Dev Discussion #34 - Character Creation

The Cawckiest King

My take on it is that Ashes really aims to be an RP MMO or at least more RP friendly than a lot of MMOs arguably have been, even the ones whose main draw (like Elder Scrolls) is the roleplay aspect.

Myself? I always create characters with roleplay in mind. I don't care for the progression chase/grind or min/maxing, so I take quite a bit of time getting characters just right. So anywhere from 30min to hours in a character creator if its a good one.

That said, here's what I'd like to see:

>>Very flexible sliders for body type, including height, weight, width, and age. Allow us relatively young characters but also really, really old ones. I know a lot of people talk about how "great" BDO's character creator is because it looks fancy, but I'm not fooled by the gimmicks. They did make some really cool decisions on how to customize hair length and overall color pickers, but that's about where the "wow" factor on BDO's character creator ends. Elder Scrolls Online and Riders of Icarus are way, WAY better when it comes to body customization flexibility (I've talked about that before in a video here)

>>It'd be super awesome if we could have some sort of indication or measuring system or something regarding height to know how tall/short our characters will be before we finalize our characters. It could be a number measurement (feet and inches? centimeters?), or maybe we could have some sort of doll/manikin near our characters to give an idea, and that manikin is a certain height like 6'0"?

>>Allow us the ability to save customizations as presets we can load up at any time, to make it easier to do things like recreate a character or come back to it later and finish making it if we need to go in the middle of customizing a character.

>>Also it'd be great to be able to tweak characters' appearances after finalizing creation, without having to spend tons of real world money in a cash shop or some such to do so. I'd even be willing to do some sort of mundane quest to earn an item/token in-game to change appearance if I had to. Just give us the option somehow.

>>I'd like to be able to modify my characters' "default expression" somewhat, like make a character appear happy-go-lucky, sad/depressed, always-angry, etc.

>>A lot more "gender neutral" or "gender passing" options. Allow both genders to not only be customizable to either look like a god/goddess of unmatched beauty OR some sort of ugly troll/hag, but also allow for masculine women and effeminate and "wimpy" looking men. Obviously you don't have to give men straight up boobs and women... other things. But it'd be nice to have characters who don't all fit into the gender stereotype of "Big square box" (male) and "curvy hourglass" (female) and that's all. Old WoW models come to mind.

>>Muscle tone sliders. Conan Exiles' character creator is a good model to look at for how it can be done well for both genders (ignoring the fact that every male on unmodded Conan have the body proportions of He-Man).

>>I find it very unlikely Ashes will have "child-size" characters outside of Dwarves, but if they do, don't just limit it to child-sized female characters like some other MMOs do for some strange and suspect reason (BDO for instance). Its very odd to me when MMOs have "child size/like" character options but its exclusively all female characters.

>>Don't lock character customization options for certain things behind race, gender, or class like BDO does. I'm talking about parts of appearance people are able to change relatively easily, like hair style, beards, tattoos, jewelry, et cetera unless there's a REALLY good reason for it. For example, lets say there's a hairstyle that dwarves have with braids and shaved patterns. Humans, elves, and other similar races should ALSO be able to use that hair style. Obviously however, some traits should be locked to race, like let's say Tulnar having animal tails - humans, orcs, et cetera would not be able to use those customization features. Or orcs and their tusks, would be limited strictly to orc races, and so forth.

>>Seriously, nothing annoys me more than wanting to make a character with a very particular look to them with hair style or tattoos or jewelry than finding out I have to pick "X" race or "Y" class, and that other race or class does not match any other part of the character I want to make (BDO does this with class-exclusive appearances and emotes and minor activities like playing musical instruments and it drove me NUTS).

>>Let us make characters with heterochromia, 2 different colored eyes.

>>Give us RGB color sliders instead of limited "color presets".

>>An option for digitigrade legs for Tulnar.

>>Allow us to preview our appearance with and without clothing/armor

>>I'd love if we had some sort of "Personality" or animation modifier for characters that changed things like in what way they stand, walk, hold weapons, et cetera.

>>Similar, it'd be neat if we could have some sort of customization option in and out of the character creation screen to modify what animations play for certain types of emotes. Maybe a drop-down menu.
To give an example, maybe you have a "lean back against wall" emote. You can select which animation your game defaults to, such as crossing your arms as you lean back, or resting your arms down at your sides.
Or with sitting, you could pick sitting with your legs straight out and leaning back on your arms, or sitting cross-legged, or sitting with a knee propped up and head rested on it.
For sitting in chairs, you could have a basic square sit with feet on the ground, or crossing one leg on top of the other, or drawing a knee/foot up on the chair, etc.
BDO did something kind of cool with giving you different kinds of sitting, lying down, leaning emotes and such - the problem is, BDO locked it to your class and you didn't get any choice in what you got.

>>An option to have our characters look squeaky clean or covered in dirt!

>>What would also be neat would be something to choose what your "place" or "class" (not gameplay class) was in the world, and dialogue/NPCs will react accordingly to what you choose. Just as some examples, you could have things like "Noble", "Peasant", "Beggar", "Shady Character/Criminal", "Vagabond", etc. NPC dialogue could change a bit depending on that, and maybe affect services even, in a minor way.
Like if you have a "Noble" class chosen, more important or "upstanding" people will be nicer to you and more willing to do certain things, but shady/criminal type NPCs will be less welcoming.
Conversely, if you picked "Shady/Criminal", "good" NPCs will be hesitant to deal with you but Shady NPCs will be more open and willing to talk to you. Guild Wars 2 somewhat touched on this kind of character customization and storyline though I definitely wouldn't do it in exactly the same pigeon-holed kind of way. It would be more just generalities and where a character would fit in with society and interact with the world. (Perhaps so it can't just be changed on-the-fly to Game the system but you also aren't stuck with that choice forever, a way to earn some sort of "reputation" points to change it over time through doing good/bad deeds? Changing your station in life with work, as it were, idk its just an idea)

>>Being able to see our characters in motion and under different lighting conditions in the character creator before finalizing.

>>Also this is more of a "wishful thinking" that probably won't come to pass because of how other people likely feel about this concept, but I think it'd be neat if character strengths/weaknesses weren't purely race-based, but more based on the way your character is customized physically. For instance, a larger, more muscular character would be stronger. A short, not-very-muscular character would be lacking in strength, but may be more agile and stealthy. You would still have ways through gameplay, level and skill acquisition, and gear to fill the gaps a little bit, but not enough to make the small, agile character as potent in an open brawl as a giant hulking muscular character that's built like a tank.

>>Also, for the love of god, Avian features for Tulnar, please! We don't need full wings and beaks and the like. Just some feathers, arm/leg scale plates, and claws would suffice! Also more beast-like leg options (again with the digitigrade legs). I made a much more in-depth video about that here.

Hoguti

Heterochromia for eyes would be cool.