[DEV REQUEST] Balancing Character Customization

[SomeRandomHuman]

In development everything is designed and made on a hyer model first then reshaped to conform to the other races hence why hyer is "easy to work around" since it the race everything is molded on first.

[Naunet]

We're talking about faces and things, not armor models.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't really buy that excuse. Every single race is essentially human, with slight variations in overall build, skin tone, etc. There is no race that should have any greater difficulty to design for, all things considered.

Nonetheless it's genre standard that the most humanoid races usually have the most options, so unless this is some awkward form of racism against inexistant species (or player personality types that would be drawn to them), their development must be considered more efficient, either because
- They take less time to develop, or —
- Their options affect and satisfy a larger portion of the playerbase, making them a more lucrative choice to flesh out in the goal of providing satisfying customization overall than the other races.

[Roda]

Nonetheless it's genre standard that the most humanoid races usually have the most options, so unless this is some awkward form of racism against inexistant species (or player personality types that would be drawn to them), their development must be considered more efficient, either because
- They take less time to develop, or —
- Their options affect and satisfy a larger portion of the playerbase, making them a more lucrative choice to flesh out in the goal of providing satisfying customization overall than the other races.

But... all of the races are humanoid, with maybe the exception of the lalafelin baby-faces...

And don't most active players play the tailed races? ._.

[Naunet]

But... all of the races are humanoid, with maybe the exception of the lalafelin baby-faces...

Yeah, that's the point I was trying to make. Designing a miqo'te face is not any different than designing a hyur face. They're both human faces. There are zero distorting features that could possibly make the miqo'te face more difficult to design for (as opposed to say, a charr or an argonian or whathaveyou).

[Shurrikhan]

But... all of the races are humanoid, with maybe the exception of the lalafelin baby-faces...

And don't most active players play the tailed races? ._.

I am not claiming otherwise. I am only saying that clearly there are certain approaches to how development time for character design choices is allotted, and maybe, just maybe, there's a good reason those are taken over a quota system.

Did <furry-scaled-tailed race 2> get 6 face, 5 tattoo, 4 jaw options? But they already have the same total components? I said 6 face options!
Did <tail-less hairless race 1> get their 4 tail options? No? Because they have no tails?! Madness!

If anyone really want a specific face or scale design or tail type and think that others would similarly feel more manifested in or attached to their characters if it were implemented—or even just a type or feel thereof—they ought merely to suggest it. Or one could point out what appears to be missing from the coverage of the race. But "give us as many face options as the humans" (in my, entirely personal, opinion, 6 variants of derp) is just not likely to get what you're looking for. The developers of these assets most likely stopped where they did because they thought they'd more or less covered their bases. You can prove them wrong, you can throw out some lucratives.

Nor can one rightly claim unfairness when far more players will benefit from a given allotment of development time, or, on the other end, the "less supported" race already necessitates additional customization categories or greater work per option (less the case in our mostly unvaried races, apart from the initial investment of tails, for which they allot no time for anti-clipping after 1.x, horns, and relative armor rescaling, largely for varying headsizes and male au'ra triangle heads*).

*Probably not a big deal really; I just felt like poking fun.

[Vejjiegirl]

Bumping this thread yet again. 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

[SomeRandomHuman]

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

Even though the PS3 had nothing to do with not having more options. They've said in several live letters that its server stress keeping things out, not PS3.

[Kosmos992k]

Even though the PS3 had nothing to do with not having more options. They've said in several live letters that its server stress keeping things out, not PS3.

Please explain how adding a few bytes of extra data to character definitions will affect server stability in a game where we are getting 40 new inventory slots with SB already and +10 positions per category in the Armory Chest. Remember *ALL* rendering is done locally on the client and all graphical assets reside on the client - the server is not involved at all.

[Vejjiegirl]

Even though the PS3 had nothing to do with not having more options. They've said in several live letters that its server stress keeping things out, not PS3.

Adding 2 new hairstyles every patch and the servers are ok, but heaven forbid they add new Jaw Options to every race with only 3 jaws the servers would explode!