Would you rather be extremely powerful or unique looking? In the days of old these two things used to be one and the same. In EverQuest certain color armors were reserved only for the elite. Particle weapons were near non-existent. Without inspecting you other players would be able to tell your status in the world and may see something they’ve never seen before. I honestly miss those times quite a bit. I remember a time when people stopped to look at Ferrel because she looked unique. Is that important in our modern MMO crop?
I obviously prefer that I Ferrel looks unique! Despite being a power gamer I’ve always been interested in differentiating myself from the pack in some way. I’d gladly take the “second best” raid gear to ensure my set matched versus taking the best and looking like a rainbow vomited. These days that is becoming a lot harder to do. The major culprit here is the appearance slots and dyes! With appearance slots everyone can look great. With dyes they can match their color pattern! Gone are the days of mismatched and rag-tag sets of armor. In EQ2 there is an entire market just for clothing and everyone from the youngest noob to the oldest uber raider is looking stylish. Fashion appreciates this but I’m feeling a bit over whelmed. I don’t want to be one of 1,000,000 players who have armor texture 37B. Ferrel is not a conformist!
It seems almost alien to me that new characters don’t start it rags and earn their way to riches! It is, in some ways, a shame. So I’m asking the question to you all. How important is it to you that your character is unique? What lengths would you go to to ensure they don’t blend in with the crowd?
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Customization is an important feature for players. How we all look different in real life trickles over to the toons we grow from Level 1. The more individuality the better.
I like the idea of having to earn your appearance. I also like the idea of appearance gear. To me the slots shouldn’t open up until you reach 80. This way at least the character is differentiated from the leveling masses. Having different looking gear at the max level is a difficult thing to achieve with any MMO. The best gear is what everyone who raids aims for. So eventually you will have a number of players wearing the same looking items. How important is it to me to look different from the masses? I like looking different, but not at the cost of having to become a hardcore raider to achieve it. I just can’t put that much energy into a game anymore. I think the only thing that really made this possible in older MMOs was the cool looking armor took a serious commitment of time and energy to get. Game companies are realizing that there is more money to be had in the casual content than the hardcore. Its this transition that has allowed the masses to catch up and achieve what the hardcore crowd earned a long time ago.
Its a hard to give ease of content and unique looks to players at the same time.
I definitely prefer looking unique and it’s a big factor for when I played MMORPGs. There’s nothing more frustrating than looking like everyone else in the game.
This is one of the primary reasons I have trouble going back to WoW. Attempting to see a unique character is like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant. As soon as I log in I am inundated with a million different particle covered toons and mounts.
I get what you’re saying, but ultimately the game is about appealing to its audience. Having unique-looking armor is surprisingly high on the list of importance of most MMO players, not just elite raiders. That said, there are more elite raiders in most MMOs (especially the older ones) than we’d care to admit, so they have to be able to get cool-looking armor, too, and feel as though all the effort they put into that is worthwhile.
I think cool-looking armor should be available to everyone, but I’d limit weapons with particle effects to high-tier raids and epic quests (that should be do-able by the majority of high-level players on any given server). That way people who raid and don’t raid have access to the coolest-of-the-cool, but either way a lot of hard work has to be given to get it.
It’s funny… my personal preferences clash with what I think is wise for the industry.
I firmly believe in very strong and extensive options for customization (in game design as well as looks, but I’ve been over that a few times). I believe that many players really want that, and any time there’s demand for a feature, it’s worth putting dev time into, at least if it’s only to investigate possibilities.
That said, I personally don’t really care much about how my avatar looks. I’ll tweak things here and there, but 90% of my game time in these MMO worlds is looking around at the world and the stuff in it, not my character. Beyond that, I really don’t care how other players see me.
So… a hearty yes to character customization options! It’s just not a feature that’s going to sell a game to me. *shrug* But then, I *am* something of an outlier anyway…
I think EQ1 did this correctly before Ykesha (the expansion which added armor dye). Have a wide variety of armor models and colors, but have them be fixed. Less detail, “plain” looking armor and weapons indicate a lower level, but might be easier to find and coordinate a set. The higher end stuff gets more elaborate looking with only the top end (rarest) pieces having particle effects or glow.
This serves a couple purposes. First it rewards the raiders and epic questers (non raid quests should exist to get the gear but they should take a really long time to complete), and makes sure low level people look up at the high level people in awe. Second, it reduces the render load in populated places. WoW, EQ2, and EQ1 tank my machine when I visit the auction block cause EVERYONE has glowing, sparkling, particle floating, armor and weapons.
The compromise is to have an appearance slot, but make people fetch the pieces of armor that appeal to them. So maybe you just like the look of Grey Wool Armor, but you’re current raid gear looks like clown vomit. Go farm the noob yard till you get your appearance slots full of Grey Wool.
I distinctly remember carrying around a set of Wicker Armor (level 15) in EQ1 cause it looked sweet and constantly swapped for my raid set when necessary.
Appearance is very important to me in all video games, one of the problems with World of Warcraft is the distint lack of appearance slots. That is why everyone looks the same, they all wear the best equipment to be strongest in combat, and there are no appearance slots!!
In Everquest, they made that mistake of limited selection in raiding loot tables, every wizard every cleric every warrior etc… All want the same exact necklace/ring/armor/weapons!! This makes everyone look identical!! I hated it, so then they fix everyone looking like a clone by adding in armor dyes, and it was a must have feature…
Lord of the Rings uses reputation to open up cosmetic outfits and hard work, and with 2 appearance tabs its a nice system, along with the use of scholar made dyes…
World of Warcraft has all of the appearance graphics it requires, from the
mundane twill, and several others plainer graphics to the high particle effects, all blizzard needs to do is add in appearance slots – so those high particle purple raid gear chars can wear grey armor with 0 stats for appearance! There’s even a neat lil ice-bound helmet grey plate helmet dropped by solo trash npcs in Borean Tundra – if there was only an appearance slot in which to equip it!! Lots of grey items are worthless due to this lack. Even green items won’t be used over purples with stats, even if they do look nice…
I agree its nice when low levels have lesser armor (long as its colorful and not dull grey, I hate it when the game looks boring and ugly), lower levels had short little junk cloaks on world of warcraft – it wasn’t until higher level that cloaks got longer and more majestic looking (which made sense). The weapons did get more impressive looking, it wasn’t until 60 purple raid equipment, 60′s blues in Outland’s group instances, and 70′s green + Northrend equipment that items started looking really impressive after all…