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Anofalye
Apprentice Member
Joined: 11/19/03
The enemy is so dumb! They believe that WE are the enemy! - A famous orc commander. |
9/15/08 8:20:44 AM#21
City of Heroes has a LOT more option than that for look...however many peoples would argue it has very little else.
Devs have to make choices as to where to give players options, what will make the players...PLAY or grant a lasting pleasure. Each look variation may lead to lag, which is hard on any game involving multiple players interactions.
EvE, WAR and WoW all have this comon thing, they make sure that look/customisation don't lag you much. In CoX, having 20 players in the same area already produce some gaming performance issues on some systems...especially if they are in a grid-base! - "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - René Levesque about the denial NO on the poll to his dream, project and goal. (Free translation) |
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9/15/08 8:53:44 AM#22
Developers will sell us what we allow them to sell us. Stop subscribing to crap and they will be forced to improve their product.
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Majestico
Novice Member
Joined: 1/18/07
''Hey now!'' - the immortal, cheesy catch-phrase of Hank Kingsly from The Larry Sanders Show. |
9/15/08 9:23:46 AM#23
To put it into perspective though, what you are discussing is character customisation, not the actual games themselves. 
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VengeSunsoar
 Hard Core Member
Joined: 3/10/04
GRIND DOES NOT EXIST. IT IS ENTIRELY YOUR PERCEPTION. |
9/15/08 9:32:49 AM#24
Originally posted by ketrine Well think of it this way. When was the last time in game you noticed someones chin size, eye colour, eye slant, eye brow width. The truth is most of those options amount to less than a hill of beans. They are just not obvious enough to the player. Height, ear, muscle, and some head things, and body things are what people actually notice. Venge Sunsoar You know, in ancient Egypt. One of the hieroglyphics on the walls of the pyramids actually says 'I am upset as my heir will ruin my kingdom' or something to that affect. This is 5000BC stuff and you know what? Nothing has changed. :P |
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9/15/08 9:38:15 AM#25
Well, im starting to sound like a fanboy ( and i guess I kinda am) but dear OP take a look at Fallen Earth ( www.fallenearth.com) . its one of those games that build on the past instead of forgetting it :) |
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9/15/08 9:42:00 AM#26
Originally posted by Anofalye
May I note that Eve walking will create a char customisation that might even go beyond that from swg , nobody knows for shure ofcource as its bin in dev for so long but whitout a darn strong customisation mechanic it looses half of its apeal and im shure they know that (they=dev) |
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9/15/08 10:47:14 AM#27
Are people NOT going to buy WAR or WOW because they can't adjust their ear length? Are millions of new players going to buy either game BECAUSE you can give yourself a pointy nose? No. Once you start thinking like a developer and not just a gamer sitting on your behind, you'll understand why decisions are made. |
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9/15/08 11:09:31 AM#28
Look at how much cox lags during a Rikti invasion. All those players and mobs firing all kinds of powers with stunningn graphics going on. Now wonder it lags..... |
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9/15/08 11:13:48 AM#29
Originally posted by ketrine Id say for both WAR and LOTRO it comes down to lore. Lore limits most things. |
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When WoW came out I was told not to bother trying it because it was dumbed down garbage by one of my SWG friends. I never tried it, not because of what my friend said but because I was just not interested. The only problem is that because it was sucessful, EVERY game that has come out is a copy of it, so there's nothing else to play. If you like it, super! I am glad you found delight in your happy meal. There is a void, a barren, obvious gap where there should be some newer games which provide us with not only detailed customization, but well thought-out quests, a rich immersive game world, and the freedom to enjoy that world to the fullest. Don't tell me that our computers can't handle 50 people in the same area with that many sliders, because my weenie laptop with 128 meg graphics card and 512 meg of ram did it back in 2003 and it ran very smoothly. The only thing I can think of that is a reason for this is company laziness. Heck, I don't see why they could do it with UO, EQ, SWG, and the like a few years ago on a smaller budget but they can't do it now that they have a much larger client base to hope for. |
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9/15/08 12:49:24 PM#31
Im just going to cut and paste my reply from the spore customization thread....... Spore and COH have nothing on the customization of the upcoming mmo APB. Don't believe me? Watch this VIDEO. Make sure you watch the end where they make characters out of star game designers Richard Garriott, Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux, and Warren Spector. The video was taken off a projection screen at the game developers conference so the graphics are actually much sharper than you see. So yes they are making MMOS with huge improvements on customization. Own, Mine, Defend, Attack, 24/7 |
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9/15/08 12:59:32 PM#32
Yeah, I guess that would be backwards development had all the games OP listed were made by the same developer. Thing is they aren't, each game is focused on different things. SWG=sandbox, EQ2=pve, WAR=rvr, in a sandbox you're going to be looking at other peoples characters as you loiter the local hubs so naturally there is a need to look different. Same with pve to a lesser extent (when you've worn out all of the pve content and are awaiting new content). With pvp based games you're not likely to notice if 2 of the people you kill look slightly familiar. |
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9/15/08 1:18:20 PM#33
Quite a few facts really. 1. People end up covered from head to toe in thick armor, which defeats most of the customization. 2. Armor in MMO games these days are actually fitted overtop of the character. When you allow customization to scale the character's size, that also means you have to scale and streatch the armor. That is a very hard task to perfect without graphical glitches. That's why AOC had the twitching booby bug. 3. People rarely use the sliders unless it is to make their character fat. Many people do not want to play a character with a huge witch nose. So you might as well limit the optios to something pretty. 4. A true MMO with tons of people in an open world could not handle model scalings and fine details with today's graphics. This is a sign that graphics have improved way too fast in comparision to all other aspects of gaming. Our graphics in this day and age are just too top notch to for our computers to handle effeciently. |
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9/15/08 1:37:59 PM#34
Originally posted by Urrelles
To the OP, yeah, its sad but true. EVERYTHING about MMO's has DEVOLVED over the last 5 years or so. SWG is actually the perfect example of what the MMO genre has done. Started out deep and complex, and now its retardedly simple. Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic |
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9/15/08 4:10:00 PM#35
Well, Abrahmm if it is true then why haven't developers done any of these things. do not say it is because they are lazy. DEVELOPERS ARE NOT LAZY! Lazy development is what you see int he Madden and Burnout series. MMO development is nothing close to being lazy. There are plenty of games with rendering distance options and such, but the older games did it better because the graphics were so simple at the times. All of the games with massive amounts of customization had below quality graphics for the time. Age of Conan tried to push the market to a more modern base of graphics. the result was an instanced disaster. Computers just can't handle that many variables at once. About a year ago I played DAOC for a couple of weeks to see how it improved. The game is over 5 years old. I had recently upgraded my computer to a level that could run City of heroes on high settings smoothly. When I entered a 50 man PvP event in DAOC, my computer chopped and chugged as it loaded all the different armor and textures of each player. It took a good 30 seconds of chugging before I was able to play smoothly for abotu 5 minutes. Then another team of 20 flanked us and the chugging began again. American internet technology is not ready to support lag free, fast paced, massive player, gameplay AND allow large amoutns of customizatio and scaling.
On a note of the sliders. I love to customize my character. When I group up with people I take great note of how their character looks. Especially if the game allows lots of customization. In every game I have played, including CoH, I have seen players use the same faces, colors, and sizes. Out of every 10 players maybe 3 will do something completely different. Out of those 3 only 1 person will do it nicely. When people make characters, they focus on eyes, hair, cheekbone, scars, and overall breast size and body fat. All those other sliders for eyebrows, nose, chin, lips, neck, thighs etc. are rarely looked at. |
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Originally posted by MarL
I watched this video and I have to say I am very VERY impressed. This is the kind of thing I would have expected to see in development now had someone asked me in 2003. It kind of concerns me that the advertised game is a free-to-play game, but I think the character creation alone would be fun enough. To the last few posters: Sure, there are going to be people who could not care less what their character looks like, but I really do. I really don't want to play as a character if I don't like the way it looks, and fewer options just means if I see something I cant stand, there's no way to change it. I don't see why you can't make different kinds of armor to enhance your unique - looking character instead of using the same ole same ole armor to cover it up. This is why many games let you toggle off your helmet too, and even with as few options as LOTRO has it has an option to use normal clothing as the graphic instead of armor. Personally, I don't see why armor has to exist at all in an MMO other than for the look of it. If you had the right crafting system you could add +1250 armor to your T shirt. As far as lag goes, lag is a part of every MMO I ever played no matter what settings, no matter what customization level. I don't mind if the graphics are a few years older than current FPS games, to me that is expected. Everybody wants to have an attractive character, but this also doesn't mean there is only one way to make a beautiful character. Why aren't there different shapes of nose for example, not just a size slider? Roman nose, pointy nose, rounded nose, pug nose... I bet not everyone would pick the same one. |
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9/15/08 10:47:07 PM#37
That is one hell of a character creation system in APB. The game might be an instanced nightmare, but I was never one to be turned down too much by instancing. |
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9/15/08 11:41:12 PM#38
The developing house only has so much time to work on the game before the publisher demands its release, Dont blame the Devs blame the publishers and investors. |
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Fair enough, I now deem that the title of this thread should read: "Why won't devs give us more options AFTER release?" There's no reason they can't add sliders after the fact... it would be nice if there were more ways to look in WAR (what I'm playing now) and even if it came after a few months of live play I would be grateful.
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