Greetings, glorious testers!
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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Also more variety in hairstyles would be great.
I think the devs are doing a GREAT job with the tool so far and should keep up the good work, not worrying too much (that early) about the feedback / a hundred and more details players can come up with.
Still there was some little things that I felt little bit odd.
First I noticed that colors of hair and beard didn't always match together because their tones were little bit different even though they supposed to be the same color.
Second I noticed that some hair and beards/mustaches looked unnatural because they reflected light oddly and looked like a bright mass (especially with white and some bright colors).
I don't know were these things some technical issues or just the game's own art style.
I think this creator had everything that I looked for the game's character creator. It is very well made and it will have more hair styles, tattoos, scars and other customization features in the future. Maybe I will get more development ideas when I have seen other races' customization features.
In my opinion every customization areas are important for me what we saw in this character creator. I love the idea of having wide selection of customization options to make unique but still realistic looking characters.
I like how we edit body parts. BDo style but with little dots in addition to edit even better than BDo.
I like hair slider.
I like the tattoo/scar system. How we can put them on the character, rotate, resize them is a fresh breath of air.
The three eye types we can choose
I dislike there no body hairs.
What features would you like to see included in the future for the Character Creator?
Add/remove moles, like tattoo system but not in that specific system. Some models have moles I would like to be removed.
Custom Tattoos: Custom tattoo designs. I can guess it’s complicated because of copyright laws. As a solution I suggest a large choice of tattoos, we can put on the character.
What areas of customization are important to you?
Body part I: A very versatile way to edit our appearance such as slimmer/fatter, how the eye looks and so on. I would like to decide if my character has a big head or no. Thigh slider, calf slider.
Body part II: A large choice of hairs, beards, moustaches.
Body Hair: I would like to add body hairs on my character. Chest, stomach, back and so on.
Crotch/Butt/Breasts slider: Realistic sizes, not Cyberpunk style.
Mouth: Tusk, tooth size.
Undo option.
Colouring: Possibility to use a hex code.
A feature I would love to see is the possibility to save an appearance in an ID to share it and make it possible for other players to use that ID to get the exact same appearance. I would be amazing for people to share what they created and also to get a character base that other players could adjust to create their own unique character.
Important areas of custimization are for example a vast amount of options for the hair and the eye colors.
A few things I'd like to mention -
- Please let us set our own expressions off of templates. So if the character has a cheery demeanor, let us modify it. Unhappy, tired, etc. Including stance, bent over, back straighter, etc. Sitting on ground, chair. Slouch level at various stamina levels, same for hp -- show off more scars.
- Also, so much of what is done in a character creator is typically a waste of time in an MMO because once in game, the character is covered in full body length armor that hides every customization. Let's have true fantasy armor that typically are reserved for females aka bikini armor so that others can see the art we've created in the CC.
- Another point of waste of time in CC, is that once in game, you spend so very little time with a close in look of other players. Top down, 3rd person view points make it difficult to see what was created. I hope you have plans for this to at least give us some free camera. This goes into actual gameplay, not the CC, but worth mentioning... My favorite aspect of Everquest when it launched was how much camera freedom was granted to the player. You could scroll out and get a true cinematic experience of seeing yourself fight -- think of the nice viewpoints shown in the movie Highlander. Mostly though, being able to zoom right up on a (another) player would be nice for the work done in the CC.
Specific features - It's hard to critique/suggest, as it all looked so beautiful...
- I'd like to see customizable braids, like scars/tattoos to be dragged onto the hair & beards. The braids take from the color palette of whichever attached (hair/beard). Which the braid could then be lengthened or widened. Also it's tie be colored, maybe ornamented some.
- Patchy hair, like braid above, but instead it hides portions of hair/beard.
- It seemed in the demo that it was hard to focus on the lower portions of the body, lower legs/feet. May need to be able to zoom there. Someone mentioned the toe-nails got color when doing the fingernails, but it was hard to see this.
- The camera needs some sort of speed up to panning, so its easier to spin the character.
- Character Palette: There needs to be easy way to make saves, which isn't the button to bottom left. That looks clunky. Some oval portraits (a palette of characters) along the bottom that can be dragged to and from, which represents what would be seen via the save/load buttons, but instead is nice and pretty. The ability to sort these, drag/drop, or by race/gender too could help if the list gets long.
- - For the above, there should be a work in progress portrait. So if you switch to another race/gender, or preset, or hit random, your work isn't lost. If you do hit gender, perhaps it makes an educated guess from current customizations to make it work for that gender.
- - Probably also, by suggestions mentioned by others, for importing from other players (the website could be made to showcase player creations and the ability to download them to your CC character palette.)
- - When hovering over a portrait, a popup render of the character.
I didn't think I had a lot to say, as the CC is beautiful as is. Some usability features would go a long way to making it better. As we know, this was a 'first pass' as Stephen said, but still you did ask for feedback.
Thanks for the hardwork - can't wait to try it out.
It already shows more promise than most character creators.
However, there were some things I did not like and could be improved upon.
These were for example the hair length adjustments. I felt that the minimum and maximum lengths were too conservative, and wanted to see more extreme values. Secondly, some of the beards seemed like they were fake as if someone had glued some hair to their chin. I would say the worst offender is the beard at 25:15 in the video.
What features would you like to see included in the future for the Character Creator?
Give the possibility to dye or to choose your starting outfit. This would prevent "Attack of the Clones" type of situation at launch, where everyone would look pretty much the same. I mean it's funny for a few minutes, but the fact that everyone looks the same will get boring really fast.
If races/ethnicities/cultures are important in this game, then I would suggest adding culture-specific options for many of the options. These could include culture-specific tattoos, face paints, beards, hairstyles, jewelry, eye color (Unnatural colors, like slight glow, high saturation, or other options), and even teeth. These culture-specific options shouldn't be too extensive, but some exclusive options should exist.
Another culture-specific option should be previewing armors/clothes for that specific race.
As a very minor thing, there might be a color pallet that is used more on a specific culture, so adding those colors as recommendations could be a nice addition. For example in the real world, Celts are associated with orange and green colors, or for the Romans, royal purple was its defining color.
Body asymmetry would be a welcome addition. This could also be applicable to hair, eyes, teeth, eyebrows, and other things. Gradient is a certain type of asymmetry so I'll mention it here. Have the ability to create a color gradient for tattoos, hair, beard, teeth/tusk, and anything that might be of importance.
Add more options for different types of "imperfections". Typically people would think of things like freckles and scars. I suggest going far beyond that, even if you could only do these changes later after choosing an archetype, and these specific changes would only be available based on your archetype. For example damage from disease, disfigurement, moss growing on your face, rotting flesh, burn marks, and many many more options. By archetype specific, I would mean that only a fire mage could have burn marks, a necromancer could have rotting flesh, etc. A necromancer that looks like one of the corpses he's summoning is more immersive than a clean-faced guy, but a cleric or warrior that looks like a corpse would be weird.
Not sure if this should be part of the character creator per se, but I'll mention it anyway. The ability to customize capes, banners, emblems, and whatnot.
TLDR, I generally want to see more variety, and more specifically archetype specific features, like rotting flesh for necromancers, meaning that these features only unlock once you select your archetype.
What areas of customization are important to you?
I would say that the parts of your character you see the most clearly and most often are the most important. This would mean the back of your character, your hair, and your face. Character customization isn't that helpful for the back, since you are wearing armor, so I would argue that hair is the single most important feature. This is because you can usually hide your helmet, and your hair is still visible when playing the game normally. The face is usually only visible in cutscenes or when you purposely turn the camera. This means that having more customization options for your hair should be a big priority.
Other than that, I would still love to have those archetype-specific features. A druid having moss grow on his cheeks would add to the immersion so much and bring out that class identity.
Side Note
I'll mention this separately here since this isn't technically related to the character creator. It would be nice to have minigames, like poker, where you could see your characters' hands as if you are in first person. I think Red Dead did this extremely well, and I loved playing Liars dice. You were so close to the other characters in a world where you usually see them several meters away. Red Dead Redemption 2 especially did it well since it paid justice to the extremely well-detailed characters.
As a player who tends to spend hours upon hours in character creation. First of all, the sculpt mode on the face and body and its subsequent accuracy/seemingly intuitive ease of use made me nearly explode with happiness! I just want to take a moment to give a *massive* thumbs up and my unreserved appreciation for this beautiful feature. This is something I have been waiting on for so, so long to be implemented in a useful/usable way. I can’t stress enough how excited I was about this feature! (I almost cried) Thank you so much! Your hard work and dedication really shows! (also, NAILS!)
Hair colours and customization tools look really solid for a starting point. Length slider is great to add some individuality and tweaks to just bring home that look you wanted.
Since it’s alpha 2 I have little concern about the amount of hairstyles we’ll get and I hope we can get some community input on them too.
The lighting already looks good. The eyes are stunning and look vivid and alive. They really kept my attention, I felt like they really ‘spoke.’
The blend mode is an amazing tool to set up a facial structure and features to work from with sculpting or to aid those who are not as excited by spending hours on a character like I am. Bravo. Really well done!
Some thoughts: (as requested I’m thinking beyond what I think would be easily implementable)
Hair wise:
The ultimate dream would be to be able to groom the hairstyle to your own preference if applicable. This can be the way in which direction tips (or even locks) are turned
Also in terms of more unruly/shaggy or more styled/smooth, suitable within the constraints of the chosen art direction
Please also give an option to flip hairstyles in case of bangs or asymmetry if possible, or to add or remove details to some like beads or other accessories fitting to culture or class.
Personally I hope skintones and hairtones will eventually be sliders for optimum control.
A way to save the colours chosen in your design(s) in a palette for later use, and maybe even offer help for harmonizing or complementing colours for those who have trouble choosing.
I hope that not all of the race hairstyles will be kept only just for a particular race, but I can see the most culturally significant/strongest race identity/silhouette ones locked to keep them more linked with lore and worldbuilding
On animation:
Something I dream of is to be able to choose your own set of idles (ultimate dream is picking them individually from a list even) and walking/running/sitting animation to help shape your character’s personality and (gender) presentation.
Even better is if you could select an enemy or enemy group (or something else) your character has a specific reaction to that is contrary to the rest of the set.
(simple examples for clarification: A brave and confrontational character with arachnofobia. Or a usually calm/poised character who has an rp backstory who has a great hatred for enemy type X and will be unusually worked up/expressive about it)
One thing that trips immersion is that everybody walks and runs the same, no matter their gender, body proportions and personality. (Race more often does have a diversion)
For instance, in games where the default is male animations, this makes for some pretty off animations in stance, walking and sitting if you want to play a (let’s call it, traditionally) feminine female character. Likewise, games that force your female character into catwalk, well, walks, and stances/idles while they are a no nonsense fighter who doesn’t wish to present that way are evenly disappointing. Choice is always the keyword.
Of course this goes for all combinations out there. A feminine male character that walks way too macho for their intended presentation etc. I’m just making these specific examples because they are most common in my perception.
A game that had a choice for walk cycles for personality for instance, was the sims. Now these were comical and hugely exaggerated and therefore only useful for the type of player who embraced its goofy and cartoony style, but as a feature, I really applauded it.
On the Character Creator:
One thing I am still missing is body proportion in terms of verticality.
So to set a longer or shorter torso, neck; or longer legs and arms (within the reasonable). Now the characters that I’ve seen so far (which are not all presented along the entire development timeline, I have to say) look average to stout of limb by default (nothing wrong with that) but without options to change that into for instance a bit more of a lanky, limber look not just utilizing horizontally manipulated shapes or directly linked to height (someone can be long of limb, but still be not all that tall) I really hope this will be added, it’s something Dragon’s Dogma had, for instance and it was just another touch that really helped sculpting and carving out your character!
I’d love more lighting environments to see how your character actually looks in game. Background lighting for instance has a huge effect, and in some games where they used a relatively strong colour that caused strong bounce light it really affected the colours you chose.
Also most character creators use a relatively dark space. Which is fine and understandable, as long as you can cycle through different lighting and environmental conditions to check if you’re going the right way and not end up with a skintone 4 times too light, warm or colour x).
A generous set of save slots to save presets while you are working.
An undo botton.
See how the face looks in a diverse set of animation/dialogue.
All in all. Extremely impressed and happy with the progress. All in house too. I’m just shaking my head in amazement. Well done all!
I love how much control we’re given over facial and body structure. Nothing ruins a character creator like a mandatory fragile elf face on female characters or top-heavy-only male proportions. Hi variety is always good!
What features do you want to see?
I hope we’ll be able to use hex codes for choosing colors as well as the swatch options. Quickly mirroring my selection, flip hair the opposite way, flip a tattoo the opposite way, inverse the hair gradient, etc. Undo button. More hairstyles. Nothing sex-locked aside from maybe heavier beard styles on non-dwarf races (I get tired of seeing the “bearded lady” gag)
What’s the most important part of character creation to you?
The face, scars, and body type. I’m not too worried about that though, given what we’ve seen so far
Like
What I most like so far is being able to sculpt your character with the dragging system. Also the hair extension slider is really cool.
Like to see
- Unique walking, running, resting, mounted, combat, eating/drinking and idle animations for females and males of the different races. Nail this and it will solidify the wow factor!!!
- Animations and posture that reflect the age of the character
- Different in-game backgrounds indoors and outside with different weathers/lighting
- Play and pause button for character idle animations
- Really long hairstyles, like all the way to their butt and race specific hairstyles
- Warpaints
- Voice options for grunts, warcrys, death sounds, breathing etc.
- Bust/butt sliders that uses the same dragging tech as everything else
- Different armor style options
- Bio luminescent eye colors
- Eyelash options
Since there needs to be a creator for each race in both genders, it feels hard to ask for much more. The first pass already looks promising customization wise.
- How you managed to make it possible, that the Faces always looked very real and authentic, whatever you change.
- How you can manage the different tattoos and scars and how the scars are even laying perfectly over the bones.
What i like to see:
1. MUCH more tattoos like this one, but i guess there will be plenty of them later on, so i dont worry about that much.
2. More different jewelry, like these:
3. More different Hairstyles. I guess we will see plenty of them.
4. Most important for me would be longer hair, like the pictures below. I understand that this can be very difficult because of the interaction of the hair with all the armor and the swinging weapons but if you can make this possible, then i think this would look wonderfull on many races, especially on the elves. (And dont forget the very long beards for the dwarves :-) )
Since we've gotten the chance to see the character creator in some of it's potential i would like to propose the idea to be able to test in a much future iteretion of the character creator to be able to test the hair physics of our character to be able to see how it would move when we are in a atack animation, or running, climbing etc.
I propose this because most of the character creators that exist that let's you test some animations of your character, are just not well enough developed and it's always just a few idle animations such as, laughing, raging, or some tipe of mundane animation. This always ends up in the fact that my character hair that i have spended hours upon it's just perma clipping thru the armor and the body, even when simply walking around the world.
That's why i would highly appreciate a way to be able to test this kind of physics in the character creator, so i can be assure that my hair cliping thru my body will not be an immersion breaking factor.
Plus i would like future options on the character creation such as blinking, and cursor eye tracking to be a toggle option in the character creator, for it is annoying to try to create delicate details when the pupil of the character it's constantly moving, and the character's eye's are constantly blinking.
And please give the players full control on hair lenght if possible, but most importantly on zoom while creating a character it's so frustrating to have to find the exact point of maximun zoom on a character creator for then go a lil bit further and get a whole horrendous zoom that makes the character creation experience tedius and unflexible.
Expanding on the character hair lenght and more, we have seen a bit of this system on BDO hair, but honestly as good as some may think it is, is pretty damn basic, yes it let you change some lengths and add some interesting hair directions, but it still pretty basic you can't pick more sections of hair that the ones that are given to you, which if i remember correctly are 4 or 5 sections of hair with 3 points to enlenght and weave some of those sections and of course we can never make the hair as long as we want or as short as we want, players need this type of tool when creating males and female characters, the hair is such an important factor of the character it shows some of it's personality with a simple glance at it, plus hair and back of a character it is what we are seeing most of the time when we are playing the game .
I would much prefer to be able to shape hair as intrepid has shown to shape bodie features and face features, the moulding sistem it's just amazing and we all know intrepid it's going more than a step further on the right direction, i would appreciete if we could do the same when it comes to hair and assymetric body parts customization, like shoulders, tights, chest, hands, legs, and of course hair.
Everything is more beautiful when it ain't perfect, we need those imperfections in everything to make sure that we are creating the most unique and better version of our characters that represents ourselves in the world of Verra.
Of course we can go a step beyond that and give the player the option to create it's own iddle animations, such as standing in a type of way, walking, atacking etc.
This is way harder than anything mentioned before and even as much as i want this i do not expect this to be possible in the game, such customizations comes with regulations and such regulations just take away the creativity of the creation, so i honestly would prefer this to not be a added option, but at least i would like to shape the posture of my character for even a little bit, and of course i would love this to be tested only if possible of course.
Make Up and eyelashes, we need to have this options in any race and or gender, this are key options to create depth into a character face and attitude, they too are used to add personality to the character's expressions, as such i would love to see an option with ornaments that may or may not be included as an starting feature when the character is created, this meaning that we could get this ornaments when we are leveling and playing the game, but it would still be a good feature to be able to preview how the character would look with some of this earrings, piercings, neckleces, rings, dreadlocks, and much more in the character creator.
And please oh please i beg you do not make female breast look like they just got thru their 5th plastic surgery, it is much preferred a natural look with a little different size in between them, if the breast are bigg make the gravity do it's natural thing, same goes for male characters if he's too muscular give us the option to make his stand rocky as they are, with limited movement around their arms, and bulky movement on the core, i do hate when a character looks and feels plastic, so please try to give us the most natural feeling in all of our characters.
With this of course come's the need to be able to add and remove fat as desired for the player, models with bigger boddy fat on the chest, or the arms and legs, are just a few of the ideas that player's might be into and no other game has been able to get this right, every time you make your character fatter it just makes them widder or when you make them skinny it just becomes a stick, it would be much appreciated if players could mould this features into specific parts of the boddy to create an amazing immersive character.
With that being said i 100% comprehend the absurd amount of work that still needs to be implemented into the whole game, i'll just like that some of this to be something to be considered since i've never seen any game even try to give you this amount of options.
That would be all my recomendations and concerns i would highly appreciate, any back up or further ideas on this matter, since i'm passionate about creating highly immersive characters with so many little details that makes them unique.
I'm looking forward to be able to test the character creator when it's realesed and i'll happily wait any amount of time that it takes to be made with the quality standards that intrepid are striving for.
Hope everyone has a nice day, bye
Edit: i have edited this text more times that i can remember i don't know how i got so invested into this, i love it
I just wanted to say that I have been following Steven and the Intrepid team's journey from the very beginning, and I just wanted to say how thrilled I am to finally see the wonderful work that all of you have been doing. Unreal Engine 5 and the amaing technology and art that has shown through is incredible to me. Thank you so much Steven and Intrepid team for truly making a game for gamers.
Character Creation,
I am absolutely blown away by the technology and art that has gone into this character customization. I am so excited to see all the races and to see all the features you plan on adding into it.
I really liked how intricate you can get with making your character. As an artist myself, I have always been massively dissappointed in games (New World in particular), where they advertize such a beautiful game, but then the character customization is utter garbage, especially for us girls. I am a little iffy on some of the body presets, but I realize that this is just a alpha 2 showcase, so I know Intrepid will be making many more changes to come. I am definitely the most excited for the elves. I really want to be able to create an elf that looks very at home with nature and her many animals at her stronghold, but is also very elegnat and reagal.
Again, thank you so much Steven and Intrepid for being so passionate and amazing at what you are doing. I will be watching every stream and tearing up at every unreal engine 5 reveal. Watching your reveals at the end of every month makes it all worth it to me.
Thank you!
Kynrelia
Manipulating presets, very cool. Definitely a dream of game programmers for a long time.
Need an in-game barber/cosmetologist for tattoos, hair styles, colors.
Body sculpting interface is D O P E.
I need bright neon hair colors please for Py'Rai
I did not expect this kind of character modding in Alpha 1. I most certainly didn't expect it in an Alpha 2.
Scarification is real good, tattoos are rad. Loving the explanations for how they work.
I'm so happy that you are taking your time to make it work.
I'd like to be a continuing supporter. I spent a good amount buying in last June, but it concerns me that you might not have enough to run continuously. Is there a way to do that? Vek look cool as hell, that's a great look.
What do you like or dislike about the Character Creator we shared?
Only thing for me was the 'sensitivity' of turning the character around, would be good not to need to swipe as much. But that's me really nit picking. Fantastic work!
What features would you like to see included in the future for the Character Creator?
One thing I would like to suggest, is the possibility of 'uploading' a face photo / utilisation of web cam in order to get similar facial sculpting so we can make the character look like ourselves. Then we can customise from there a little more
I think a lot of very good points have been brought up by other people, and I'm personally really looking forward to what you'll come up with for the Tulnar.
I want to commend you for already having implemented the different background and lighting options, I've seen so many threads on forums with people complaining that their characters looked nothing like in the character creator once in game.
About feedback.... the system looks easy enough to use, maybe a bit of UI interface. Would like numbers next to the sliders if i want to jump to a specific option.
Next would be the ability to have asymmetric characters. Eyes is a easy example, but all the arms and legs. Would probably look a bit weird on humans, but for Tulnars will be really important.
More tattoos is a easy one. I do hope you guys will let up upload photos. In the end we are all mature enough, and trolls will get reported fast.
Also here, i would like to see tattoos that are part of the culture of each race. So some tattoos are just for humans, some just for elves etc.
Next is ornaments. Piercings, earrings, eye patch, maybe masks (cloth or leather of course).
Extra hairstyles. This one is self explanatory.
Thats all i can think of. Again, it looks super, can't wait to play. Fantastic work!
They have said in other streams including the most recent one that this would in fact be possible, though not the parameters for it. Presumably in Alpha-2 it will b freely accessible, though the parameters for accessing might change over time to test design concepts. But that's just speculation. All we do know is they have definitely said that you will have access to your character creator even after publishing.
Specifically, I thought the blend between sliders and sculpting was a good call. This worked well in FO4, and I think Ashes will make it better. The freedom of placing tattoos and scars gives more creative license to players to make their characters just right.
Things I’d like to have included:
- varied environmental lighting
- A set of base level templates for each race
- The ability to see examples of each basic armor type with the constructed toon
Oh, and fix the Kaelar belly button. 🤪