Aion going F2P in Europe starting February

[SilverBreeze]

Honestly the only reason why I played so long, and still have the itch to play, is because my characters were adorable and I know I'll never get that kind of character customization in an MMO ever again.

[Rulke]

^ Not necessarily true. STO and APB especially had great char customization. Hopefully something like that becomes more of a "standard" for big AAA games.

[SephYuyX]

PSO2!

[Katlan]

game wasn't dead last time I was playing, but the population is a little thin sometimes. It's just that the game is designed to be fun with a lot of people because there just isn't a ton of unique stuff to do without a mob of players.

My problem w/ going back to play again was that the community is small in a way that everyone is clicky and a its harder to get stuff done. even trying to do BTHM when you haven't done BTNM. Getting ppl for BTNM was soooooo difficult because ppl would only want to do BTHM, but then how the fuck do you get experience for BTHM if you cant get gear from BTNM. And then ppl look you up and won't take you to BTHM or other stuff because you don't have the gear from BTHM for example lol.

That, and 90% of ppl do loot run only runs so if you want anything your best chance is to buy it from trade. Game is so money driven its just insane now. And those that have infinite money from playing all this time own the economy

[SilverBreeze]

^ Not necessarily true. STO and APB especially had great char customization. Hopefully something like that becomes more of a "standard" for big AAA games.

When it comes to good character customization I like games that allow me to control my character's proportions. In STO you can't do that because you can't adjust your quite ample bosom. APB's customization was very good (in some ways, beyond Aion because of how you could do things, in some ways, not close to being as good) but it didn't allow the freedom that Aion offered. My biggest thing with customization in the games is that you can't make shorter characters, and you can't make petite characters. It's hard to find a MMO or any customization in any game that compares to Aion to where if you really want to play a cute petite character, you can. Hell it's hard to find a MMO where you can make a character who's tits arent at least as big as her head (not counting races/classes that have it required in some games, like TERA or Guild Wars' Female Assassins), I can name two off the top of my head, DC Universe, and Aion, oh and PSO2 which is upcoming, if you could ever call the PSO series a MMO.

Spoiler: show

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6.../cheriss-6.png

And my APB character. Like I said, awesome customization, amazing in some ways, not quite in others (understandable you couldnt make your character smaller/slimmer in a shooter game).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ea/Peach-1.jpg

If F2P comes to US I'll probably play it a bit.

[Pooky]

My problem w/ going back to play again was that the community is small in a way that everyone is clicky and a its harder to get stuff done. even trying to do BTHM when you haven't done BTNM. Getting ppl for BTNM was soooooo difficult because ppl would only want to do BTHM, but then how the fuck do you get experience for BTHM if you cant get gear from BTNM. And then ppl look you up and won't take you to BTHM or other stuff because you don't have the gear from BTHM for example lol.

That, and 90% of ppl do loot run only runs so if you want anything your best chance is to buy it from trade. Game is so money driven its just insane now. And those that have infinite money from playing all this time own the economy

Game has always been money driven, even at launch. And the reason the community is so clicky is because you really dont need many people to get shit done; hell me and my friends would go 3 man bthm and sell loot daily. When you only need 3 to complete the current endgame content, what do you expect lol.

I jumped ship shortly after the 2yr mark, as I was just bored as fuck. Playing TOR atm, and even though the char customization basically isn't there, its still a fun game. (Plus, I like being able to PvP more than twice a day without getting zerged by players/mobs in lolopenworld)

[arus2001]

When it comes to good character customization I like games that allow me to control my character's proportions. In STO you can't do that because you can't adjust your quite ample bosom. APB's customization was very good (in some ways, beyond Aion because of how you could do things, in some ways, not close to being as good) but it didn't allow the freedom that Aion offered. My biggest thing with customization in the games is that you can't make shorter characters, and you can't make petite characters. It's hard to find a MMO or any customization in any game that compares to Aion to where if you really want to play a cute petite character, you can. Hell it's hard to find a MMO where you can make a character who's tits arent at least as big as her head (not counting races/classes that have it required in some games, like TERA or Guild Wars' Female Assassins), I can name two off the top of my head, DC Universe, and Aion, oh and PSO2 which is upcoming, if you could ever call the PSO series a MMO.

I guess my definition of ample bosom will differ, but head-sized boobs don't seem common to me in the MMO scene. Furthermore, I'd go on to say that Aion got way too retarded with some of its "freedom" in allowing the creation of stupidly small or generally poorly proportioned characters that come about as a result of average person not knowing a lick about such. Petite/flat-chested is one thing, sure, but knee-high death dealers that gain a considerable PvP advantage as a result of diminished visual presence is another. To that end, I can't fault companies from limiting height adjustments, but in relation to Tera, still kind of boggle at their choice of letting the smallest races have the largest attack range when they should arguably be the shortest.

[Senji]

I guess my definition of ample bosom will differ, but head-sized boobs don't seem common to me in the MMO scene. Furthermore, I'd go on to say that Aion got way too retarded with some of its "freedom" in allowing the creation of stupidly small or generally poorly proportioned characters that come about as a result of average person not knowing a lick about such. Petite/flat-chested is one thing, sure, but knee-high death dealers that gain a considerable PvP advantage as a result of diminished visual presence is another. To that end, I can't fault companies from limiting height adjustments, but in relation to Tera, still kind of boggle at their choice of letting the smallest races have the largest attack range when they should arguably be the shortest.

Eh, I would rather the customization for the majority to get exactly what they want with the possibility of some "ugly" characters. Yes, it does take more to process, but those it hampers can turn down graphics or set it up. I would like to see the ceiling range being pushed far higher.

If you raged at speedy little assassin arms and legs tearing you up, don't blame the game. If you were frantically clicking to target, you were doing it wrong and already dead.

Tera; unless I missed the recon memo, thought it was still set up as smaller had smaller hitbox and range, yet magic stayed the same for all classes?

[SilverBreeze]

I guess my definition of ample bosom will differ, but head-sized boobs don't seem common to me in the MMO scene. Furthermore, I'd go on to say that Aion got way too retarded with some of its "freedom" in allowing the creation of stupidly small or generally poorly proportioned characters that come about as a result of average person not knowing a lick about such. Petite/flat-chested is one thing, sure, but knee-high death dealers that gain a considerable PvP advantage as a result of diminished visual presence is another. To that end, I can't fault companies from limiting height adjustments, but in relation to Tera, still kind of boggle at their choice of letting the smallest races have the largest attack range when they should arguably be the shortest.

When talking about people who make really tall stick figure characters, and people who make enormously fat characters, the people who make characters like that are by far the minority. I think a lot of people care about how their characters look (otherwise we wouldn't have tons of female characters in MMOs played by non-females) and giving them freedom in creation lets them do that. There will always be bad eggs in every game, it's disappointing to be limited because of those people. In games where you have to target people and use abilities on them, I don't see why height and weight are usually attributes that are locked to us when it comes to creation.

Unless I'm seriously mistaken, I'm sure there was a post that said that Elins actually had a hitbox larger than their smaller frames (so they are easier to hit than they appear to be) and they actually had the shortest attack range as well. Baraka and Amani had longer attack ranges and hitboxes slightly smaller than their larger frames, so they were harder to hit than they appeared, and to make them more appealing. Obviously this is for weapons, and not magic, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure I saw this post.

[arus2001]

Tera stuff aside, maybe I'm just weird in liking rules even within my fantasy settings. Basically seeing knee-high humans who aren't handicapped in any way detracts from my personal sense of immersion, and ultimately the only reasons these people opt for such characters are jokes or to acquire a visual advantage in the PvP sphere. Tabbing in Aion certainly wasn't perfect when I played it, so sometimes you'd have to point and click if you wanted to get a target quickly. This was obviously easier for normal characters and up. But yes, the super-midgets also carried that hyper-speed movement look, which was an eyesore of its own. Overall, I have no problem with those who wanted to be 4'5" or whatever one might estimate the average 10 year old girl to sate their loli fetish. 2" people are either toddlers or otherwise host to various medical conditions. Much as some might try to spin it as emulating non-present races like elves or goblins, I see it more as NC being lazy in not offering options like that to begin with with their own "racial rules" for proportions and whatnot.

Were I to get further critical of Aion's character creator, I'd still claim its lacking. Breast size, as brought up, wasn't really its own attribute. Rather, bigger tits were more a result of the chest wire mesh being stretched. You couldn't be a petite girl with big knockers, as some might like. Meanwhile, if burly flat-chested amazon chicks were your thing, there was still that illusion of bust. I also hate hair styles that include accessories you can't edit at all. To me, that outright invalidated some of them because the colors chosen were god awful. At the very least, being able to make them match your hair color could take some of the sting out. I know a lot of games have issue differentiating between muscled and fat, too. That's definitely a mix of mesh and texture issue, though.

Overall, I can perhaps see why perfect creation systems aren't out their yet, as it's all data that needs to be transferred for us to render. The higher detail the game calls for, the more demanding the PC specs will be. This is certainly why Rift's characters aren't much better than WoW's, as it's possible to find yourself lagging away in world events with hundreds of other people around. Aion also had this issue with Seiges, which was initially plagued with crashes and tweaks I'm not sure they ever really fixed. Either way, I recall some people having to reload the game at lower settings if they wanted to hit up an active fort. It wasn't so much that their rigs sucked (at the time), the game just wasn't optimized well.

[SilverBreeze]

It may be lacking in some areas, but it's the best we've seen and probably will see for a long time. Breast size was a chest wire mesh yes, but you could get someone with a large chest and someone with a small one and the armor would look good on both of the characters. I disagree that you couldn't play a smaller character with knockers, as that's what a lot of people played and it looked fine to me. It's a hell of a lot better than "you're this race, or you're this size, so all of this is locked in and you can't change it. Yes there were hairstyles with ornaments in the hair, but at the same time there were 60 hairstyles, in some games you're lucky to get 10-15. It's frustrating to want to make your character but at the same time it feels like you're making what the game wants you to make, so it never really feels your own. Aion was really good at making all my characters feel wholly unique, even down to being able to give them their own facial expressions. It's just something I wish we would see more of, but it seems like we're constantly moving backward when it comes to character creation.

At the end of the day, I don't really expect a perfect system, but I would like some freedom I guess is what I'm asking. Games where you have no choice on your characters body type, or sure you have 30-40 hair styles, like in SWTOR, but you see everyone using the same 5 because the rest are crap. I guess at the end of the day, when we're playing in a fantasy world, it kind of sucks to see everyone running around as if they were spat out of the same cookie cutter mold. And I hate running around in town in games and seeing 4-5 people from the auction house to the bank that look exactly like my character.

[arus2001]

Well, like I said, it's more than likely a hardware thing at this point than it is devs being incapable. Just think of Aion and how you can fine tune faces like it does, now imagine transmitting all that data when you're within range of someone who must interpret it to render your model, and then multiply that for every person you add. While internet connections should be able to handle this data fine, it's the user end that chugs. And if a game designer is presented with the choice of making a Super Awesome Character Creator(tm) that only 100k people might be able to reasonably utilize over a scaled down version that could open your customer base to a million plus with their 2-3+ year old PCs, it's not hard to guess what they'd choose.

This isn't to say some devs just aren't lazy, though. Some most definitely are. When you're seeing so many clones despite a high variety of options, then there's a good chance there's issue with the options beyond freakishly coincidental tastes in a given look. Regardless, look goes beyond your face to include gear, and Wardrobe options, or skinning in Aion's case, along with dyes are a feature that's steadily been gaining popularity so even if you might you might be wearing the same exact armor, they can still look different.

[Ambrosia]

Yeah character customization is definitely one of the big factors for me in an MMORPG (not #1 but maybe #2 or #3). Games with really good character customization you say? You guys have already named a few so let's see:



Current MMO: All Points Bulletin, Aion Online, Eve Online

Current MMO: (Lesser extent): Star Trek Online, Continent of the Ninth

Future MMO: (Upcoming in 2012-2014 for NA/EU market): Blade & Soul, TERA Online, Guild Wars 2, Phantasy Star Online 2, Archeage, A long shot but maybe Final Fantasy Version 2.0?



Oh and that is so true about SWTOR. Most of the hairstyles are just plain bad. Of the 40 or so you can select I only saw 4 that really looked good. I thought the character customization was going to be like Star Trek Online at the very least, but no sadly it didn't even come close to that. I have not tried EVE but I heard it is quite extensive. Aion had quite a bit of freedom. But when it came to clothing/hairstyles etc. I think APB wins. I remember my friend showing my some websites (I think they were mostly Russian) of people customizing their characters and they were extremely detailed with intricate tattoos/markings/gang insignia down to the patterns used on shirts/pants/skirts etc.) I really didn't think stuff like that could exist in an MMO, I was quite amazed if I say so myself.


Maybe those 5 I listed in the future MMO category won't be exactly like APB or Aion but they may come very close and possibly surpass them in a few areas. I wonder if there are any current or near future MMOs that I may be missing that may be added to this list that can compete with the level of detail those MMOs offer in customization. If you know of one do let me know! On another note I wonder if Aion will become F2P in the U.S. by the time May comes around with TERA. I wouldn't be surprised if half those people playing Aion will leave to try TERA out.