Character Customization & Depth

[Morreion]

The Daily Grind: How do you like your character customization? (Massively)

SOE's Jens Andersen recently provoked a bit of a discussion with his comments on DC Universe Online's character customization options. In a nutshell, he intimated that they're somewhat limited initially and devoid of excessive "fluff" in order to give players something to strive for as they build their avatars.

This is something of a departure from the tradition established by earlier superhero MMOs. City of Heroes and Champions Online both feature absurdly awesome amounts of individuality and costume customization potential. Even older, non-superhero games such as Aion and Star Wars Galaxies are renowned for the unique looks possible with their extensive character creation tools.

Put me down for detailed character creation options. The biggest problem I had with WoW was that you looked like everyone else character-wise (though WoW had great clothing & armor options). More individuality please!

EQ2 sent out character creation disks for preorder folks so that they could spend lots of time building their character's looks. Now that is awesome PR and very cool!

The Daily Grind: How much planning do you want for your character? (Massively)

So how much do you like to plan out your characters in advance? Do you prefer games that let you make all your choices as you go, with no wrong options? Or do you like making long and detailed arrangements for your characters' future?

I LOVE spending lots of time planning out my character's advancement and training options. That's a significant part of the fun in a game for me. Character builder tool websites are fantastic! I like lots of options in training to have a build that I like. I dislike cookie-cutter class approaches. I'd rather have skill-based systems, but that's another topic

[Regolyth]

That makes me sad to hear about DCU. I was looking forward to playing that. I was thinking that the character customization would be a lot like CoH. I guess I was wrong. The way that article read, it kind of makes me not want to play it now.

I think we're in an age where high customization is not only possible, but required (if for nothing else, individuality's sake). I really liked the customization options in EQ2. So far, I think it has had the best out of games that I have played (I never played CoH, but I hear it's down right uber).

Games with a lot of customization and fluff attract me. I love all of the extras that I can get or do. It just adds more and more replayability to the game.

Also, as Gack mentioned, I like customization as far as character trees (classes) go as well. Again, I think UO had the best idea as far as how customized a character can be. Any character could learn any number, or combination, of skills: e.g. a mage who could block with a shield and worked a side job as a lumberjack, begging on the weekends. Now that would make for a really bad character to play, but it's possible.

[dotty]

I love the individuality options, and do not like looking like everyone else. The simple ability to dye armor in DAoC along with the guild cloaks made this possible. In Second Life your AV can be absolutely anything you can dream up, or any assembly of pieces of any shape/size/color. Not many places you can go from a very normal looking female to a flaming nightmare to a knee-high bunny to a jiggling blob of fruit jello to a 6 story high dragon. I might be a bit spoiled this time.