Petition To Expand Character Creator

[Iscah]

Another idea is allowing for interracial characters. F'lhaminn is clearly a mix between the Seekers of the Sun and Keepers of the Moon as seen by her name and eyes.

These aren't *really* interracial characters, at a character-creator level. F'lhaminn is 100% a Moonkeeper NPC model with a name that suggests the person F'lhaminn must be part-Sunseeker. There's nothing stopping a player from doing the exact same thing right now.

Hilda is a Midlander NPC (you can see it from her body size and emotes) who has been customised to have a unique face with pointed ears as part of it.

Essentially she's the inverse of some of the Garlean characters (eg. Nero, Lucia, Maxima) who are technically Elezen NPCs with modified faces and rounded ears.

[MsQi]

These aren't *really* interracial characters, at a character-creator level. F'lhaminn is 100% a Moonkeeper NPC model with a name that suggests the person F'lhaminn must be part-Sunseeker. There's nothing stopping a player from doing the exact same thing right now.

Hilda is a Midlander NPC (you can see it from her body size and emotes) who has been customised to have a unique face with pointed ears as part of it.

Essentially she's the inverse of some of the Garlean characters (eg. Nero, Lucia, Maxima) who are technically Elezen NPCs with modified faces and rounded ears.

You basically supported her point. F'lhaminn proves that from a lore standpoint there is mixing. Add to that the little girl I mentioned that is obviously a mixture. You can't currently put Elezen ears on a midlander nor vice versa. Thank you for your support.

[Iscah]

You basically supported her point. F'lhaminn proves that from a lore standpoint there is mixing. Add to that the little girl I mentioned that is obviously a mixture. You can't currently put Elezen ears on a midlander nor vice versa. Thank you for your support.

From a lore standpoint? Yes. But that doesn't add anything to the character creator other than stopping you from using the "generate random name" button. So I'm not sure how she is relevant to "ways they could expand the options". I see it as proof that they don't think they need to in this case.

Also I'm not 100% sure but I think there may be only one character model for child-Miqo'te, and it has the fangs? I haven't confirmed it myself, but it got brought up in the Lore forum when we were discussing the Moonfire Faire, and someone else said that they all have the fangs regardless of their clan. (We've seen a few other Sunseeker kids around, like T'kebbe in Idyllshire.)

Also yes, if they were able to add any kind of new options they could choose to implement "put elf ears on your Hyur". But for now, as far as I can tell, Hilda isn't anything special in terms of the NPC build - it is a standard Midlander model (as produced by the character creator) with a unique customised face (a developer-only extra feature, used for many major NPCs). I'm guessing that the ears are not an "option" for them, ie. something they turn on or off when building the character, it's just built into the custom face and overrides the default ears.

[MsQi]

From a lore standpoint? Yes. But that doesn't add anything to the character creator other than stopping you from using the "generate random name" button. So I'm not sure how she is relevant to "ways they could expand the options". I see it as proof that they don't think they need to in this case.

Also I'm not 100% sure but I think there may be only one character model for child-Miqo'te, and it has the fangs? I haven't confirmed it myself, but it got brought up in the Lore forum when we were discussing the Moonfire Faire, and someone else said that they all have the fangs regardless of their clan. (We've seen a few other Sunseeker kids around, like T'kebbe in Idyllshire.)

Also yes, if they were able to add any kind of new options they could choose to implement "put elf ears on your Hyur". But for now, as far as I can tell, Hilda isn't anything special in terms of the NPC build - it is a standard Midlander model (as produced by the character creator) with a unique customised face (a developer-only extra feature, used for many major NPCs). I'm guessing that the ears are not an "option" for them, ie. something they turn on or off when building the character, it's just built into the custom face and overrides the default ears.

You're not connecting the dots. these are not isolated things. The lore should support design choices and the design choices should support the lore.

You say Hilda isn't special then go on to say why she is.

[Iscah]

You're not connecting the dots. these are not isolated things. The lore should support design choices and the design choices should support the lore.

You say Hilda isn't special then go on to say why she is.

We're approaching it from different views. I'm saying Hilda is "not special" because she is one of many NPCs who have been customised in a way that is beyond the reach of players because (as far as I can tell) it uses a different method. Instead of being a "built face" in the creator, it's a unique face for just that character. The method is not special just for her. Her face includes modified ears but that doesn't mean they can simply give players access to the same option in the "face builder".

And it may well be a lore "design choice" that they don't want Hyur-Elezen mixed-race characters to be common. They haven't shown any other similar NPCs in all this time.


Also I'm not sure what you mean by these being "not isolated things". They are the rare occasions we can point out that a character seems to be mixed-race, and it is generally achieved in ways that are not linked to creating additional features in the character creator, although sometimes using methods 'beyond it' and inaccessible to players.

[MsQi]

We're approaching it from different views. I'm saying Hilda is "not special" because she is one of many NPCs who have been customised in a way that is beyond the reach of players because (as far as I can tell) it uses a different method. Instead of being a "built face" in the creator, it's a unique face for just that character. The method is not special just for her. Her face includes modified ears but that doesn't mean they can simply give players access to the same option in the "face builder".

Nothing is simply given. Everything requires work. That's life kid.

[Iscah]

Nothing is simply given. Everything requires work. That's life kid.

Work indeed - and they seem to be doing a lot of work within pre-existing bounds*. As I wrote earlier, I suspect in the case of the character creator, those bounds are how the game is set up to read the string of instructions describing a character's appearance, and changing it might mean altering huge amounts of code. All the existing NPC data needs to be able to refer back to it and find the instructions where they need to be. Everything that displays your character needs to read all the instructions.

As I wrote, I think there are ways they could insert extra options into the existing framework, but I don't believe they 'can' (or at least realistically would) undertake the massive overhaul required to change what data is stored about the character and how it is read.



* for another example of working within bounds: the glamour dresser. If it was as simple as implementing a straightforward glamour log and independent-of-gear "glamour slots", surely they would do that instead? But I don't think they can do that within the bounds of the character data, so had to find a way of applying glamours that would still produce a final result where the system expects to find the appearance instruction: attached to the gear itself, like it always did with prisms.