Can/will they improve the character creator?

tomofhyrule

sans-culottes wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

WOW did at least one major refactoring of character models.

They did. And that was when I quit that game after 7 years, 7 accounts and have never been back. I was extremely unhappy with the changes Blizzard made, so I quit paying them.

I LIKE my characters the way they are. But of course, if ZOS screws them up, I can quit paying ZOS 4 annual subs and never come back too.

I understand that not everyone likes graphical updates, but they’re generally aimed at keeping the game visually relevant for newer players while maintaining overall artistic consistency. If models are updated, then a toggle option (like WoW eventually implemented) would be a reasonable compromise.

EverQuest handled this well when it introduced the Luclin models, allowing players to toggle between old and new. If ZOS ever updates ESO’s models, then a similar approach would make sense—offering improvements without alienating those who prefer the original look.

I’d like to remind folks that other games have split the difference in the past. WoW and EQ both allow you to toggle new models on/off. While I suspect a full overhaul of the system is unlikely, seeing people negatively compare Dragon’s Dogma 2’s mostly excellent character creator to ESO’s character creator is baffling.

While it has fewer options than Dragon’s Dogma 2, Baldur’s Gate 3 also has an excellent character creator. Updating some of the dated assets would go a long way toward improving ESO’s longevity

Wait, when you say "excellent character creator," are you talking about options or graphics. Because BG3, as good as it looks, literally only has 4-8 face options and only 1 or 2 body options per gender. There's no "I want my Orc to be smol and jacked" in BG3, and yet I can do that in ESO. The thing I can't do in ESO is actually make him green like some of the Orc NPCs.

Graphically, there are also things that are different. I'll go back to "does this fit in the world or not?" as the factor. Consider those Sims mods where people make 1000% photorealistic Sims by giving them photo contour makeup to make the face shape look even more realistic, and then picture-perfect model hair, to the point where that character looks like a photo of a real person. And then... they get thrown in game to interact with the refrigerator model that looked cartoony even in 2014. That's jarring. Sure, some people like the realistic characters, but - as we saw with the reception to Ithelia - a character in a different artstyle just doesn't seem to 'fit' in the world.

Also, every character creator is different, and a great feature in one doesn't necessarily mean that it should replace another wholesale. Dragon Age: Veilguard's character creator (which has a free version to play around with) has gorgeous hair physics, but the characters look really cartoony (characters with freckles look like they have a massive skin disease, and the less to be said about the Handsom Squidwards they call Qunari, the better).

Stx

I really just want more hairstyles and beard styles. ESO is sorely lacking in options for those. And the original pack of options look very dated.

ImmortalCX

Stx wrote: »

I really just want more hairstyles and beard styles. ESO is sorely lacking in options for those. And the original pack of options look very dated.

Yeah, even just expanding on what they have would be a nice gesture.

Unless we come to find out that player cosmetics are what is causing all the server lag.

I think they absolutely could update it, and would if they were planning to fully support ESO.

Blizzard overhauled the character creator at the 10-year mark. ZOS is rumored to have a new rpg in the works, so they are probably not going to do any major overhauls.

Vulkunne

TaSheen wrote: »

I do not want my girls' looks changed. The last couple of times that happened, I never played those games again, because my girls were ruined, no longer the characters I'd spent a lot of time on.

I do not want to see character model changes EVER.

I can agree with this, the only thing I might recommend is for some of the races, like Breton or Dunmer, the eyelashes seem to use a lower-resolution texture than say Bosmer or Orc. This makes them seem faded and not sharp, whereas sharp in comparison to some of the other races. Another item to touch up, very carefully, is some of the eyes are too narrow. In other words, even with the lowest amount of 'squint' and set 'eye size' to max, the eyes still don't look quite normal. Also, Vampire eyes contain 'artifacts' depending on brightness. In other words, the best Vampire eyes are either a heavy red or especially a heavy dark texture, with some textures being dark but shading light.

This means that having a Vampire with a bright eye color puts these terrible 'glitches' around the eye that only a dark texture can cover up. Vampire eyes and WW eyes should be in their own bucket with different options exclusively for them and off the main palette. There's also sometimes a stubborn white ring around the eye and behind it which looks awful, especially against darker eye textures and this cannot easily be covered up. Only one or maybe two textures can darken this and remove the glitches also.

Another thing that might help is a series of optional templates to promote 'body positivity'. In other words, to get the right shape or form for a female can be somewhat challenging. The same for setting an Orc face so he doesn't look like a Goblin. It can be done but takes some work and costs $$$. It would be nice to have some professionally crafted and lore friendly templates to start with vice pure-random horror-shows. I'm sorry but that was an oversite from the original game as you don't want to just force random traits exclusively. They rarely come out well. Speaking of which, the background lighting also needs to be friendlier and not too bright that it creates an over-saturated looking image that hides depth as well as also being not too dark, so it doesn't hide the colors/textures from things like skin and hair.

I've spent alot of time on this (probably far too much) and can see some minor changes that could be improved. But above all, if changes are made, we need some compensation. Because I am NOT going to pay again to reset everything so I would sincerely hope a couple free adjustments come per character or maybe per account. Gets to be rather expensive.

In short, I agree that what we have is better than a botched job however this is one part of the game that could most def use some TLC. Especially since we're paying $$$ for a poor character creation experience. I can build what I want now but sometimes it still takes a couple attempts and for others with little or no real experience as far as how the character will emerge after a change and being disappointed and so I can imagine for them this can be a real ordeal.