Rust forces random race and look on the player, then locks it.

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

http://steamed.kotaku.com/rust-chooses-players-race-for-them-things-get-messy-1693426299

So, aside from the implied "DEM RACIST GAMURZ" message in the article, what do you think?

Honestly, I don't care about race. I do think its stupid to have character customisation, then immediatly lock it off and tie it to something you can't change. If it's a single player game with a story, fair enough, lock the character. What if you get a character that looks like something from the random button in Oblivion?

I also understand wanting to change your character. The point of custom characters is that it's YOUR avatar in the world. If people are more immersed because they play their own race. I played GTA: San Andreas to death and had loads of fun doing so. CJs race was never an issue. When you play Generic Custom Guy #19479402, you want to be able to personalize SOMEHOW in order to make the Generic Character yours.

Personally I generally play as female character with darker skin and white hair and face scars if the option is there. Its just how I roll. I wouldn't enjoy playing a hispanic, 50-year old bald man, and then not being able to alter it.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Sounds pretty fucking stupid. Your point of "I do think its stupid to have character customisation, then immediatly lock it off" says it all, really. If they had a pre-set character with a background who happened to be of a non-Caucasian ethnicity, fine. But for a game that could have a nice character creator, where players could play as whoever they desired, to be locked out like that is just really silly in my eyes.

The Elder Scrolls VI: Elsweyr! Where you can only play as a randomly generated character. Now wouldn't that be lovely?

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I think it sounds rather neat actually. If nothing else it seems fitting to the kind of atmosphere that I've been getting off of Rust (disclosure: never played it, only watched streams and LPs), the whole "roll with your situation and do the best with it"-vibe. Giving players a unique avatar, but one they can't alter, just reinforces the idea that you aren't choosing the situation you are in, but you have to deal with it.

Also, it is as far as I know a unique game feature and that has to count for something, right?

 

[Scarim Coral]

I haven't played the game and while I think the idea is an interesting one but I can easily see why not everyone is on board on it.

Sure I get the idea that it make that character more unquie to that player but it should be the player imagination that define them being unquie, not the game randomance and forcing it onto the player to say it's unquie.

Even then while I don't know how dept the chracter creation is but if it's a good one, you can get some really wacky character creation that someone had spend ages on like e.g. I seen that V (V for Vendetta) Sherpard from Mass Effect! So that is lost assuming you can pull that sort of apperance in the game.

 

[Alfador_VII]

Sounds like a cheap way to get publicity for the game.

And it's working!

Otherwise, pretty pointless.

 

[Lufia Erim]

http://steamed.kotaku.com/rust-chooses-players-race-for-them-things-get-messy-1693426299

So, aside from the implied "DEM RACIST GAMURZ" message in the article, what do you think?

Honestly, I don't care about race. I do think its stupid to have character customisation, then immediatly lock it off and tie it to something you can't change. If it's a single player game with a story, fair enough, lock the character. What if you get a character that looks like something from the random button in Oblivion?

I also understand wanting to change your character. The point of custom characters is that it's YOUR avatar in the world. If people are more immersed because they play their own race. I played GTA: San Andreas to death and had loads of fun doing so. CJs race was never an issue. When you play Generic Custom Guy #19479402, you want to be able to personalize SOMEHOW in order to make the Generic Character yours.

Personally I generally play as female character with darker skin and white hair and face scars if the option is there. Its just how I roll. I wouldn't enjoy playing a hispanic, 50-year old bald man, and then not being able to alter it.

I didn't like san adreas. Not because the character was black, but because he was negatively stereotypically black.

OT: i like it. More games should do this. Get like 3-4 models and have the character be randomised upon starting. It could lead to more gender neutral stories, and better writting. It's stupid in rust though. A good idea in the wrong game.

 

[Riotguards]

although it sounds like a neato idea i'm really surpised that they are against people being racist, racist words are only acceptable by said race so really the "you are who you are" would mean you are a black man, etc, etc

 

[Erttheking]

It's a first person game, meaning you're rarely going to be seeing your character.

I never got this. In a first person game the only thing you really customize is what your hands look like.

 

[CommanderZx2]

Not sure why they'd lock your appearance. Other games have had randomly selected appearances for characters, but that changed whenever you died such as in The Ship.

 

[Skatologist]

Oh come on, why is it every time I make a thread, someone else does it immediately after I get it either planned out or made?

sniplash

I think it's the best design decision I've probably ever seen. I know I can't change my own race IRL when interacting with people, so why not have at least one game have a similar way of doing things by being randomly chosen your aesthetic features?

I don't get butthurt when RNGs in my tactic RPGs decide attributes like intelligence or bravery without me deciding them, so I'm not seeing why this is so apparently awful when previously I only had the option of playing a handful of generic looking white guys.

I think it sounds rather neat actually. If nothing else it seems fitting to the kind of atmosphere that I've been getting off of Rust (disclosure: never played it, only watched streams and LPs), the whole "roll with your situation and do the best with it"-vibe. Giving players a unique avatar, but one they can't alter, just reinforces the idea that you aren't choosing the situation you are in, but you have to deal with it.

Also, it is as far as I know a unique game feature and that has to count for something, right?

This was the point of why this was implemented, Rust is very random and the lead dev, Garry Newman, seemed to give a fairly good explanation of trying to implement this in the Kotaku piece.

It's a first person game, meaning you're rarely going to be seeing your character.

I never got this. In a first person game the only thing you really customize is what your hands look like.

Yeah, that's why I've seen a lot of people being turned of by TF2 and how everyone marvels at hats and other aesthetics. I think it's only the idea of people liking empty customization.


Oh, and for all the supposed defense of artists' original intentions and work, a lot of people seem to be jumping at the heels to change the decision of this dev. It's almost like it's different when we don't get our way or something.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Oh, and for all the supposed defense of artists' original intentions and work, a lot of people seem to be jumping at the heels to change the decision of this dev. It's almost like it's different when we don't get our way or something.

The "Artistic Vision"-defense is only to be applied against the evil SJWs and their attempts to take away the titillation. When a developer makes a shitty design decision (ie. this or nerfing the FAMAS) you are not only entitled, but obligated, to protest with all your might against the cruel dictatorship of the developer!

 

[Redryhno]

It's a first person game, meaning you're rarely going to be seeing your character.

I never got this. In a first person game the only thing you really customize is what your hands look like.

Except you can also go third-person, so....

Overall, I don't really care, so long as you actually have some sort of choice to turn it on or off(I forget if you can customize your character to begin with). I mean, this is something you put in when you're developing the identity of the game, not three years after the fact.

Edit: Especially when they already started from scratch after relaunch to begin with.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I never liked RPGs that had a predetermined character, like Geralt in the Witcher Series. It takes away from the entire roleplaying thing. It might have been a better idea to just not let you customize your appearance after you leave the character creator, or randomize the character and lock it if you didn't bother to change anything in the character creator. That way, everyone should look different, the way the devs want it to be. But to not give you any choice at all? I get it's supposed to follow the Rust theme, but it's still a game.

 

[CrystalShadow]

It's a first person game, meaning you're rarely going to be seeing your character.

I never got this. In a first person game the only thing you really customize is what your hands look like.

Well, you could wonder the same thing about real people. I can see my body (parts of it, not all angles), but not my face. Does that mean I shouldn't care what my face looks like?
Or in general shouldn't care about my own appearance? After all, I can't see myself really...
(Yes, mirrors, sure. But that's a unique case that only happens sometimes, and really we have mirrors around to help us adjust our appearance more so than for any other reason)

On topic, eh. I prefer to have control over my appearance, but I can still appreciate a concept like this.
Depends on the circumstances.

I once considered a concept for a 'life' mmo. Totally impractical, but it basically came down to trying to make an mmo world more significant.
It could still be a sci-fi or fantasy setting or whatever, but you wouldn't arbitrarily be there.
You would live an actual life in this world. In accelerated time, (though perhaps you could choose by how much depending on which server you chose)

You'd be born, go through childhood, and eventually die.
Basically, live an entire life in a compressed amount of time.

That sounds kind of off topic, but my idea for character creation in such a situation was... Well, it's life... So basically, to be born, you kind of have to have parents.
Which could be other players, or it could be AI (though I was leaning more towards other players, with AI taking the role only in dire emergencies when there is a shortage of players).

Who ended up as your parents would be randomly assigned from whoever was willing to... (I was going for ultra-realism in this sense, so you can fill in the gaps for yourself. XD)

Your appearance, then, would be based on the appearance of your parents.

I also considered allowing limited choices (such as say, in a fantasy setting, are you an elf or a human, or an orc or something?), but overall you'd still not have absolute control over who you were.

That was meant to be intentional. Because, well, did you choose who you were going to be before you were born?
(Well, if you get into metaphysical ideas about life after death / before being born, then maybe. But let's leave that out of things for the time being)

So... Anyway, getting to the point, I can see legitimate reasons why certain game concepts might go down this route.
It has a degree of appeal if it works for the setting.

As for tying it to your steam ID, think for a moment what happens if you allow variable appearances, but you do not give people direct control over their appearance.

If you generate it randomly, but allow people to reroll the randomly generated character, what do you expect to happen?
People will just end up rerolling things until they get what they want.
At that point, you might as well just give up and let them customise things directly...

(I also remember a game once that chose your character class based on a personality quiz. - While it seemed interesting as a concept, I almost immediately upon getting through it the first time decided to redo the whole thing to get a different result.
As amusing as it seemed on paper, in the end it would probably have been better to just allow the players to choose directly...)

 

[Tsun Tzu]

Oh, and for all the supposed defense of artists' original intentions and work, a lot of people seem to be jumping at the heels to change the decision of this dev. It's almost like it's different when we don't get our way or something.

The "Artistic Vision"-defense is only to be applied against the evil SJWs and their attempts to take away the titillation. When a developer makes a shitty design decision (ie. this or nerfing the FAMAS) you are not only entitled, but obligated, to protest with all your might against the cruel dictatorship of the developer!

Er...no.

Folks can complain in any instance about anything, fine, all well and good, but the difference is the lack of a pound sign accompanied by shrill baying/threats/concentrated shame-bombing demanding it be changed to suit a preference.

General whining is to be expected, however, as this is the internet.

OT: I think this is a dumb mechanic because it comes off as an arbitrary/shortcut design decision.
I also think this is a neat mechanic because it further deprives the player of agency. Yay, survival games.

Needless to say, I'm at a bit of an impasse here, but I don't play the game, so I'm erring on the side of 'not caring overly much.'

 

[Phlap]

It sounds pretty cool, but I don't like the idea of having it affect pre-existing characters. Maybe if it had been implemented for new characters only...

 

[The Lunatic]

Apparently people don't understand the difference between respecting artistic vision, and agreeing with artistic vision.

I respect the creator's right to do this in their video game.

I'm also allowed an opinion on it. And my opinion is, it's kinda an interesting idea. A little dumb, honestly, but, interesting.

However, respect means I don't demand they change it, or take to twitter about how badly I'm triggered by depictions of it.

 

[Fishyash]

It's not really a big deal to be fair. Personally I prefer the option to customize your character though, and I overall find that to be better and more immersive game design.

It's different though, and not exactly unfitting for Rust.

 

[Adultratedhydra]

Sounds like a cheap way to get publicity for the game.

And it's working!

Otherwise, pretty pointless.

Pretty much this.

"Guys. whats a hot topic thats going on right now? Our game is dieing in the ass and we need something spicy."

"Well jim racism is a hot topic right now."

"Brilliant. We'll make our player characters randomly be different ethnicities for no reason but we'll tell people that its in effort to show how non bigoted we are! Generate them controversy bucks."

"Excellent choice."

Garry always has been a more accepted than most Troll.

 

[happyninja42]

I think it's an interesting idea, considering none of us have any say in what race we are, as that was decided when we were born. Adding that to the game mechanics seems at least a novel idea to me.

I personally don't care either way, as I barely pay much attention to race in games like this. The only time I do is in games like Skyrim, where I'm playing a certain character concept, and thus have to pick a specific species to reflect the roleplaying story I'm going to play out.

But in stuff like Fallout, where it's all human, all the time, I don't even bother changing the default sliders in most cases, or maybe just hit random a few times. I never see my face, so who cares?