Originally posted by Findariel

Rift has very stale looking characters and you can only pick one face per race/gender, which is really very, very poor. The clothes are ok but don’t look very spectacular either. My score: 4.5/10
 

Did you play the right game?

There's a tool that changes the shape of the face and not to mention 10 preset faces. 

Originally posted by GoodAfternoon

Originally posted by Findariel

Rift has very stale looking characters and you can only pick one face per race/gender, which is really very, very poor. The clothes are ok but don’t look very spectacular either. My score: 4.5/10
 

 

Did you play the right game?

 

There's a tool that changes the shape of the face and not to mention 10 preset faces. 

 

 

I played Rift free trail. And I kinda agree with Findariel. Im sorry even with the sliders I thought the game lacked a bit in Custimazation. And when the avatars move in Rift it looks awful. Im sorry but that is just how I feel... If you compare how cool Dark elfs Run animation was in Lineage2 and compare that with Rift it dosent even come close..

That said. It still has much more to offer then most Online games of this "DARK AGE" of MMO gaming..

I tend to avoid games where you pick 1 of 5 faces and 1 of 5 hairdos...

For me SWG was best, as you could recognize a friend in the game by his face, and didnt need the flashy hoovering letters over his head. And then on top of the awesome facial/body system, there was a ton of clothes and armors.. Tho everyone wore the same to not be steamrolled by a Durni.

AOC came a close second, as it had the same as SWG just with better gfx. But lacked a bit on the armor/wearables... I always ended up looking at what the NPC's were wearing and wished for them to improve the loot/crafting.

Fallen Earth comes in third, despite they having 20'ish SET faces to choose from. This because of the plethora of wearables. I do wish they would improve the character customization tho, and fix and reinstall the wardrobe function so it works and doesnt DOUBLE DIP into your wallet... Yeah, I'm not to fond of PvE and PvP being the holy cow and not be in the cash shops, while RP ends up being the ones that pay... It's not like there are whole patches dedicated to RP now is it.. yet RP who barely gets a scrap from the devs... pays. But thats off topic...

WOW.. well, lets say I did not feel unique for a single second, and I didnt even buy it after the beta. a few faces, a few beards and pretty much the same wearable progress as every other paladin/insert your class here... F That!

After running into 10 paladins that looked exactly like me, and that in only one day, I decided to not buy WOW.

And pretty much every game since have been like that.

If I can't create or dress my character into what I envision him to be, then the game is not for me. I don't play to follow a cubicle monkeys fantasy(dev), I follow my own, wich pretty much keeps me out of most themeparks too.

:P

Originally posted by Timeout77

Originally posted by GoodAfternoon

Originally posted by Findariel

Rift has very stale looking characters and you can only pick one face per race/gender, which is really very, very poor. The clothes are ok but don’t look very spectacular either. My score: 4.5/10
 

 

Did you play the right game?

 

There's a tool that changes the shape of the face and not to mention 10 preset faces. 

 

 

I played Rift free trail. And I kinda agree with Findariel. Im sorry even with the sliders I thought the game lacked a bit in Custimazation. And when the avatars move in Rift it looks awful. Im sorry but that is just how I feel... If you compare how cool Dark elfs Run animation was in Lineage2 and compare that with Rift it dosent even come close..

That said. It still has much more to offer then most Online games of this "DARK AGE" of MMO gaming..

That's not excuse for lying. Despite you not liking the options, they are present and in the game. 

Not to mention that avatars moving has nothing to do with the facial customization.

APB, hands down: best of the best.

I think Aion had one of the best customisations ever in a mmorpg.

CoX, Champions ONline, AoC, Rift, Aion, APB, Perfect World. These are some of the games with indepth character customization. Anything less than that should not exist. The more sliders the better

edit: Rift being at the bottom because only the face has modifiers not the entire body

EVE online has the best character maker currently on the market , its compleetly useless as you can only hide in youre own ship at this time but stil

APB has a great character creator, its not as good as Eve's when it comes to sculpting the facial/body features but its tatoo and cloth texture layer system is one of a kind, it might take a otehr 5 years before we see that become mainstream.

less good but in no way bad , just fitting for the game / time the game was made.

SWG used to have for its time a great creator

Fallen Earth, even tho its more preset sliders then sculpting sliders FE allouws for a quite nice characters

CoX, highly outdated these days but lots and lots of choices how you want to look, basicly the same for any Super MMO tho, Champions online got a great system to, and DCUO aint to bad either.

all the above have or had a very large range of cloth options and it was/is very hard to ever find a clone of youre character

AOC,WaR,WoW,GW,RIFT. basicly any themepark gear based game.. CloneBars Online. ...some had decent slider options, some decent clothing options, but most suck in one or both of them. 

Character customization is very important to me as well.  I like sliders, but I am ok with presets as long as there are lots of options and those options are aesthetically pleasing to me.  I tend to play whatever gender looks the best.  I don't use asian or african featured faces, or intentionally ugly faces,  so that cuts down on the number of options avialable to me.

I loved how my character looked in SWG and APB.  Those were probably my two favorites for character creation even though SWG is dated now.  I felt both afforded me a wide lattitude in designing my character.  

I like appearance tabs, lots of hair styles, and the ability to color items.  I understand that stats are the most important aspect of a piece of armor, but if I don't look good I am unhappy.  I like a good looking character :)

I guess I am the only one here who really does not care about character customization.  I generally just press the random look button until I see something I like and go with it.  Heck in SWTOR I actually managed to randomly generate two characters who looked almost identical.  I quickly realized that it did not really bothered me.

I 'customize' my characters after I start playing them.  As I play them they gain unique personalities based on what I do with them and this I find much more immersive than playing with face shapes and skin colors.  I guess I never got out of the Pen and Paper RPG mindset.

Originally posted by Findariel

Originally posted by Datarin

I would argue that character customization is much more directly linked to what you do in a game as well; merely looks won't get you far, but the general look and feel of your character would bring you much further: roleplaying is just one such outlet. In that case, EVE would rank far above LOTRO and others.

But in EVE no-one ever sees your character, just a snapshot. You may as well upload an image with a picture that you made with another game. Personally, I don't find that immersive at all.

Just so you know, they are slowly implimenting Exploreable Spacestations. guess what you do in these stations, Interact with other players that you can see.

TSW's charater customization potential is one of the main reasons im looking forward to it. 

Originally posted by Findariel

EVE has no characters that can interact or see each other, you' re basically a spaceship with a 2D picture as avatar. My score: 1/10

 

But you can give that 2D avatar a very expressive and distinctive look. There are some pretty scary pirates, hard-line tycoons etc. out there.

In Vanguard, I had a Gnome Blood Mage.

I tried playing him from time to time, but OH MY GOD IS THAT GUY UGLY was always the result.

I tried editing him right and left, but he still looked awful no matter what I did.

Finally I gave up, and made a Darkelf Blood Mage instead. Any massively enjoyed playing that character.

So yeah, Looks are very important to me. Sadly they nerfed Darkelves into Oblivion later.

Originally posted by LadyNoh

Originally posted by Findariel

EVE no-one ever sees your character, just a snapshot. You may as well upload an image with a picture that you made with another game. Personally, I don't find that immersive at all.

Just so you know, they are slowly implimenting Exploreable Spacestations. guess what you do in these stations, Interact with other players that you can see.

Well we all know about CCP's good ideas .. it may take over a decade to get them into the game. During 2006 fanfest they already showed impressive content about walking into bars in stations and minigames ..

Now it's 2012 and we can still just walk around in our captain's quarters without being able to do anything that can't be done outside the CQ, let alone interact with other players. Then I ask myself: what's the use?

Since WoD is delayed the engine is also put on hold/slowed down so there's not much hope we'll get it before 2016.

Originally posted by GoodAfternoon

Originally posted by Findariel

Rift has very stale looking characters and you can only pick one face per race/gender, which is really very, very poor. The clothes are ok but don’t look very spectacular either. My score: 4.5/10

Did you play the right game?

There's a tool that changes the shape of the face and not to mention 10 preset faces. 

I'm sorry but as Timeout77 already guessed, I played the trial version.  But in spite of the slider bars I still wasn't very impressed by the options, for instance the jaw was very perculiar and couldn't be adjusted. But yes, perhaps the full version would get a better rating. Sorry for that.

Originally posted by Findariel

Originally posted by brody71

do you prefer premade faces or the slider type? i tend to prefer premades, i can never get good faces when i mess with the sliders.

Premades have my preference as well. Sliders are nice for length or colour depth though - and width. And I'm always hoping thet one day there will be a game that also supports fatter characters. :-)

You can have fatter characters, plus chars of variable height from tiny to really tall, in Aion, which is now f2p.  Lots of options for face and hair, too.  It's a game where I spend hours creating my character, but then once I get playing, think "meh".

Loved your post, btw; your tastes and views regarding character customisation seem similar to mine.  I felt exactly the same about LOTRO.  Played on release, and tried again recently now that it is f2p, but just can't stick with the look of the character, and the run animation is purely horrible!  Chars run as if they are also squatting, which is extremely strange to look at.

Regarding WoW which I'm back playing atm whilst waiting for GW2, I don't like most of the character models and hope they upgrade them at some point (I think I read somewhere that they were planning to?).  Humans are blocky, and move clumsily (the female jump particularly).  What I think they really got right (apart from the somewhat clumsy humans), is the fluidity of movement of character which I have yet to experience in any other mmo. 

Nearly forgot to say, I agree with posters above that the best character customisation I've experienced has been in City of Heroes.  Fantastic.  I played around in char creation for hours lol.

I think the customization is really important cause when you create someone to your tastes u get inside the game like its you like you living another life.
I spend hours creating a character that is similar to me thats my way to get into the game.

Originally posted by xenpt

I think the customization is really important cause when you create someone to your tastes u get inside the game like its you like you living another life.
I spend hours creating a character that is similar to me thats my way to get into the game.

Me too ^^

Originally posted by jayarte

You can have fatter characters, plus chars of variable height from tiny to really tall, in Aion, which is now f2p.  Lots of options for face and hair, too.  It's a game where I spend hours creating my character, but then once I get playing, think "meh".

Loved your post, btw; your tastes and views regarding character customisation seem similar to mine.  I felt exactly the same about LOTRO.  Played on release, and tried again recently now that it is f2p, but just can't stick with the look of the character, and the run animation is purely horrible!  Chars run as if they are also squatting, which is extremely strange to look at.

Regarding WoW which I'm back playing atm whilst waiting for GW2, I don't like most of the character models and hope they upgrade them at some point (I think I read somewhere that they were planning to?).  Humans are blocky, and move clumsily (the female jump particularly).  What I think they really got right (apart from the somewhat clumsy humans), is the fluidity of movement of character which I have yet to experience in any other mmo. 

Nearly forgot to say, I agree with posters above that the best character customisation I've experienced has been in City of Heroes.  Fantastic.  I played around in char creation for hours lol.

Sounds good! Too bad CoH isn't really my type of game though .. but I think a lot of developers underestimate the importance of character customisation. A lot of people voted "extremely important" and I don't think most developers expected that it is the case. I'd even think that even if a game has mediocre gameplay, having a unique character that you truely love and feel dedicated to makes up for a lot.