Character Customization

[EvilKitten]

Phew, that's quite a lot on char customization!

Char visual customization and frame/vehicle visual customization is going to be important to cover day to day sales of Ember between mini-expansions. So, we're going to have to bite the bullet and move this from a nice-to-have to a must-have system.

Also, if fundraising keeps up the way it has, I can see us doing both male and female characters. We know selling cool looks and skins can generate enough revenue to fund ongoing games and also profit. We do have to make a profit for the company to keep going, or its not ever going to be able to grow, attract more talent and do cooler things.

We want you to be able to create your own style/char, instead of providing canned ones like in Overwatch. This means our selection of clothing, equipment will vary from sci-fi reaper street style all the was to armored looks (which we'll probably start with) to fun things like cat-ears.

So that said, how many options should be free at the start for hair/heads, etc vs paid cosmetics?

Can't speak for the guys, but for girls it would be nice to have at least one pony tail and two or three long haired options as well as 5 or 6 short haired options to start out with. For heads I would do one general face for Asian, Caucasian, African, Native American as either stand alone or presets and then provide sliders for customization from there. There is nothing wrong with selling hair styles but I would strongly recommend against selling faces or colours. Players identify too strongly with the face of their character so all options should be open there.

As for clothing items, are you planning to sell single "outfits" or do you plan to divvy up the parts (pants, shirts, gloves, hats etc). I am rather hoping for the latter. If so I would have at least 10 different free items to choose from in each of the pants/shirts/shoes category. Also I would sell individual items but also sell complete outfit combinations for a small discount.

The one thing that would be good to completely monetize would be jewelry,piercings and tattoo's. Anything that isn't required to cloth the character should be up for grabs. However with that said, if you actually sell those thing you do need to make sure there is at least one *free* clothing option that allows other players to see said item. This is pointed mostly at Tattoo's. I would not want to purchase a tattoo only to discover that none of the available clothing options actually showed it off.

Honestly if you want to look at what I consider to be one of the best finely tuned character customization in any game I would look at Saints Row 3/4. While there are other games out there that also have competent character creations the Saints Row franchise has really nailed it down well (far far better than Skyrim IMO)

There is no point in watching the whole thing but you can jump through and get an idea if you haven't played Saints Row before.

 

[Wintersiege]

I think WoW/Mass Effect level customization for toons was adequete, nowhere near the level of many of the newer Korean/Chinese MMO that are everywhere nowadays but a good place to start I would think. Please no shiny skin ala Blade and Soul, all the girls look like plactic barbie dolls.

 

[Darkwolf]

Phew, that's quite a lot on char customization!

Char visual customization and frame/vehicle visual customization is going to be important to cover day to day sales of Ember between mini-expansions. So, we're going to have to bite the bullet and move this from a nice-to-have to a must-have system.

Also, if fundraising keeps up the way it has, I can see us doing both male and female characters. We know selling cool looks and skins can generate enough revenue to fund ongoing games and also profit. We do have to make a profit for the company to keep going, or its not ever going to be able to grow, attract more talent and do cooler things.

We want you to be able to create your own style/char, instead of providing canned ones like in Overwatch. This means our selection of clothing, equipment will vary from sci-fi reaper street style all the was to armored looks (which we'll probably start with) to fun things like cat-ears.

So that said, how many options should be free at the start for hair/heads, etc vs paid cosmetics?

Id say something like 15-20 options to start with per part like 15-20 hair styles, 15-20 tops, 15-20 bottoms etc etc. For something like cat ears why not have a tail to go with it? Complete the set there and make it an items to release abit later on after the games out.

 

[MattHunX]

Phew, that's quite a lot on char customization!

Char visual customization and frame/vehicle visual customization is going to be important to cover day to day sales of Ember between mini-expansions. So, we're going to have to bite the bullet and move this from a nice-to-have to a must-have system.

Also, if fundraising keeps up the way it has, I can see us doing both male and female characters. We know selling cool looks and skins can generate enough revenue to fund ongoing games and also profit. We do have to make a profit for the company to keep going, or its not ever going to be able to grow, attract more talent and do cooler things.

We want you to be able to create your own style/char, instead of providing canned ones like in Overwatch. This means our selection of clothing, equipment will vary from sci-fi reaper street style all the was to armored looks (which we'll probably start with) to fun things like cat-ears.

So that said, how many options should be free at the start for hair/heads, etc vs paid cosmetics?

Ehh...

I know I've said that I'd want more options than what we had in Firefall. But, honestly...the free stuff I could start with was enough. For starters, anyway. But, there needs to be 2x 3x 4x the amount of stuff that'll have to cost something. Though, what I also liked about Firefall, is that I could convert my hard-earned, endlessly-grinded resources to e.g.: a mere 10 beans to buy a new hair-styles that was more to my liking. That was neat. There should be the chance to unlock a lot of customization options for in-game currency that we'd get from converting the resources we'd use for other stuff, like putting modding on hold, to use all the stuff we have and exchange it for some...Emberite...whatever such currency would be called and buy ourselves some swag. The higher tier the cosmetic items would be the lot more they'd cost and a lot longer it would take to gather enough stuff to exchange it for the credits needed for them. Nothing should prevent one from eventually obtaining any item (unless it's some founder-exclusive or season-pass...etc. that sort of stuff). If they want instant swag or a piece of high-end gear, right off the bat, then they can do what they've done before and pay for it with actual money, while others who don't want to use real-world money, could work for it.

That system was fine.

 

[MattHunX]

Given that the actual purpose of customization is to assist in drawing in the player to better identify with the MC, the only other conclusion I can come up with is that secretly most male gamers are actually closet transgendered!

Well...

I often think about what I would do in a situation, how I'd relate to certain individuals, if I was female.

I like to write fanfics for stuff (like Borderlands...have a longer fanfic for it) where my female OC is essentially a female version of me or more like...how I'd like to be. Different in personality, but not in principals and mentality (including orientation). So, yeah...most of my female OCs either don't prefer men, or they don't bother with romance and relationships.

That's also why I prefer certain equipment, weapons, abilities with a female, but not with a male, and vice-versa.

 

[Daynen]

I think an overlooked part of customization lies not in the choices we have to customize, but in the impact that customization has on our experience. How many of us remember spending countless hours customizing a character in Skyrim, for example, only to realize thereafter that no one was ever going to see that character? Even WE don't see our OWN characters most of the time if we're playing in first person, and even those who play in third person feel this effect as soon as they find their first desirable piece of headgear. All that work tweaking the perfect face, wasted on that awesome full-faced daedric helmet.

From the concept art, Ember seems to be in a somewhat decent spot, given our characters are completely visible within our omniframe, but only time will tell. Just know that if all our customization gets buried beneath our gear, or if we never have moments where people get a good look at each other in person, half the draw of that customization will be null and void.

 

[NitroMidgets]

Is it wrong to like the concept where at some point your "upgrade" can drastically alter how you appear? Sort of like with Project Genom.
https://pgenom.com/about/character-progression/
The fact that at some point you took on more of a human, mutant or synthetic appearance due to your choices was nice.

 

[Darkwolf]

Is it wrong to like the concept where at some point your "upgrade" can drastically alter how you appear? Sort of like with Project Genom.
https://pgenom.com/about/character-progression/
The fact that at some point you took on more of a human, mutant or synthetic appearance due to your choices was nice.

I do not think we will be going on that direction with Ember

 

[MattHunX]

I do not think we will be going on that direction with Ember

Nope. Yep. Agree. We shouldn't grow tentacles.

Our omni-frame, however, should be able to change drastically in appearance, depending on what we'd build it for.

 

[Darkwolf]

Nope. Yep. Agree. We shouldn't grow tentacles.

Our omni-frame, however, should be able to change drastically in appearance, depending on what we'd build to for.

I agree with that and maby some vanity clothing like a ninja outfit or bikini (firefall surfing anyone?)

 

[MattHunX]

I agree with that and maby some vanity clothing like a ninja outfit or bikini (firefall surfing anyone?)

Nah, that breaks the immersion of it, for me.

Same reason I was never tripping over myself to get (or was never sad that I couldn't get) customization items like Tiki-Masks, flaming-skulls, chibi-conversion, beer-hats...etc.

Going by the current player-character design, from the official art, we can easily get away with hoods, baseball caps, headphones and other, normal stuff one would wear as casual clothing, in and out of the mech.

 

[Despair]

I'm in for an item shop (cosmetics, gimmicks, maybe colors)
I'm in for character customization
I'm in for omniframe changes

 

[MollilMayhem]

Can't speak for the guys, but for girls it would be nice to have at least one pony tail and two or three long haired options as well as 5 or 6 short haired options to start out with. For heads I would do one general face for Asian, Caucasian, African, Native American as either stand alone or presets and then provide sliders for customization from there. There is nothing wrong with selling hair styles but I would strongly recommend against selling faces or colours. Players identify too strongly with the face of their character so all options should be open there.

As for clothing items, are you planning to sell single "outfits" or do you plan to divvy up the parts (pants, shirts, gloves, hats etc). I am rather hoping for the latter. If so I would have at least 10 different free items to choose from in each of the pants/shirts/shoes category. Also I would sell individual items but also sell complete outfit combinations for a small discount.

The one thing that would be good to completely monetize would be jewelry,piercings and tattoo's. Anything that isn't required to cloth the character should be up for grabs. However with that said, if you actually sell those thing you do need to make sure there is at least one *free* clothing option that allows other players to see said item. This is pointed mostly at Tattoo's. I would not want to purchase a tattoo only to discover that none of the available clothing options actually showed it off.

Honestly if you want to look at what I consider to be one of the best finely tuned character customization in any game I would look at Saints Row 3/4. While there are other games out there that also have competent character creations the Saints Row franchise has really nailed it down well (far far better than Skyrim IMO)

There is no point in watching the whole thing but you can jump through and get an idea if you haven't played Saints Row before.

LOL...watching that guy try to create the female character was hilarious! His problem was her chin/jaw area mostly. But anyway, that's a nice example of a level of character creation that I find the most fun to play with. I can actually spend an hour messing around with all the sliders on a face and head. I always start with a bald headed face, get the shape of the head where it looks good from all angles, and then take each feature one by one and fix those. Hair styles are last. Loads of fun. I always wonder, though, after you go through all that creation and get exactly what you want, how much of that detail is actually translated to the screen IN GAME?

 

[EvilKitten]

LOL...watching that guy try to create the female character was hilarious! His problem was her chin/jaw area mostly. But anyway, that's a nice example of a level of character creation that I find the most fun to play with. I can actually spend an hour messing around with all the sliders on a face and head. I always start with a bald headed face, get the shape of the head where it looks good from all angles, and then take each feature one by one and fix those. Hair styles are last. Loads of fun. I always wonder, though, after you go through all that creation and get exactly what you want, how much of that detail is actually translated to the screen IN GAME?

Scary, I do the exact same thing. And I always start with the chin and work my way up the face. Which always seems to be the opposite for how most character creators that use sliders like SR4 lay their sliders out. I have pissed off more than one person by taking over an hour designing my characters face in a coop game.


(to show off some aggressive navel)

 

[MattHunX]

LOL...watching that guy try to create the female character was hilarious! His problem was her chin/jaw area mostly. But anyway, that's a nice example of a level of character creation that I find the most fun to play with. I can actually spend an hour messing around with all the sliders on a face and head. I always start with a bald headed face, get the shape of the head where it looks good from all angles, and then take each feature one by one and fix those. Hair styles are last. Loads of fun. I always wonder, though, after you go through all that creation and get exactly what you want, how much of that detail is actually translated to the screen IN GAME?

LOL...my longest was about an our and a half. And that was in Mass Effect 2 or 3, I think. And Dragon Age Inquisition, too.

I like a bit of androgyny, like making a stronger chin or wider, squarer jaw for my female characters, actually. I always start with the hair, so I"ll see how it frames a face that I then shape.

 

[MollilMayhem]

LOL...my longest was about an our and a half. And that was in Mass Effect 2 or 3, I think. And Dragon Age Inquisition, too.

I like a bit of androgyny, like making a stronger chin or wider, squarer jaw for my female characters, actually. I always start with the hair, so I"ll see how it frames a face that I then shape.

As a former hair stylist, you "should" pick the hairstyle that frames the face properly...hence the reason I make the face first. Plus a good-looking face will look good with pretty much any hairstyle...i mean if the head looks good with no hair at all, then it can't look bad with whatever hair you put on it, but I suppose you could also work backwards, too. However, if you like to make feminine faces with more "masculine" characteristics, then finding a complementary hairstyle becomes a bit more challenging.

But that's the fun in it.

 

[Bl4ckhunter]

Can't speak for the guys, but for girls it would be nice to have at least one pony tail and two or three long haired options as well as 5 or 6 short haired options to start out with. .

Long hair has some issue thought, unless there are plans to add "dongly bits" (and i know just how bad it sounds) that move around like in warframe to characters you end up with hair that looks like sculpted plastic, which isn't really good looking.

 

[Rocket]

So that said, how many options should be free at the start for hair/heads, etc vs paid cosmetics?

Whatever you do, please don't make the basic free stuff look too good. Great when your trying to build interest, not so great when your trying to build income that can pay for servers. Firefall made that mistake. The base Battleframes didn't need much else, so warpaints didn't sell well.

Warframe is an example of the opposite. The base Warframes, at least in the beginning, tend to be somewhat bland. The base color palette is very uninspiring. You want something better and someone needs to spend real money. Varied color palettes, Immortal Skins, Deluxe Skins (models), Syndannas. There's heaps. And it's all cool because the gameplay is pretty good.

Now maybe Ember doesn't need to go quite that far if it's not FTP. But people still need a reason to go full retard on swag.

 

[Torgue_Joey]

Whatever you do, please don't make the basic free stuff look too good. Great when your trying to build interest, not so great when your trying to build income that can pay for servers. Firefall made that mistake. The base Battleframes didn't need much else, so warpaints didn't sell well.

Warframe is an example of the opposite. The base Warframes, at least in the beginning, tend to be somewhat bland. The base color palette is very uninspiring. You want something better and someone needs to spend real money. Varied color palettes, Immortal Skins, Deluxe Skins (models), Syndannas. There's heaps. And it's all cool because the gameplay is pretty good.

Now maybe Ember doesn't need to go quite that far if it's not FTP. But people still need a reason to go full retard on swag.

DID SOMEONE SAID SWAG?
MY WALLET GONNA EXPLODE FOR COSMETIC

 

[EvilKitten]

Long hair has some issue thought, unless there are plans to add "dongly bits" (and i know just how bad it sounds) that move around like in warframe to characters you end up with hair that looks like sculpted plastic, which isn't really good looking.

Sorry but with today's modeling technology there is NO reason not to have realistic hair, even longer hair. I would avoid having hair down to your waist sure, but shoulder length hair should not be an issue.

Whatever you do, please don't make the basic free stuff look too good. Great when your trying to build interest, not so great when your trying to build income that can pay for servers. Firefall made that mistake. The base Battleframes didn't need much else, so warpaints didn't sell well.

Warframe is an example of the opposite. The base Warframes, at least in the beginning, tend to be somewhat bland. The base color palette is very uninspiring. You want something better and someone needs to spend real money. Varied color palettes, Immortal Skins, Deluxe Skins (models), Syndannas. There's heaps. And it's all cool because the gameplay is pretty good.

Now maybe Ember doesn't need to go quite that far if it's not FTP. But people still need a reason to go full retard on swag.

I think rather than selling fixed warpaints they need to sell wardesigns.

Base Model = 1 color options
Cheap Paints = 2 color options
Delux Paints = 3 color options.

Again this is just like how SR3/4 does their clothes (there is a reason I posted that video). They have certain styles/locations for each of 1-3 colors which you can pick from a ton of different colors and you can mix and match to get just what you want. So you can have a wardesign that is green and the same one can be red for someone else. There can be a less expensive option option for each type that you pay a small amount and chose what colors you want, but after that they are fixed. There can be a higher priced version that allows you to change colors after you have purchased it.

E.G.
Base = free
1 use cheap paints = 10 points
multi use cheap paints = 25 points
1 use deluxe paints = 50 points
multi-use deluxe paints = 125 points