Different muscle mass/weight within a race for customisation?

[Thimagryn]

In Phantasy Star Online, one of my friends made their elf character look like a short, fat hobbit with a green afro. Amusing the first few times, then it became painful knowing that 'thing' is joining the group.

So I agree with what that guy said about people picking the worst settings. Give people options and they'll (ab)use it.

[nekobaka]

I personally would like to see some variations based on class with an option to have ether the class modified version or the base version we have now. A plate wearing BE paladin should have a bit more grunt to them while a human male priest shouldnt really be carrying all that upper bulk. We dont have to have female warriors look like the DIII barb, just give them the option to have one that packs some muscle compared to their caster cloth wearing buddies.

[Deleted]

I also want to see a skinny Orc and a fat Troll.

Yeah, well I don't. I rather look at characters that define their race and serve as a standart for it (even if it means hulk in a dress) than having hardly recognizable special snowflakes everywhere.

[NuLogic]

Boob sliders plz?

[Deleted]

Yes I would love this so my plate wearers could be more bulky than my cloth wearers of the same race. Really just a role-play reason but it all adds to the fun!

[Yig]

Sliders should never be in WOW. But a few options per race would be welcome. Sliders open a pandora's box of bullshit when it comes to preserving the cohesion of Blizzard's art style in WOW.

Here's something to consider. Chris Robinson recently said they are considering giving orc players the option to finally stand up like every orc you've ever seen in the Warcraft media outside of WOW's player model. Not even peons bent over like old arthritic hermits. But Robinson said this is something they're currently talking about and it's on their wishlist. This opens a doorway for quite a precedent here considering other similar options in character creation.

WOW wasn't originally limited because of technology, just look at Star Wars Galaxies array of character creation options to see that. They intentionally limited the system for very specific aesthetic reasons. They wanted very strong and iconic imagery with just enough variation to make you feel a sense of unique identity while making us all look like were painted by the same dude in a kick ass over the top drawing. They also wanted custom unique animations filled with charm and character for each race, and unique for both sexes, something other MMOs did not do back then. They also wanted people who did not play MMORPGs to try out WOW and WOW was made to appeal to newcomers to the genre, they didn't want to make this game into an Excel spreadsheet that would potentially intimidate or bore the people who were not among the 100,000 or so living in the world that were playing MMOs in 2003. They wanted you to get into the game and start playing without feeling bombarded with choices.

Sir Samwise of Beertown on the subject:

We gave very simple choices, and there wasn't any of this 'Is my guy five pounds overweight? Are his eyes sea blue or sky blue?' Don't get me wrong, that sort of thing is cool, but we made a very simple UI and character creator, and that's one of the main things that helped people gravitate to the game.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2009/11/24/po...in-cataclysm/2

It had nothing to do with laziness. Now, you may disagree and you may wish they did it differently, but that's why we have what we have. Lately new hairstyles have been alluded to along with expanded customization with decorations and alternative orc anatomy, so things could be getting interesting and more ambitious than many are giving credit for in the next year or so in this department. Or not. And I suck, and I'm wrong-wrong-wrong.

[Ineluki]

Definetly though I agree with what others have said, keep it limited to 3 or so options so people cant make something way over the top.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Anyone who wants this thinking 'it's so easy Blizz should have done it years ago" has no idea how models in WoW work. For each slider option you need a whole new model made. We're talking 9 new models per race/gender if there's just 3 each.

- - - Updated - - -

Boob sliders plz?

Oh, and the whole slippery slope issue.

[ACES]

Yes, I actually want to be scrawny! A buff priest just doesn't seem right to me.

[Al Gorefiend]

Boob sliders plz?

This, this is the inevitable outcome of putting sliders in an MMO. Once it happens, people want boob sliders, and when that happens, you'll never see a female character with normal-sized boobs.

Welcome to Guild Wars

[OzoAndIndi]

Yeah, I think the idea of being able to make them taller/shorter and leaner/bulkier would be a plus. If not to a ridiculous scale.. still race appropriate.

My Belf isn't addicted to mana/fel magic, he's addicted to Elixir of Giant Growth. And throwing Baby Spice at others.

Boob sliders plz?

Only if the guys get, well, you know...

[Annarion]

Just three options for each race/gender. Slim, athletic, strong. Slim is for casters, athletic is for agility characters, strong is for strength characters. Not that you'd be locked into those options, but just gives you an idea of what they'd look like. If I could make all my belves have a silhouette like Loki in Thor, I'd probably play male characters instead of female. I'm just not in to football player shoulders. But there should be a distinction between a caster and a rogue. Casters should have hardly any muscle mass (obviously you're still going to be bigger as an orc than a night elf), athletic should be about where most of the female races are now, and strong should be approximately where males are now, except for the outlying ridiculous builds (Looking at you, human and draenei.)

Nothing about bust size or height or weight. Just muscle mass. Even if you're a caster, you're still a hardened veteran of a thousand battles and shouldn't be packing around jelly rolls. Even if you were heavyset, you'd look like dwarves, not John Candy.

[Voidism]

Only if the guys get, well, you know...

Okay, I'm now all for this idea.

Also, a butt slider. "Hot", "Holy dayum" and "Dat ass" should be the options. I might even roll a male toon.

[rpdrichard]

With all the talk of subraces going on at the moment. I was curious how people thought about different muscle mass or weight for your character. For example, if I wanted to play a female blood elf warrior I would love the option to make her look more bulky. I'm not suggesting different skeletons within a race/sex, but instead just broader limbs etc.

Thoughts anyone?

I'm all in for the customization options...as long as they don`t delay the launch of WoD

[Rivellana]

I played Aion for awhile which has the most customizable character creation options of any game I've played. It was full of people with inch tall characters, stick figure characters with gigantic bobble heads and tons of absolutely massive (largest size you can make) characters.

I wouldn't object to some slight customization for WoW characters but i don't think I'd want to see the above extent of characters in WoW.

[judgementofantonidas]

With all the talk of subraces going on at the moment. I was curious how people thought about different muscle mass or weight for your character. For example, if I wanted to play a female blood elf warrior I would love the option to make her look more bulky. I'm not suggesting different skeletons within a race/sex, but instead just broader limbs etc.

Thoughts anyone?

I voted yes but with conditions. You should be easily able to break out of the heroic muscled and swim suit competition forms that any race has by simply eating too much. They could put a mechanic in for you to become the fat lazy slob that you always wanted to be. It would however come at the cost of loss in strentgh, stamina, haste, etc.

There ya go you can make your toon look like you and perform the same.

[ipoststuff]

I voted no. Tripling (slim,fit,fat) the models would take waay too much development time. Time could be spent better at more important things.

[Yig]

I voted no. Tripling (slim,fit,fat) the models would take waay too much development time. Time could be spent better at more important things.

This is just so arbitrary. The same could have been said for giving every single race custom animations instead of just using a single humanoid body like most MMOs, and both female and male models use the same basic animations. So where the hell do you draw the line? And what exactly is more important? Because it's only costing models and animation somewhere else in the game, and it's only costing those models and animations for the window of months this project would take. Anything they sacrificed for this would be eventually be worked on a few months later. This is a canard. It's a fucking annoying canard, and it's usually just a fancy way of someone saying they don't like your idea but they want to somehow make their disapproval take on an objective quality as if it's more than just a simple disagreement on what you enjoy.

It's self aggrandizing and unseemly, and if we were in Japan I would have to look away so as to be polite while you shame rational rapport in this manner.

I say, good day.

But at least you said vote. Maybe I'm being too harsh on you. Maybe. If so, here's a puppy snuggling with a kitten.

[Pancaspe]

Yes

I'm so tired of looking at a male gorilla on steroids (Humans) or a walking fridge (Male Draenei).

I also want to see a skinny Orc and a fat Troll.

This is why I only play Female Characters. I HATE the Hulk Hogan Males.

The original BE Males were perfect! They looked like Elves.

[nyc81991]

While I think it could be cool, it probably won't happen. It seems like Blizzard is trying to keep the models very similar to how they are now. Allowing them to have their size changed would probably cause clipping issues and make the newer animations look odd.

I can't think of any Mmo that has resizable character models that also has the fluid movement / animations that WoW models have.