Physique impact on Character Creation

Mavryk

I was watching the twitch stream and saw some of the new models. At one point Steven called one of the orc models a "Beastie Boy" which made me wonder what could be done in linking the character model options with certain stat attributes. I can't think of anywhere this has been done or even if attributes will be assigned through a system that would support this. Similar to how Steven described being able to size up an opponent by assessing the unique armor models the character model itself would become another way to connect what you see with what you get.

In these examples, I use the concept of a point-buy system but it can be adapted to whatever method attributes are assigned. Points are reduced or increased based on the physical elements selected in model creation.

- buff characters have a higher minimum strength
- wiry characters have a higher minimum dexterity
- character weight (as a percent deviation from average for the race) have a reduced starting and maximum constitution
- character height have a reduced starting and maximum dexterity

What other connections between body and stats can you think of? How could (or should) these physical characteristics impact the character in the end-game? As a character grows in level should their physical form change with their new attributes?

caedwyn

yes i like the idea
since aoc looks towards realism. its only logical that these are taken into consideration
EVEN FIFA AND PES football games have this !
a very rall or fat player is just not as agile and dexterous as a small and thin player !!
like how often did you see obese ninjas in movies and games hanging from a branch or doing parkour? xD

they said "we dont want unrealistic armors that are overly sexualized and are not logical as armor"
by the same standard, as a tanky person wears full plate and huge armor pieces but takes a penalty in movement etc but takes advantages in strength and stamina etc ...and it should also work in the same way.

Snekkers

i dislike the idea, i want to be optimal for pvp and want to have a character that i like to look at, with ur systems i cant

CROW3

MO2 does this. I wasn’t a fan of this system.

maouw

I think the idea would be ok IF there were both advantages and disadvantages to trade-off for being big/small.
(e.g. small people are harder to hit, but their attack boxes are also smaller)

As it is however, I don't think Ashes combat intends to add that level of complexity.

Azryil

I can see the desire for systems like this from an immersion perspective, but I don't like the idea of being super bulky just to gain the benefits of higher damage stats. Even if the overall benefit is small the desire to min/max stats would conflict with my aesthetic ideal, and that would annoy me.

Dygz

Looks can be deceiving.
Seems like stats would be part of racial progression and social org progression.

Nerror

I think it will remove a lot of freedom of choice from the customization of your characters. That's really the main reason I don't like it.

Biccus

I’m very much against putting stat restrictions based on character models. However I am thinking I would not be against your primary archetypes preferred stat setting min/max on things such as muscle definition/size.
For example a strength based archetype being locked out the slender builds and casters being locked out of bigger muscle sizes.

It’s an added layer of unnecessary options but I think it could be interesting.

daveywavey

I think it should all be cosmetic. Let people play how they like, and look how they like.

Songcaller

Thankfully the game isn't fifa.

Atama

Your character's strength doesn't come from their muscles. You are a conduit for magical powers that give you your strength. Why is it that after going on some adventures, going up a few levels, and getting a new set of bracers you can strike people 10 times as hard as before? You don't have muscles that are 10 times bigger.

Your physical build has nothing to do with your actual game performance, and it shouldn't, because what you are doing in a game like this has nothing to do with physics. It's all magical gobbledygook. Which is fine, that's why we play games like this. So we can embody superheroes that do impossible things.

AidanKD

I am afraid to agree with the majority here. Let character customisation be just for the aesthetic and let our ingame choices determine our power and stat weights. Perhaps in a single player RPG that would sound cool to me but in an MMO I am not so sure.

Vellety

Please no, let me customize my character however I want without feeling pressured about stat points etc.
If I want to make a very big boy character and still be super fast in-game, let me.

Geophysical Ninja

daveywavey wrote: »

I think it should all be cosmetic. Let people play how they like, and look how they like.

100% agree. Character gender and looks should have no impact on the mechanics of the game.

Merek

Full character customization, ranging from height to weight and musculature, should be a thing. But it shouldn't affect gameplay.

Goalid

I agree overall with the majority here. First, having a system like Mortal Online 2 really hurts new and casual players to the game, if they just make a random character that won't be meta with their class. And that puts people at a huge disadvantage. Also, it's just a headache to make the exact right height, weight, age, etc for a build, and takes too much agency away from the player in character creation.

However, I do find the mentality of "I should be able to do anything I want with my character creator, immersion be damned!" to also be a bit silly. Racial advantages do matter to me from a world building perspective. Having a Nikuan swordsman be equal to an Kaivek swordsman who has trained just as hard, with the same exact skill set, is immersion breaking. You should still be able to be a Nikuan melee, but the playstyle should be different. But, the problem is that you don't want to make the racial advantages so strong, that entire race/class builds get left out. For instance, in Classic WoW, Dwarven priests were always taken before Human Clerics because they had fear ward. So, it's a hard system to get right and I won't blame the Devs if they don't solve it, since no MMO seems to be able to do it right.

Atama

Goalid wrote: »

However, I do find the mentality of "I should be able to do anything I want with my character creator, immersion be damned!" to also be a bit silly. Racial advantages do matter to me from a world building perspective. Having a Nikuan swordsman be equal to an Kaivek swordsman who has trained just as hard, with the same exact skill set, is immersion breaking. You should still be able to be a Nikuan melee, but the playstyle should be different.

What will happen in Ashes is that your race will give you augments you can slot. How that works with your build will be situational. You aren’t going to have a situation where a Kaivek (I assume you mean Ren’kai) swordsman is objectively superior to a Nikuan swordsman, but depending on what you’re trying to do you might find one set of augments better than the other. Maybe you can close into melee range faster as a Nikua, but the Ren’kai gets a knockdown ability. (Just a hypothetical.)

Asgerr

This has basically already been done in the videogame called Biomutant. Not many seem to be following in those steps, and it's not even a patented tech.

It can be somewhat cool, but at the same time, if I wanna play a buff as hell Renkai, I shouldn't be punished if I try to play a caster class.

It would also lead to a type of min maxing that would harm player agency in their character's design. Especially in games like an MMO, where you spend thousands of hours looking at your character, it would suck to have something you don't like visually, only because it gave you that 10 extra MP.

Furthermore it just plays into trite stereotypes that all mages are skinny dweebs and fighters are all hulking brutes. There can be in between and you can be a science ace with 12 inch pythons.

However I do stand on the side of every race having a certain spectrum for their appearance to be modifiable, rather than a completely free for all. A dwarf sized Renkai or a mountain of muscle Py'Rai elf

In summary: never restrict a player's agency for choice over how they wanna look like.

Geronimo