For those curious about the official responses to this question.
Dec 9, 2016: Alpha with the Dev's with CohhCarnage. At 52:16 in the video, the question is asked about what kind of customization will be available in character creation.
Joppa says: "A pretty standard set of options available, and standard meaning according to modern standards. There will be some games out there that will do a deeper dive in character creation customization options than we will, but you will not be lacking in any of the customization options you have come to expect."
Aug 17, 2018: MMORPG interviews Dev's Chris "Joppa" Perkins and Brad "Aradune" McQuaid. At 22:25 in the video the question is asked "How in depth will character creation be... will I be able to make my Ogre Warrior look different than everyone elses Ogre Warrior?"
Joppa says: "You can expect a pretty standard character creation system. If I had to look into the future and say what I feel like we are trending towards; It's not a place we're going to be dumping a whole lot of resources. And what I mean by that is not that we are gonna skimp it or overlook or ignore it. Just to say that there's going to be your standard 'what you've come to expect' from a typical character creation standpoint. Then to build on top of that one thing that I know for many of us was really important is to capture that racial identity by having starting points for the different races, silhouettes if you will, that were very unique and identifiable. So that means even though your Ogre, you're going to have some facial customization, you're going to have some height customization, and skin colour, and hair style, hair colour, and a couple of different bells and whistles that you can change, you are also going to be an Ogre which is going to in and of itself have such a unique identifiable visual footprint that that too is going to be a part in distinguishing you from other players. I think we are going for a sweet spot of making sure that players feel like 'yes they can' achieve a look that they feel is themself and unique, while not going crazy overboard on the most minute (my-NOOT) little details that no one can even see."
"Standard what you've come to expect" could mean an awful lot of things, and honestly from the screenshot that's been posted, it's pretty barebones - I would have expected more. At the very least they need to add some level of body customization (either through sliders or through preset body types) and expand the face slider options a bit (as per my previous post). Otherwise, I would label the current state of character customization below "standard".
Naunet said:"Standard what you've come to expect" could mean an awful lot of things, and honestly from the screenshot that's been posted, it's pretty barebones - I would have expected more. At the very least they need to add some level of body customization (either through sliders or through preset body types) and expand the face slider options a bit (as per my previous post). Otherwise, I would label the current state of character customization below "standard".
I agree 100% Naunet, but I can also say with high confidence that the character customization is not yet finalized. I would hope that they get the basics completed before they do too much work on character customization. (i.e. Necromancer/bard - racial differences - city building - multi level content - quest chains are still incomplete). HINT HINT! The grass and water look cool enough, the lore is amazing, but if we have no characters to play none of it matters! With that said, I imagine that it will take them quite a bit of time to complete customization considering that they just recently finalized what they think they want the skar to look like... on paper.
Darch said:I agree 100% Naunet, but I can also say with high confidence that the character customization is not yet finalized. I would hope that they get the basics completed before they do too much work on character customization. (i.e. Necromancer/bard - racial differences - city building - multi level content - quest chains are still incomplete). HINT HINT! The grass and water look cool enough, the lore is amazing, but if we have no characters to play none of it matters! With that said, I imagine that it will take them quite a bit of time to complete customization considering that they just recently finalized what they think they want the skar to look like... on paper.
Oh for sure. There's still plenty of time for them to improve it. :) Doesn't hurt to give them a bit of a reminder every now and then, though! Don't want them to get complacent about how things are~ ;D
I am sure it will be improved - I am also sure they will not have scores and scores of things to customize. The constraint, of course, is not with the resources or difficulties of creating a fantastically complex character creation page it is with rendering the details in a visible manner for thousands and thousands of characters at the same time.
Given a choice I would rather have a smaller number of things that can be customized but with a larger number of choices in how to do it. Thus, better four facial options each of which has 20 settings than 20 facial options each of which has four settings. The aggregate level of customization may be the same, but it gives me a better chance to find something that is just what I want every time I customize a feature.
Options I consider almost mandatory subject to racial constraint. Height. Overall body configuration. Hair styles. Overall face appearance. Skin color. Markings. I am sure I have missed some. Maybe age.
While options to customize eyes, eyebrows, cheeks, lips, facial markings, jaws etc clearly add value I would rather have an overall "face" option with 30 choices than 10 options for parts of the face each with 3 choices.
But the more VR can throw in the better I don't disagree at all. I have been known to spend literally hours in a row creating a few characters.
By the way- please, please, please give us some save features so that after we do that work we can call it up for a later character. Even if the save goes away after we leave character creation if a permanent save is too much to ask. Thus if I really get a nice ogre configured but decide I don't want that class after all I can create a new ogre in a different class without losing the beauty (personally I think all ogres are ugly but you get the point).
dorotea said:By the way- please, please, please give us some save features so that after we do that work we can call it up for a later character. Even if the save goes away after we leave character creation if a permanent save is too much to ask. Thus if I really get a nice ogre configured but decide I don't want that class after all I can create a new ogre in a different class without losing the beauty (personally I think all ogres are ugly but you get the point).
This should be very easy for VR to implement. Many MMOs have it. The game just needs to have a button that exports a data file with all of the options/slider settings in it.
dorotea said: ... By the way- please, please, please give us some save features so that after we do that work we can call it up for a later character. Even if the save goes away after we leave character creation if a permanent save is too much to ask. Thus if I really get a nice ogre configured but decide I don't want that class after all I can create a new ogre in a different class without losing the beauty (personally I think all ogres are ugly but you get the point).
In modern MMOs, this is just a string of numbers. You can write it down, or take a screenshot, or have it written to a file.
Examples:
https://postimg.cc/bs4CZ4Dw
https://postimg.cc/3yTtBpZM
First image: 1,4,1,7,1,8,25,25,2,4
Second image: 3,5,7,2,7,4,19,35,5,1
With three other numbers for race, class, gender.
That's it, very straightforward.
vjek - doesn't work that way in all MMOs. But where it does I agree.
In many, yes, you can note that you had skin color 3, nose 11, hair 8 etc. Not at all a problem to replicate it exactly. Rift worked that way as I recall and I just made notes and could have an identical twin of any character if I wanted.
If Pantheon does that no need to save anything.