Letter from the Producer, XXXVII (10/26/2012)

[Siatdiat]

This is the first time I have ever seen anyone prefer fewer character creation options. Not giving a shit either way would be one thing... but actually wanting less control so you are less likely to screw up your own character is... I dunno. I'll agree that less options generally means people are less able to make abominations, but you'll never be able to avoid morons ruining your immersion when they are already running around with terrible names like The Bigguy or Omg Rofl.

Use the randomize button if you can't be bothered.

Are people really going to be mad if they can't pick a height between tallest and second tallest? Seriously. I'm talking about sliders and 4000 Color options is stupid. Pretty sure everyone wants more hairstyles and other actual distinctive options.

[Spider-Dan]

You guys are also making assumptions that crafted gear will be the BoS equipment. I'm more willing to think it's the dungeon drops.

I said something to the same effect: BoS will likely replace some of the gear that is currently EX.

[xopher]

Do people want a Color pallet for dying armor also? How many people actually want to spend 2 hours making a fucked up looking character that they regret the whole time they play? Shit is lame as hell. Limiting options slightly is going to improve my gameplay experience immensely. In this situation less is more = quality control.

good for you. The rest of us want to be able to spend 2 hours creating a character we'll love the rest of the time we play.

[Spider-Dan]

So the difference in values for the colors that already exist in the game is going to impact performance? Give me a break. The major impact on performance comes from the number of models on screen.

Right, but if you have 30 avatars on screen, it's easier to deal with the overhead when you have discrete options for height/weight/bust/etc., instead of having 5 Miqote with the same face and hair that are all just slightly slider tweaked.

If the choice is between custom sliders and more consistent performance (across a variety of hardware, including PS3), I won't cry over the loss of the sliders.

[xopher]

You act like a model with slider-based alterations isn't the same model.

[solracht]

I don't even care about sliders, but the arguments against them reached OF levels a few pages ago. Both TERA and GW2 have pre-set faces and then the option to use sliders for extra customization, so a compromise is possible as shown by these two games. If you don't want to mess with the sliders, don't - just go with pre-sets. Nobody's forcing you to spend 2 hours creating a character.

Also, worried about people making dumb-looking characters? Really? Where were you people 2 years ago? Most highlights already make your character look like a clown.

[Stromgarde]

Right, but if you have 30 avatars on screen, it's easier to deal with the overhead when you have discrete options for height/weight/bust/etc., instead of having 5 Miqote with the same face and hair that are all just slightly slider tweaked.

If the choice is between custom sliders and more consistent performance (across a variety of hardware, including PS3), I won't cry over the loss of the sliders.

Slider size for stuff like size/length/etc versus 5 choices is just greater quantization along a fixed path. That being said, consider that each letter in a name is a minimum of 5 bits (0-31) (low end, single case roman characters) to up to 16 bits (0-65536) for double-byte unicode. Per letter. While personally I think that the former is more likely for PCs at least, bear in mind that this data is only sent once when a model is initially loaded and that character customization stuff is very small in comparison to something as simple as name.

[LD]

Yep, can't wait for alpha to hit NA/EU.

[Sephiroth]

Am I imagining things or were they going to implement something in-game to allow you to change shit like hair style? They could add more hair styles at any point if they did that.

[miokomioko]

Yeah, that was mentioned quite a while back, but it was more along the lines of a "we want to do this" kind of thing.

[Gokulo]

So the difference in values for the colors that already exist in the game is going to impact performance? Give me a break. The major impact on performance comes from the number of models on screen. If that logic made any sense then we wouldn't be able to have dyes for gear.

Edit: Oh and I brought up Dark Souls and Demon Souls because there is an online element to those games. Granted there aren't many models that are on screen at once, but I still never heard of the game being limited in how many variations in characters are possible.

I should have been more specific. I also agree that anyone saying PS3 will cause character creator limitations is stupid. But in a more broad sense comparing games like XIV and DS or Skyrim is silly.

[Gulkeeva]

good for you. The rest of us want to be able to spend 2 hours creating a character we'll love the rest of the time we play.

haha I know I don't usually with the first character of some mmo's, but when I make a 2nd character it has to be "perfect"

I know for FFXIV>. your first character is your perm character, so I did spend time on it... it took a long time to decide on the chest size of miqo'te.. between moon and sun....＿冂○

[Chakra]

Except with SE's track record, they haven't necessarily been true to their word with "More Options". Hell if they add just 1 thing, it would be "More Options". This of course is semantics aside of unlocking the rest of the races & classes.

Also that fact that this is being developed for a Console, again sets a limiting bar of options for character creation. Hey I'm all for 100 different hair styles & a color wheel to broaden the base, but it's just not in SE MO.

So having Female/Male versions added for races is showing they are not true to their word on, "More options"? Also, let's try and stop treating 1.0 mistakes as potential 2.0 mistakes. Everything that was said to be touched up on has been after the development switch up and the replacement of Producer/Director.

Now... who knows. They may very well not make many models to add in at the beginning which would royally suck, but with their plan to implement barber shops, this gives them the ability to add more in later.

[Stanislaw]

Unfortunately the boards can get in trouble for what was posted here so action was taken.

Check your PMs.

Gotcha, sorry about that. Won't happen again. Would hate to see BG get in trouble because of me.

[Lucavi]

This is the first time I have ever seen anyone prefer fewer character creation options. Not giving a shit either way would be one thing... but actually wanting less control so you are less likely to screw up your own character is... I dunno. I'll agree that less options generally means people are less able to make abominations, but you'll never be able to avoid morons ruining your immersion when they are already running around with terrible names like The Bigguy or Omg Rofl.

Use the randomize button if you can't be bothered.

I think the fact that it is FF players, who are completely drenched in the way SE has handled things, speaks more than their actual comments do. To want lesschoice, freedom and option in a game is just...

I mean, I could imagine if there were 10 billion fugly characters running around, but I have yet to play any MMO with sliders where there are ass-looking characters past level 10. People typically want to enjoy looking at what they make if they're going to make it a main character, so you won't see maxed out characters looking too shitty.

But yeah, clearly less is more when it comes to SE. I suppose by those standards, 1.0 was a treasure trove of awesomeness, because we got less of just about everything.

Amazing how presets + sliders to enhance presets = oh hell no.

[Manako]

not a PS3 limitation per se, but QA is typically pretty rabid about clipping issues which could be caused by sliders, so things that a PC game might get away with (because its just internal QA) may not be as strict as something on a console which would have to be approved by Sony QA. Perhaps it is simply that internally they are anti-clipping, which is why we aren't allowed to have capes, and they tend to turn pants off for many of the shirt models.

Looking at a game like the sims 3 which uses a lot of sliders, I wonder how discrete some of them are. It feels like the body type sliders are more fixed (maybe they have 12 different variations) and the facial sliders allow for much more freedom of movement. This makes sense considering the faces typically aren't going to cause problems (they don't wear things on their face, their facial animations are rigged differently than ffxiv's), but the clothing might look bad on an oddly shaped body.

[solracht]

not a PS3 limitation per se, but QA is typically pretty rabid about clipping issues which could be caused by sliders, so things that a PC game might get away with (because its just internal QA) may not be as strict as something on a console which would have to be approved by Sony QA. Perhaps it is simply that internally they are anti-clipping, which is why we aren't allowed to have capes, and they tend to turn pants off for many of the shirt models.

Have you seen roegadyns with WHM AF and a shield?

Haubergeons and pretty much half of the armor pieces in this game cause clipping issues, and I don't really expect this to change come 2.0.

[blythe]

good for you. The rest of us want to be able to spend 2 hours creating a character we'll love the rest of the time we play.

And I don't want to have to look at the horrible crap 90% of the population will come up with. To prevent people from creating extreme models, the sliders would have to be so limited there would be no point. I don't see what's wrong with giving us plentiful nice looking, compatible pre-sets. And yes I'm aware I'm saying I want "less freedom." There is no kool-aid being drunk, I just care about aesthetics.

[Churchill]

because you're a pussy and shut the fuck up

no one cares what you want to look at, if this is a pc game then it should be fully customizeable because that is the PC standard, period. If it is the inverse as per Square SOP, then you're not going to have full customization.

[blythe]

Hey I'm not the one doing the crying. I'm happy

Seems to be a whole lot of harping on something that's never going to happen in this game