[DEV REQUEST] Balancing Character Customization

[Vejjiegirl]

THREAD UPDATE: 02/05/2017

It was mentioned in the last live letter there are no plans to add anymore customization options to the character creator and they plan to just keep adding more hairstyles.

Developers please reconsider, a lot of races like Au Ra, Elezen, Hyur Highlander, and Roe desperately need more options.

Muscle slider for Miqo'te and au ra should be a possibility as well with the dropping of PS3

To be honest from a design standbout, we've reached a point where FFXIV need to halt designs of further and further hairstyles, and start putting staff and resources into additional head type, eye, nose, mouth models and additional options in the features menu for every race.

-Satsuma0 from FFXIV Reddit

Customization and making your online persona unique from others is always a really nice thing to have in a MMORPG.


The Request:
In every update we get a new hairstyle (for example a player created hairstyle coming in 3.1)
It was mentioned in a Letter from the Producer LIVE that there is a strict limit to the size of each character's memory allocation, yet none of the races customization features are evenly distributed.
I fear with every new hairstyle added in future content updates the chances of this being balanced will become more and more slim (hairstyles take up memory too right?)

I was wondering if instead of a new hairstyle in future content updates past 3.1, could you add a few more Face, Jaw, eyebrows, eyes Shapes etc to the races/genders that are lacking them?

I feel if the races and genders had more equal customization it would greatly help boost the uniqueness of our player characters.

In the past I collected data from the character creator (I checked females only at the time but males suffer in the same way)

Below is the information I collected:

Female Character Creation Options:

Face:
Hyur Midlander =5
Hyur Highlander = 4
Elezen = 4
Lalafell = 4
Miqo'te = 4
Roegadyn = 4
Au Ra = 4

*(Hyur Midlander essentially have more jaw,eyeshapes,eyebrows, nose shapes, and mouth shapes due to have an extra face this is why they are not red below)*


Jaw:
Hyur Midlander = 4
Hyur Highlander = 4
Elezen = 4
Lalafell = 4
Miqo'te = 4
Roegadyn = 3
Au Ra = 3

EyeShape:
Hyur Midlander = 5
Hyur Highlander = 6
Elezen = 6
Lalafell = 6
Miqo'te = 6
Roegadyn = 5
Au Ra = 5

Eyebrows:
Hyur Mildander = 5
Hyur Highlander = 4
Elezen = 5
Lalafell = 5
Miqo'te = 5
Roegadyn = 4
Au Ra = 4

Nose:
Hyur Midlander = 5
Hyur Highlander = 6
Elezen = 6
Lalafell = 6
Miqo'te = 6
Roegadyn = 6
Au Ra = 5

Mouth:
Hyur Midlander = 4
Hyur Highlander = 4
Elezen = 4
Lalafell =4
Miqo'te = 4
Roegadyn = 4
Au Ra = 4

EarShape/TailShape:
Elezen = 4
Lalafell = 4
Miqo'te = 8
Au Ra = 4

*(Miqo'te, Au Ra, Lalalfell, Elezen Only)*

Tattoos/Limbal Ring/Ear Clasps:
Hyur Midlander(Tattoos change with face)= 2
Hyur Highlander(Tattoos change with face) = 2
Elezen = 2
Lalafell = 2
Miqo'te = 2
Au Ra = 2
Roegadyn(Tattoos change with face) = 2

Male Character Creation Options:

Face:
Hyur Midlander = 6
Hyur Highlander = 4
Elezen = 4
Lalafell = 4
Miqo'te = 4
Roegadyn = 4
Au Ra = 4


Jaw:
Hyur Midlander = 4
Hyur Highlander = 4
Elezen = 4
Lalafell = 4
Miqo'te = 4
Roegadyn = 3
Au Ra = 4

EyeShape:
Hyur Midlander = 6
Hyur Highlander = 6
Elezen = 6
Lalafell = 6
Miqo'te = 6
Roegadyn = 5
Au Ra = 6

Eyebrows:
Hyur Mildander = 6
Hyur Highlander = 4
Elezen = 6
Lalafell = 6
Miqo'te = 5
Roegadyn = 4
Au Ra = 6

Nose:
Hyur Midlander = 6
Hyur Highlander = 6
Elezen = 6
Lalafell = 6
Miqo'te = 6
Roegadyn = 6
Au Ra = 6

Mouth:
Hyur Midlander = 4
Hyur Highlander = 4
Elezen = 4
Lalafell = 4
Miqo'te = 4
Roegadyn = 4
Au Ra = 4

EarShape/TailShape:
Elezen = 4
Lalafell = 4
Miqo'te = 8
Au Ra = 4

*(Miqo'te, Au Ra, Lalalfell, Elezen Only)*

Tattoos/Limbal Ring/Ear Clasps:
Hyur Midlander(Tattoos change with face)= 2
Hyur Highlander(Tattoos change with face) = 2
Elezen = 2
Lalafell = 2
Miqo'te = 2
Au Ra = 2
Roegadyn(Tattoos change with face) = 2

[Samcaesar]

See, this sorta thing still doesn't make much sense for me. Not to mention the fact that the girls have an entirely additional slider that's lacking an equivalent the guys (Breast slider). I really wish we'd get an in depth look into why hairstyle additions don't mess things up or why there's just down right less options on some of the races (And an entirely missing equivalent option on the guys for the breast slider).

[Hito-Shura]

The characters of this game look amazing and I love them very very much! But... The amount of copycats (no pun intended) in this game is real. The options are not only limited but some races have even less choices than the others.

Again, I think the character creator is fine like it is currently but I've seen lower budget games who had a much better character creator than FF14 which is really a shame when you think of all the possible things they could add to make this game even better when it comes to its character creator... I only wish there was a bit more for us to play with considering the amount of players active on this game.

[Vejjiegirl]

I plan to update the OP with the male stats tomorrow.

[Fitzy]

Lets see if i can put this into easy terms to understand.

Picture memory as a number of slots. Now assume we have 4 available slots for facial features. These 4 slots can be filled out for example with face, eyes, nose, mouth. We are now using all of our available slots for these 4 customisation options. The reason we cant have the horns and face as a separate option is because this would create a 5th customisation option, but we only have room for 4 options.

As for why adding extra hairstyles doesn't affect this is because even if we have 100 different hairstyles to choose from, ONLY 1 hairstyle (the one you choose) is actually taking up 1 of the 4 available memory slots.

The number of total hairstyles we have to choose from is likely to have its own separate memory allocation but that's another issue on its own. You have to view memory as the separate parts that they belong to to make up the whole.

Its a similar issue to the common misconceptions that people have with inventory space. They wonder why if we can purchase an extra retainer, why cant that extra space just be given on our characters. Its the same issue, 1 character with 100 slots plus 1 retainer uses the same amount of available memory when they summon a retainer as a person with 1 character with 100 slots and 10 retainers. Because only 1 retainer memory is loaded up at any given time. The character inventory memory remains the same at 100 slots

But if we had a person who has a character with 200 slots and 1 retainer, they are suddenly using almost 2 times the memory of the person who only has 100 slots and 1 retainer because that character inventory has to be loaded in memory at all times.

And lets not even get started on the technical side of what memory means cause that just gets even more confusing, does it refer to space on a HDD, or RAM or even the capacity of your bandwidth. Most people on these forums think it refers to HDD space, but in most instances, it refers to the later two areas.

[Vejjiegirl]

I updated the stats for the males now, I noticed most of the male races are pretty even compared to the female races. Midlander Hyur is OP though! 6 Face styles while the other races only get 4!

Male Au Ra Customization > Female Au Ra Customization

Lets see if i can put this into easy terms to understand.

Picture memory as a number of slots. Now assume we have 4 available slots for facial features. These 4 slots can be filled out for example with face, eyes, nose, mouth. We are now using all of our available slots for these 4 customisation options. The reason we cant have the horns and face as a separate option is because this would create a 5th customisation option, but we only have room for 4 options.

As for why adding extra hairstyles doesn't affect this is because even if we have 100 different hairstyles to choose from, ONLY 1 hairstyle (the one you choose) is actually taking up 1 of the 4 available memory slots.

The number of total hairstyles we have to choose from is likely to have its own separate memory allocation but that's another issue on its own. You have to view memory as the separate parts that they belong to to make up the whole.

Its a similar issue to the common misconceptions that people have with inventory space. They wonder why if we can purchase an extra retainer, why cant that extra space just be given on our characters. Its the same issue, 1 character with 100 slots plus 1 retainer uses the same amount of available memory when they summon a retainer as a person with 1 character with 100 slots and 10 retainers. Because only 1 retainer memory is loaded up at any given time. The character inventory memory remains the same at 100 slots

But if we had a person who has a character with 200 slots and 1 retainer, they are suddenly using almost 2 times the memory of the person who only has 100 slots and 1 retainer because that character inventory has to be loaded in memory at all times.

And lets not even get started on the technical side of what memory means cause that just gets even more confusing, does it refer to space on a HDD, or RAM or even the capacity of your bandwidth. Most people on these forums think it refers to HDD space, but in most instances, it refers to the later two areas.

That makes a lot of sense, it would explain why they couldn't add Au Ra Horn selection for example. This would mean that each selection (i.e. Face Shape) would have different slots that they could add into like the hairstyle selection. However, they wouldn't be able to add anything else (for example Muscle Slider for Male Miq'ote)

[Noka]

If the setup is optimized, most of the flags are bits. Let's say for one race, 2 bits go to face shape. This frees up memory for other slots, but means the maximum is 4, as bits can be 1 or 0. Thus, the only combinations for marking flags are 00, 01, 10, and 11.

This means it takes another bit to go over 4. If this is optimized for memory, then their memory allocation means that it's simple to add things that they already have a large amount of, but smaller numbers will take more for less. All memory allocations that are just simple bitflags rely on those possible combinations; they can be considered to be 2^(bit number) combinations. So we have 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64...

When you look at the required space, consider this: Races have 50-100 skin colors. Same with hair color, eye color. All these options take up space. So if memory allocation is the same for all races and appearances, then cram room can be challenging, while hair styles aren't because they're not filled yet.

[Naunet]

I have to stand behind the OP on principal. The character creation is rather shameful in how limited the options are.

[Letbluevannback]

Honestly I'd prefer if they removed the option to toggle on/off limbal rings from Au Ras (they should always have limbal rings, like how Dunesfolk always have glossy eyes and Seekers always have cat pupils) and turn that tab into a Horn tab instead, where you can choose both main and secondary horn sets. The fact that main horns are locked to faces and secondary horns are locked to certain hairstyles is just plain dumb.

[Noka]

To be super fair, I'm pretty sure most of this is riding on 1.0 code (as 1.0 characters kept their customized options). 1.0 was one of the least optimized games I've ever seen, so...

It's entirely possible my views on How They Could Have Properly Optimized Allocation (tm) aren't right. It's just a good way to look at it; if they used flagging certain parts, then the maximum hairstyles will be about 32 before they need to squeeze out more memory. If they didn't, and have a different method, then Fitzy is correct; they'd most likely be metering it out solely based on what slots are what.