36?! I'm only level 9! Absolutely loving it though.
Props to Trion too on the handling of the server issues too. Queues the first night were like 40 mins, and each night it's gotten lower to the point it's pretty much instant login now.
I didn't play during beta, but I checked it out on opening day and I'm pretty impressed with Rift so far. I've tried a lot of different MMOs and this might be the first time I thought one was a solid competitor for WoW in terms of overall polish and features.
The game also looks a lot better in person than how the trailers have presented it so far. I'm not sure if it's just the kinds of locations and shots used in the trailers or what, but it's a good looking MMO.
One minor thing I noticed that detracted from the gameplay is the lack of audio cues in some situations. I've come to expect some sort of sound for just about everything in WoW, and it's really noticeable when it's not there. Hopefully that's an easy thing to patch in the future.
Congrats to Haz and Anux and the rest at Trion! Keep up the good work.
and Haz, the art is fantastic. however you need to go and slap whoever is responsable for making the tree bark on EVERY tree in the game look like snake skin.
Hey all, I'm on AshStone on the Defiant side right now. Got a guild going and already rocking guardian face. If anyone wants to join, jump on and IM me. Evilblah - Warrior
Hey! Thanks for buying the game guys and glad people are having fun with it but dayam, you guys are totally killing me with those screenshots! ;-P
Mind If I desperately try and claw back some street cred?! Some recent grabs of my own:
mind if i ask though, why does super-sampled AA in the game not actually look like super-sampled AA?
it's reccomended to use game settings rather than hardware forced AA, which is cool. but it just doesn't look as good as if i use hardware.
Yeah, there's been a fair amount of flak directed at us over the AA support.
Bottom line: We use a deferred renderer (there isn't really any of the Gamebryo code left in the renderer, it's all Trions). And in DX9, there's apparently a showstopping reason why a defferred renderer can't do true super sampled AA.
A DX11 client would rectify that situation, but I can't say when that might be.
Wow this really tempting you jerks, I'll have to check this out but I'm on spring break and want to get some work done. This is exactly the type of assets I want to see a polycounter working on.
really loving the epic public quests - Just fought off a major water invasion in Freemarch during lunch. I have a Defiant on the Stonecrest server, a pyromancer named Virinis.
looking sweet, i dont do MMO's but i was watching my friend play over his shoulder the otherday. very polished, i cant really say that about any other mmos besides wow.
Just thought I'd put it out there again. Me and some friends play as Defiants on the Rasmolov server (PvP). My chars there are Ballbreaker, and Chucknorris.
If anyone wants to, you're more than welcome to join
eld: Yeah we are using gamebryo, but its hard to really say that - if someone was to license the engine / tool off the shelf and compare it with what we are using, it would be like using 2 vastly different toolsets. This is my second project with Gamebryo and both times weve gutted the entire rendering side of things just for starters.
eld: Yeah we are using gamebryo, but its hard to really say that - if someone was to license the engine / tool off the shelf and compare it with what we are using, it would be like using 2 vastly different toolsets. This is my second project with Gamebryo and both times weve gutted the entire rendering side of things just for starters.
Yeah true, I'm not of the illogical "gamebryo creates cancer in everything it touched" kind of crowd.
I can see how studios would need to develop further on the gamebryo codebase since the company behind is no longer around.
But still, content over rendering engine, and it shows in rift.
I must say this is one of the most polished mmos to be released. Everything from UI to gameplay is very well implemented. Good job to those who worked on this!
eld: Totally agree man, its all about the team and how they utilise the tools given. On the other hand tho, exceptional tools in the hands of an exceptional artists well...
dom: Woah dude, mad props coming from you!! - I really appreciate it, ill be sure to pass it on to the team!
Great job on the game, first of all it was the smoothest launch of any MMO I've tried before, second the game is fun as hell.
Not only is riding around Riftbusting major rifts pretty fun, but when invasions happen all hell breaks loose, that's even more fun.
Can't wait to get into the higher level zones and content.
I'm on Shatterbone (PvE) with a couple of buddies.
EDIT: Can't wait to upgrade video card so I don't have to play on low quality renderer, but props to you guys for including that feature so people like myself with shitty computers can still enjoy the game.
HEY! I just wanted to share that last night I got my fiance into Rift. Now she is running around as a cleric kicking ass for the Lord! This will be one of the first games we play together like this and I am super stoked! We played for about 3 hours last night!!
HEY! I just wanted to share that last night I got my fiance into Rift. Now she is running around as a cleric kicking ass for the Lord! This will be one of the first games we play together like this and I am super stoked! We played for about 3 hours last night!!
dude... soon she'll be wanting to wait behind to loot all the mobs while you're trying to push on to the next rift.
in before devorce due to you rolling need on something she wanted.
Hahaha this game is great for couples though. Duoing stuff makes things really fly.
Good to see people enjoying the game. I have a hard time trying to resist playing it so much.
@almighty_gir - I already thought of that! I rolled a rogue, she a cleric, I am using firearms, she maces, armor is different, and I am letting her snag all the artifacts because I have another character (that is higher level) snagging artifacts for me. Haha!
@Anuxinamoon - Yeah it is. I am really happy with this experience so far. Can't wait to take her into her first instance or warfront.
Man, I'm feeling really disappointed right now. I REALLY wanted to get into this game. I loved just about everything about it. Great artwork, loved the class/skill system - absolutely adored the concept. And the game ran like a dream when I played it.
But when I wound up playing in the beta I tried it for one day and just couldn't bring myself to do more than that. For two reasons. I couldn't for the life of me create a character I wanted to play. I was reasonably pleased with what I could do to the face, but I had few hair options - and regardless, my head was stuck on this stocky body.
I am a thin guy. A really thin guy. I weigh less than 110lbs. I like to make characters somewhat reflective of that. But no matter what, I just felt like this beefy, clunky looking guy character. It was even a neat character if you're into that sort of thing, it just wasn't at all the type of character I wanted to play.
It looks like females do not necessarily suffer this same problem, obviously it won't be hard to get a thin girl character. As is so commonly the case. But I'm not one of those guys who plays girl characters.
And the second thing - invisible walls. Maybe these aren't common for all parts of the game, but I ran into a lot of them in my small bit of time playing. I started it up, am running around this castle thing, ok got a couple quick intro quests done. Pop out into a town that seems to be involved in a battle, ok sweet. And then "Woah, look at that cool stuff over there. Man I want to get there bad." *walks up small hill* "...wait, what? Invisible wall? Why invisible wall, I totally should be able to get over there!"
And then later I find I actually can get over to where I was trying to get to. Like right at the spot I was trying to get to, right on the other side of this invisible wall. I just had to spend an extra minute going around a different way and I couldn't really find good reason for it. There wasn't anything special about going the proper way from what I could tell.
Totally turned me off of the game. I wanted to play it. I wanted to enjoy the beauty of the game and really dive into the gameplay system. This sounded like my perfect MMO. But I just couldn't force myself to do it. The most fun I had playing the initial tutorial areas was when I died, and could wander around having an out of body experience and really take things in.
Ah well. It was a great game and there's so much potential there. I'm sure a majority of people will be real happy. Just wish I could've found more in it for myself. I never want to play a beefy looking guy with short hair. There's a long hair option? Yeah, I found a good one. It just had a bunch of sticks in it. Literally, sticks in it. And leaves.
Soooo, you won't be playing the game because you can't make a thin male character and had to walk around an invisible wall for an extra minute? O.o
Anyhoo, I picked this up on Sunday. Loving it so far. Gorgeous game, tons of build options, awesome public quest/RIFT system, familiar gameplay. All around happy right now. Great job and thank you to everyone who worked on this!
Soooo, you won't be playing the game because you can't make a thin male character and had to walk around an invisible wall for an extra minute? O.o
Haha, yeah I guess you could sum it up that way. I can be a pretty picky person, I know. I don't think it's totally unreasonable, though, do you? I mean. Focusing on and building up your avatar is sort of a huge part of the MMO experience. As is exploring the game world. The invisible wall thing I probably could've gotten used to if I was playing a character I really dug. Really though, "thin male character". It's not like I'm looking for the ability to alter individual limb length or add horns or goat hooves or have glowing green cyborg eyes.
Maybe I'll get lucky with an expansion adding a new race or something of the sort a ways down the line. *shrug* I'll certainly keep an eye on it.
That being said, I still thought it was an awesome looking game. And I can tell the people who worked on it really put a lot into it - and it shows. Not going to let my personal character tastes get in the way of that acknowledgement, so thumbs up to those who worked on it nonetheless. :thumbup:
I am a thin guy. A really thin guy. I weigh less than 110lbs. I like to make characters somewhat reflective of that. But no matter what, I just felt like this beefy, clunky looking guy character.
Hey Two Listen!
Thanks for the thoughts man, its always genuinely interesting for me to hear feedback and oppinions especially with regard to character related things!
But theres something I wanted to ask you about this comment in particular.
If something like this can prevent you from playing a game - do you not play god of war or red dead redemption for the same reason? Or do you not care about it as much because in those games you expect to take on the role of a 'hero' in a storyline as opposed to taking on the role of 'you' in the storyline?
I think about this kind of stuff all the time, all aspects of peoples thoughts regarding how they should look, and how much control / customisation a player should have over their toon in an mmo is interesting to me!
eld: apologies for being seemingly pedantic about this, but there are so many misconceptions and mis-statements out there about Rift and Gamebryo ("the reason Rift looks exactly like X game is they share the same engine", that sort of thing) that I did just want to clarify something If I may: The term 'game engine' can obviously be perceived to mean different things. Sure there's maybe some code in there that's Gamebryo that's the framework of the game, but the actual *renderer* is all Trions. The deferred aspect, the shadows, the hemispheric lighting, the shaders, there's nothing in there that's Gamebryo code. We add to it all the time (e.g anyone playing today will notice a huge upgrade soon in the exterior lighting in an imminent patch). So it just gnaws away at me when I see people describing the renderer as Gamebryo, when it's basically not, we chucked it.
Big fan of your minecraft texture pack btw, can't play without it...
Thanks for the thoughts man, its always genuinely interesting for me to hear feedback and oppinions especially with regard to character related things!
But theres something I wanted to ask you about this comment in particular.
If something like this can prevent you from playing a game - do you not play god of war or red dead redemption for the same reason? Or do you not care about it as much because in those games you expect to take on the role of a 'hero' in a storyline as opposed to taking on the role of 'you' in the storyline?
I think about this kind of stuff all the time, all aspects of peoples thoughts regarding how they should look, and how much control / customisation a player should have over their toon in an mmo is interesting to me!
Ah, yeah sure I don't mind elaborating a bit.
Something of that nature wouldn't stop me from playing God of War or something similar, no not at all. For pretty much the reasons you specified. It's a predetermined character, with a persona and story all its own. It's own history, it's own personality, obviously the character's design and look is going to be part of the package. When you step into a game like Jak and Daxter or God of War or Doom 3, or Prototype, or what have you, you're not stepping into a role playing experience. If I'm going to sit down to play Doom 3, I'm going to sit down and be that last man standing ready to kick the shit out of demons.
MMOs though are a lot different than that. Think of any MMO you can. Guild Wars, Aion, City of Heroes, Final Fantasy. I'd bet my savings that if you go to related forums - official or fan operated, that you'd have at least one HUGE thread for people to post their toons. When I sit down to play any MMO, I always put a lot of thought into what sort of toon I'm going to be making. I've got this persona in my head, because an MMO grants you that freedom. Besides - additionally, I buy something like Prototype, ok, I paid $50, cool, get to play through the story and what not. But I buy an MMO, I'm buying the game, and more often than not I'm paying monthly as well. Which isn't really a big deal, it's just, on my $9 an hour job right now - haha, you know, kinda counting pennies sometimes. Can't have a bunch of different MMOs at once.
I'm not a "roleplayer" to any extent. I don't like to sit there and pretend that I actually am my character and when I'm playing Oblivion I don't give a shit about having my character eat or try to actually "become" that Dark Brotherhood assassin. But when I play a game that gives me the freedom of creating my own character, especially one I'll be leveling up and expanding upon myself for sometimes months at a time - I at least want to be able to connect in some manner to the character I'm staring at as I run back and forth from quest to quest, monster to monster. Playstyle often serves a variable you can decide upon by class, clothing and such by armor, etc. But there's only one chance you get to decide just the basic look of your character, and that's at character creation.
I don't expect ridiculously detailed Oblivion or Aion style sliders for every feature and proportion possible. Sure it can be cool, but I don't expect it for everything. But I do like at least to have a decent range to choose from. In Guild Wars if I didn't want to be the bulky warrior I could be the thin ranger, or the even thinner Necromancer. In FFXIV you've got your tall elf thing, your itty bitty lalafells, your huge muscular male race, as well as some more normal human or cat thing to choose from. Rift just didn't seem to give me that. I could do some pretty cool things with the face - could even change the angle/length of my ears sometimes! Facial hair, lots of hair colors, that sort of thing. But then it went down to body and I had a slider for, if I recall, kind of just a basic height that might've just scaled the entire character (I don't remember exactly). My character looked great from an art standpoint, I would've really liked to see these characters in the world and interact with them. It just...was not what I wanted to play myself. If there was a simple "weight" slider, I would've been set in a heartbeat. I can deal with sticks in my long hair, heh.
A lot of guys I guess like to look muscular, the whole big arms broad shoulders thing. It shows - in games like Aion where you can create just about anything under the sun, most guys are huge as can be. I just can't get into that. I prefer lean characters. And if I can get long hair - I'll take it! Especially for games in fantasy settings, it's really common in fantasy/fictional movies for longer hair on guys but in games they might toss you one ponytail. You'll have 10 different hairstyles of a real short length, comb overs, that covering one eye emo look, the thing that looks like a shampoo mohawk, etc. And then toss you the one longish braided ponytail or something.
Sometimes I think the reason for not adding a weight body slider or longer hair is due to technical stuff - armor problems that might arise or something. But if it's feasible for female characters, I know that's not always the case.
...ah...I ramble way too much. Anyway, I think you get the idea. In Guild Wars I played a necromancer most often, had a lean villain in CoH/CoV, chose the smaller more average sized human race in FFXIV, etc.
It's kinda silly, I know. I've tried in the past to just sort of overlook it. But if I'm going to be doing that, I figure might as well stick to something a bit cheaper. I suppose everyone's got those odd little things they get hung up on.
Yeah, I'm kinda like the way Two Listen is. The difference is that I go in with a very specific idea in mind of what kind of character I want to play. So hopefully there's enough customization within the game to let me hit that theoretical character at some point. Games that don't have enough customization options for me to make just the right one, end up completely shutting me off.
Rift does one of the most awesome things with the soul system. Especially the way that within a class you can build so many roles. So if I have an idea for huge big guy with a two-handed weapon that does nature-based attacks, ok, play a Druid. Or a small dude shooting death magic, just make a warlock or something. And interestingly enough, the Cleric which can be a Druid, can also be a Cabalist. So it hits both of those within the same character. Stuff like that.
It also had to do with the role. Say I want to play a nature-based offensive class. In other games it's almost guaranteed that a nature-based class is a healer, meaning not offensive. So tough luck. But Rift has enough options that you can pull it off (Druid, Chloromancer). Although more would always be welcome.
What it's missing is some armor customization. I need a Scottish kilt.
A lot of developers are going to shy away from making (intentionally) hideous female characters or weak males. This reminds me of when Blizz introduced the Blood Elf males in WoW and how there was an uproar over how slender they were (to put it kindly). Blizz gave in: http://www.2fps.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/oldnew01-1.jpg
There are a lot of things that go into character customization that often seem counter intuitive to players. On Guild Wars we were able to mine data on which faces and hair styles were most popular among players. We tried to make a decent variety, but the argument can be made that you want to be making stuff that most of your player base can enjoy. So does that mean you drop the offbeat selections (disfigurements, exotic styles, etc.) even though a minority of players really want it? Is it worth it to spend an equal amount of time on an asset that will be only picked by a fraction of players?
Obviously the value of visual variety should not be underestimated, but some people think you should keep the player characters heroic and attractive and leave the fat/old/skinny characters as NPCs. Or you can give players ultimate control like in Aion/Perfect World where the results are as likely to be hideous as gorgeous.
It's not hard to make a slender option, and it's usually not about technical limitations (well, sometimes... ). It's about what decisions were made to appeal to as many people as possible for fearing alienating potential players. Throw in the increasingly global nature of MMO games and wanting to be successful in other markets where sensibilities for characters can be drastically different makes things even more difficult.
That aside, I do think it would be nice if there were some more variety in Rift characters, particularly between the factions, but, again, I've been through character customization stuff enough to understand the reasoning behind it. Thankfully the selections that are available are nice. Besides, I usually have no qualms picking attractive female characters. Thanks, Haz!
BTW: I've not run into any invisible walls yet... but maybe that was fixed for release or maybe I haven't been as adventurous in my exploration. However, there are a few other things that I've noticed such as not being able to swim up and forward at the same time (holding jump and pressing forward), spells not visually being cast sometimes, many sounds being nearly inaudible underwater, no camera collision with water surface plane, sometimes self cast spells require two clicks if you don't have yourself targeted already, and some other minor stuff that I can't remember at the moment. Not that I want to turn this into a bug thread or anything, but I'm hopeful you Trion folks can take note of it if you haven't already! It's always encouraging to see the steady mini patches you've been releasing to iron stuff out, and I'm really looking forward to the new lighting Daz mentioned.
A lot of developers are going to shy away from making (intentionally) hideous female characters or weak males. This reminds me of when Blizz introduced the Blood Elf males in WoW and how there was an uproar over how slender they were (to put it kindly). Blizz gave in: http://www.2fps.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/oldnew01-1.jpg
See. That change they implemented. That would really annoy me. I've never been interested in WoW, but if I were a player that would really annoy me. Both the old and new versions even still look identifiably as members of the same race. Why on Earth would you not just have both? (They didn't keep both, did they?) Does it really make sense if you were going to play, say...a mage, to be that huge to begin with? With your shoulder nearly eclipsing the size of your head? Of course by WoW standards I guess that's pretty tame.
I know they're appealing to as many people as possible. On a related note, for me the whole "Oh we're the same race so we all have to have the exact same build and muscle mass" has always been a blow to immersion.
Besides, if you were to implement a weight slider, I can pretty much guarantee it'd be used to some degree by most everybody. It's not the same as throwing in a type of facial hair or face template that only a few would choose, making the time it would take to implement worthwhile for the entire playerbase.
See. That change they implemented. That would really annoy me. I've never been interested in WoW, but if I were a player that would really annoy me. Both the old and new versions even still look identifiably as members of the same race. Why on Earth would you not just have both? (They didn't keep both, did they?)
Yeah, that's the part I don't get. Why not keep both?
Too many options is bad too. You can easily get into the Football Helmet Clown Shoes territory that way, as Sirlin puts it. But if they've already done the work, and people (however few) already like it, then why not?
The part that I really never understood is how come when they add character NPCs they don't make them playable too? Might as well I'd think. Like in WoW with the Lich King expansion they added the Vrykul. Which are characters and have equipment slots. So I would think you might as well make them playable as well and give the players more options. I'm real curious as to how come it doesn't happen that way.
Replies
[ame]
Out for a swim.
What I looked like at the end of beta 5.
BTW Hazardous, played around with High Elves last night, was really digging the character art on those. Not sure if that's you or not, but good job
PS
Gnarlwood seems to be the Polycount server.
Smooth that cooch!!
Didn't think it would be so exciting to launch an MMO!! THis guy is totally pumped:
[ame]
Shakeweightin...... bruh.
o/
I'm not sure if I'm excited enough to do a naked video of me with a Shakeweight, but I'm pretty damn excited.
Props to Trion too on the handling of the server issues too. Queues the first night were like 40 mins, and each night it's gotten lower to the point it's pretty much instant login now.
my toon so far.
The game also looks a lot better in person than how the trailers have presented it so far. I'm not sure if it's just the kinds of locations and shots used in the trailers or what, but it's a good looking MMO.
One minor thing I noticed that detracted from the gameplay is the lack of audio cues in some situations. I've come to expect some sort of sound for just about everything in WoW, and it's really noticeable when it's not there. Hopefully that's an easy thing to patch in the future.
Congrats to Haz and Anux and the rest at Trion! Keep up the good work.
and Haz, the art is fantastic. however you need to go and slap whoever is responsable for making the tree bark on EVERY tree in the game look like snake skin.
Mind If I desperately try and claw back some street cred?! Some recent grabs of my own:
rank 41 now... got 3 50's in guild.
mind if i ask though, why does super-sampled AA in the game not actually look like super-sampled AA?
it's reccomended to use game settings rather than hardware forced AA, which is cool. but it just doesn't look as good as if i use hardware.
Bottom line: We use a deferred renderer (there isn't really any of the Gamebryo code left in the renderer, it's all Trions). And in DX9, there's apparently a showstopping reason why a defferred renderer can't do true super sampled AA.
A DX11 client would rectify that situation, but I can't say when that might be.
If anyone wants to, you're more than welcome to join
Gamebryo eh?
eld: Yeah we are using gamebryo, but its hard to really say that - if someone was to license the engine / tool off the shelf and compare it with what we are using, it would be like using 2 vastly different toolsets. This is my second project with Gamebryo and both times weve gutted the entire rendering side of things just for starters.
Yeah true, I'm not of the illogical "gamebryo creates cancer in everything it touched" kind of crowd.
I can see how studios would need to develop further on the gamebryo codebase since the company behind is no longer around.
But still, content over rendering engine, and it shows in rift.
dom: Woah dude, mad props coming from you!! - I really appreciate it, ill be sure to pass it on to the team!
Not only is riding around Riftbusting major rifts pretty fun, but when invasions happen all hell breaks loose, that's even more fun.
Can't wait to get into the higher level zones and content.
I'm on Shatterbone (PvE) with a couple of buddies.
EDIT: Can't wait to upgrade video card so I don't have to play on low quality renderer, but props to you guys for including that feature so people like myself with shitty computers can still enjoy the game.
dude... soon she'll be wanting to wait behind to loot all the mobs while you're trying to push on to the next rift.
in before devorce due to you rolling need on something she wanted.
Good to see people enjoying the game. I have a hard time trying to resist playing it so much.
Daz: Post moar screens please!
@Anuxinamoon - Yeah it is. I am really happy with this experience so far. Can't wait to take her into her first instance or warfront.
But when I wound up playing in the beta I tried it for one day and just couldn't bring myself to do more than that. For two reasons. I couldn't for the life of me create a character I wanted to play. I was reasonably pleased with what I could do to the face, but I had few hair options - and regardless, my head was stuck on this stocky body.
I am a thin guy. A really thin guy. I weigh less than 110lbs. I like to make characters somewhat reflective of that. But no matter what, I just felt like this beefy, clunky looking guy character. It was even a neat character if you're into that sort of thing, it just wasn't at all the type of character I wanted to play.
It looks like females do not necessarily suffer this same problem, obviously it won't be hard to get a thin girl character. As is so commonly the case. But I'm not one of those guys who plays girl characters.
And the second thing - invisible walls. Maybe these aren't common for all parts of the game, but I ran into a lot of them in my small bit of time playing. I started it up, am running around this castle thing, ok got a couple quick intro quests done. Pop out into a town that seems to be involved in a battle, ok sweet. And then "Woah, look at that cool stuff over there. Man I want to get there bad." *walks up small hill* "...wait, what? Invisible wall? Why invisible wall, I totally should be able to get over there!"
And then later I find I actually can get over to where I was trying to get to. Like right at the spot I was trying to get to, right on the other side of this invisible wall. I just had to spend an extra minute going around a different way and I couldn't really find good reason for it. There wasn't anything special about going the proper way from what I could tell.
Totally turned me off of the game. I wanted to play it. I wanted to enjoy the beauty of the game and really dive into the gameplay system. This sounded like my perfect MMO. But I just couldn't force myself to do it. The most fun I had playing the initial tutorial areas was when I died, and could wander around having an out of body experience and really take things in.
Ah well. It was a great game and there's so much potential there. I'm sure a majority of people will be real happy. Just wish I could've found more in it for myself. I never want to play a beefy looking guy with short hair. There's a long hair option? Yeah, I found a good one. It just had a bunch of sticks in it. Literally, sticks in it. And leaves.
Anyhoo, I picked this up on Sunday. Loving it so far. Gorgeous game, tons of build options, awesome public quest/RIFT system, familiar gameplay. All around happy right now. Great job and thank you to everyone who worked on this!
Haha, yeah I guess you could sum it up that way. I can be a pretty picky person, I know. I don't think it's totally unreasonable, though, do you? I mean. Focusing on and building up your avatar is sort of a huge part of the MMO experience. As is exploring the game world. The invisible wall thing I probably could've gotten used to if I was playing a character I really dug. Really though, "thin male character". It's not like I'm looking for the ability to alter individual limb length or add horns or goat hooves or have glowing green cyborg eyes.
Maybe I'll get lucky with an expansion adding a new race or something of the sort a ways down the line. *shrug* I'll certainly keep an eye on it.
That being said, I still thought it was an awesome looking game. And I can tell the people who worked on it really put a lot into it - and it shows. Not going to let my personal character tastes get in the way of that acknowledgement, so thumbs up to those who worked on it nonetheless. :thumbup:
Hey Two Listen!
Thanks for the thoughts man, its always genuinely interesting for me to hear feedback and oppinions especially with regard to character related things!
But theres something I wanted to ask you about this comment in particular.
If something like this can prevent you from playing a game - do you not play god of war or red dead redemption for the same reason? Or do you not care about it as much because in those games you expect to take on the role of a 'hero' in a storyline as opposed to taking on the role of 'you' in the storyline?
I think about this kind of stuff all the time, all aspects of peoples thoughts regarding how they should look, and how much control / customisation a player should have over their toon in an mmo is interesting to me!
Big fan of your minecraft texture pack btw, can't play without it...
Ah, yeah sure I don't mind elaborating a bit.
Something of that nature wouldn't stop me from playing God of War or something similar, no not at all. For pretty much the reasons you specified. It's a predetermined character, with a persona and story all its own. It's own history, it's own personality, obviously the character's design and look is going to be part of the package. When you step into a game like Jak and Daxter or God of War or Doom 3, or Prototype, or what have you, you're not stepping into a role playing experience. If I'm going to sit down to play Doom 3, I'm going to sit down and be that last man standing ready to kick the shit out of demons.
MMOs though are a lot different than that. Think of any MMO you can. Guild Wars, Aion, City of Heroes, Final Fantasy. I'd bet my savings that if you go to related forums - official or fan operated, that you'd have at least one HUGE thread for people to post their toons. When I sit down to play any MMO, I always put a lot of thought into what sort of toon I'm going to be making. I've got this persona in my head, because an MMO grants you that freedom. Besides - additionally, I buy something like Prototype, ok, I paid $50, cool, get to play through the story and what not. But I buy an MMO, I'm buying the game, and more often than not I'm paying monthly as well. Which isn't really a big deal, it's just, on my $9 an hour job right now - haha, you know, kinda counting pennies sometimes. Can't have a bunch of different MMOs at once.
I'm not a "roleplayer" to any extent. I don't like to sit there and pretend that I actually am my character and when I'm playing Oblivion I don't give a shit about having my character eat or try to actually "become" that Dark Brotherhood assassin. But when I play a game that gives me the freedom of creating my own character, especially one I'll be leveling up and expanding upon myself for sometimes months at a time - I at least want to be able to connect in some manner to the character I'm staring at as I run back and forth from quest to quest, monster to monster. Playstyle often serves a variable you can decide upon by class, clothing and such by armor, etc. But there's only one chance you get to decide just the basic look of your character, and that's at character creation.
I don't expect ridiculously detailed Oblivion or Aion style sliders for every feature and proportion possible. Sure it can be cool, but I don't expect it for everything. But I do like at least to have a decent range to choose from. In Guild Wars if I didn't want to be the bulky warrior I could be the thin ranger, or the even thinner Necromancer. In FFXIV you've got your tall elf thing, your itty bitty lalafells, your huge muscular male race, as well as some more normal human or cat thing to choose from. Rift just didn't seem to give me that. I could do some pretty cool things with the face - could even change the angle/length of my ears sometimes! Facial hair, lots of hair colors, that sort of thing. But then it went down to body and I had a slider for, if I recall, kind of just a basic height that might've just scaled the entire character (I don't remember exactly). My character looked great from an art standpoint, I would've really liked to see these characters in the world and interact with them. It just...was not what I wanted to play myself. If there was a simple "weight" slider, I would've been set in a heartbeat. I can deal with sticks in my long hair, heh.
A lot of guys I guess like to look muscular, the whole big arms broad shoulders thing. It shows - in games like Aion where you can create just about anything under the sun, most guys are huge as can be. I just can't get into that. I prefer lean characters. And if I can get long hair - I'll take it! Especially for games in fantasy settings, it's really common in fantasy/fictional movies for longer hair on guys but in games they might toss you one ponytail. You'll have 10 different hairstyles of a real short length, comb overs, that covering one eye emo look, the thing that looks like a shampoo mohawk, etc. And then toss you the one longish braided ponytail or something.
Sometimes I think the reason for not adding a weight body slider or longer hair is due to technical stuff - armor problems that might arise or something. But if it's feasible for female characters, I know that's not always the case.
...ah...I ramble way too much. Anyway, I think you get the idea. In Guild Wars I played a necromancer most often, had a lean villain in CoH/CoV, chose the smaller more average sized human race in FFXIV, etc.
It's kinda silly, I know. I've tried in the past to just sort of overlook it. But if I'm going to be doing that, I figure might as well stick to something a bit cheaper. I suppose everyone's got those odd little things they get hung up on.
Rift does one of the most awesome things with the soul system. Especially the way that within a class you can build so many roles. So if I have an idea for huge big guy with a two-handed weapon that does nature-based attacks, ok, play a Druid. Or a small dude shooting death magic, just make a warlock or something. And interestingly enough, the Cleric which can be a Druid, can also be a Cabalist. So it hits both of those within the same character. Stuff like that.
It also had to do with the role. Say I want to play a nature-based offensive class. In other games it's almost guaranteed that a nature-based class is a healer, meaning not offensive. So tough luck. But Rift has enough options that you can pull it off (Druid, Chloromancer). Although more would always be welcome.
What it's missing is some armor customization. I need a Scottish kilt.
A lot of developers are going to shy away from making (intentionally) hideous female characters or weak males. This reminds me of when Blizz introduced the Blood Elf males in WoW and how there was an uproar over how slender they were (to put it kindly). Blizz gave in:
http://www.2fps.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/oldnew01-1.jpg
There are a lot of things that go into character customization that often seem counter intuitive to players. On Guild Wars we were able to mine data on which faces and hair styles were most popular among players. We tried to make a decent variety, but the argument can be made that you want to be making stuff that most of your player base can enjoy. So does that mean you drop the offbeat selections (disfigurements, exotic styles, etc.) even though a minority of players really want it? Is it worth it to spend an equal amount of time on an asset that will be only picked by a fraction of players?
Obviously the value of visual variety should not be underestimated, but some people think you should keep the player characters heroic and attractive and leave the fat/old/skinny characters as NPCs. Or you can give players ultimate control like in Aion/Perfect World where the results are as likely to be hideous as gorgeous.
It's not hard to make a slender option, and it's usually not about technical limitations (well, sometimes... ). It's about what decisions were made to appeal to as many people as possible for fearing alienating potential players. Throw in the increasingly global nature of MMO games and wanting to be successful in other markets where sensibilities for characters can be drastically different makes things even more difficult.
That aside, I do think it would be nice if there were some more variety in Rift characters, particularly between the factions, but, again, I've been through character customization stuff enough to understand the reasoning behind it. Thankfully the selections that are available are nice. Besides, I usually have no qualms picking attractive female characters. Thanks, Haz!
BTW: I've not run into any invisible walls yet... but maybe that was fixed for release or maybe I haven't been as adventurous in my exploration. However, there are a few other things that I've noticed such as not being able to swim up and forward at the same time (holding jump and pressing forward), spells not visually being cast sometimes, many sounds being nearly inaudible underwater, no camera collision with water surface plane, sometimes self cast spells require two clicks if you don't have yourself targeted already, and some other minor stuff that I can't remember at the moment. Not that I want to turn this into a bug thread or anything, but I'm hopeful you Trion folks can take note of it if you haven't already! It's always encouraging to see the steady mini patches you've been releasing to iron stuff out, and I'm really looking forward to the new lighting Daz mentioned.
See. That change they implemented. That would really annoy me. I've never been interested in WoW, but if I were a player that would really annoy me. Both the old and new versions even still look identifiably as members of the same race. Why on Earth would you not just have both? (They didn't keep both, did they?) Does it really make sense if you were going to play, say...a mage, to be that huge to begin with? With your shoulder nearly eclipsing the size of your head? Of course by WoW standards I guess that's pretty tame.
I know they're appealing to as many people as possible. On a related note, for me the whole "Oh we're the same race so we all have to have the exact same build and muscle mass" has always been a blow to immersion.
Besides, if you were to implement a weight slider, I can pretty much guarantee it'd be used to some degree by most everybody. It's not the same as throwing in a type of facial hair or face template that only a few would choose, making the time it would take to implement worthwhile for the entire playerbase.
Yeah, that's the part I don't get. Why not keep both?
Too many options is bad too. You can easily get into the Football Helmet Clown Shoes territory that way, as Sirlin puts it. But if they've already done the work, and people (however few) already like it, then why not?
The part that I really never understood is how come when they add character NPCs they don't make them playable too? Might as well I'd think. Like in WoW with the Lich King expansion they added the Vrykul. Which are characters and have equipment slots. So I would think you might as well make them playable as well and give the players more options. I'm real curious as to how come it doesn't happen that way.