Comments on: Brief look at the EVE character creator

By: Dblade

Dblade — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 23:53:07 +0000

The tech is nice, but I missed all the things like headdresses, implants, futuristic armor, and facial tattoos. You get a lot of people looking the same except for camera angeles, especially from the neck down.

By: Stabs

Stabs — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:04:31 +0000

Some of my characters look great but one in particular rather irritated me. It looks exactly like a real life acquaintance I find rather annoying. No matter how I altered it, it still looks just like her – just with a wig on and different lighting.

I suppose I could re-roll a different race but I’m loathe to do that after a year of skill training.

By: Esri

Esri — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:52:35 +0000

I was disappointed in the “bleeding edge” character creator. I was able to make nice-looking avatars and they were satisfactory replacements for the old portraits. They’re much better looking, for one thing.

The drab clothing was a huge disappointment. I know we’ll probably get another chance if “walking in stations” ever truly comes about (hey, Duke Nukem Forever has a release date!), but grey, brown and black (one white shirt as I recall) are not a color palette. I was happy enough, for MY avatar, with pilot-y looking clothes, but as you say it is a sci-fi game and they could get away with just about anything.

The “bleeding edge” just wasn’t there. It’s adequate.

Esri

By: Samon

Samon — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 10:24:15 +0000

To be honest, I think its a step backwards. It certainly looks much better and polished, but in my opinion, it just doesn’t offer enough variety between different characters of the same race. They do look good, but as you say, the range of customisation options are quite limited and only offer subtle tweaks to a standard template for each race.

For me, the most important things about creating a character is that it looks unique and that I’m able to make it look, or at least get close to looking, how I imagine the character should. The new tool fails on both counts. I’m not sure whether this is poor design, where they’ve prioritised style over substance, or intentional, in that they want all characters to be easily identifiable as belonging to a particular race. I suspect its probably the latter, but its still disappointing.

Also, about the clothes, I believe they’re working on having characters walk about space stations in a future expansion.
They’ve also mentioned the possibility to buy things like clothing for characters through micro transactions at some point in the future. The more cynical might think that having such a limited clothing choice now, might just lead to a lot more sales of virtual clothing in the future.

By: ffox

ffox — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 07:20:35 +0000

the new character creator is really great. (not that the old wasn’t – it was way ahead for its time, it’s just – its time is way back now )

i can see the reasoning behind not giving much clothing-related options as its primary purpose is to make a portrait photo. at least this is the idea before Incarna launches (some day, anyway… but hey – Even Duke Nukem Forever got a release date, so who knows?!)

what i didn’t like is how limited you are within the sub-racial template. this is actually a gameplay and not a technological limitation, of course. still, i’d be happier if i had at least 2-3 starter options for my ancestral model.