Character creation mechanic is dying.

[FakeSympathy]

So i have recently started to play Tom Clancy's The Division, and I was baffled by lack of options when making my own guy. Usually when they give me option to do so, I make my character Asians to reflect my own skin types. But oh my god, all the Asian male models looked terrible. They are all slanted eye and no options to change eye types (I have bigger eyes than most Asians). So then I moved on to white male models, and while they looked bit better, the lack of making my own guy still was disappointing.

TO be fair on Ubisoft, this is the first game to allow character creation (at least for me), but damn, the least they could do is learn from Bethesda on what they did with Fallout and Elder Scroll games' character creation. You had the freedom to create a badass looking hero, or hilariously ugly looking field. Seriously, if you are going to have generic pre-made models with little options to change them, what the hell is the point of giving us the choice in first place?

Division is not the only game guilty of this crime. Dragon Age Inquisition (DAII did a better job, IMO), Destiny, Star Wars Battlefront EA, and other games had really bad character creation.

This is a trend that needs to stop

 

[Zhukov]

I actually prefer character creators where you choose from premade facial features rather than fiddle with sliders. (So for example picking from a list of noses rather than having nose length, nose height and nose width sliders.)

Sliders tend to result in faces that look fine during creation but then fall apart when animated or when seen from a particular angle.

Although of course providing more and varied features to choose from is never a bad thing.

 

[Zhukov]

I actually prefer character creators where you choose from premade features rather than fiddle with sliders.

Sliders tend to result in faces that look fine during creation but then fall apart when animated or when seen from a particular angle.

Although of course providing more and varied features to choose from is never a bad thing.

This is the reason I hate almost all character creatiors, the only game it was genuinely good (and had a lot of options) is Xenoblade X.

I can usually wrangle something pretty good out of any character creator, but it always takes me several hours and multiple false stars with the slider variety.

 

[tippy2k2]

I'm sure there is a segment of the population that wants a robust creator where they can create any person to their hearts content.

I am not one of those people and I'm pretty sure I'm in the majority (I would have to imagine that a game company or three has done some kind of study or something to see if it's worth their time; I wonder if that's something I could find if I looked hard enough...).

It certainly sucks for people who DO like that kind of thing and I don't know how much work it is to put something like that in but I am perfectly fine with a handful of generic looking characters and whatnot. When available, I don't ever touch the sliders; I just create someone with short blond hair that looks vaguely like me and I'm happy.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I'm sure there is a segment of the population that wants a robust creator where they can create any person to their hearts content.

I am not one of those people and I'm pretty sure I'm in the majority (I would have to imagine that a game company or three has done some kind of study or something to see if it's worth their time; I wonder if that's something I could find if I looked hard enough...).

It certainly sucks for people who DO like that kind of thing and I don't know how much work it is to put something like that in but I am perfectly fine with a handful of generic looking characters and whatnot. When available, I don't ever touch the sliders; I just create someone with short blond hair that looks vaguely like me and I'm happy.

Yeah, I usually just find an acceptable base and then tweak the little shit like hairstyle/colour, eye colour and crap like that. BioWare, much as I love both DragonAge and Mass Effect, are the fucking worst for this: any serious deviation to the base template animates like something out a horror movie or nightmare. Ironically I find MMO character creation to be less of a pisser: The Old Republic has a good one.

 

[Axelotus07]

I'm also not very keen on an extensive character creation. I do, however, like to at least have some extra little options in order to make my character (at least slightly) unique from the rest of the pack.

This is mainly a preference for MMOs. I really can't stand it when your only choices of a character are 'bulky guy with muscles and guns #1' or 'bulky guy with muscles and slightly different guns #2'.

Firefall...I'm calling you out.

 

[Saelune]

Character creation is one of my if not my top favorite game feature. I was disappointed with The Divisions creation, though with all the character based TF2 and MOBA clones coming out, anything that lets me be my own character is nice.

I prefer when they allow simple creation but let people get super specific if they want. I just hate sliders that aren't clear whats changing. Maybe make that more obvious.

I think hair styles is where it lacks the most, since hair can really make or break a face. I wish games would steal Tekken (of all things) hair creator thing that lets you customize the hair based on front side and back.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

This thread gets made after Fallout 4 released with the best character generator in a Bethesda game to date some 5 months ago and only a few weeks after Black Desert Online became available in the West, a game lauded for its' potent character generator. I am going to go with: Hyperbolic thread title is hyperbolic.

No, character creation mechanics are not dying. Some games have less options then others, this is how it has always been and always will be.

 

[Musou Tensei]

Good, I usually go with the default design anyway nowadays, unless I can change the boob size. I much prefer actually designed characters.

 

[Sharia]

While I do prefer presets myself, I have to defend the OP a little. Some of the more recent games I have played, Devision being a glaring one, the options are absolutely terrible.

I prefer Japanese games by a mile when it comes to this kind of thing; the majority of their presets are attractive and presentable (at least with the females and anime styles much more so) where in western games (Division, I am looking at you again), 95% of them look like they have bit hit with the ugly stick more than once.

I actually just restarted Mass Effect, and I can assure you that there was literally only one female Shepherd pre-set face that I could come close to accepting, and even then I had to do some moderate modification.

 

[Something Amyss]

I actually prefer character creators where you choose from premade features rather than fiddle with sliders.

Sliders tend to result in faces that look fine during creation but then fall apart when animated or when seen from a particular angle.

Although of course providing more and varied features to choose from is never a bad thing.

I like it when you can do both. Though any such game needs to have a "real world" test before you finalise your character.

Also, most of the Division models look ugly, period, so we're not really getting much benefit from presets.

Also also, they cut out a lot of model options, apparently, so everything is super limited.

I'm sure there is a segment of the population that wants a robust creator where they can create any person to their hearts content.

I am not one of those people and I'm pretty sure I'm in the majority (I would have to imagine that a game company or three has done some kind of study or something to see if it's worth their time; I wonder if that's something I could find if I looked hard enough...).

I'm also sure you're in the majority, though maybe not to this extreme. The Division is getting hammered over its lack of options. Among other things, mind. Like lack of content, cut features, and borderline Molyneux-level lies.

I think hair styles is where it lacks the most, since hair can really make or break a face. I wish games would steal Tekken (of all things) hair creator thing that lets you customize the hair based on front side and back.

I just wanted a ponytail, dammit! >.<

This thread gets made after Fallout 4 released with the best character generator in a Bethesda game to date some 5 months ago and only a few weeks after Black Desert Online became available in the West, a game lauded for its' potent character generator. I am going to go with: Hyperbolic thread title is hyperbolic.

No, character creation mechanics are not dying. Some games have less options then others, this is how it has always been and always will be.

At the same time, you're pointing to a singular example. That's like pointing to Fallout or TES and saying that they prove there isn't a decline in single-player only games. It's nice that F4 has robust creation options, but is it the norm? Fallout games used to not be particularly impressive, while F4 now stands out.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

You really looked at only one game and decided that chargen was dying? What about all the recent games that came out which had massive amounts of customization. Even down to turn based games like XCOM2?

Sadly some games undervalue customization because they don't see the long-term benefits. But that's pretty retarded, given that bonding with your characters or giving a personal touch means you keep coming back.

Generally I simply don't agree: character creation isn't getting dumbed down, quite the contrary, and rightfully so.

This thread gets made after Fallout 4 released with the best character generator in a Bethesda game to date.

I have to laugh at that one to be honest. Fiddling around with the Fallout 4 chargen was horrible because you had so little control over stuff and couldn't even move the camera around properly. Skyrim with even a few chargen mods installed was 100X better.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Plenty of older games had little to no customization beyond the class. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines bases your look entirely off of gender and clan. If I remember correctly, Baldur's Gate and Fallout were basically the same (with Fallout being even more limiting to an extent). Bethesda also had very noticeable improvements with each new Elder Scrolls game, and while I didn't fiddle around my with Fallout 4's character creator (I was in a rush), it looked to be a significant improvement over Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

So really, I would say that it depends on what you're looking at.

 

[Recusant]

You know when you sit down to a game of D&D (or whatever your RPG of choice is) and you come up with a combination of class, race, quirks, foibles, and history? When you roll dice and assign the results to attributes? When you decide what you want to play and who that person is? That is character creation. Fiddling with sliders to change the exact shape of your avatar's eyes is not. A detailed, complex system to adjust the appearance of a face and body you're only to see five percent of the time is hardly a good way for a dev team to be spending its time- if this system is dying out (which I seriously doubt), then so much the better.

 

[Drake the Dragonheart]

my beef with character creation is there are sliders to adjust 15 different slabs of flab, but I can't choose for my character to be left-handed?

 

[Lufia Erim]

Can i make my character a girl? Can i make her fat? If a game allows me to do both those things
, i am happy.

The reason being, i like fat girls and i try to make my characters look like my gf. So far, Dragons dogma was the best.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

Wut? DAI's CC is one of the most sophisticated ones in an RPG (with the exception of the hair, which was godawful). DAI didn't do much right, but CC was not one of its major failings.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Division is not the only game guilty of this crime. Dragon Age Inquisition (DAII did a better job, IMO), Destiny, Star Wars Battlefront EA, and other games had really bad character creation.

Would it even matter for Battlefront or Destiny? You wear a helmet all the time and can't even see your character's face.