Character Customization and you

[Siyano_v1legacy]

For most of the time I feel it pretty useless, what the point of choosing my eye-hair-skin color if anytime in the game I am just wear a big giant armor, im not talking about so tiny custom that they serve no purpose, tattoos, ring, bracelet, necklace, earring to name several

 

[Fr]anc[is]

I like games with customization. I never do much with it, just tweak the default face a bit and change the hair, otherwise I completely mess it up. I love seeing really ugly main characters made just for giggles on youtube though

 

[Midnight Crossroads]

It's hit and miss. I like the idea, but the execution -most of the time- sucks so hard that I just hate going through it.

City of Heroes is one of the few games in which I enjoyed creating my own character. It allowed a great degree of customization that looked good.

Dragon Age left a lot to be desired, but was decent enough. Although all of my characters came out with dark skin, black hair, and bent noses. It was especially hilarious with the human origin, as I would always just pretend I was an illegitimate child and the Arl was just in denial.

Demon's Souls and Fallout 3 both had horrible character creation. KoToR was just awful. If you played a dark-side jedi, you had to deal with a week-dead walking corpse. Veins through the face, hair with no luster, flat eyes. I hated it.

Another bad one was WoW. It had ten faces per race/sex, two of them were good, eight were absolute crap. Female dwarves are rare? Try a female human with a hag's face. Then you had the ludicrous models with no scaling. All male NE were gorillas, and none had the option of the Cenarius-style beard like on all the damn box art(apparently straight razors are the number one import among male night elves ever since the humans arrived.) All human males were ripped, all the girls had huge busts, and then the blood elves were pro-ana sticks.

And then there was Mass Effect. Omaigawd that game had horrid character creation. I just stuck with generic Male/Female Shepard because the second you touch the slider, you get a fish person. Do people in the future not use shampoo at all? That shiny hair looks like grease, tone it down, Bioware, it's disgusting.

 

[Celtic_Kerr]

I like being able to customize my character, but it all gets overshadowed eventually. Let me explain. You make this character of a certain build, height, and everything right? And then you're forced to put on armor. Not armor you like, but the best armor you have. You can't change the color, how shiney it is, nothing. it's got an appearance. DEAL. You want to wear a helm? Your face disapears. Don't wanna look at a man with a can on his head? DEAL. World of Warcraft did good with this as there is an option to wear a helm, but show your character's face on your avatar, so that he doens't look generic.

Mass Effect 2 was also good for that, as you didn't buy different armors, but upgraded your character as you would upgrade your ship.

 

[zaiggs]

I think character customization has it's place, but more often than not, it serves as nothing more than a little mini game before the game starts. Especially for Fallout 3 and Oblivion, I felt that all that customization was for nothing. You more often than not ended up covering your character in gear of some sort, covering up your character. Also, how many people played those games in 3rd person? I felt that 3rd person looked weird in both games and playing in first person kept me from seeing the character I had created and covered in the best armor I could find.

Character customization can be really interesting though, and I realize for games like Saints row, if there wasn't character customization, the game wouldn't be as interesting.

I still feel in a lot of games it's hard to make a character that isn't at least partially hideous.