Everquest 2 Characters

[Evil Elvis]

Speaking of Final Fantasy, someone needs to phone Square, and tell them they're being one-upped in the effeminate male department.  

At least half of the male hairstyles have bangs.  What the fuck is up with that?

And they need to work on the mouths for the characters too.  Moving the slider anywhere close to left hand side produced some lemon-sucking, Kato Kaylin look-a-like.

[Nebu]

Bald toon for teh win!

[Soukyan]

Bald toon for teh win!

Umm... like anyone is really going to give a shit about hair after... oh... character creation. This is the EQ universe we're talking about here. Everyone's going to be too busy modeling their +10 Helmet of Orc-Bashing to worry about the hair.

[eldaec]

Bald toon for teh win!

Umm... like anyone is really going to give a shit about hair after... oh... character creation. This is the EQ universe we're talking about here. Everyone's going to be too busy modeling their +10 Helmet of Orc-Bashing to worry about the hair.

And this is the key point.

The reason coh character creation is so good is that people can identify your character by the customisation you put on it.

The reason swg character cration sucks is that every bugger is wearing composite armour that carefully hides every last ounce of effort put in to customisation at creation.

[schild]

Being a smuggler, I tended to either nullify the chance of taking any damage by using Panic shot, or just health shotting and using Feign Death til the effect wore off. You could usually recognize me by my Galaxies Old Navy combo outfit...



or my sweet padded armor, with my right sleeve missing in absentia - because I was a badass motherfucker.



When I finally sliced all my composite with 40% slices, I wore an outfit minus the right sleeve and helmet. With or without the helmet, if I got head shotted, the result would be me on my ass.

[Riggswolfe]

I remember this exact same thing before SWG came out. Look at the shiney! look at how I can customize my character.

Then:

My god the game play sucks.


Thank God SOE isn't responsible for both of them. Oh wait, they are.

Did anyone else notice that in the movie, all the warrior did was repeatedly swing his sword. All the rogue did was repeatedly swing her dagger. All the mage did was nuke after nuke after nuke.

Beautiful graphics. shitty gameplay is my guess.

[Signe]

You're probably right, Riggs.  I'm expecting to be disappointed.  It makes my life easier, anyway.

[Furiously]

Watch the characters moving, not the scripted chars walking around - but the ones in the fights.

I think they took EQ's awkward robot-like movement and one-uped it.

That being said. I'm gonna pre-order on Monday.

[schild]

Derailing because I'm bored.

For all the money NCSoft has, they somehow, still have fucking Engrish on their web site.

"The Tabula Rasa, the most fancy and mystic Action MMORPG!"

"Enjoy building your personalized Super-Hero, The City of Heroes!"

"Enjoy the parade of exciting and joyful Casual Game, The Gameting!"

"The most thrilling and dynamic Vehicle Combat Game, It's the Auto Assault"

wtf. I half expected there to be a "kekela {>^_^{>" in there somewhere.

Isn't Garriot on the board? He needs to fire whatever abortion came up with that shit.

Here's a recent screenie from TR.


I want that sword in every game, kthx.

Now back to EQII.

[HRose]

He has a broken arm or what?

[Trippy]

He has a broken arm or what?

Maybe he's just showing off by getting ready to fight with one arm behind his back.

[schild]

He has a broken arm or what?

Maybe he's just showing off by getting ready to fight with one arm behind his back.

Or a thumb up his ass. But seriously, look at that awesome sword!

[Trippy]

But seriously, look at that awesome sword!

I don't know...doesn't look all that sturdy to me. What's holding the blade to the hilt?

[daveNYC]

But seriously, look at that awesome sword!

I don't know...doesn't look all that sturdy to me. What's holding the blade to the hilt?

Mood rings.

[Soukyan]

But seriously, look at that awesome sword!

I don't know...doesn't look all that sturdy to me. What's holding the blade to the hilt?

Fucking MAGIC! ;)

[schild]

What's holding the sword together?

The blood of the non-believers.

[Signe]

Derailing because I'm bored.

You should ban yourself.

[Murgos]

If you do I'll point you to some password cracking tools and then you can comeback and attempt a board takeover, until you call your hosting service on your self and they come in and reset everything to new passwords.  Then you could register a new site called the banned of f13.

[Sky]

So I came across a copy of the character generator (thank you eqholic).

CoH character generator: Can spend hours making cool and unique characters.

EQ2 character generator: Can spend hours trying to make a cool and unique character.

These are BAD. Unless you want to play a bland accountant with a combover or a dark elf male with a bouffant (sp) hairdo. I just put in about an hour and a half, and the best I could come up with were a couple "well, I guess I wouldn't be too embarassed playing this guy"....

It's not even as good as the SWG generator, imo. The height slider gives you what, a span of about three inches in height? I'd hope this is due for a full revamp (but I imagine it's not), because right now it's about as good as Morrowind's character generator (ie: crap).

I'm embarassed for SOE, if this is the best money can buy.

[Big Gulp]

I'm embarassed for SOE, if this is the best money can buy.

When we disagree, we disagree mightily.  When we agree, we agree mightily.

These are just fucking ugly.  I flat-out could not make a character that I could call "appealing" by any stretch of the imagination.  I don't care how intricate or technically impressive the underlying tech is, the skeletal/muscular system they used to try to create "realistic" faces, etc; when the result is this it's probably time to rethink your approach.

What a group of incompetent fuckups.  They deserve to have Blizzard and NCSoft eat their lunch if this is how they're going to piss away their 800 lb. gorilla status.  Also please keep in mind that I'm pretty much an EQ apologist.  For what it does, EQ does it fairly well.

However, I also appreciate aesthetics and style.  It's not about being an eyecandy whore (which I plead guilty to), it's about recognizing that something looks like dogshit when it looks like dogshit.

[Sky]

Who makes two seperate hairstyles for COMBOVERS??? Where is the demand? How about some more non-spiky hairdos for males?

What the hell is up with the dark elves? There is no way I'd make a dark elf, despite having played a DE Necro to 54 in EQ. Heck, even my SoL DE was pretty cool, much cooler than any combination I could make with the new generator! I won't even get started with the fact that dark elves can't even get white hair and beard (there is always a yellowish tinge), but their eyebrows are pure white no matter the hair color.

Sure, melee types might have an out with helmets, but I tend to play casters. I guess simple long white hair and a goatee is not going to be an option for dark elves.

[Sable Blaze]

I just want our skull helms back...with hair.

I guess I have to go look at this. Pretty much the main reason I'm considering EQ2 is the opportunity to play a dark elf again. A dark elf shadowknight. A shadowknight that, well, kinda like...works, or something...

Hmmm...this doesn't bode well. Still, the only way to really find out is to try it. I'm just glad I don't have to make this decision for several months yet.

[Morfiend]

Fool me once, shame on you.


Fool me twice....





Imo EQ was a horrible horrible timesink of a game. If EQ2 is even close to EQ, I will be staying very far away.

Hey Haemish, maybe one of us should document all the fanboism, and brink it back up 6 months after release. Could be quite funny.

[HaemishM]

If I did that, I'm quite sure I'd have to eat a lot of crow for the moderately fanboish defense of DAoC I've had since the RVR expansion. :)

[jpark]

Excluding minor height adjustments, isn't all of this head customization irrelevant the moment somebody wears a helm or hood?

I like the control CoH gives over body types.  It goes beyond head customization.

[Alluvian]

Yes it is very irrelevent.  Plus in character gen you basically have to fight the sliders to get a decent face.  Anyone who knows how to make a decent face will pretty much look the same.  Then there will be the mutants that look like pug nosed dogs and such.  A huge waste of bandwidth.

Also I really don't like that the caps are part of the hairstyles.  I don't like that earrings and glasses are character generation at all.  Those should be ingame items you can put on and take off or change.  Not welded to your face.  Although earrings would have to NEVER have any beneficial stats or else everyone will have 40 piercings.  It should be for show customization only, but not part of character gen.

Hey Haemish, maybe one of us should document all the fanboism, and brink it back up 6 months after release

There is fanboyism here?  Most I have seen is a few people saying it has some good features on paper or that they will give it a try.  That is the most fanboy anyone here has gotten that I have seen.  Is trying a game being a freaking fanboy now?  Jon Carver actually said he was in beta and liked it.  WOAH fanboy alert.  Wooo, someone get that man some medical help!

There is zero EQ2 fanboi in this thread, or any other I have seen on this board.

I have said I like the creature design from what I have seen, but in the same breath I have mocked it's inability to draw real animals. I like that it has a cloth system, I have said making decent looking characters is possible, but that the char gen is seriously flawed (stated at least 3 different ways it is flawed).  Stated the animation is mediocre, not horrible, far from good.  With those comments, I have been about the most positive person here regarding the game.  We did actually preorder one copy.  EQ2 is big enough that for good or ill I want to play the first month to mock it or to enjoy it.  Either one.[/quote]

[kaid]

I am about as eq2 fanboi as you will find on this thread and I am more than willing to point out flaws and other not so rosy things.

Not so rosy things

I doubt it will be out this year

Any real world animal is likely to make one of my best friends get stabby with her eyes. This probably wont be noticed to anybody who is not a huge animal person but for those who are it bugs them alot.

Character creator takes place at twilight WTF no clue why they chose a time of the day with wierd shadows and darkness for character creation.

More facial/hair options needed for characters some need it more than others. The female dwarves don't look to bad but they got gimped on utter lack of facial hair options. (fanboy on) Apparently many of the long hair patterns and things like iksar scales/ogre beards were taken out due to bugs but are expected to be back in for release. I have seen screen shots with them so I expect they are being honest with this one.

Animations many of the movies I have seen so far have been from the fan faires. During those fan faires they specifically said they only had the default 1 handed auto attack animations which looked really bad silly with polearms. I am still not sure if they have fully added all the final animations for combat/character movement. They are doing motion capture so I would find it really odd if in the end they screw this one up so I will give them my fanboiesqe meh I will wait to play it myself before I judge.

I am hopeful it will be a good game and I have pre ordered it and I will play it when it comes out. I will also play wow when it comes out I have given nearly everything a try to see if I like it or not. I don't trust people and find most in general are stupid so I try to form my own opinions about games based on first hand experiance.

Some times this hurts my brain like in AC2 but some times you get a gem like coh. I never expected to play coh more than a month but by god they did a fine job making a fun playable game that you can play for a couple hours and enjoy. I myself would like a game with a bit more scope than COH eventually but I admire a company who saw their niche and went at it like a freaking laser and hit their target. You can tell that right now coh is pretty much exactally what they aimed for at this point and very few other mmrpg can say that after the first few months.

I just can't see investing much hate in a game until you actually get it into your claws and call me a fool but I will give companies at least a chance to prove misgivings wrong. Sometimes I will get lucky some times not but time will tell how he new batch of mmrpg will pan out long term.

kaid

[kaid]

Oh one more fanboy thing to say about weight body type modifiers for character customization. The lack of these is a design decision.

They wanted to preserve the instant race identification when you see somebody you will know it is a gnome not a skinny halfling or that its a dwarf not a fat gnome.

It also has the side effect of making it ALOT easier to make much more impressive armor. You can more easily fix clipping issues when you are not worried how it will look on a fat person. Anybody who has ever seen the hoolahoops in swg can understand why this is a legit concern.


kaid

[Sky]

I dunno, I could trade some clipping issues for more variety. "Instant race identification"? That's ridiculous imo. Dwarves should be massive with huge shoulders and beards and be recognizable as not being a fat gnome, despite what they are wearing. And why stop gnomes from pretending to be dwarves by wearing bulky clothes? Are people getting offended because someone thinks their dwarf is a halfling? Me no understandee.

things like iksar scales

Do you mean the fact that all Iksar have the yellow underbelly? I played an Iksar monk to 32 in EQ, but I instantly gave up trying to make an Iksar. Has no one at SOE heard the expression "yellow-bellied coward"?

[kaid]

Yes the yellowed belly thing is what I am talking about. There are supposed to be a number of iksar scale patterns but only a single one was included in the character creator disk. Moorgard said that there were graphical bugs with the others and they were pulled from the CC disk but should go in by live.

They claim the instant race identification is the big reason for the no body modifications but I believe it is more with equipment. It is just easier to design armor for specific bodies with specific limited range in height. If you have to design armor like they did in swg for wildly diverse body sizes it just requires a lot more work and leads to nasty ugly artifacts like hoola hoop belts.

If you have not played SWG most items are pretty clearly designed for a specific body shape. If you were alot thinner than that body you would have items that hover around you. Belts and bandoliers were the worst culprits for non male or non standard to heavy set person they would float VERY noticably away from your body.  

kaid

[kaid]

Okay here is a link and it is borderline work safe. Somebody found that in the character creator files if you make a character and save it and go in with a binhex editor you can set accessories to 0. The results are as follows.


http://www.foxeye-art.com/naked.shtml


Its really not that bad cause even "nekkid" they still have the fig leafe stuff to cover bits you naughty hackers should not see. It does give you a better look at the bodies without the crappy newbie outfit to get a better feel for how the models are really designed.

Kaid

[schild]

Elves in EQII have a loincloth. Elves in Guild Wars have purple lace panties.

Just sayin'.

[HaemishM]

Holy crap, that's even worse. All the human/elf models are WAY too squat, like they are compressed. None of the proportions are right. The nekkid looks terrible. The Iksars have bodies that are too elongated.

Modelers on EQ2 need to go back to art school.

[Furiously]

Modelers on EQ2 need to go back to art school.

It just seems very..."Meh. Good enough, send it on out."
 
Or perhaps it's a distinct lack of uniform style. Which WOW is overflowing with.

If they hold firm with their small group mentality (I'm thinking task forces) for almost all encounters. I really think they might have a fun game in their hands.

[schild]

Hmmm, while there are a number of people that I'd love to play EQII with from Europe, this is a surefire way most of the players in EQII will speak some sort of English.

It seems a decision has been made on Servers & choice in EQ2; this is a warning to anyone who wants to pre-order the game: Choose carefully, as they are restricting US clients to US servers & Euro/UK clients to Euro/UK servers.

For those of you in the UK and other parts Europe, I'm sure someone on f13 would be willing to work something out to get an account going for you.