The better character editor.

[Casual Shinji]

Throughout my life in gaming I've played a lot of titles that allowed you to build the look of your own character, and I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking nearly all of them suck a great deal. Hair that looks like straw, mouths that resemble something reptilian, and eyes that look like... something you wouldn't want looking your way.

I know not everyone cares about editing their character's looks and are fine with simply jumping into the game as is. But I generally take great pride in making my character look the part, and again, I know I'm not alone in this. It frustrates me then that whenever I play an RPG - which is typically the genre that uses this mechanic - that I have to bust a bloodvessel in my head trying to make something out of rather crummy design plates. I spent the longest time trying to make a ManShep in Mass Effect that looked like he had some actual brain activity.


I have to say that as much as I disliked the game, Dragon Age 2 offered the most stable character design I've ever come across. You could actually give your character long hair without clipping issues, for one thing. And even better, assuming you had the DLC treasure room area, you could edit your character well into the game. And seeing as the game had a time span of several years, it was nice to appropriately age my character. Something I think other RPGs could learn from. The ability to give your character a new hairdo or grow out a beard during the game would add a lot to the experience.

So my question to you is, what is the best character editor out there? Not including mods. And what are some of the worst experiences have had trying to build a character?

 

[roushutsu]

I've always liked the character editor in Champions Online. It's a superhero MMORPG, and there's so many options to design your hero without having to pay for a couple of more. I've played games like CO that have very limited options, which makes no sense considering, you know, it's SUPERHEROES! I can say that I haven't seen 2 characters that look the same, and I love that.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I've always liked the character editor in Champions Online. It's a superhero MMORPG, and there's so many options to design your hero without having to pay for a couple of more. I've played games like CO that have very limited options, which makes no sense considering, you know, it's SUPERHEROES! I can say that I haven't seen 2 characters that look the same, and I love that.

Oh yeah, I forgot about MMOs. I'm not too familair with them.

 

[Tayh]

APB had the best cosmetic and lifelike character customization that I've ever seen.
Now known as APB:Reloaded, a free-to-play cash shop game.

 

[Gatx]

I've always liked the character editor in Champions Online. It's a superhero MMORPG, and there's so many options to design your hero without having to pay for a couple of more. I've played games like CO that have very limited options, which makes no sense considering, you know, it's SUPERHEROES! I can say that I haven't seen 2 characters that look the same, and I love that.

There's a lot of options for designing superhero costumes, but I've had a very hard time making my hero's face look like anything but a square jawed manly man.

I'll add DC Universe Online to the list. While not all of the costume pieces are available from the get go, unlocking costume pieces from new gear gives you incentive to actually play the game (At this point I only play Champions Online to make costumes), and while you're not given as much freedom, certain things like picking a 3 color color scheme for your entire costume steers players towards smart costume design.

 

[XMark]

So far, the only game in which I've been able to make decent replica of my own face was Oblivion. However, Oblivion's face generator is pretty bad when you're trying to make a character who actually looks good (especially female characters).

Skyrim seems to have a face generator which is easier to make good-looking people with, but a lot of the faces end up looking kinda the same.

Mass Effect has the same kind of problem - look at any picture of a custom Shepard and you'll think "yeah, that's a Shepard". Male Shepard seems to be more easy to create a unique look, but any decent-looking femshep has almost the same face as another.

I like Dark Souls' face generator because there's a Male/Female slider with multiple steps in between if you want to be androgynous

 

[Mikejames]

I remember spending a lot of time on my custom Commander Shepard. Was finally satisfied getting everything the right tone, but after I started the game I realized that the guy had cheek bones you could impale someone on if you looked at him from any angle other than facing forward.

So in my laziness I stuck with default Shep.

Dragon Age's customization was fine, but I thought it was a tad awkward having the exact same hairstyle as Alistair the whole game.

 

[Hagi]

EvE Online would be pretty far up there.

It's the only game I know where people from other games would sign up for a trial so they could use the Character Editor to design their character in more detail, mostly for the sake of roleplaying.

It makes use of a sculpting system allowing you to modify pretty much every bone and muscle in your character's body ( slight exaggeration but serves to get the point across ).

This here seems to be a decent video about it:


Sculpting part starts around 5:10.

 

[Lieju]

Saints Row 2.

I like the ability to edit bodyshape too.
Female characters especially tend to be stuck with horrid bodyshapes in a lot of games.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

I'm quite partial to Demon Souls' character creation thingie.

I spent too much time in the character ed of Oblivion, Fallout, Skyrim and the lot... and the results still leave much to be desired.

I spent about half my total playing time of Mass Effect in the character editor.

I spent about two thirds of my total playtime of Dragon Age II in the character creation and watching off-putting kinky videos with a shaved dwarf in it.

With Dark Souls, I could go recreate folks or go for a collection of the weirdest humanoids... ever. Red-faced pyromancers, baby-faced nobility or rat-faced rogues... Demon Souls has it all.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

I spent the longest time trying to make a ManShep in Mass Effect that looked like he had some actual brain activity.

Must have been pretty disappointing to hear him speak then. Anyway, that Phantasy Star online game they never released in the states looks like it had a pretty thorough character creator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRSh9MYNcV4

 

[Angelous Wang]

The PC Skyrim/Fallout3/New Vagas character editors are best ... once you've loaded in a few hundred mods to add a few thousand more options.

In-built options cannot beat the sheer magnitude of user modded in options. Also because of the console (plus that DLC "cosmetician") you can age your character appropriately through out.

But if we have to go for a game without mods I too would have to go with APB:Reloaded. Spent a ton of time in that game and my characters have never ever come across a "clone" or anything close enough. The game's customisation is probably it's best feature.

 

[NightmareWarden]

I've always liked the character editor in Champions Online. It's a superhero MMORPG, and there's so many options to design your hero without having to pay for a couple of more. I've played games like CO that have very limited options, which makes no sense considering, you know, it's SUPERHEROES! I can say that I haven't seen 2 characters that look the same, and I love that.

This sums up my feelings on the best character designer I've ever used. The best one for designing faces that I've used was the MMO called Aion.
And for non-humanoid characters, Spore takes the cake for me. Darkspore had a good one too, but I didn't play around with it enough to give a definitive rating.

 

[Hambers]

The WWE games have always had a really robust character editor with a host of options. These options however do not change much over the years and some of the more sensible ones seem to have been axed in a bid to have any change at all. You can roll back the years and see the same receding ponytail in dark green every time but damn if I can find more than 4 haircuts I'd want.

To give you an idea of how well the recent installment's editor works it is actually possible to make an accurate, unidealised, not bug fuck ugly recreation of your face. In the Mass Effect series my bro-Shep looked like me on a self-hate kick.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Saints Row 2.

I like the ability to edit bodyshape too.
Female characters especially tend to be stuck with horrid bodyshapes in a lot of games.

Yeah. For me this is a good part of a character editor: not just editing the face. Dragon's Dogma did this quite well (and your build had consequence in game: a heavy character could carry more, but was less good at climbing monsters), plus had a face builder that wasn't half bad.

 

[The Madman]

Saints Row 2.

I like the ability to edit bodyshape too.
Female characters especially tend to be stuck with horrid bodyshapes in a lot of games.

I'll second this. It is especially tragic that Saints Row 3 actually had a much less robust character editing system.

I finally picked up Saints Row 2 recently after absolutely demolishing Saints Row 3 and loving every second of it and... damn, it's damned difficult to make an even semi decent looking character editor. Sure there are more options but it doesn't really help when everything still looks like crap, and while being able to change the posture and walk of a character is neat it makes almost zero difference when they all seem to do the same dumb looking run animation which is what you'll be seeing 90% of the time.

So far I much prefer Saints Row 3, which let me make this supreme badass:

Really do need to give Saints Row 2 another try, but it's making things so difficult. The game is bugged to high heaven and the cinematic are all messed up with the characters out of sync. I'm sure I'll be able to fix it, but again, the game is not making things easy for me.

 

[Fleaman]

Tera Online: Doesn't have even a tiny bit of body customization (unlike predecessor Aion), but its face-editing options are top-notch. Tons of variation available, with the added benefit that a large proportion of them are attractive. Not even just "not completely uncanny", but actually good-looking. Contrast something like Oblivion: Plenty of options, all of them ugly.

Champions Online: Pinnacle of variability. This is a super hero MMO and the high degree of control you have over your character's look and powers is a major selling point. A shitload of sliders for face and body, several different animation and expressions to choose from (though not close to as many as in Saints Row 2), and costume parts from every genre ever. I've got a robot maid with glowy bits and a tall fellow with a pinstripe suit and the head of a jackal made of obsidian. It's a ton of fun just hanging out in town and watching everyone's characters fly by (and counting the Obamas). Contrast DC Universe Online: Didn't play it much, so I don't know if customization opens up as you play the game, but the options you start with are incredibly limited, and they are also all ugly. I am terribly superficial and care about such things.

 

[piinyouri]

I was quite fond of Soul Calibur 3's creator.
Basically making giant action figures. I probably made around 20 characters that I never played even once.

Also find Dragon's Dogma's character creation to be a perfect mix of accessibility, control and creativity.

 

[Benpasko]

I was quite fond of Soul Calibur 3's creator.
Basically making giant action figures. I probably made around 20 characters that I never played even once.

Also find Dragon's Dogma's character creation to be a perfect mix of accessibility, control and creativity.

I used to play as Armor King in SC3, you could make him perfectly in the editor. It's definitely the best fighting game editor I've ever used. SCV is pretty good, but a lot of the options look terrible or don't work together.