Update for the personalization of the characters

[Ecoh.4702]

Hello, I wanted to propose an update for the personalization of our characters, aesthetically speaking. I think it is time to add something new because the hairstyle kit or the item to completely modify our character seems to be useless, they are always the same hairstyles, the same faces, etc. The faces that we are allowed to use are ugly and almost nothing can be modified. All the current games have a big personalization where you can create a unique character, giving it your touch of creativity, but in Guild Wars 2 no, and it's a sad thing that they have never improved this theme. In the forum in Spanish, nobody paid any attention to me, so I post here, I'm sorry if my English is not very good but I'm sure I'm making myself understood. It is not the big thing that I ask, but if it would serve so that the players can entertain a little more with their characters, after all, one of the best moments when playing a video game is when you create your first character and give it the features that differentiate it from the others. In Tyria you see 3 or 4 players identical to yours ...

[Danikat.8537]

Do you want more default faces, and if so what? How should they be different from the ones we have now so you don't think they're ugly?

Or do you want more sliders so we can personalise the faces more? What is there which we can't currently change that you would like sliders for?

[derd.6413]

i find gw2 has one of the better character creations (given it's age)

[Chasind.3128]

You did just fine!The reason we can't completely customize our characters the way we actually want is because it's been stated that anet didn't want players spending more time customizing their characters than playing the game itself - which, anet shot themselves in the foot by taking away or not allowing more customization in characters.It's one of the top 5 things I see asked; I even ask because it's something I enjoy once I've completed all of the content. More/ Better faces/ Better hairstyles & beards along with scars, tattoos, new ears for Asura etc.

I want to see the option to choose 2 different color eyes - Heterochromia Iridis, I want my character to have a dark green eye and a hazel green eye like I do IRL.More Makeup variations that we can actually toggle. The makeup we have with the smokey eye & red lipstick is really bland & basic - looks like a type of person you'd meet at a club & not want to call back. It's not great.I want customization of scars & blemishes - to add more scars/ moles, freckles, rosacea & for the love of all that is beauty: Tattoos for humans. Not something that looks painted on either, but a settled/ slightly faded look.Better hairstyles that aren't anime physics; (Sticking up, clumpy, large & defies physics)Alot of the hairstyles for females expose the forhead & the way the faces look & are shaped, it doesn't look great. Many of the hairstyles are unflattering due to a lack of detail that could & would spice it up. Take Anise's hair, just add a pretty side swoop instead of it all pinned back or bangs that side above the brow. Bangs can be so pretty when done right.The lack of well done beards is appalling. The giant handlebar mustache on norns is appalling.If we could have a character customization closer to the sims or black desert even, this game could appeal to a larger majority of players - I've told people who want an extremely casual no forced grind mmo to play gw2 & I've had some ask about the character creator, I tell them that "it exists but it's not great. It's clones running around aside from different outfits. You can't do much with faces, so you see alot of look-alikes" & it turns people off.

I'd like better sliders overall & more options to make our characters look different.

[Samuel.4812]

It's still vastly superior to wow but I do hope we get more faces and hairstyles soon. More sliders? Unlikely.

[sorudo.9054]

@derd.6413 said:i find gw2 has one of the better character creations (given it's age)

aion is much older, perfect world is older than GW1.both have a better CCS, both do better in that department.

[Ashantara.8731]

While I agree that new stuff needs to be added for character customization, I disagree that all we have so far is "ugly", as the OP stated.

[Westenev.5289]

I... kind of agree. It's often so bad that it often feels like humans wear the same hairstyles in different colours. I can't say I pay too much attention to faces, but some characters in game seem more barbie-ish than others, I guess?

[Fenella.2634]

I wanted to create an elderly female norn lately and simply didn't have face options. For men, sure, but all the female faces have to be young and pretty? Hm.

Also, there are very few hair options for females (especially human) that look halfway believable for the context of the game. I mean... Does the Pact Commander, in the middle of an urgent and dangerous mission somewhere deadly, seriously spend two hours a day arranging her hair? Most of the hairstyles certainly imply that...Sure, maybe it can be done with magic. But it really throws my suspension of disbelief out the window.

So yeah, more options would be nice. :D

[Majosea.2487]

@sorudo.9054 said:

@derd.6413 said:i find gw2 has one of the better character creations (given it's age)

aion is much older, perfect world is older than GW1.both have a better CCS, both do better in that department.

Yeah, but do you know how annoying it was to look around and see Bobblehead, anime-eyed characters with tiny bodies carrying huge weapons in Aion

[necromaniac.7629]

That's what cosmetic auras are for and gem store or "not so east to get" armor and weapon skins are for

[ChillyKoti.1928]

Here are a few things I'd like to see;

-More faces, of course. Putting a side note here... Humans, Norns and Sylvari are fine. But Asura and Charr which are the most unique playable races have too much ugly faces... Pardon-me if this sounds really subjective, but really.... for exemple, players that plays female asura almost all uses the same face, almost the same goes for charr both gender.

Also, for Asura, I'd like to see the characters we see in the character creation screen where they tell us to chose a "model" instead of the weird faces we have now. Right now, we can only either be an old grump or a little kid.

-More hair style could be nice.

-More beards for humans and norns.

-More sliders are also always welcome.

[VDAC.2137]

There are faces I like. Too many of the human female faces look bizarrely doll-like, but there are other options. Most important to me is to make more things customizable — making the face look unique rather than a clone and customizable make-up, etc., as others have said.

The statement about wanting people to spend time playing the game rather than customizing characters is ludicrous. I spend more time playing a character I am happy with and if I’d be willing to pay for additional customization capability, who’d be complaining?

[Tiviana.2650]

Some suffer from same face syndrome its true, everyone picks the same pretty face's because there are only a few. No one wants an ugly character, so its a waste to create faces that are not good looking. I actually think this could be remedied by letting players create their faces, let them choose noses eyes mouth chin face shape brows etc from an assortment. I know it wont happen but i can dream, and let this be a idea to future game developers. Creating our own unique faces is a major point of creating our game personas.

[phs.6089]

it's been like ages people ask for this, doesn't seem we get getting it, Don't really know what problem is, if character models so hard-coded, meshes are unbendable. But yeah this request is still pops-up every now and then.

[Thornwolf.9721]

1. Let norn choose whether or not they are in human form all the time. (If not they are in the form of their animal spirit they chose at the begining, with armor. )
2. Let charr choose if they stand up straight like the shaman cast or hunched as is now.
3. Let sylvari choose to come out more mordrem looking, or perhaps more animalistic (Like the scaled hair we have.)
4. Let the Humans have canthan faces and hairs
5. Let there be body scalers(For like specific muscle mass and in-depth model modification like other games.)
6. More hairs for charr, norn and asuran
7. More tattoos for norn and fur patterns for charr.

There is a few, but it covers all the races and even might make room for others down the line. Aesthetic customization and race identity is important, if it isn't to me explored and made a core portion of the game (Make it mean something without direct stat increases.) Then why did they ever let us be anything but human/sylvari as they have been the focus of the story through guild wars 2 (Humans were the focus in Gw1.) It makes the other races feel semi-irrelevant on the PC end.

[Danikat.8537]

@Fenella.2634 said:I wanted to create an elderly female norn lately and simply didn't have face options. For men, sure, but all the female faces have to be young and pretty? Hm.

Also, there are very few hair options for females (especially human) that look halfway believable for the context of the game. I mean... Does the Pact Commander, in the middle of an urgent and dangerous mission somewhere deadly, seriously spend two hours a day arranging her hair? Most of the hairstyles certainly imply that...Sure, maybe it can be done with magic. But it really throws my suspension of disbelief out the window.

So yeah, more options would be nice. :D

Oddly that's one unrealistic aspect I enjoy. My main characters hair is only slightly shorter than mine (down to about the middle of her back) but very straight and it never gets tangled in her bow or backpack, never goes frizzy when it's been raining, never takes ages to dry and needs tons of brushing when she's been swimming...

I know it's just due to the limitations of the game engine and the fact that it would be a complete waste of time to program more realistic hair (especially if it would 'fix' all of the above, which would just annoy players), but it's still nice to imagine.

@Tiviana.2650 said:Some suffer from same face syndrome its true, everyone picks the same pretty face's because there are only a few. No one wants an ugly character, so its a waste to create faces that are not good looking. I actually think this could be remedied by letting players create their faces, let them choose noses eyes mouth chin face shape brows etc from an assortment. I know it wont happen but i can dream, and let this be a idea to future game developers. Creating our own unique faces is a major point of creating our game personas.

I don't think it's true that no one wants an ugly character. It depends on how you go about making them, if you're trying to make an idealised version of yourself or simply an idealised person to play as then yes, you're probably going to make them as pretty as you can. But there are a lot of people who don't do that - role-players for example who make a character to suit a role in a story.

I don't think any of my GW2 characters are ugly exactly, but there's only 2 where I'd say I was trying to make them look 'pretty', and then not in a sexually attractive sense: one of is an asuran guardian where my starting concept was 'tiny cute girl holding off hordes of enemies with a gigantic weapon', the other is my charr revenant who I was trying to make look as much like a snow leopard as possible. With the rest how attractive they are just doesn't come into it, they look (to me) like the person they are, and if someone thinks that makes them ugly or pretty or whatever then that's up to them.

I'd say the complete opposite - if everyone just wanted to make pretty characters then we'd only need a few faces to choose from because beauty standards tend to be very limited. More options would benefit the people who want to make more of a range of characters, and might also encourage more people to explore other options.

@phs.6089 said:it's been like ages people ask for this, doesn't seem we get getting it, Don't really know what problem is, if character models so hard-coded, meshes are unbendable. But yeah this request is still pops-up every now and then.

They have made new faces and hair styles occasionally, so it clearly is possible. I wonder if it's because someone at Anet looked at the number of people who use them (or simply the number using total makeover kits in general) and decided it's not worth an artist taking the time to make them vs. more noticeable and therefore maybe more popular cosmetic options like weapons and armour skins.

GW2 players definitely seem to care about their characters appearance more than people in many games (I can't remember anyone on this forum referring to their character as 'just some pixels' or 'a marker for where your skills activate' or openly mocking anyone else for caring about character customisation like they do on other forums), but especially since so many people play with the camera zoomed way out it wouldn't surprise me if relatively few worry about someone working out that - before using sliders to personalise it - they picked the same face as someone else. Looking back through the past 2 years of topics on this forum I found 9 topics asking for new hairstyles/faces (including this one), mainly about hairstyles even though I was specifically searching for topics that mention new faces (again, focus on the more noticeable aspects), all but 1 started by Chasind, only 2 got beyond 1 page and less than 100 people posted in all of them combined (yes I counted).

Admittedly I only use total makeover kits I get free and then almost always on new characters, and only once per character, because once I'm used to how they look it seems weird to change it. But as I said above that's how I see my character - it's more important to me that they look 'right' for the person they're supposed to be than they look 'pretty' or use the latest exclusive faces/hairstyles.

But if Anet have stats saying the majority of people never change their face/hair after the character creator and that barely changes when they add new styles maybe they think they can't justify spending time on that when they could be making things people will use.

[Phineas Drayke.6381]

I find the faces are all too goodlooking, especially humans and female norns. Give us the possibility to make ugly looking characters. Battle worn characters, old characters (not just old faces),...

[Yamazuki.6073]

@derd.6413 said:i find gw2 has one of the better character creations (given it's age)

There's a good amount of older games with better character creation; I've even played a few online shooters from a few years back that had better character creation. There's more than just WoW/FFXIV/GW2.

[derd.6413]

@Yamazuki.6073 said:

@derd.6413 said:i find gw2 has one of the better character creations (given it's age)

There's a good amount of older games with better character creation; I've even played a few online shooters from a few years back that had better character creation. There's more than just WoW/FFXIV/GW2.

i was looking at MMOs since single player games tend to get away with more elaborate character customization.

[AlexxxDelta.1806]

@"Danikat.8537" said:

They have made new faces and hair styles occasionally, so it clearly is possible. I wonder if it's because someone at Anet looked at the number of people who use them (or simply the number using total makeover kits in general) and decided it's not worth an artist taking the time to make them vs. more noticeable and therefore maybe more popular cosmetic options like weapons and armour skins.

You're on to something there but I doubt the reason is not enough players using them. It's just speculation of course, but I think Anet in recent years has made the business decision to focus development on "big ticket" items instead of cheaper like makeover and hair kits. Weapons and armors(outfits) sell for more and are harder to acquire using gold from the exchange. I'd wager a good amount of players use gold for their hair kits.

[Samnang.1879]

i just wish i can customize my male toons' forehead... it's too small for my tastes.

if santa is real, plz grant me this wish

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/74351/suggestion-option-to-customize-forehead#latest

[sorudo.9054]

@Majosea.2487 said:

@sorudo.9054 said:

@derd.6413 said:i find gw2 has one of the better character creations (given it's age)

aion is much older, perfect world is older than GW1.both have a better CCS, both do better in that department.

Yeah, but do you know how annoying it was to look around and see Bobblehead, anime-eyed characters with tiny bodies carrying huge weapons in Aion

that's not the point, the point is that GW2 is behind all the features older games have for years before GW2 released.with how GW2 has their CCS it becomes obsolete in comparison, it's not about the style but the possibilities.

[Gussy.3907]

Just adding my voice to support the original post. I would like to see sliders on the body options (shape, muscularity, etc). DAZ 3D level would be amazing but likely unrealistic. And the argument that Anet wants us playing the game more than tinkering with our characters is really hollow. Simply logging in is playing the game and the whole idea of Guild Wars is that you can play how you want to play. Stories, free roaming, crafting, pvp, WvW, mini games. If all people want to do is spend time making their characters look good, that is their prerogative. We all bought the game and spend plenty of money in the Gem Store. We are the customer and Anet gets our cash. How we play their game is up to us not them. So if greater character customization is in the top five requests, Anet should respond. From a business perspective, adding this feature as a salable item in the Gem Store could be a real cash infusion for the company. Oh and while they are at it how about bringing back all the emotes from GW1. Just sayin'.

[Maria Murtor.7253]

I quit playing Final Fantasy 14 after 3 weeks (or so), because I really could not stand certain things like the silent protagonist or redundant quests, but I have give credit to the character creation, which is the best and - most important - largest I have seen so far.

https://ffxiv.fandom.com/wiki/Character_creationhttps://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Character_creation