It's time to update/revamp character customization

Firstly I want to apologise if my wording isn't great or if I use the wrong terms. Feel free to correct me. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Hopefully this won't be immediately buried :)

With the new graphics update now out, something that I've felt strongly about for years. I hope I am not alone.
I will try to cover related topics on character customization & perhaps how to improve what's already there.

The reason I felt like bringing this all up, is with the graphics "update" it makes the existing options/ choices feel even more outdated. And the update makes it more evident that it could use some dusting off.
Also: It's 100% okay if you like it as is, in that case this isn't aimed at those who are content with what we have, but please feel free to drop your thoughts! ♥

-Selecting more than one face paints simultaneously
A given number? Perhaps four is reasonable I should think. Let me know your thoughts or how that could be different or improved.
It would look/work like this for example: Blush + freckles + & two autonomous eye shadow choices that count separate. (the color swatch can be separate or together.)

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Eyebrow hair - give us multichoice.
A separate category that exists within the 'eyebrow' choice that reveals actual eyebrow hair from thin & sparse, patchy, to medium and drawn on perfection, to strong or hairy & grandpa like.

Why is it that we can choose brow shape/angle but not add in additional hairs than the one choice given under facial features only applicable for some faces/races.

-Swapping the side at which the hair parts.
It would be a positive & interesting change.
The reason for me: many pretty earrings are featured on the left ear but the bane of even noticing them is how many 'down' hairstyles cover the left ear! So this is a personal one for me: I like many of the earring designs and I enjoy seeing them on my character. It sucks that I am delegated to a 'few' hairstyles because of this.


-More racially unique hairstyles.
-With the addition of female Hrothgar having a severe lack of racially unique hairstyles & why haven't there been any additional racial unique hairstyles added to existing races over the years? or even a touch up of some sort. Two or three juicy/aesthetically pleasing hairs added I think would help the older races feel slightly revamped atp. I know it's less than a shot in the dark, but it's definitely something that I wish would be addressed.

Slightly improved skin tone.
-natural flush on the cheeks, ears, nose & chin.
-Natural highlight & just generally more 'fleshy'.
-Darker skin tones need more 'life' + pale palms and feet.

Bump! Additional customization would make the graphical changes much more worthwhile. The game only benefits from more diverse facial features and more customization options as a whole.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by juicybug

Slightly improved skin tone.
-natural flush on the cheeks, ears, nose & chin.
-Natural highlight & just generally more 'fleshy'.
-Darker skin tones need more 'life' + pale palms and feet.

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This here.

Yesterday I used my free fantasia from Ul'Dah to fix my character, and I was stuck on the skin color for an entire hour. Because color choices are blocks of fixed colors, there's no balance between some of them. My character looks like he's been hit with a bucket of mud.

Had they used something like this (as many modern MMORPGs do) then it wouldn't be an issue at all.

https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...ality=lossless

Game is stuck with its 2002 engine from FFXI and it shows.

I agree.

I’ll add a few suggestions that have been on my mind recently:
- A slider for the opacity of face paint and lip color, instead of a choice between none/light/dark. For lips, a matte/glossy slider would also be great. The newly-introduced permanent glossiness of lips doesn’t fit the look some people want for their characters, so they should be able to lessen or remove it. And being able to use lip colors without gloss would be a nice new addition that we didn’t have even before the update.
- A slider for iris size that allows for sizes in between the current “large” and “small”.
- The ability to choose eyebrow colors separately from hair colors. Some of the updated faces have eyebrows that are unnaturally dark for the selected hair color, and I’d personally like the option to make characters’ eyebrows match their actual hair color again by selecting a lighter color. I’m sure there are those who want to select even darker colors, which they should have the option to do as well. (If they want to prevent something like brown hair with purple eyebrows, it could even just be a three-option selection: eyebrows that match the hair color exactly, darkened eyebrows, and very darkened eyebrows.)
- More scar options.
- The ability to change the size of individual facial features, even slightly.

Don't settle for petty details. Complete overhaul if they actually want to keep the game going forward for at least 10 more years. Period.

Actually, their first priority should be to finally get off their butts and finish Viera and Hrothgar.

It would be nice if we got a lot of new options for the existing races instead of a new race in 8.0.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrForester

Actually, their first priority should be to finally get off their butts and finish Viera and Hrothgar.

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You’re right. Hopefully, improved character creation would benefit all races, especially viera and hrothgar, who currently have more restricted options than the other races. A character creation update that doesn’t bring viera and hrothgar up to the same standard as other races would be a bad joke…but, unfortunately, if we look at how viera and hrothgar have been handled so far, it doesn’t seem outside of the realm of possibility. Discussions of an update to character creation need to highlight viera and hrothgar specifically, to make sure they aren’t being left even further behind. (And the hat problem, which isn’t part of character creation, is equally in need of attention.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrForester

Actually, their first priority should be to finally get off their butts and finish Viera and Hrothgar.

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while this made me chuckle, I actually full agree bc it would open the door to more physical positive changes, even for aesthetic reasons!
100%

Yes please, character creation is super outdated the PS4/5 can handle eyeshadow & blush at the same time I'm sure of it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by juicybug

-More racially unique hairstyles.
-With the addition of female Hrothgar having a severe lack of racially unique hairstyles & why haven't there been any additional racial unique hairstyles added to existing races over the years? or even a touch up of some sort. Two or three juicy/aesthetically pleasing hairs added I think would help the older races feel slightly revamped atp. I know it's less than a shot in the dark, but it's definitely something that I wish would be addressed.

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Agree with all your other points, but for this one, I’d rather have all hairstyles made to work for all races and genders. One, there are some hairstyles I would love to have from other races. Two, Viera and Hrothgar would benefit from this by finally having the entire catalog of hair to choose from, which is long overdue. You’d think with them not being able to wear most hats, they’d at least get to use whatever hair they want!

Others things I’d like to see are mostly echoes of what others have said… there should be a better color system, and/or you should be able to use dye colors for character features. The lip color having a slider would also be great, since even on “dark” the lip color is barely visible on some faces. A few different options for where on the lips the lip color is applied would be good too.

I’d also like the ability to separate ears/horns from faces. Make that its own tab. If we could mix and match from other races too, that would give a lot more options… I always wanted a half-Elezen like Hilda, and this could be an easier way of doing it. We could add the tail selection tab to all races as well for the same reason.

This is long overdue.

Yeah, do away with gendered hair. Lots of hairstyles that fit the personality of my character are locked behind gender. Also seems silly to have gender locked hair when the new hairstyles are rarely gender locked (last one I can think of is Ivalice Raid).

Other than that, I want better makeup options, I want to choose the color of eyebrows/eyelashes, better makeup colors (including lips), more and/or better hair colors. The usual.

And while they don't affect me:
Stop locking hairstyles with faces?? Hroth deserve justice.
Facial hair options for male characters, I see this asked for a lot.
My dear friend would also love some dreads to be available for everyone and he has wanted this since he started playing this game in ARR.

This needs to be their next step after fixing some of the updated faces they messed up. Everything changed to sliders, less muddy makeup colors, more options for blush placement, etc. More face options like moles and the option to make them other colors other than black. Would personally love to have multiple moles of different sizes that are brown and not black. Make the lips not wax looking, eyebrow color wheel separate from hair color so they don't look washed out with lighter colors. More tail/ear/horn options. I want a big fluffy tail for my miqo'te please.

In theory, if they’re using shapekeys to set the features on a universal base mesh now, it’s within the realm of possibility that they could do facial sliders. I think it’s likely old code limitations holding them back. However, it really is in everyone’s interest that they find a way around that if the plan is to support this game for another 10 years. The character creator was already outdated 10 years ago.

This paired with some hairstyles that aren't designed by someone stuck in 2000's or early 2010's would be nice as well. So many out dated hairstyles and with a whole design contest, full of 40 designs to choose from that does the design work for them; they added one and then the trailer hair. 2 hairstyles for an expansion launch...

I want body tattoos and different running animations so we can choose the one we prefer.

Updated hairstyles that aren't "cutesy" or "childlike"
or "K-pop" inspired

I want warrior braids that look like it belongs to a fighter & different variations for a more feminine look or masculine (feminine will have long, wavy bangs or side swept bangs while male doesnt) - I want more punk/ male & female inspired hairstyles like female mohawks that don't give us a MASSIVE FOREHEAD.
I want long hairstyles that have texture & aren't childish. No more flat, split down the center sephiroth boring hair- give us bangs. give me Gaia's hair. Don't even bother telling me "bc of clipping we cant have it" I DONT CARE. DONT BOTHER- I WANT LONG HAIR, IF YOU DONT LIKE CLIPPING YOU GO ENJOY YOUR BUZZ CUT UGLY HAIR. AND LET US LONG HAIR LOVERS HAVE SOMETHING GOOD FOR ONCE.

I want Viera to finally get Y'shtola & Thancred modish hair. Guess Yoshi-P and everyone else except a handful forgot?

I want thick eyelash options for every race
thick/ hairy Eyebrow options for EVERY race

The character creator feels very behind, outdated and lackluster

We also need more face paint options and be able to wear 2-3 at once.

New faces

New make-up colors

New hair/ eye colors

New body and cosmetic options- body tattoos, body scars, new face & neck scars, garlean eye, half elf ears for hyur,
Unlock the hairs from the face for Hrothgals. I want to wear more than 2 hairs per face.

I would be happy if they would have us mirrored hairstyles...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HeyMcFly

Don't even bother telling me "bc of clipping we cant have it" I DONT CARE. DONT BOTHER- I WANT LONG HAIR, IF YOU DONT LIKE CLIPPING YOU GO ENJOY YOUR BUZZ CUT UGLY HAIR. AND LET US LONG HAIR LOVERS HAVE SOMETHING GOOD FOR ONCE.

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I agree with most of your post, especially regarding the theme of some of the more recent hairstyles. It would be nice to get hairstyles that look like they belong on an adventurer, instead of an excessively hair-sprayed idol.

But, I have to say, the way long hair behaves currently just isn't up to par. Clipping makes it borderline unusable with a lot of gear, and it moves (or doesn't move) in an unnatural way. They should do something to make long hair look decent before they add a bunch of long hairstyles. Adding something broken and fixing it later is ultimately going to be more work than doing it right the first time (and that's assuming they wouldn't just leave it broken forever).

Every available character customization option will effect the appearance of the game for everyone, because everyone can see everyone else's character. And there are plenty of players who would love to use long hair if it didn't clip horribly with almost everything and move like it's made of rubber---those players should "have something good for once", too. All options should be held to a certain standard of quality. We should get long hairstyles, and they should look good.

Honestly I would be happy if the aura horns weren't tied down to their faces along with their scales as well

I agree with this thread, its long overdue ! It's basically the same creator since ps3. quite outdated ! Definitely needs to be revamped, and more options added !It would be good business too, considering that even now fantasia is a best seller. So I don't get it.

completely agree! I actually have been wondering if there might be a future change to a color wheel to choose skin tone and eye / hair color from. I can't really see why they went ahead and made the RGB values visible on the CC when we can't actually pick from a full spread of colors. One of my biggest issues with the graphics update was that it seems to have totally changed my hyur's skintone, and something comparable to his old one doesn't exist for hyur anymore. this would solve that.
also: if they're going to keep skin shine tuned so high on dark skin, they NEED to make that a slider as well.