f13.net

When I ran into the GW-hits-a-million article, I made the mistake of poking around IGN a bit more. I came across what some are predictably reporting (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/press_release.php?aid=11648) as an "interesting" survey on MMOers. Of course, they're not mentioning that these are just MMOers who a) love the genre enough to go seek more info about it, and b) actually think IGN has a lot to add to discussions about it. Clicky the linky for the full thing. I didn't copy/paste it because you know this stuff already.

One statement stuck out though:
Character customization? Really?

Character customization is often requested by players as a nice wish. Yet players don't stick with a game because of the color of the lipstick they chose, like they don't stay with a game just because they love the license. The game is either fun and playable or it is not. Regardless of how many different patterns one can choose from for their tendrils, a bug-riddled nigh incomplete and inconsistent mess is not going to have broad sustainable appeal.

Besides, who's playing at a resolution and point of view where that pattern matters in the first place? Sure it might be nice to ratchet the graphics sliders up to see teeth crowns. But who does this for long, and particularly, who cares during the bulk of play which involves either combat, or interactive crafting?

To be fair though, "character customization" could mean both the at-creation look and the  ongoing customization offered through items. That, to me, would make the most sense. People do enjoy looking different from everyone else, regardless of resolution and point of view. Hit Thunder Steppes, Ironforge, or Lok and no two players look the same because of the stuff those characters acquired along their way there.

Equipment-base customization is not typically part of the common defintion of "customization", but I sincerely hope it is for the purposes of this survey. If it's not, then I question the result.

Anecdotal:

I knew 4 people who hung around in SWG as long as they had because they loved the ability to change their appearance and customize their house.  They were social gamers, and didn't give 2 shits for anything other than dancing/ musicianship and the crafting system.  Oh, and being fast enough to not get killed by any of the mobs as they ran to their house.

COH - people not on hardcore gaming sites talk much more about the customization and freedom of how you look than any of the gameplay.  The gameplay is nice, but the love for the customization is there.

It's safe to say that customization won't save a game, but it can be the basis for it in a social setting (Second Life) or really enhance decent gameplay for 'normal' people who are where the market wants to expand.   Biggest complaint from non-hardcores I hear in WoW is that everyone looks the same.  They don't just mean faces and hairstyles, but that does account for a lot of it.

Customization is very, very important to me.

Not just how my character looks but what skills he has, what items he has, etc.  It is one of the first things I look for in an MMO.  It almost always has been.  Even back in my mudding days I tended toward muds that had more strongly defined characters and a progression that involved customizability (not that there were many).

Admittedly I'm semi-hardcore.

Gabe.

People also say that they're tired of seeing smut on TV.  Then they turn on their computer and go for the hardcore porn. 

Point being that what people say they want and what they actually want are sometimes different.  Its difficult to imagine that a group of people who want character customization over all have made CoH a modest success while 1,000,000 of them play WoW.  No one wants to say that they are in it for the Ding Grats and the higher-DPS sword.  But they are.

I dislike games without much character customization. It was a glaring fault of EQ after coming from the crazy UO with all the articles of clothes and armor you could don. Sure, there was a lot of decent looking gear in EQ, you just had to level and camp like mad to get it.

Anyway, count me amonst those who feel that customization is essential, the more the better. I don't want to look like every schmuck in the game, it's nice to be able to customize to an avatar you feel comfortable existing as. Being stuck wearing a nasty robe in EQ because it has the best stats just sucks imo.

Most of these mmogs are basically the same anyway, kill, loot, repeat. At least one can look good while doing it.

Even Planetside has a small level of customization via the medals/awards and outfit patches.

If you can't be unique, you can't be the hero.

That's exactly why I play WoW.  It's Diablo with other people - oh and no end.  Ever.

WoW is a ding generator.

It's not the "hero" thing for me.

If anything I think the "I want to be a hero" thing is over-rated.  I don't want to be a hero -- I want a fun game.  The "hero" stuff comes from static content, content I can get in a single-player game.  It's the gameplay that really keeps me playing an MMO.

I just get excited about crafting unique builds, looks, equipment setups, etc. for my character.  If I can come up with some unique set of skills or items or look that other people wouldn't have thought would have worked then I'm having fun.  Even if I'm sub-optimal.  I'm that guy that plays around with weird Javazon builds in D2 and end up rocking even though everyone "knows" that bowazon is better.

If nothing else, customizability introduces a "skill" to MMO's that hits my Fun-spot.  I don't just have to whack-a-mob to earn a ding.  I get to find different effective setups and techniques for whacking that mob that others haven't thought of.

Gabe.

Customization isn't just physical looks, but that's a big part of it. But I think most MMOG devs have failed at customization, either because they don't build enough into it (/wave WoW) or because they focused on the wrong things (/wave EQ2 and SWG). CoH got it right on the front end, but it does lack a little bit of character customization on the back end, you know in the game itself. But where you can customize your character in COH is in the stuff people will actually see, your size, build, and all kinds of different costume types. In EQ2, they were more concerned with being able to shape the size and shape of your nose or the color of your eyes, all of which WILL NOT be seen by the majority of people who play. You have to approach physical customization on the 3-yard rule approach, i.e. what will look good at 3-yards from the character. Nothing else much matters.

Also, keep in mind this survey was done by IGN, so its participants were all regular Vault-users. Do I have to draw that particular bell curve for you?

It would have to be you - I can freehand perfect curves all day but drawing a straight line by hand eludes me.

Customization is dead last on my list. If everyone in the game all looked exactly alike (which in Planetside they pretty much do) I'd still play it if it had the gameplay I was looking for. Again this is from the perspective that the character is not me but instead is my (s)pawn.

Customization, to me, is EXTREMELY important, but only in as much as it lets me make a character I like the look of.

Morrowind, for example, NEEDS more customization because the artists who put together the character models did an extremely bad job of it.  If you give me sliders for nose length and eye angles and all that, I am highly confident that I could come up with something way more palatable (to me, at least) than any of the artists did.

World of Warcraft, on the other hand, has a lot of models I do like.  Even though there are a lot of zombies with the same hair style as me, as long as I can play a character who I think looks cool, I don't care.  There's enough differentiation in WoW that I rarely run into people who look exactly like me, and that little difference is all I really need.

To me, anyway, this is something of a game-breaker.  If you expect me to play Game X for 100 hours, you'd better ensure that I'm playing a character I like, and if you can't ensure that, at least give me the option to make one myself.  Gameplay and all that stuff needs to be in there too, but if I'm stuck playing some retarded looking ogre fairy elf princess, I won't last long enough to care about the gameplay.

In WoW distinction is about the items anyway - when fully equipped we're only talking about facial features anyway and I rarely zoom in to FPP that I'd notice or care anyway.  I'm also in the camp that customization to me means the entire character, skills etc

Customization based on items is a part of these games. However, there's two distinct schools:

• For look- The folks who have masquerades at Atlas Park or costume parties in Azeroth. These are folks who either acquire gear specifically because it looks good, or keep gear they've outgrown for the same reason. This is obviously done enough or Blizzard wouldn't have bother making the Dressing Room function. Nothing like a 60 Mage dreaming of holding a big ass axe.
• For stats- This is aesthetic as a by-product. In WoW specifically, the sets are designed for a self-consistent look, but the sets are acquired for the set bonuses, if they're good enough (and people build the full set fast enough to not outgrow it before it loses its relevance *cough* Magistrar's *cough*).

There's not a clear divide obviously, but rather, it's the motivation.

Games like SWG and UO went all sorts of crazy with customizable options. CoH eventually patched inline customization as well with the Tailor. A whole minigame develops from that, providing the dual benefit of customization and extended retention.

Finally, while Haemish is right to note what I did (about who's taking the survey), the fact that customization is #1 to the Vault survey taker really indicates something. I wouldn't have assumed that at all.

So I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the survey after all.

CoH's multiple costumes and tailor helped flesh out my mid 20's power focus change and made for a nice roleplaying story arc.

WHAT?!

I can't count how many damn level 60 Night Elf Rogues I saw in that exact fucking same armor.

We really must permit colored text again.

The second part is something that annoys me greatly in WoW.

I get that the crafted sets need to have a small difference in level req. from beginning to end since each of the pieces will probably require progressively higher skill to craft, but Blizz could have set up the crafted sets so the whole set doesn't span 10-15 fucking levels (so if I want better gear I end up looking like a patchwork retard). The Imperial Plate set goes from level 47 to level 56 or so. If I want the whole set bonus I need to keep at least 2 pieces of sub-50 gear equipped, which kind of eliminates the point of the set bonuses since I can make up or surpass the armor and stamina loss from not having the set just by getting green or better equipment my level.

Has Darniaq actually played WoW?

How old is UO, and how cool was it to be able to walk into town and identify people by their look?

If they mean the ability to differentiate your character from the norm by skills and abilities, I'm with the Vault respondants, sadly.

Shadowbane gave a lot of variation that allowed you to make a character with a fairly unique combaintion of skills. WoW is less attractive in that manner, because other than talents it mostly comes down to items which tend to normalise depending on the catassery of the participants. EQ was just horrible - every level N foobar was the same as every other level N foobar. I'd much rather have everybody LOOK the same, but have character decisions that set their skills and playstyle apart. Everybody looked exactly the same in Lineage, but they weren't as similar as characters in EQ.

To me it's just a bonus, if we're talking looks. In DAoC for example I had a grey hat, 2 purple sleeves, grey chest and green pants for a very long time. I looked totaly unqiue, in a bad way, but I didn't care all that much. It doesn't bother me all that much that everybody looks the same in WoW. It's geting a bit better in WoW though, new stuff arrives all the time.

While I like new items, I don't go much for an overall "look" unless of course that look happens to be "garish".

For probably an embarassing multiple of the time you put in.

Please understand that I was talking about intention, not what everyone here has seen during their X number of hours in the AH every night/day/week/month. With so many friggin people playing it, I imagine everyone's reality may vary.

Mine, on a PvE server (Icecrown) shows a vast array of clothing. Nobody looks the same, unless they're all nekkid. But then, if they are, I ain't in that room. There's only so much immersion I want.

If you're playing on a server where everyone's got the best orange gear, fine, then I'm wrong as it pertains to the reality of your server.

It was very cool and I miss that aspect.  I can remember when I'd change my look after 3-6 months of the same and people wouldn't even talk to me for awhile if they had "show names" shut off.  They didn't recognize me.  Many times I'd have other people immitate me and get a lot of laughs.  That's when I knew I needed to change again.  Little things like this kept me interested in the game and community through my periods of burn-out, lack of content, etc.  It prolonged my subscription longer than I probably know.

CoH has the best macro-look (the 3 yard rule) customization out there right now and it wasn't enough to get me to play more than 2 months.  WoW has the worst and I'm still playing it from launch.  If you have both of what I want from those two games, I'll stick with you for the same length of UO which was 6 years.

As for games that let me resize my nose (hairs,) I care not.  I usually just skip over that part in character creation.  Nobody else cares to look that closely, and I don't either.

Very cool - for example ImaNewbie wouldn't have existed. (http://www.imanewbie.com/)

(http://www.imanewbie.com/sales/imacd2.jpg)

BTW he is now selling his complete comics collection on CD.  He makes the comment he's had to change hosts several times now and he can see a time when his stuff is no longer online.  From a nostalgia point of view that would be unfortunate since his comics really are a highwater mark of UO's most interesting years.

Customization is big for me.  In WoW it's not reaching a new level - it is allocating that next talent point I enjoy so much - despite their minor effects.  The relative lack of customization in EQ2 killed me early on.  Shadowbanes advanced customized templates was amazing and was the sole saving grace in that game for me.

CoH is the best overall I have seen for customization - for visuals and abilities.  But the genre, absent endgame and lack of economy hold it back.

Customizing your character is one of the few times I truely think in a MMORPG.

Customization is a major selling point in getting me initially interested in a game. Lack of it was one reason I never played EQ and a reason that I stayed away from WoW for quite a while. By customization here I am referring to a combination of Avatar customizing and class customizing.

I don't think there has been a single game out there that really covered all three possible aspects:
 - Base avatar: customizing height and build, facial, hair, etc. WoW falls short here because everyone is the same body with changes to hair and skin tone. CoH is one of the few to offer this.
 - Clothing/Equipment: customizing the look of what you wear. I advocate the idea above of having a crafting option to modify or accessorize loot items. UO and AC did this well, SWG also. CoH broke new ground in this aspect. WoW does ok, but is hurt by the fact that at certain levels, everyone wears the same optimal stuff.
 - Character Customizing: Stats, skills, powers, etc. I'm personally a fan of the skill based approach, or failing that, classes as a base with a assortment of alternate paths. Obviously I favoured UO and AC for this. I like to be able to make creative (aka Gimped) characters if I want to.

All in all, this stuff really affects my decision on whether to try a game or not. In the long run, its a combination of things that makes me continue playing - mostly whether or not I'm having fun.

CoH doesn't have a lot in skill customization.  The power pools help, but for the most part a fire blaster is a fire blaster is a fire blaster.

The exception to this are Kheldians.  Two Warshades could be radically different- one might be a blaster, another might be a tank, another might do both well but not at the same time, another might do both decently at the same time, another might be a weird mix of controller/tank... unfortunately, the player base hasn't really taken advantage of the flexibility they have.  Most consider human-form specialists gimped... meanwhile, I have one at level 31 who does just fine and it only gets better from here.

But unfortunately, you make the major decisions about how your character is going to be played at creation- which is funny, because that's exactly what they wanted to avoid.

Of course, in terms of appearance and theme customization, CoH tops everyone else.  Not only is the costume generator extremely robust, but the superhero genre allows for just about any story you want to tell- magical, technical, time travel, fantasy, detective, soldier, apocalyptic, pretty much any theme for a character can work.  So of course everyone makes DBZ clones.

Wow, Imanewbie... Hadn't read that comics in years. Thanks for the link and the jolt to my memory =).

Gets me nostalgic though, WoW might be on every PC-gamers lips, but I've yet to see communities like the ones UO spawned during it's peak.

I go back twice or so a year to read them.  I'll probably buy his disk.

It would be hard to recreate UO - it was a captive product with no real competitors and it's open-ended sandbox meant very different kinds of people could create very different kinds of communities.  All the very things a lot of people in this community claim not to want.

While we are on the subject, we can't forget "Bonedood and Platedewd" or "The Dread Lord Morvan".

You say tomato, I say tomato...

My daughter and son play games for completely different reasons, yet both are very committed to their particular games.

Daughter is a social gamer.  Her favorite thing to do is to buy things, decorate, change her look, dance and play hide n seek -  she plays Toontown.

Son is into achievement.  His favorite thing is to advance, get new items that will help him, etc.  He's revisiting Pokemon right now.

My son cares little about customization; for my daughter, it's the whole game.

I am always a tad disappointed when I equip something and it doesn't look the same in the world as it does in inventory.  Or worse, it looks like the thing it replaced.

I didn't play long enough to find out, but based upon this survey, one would think that the hairdresser, plastic surgeon, fashionista - or whatever they are called - in SWG would be very popular.

Is this true?

I have never been able to figure out why MMOG designers don't put more crafter customizer abilities into these games.  People like to look different; people like to create.  Seems like a perfect synergy.

Those proffessions had a level of popularity with the social gamers for a while. Then they fiddled with things and tried to make those classes "more useful". As in putting in benefits related to combat for having the skills. A week later, every Cantina was full of dancers and musicians macroing up thier skill 24/7. Most of the social gamers then left.

That and adventurers/PvPrs refused to play the "come to town and interact" mini-game.

On Scyllia nobody who was a musician/ dancer/ hairdresser really cared about the interaction or lack therof with the combat characters.  There were a few who came in and interacted a little bit, but for the most part each cantina 'scene' had it's own little community and play revolved around those characters.  Then, when Hologrinding came in it started to die off because you had bots cycling the profession including "Tip me" spam.  Then the buffs the classes got made this even worse, and people started quitting.

   I quit around this time so I don't know what happened after that, but I do recall hearing several hairdressers being pissed that they couldn't do changes anywhere they pleased.  Forcing people to come to a specific building to do the customizations really hurt a class that was already hurting because it was such a gind to do each of the changes.  I understand they forced it so you couldn't make changes to yourself for xp anymore, so that had to REALLY kill the whole profession.

Social gaming was all but gone from SWG, and then they killed crafting.  That's sad because while Sim Beru was way too much work for me, I could see its appeal to others.

I liked SimBeru in that it made SWG unique in a sea of EQ wannabes (which pervades to this day and has retroactively affected SWG).

Having been a Master Musician twice (on two different servers), I found the experience much as Merusk described it. Roleplayers liked hanging with Roleplayers. Combatants liked hanging with Combatants. The arbitrary system that forced these two together obviously predicted the AFKing that followed. It wasn't Roleplayers AFKing. It was the traditional min/max sub-group of Combatants rolling an alternate character on a separate account specifically to fill a need defined by their core play group.

So the Roleplayers packed up and either formed travelling Vaudville groups or took up residence in a player city.

Like anything, Roleplaying in SWG's system requires dedication. Macroing the professions were easy, but not worth the time unless you actually planned to put on shows. But this, too, is expected. Why bother macroing Armorsmithing or Architecture unless you planned to make a fulltime business of it?

In my opinion, the only flaw in this particular part of SWG was the attempt to make these very different types of players mingle.

From the time Raph first outlined their plans of the model I was skeptical.  I've simply never seen enforced dependency work to the satisfaction of the customers.  I'm not sure what the answer is though.  In SWG's case I think it would have made more sense to keep it solely PvE and have watered-down Jedis in from the start.  By watered-down I mean more like CoH characters with great effects/animations but nothing imbalancing by itself.

Bah I can't believe I just did a post mortem on a mainstream MOG.
:dead_horse:

Image Design, actually changing your appearance and such was -- in my experience -- very popular.  People really liked being able to change their appearance, etc.

Image Designers, the players who actually made the in-game changes to characters -- these weren't very popular.  Customizing YOUR character is fun but mindlessly clicking a few buttons to customize someone else's character is not.  There was a niche of people who were paid to pick new "looks" for other players but by and large most people wanted the control themselves and thus the actual profession of doing customization for others added a lot less to the game than the general ability for one to be customized.

Gabe.

There are alternatives that I can see for that, though.  Like Image Designers having shops, where players come in and design their own look (like in CoH), but it must be done in a shop.  Or an interface that follows around an Image Designer (a trunk or booth or something).

But then being an Image Designer still isn't fun.  It just means dropping a building that other people use or having a pet that other people use.

They did put in special huts where you got your image designed.  But a designer had to be there. And people screamed to high-heaven that they actually had to pay an image designer at the tent or to come to the tent to change their appearance.

Gabe.

I was an image designer and I loved it when I had a chance to actually work with it.

However, the demand wasn't there. It was a great feature to offer clients, especially since I was a tailor. And at least according to my customers, I was good at the job. But there's almost nothing to do when you're not image designing and I might do two or three clients a week. That's an awful long time to wait for a tell. Especially with half my skill points devoted to it.

Also as the game evolved more towards an action game and social players left, the requests started to become more and more stupid. Instead of dancers looking for just that right look, I was getting doods who wanted pink skin and purple hair and to be made fat as possible who then cancelled after getting their giggles or tipped me a whopping thousand credits.

I think a lot of people liked having the options and probably got an image design done at some point, but once you look like what you want to look like, how often do you change?

If only they had seperated adventuring skills and social/roleplay skills into two distinct pools. Not like anyone ever submitted that idea *cough* That, plus a Planetside combat model, would have guaranteed my subscription until the lights went out. As it is, fuggedaboudit.

Then again, maybe it reflects reality. Maybe that's why The Nuge isn't putting out hit albums anymore, he needed the skill points for hunting.

Combine that with SCS and it's really not surprising what happened.

Well to some of us anyway who /boggled when Raph patiently explained ad nauseum that we social/roleplayer types don't understand our own behaviors and preferences.

I'm an antisocial roleplayer.

The idea that roleplayers needed the very same advancement model as Achiever combatant types is what I always questioned. People attracted to the concepts of virtual dancing or musician, both very cool features in a genre otherwise all but lacking them, arguably are not as interested in the raw Diku-inspired advancement schema as the traditional Warrior.

There's a bunch of ways to bring people together that already work. Basic zone design can funnel people together to areas of convenience during down time. Arbitrary separation of abilities ala everything since 1973 has long proven effective. Compelling features like central bazaars or teleportation points too.

But penalizing their activity in a system with stat loss (Wounds) and item decay was sort of a slap in the face. It was counter intuitive to what a type of player wanted to do. And that's really important in my opinion. In a game designed to appeal to so many, well, we know how it turned out.

There's no reason to force people together. Compel them. Some will come. Others won't. You're getting double the monthly fee as a result, and broadening the potential appeal to boot.