General Discussion

Character customisation is key for me but not because of immersion. I find it is important for me so that I feel a connection to the character, so when I look at or think of the character I feel I created her instead of feeling like I'm borrowing someone created by the devs.

Aesthetics is important for me, it always has been, so I'd say customization plays a huge part. The options differ from game to game and what doesn't necessarily look good at start may look a lot better in a few levels once some new gear pops into place. I probably spend more time on tweaking my characters' looks than I would like to admit, but to me that's part of the fun and I enjoy doing it. I think most players, at least to certain extent, would have their characters look stylish rather than a homeless hobo (unless that's their style of roleplaying). People want to be acknowledged and get noticed in real life one way or the other, and this applies to MMOs as well. Some on a sub-conscious level, others more deliberate.

Im with Paulscott.  I don't think its important at all.  It really slows systems down, lowers the amount of players on screen, and is typically unnoticed.  Armor customization on the other hand is very important in making your character unique.  Most of the games that gloat about the complexity of thier character customization like Vanguard have so little end-game armors all that customization is useless.

Also you can't forget the more customization a game has, the uglier the characters become since they have to become modular in order to be manipulated.  This leads to smoothed textures and high poly counts that make the characters look like clay.  With hair being a very seperate part of the body.

dont useually care that much just pick the least ugliest looking model and play it, who looks at their charecters face at all anyway?

The custimisation that counts is ones that are very obvious, like dyed armour, things that actually make you stand out that you dont need to strain your eyes to see.

It's not a big minus if the game is good but you cant customize your char. But even a little bit of customization is good and adds to the game. But one thing that is really lame is when you can't choose your gender. This is the one thing every game should have. But of course the better the customization the better. Makes the game more enjoyable if no one looks the same as you. The same thing goes for armors/weapons. The more and different the armors/weapons the better.

Variety is the spice of life.  It's no less important to me no matter what endeavor I find myself persuing.

its not a huge deal, but it sucks looking like EVERYONE else, granted.... someone will probably always look similar, but ya it can be annoying, i think armor dyes and whatnot always helped  people not looking the same

Customization is one of the biggest draws for me. Be it choosing facila featurse to having a variety of paths to follow skills wise. I remember my eq ranger. He was maxed in level but standing next to the average Maxed ranger i perfornmed 100% better with my bow and outdoor skills. the reason was customzation, other rangers could stand up to a decent pounding where as i was a paper weight. but once you were snared you may as well fall to the floor and die, because then i took over. i concentrated on maxing bow skills, snare skills and even wore my POP pants with free root spells when there were much better stats around. i was the god of the outdoors! i had all the rarest spells...whcih a lot of games seem to fail on these days! you just go to a vendor and get all your spells where in eq you had dropped spells too.

The more i can customize and specialise my char the better. heck i even used to die every item i had dark green in eq so it looked more like camoflage!

There's no excuse for lack of customization in MMO's released these days.

Just to be clear by customization I mean more than faces & body types. I'm talking CoX / SWG/ MxO type customization. I'm the type who recreates characters several times before final creation.  While dated I enjoy CoX's level of customization though even that is not where it should be.

The worse thing ever is having the same face, body style, armor & skillset as everyone else.

Character customization for me is important. Without it, the game just start off in the wrong foot. Which isn't good.

I'm a bit split in my opinion on bars, although I like the functions of them, but it seems to me that most new games with that function don't use it much. I can move the bar in all positions and I can't honestly say that I see much difference. And the difference is so minimal that its just wasted. The freedom with the customization should be placed more on the player. If the player want to look ugly or out of place, it should be the players choice and not some art designer. Perfect look is not always perfect for me. If I want a fat character, I want a fat character, so let me choose that :D

To the ones that not liking bars, just many predefined faces/setups. I don't really see the big problem to include both methods. The developers could add the bars and some predefined faces for those that don't want to use much time on the process.

SWG was also one of my favorite when it comes to customization, not just due to the models, but the models and the oportunity to use a wide selection of clothing in the game. Most games just use a tired system of armour, use that or go naked. In SWG I used different clothing in different situations, I also used a good time to find a good looking armour/clothing mixture that I liked. Think I had 4-5 different cloth sets on me all the time, and a couple of armoured looks. In that game you could really know the players on looks and not just the name.

EQ2 developers has actual understood this lately, and they have added a new sets of cloth slots (Apperance slots), where you can equip cloths and armour just for the looks, and another set for the stats.