Character Creation

[pantsoffdanceoff]

The 15-day trial for City of Heroes was spent completely in the character creation menu. It is just important to me that games have this, but it's a selling point. It adds to the immersion when it feels like you added or a facsimile of you to the game.

 

[Kiutu]

Soul Calibur 4 character creation added a couple things, but at the cost of true customization. Ever play number 3? Remember how you could have armor, a shirt, and undergarments?
Now the armor and shirt are grouped! It's retarded. They cut the actual clothing in half just to add simple meaningless body shape.

I did play SC 3 and it is easily the best Soul Calibur game because of the character customization. I spent weeks trying to develop characters and possibly churned one badass war veteran and my brother made an assassin that would be feared by other assassins.

The Elder Scrolls games, which are the king of character creation. Part of why I love them so much. You can do alot, and though some may be harder, know what you're doing and you can succeed. I know some who use this to make the game more fun to add a challange. Ofcourse you can always fix things later. Need to be better at a skill or risk doom? Train it and practice.
Also though, for backstory in SC4, just because they dont have it stored in game, you have your own head, or if you so desire, write it yourself. SInce character creation was added in 3 I had story for my characters as did my brother. Was alot of fun.

I understand what you are saying, but let us say that I wanted to wield light weapons, like a short sword. I also want to be able to run around my enemies, slashing all the way. While this is going on I want to play with my future victims, keeping them alive long enough before I get bored and then leave, my victims fall into nice little cubes of meat. If I get too strong, I might not be able to play my victims, killing them in one shot. This makes me unhappy because I cannot toy with my victims. If I am too weak, the battle will drag out, increasing the danger my character is in if my intended targets catch on to my strategy. As for writing a story, Mortal Kombat Armageddon included a feature that allowed custom characters to have a story behind them. Custom characters in games that feature online battles should have I feature that allows people to take pictures of the characters and post them online. You might inspire someone to make your character or find ways to modify our design to fit their own image.

Difficulty slider and you would have to cheat or only fight really weak guys to kill a guy in one hit with ANY unenchanted shortsword. Also you dont play TES online anyways. Your desire is rather specific really, so your best bet would just be to make it yourself, cause I doubt that eniugh people want that so bad that a game will be made.

 

[Kiutu]

I think Elder Scrolls did it well..... Mass effect had an interesting one too... but i could not get myself to use it cause we all no who the true commander Shepard. Default baby

That sounds boring.

Hey hey don't doubt Shepard man

Default Shep is boring. I forgot what its called, but I was biotics/tech and that was definatly more fun than just guns.

 

[GodsOneMistake]

I think Elder Scrolls did it well..... Mass effect had an interesting one too... but i could not get myself to use it cause we all no who the true commander Shepard. Default baby

That sounds boring.

Hey hey don't doubt Shepard man

Default Shep is boring. I forgot what its called, but I was biotics/tech and that was definatly more fun than just guns.

I meant physical looks i wasn't talking about the biotics/tech/soldier skills ya those are fun to change

 

[Kiutu]

I think Elder Scrolls did it well..... Mass effect had an interesting one too... but i could not get myself to use it cause we all no who the true commander Shepard. Default baby

That sounds boring.

Hey hey don't doubt Shepard man

Default Shep is boring. I forgot what its called, but I was biotics/tech and that was definatly more fun than just guns.

I meant physical looks i wasn't talking about the biotics/tech/soldier skills ya those are fun to change

I like my character to be MY character. I made mine look like my Kotor character actually.

 

[Guitar Gamer]

I used to try to make myself in games but making a teenaged whiteboy from Canada eventually loses it's appeal, a transexuall vampire-cowboy from Finland? that takes awhile to get boring. And never quite gets any less wierd and unusual

 

[DROPDEADNAKED]

Xbox 360 Avatars...

But Sports games have pretty lacking support of the feature.
Oblivion, Saints Row, and Rainbow Six was sweet.

 

[DreamKing]

Difficulty slider and you would have to cheat or only fight really weak guys to kill a guy in one hit with ANY unenchanted shortsword. Also you dont play TES online anyways. Your desire is rather specific really, so your best bet would just be to make it yourself, cause I doubt that eniugh people want that so bad that a game will be made.

I was just using it as an example. What does playing TES online have to do with character creation and playing as my own character and have them develop according to my whim instead of preset standards? As for what some people look in a RPG is the RP. Sure, there are better opinions out like D&D but that get expensive with all the minis, maps, and rule books so people turn to video games for their RP fix. Games like Fable have shown that is possible to create a game where choices are the forefront and main selling point of games, but the choice is limited and character creation is very basic.

 

[Flap Jack452]

Soul Calibur 4 had a pretty deep customization, but as Necroswanson tells me, it used to be better.

 

[Cheesebob]

The 15-day trial for City of Heroes was spent completely in the character creation menu. It is just important to me that games have this, but it's a selling point. It adds to the immersion when it feels like you added or a facsimile of you to the game.

City of Heroes/Villians has some of the best Character Creation ever


Only Saints Row is close to being that good

 

[Vrex360]

Best games for character customisation:
Saint's row 2
Soul Calibur 4 (I made the king of the lizard men)
Halo 3 (not as much as the big boys but as online FPS's go it put a lot of effort in, I made the cool lizard alien that is my avatar)
Mass Effect (it is very deep but I just use the default male face anyway, a while back he looked a lot like me. Then I started gaining weight)
Oblivion
Fable

Worst games for character customisation:
Two Worlds
Fable 2 (after Fable 1 had so many various choices, this was painful. It's true what Yahtzee says, it takes a lot of effort to customise your character but the end result is so empty why even bother?)

 

[Aura Guardian]

Soul Calibur 4 character creation added a couple things, but at the cost of true customization. Ever play number 3? Remember how you could have armor, a shirt, and undergarments?
Now the armor and shirt are grouped! It's retarded. They cut the actual clothing in half just to add simple meaningless body shape.

Soul Calibur 4 had a pretty deep customization, but as Necroswanson tells me, it used to be better.

The body shape feature was a decent add-on. But I'm more annoyed with the destructible clothes feature. The regular characters gets their clothes ripped while the created character's clothes when destroyed are stripped to the underwear.

 

[DreamKing]

Soul Calibur 4 had a pretty deep customization, but as Necroswanson tells me, it used to be better.

It used to be a lot better. There were numerous armor types; pieces did not have to be equipped to see what they looked like; items like facial hair were not restricted to certain faces but were included in the face section of equipment; there was generic weapon sets that were class specific but the game included a class that was able to wield them all (SwordMaster, in case your wondering), the rest of the classes had three generic weapons but could have used weapons from two characters that had a similar fighting style; had an Alignment system that determined character lines and victory poses; had a easily accessed shop to purchase more equipment, and had four generic voices ranging from young girl/boy to old man/woman.

EDIT: It also included an extra mode, Chronicles of the Swords, which was an RTS where all of your controllable characters are custom and could be edited with the pieces of equipment you already had. Some pieces of equipment could only be used in the Character Creation mode by finishing a chapter that included a character with a unique item.

 

[DreamKing]

Now for the next part of my question: Are there games that go overboard with character creation and customization and are there genres and games that should avoid character creation and customization all together for various reasons?

 

[hagaya]

Soul Calibur 4 character creation added a couple things, but at the cost of true customization. Ever play number 3? Remember how you could have armor, a shirt, and undergarments?
Now the armor and shirt are grouped! It's retarded. They cut the actual clothing in half just to add simple meaningless body shape.

Not to mention 12 character classes that weren't already characters. There was also better customization options. SC4 did a few things better (color wheel, voice in a few ways), but I'd prefer SC3's character custiomization. Lets hope Soul Calibur 5 has the same great customization (and EDGE MASTER!!).

 

[Doomwaffle]

In Baldur's Gate, you could make your own voice sets- You go through a list and name each file the correct one and then put the file in the voice thing. You could not imagine the glee on my face when I heard myself talking when I began playing- it was awesome! But sadly, Baldur's Gate is rare and old but still a good game- you can get a crack offline easily.

 

[Gamer137]

I am satisfied with character creation the way it is for the most part. What I do want, however, is adding glasses to the setting in RPGs. I am pretty sure it is for equipment reasons, but I can never make a character that looks like me without hunting for a pair of cheap glasses.

 

[Da_Schwartz]

Overall my fav character creation system is City of Heros. Visually like face hair costume etc. it's unmatchable. Nuff said. And although there is no real stat point system. Enhancment selection, type of enhancment, Power selection and cross classing just adds to it.

 

[DreamKing]

Now for the next part of my question: Are there games that go overboard with character creation and customization and are there genres and games that should avoid character creation and customization all together for various reasons?

*takes deep breath*

Ok, I got it. Soul Calibur 3, Oblivion, City of Heroes/Villians, Mass Effect, whatever, have a deep character and customization systems. Please no more posts about that. I understand you might want to show me the game that you believe that has the best system but I have another question above. I want to hear what the Escapist has to say about games that get bogged down in too much character creation and customization. Is possible that some games and genres should avoid custom and created characters for some reason? Please, this is the last time I will post this.