One Concern about Expanded Character Customization in 8.0

[RedLolly]

One of my WoL's lore is that her dad is a keeper and mother a highlander, so the hyur with lightly greyed skin was my exact plan the instant this update hits since making it work with currently available tattoos and make-up never quite nailed it.

As for "funny joke characters breaking immersion," they already exist in large numbers and unless they're actually offensive, they're players all the same. We're going to see a lot of them at the start of Evercold, and then it'll die down as the novelty wears off.

[Wildheaven182]

They could expand the color selection for colors that make sense for that race without lazily slapping a full spectrum color slider on everything.
But I guess that would require basic programming and respect for the game, which the developers dont have.

[DeltaDawn37]

See this is actually why I am happy that people will get the option to go outside of the standard palettes, because I know a number of people who do actually care about lore and who want to make mixed-race characters or characters from other non-playable clans (like Doman/Hingan roes like Gosetsu who have human skintones not accessible by sea wolves). I just think that expanded skintones should be opt-in versus a default in order to maintain some degree of identity and cohesion for existing clans, especially for new players - basically that using expanded options should be a case of "I know what I'm doing (or simply don't care at all), show me the full selection." I think guiding new players to create a character who can easily exist in the world encourages roleplay and better connection with the story, whereas a free-for-all character creator with no guidelines encourages... well, to put it bluntly, a Second Life character whose only purpose is to look appealing to their creator even if this puts them at odds with all of the game's lore. And while I have seen enough modders to know that many people do prefer to engage with the game this way, I still think it should be a conscious choice and not the default.

[RedLolly]

Snip

Baldur's Gate 3 actually does this when making characters. You are shown the skin tones and eyes types that are canon compliant for the race/clan you chose, but you can check a box on each menu and gain access to everything made for every race.

[Destati]

One of my biggest issues with the skin tone selection are the discrepancies between genders of certain races. For instance, female Au Ra have access to skintones that males do not. Also the differences in hair color among races is weird too.
It's not as though your race selection really matters anyway (though I wish it did) so I'd rather sacrifice identity and deal with "abominations" if it means having access to the full spectrum of colors.

[CCheshire]

I mean, if true freedom with the new CC is to exist in EC, then you can just block the other green WoLs if they offend your sensibilities that much, just like a certain large group of Roes stand around in his underwear on certain worlds...

Finally, I plan to adjust my Wol's options in the upgraded CC because I'm glad I have more options, even if it means I can't control other players' designs because this is an MMO.

[Lukha]

I would very much like this as an option, not least because as nice as it is to get expanded color options, I am perfectly happy with how my character looks and am a bit concerned that switching from a limited number of options to a color wheel might effect his current looks in some unforeseen way. I also prefer to stay as lore-accurate as possible, so it would be helpful to have a clear delineation between the default options and the expanded ones.

Thinking about it from the point of view of someone who might want to make a mixed-clan or mixed-race character, it might even be better to have the expanded options separated and categorized by which race and clan they originally belong to. That way, if you wanted to make something like a half-Seawolf, half-Duskwight character, you could easily see which colors you should be working with for that.

[DeltaDawn37]

Ooh I hadn't even thought about that, that's a great idea!

[SalamanderIX]

I'm more concerned about what a full range means.? Do they mean literally any color?..

Because it's like, the hair highlights and eyes I guess it's whatever. But what if somebody wants blue skin, like very blue? 80,100,150 would probably do it, it would be way more blue than the bluest skin we have right now. But if they are allowed to pick 0,0,255- there's a lot of people who would pick that. And it's going to look absolutely dreadful. blue isn't even that bad compared to red, purple, yellow, or green. any saturation beyond 50%, and 50% is very high for a skin tone, will look distastefully tacky. It wouldn't look good on hair either, which is why i say hair highlights and not hair.
Like there's quite a lot of people out there who don't even know what saturation is, can't see color properly, have extremely bad taste, or just want to troll our eyes.

[OdrN]

So, even when we get more options, people complain ;-).
Don't hit me, just kidding!

Don't dream, there won't be an option to toggle on/off the colors of the players. The game would have to load a different model or something like that, meaning having to store two models for every character, and what would be the "base" colors? How would the game know what is "normal" and what is "not lore appropriate"? Not happening in this timeline.

As mentioned above, there is already horrible immersion breaking characters in FFXIV. People who wants to embody freaks will not be multiplied by this new option. Most players want their avatars to look cool.
And personally I played Aion, nothing could hurt my eyes more than the players' avatars in that game.