Ok another post asking for all of your opinions. In all of todays MMOG's the biggest problem I see is the fact that you have to have your characters name floating over your head so other players can tell you from the 100's of other look alikes. Yes I know you can turn this feature off, but then you could not tell your friends from every one else. Is it possible to have your character creation phase in a MMORPG, as detailed as the creation phase in The Sims 2, but go a step forward and make the detailed customizing you can do on the face in TS2, also available for the entire body. This way your in game avatar can be a truely unique one, and everyone that knows you in game can tell it is you without the floating names. How hard would it be to program this into a game?

Ever try City of Heros? You can get fairly distinctive looks in that. Of course everyone just runs around looking like X-men clones, but it's the thought that counts.

Yes I do play City of Heros, and yes they do have a great deal of customizing. But I was wondering about getting down to fine details like The Sims 2 does for the face, except being able to do for every aspect of you whole body.

Go check out Uru, its an MMO based on the Myst franchise. They advertise that the facial creation system is accurate to the point where you can map your own face onto the character you create in game. Though I do wonder whether people really do that.

I always worry about this, but not in the way you might think. If you spend money customizing the width between my eyes or realistically modelling my avatar's hair, I know that's less you've had for anything else. If the game is a fashion show, then by all means, knock yourself out--heck, even build that into the game. But being able to see the mole on my friends neck isn't going to do much if I'm playing the same hack & slash game that 99% of your competitors provide.

It's just the way it goes. Look at soldiers in combat these days. Unless you're up close and personal looking at their face, you're probably not going to know who they are, even if they're all your best friends. At moderate distance, they all look the same, with small variances in height and build.

Perhaps you should make your game rely less on knowing who is who and just try to make sure you know if you should be hacking on that person or not? :)

I guess it depends on the game.

I was thinking about something pretty similar.

I just started watching the Red vs. Blue series (the online videos made using the Halo game) and I started thinking about how similar looking characters can be quite different.


In Red vs. Blue all of the characters use the same basic armor, but they have different armor colors and voices. And since there are no facial expressions (everyone has reflective faceplates on their helmets) any expression has to be made through their voice and body language.

Anyway, I was thinking that in an MMORPG it might work best to customise the body instead of the face just simplify the face and have only simple customization of things like skin and hair color perhaps have a beard or something. But have most of the customization go though cloths, markings, or movement.


In a fantasy RPG, I would be more interested in having a cool-looking flowing cape, a unique suit of armor, or a robe to set me apart from other players.

If I buy a shield, I would like to be able to have an image put on it. So instead of simply having a Generic Iron Shield +5 I could have a Generic Iron Shield +5 with a picture of a dragons skull on it! Likewise, cloths and armor could come in different colors.

And with that kind of customization, It would be easy for different clans or teams to agree on some color scheme to tell who belongs to what clan.

Or you could include various specialized body-language cues:

Walk: players could walk with a limp like old vetrens, walk light-footed like theives, walk elogently like royalty, or maybe swing their arms like they are jogging, perhaps if they play as a child then they can skip.

Head: Some could just look straight ahead, others might have their heads look around constantly, some could constantly look back over their shoulder etc.


So anyway, Having the characters appearence mainly customised through clothes would probably work out better than through just faces. And having some clothing items limited due to price or as being rewards for acheivements could help keep too many characters from looking alike.

Also, when I was watching Red vs. Blue I was thinking that perhaps when having two teams opposing eachother, you could have each team have a sort of spectrum of colors instead of just one. So a "red" team could have bright red, orange, dark red or pink armored characters they can tell individuals apart while knowing which team they are on, though there are obviously better ways to accomplish this.

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Original post by The Shadow Nose In a fantasy RPG, I would be more interested in having a cool-looking flowing cape, a unique suit of armor, or a robe to set me apart from other players. If I buy a shield, I would like to be able to have an image put on it. So instead of simply having a Generic Iron Shield +5 I could have a Generic Iron Shield +5 with a picture of a dragons skull on it! Likewise, cloths and armor could come in different colors.

You make it sound easy, but have you imagined this world? Walking into a paint and spray shield design shop takes a bit away from the feel of the medieval world. Same goes for clothing. Where having three or four variations of an armor is fine, it would seem a bit out of place to be capable of customizing the exact color when you buy it. If you're playing a legendary hero character who everyone knows, then perhaps that type of service would be more fitting. But that's usually not the case until the game is won, and is never the case in a MMO game.

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Original post by JiiaYou make it sound easy, but have you imagined this world? Walking into a paint and spray shield design shop takes a bit away from the feel of the medieval world. Same goes for clothing. Where having three or four variations of an armor is fine, it would seem a bit out of place to be capable of customizing the exact color when you buy it. If you're playing a legendary hero character who everyone knows, then perhaps that type of service would be more fitting. But that's usually not the case until the game is won, and is never the case in a MMO game.

I think a customization shop would indeed be strange in a medieval world. Buying custom items, OTOH, wouldn't. I'm sure it wasn't extremely rare back then to have customers request a specific color from the tailor or a particular etching from the blacksmith. For a higher fee of course.

The MMORPG I am working on uses Facial Studio for modelling faces, so we can have a fair few different styles of face. However, we are working on having unique/destinct items that characters can have.

These items might not be at all useful to any other charatcers, but will look and act differently to anything else avaliable.