Please improve character creation

Vorkrunne

I love the voice acting in ESO. I love the lack of world PvP.
I love that we have different species of mounts in this game. I love the housing.
I love that we have dungeons, raids, and even group content to do out in the world.
I *love* that every zone scales to your level.
I love the optional subscription perks. I love how many furniture items are in the cash shop.

However, I am playing Black Desert.

The character creation in ESO is so limited that it's frustrating. Simple hair colors that are available to NPCs are not available to players of the same race.

The hair on characters fails to look and move like hair at all. Horse hair is no better.

I know that ESO will never have the combat animations that BDO has, and I have made peace with that. However, I don't see why improvements to character creation can't be made. At least allow us enough combinations of hair/eye color/body types that we can make the characters we want to play.

This mostly affects elves and human races as I find the Khajit, Argonians, and orcs to have great options.

For example, try to make a tall, muscular, pale skinned elf with black hair and blue eyes. Now, try to make him actually a handsome elf. Frustrated? Me too. I would not ask Elder Scrolls to change the look of their elves in their universe, but surely artists can come up with some faces that aren't hideous while maintaining the lore of Gollum eyes. Female elves don't look as bad. Surely all male elves in this game don't need to look horrid.

My guild would love to drop BDO and come here, but we're stuck with such limited character creations that none of us really feel tied or immersed in ESO.

It is hard to get into a game when every character you think of creating can't be made.

Give us handsome males. Give us muscular elves. Not just tiny lean cuts to emphasize that they have no body fat, but actual muscles. Same for the females in this game. Unless you are a particular race, you don't get to have muscles other than lean, thin cuts.

You have emotes for sale, can you sell me what my character should look like as a tank rather than a scrawny noodle?

Vorkrunne

Also, allow us to actually make fat characters. These sliders are very restricting on that front, too. I enjoy RPing a wide array of body types.

After experiencing MMORPGs where you don't need to have a character description to portray what your character should actually look like, it's hard to go back to the days of "Okay... I know what you see on your screen is this face, but... imagine this totally different face" *sends image over Discord*

Not fun

GeorgeBlack

Sort of agree

VaranisArano

I just want better lighting so I can tell the color of my character's hair. I thought Coldharbor was bad, the ship was worse.

Aesthier

Vorkrunne wrote: »

I love the voice acting. I love the lack of world PvP.
I love that we have different species of mounts in this game. I love the housing.
I love that we have dungeons, raids, and even group content to do out in the world.
I *love* that every zone scales to your level.
I love the optional subscription perks. I love how many furniture items are in the cash shop.

However, that's because I am playing Black Desert.

Sorry was laughing so hard I just couldn't resist the edit so everyone could see what I initially read it as.

Tasear

Some things are related to lore and immersion. Some colors simply don't exist for that race.

Dapper Dinosaur

It's 2018 and we still don't have a "charizard" head option for argonians, which even Skyrim had way back in 2011.

SickleCider

I agree.

To everyone worried about the lore, I assure you that the ability to make my Breton's eyes violet won't detract from your immersion.

Slick_007

random name generator for gods sake. thats the longest part of creating a character here

Turelus

VaranisArano wrote: »

I just want better lighting so I can tell the color of my character's hair. I thought Coldharbor was bad, the ship was worse.

Yeah. I will never understand why the TES games have always forced you to make characters in bad lighting.

I know it breaks immersion, but give a feature (toggle) to change the lighting from day/night/fire glow so we can see them fully before we submit.

Whilst I would love to have the options BDO offers I just don't think ESO is able to do it. Just allowing more options at creation (like showing hair or accessories we own from the store) would be great.

Also make the log out timer during the character creation screen longer. I should be able to go make a coffee and get food mid-creation without coming back and losing everything.

jaschacasadiob16_ESO

Slick_007 wrote: »

random name generator for gods sake. thats the longest part of creating a character here

How many people had a timeout while trying to guess a name for their character and had to redo everything from scratch? Plus, having a name generator would avoid so many dumb names in game...

TelvanniWizard

I want more facial hair options.

Aurielle

jaschacasadiob16_ESO wrote: »

Slick_007 wrote: »

random name generator for gods sake. thats the longest part of creating a character here

How many people had a timeout while trying to guess a name for their character and had to redo everything from scratch? Plus, having a name generator would avoid so many dumb names in game...

This is why you decide on a name before you create a character. If it's taken, you can use special characters.

Cryptical

There should be a workshop you save the prospective character to, so you can come back later. It would help with the name issue too.

VaranisArano

Tasear wrote: »

Some things are related to lore and immersion. Some colors simply don't exist for that race.

In Skyrim, my Altmer Dovahkiin had black hair, long black hair. There's no lore reason why the darkest hair color I can get here is medium brown. Some things, like Dunmer eyes, sure there are lore reasons, others are just limitations for no good reason.

jlmurra2

jaschacasadiob16_ESO wrote: »

Slick_007 wrote: »

random name generator for gods sake. thats the longest part of creating a character here

How many people had a timeout while trying to guess a name for their character and had to redo everything from scratch? Plus, having a name generator would avoid so many dumb names in game...

I always have several names, and surnames ready when making a new character.

I wish they at the very least add lighting options to the creator. The lighting is always so dim, and when you get into the game world characters often look very different. That combined with the delete limit (I understand why the delete limit it is there) is cruel.

Slick_007

Aurielle wrote: »

This is why you decide on a name before you create a character. If it's taken, you can use special characters.

i went through about 20 names for one of my characters. _ -, space, all taken for the ones i tried., i had to come up with those myself. i would have much preferred after the name i wanted was taken in all variations to just hit random and go

LioraValkyrie

It would go a long way just to make owned collectibles previewable in character creation. You can have a concept in mind using this costume, those tattoos, and whichever other makeup and just have to guess how it's going to look on the poorly attired slave you are confronted with.

DMuehlhausen

Versispellis wrote: »

I agree.

To everyone worried about the lore, I assure you that the ability to make my Breton's eyes violet won't detract from your immersion.

If I saw them it would....

Fleshreaper

DMuehlhausen wrote: »

Versispellis wrote: »

I agree.

To everyone worried about the lore, I assure you that the ability to make my Breton's eyes violet won't detract from your immersion.

If I saw them it would....

Really? If only The Elder Scrolls had illusion magic line, that would help with immersion.

SydneyGrey

Tasear wrote: »

Some things are related to lore and immersion. Some colors simply don't exist for that race.

They're talking about options that are in the game but not available in the character creator, like black and dark brown hair for High Elves, and a particular shade of red hair for Nords. Both of those are seen on NPCs, but we can't have them for our own characters.

And on top of that, we now can ride flaming melted cheese camels. That kind of thing breaks immersion a million times more than having a new eye color for a Dunmer would.

Azyle1

Thanks God BDO sucks at almost everything else it sets out to do .

ANGEL_BtVS

My biggest problem is that the character you create in the creation tool doesn't always look the same once you actually finalize it and enter the game. I wish there was a 30-minute timer or something where you could reset it after you've been able to see your character actually in-game to make fine tune adjustments.

Cuthceol

unfortunately I believe most of the ideas in this thread would have a negative impact on the cash shop and are unlikely to go any further

Kolache

Strong agree with this one.. it's time for character creation 2.0 in ESO.

Especially for hair and EYEBROWS.

SydneyGrey

A lot of people have begged for dark hair for the Altmer over the years. I'm wondering if the reason they won't give it to us is because there's not a way to do it without messing up thousands of Altmer already in the game, because it would change the sliders.

MLGProPlayer

BDO has a much more robust graphics engine. You can't expect the same level of character detail and customization in ESO.

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO

yeah i would love to have more variation and complexity regarding character creation...

SickleCider

DMuehlhausen wrote: »

Versispellis wrote: »

I agree.

To everyone worried about the lore, I assure you that the ability to make my Breton's eyes violet won't detract from your immersion.

If I saw them it would....

I see where you're coming from, but I'm not really convinced about that. I think as far as the lore is concerned, overarching ideas are more important than visual idiosyncrasies, especially in a franchise where all the races have been dramatically iterated on in every title. I don't think there's a deep and abiding lore reason we have the eye colors we have; it's just the palette they decided to provide. I'd be more concerned about the fact that everyone is riding their own personal flame atronachs, and so forth. Not that that bothers me, mind; I think when you're playing an MMO you have to make concessions about immersion, and my tendency is always to favor player agency.

SickleCider

SydneyGrey wrote: »

A lot of people have begged for dark hair for the Altmer over the years. I'm wondering if the reason they won't give it to us is because there's not a way to do it without messing up thousands of Altmer already in the game, because it would change the sliders.

That's entirely possible. If all the NPCs in the game are generated with the character creator, it's easy to see why they aren't in a hurry to make modifications. That'd be a totally reasonable explanation.

Aela_Dragonrider

As a player who obsesses about my characters' appearance (I can spend between 1 and 2 hours designing a character face and if I delete a character, it almost certainly because I didn't like the face I made for it), I agree that more choices would be great. Primarily:

• More face sliders: Maybe cheek roundness, more mouth adjustment, and face width for starters.
• More hair choices: Not too many or we'll never be able to choose, but I'd like to see some more braided hair styles at the very least. And more vivid hair colors. The ones available seem kind of dull.
• Better lighting: And I'm not just talking about the character creation. While the lighting there leaves something to be desired, how about the lighting in the character selection menu? It makes my character look very different from in-game.

That being said, ESO's character creation is not the worst I've seen and I can live with what they have.