When Are Customization Options Too Much?

[rob_simple]

Skyrim let's you customize every dimension of your nose, jaw, lips and eyes.

The funny part? The game either plays in a First Person perspective, or locked behind you for most of the game, or with a helmet on. So you will never see your features for a good 95% of the whole game.

Spoiler: Which is a shame since I went out of my way to make my character look like a battle hardened warrior

Way to go Bethesda. At least Mass Effect and Dragon Age had cutscenes that let you get a good look at your face.

I'd say the added punchline here is that unless you whip the sliders all the way to the right or left on most dimensions, there's barely a discernible difference. There were several times when customising my character in Skyrim that I had to put the slider right up just to figure out what was supposed to be changing.

So, in answer to your question OP, I think that the only time there is too much customisation is when it's only there for its own sake and adds nothing to the game; either aesthetically or in terms of gameplay.

 

[Aeshi]

When the level of customization makes proper balancing of the options impossible, which results in the vast majority of said options being left to rot while people use the whatever 3 or so options are currently the most OP.

"Millions of choices" means nothing when one of those choice is unquestionably superior to all the others. It's like "Better Graphics" in that it looks pretty but at best doesn't actually add anything, and at worst just makes the game more tedious. The only difference is that people are still stupid enough to believe that the former automatically makes a game good.

 

[Zhukov]

I thought Saint's Row 2 was a bit ridiculous in that regard.

I mean, a slider to adjust the left corner of my character's mouth? Come on.

And then after spending nearly two hours trying to wrangle a semi-human face out of the engine, I only played the game for half an hour before realizing it was shit and giving up.

Also, Brink but for different reason. All that character appearance customization and it's a bloody first person game. You never see your character and nobody else is going to look at you any longer than it takes to figure out whether or not to open fire.

 

[Space Spoons]

When you start getting adjustment sliders for stuff like "cheek depth" and "eyebrow height", I think it's getting a little excessive. Not that I think more options are necessarily a bad thing, mind you, I just find it a little overwhelming. Generally, when I'm faced with thousands of ways to tweak my character's appearance, I'll go with something pre-generated, maybe change the hairstyle and be done with it.

 

[Legion]

I'd say when you get a ridiculous amount of options when character creating, but when it comes down to it they do absolutely fuck all to the characters appearance. So many sliders in Fallout 3 and New Vegas and yet going from one end to the other will sometimes do absolutely nothing obvious at all.

 

[Frankster]

There is such a thing as too much customization? o0

As you can guess by my answer, im on the pro customization side, there is never enough as far as im concerned.

Better too much then too little (to give an example: most mmos, heck i remember TOR really taking the mickey here, especially with only available body sizes being anorexic model size, skinny twig size, 40k space marine size and finally bobba fatt size, was bloody ridiculous.)

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Although I am a fan of customisation, I feel like we need restrictions to work around to show real creativity. Which is why I tend to like class-based combat, like BFBC2's multiplayer and Resistance 2's co-op. But that's more of a gameplay preference (because I'm a medic at heart).

However, I can say something about visual character creation options. Some people say they are really extensive, and I agree to an extent. But there has been no system so far that has been really stellar for me. Some games have options that only change things minutely, others have options where only the maximum looks remotely like where the ears are meant to be on the head, some have options that make features look stupid rather than deforming them appropriately, etc you get the drift. But I have been playing Dragon's Dogma recently, and most of what it has is picking from a lot of presets. And I have been met with this problem multiple times each character and pawn; I'll end up with a face that's altogether what I wanted, but I just wish I could have a slightly wider jaw, or smaller forehead, or something like that. Also, a good 2 thirds of the preset things are just stupid, like pillow-lips, ears that are pointed at the bottom, short wide torsos and one closed eye. So in the end...I think customisation is good, but we need a system that just implements all the best things available without screwing up anywhere, and presets just simply don't do it for me.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE

Armored Core. My favourite games, main thing is the ability to build a customisable mech out of a VAST arrangement of parts. The most recent game, Armored Core V, has suffered greatly as a result of a simplified customisation system. In an effort to bulk out part numbers, a large amount of parts are entirely useless once you get their better counterparts. A lot of stats were removed, leading to the horrible decision of merging stability and fire rate, and producing a horrible metagame of only the highest stability builds even having a chance. Also classifying some weapons as 'cannons' meaning that everything other than a tank has to stop to use it. I realise this was done in earlier games, but ACV allows you to be destroyed very quickly and the cannons just aren't worth it ever. This is in contrast to ACfA, where a lot of parts were widely useful (the few that weren't was stability issues, not deliberate shittiness), all frame parts were useful somehow, fire rate was weapon-specific, and instead of having just arm weapons, back weapons were also avail...Jesus Christ I'm rambling, what I'm trying to say is when you have to build a giant robot make all the parts viable or don't bother.