited.
The character maker was released as a separate download before shadow bringers, and I must have made a dozen characters leading up to launch. They gave away a free race change with the expansions new races, so I wanted to make sure I took a hard look at everything. It is at least a step above a C to me.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
What this means is if you want to make a human with fae or goblin skin. You can, just say you have some goblin in your family tree and move on. They have the standard options per race set aside, but they allow you to just click and open up every races skin, eye, or hair color. Which is nice. There are a billion reasons why you might have exotic colors in a world with magic, and this game seems to understand that.
Right now there is only a handful of other options. I would consider the customization to be C-tier, but the visuals are S-tier. The game looks insane. I just played Cyberpunk 2077 at max settings recently and this is impressing me.
I don't even like turn based unless I am at a D&D table, and I played the first two hours today. It felt like real D&D. To the point that I had stopped playing and make my D&D group agree to play it coop when its done.
The whole opening sequence is the best introduction to a D&D game I have ever seen in my life. It might be my D&D bias talking, but it may be the best introduction to a game in general I have seen.
So thanks for the recommendation.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I am glad I could introduce that to you and have you enjoy it. Your point about the skin color is amazingly spot on. I made a character just the other day that has sickly pale green skin as a half elf with that balding haircut and his name is glooby, a half elf half goblin wizard that loves to use acid, fire, and poison.
And grease, lots of grease.
I think the importance for preset options is to just have a crap ton of choices. WoW doesn't really do that. They give you a couple choices for every category unique to every race. SAO FB basically would have 10 more options in every category for every race. Hair style is pretty important as well.
It's also important to know when to use sliders and when not to. Though SAO FB probably uses too many. A lot of them are default set to a pretty good place if you don't care. So you can adjust the ones you do care about.
It's basically in between the crazy ones and the basic ones like WoW. User interface is kind of important. It does user interface really well for a anime game character creator. Cuz Japanese games often have terrible UIs. XD
U.S. East
I watched this video.
I was really liked the first season of SAO. I have seen up to alicization, but I just have a meh feeling about the franchise. I say that just to say that unless a friend seriously asked me to play that game with them I don't thing I would play it, assuming it has some multiplayer. That character creator is at least C-Tier to B-Tier to me based on the video. I don't take away points for graphics or art style.
Again this is another case where Japanese games tend to give you some good anime-ish customization without having a lot of the options lead to derpy/ugly characters. Something I wish was more common.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Seen Lazy peons video on it. It looks above average from a purely character creator point of view. Not willing to put any more thought into it beyond that.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.