Was board, ranked MMORPG character creators. Lets talk about it.

"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

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Comments

Noaani

Of the games above that I have played, I dont think there are any that I would move.

Riessene

I remember Aion being pretty robust with sliders letting you create anything from pretties to monsters with a good color selection?

But I also played it like in 2013 so I might be blinded by nostalgia

Vhaeyne

Riessene wrote: »

I remember Aion being pretty robust with sliders letting you create anything from pretties to monsters with a good color selection?

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.

Riessene

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Riessene wrote: »

I remember Aion being pretty robust with sliders letting you create anything from pretties to monsters with a good color selection?

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.

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)

Vhaeyne

@Riessene Thanks for the screen grab. Maybe this bumps Aion up to a (C+).

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.

Jxshuwu

Strictly mmorpgs? Code vein had some cool customization.

Vhaeyne

Jxshuwu wrote: »

Strictly mmorpgs? Code vein had some cool customization.

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.

Jayma

BDO gender/class lock make me place it directly in F tier.

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.

Naterdoo

Haven't played Neverwinter but TheLazyPeon's latest video, "Failed First Impressions," had that one included. I probably wouldn't put it in the same tier as GW2 and ESO due to that.

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?

Riessene

@Vhaeyne you're welcome! Gotta disagree here because I love playing with sliders (but honestly not a fan of grab and move face feature a la bdo and fallout4/76) its the ones that do almost nothing make me frustrated. But I get that seeing a bunch of little monsters running around in the game can be immersion breaking. I usually use this power for good trying to make unique and interesting looking characters. Really looking forward to what AoC offers us!

And also prayer circle for "Save appearance" option !!

Vhaeyne

Jayma wrote: »

BDO gender/class lock make me place it directly in F tier.

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.

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.

Naterdoo wrote: »

Haven't played Neverwinter but TheLazyPeon's latest video, "Failed First Impressions," had that one included. I probably wouldn't put it in the same tier as GW2 and ESO due to that.

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?

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.

Riessene wrote: »

@Vhaeyne you're welcome! Gotta disagree here because I love playing with sliders (but honestly not a fan of grab and move face feature a la bdo and fallout4/76) its the ones that do almost nothing make me frustrated. But I get that seeing a bunch of little monsters running around in the game can be immersion breaking. I usually use this power for good trying to make unique and interesting looking characters. Really looking forward to what AoC offers us!

And also prayer circle for "Save appearance" option !!

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.

Jxshuwu

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Jxshuwu wrote: »

Strictly mmorpgs? Code vein had some cool customization.

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.

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

Samson1

I hope the character creator in AOC is so comprehensive that it actually makes me flustered with all of the options and functionality.

Sathrago

If I remember correctly blade and soul had a pretty decent character creator. You could also unlock hairstyles and such theough ingame content but th as ts probably off topic.

It's by no means the greatest though, I played that game for the insanely good pvp.

Vhaeyne

Sathrago wrote: »

If I remember correctly blade and soul had a pretty decent character creator. You could also unlock hairstyles and such theough ingame content but th as ts probably off topic.

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.

Sathrago

Omg I totally forgot to mention baldur's gate 3. They have an awesome character creation setup and it's not even fully finished yet.

Vhaeyne

Sathrago wrote: »

Omg I totally forgot to mention baldur's gate 3. They have an awesome character creation setup and it's not even fully finished yet.

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.

Sathrago

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Sathrago wrote: »

Omg I totally forgot to mention baldur's gate 3. They have an awesome character creation setup and it's not even fully finished yet.

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.

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
Baldurs-Gate-3.jpg?resize=803%2C464&ssl=1

nilv

Aion is definitely S-tier when it comes to customization. Yes you get some wacky looking character when you give people full control over the customization, but that’s why I think it’s the best customization I have seen so far.

⇻ theNILV ⇺

Vhaeyne

@Sathrago That may be the most detailed gith I a have ever seen in my life. The characters look good. I will have to give that game a try and see how I feel about it myself.

@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.

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