Guild Wars expansions: Trend of decreasing face / hair customization...

My 2 cents, yes having African looking characters for an African continent makes sense. Variety is nice. Having a world with different continents with different looking people, though scary, just seems right somehow.

To cater for those who want Caucusian or Asian faces, how about having just 1 or two available, or make some mongrel faces, you know, imagine an African tribe with a flock of white sheep.

And yeah, love those ugly faces. I didn't think I would like assasins but I threw one together with a savenger/street urchin/thief look and think she's completely awesome. None of that white ass, pony tail sh*t.

the voice change suggestion relate to character appearance options because for players who will be creating caucasian, asian, middle eastern looking paragon / dervish, it wouldn't be suiting for them to have a distinctly african voice. in-fact, i believe most middle eastern voices tend to be a bit higher pitch than normal in real life. therefore, the paragon / dervish female voices should sound more standard and universal for character creation.

I was also extremely disappointed with the small amount of face and hair choices in the Nightfall preview, same as how I felt when Factions came out.

I noticed a lot of recycled hairstyles AGAIN, and many of the hairstyles are so similar it's hard to count them as new styles. The prophecies mesmer short, thick, cropped hair was rehashed in Factions for female necros... and it is reused a third time in Nightfall, with a slightly more curly texture. Very disappointing.

I find the african facial features very attractive, but the makeup on half of the female faces is just horrendous! Gold lipstick and tacky eyeshadow?! Blegh!

It's also a bit silly we're so severely limited in skintones with Nightfall. I understand they are trying to make it realistically african, so why do they offer blonde and red hair tones? IMO those look awful with the dark skintones so for me at least they're wasted from the start since I have no choice but to make a tan or dark skinned character. It's also interesting the dark skintones were available in Factions, but light skin tones are not offered in Nightfall. There are fair skinned people in Africa, Egypt and India!

Anyhow, just hoping more options will be added... and I know it's a shot in the dark, but some lighter skintones would be nice too. Cantha and Tyria featured darker skintones with asian and caucasian faces, yet Elonia offers african faces but no light skintones.

I've seen this idea posted so many times and always have to agree. If all hair and face combos were offered to people with the merged accounts there would be yet another incentive to merge, since 2 slots ($20) is lost on merging. Would be a great business move for ANet to make. It's also apparent that the hairstyles from different campaigns do line up on Tyrian faces. Remember the glitch where 1 Tyrian warrior and ranger hairstyle were temporarily replaced by Elonian hair? It all lined up visually, would just need to be programmed in as an option.

So anything about a hair stylist yet? I'm dieing to change my warriors hair, and i've had him for over a year, with all the missions beat from both campaigns so far and all towns unlocked and 2 sets of 15K armor... i'd hate to delete him cuz of hair... and i am considering doing that

Once again, The discussion was about hair/facial choices. Not choice in whether or not your voice matches your skin color. Voice to skin pigment does not apply.

Sounding universal is a state of mind. What sounds universal to you might sound foreign to someone else. With that said, the voices match the region.

I've heard Caucasians with deeper voices than most Africans. Etc. Etc. And I'm pretty sure that Caucasians or any other race that grows up in Africa will have an African accent. A prime example is a Mexican born guy with a very very heavy Texan accent after living in Dallas for 16 years. You could never tell the difference if you heard him over the phone.

Now you can get nit picky with which region and whether or not a middle eastern accent applies. But one thing is for sure, you can't be sure someone sounds a certain way by the look of their face or skin color.

You don't need to be black to have black characters. I have two black monks, "mixed race" ranger and warrior, and 4 white characters.

I'm white.

Omega X: You have not really understood anything this whole thread. So I'm not even going to bother with you.

One more vote for being able to choose from the options from all campaigns purchased and available to your account on character creation. All faces and hairstyles for, say, Warriors across all campaigns purchased should be available to you regardless of where you create the character. Yay for more variety (and if you want to be a continental purist, just stick with the local flavoured faces/hair styles on character creation, noone says you have to use the ones from previously purchased expansions).

Hair colours and skin tones should be available to all classes across the board regardless, as there is no geometry involved in making them fit onto a character model. Restricting hair colour to a specific class just doesn't make sense, and is an easy way to give more character variety. ("That baby was born with blue hair - sign her up for Necro classes now, she can't ever be a Ranger!")

This way, I can make a blue-haired Warrior with a Tyrian face, Canthan Hairstyle, and have him/her start in Elona. Because I have purchased all three campaigns. And really (again, for those that have all expansions), once you have hit Level 20 and have your 200 Attribute points, who gives a flying fig which continent is your homeland?

(The preceding is, of course, my opinion. Your mileage may vary.)

I guess that is code for "I don't have much basis for my argument".

I don't have a problem with appearences being chapter-exclusive, as long as there are plenty of good choices in each. I hope that they are indeed adding more faces and hair for the Nightfall retail, because I agree that there wasn't all that much.

I also dont have a problem with appearances being chapter exclusive as long as there are a Wide Variety of Choices in the New Chapter, which there are NOT.

The hair style choices in nightfall were just horrid. Especially the monk short braided hair, I think it was 8 short braided styles which all basically look similar with 1 bald style, and 1 ugly updo hair style, I dont call this variety and with what it is all the styles are the same and if you dont like braided hair well you might as well not make a monk.

Same goes for a few others like necro...why the limited choices?

The designers of guild war hair need to actually go down in person to a hair salon and look at all the different styles with long hair, medium cut hair, and short hair. All we have in nightfall for monks is short braided hair which has no variety in length, or body. Faces are the same way.

And no matter what Gaile says look at Prophecies...most people choose the nonshort hair styles, how many princess leia hair style monks do you see, most in prophecies are that style. And what of faction monks most are the longer hair styles, I dont say all need to be long or medium hair styles, but at least give us the choice, and the one long hair style in nightfall was just ugly. Have a designer who knows and has been to real hair salons sign off on the designs.

SAVE THE UGLY!

While I agree we do need more "pretty options" I am still opposed to the removal of what players call "ugly" altogether. Monk cones, half-bald dos, do get used. I don't want to be forced to have buns simply because the rest of the gw population found some of the more unique and creative styles "fugly".

I recall there were roughly 5 hair and 5 face options each in the preview, this might be a slight underestimate, but this definately needs to be fixed - without removing the ugly.

well if the system allows mixing between chapters, you can make all the "uglies" u want lol

"Hair-stylist" in-game, with all chapters (you have) hairs (and hair colors)

I agree... and after all, they've already made the 'ugly' faces and hair so even if they make new faces and hair more similar to the popular ones, keep the uglies in too. What harm would there be since they're already made?

You, sir, are exactly correct in every detail.

Well what I have noticed is that, (I'm not discriminating or anything) but, in Factions you had to be Asian, and now in Nightfall you have to be African American, and not white, not everybody is African American or Asian, at least in Prophecies you could change the skin color from pale white to dark black, but in Nightfall, it goes from light brown to dark black.

Um... no. There is paler skin than light brown in Nightfall.


Yeah, I never understood that. It seems silly to me. I'm all for the professions having their own unique looks, but imho Guild Wars has defined how professions should look a little beyond my liking. The customization of characters isn't as high as I would like it, but the quality of what is there is great.

I don't like how hairstyles are chapter specific. While I have no problem with being forced to choose form the hairstyles in the chapter I decide to make my character upon creation, I think it would be nice to have the opportunity to change it by like buying a new hairstyle from a NPC or something. I know some people keep complaining that this is GW and not The Sims, but the fact is that by just adding something like this would amplify the amount of customization in the game a lot more than working on a bunch of new hairstyles and stuff.

Unless they add a bunch of new faces and hairstyles and what not for Nightfall release, it is clear that the amount of new looks is decreasing.

Variety is the spice of life.

any update yet on whether more face / hair choices will be added?

My first character is a black ele - a nod to my long time previously favorite character, a female erudite enchanter in EQ. I'm certainly willing to mix it up, and I don't find it odd at all Nightfall is dominated with such a theme.

The problem is a few fold however - where we could chose darker/lighter before, now there appear to be much less options, particularly for the male side of the coin (yay more of us have to make more females). I don't get the forced hand. Also face choices, chp1 seemed to run a pretty good range, chp2 and chp3 expand in their own ways, but per the thread, we keep losing choice. I don't get that, we bought the chapters, I'd hope for the collective breadth of choices not a smaller and smaller pool until I'll be entirely unsatisfied. I'm used to a lot of people looking like my male warrior from chp1 (keep the helmet on), my monk from chp2 (sees his twin non-stop) but now I'm even having a hard time picking one toon/avatar I like - it's certainly not just skin color but that's another factor - less choice in skin tone with less face choices.

But go further - *all* of our characters heroes are chosen for us, the vast majority Nightfall-only flavor with this in mind. In some ways you'll see them more than you'll see yourself. You'll even see 'copies' at times. Yay.

I'm not making a ton of new characters in chp3 and they'll probably all be female now, maybe from now end given the new trend (thanks ANet).

But I'm even more disappointed on the cosmetic side of things with the hero pool - hey I'm open to a lot of things, my character grouping is quite a diverse crew. But do you have to pigeon hole our new character choices more and more, and lock in all of our heroes to boot w/o any choice?

Ah well, I would have gone a different route there

Myself right NOW, wanna make a new character, but I like the combo of a prophecies face with a factions hair, and wanna start in factions chapter.

I wanna start Factions again, but I personally don't like chinese/japanese faces for a "forever" character, so, I CAN'T play Factions if I don't like being an asian (note I am not racist, maybe I got used seeing myself in the mirror, and rarely delete characters similar to me)

Ok, it's bad enough the number of faces and hair is decreasing with each chapter, but there were so many duplicates in Factions it wasn't even funny. I actually got around to making some screenshots...


Tyrian Mesmer, Canthan Necro -- This hairstyle is reused AGAIN in NF for female mes.


Canthan Mes, Rit, War


Tyrian Monk, Canthan War


Canthan War, Tyrian War


Tyrian War, Canthan War


Canthan Nec, Mes


Canthan War, Tyrian Mes & Ele


At least if we're going to be limited please use some new, unique hairstyles and faces. Please don't reuse anymore old hairstyles... I was so disappointed to see so many dupes in Factions, and I'm sure I didn't find all of them. Variety is fun!

That monk got tired of healing and changed profession to warrior

BTW, good eyes (you have) Riesz

only 2 weeks til release...will be get more choices are the same amount in the preview?

what's to complain? What about all female casters look exactly the same under the hood?

Yeah... also forgot to mention female paragons (maybe dervishes too, can't remember) have the exact same body as female elem. Same standing pose and everything. Also reused emotes from the caster line

And it's used for assassins :s

they might as well mix it all up to give us more combinations and choices

well looks like well see soon...

Ive just noticed my paragon character that I kept from the preview event has changed hair color - its no longer blond, but dark brown - I sure hope they wont cut down on hair colors as well, taht would be so lame...

im hoping they added some extra choices in light of this dicussion. otherwise, even if you add more choices at a later date, we would likely have to delete and recreate our characters

ok just about to pop in my nightfall cds for installing.

for those who have installed it already, did they add more character customizations in any way?

wow. well they fixed this. Tons of colors and more hair/faces than the preview.

Not more hair styles for the monk.

I was kind of expecting a stylist in Nightfall.

Maybe soon? Would be nice if they added more stuff to develope our characters since half the game is based on that. (Armor skins that don't do anything but look cooler, dyes, weapon skins, why not a stylist for new hairs and such?)

i agree with you on that

ive invested quite a lot of time & gold [skill caps & armor] into my older toons and i just cant get myself to delete them.

a stylist [and maybe even a plastic surgeon ] would be an awesome addition in the near future [knocks on wood ]

the faces are only 1 or 2 more than the preview unfortunately. but they did add a lot of hair colors and more hair styles.

They did fix it, thankfully. The face selection is still really thin; most professions got only one or two new faces. But the added hairstyles and colors are very nice.

I really do have to ask this: While I do find the shared profession faces a little disappointing, why are shared profession hairstyles such a problem?