Character models and diversity.

Wouldn't it be great if the character models themselves were not limited primary profession? We have 12 character models and a handful of options for each one. Why not make the models themselves interchangeable? I for one would like to have a thinner, leaner male warrior for example. Or maybe a fat mesmer. Allowing all the skin tones, hair colors, hair models, etc. across the board would be great as well. I appreciate that the armor reflects the primary, but couldn't we get more diversity if the models were were not class specific??

(I get real tired of (basically) looking like everyone else)

Agreed.

I agree also. I feel sorry for Monks and Necro's. They're just damn ugly.

I think you'll find that they havent done this because then they'd have to model armor sets for each model, instead of just the current male and female. At least this was the excuse given in EQ2 for the difficulty of developing armors - I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was claimed here. I do agree though that more customisation is a good thing - I really like creating characters

p.s i resent the necro comment

I'd like to see more diversity in body size too. And it's doable too. I forget the name of the game, but I have tried a few demos of mmorpgs that had sliders in character creation that let you control their facial features, fatness, leanness, etc. as well as the fat content and muscle content of their body, as well as height and width of their body. It was very nice, and the armor and clothes were programmed to "refit" the body to those specifications, so there wasn't any extra modeling either. :0

anoyne played marrowwind?

AO did both width and heigth for characters. Was fantastic having a really short really fat Atrox Docter because it looked like a funny dwarf with a snipers rifle healing people. Armor seemed to work there just fine. Additionally there were quite a lot of different looks as well. No dye though which I was recomending to Devs back then. Yeah to GW for that one at least.

Mmm StarWars:Galaxies had the most customisable characters I've seen:

Skin Colour
Body Height
Body Fat
Muscle
EyeTilt
Eye Size
Eye Colour
Nose Length
Nose Width
Chin Length
Chin Width
Ear Size
Eyebrows
Hair Style
Hair Colour
Markings / Tatoos / Makeup / Facial Hair

You could make a truly unique lokoing character even before you aquired any items to distinguish yourself. Shame about the game

I never played SWG, but CoH had the most impressive customizing I have seen. Could even choose primary and secondary color of costumes.

I agree that having the complete set of avatars available regardless of primary class would be great. I have had at least 3 people come up to me and comment how we look exactly the same and then ask me to team up with them. They may think it is cool to have a twin; I don't.

I would be satisfied with simply being able to dye my armor and weapons as advertised. The prices for dye are simply idiotic. I expected the dyes to be the most annoying drop to get (e.g. "Great another black dye to take up space"). Instead, I am hesitant to use the 2 dyes I have collected so far because I only have 1 shot to get it right. Once I buy new armor, that dye is now wasted.

At this point, it would seem that the easiest way to get character diversity would be for the devs to flood the dye market so that players can get creative with their characters.

-chojin

I agree, without a vast array of cosmetic options during creation, dye and kit is out only chance to look different. With apx 2-3 armor choices per profession at any given stage increasing dye drops and possibly implementing a secondary colour system so you can two tone stuff would be great.

I've racked up over 36 hours of play on my main character and looted precisely 5 dyes, 2 purples, one red, one yellow and a black. Barely enough to dye one set of armor in a comedic 'I put on whatever wasn't in the wash' style.

I realise that they probably wanted dyes to be a secondary market but to me the effort of aquiring new dyes or standing around yelling to sell a pot of whatever colour is not fun when the alternative is sucking the lifeforce from some evil abomination in some fantastical locale

Un-nerf dyes for great justice!

SWG Conquered COH in customization, the thing was, you could pick all of your characters traits, look completely unique and THEN if you get tired of any single trait you could go to a stylist and change any of that anytime in the game.

I haven't much a qualm about the way the game is set up now as far as characters go. However I do wish the male necro stood upright, no offense to those that like the hunch... I think the femme necro looks hot, the male and female monk seem fine to me though the hairstyles for the fem monk, some of them are... eh... Shaved head isn't my thing.

A fat monk, Fryer Tuck anyone? XD Could you seriously imagine a fat mesmer? o.o; and I'd imagine there would be alot of guff for the really fat characters. I already hear comments about americans being fat, even if its true, it isn't good to make fun of u.u; Imagine some of the problems we might have then perhaps...

Just trying to look at this from various angles... I have yet to find someone look exactly like me, which is, odd o.o;

Like I said I never did SWG, so I am sure I would have been impressed with it b/c I was super impressed with the design system for CoH. However, the thing I forgot to mention which should be mentioned is that NCsoft did CoH and had a fantastic design and customization system. Each costume piece could be colored in primary and secondary colors and new costumes could be bought later in game.

Point I am trying to make here is that if NCsoft did it for CoH why is GW lacking since it is the same company! The engine clearly has been developed.

I would assume that it was decided that it was not worth the effort since while actually playing the game (everywhere but towns) you'll be with at the most 15 other characters. You won't need that much to distinguish yourself from the others.

<uncontrolled laughing>

You're hilarious and right on target. I want my character to look stylish, not like a slob that is too lazy to run the washer.

As for the dye market, I think it is out of control.

I don't understand why I can go on a mission and get 5 spiked axes with "value: X" (X = 3-20), but I can't get a single vile of dye with a "value: 1". Does anyone even know what "value: 1" for dyes means? All dyes list as "value: 1" but have selling prices of 200-3500 gp! Give me a break.

The market for weapons, runes, special materials, etc is a justified economy. The dye market just prevents character development.

-chojin

value: 1 is the price a merchant will offer you for the dye (those theiving swines!)

The price a dye merchant will offer you is better and afaik based on how much of that colour is being boughtfrom or sold back to the merchant - however it's still daylight robbery

I'm all for the extra customization. Customizing your character itself is half the fun imho.

I really think there should be a stylist NPC, and for a moderate fee (I'm thinking anywhere between 1-15K is about right), we can rechange our hair style, hair color, face, skin color, and/or body scale. The reason I'm saying this is, I liked my original character setup, but that was with the starter armor. Now that my armor has changed, I would really like to be able to rechange my character to match with it (namely a matching hair color ).

Also, is there a reason elementalist headgear can't be dyed? I know warrior helmets can be, but it would be great if elementalist eyes could be as well. I think a blue flame's eye would be awesome.

Secondary colors would be great as well. For armor that it applies to (for example, elementalist headgear only really has 1 color, so it wouldn't apply), when you click on it with a dye, a menu would pop up asking which part you want to dye. Especially for some elementalist armor, when it's currently dyed, it only changes the embroidery, but the main part of the armor itself is still the same color. It would be great to be able to change more.

I agree, its just not possible yet to have a tall skinny guy or a short fat guy.

NCsoft is the publisher for both games... that is they are responsible for advertising, marketting, and sales of the games. However they are not independantly responsible for the development of the games. GW was developed by ArenaNet, which is actually a subsidiary of NCsoft but operates somewhat on its own with funding from NC. CoH was developed by Cryptic Studios, which is entirely independant from NC. NC has a liscence to manufacture and sell copies of the software, but they are in no way responsible for it's development...

So don't try to draw any comparisons between the way CoH was designed and the way GW was designed because they were made by ENTIRELY different people.