Character Creation Has A Race Problem

[kikix12]

One can curb the worst of the caricatures pretty easily by adding sliders but keeping the possible values restricted to realistic looking body shapes.

Yes, but it's not as easy as one would think. Humanly possible variations include people that are 1,6m and 1,9m high. Make a body of a 1,9m high person with the legs of a 1,6m high person and you have a caricature while using sliders limited to humanly possible values.

To avoid that, one would need to make proper algorithms that calculate proportions and actively limit options based on what else is selected. And that is what would take a lot of effort to make, seeing as proportions of just about anything is related to just about anything else, directly or indirectly.

This particular thread was more focused on providing more ethnic looking options.
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In regards to sliders, they can be tweaked to not allow extreme options.

You are the one that both brought up other games and their creators and how much freedom they have, as well as as compared FFXIV to them. I merely responded to that. Only now do you seem to try and reduce the scope of that comparison, but even then, just at the face value for the sake of negating what I said.

That would be completely within the control of the developer.

Of course. It IS possible to make a wonderful character creator that allows to make characters of many varied races that completely seal any risk of caricature characters being made, all the while providing immense freedom. All with nothing but sliders. However, as I said, making even a restricted version of that is time consuming and costly. Too costly for vast majority of the games. Unless it would be made to match multiple games, thus be reused, the cost of such a well-made character creator will NOT return itself even in part. No matter what character creator you have, players will play the game if it's good and won't if it's not. And most people do NOT ever change their characters looks. I didn't even use a free Fantasia I got, it's still collecting dust on my retainer. Unless I'll want to make character on a different server, I won't even see the new character creator anymore. And most people are like me. So yes. The likelihood is that the choice is between limited options or caricatures, and I'd pick limited options every time. I know I'm one of the few in that...but yes.


That being said, I already brought up that I'm not against the idea of broadening those limited options in a controlled manner. But that was not relevant for my response to the particular statement you made there.

Going through this thread, you'll find several people who seem adamantly against adding new faces/features for reasons.

I'll admit I skipped since page 6 or so...but I have not seen one. All of them were more against the supposed "race problem" from the title. Sure, there were people that said the game is fine, but none were strictly against it. Just saying that it's not necessary.