Character Creation Update

LesserCircle

This is just a suggestion for ZOS but I think we can all agree this would be a nice addition. It should be updated so we can use all the different appearance items like hair styles or addornments that we own and we should be able to check how that character looks as a vampire and it's different stages as well. If we could also select the time of the day it would be even better so we can see how it will look in different lighting conditions, this should be easy to do for them as we got that furnishing that does just that. Of course I could continue to add more features but even a basic update would be awesome, character creation is just old and it feels too basic.

Pixiepumpkin

I would like a way to create an outfit from my collection and preview that on a character I am making.

Tandor

LesserCircle wrote: »

This is just a suggestion for ZOS but I think we can all agree this would be a nice addition. It should be updated so we can use all the different appearance items like hair styles or addornments that we own and we should be able to check how that character looks as a vampire and it's different stages as well. If we could also select the time of the day it would be even better so we can see how it will look in different lighting conditions, this should be easy to do for them as we got that furnishing that does just that. Of course I could continue to add more features but even a basic update would be awesome, character creation is just old and it feels too basic.

Please just speak for yourself.

This would add enormously to the amount of information accessed from the character creation screen which would impact on its loading time. I'm personally fine with it as it is, including the loading time!

Pixiepumpkin

Tandor wrote: »

Please just speak for yourself.

I don't think @LesserCircle was literally talking about everone who plays ESO, but was rather a hyperbolic statement to emphasize their desire to see better character creation.

And I for one, Agree. The character creation menu in game is looking a bit dated (ui needs refreshing) and it would be nice to be able to see your character in the creation menu as how you want to see them in game. Diffrerent head pieces, tattoos, adornments etc etc etc etc can look differently based on your size, face shape etc.

I think its a very reasonable request.

Tandor wrote: »

This would add enormously to the amount of information accessed from the character creation screen which would impact on its loading time. I'm personally fine with it as it is, including the loading time!

How many seconds we talking? Mine loads instantly, I mean there is no waiting for anything to load when I goto create a character.

Rebirthment

I think a big QoL improvement for CC would be the ability to change the background your character is in. The current area lacks lighting and i feel being able to choose how your character would look in different areas of the game can really help.

FluffyBird

Tandor wrote: »

This would add enormously to the amount of information accessed from the character creation screen which would impact on its loading time. I'm personally fine with it as it is, including the loading time!

How often do you use character creation for its loading time to matter?

AScarlato

FluffyBird wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

This would add enormously to the amount of information accessed from the character creation screen which would impact on its loading time. I'm personally fine with it as it is, including the loading time!

How often do you use character creation for its loading time to matter?

I laughed, thinking the same thing.

The benefits of being able to see our cosmetics in advance outweigh the additional 1 second this person would experience, if that was even a thing.

Serpari

CC desperately needs a QoL update. If anything needs to get better textures and meshes first, it's our characters. Better lighting in the CC too, I'd like the ability to change backgrounds so I can see my character's eye color, skin tone and hair color contrasted against different light spaces. Say, a background in dreary High Rock (cool lighting), another in sunny Hew's Bane (warn lighting), another in neutral Cyrodiil (neutral lighting), and one in a more fantasy location like Coldharbour and/or the Deadlands.

I'd also like the ability to give Altmer black hair, Imperials silver-white hair, etcetera. I think the arbitrary locks for hair color make little sense when we have about 20 colors to pick from, which is so few, while FFXIV has like over 50. You can limit the palette to keep it lore compliant, but IMHO there's nothing lore breaking with a black-haired Altmer (Leythen is right there) or a silver-white haired Imperial (they get old too, look at the Prophet, who uses a hair color inaccessible to us players, just like Bastian Hallix's red), I've never understood why we're prevented from making those choices.

Some assets are just bad. There's a bunch of body markings that give you an egregious neck seam (Spider Daedra Chest Paint), one costume has a floating black triangle around the clavicle area that wasn't properly erased from the diffuse (Glenmoril Witch Robes), some are just low quality (Thief Starskin). I have found so many poor quality assets like this, yet ZOS wants me to pay for these things.

Vampire and werewolf need a visual upgrade, at least. It's sad to know there's already a higher quality texture and mesh for werewolf we don't have access too. Vampire looks bad at various stages, some eyes were clearly made with men, not mer, in mind—it makes them look off because their pupils are too small for their eyeballs when mer have bigger eyes (irises and pupils included) in comparison to men. In stage 3 and 4 I don't look undead, I look like I have a skin condition that desiccates my character because the textures are so pixelated.

We can up the quality of character visuals without making it too hard on system resources. I know this because I've done character asset work both as a hobbyist (I mod Skyrim and FFXIV) and a professional. I don't mind paying for cosmetics (fashion is the end game, after all), but not when they're this low quality. There's furniture in this game that's higher quality than our characters' assets, and there's just as much furniture in the world as the amount of PCs running around, so the argument based on 'taking up too many of our computer's resources' is kind of moot.

Increased loading times should be a non-issue with proper optimization. I'm not asking for 1GB 4K textures, I'm asking for better quality than the mid 2000s stuff we got at the moment.

An idea I've had is allow players to change features about their characters up to an hour after character creation. Not race change, not gender change, not Alliance or Class change, just basic appearance tweaks like skin, eye, hair color and face/body sliders. The amount of Appearance Change Tokens I've burned because my character's skin tone look fine in the Balfiera cell, but then awful in the overworld are too damn many. As a matter of fact, why does the CC start us now in such a dark location with terrible lighting? It's awful for character creation purposes.

TL;DR: Bring the CC quality up to par with other MMOs currently on the market.

Tandor

FluffyBird wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

This would add enormously to the amount of information accessed from the character creation screen which would impact on its loading time. I'm personally fine with it as it is, including the loading time!

How often do you use character creation for its loading time to matter?

It depends in part on whether the data is accessed on loading in the character screen or just the character creation menu, but also on whether you create a lot of characters and/or make a lot of attempts at creating characters.

Serpari

Tandor wrote: »

FluffyBird wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

This would add enormously to the amount of information accessed from the character creation screen which would impact on its loading time. I'm personally fine with it as it is, including the loading time!

How often do you use character creation for its loading time to matter?

It depends in part on whether the data is accessed on loading in the character screen or just the character creation menu, but also on whether you create a lot of characters and/or make a lot of attempts at creating characters.

It depends more on your own computer and/or console's processing power, tbqh. I run a mid-tier rig but have a 4090. I have this game installed on a Samsung Pro NVMe, with 64GB of RAM and an AMD Ryzer 7 current gen. One day I made over five characters with hardly a hit on my system's resources. But again, I have a decent rig. If you're running this game on a HDD with an Intel i3 wiht 8GB of RAM or something, yeah, it'll be a bit slower.

Telling people to just get better PCs is not the play since the economy is in shambles, though. Some people also play on console. You'd be surprised at the amount of optimization you can squeeze out of high quality assets if the programmers and the assets designers actually talk to each other and bother to optimize in the first place.

Sidewaves89

I would like to buy Imperial race and Any Race, Any Alliance Bundle before i create my first character.