Changing Character Appearance, thread #3,456,285

BrotherSpark

Bring out the dead horse, it deserves another beating. I have noticed this is a pretty popular request in the forums, and for good reason.

A character almost always looks different in the game than in the generator.

Maybe it's the lighting in the generator, maybe it's the limited angles in the thing, but a character almost always looks different in the game itself. I spent hours making a perfect replica of myself in Fallout 3 only for me to come out in-game looking like somebody beat me in the face with a stick during my formative years. I tried making Red Sonya in Skyrim, and in the generator she was beautiful. In-game, her face looked like somebody dropped a ham down a flight of steps. It isn't just you, Zenimax (and Bethesda). I think this holds true for pretty much any game. I was recently playing another big-budget fantasy RPG from another studio and made a great looking elf with a big smile and bright eyes. She came out looking like she was wrung through a lemon squeezer, grumpy as hell. This isn't the only good reason for an appearance change, though...

Good roleplayers like to imagine their characters growing and changing as they play.

Maybe my Khajiit has grey hair and an eye patch by the time she's Veteran rank. Maybe my Bosmer got a tan. My sorcerer's been at the receiving end of so many danged inferno attacks that she probably deserves that "burned all over the face and body" option in the character generator. A good player gains an attachment to their characters and wants to watch them grow as they play. Being able to change a character's appearance allows us to immerse ourselves in this fashion. After saving Tamriel from the evil machinations of Malcolm McDowell, I'd like to venture into Cyrodiil with a mohawk and warpaint and go crazy on some people in PvP. I've earned it at that point. I can save the world, but I can't shave my head?

Please don't charge real money for it.

Seriously. We are already buying wedding dresses, lizard steeds, and hilarious little pets that do little except make us look totally awesome. We can probably all expect to buy at least one or two respectification scrolls in our lifetimes. I think this is basic enough that it should be implemented simply to prevent the "deleted and remade my character three times tonight and he still looks like Steve Buschemi" problem. I'm happy to keep giving Zenimax my money, because I am into their game pretty deep and intend to stay there for a long time. Giving us this one for "free" (IE not real-life money) would be a stellar gesture on their part.

NewBlacksmurf

Your first bold sentence is so true.
I've definitely made a character or 15...and then after Coldharbor thought wth?

BrotherSpark

Right? I've never played a game with a character generator where this wasn't the case. ESO's character generator is one of the best ones I've ever used and I still get this issue.

Today I got a deal on a werewolf bite, so I made a new Bosmer, ran her all the way from Daggerfall to the shrine in Bangorai as fast as I could, forked over thousands of gold, spent two hours grinding werewolf up to ten, and... I get back to Daggerfall as the sun's rising over her face and she looks like she's sucking on a sour candy.

TheShadowScout

BrotherSpark wrote: »

A character almost always looks different in the game than in the generator.

Indeed they do.
Sometimes its the lighting, that makes some skin/eye color combinations seem all right, and once in live game, under different lighting you get to thinking "was I drink while I made this?". Sometimes its shapes that look okay when static looking suboptimal when in motion. Sometimes its the voice, sounds all right in chargen, and then grunts like a hog when falling in live game...

...and sometimes its just inattendence, you forget to move that one little slider, and don't notice until much later in the game, when you are in high veteran ranks and start to actually look at your character to find the "perfect" armor look now that you won't replace your armor twice a day powerlevelling... and notice, "oh, noes, this hip shape doesn't fit how I envisioned the character"... (and after checking you confirm, no, it isn't a case of "Does this armor make me look fat?" )

BrotherSpark wrote: »

Good roleplayers like to imagine their characters growing and changing as they play.

Weeeelll... technically all our characters are vestiges who kinda recover from all injury without scars, so any such scars would have been recieved before we got sacrificed and sent to coldharbour in the intro... so, no matter how many fireballs your faces tops in the game, it won't scar anymore then the time you fell into lava and respawned.

But... we're still alive enough to grow hair, and have a different hairstyle every now and then... change makeup... wear different adornments... et cetera.

And... sometimes roleplayers will want to completely re-envision their character. Often after making a break with some longstanding roleplay that went sour... and then we might want to destroy any remider of bad memories, yet still keep all the time we spent on our characters.

BrotherSpark wrote: »

Please don't charge real money for it.

I fear that ship has sailed and sunk. The game now needs to generater the profit that keeps the servers running through cash shop purchases, which means they have to charge crowns for everything nifty.
All we can pray for is that maybe, just maaaybe they will show a little generosity, and let us pay for "everyday" changes like hairstyle, makeup and adornmenrts with gold. But that is the most I can imagine them giving out for less then crowns...

And I have no problem with that. I am willing to pay for the ability to make structural changes to my characters, just to get them "perfect". And I am not alone in this. So they WILL tap that line of income. It's the only logical option in a capitalist system.

CaptainObvious

Hopefully when they do this, they will also improve the voice chooser by allowing you to select which voice sample you want to play or giving better descriptions an A-G.

BrotherSpark

My issue with paying real money for it goes back to my first comment about the character generator vs in-game appearance.

When I am grinding up a werewolf for 2 hours and then realize my character looks silly in the sunlight, I am sad. If I pay ten dollars to change her, and she still looks silly, I will be way more sad.

NewBlacksmurf

BrotherSpark wrote: »

Right? I've never played a game with a character generator where this wasn't the case. ESO's character generator is one of the best ones I've ever used and I still get this issue.

Today I got a deal on a werewolf bite, so I made a new Bosmer, ran her all the way from Daggerfall to the shrine in Bangorai as fast as I could, forked over thousands of gold, spent two hours grinding werewolf up to ten, and... I get back to Daggerfall as the sun's rising over her face and she looks like she's sucking on a sour candy.

Yooooo!!
I'm with you man. I just grabbed light armor and covered my face (show helmet) frustrated and now we are limited to min deletes too so yeah...I feel ya

IOUAT

They might cause there a game company nd we all know how greedy. They can be. Eh hem...sony....eh hem... microsoft...eh hem ea games

Prof_Bawbag

It must be something to do with the character creators Beth make/provide. TES games are exactly the same. You make what you think is the character look you want, only to realise once you're in-game, they look different. That darker skin is too dark, that nose is too flat and so on. Before they released the face sculptor in Riften sewers, you had no choice but to run through the entire tutorial again. It was a major pain.

Artheiron

paid stuff:
-new hairstyles, tatoos and all other cosmetic things for you to unlock and select in barber shop.
-full body-race-gender change.

free stuff-in game gold:
barber shop in game for you to change your hairstyles, color, scars, shape of beard and adornments.

sounds fair?

Prof_Bawbag

Mugetsu wrote: »

They might cause there a game company nd we all know how greedy. They can be. Eh hem...sony....eh hem... microsoft...eh hem ea games

Why are those companies greedy? You say that like those corporations are entirely to blame. If anything, the fault lies with those suckers who defend those practices. This very forum is full of people defending cash grabs. People who question it are called idiots by fellow consumers because us questioning it are too stupid to grasp that "No one is forcing you to pay..." malarkey. If people didn't want to be nickel and dimed, the likes of EA, MS etc wouldn't do it. It wouldn't be a financially viable business model.

IOUAT

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Mugetsu wrote: »

They might cause there a game company nd we all know how greedy. They can be. Eh hem...sony....eh hem... microsoft...eh hem ea games

Why are those companies greedy? You say that like those corporations are entirely to blame. If anything, the fault lies with those suckers who defend those practices. This very forum is full of people defending cash grabs. If people didn't want to be nickel and dimed, the likes of EA, MS etc wouldn't do it. It wouldn't be a financially viable business model.

Some my defend those things. But its the companies tht continue to do it. They are smart they could stop if they wanted to. They choose not to cause they are greedy

Prof_Bawbag

Mugetsu wrote: »

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Mugetsu wrote: »

They might cause there a game company nd we all know how greedy. They can be. Eh hem...sony....eh hem... microsoft...eh hem ea games

Why are those companies greedy? You say that like those corporations are entirely to blame. If anything, the fault lies with those suckers who defend those practices. This very forum is full of people defending cash grabs. If people didn't want to be nickel and dimed, the likes of EA, MS etc wouldn't do it. It wouldn't be a financially viable business model.

Some my defend those things. But its the companies tht continue to do it. They are smart they could stop if they wanted to. They choose not to cause they are greedy

No, they're giving enough consumers what they want to make it a financially viable practice. Every corporation in existence use the same methods within their respective fields. If there was little or no demand they'd not come up with these cash grabs. It's that simple.

If no one or next to no one was willing to shell out $20 for some pitiful micro dlc, then it wouldn't be in any devs/publishers interests to offer these goods.

F7sus4

BrotherSpark wrote: »

A character almost always looks different in the game than in the generator.

Not just in generator, but in different types of armor as well. Even more. A good example is Altmer Light Armor which will always make a slim character look incredibly fat, while Dunmer Light Armor will make a fat character look anorexic.

I wouldn't mind getting a possibility of small adjustments here and there.

Mojmir

If they add blue,green hair and neon colors,I'm out

Volkodav

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

It must be something to do with the character creators Beth make/provide. TES games are exactly the same. You make what you think is the character look you want, only to realise once you're in-game, they look different. That darker skin is too dark, that nose is too flat and so on. Before they released the face sculptor in Riften sewers, you had no choice but to run through the entire tutorial again. It was a major pain.

What face sculptor in the Riften sewers?

Tholian1

@WhiskeyRiver.AZub17_ESO , it was a character introduced with the Dawnguard DLC. For 1000g you could remake you face, as long as you weren't a vampire.

thunderwell

I agree there needs to be an appearance/race change option.
I do not agree it should be free.
As stated before, ZOS needs to make money somehow.
However, they can add ONE appearance (non-racial!) change scroll via non-repeatable quest.
But only if ZOS is feeling generous.

For facial cosmetics like hair/horns, beards, piercings, etc, should be available in-game for in-game gold.
Everything else should be change scroll exclusive.

Mojmir

delete

BrotherSpark

I recommended not having to pay real money for it because of the Steve Buschemi problem. If I pay ten bucks to rework a character because he looks like Steve Buschemi, and he winds up in-game looking like Steve Buschemi again anyway, do I have to pay another ten dollars to remake him? At that point, I'm liable to just rage-quit. If it costs me 4k to make the character in 4 tries, that's different. It's a pain in the neck but I'm not depleting my bank account.

BrotherSpark

I pay for plenty of other stuff anyway. I bought a Guar, a Senche, two game upgrade packs, and a mount upgrade pack. I intend to grab a couple respectification scrolls for my first characters that I built while I did not know what I was doing. I'm going to get all the DLCs. It would be a good gesture on Zenimax's part, is what I mean, to make it an in-game feature.

Osteos

For me its the lips. In the character creator they look fine but somewhere between there and the sunny streets of Daggerfall they slathered on hot pink lip gloss

Leeric

When I first created my main character in the early access before launch (PC) the game was bugged and wouldn't let me rotate or zoom on my character, I couldn't really see any finer details. Dude looks like Julius Caesar with a giant scar on his face lol I think we should all get a freebie.

Prof_Bawbag

thunderwell wrote: »

I agree there needs to be an appearance/race change option.
I do not agree it should be free.
As stated before, ZOS needs to make money somehow.
However, they can add ONE appearance (non-racial!) change scroll via non-repeatable quest.
But only if ZOS is feeling generous.

For facial cosmetics like hair/horns, beards, piercings, etc, should be available in-game for in-game gold.
Everything else should be change scroll exclusive.

Poor little ZOS. They've really been struggling of late giving us all this free stuff. It's about time they charged us extortionate amounts for re skins, dlc that was originally gonna be free, to play one of the most popular races in the TES series [imperial] and so on. You'd think if their head of marketing guy had any sort of savvy they'd be charging us a fortue for those things. Oh wait ...

NovaMarx

*Picks up a stick and approaches the dead horse*

I think 99% of the community want to change their character's appearance, at least once. Or they at least want the option.

I would like to see them add a barber shop where you can pay gold for a makeover, but you can probably count on it being added to the Crown Store as well. I don't think it should or will be free.

But as long as they give us both options (to either use gold OR Crowns) everyone will be able to use it

SlayerTheDragon

Still can't believe this is not in the game yet.

If you like your character your game experience will be a positive one. How hard is this to understand?

Skyforge got this right - you can change your character at any time - even gender, this gives the feeling that the devs really want you to be happy with your character, which in turn makes you happier with the game.

There should not be an in game barber, or any restrictions. It should just be a button on the character selection screen, which lets you go back into the character creator and do whatever you need to do (without race and faction ofc).

TortUred_mAlice

IIRC, RuneScape used to charge around 2k for a haircut and 3k for a gender change. It's now changed to an anywhere/anytime change for free.
Skyrim charged (was it, 1k?) for the face sculptor...

ESO deserves to have a face sculptor, maybe even a makeover magician that can change your class when you're a certain level.

We should play how we want. It's not broken and we're not exploiting anything.

Also, an (optional) idea for a choice of playstyle - you have provisioning as a skill, you also have mass alterations in the creation menu. You have blacksmithing, I think you have dirt or something in the menu... If there is a realistic choice option in the game settings, perhaps we can put one and one together? I.e., my character has been making a lot of food lately... My character has been working in a forge lately...

b92303008rwb17_ESO

DonoVDV wrote: »

Still can't believe this is not in the game yet.

If you like your character your game experience will be a positive one. How hard is this to understand?

Skyforge got this right - you can change your character at any time - even gender, this gives the feeling that the devs really want you to be happy with your character, which in turn makes you happier with the game.

There should not be an in game barber, or any restrictions. It should just be a button on the character selection screen, which lets you go back into the character creator and do whatever you need to do (without race and faction ofc).

I am all for name/appearance/race/faction change. But only games without or don't even care about roleplay and lore will set no restrictions regarding these character changes. Skyforge does not even have the basic elements to call itself a roleplay game, not to mention comparing it to ESO.

No character change restrictions will not make you like your character more. It only makes your character matter less to you.

BrotherSpark

I am not really enthusiastic with the whole race/faction/class change concept. Not to disparage anyone that feels strongly about these things.

I think that appearance is largely cosmetic and doesn't affect the gameplay, while race/faction/class have real gameplay implications. I could see an arrangement where appearance (or gender) change cost in-game gold and these other things cost crowns.

afgncaap7

I just want to make my character a little bit taller. He seemed fine in the creation screen but you don't really have any idea what it's going to look like in the actual game. Character creation in general for any game seriously needs to let you directly compare your character to NPC's.

TheShadowScout

One thing for height... I'd love to have a scale of some sort during character generation. Just so people can better adjust their characters in relation... hard to tell how tall your bosmer will be compared to your friends altmer, would be nice to have some hint as to what slider position translates to which total height for that race...