Character appearance shouldn't dictate class!

General
61

You’re not one of a kind, but you’re definitely part of a small minority for this genre.

PoE1 is one of the most successful games of the genre and there’s no customization at all.
GD is a much beloved game in the genre and you have a total of 2 models for all classes (just a generic male/female for everything, basically).

Basically no game in the genre has this other than D4 (mostly because it targets a much more casual crowd and not the regulars of this genre). And that is because the vast vast majority of players in this genre want gameplay above almost everything else.
They will even play with a pixelated blob as long as the gameplay is fun.

So yes, there are more out there like you, but almost none of them play diablo-likes. Or they play D4 instead.

EDIT: to clarify, I mean players that can’t play without character customization or gender selection. Not players that would be fine with the option. As has been established already, pretty much everyone would be OK with this being added, just that it’s not a priority.

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62

That’s fair, but as I said before, the reverse is also true. Just because you (or I, or anyone else) deems a thing important doesn’t make it so & that difference in preference is the reason why other people don’t value things that you value (which you couldn’t get your head around).

Nobody said this.

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No, there’s definitely lower priorities, but it’s quite far down the list for sure!

Well, you don’t either, do you? It’s a bonus, a improvement. You can play the game just fine without.
If the core gameplay loop has problems though it would be utterly nonsensical to say ‘do that instead’, don’t you agree there?

Yes, not with guaranteed necessity.
In this case it holds true though.

No, it actually isn’t in this case.

Every game has focus areas to bring it to a better received state by as many people as possible for as long of a timeframe as possible.

That definitely doesn’t uphold for loot-based Hack’N’Slash games for the character customization.
It’s a miniscule side-aspect with no gameplay relevant aspects interacting with it. If we would talk about a story-centric game then yes. If we’re talking about a life-simulator of some kind then yes. If we’re talking about a primary socially based game then yes. This genre is neither.

So you’re solely speaking from your own egocentric position?
That means you’re not asking for things which are good for the game but instead asking for things which are good for you. There’s a massive difference, and a very important one.

Why should anyone heed your words when they’re solely self-serving? The only exception would be if the self-serving outcome would also serve others by doing that.
In this case it also doesn’t uphold though, the focus on your change wouldn’t serve the community, it would only serve a very very small subset of distinct people which aren’t the core audience at all.

Yes, and that mindset is a really underrepresented one in this genre. You gotta deal with that. Can’t go to a RC-car racing event and then demand that they allow nitro-injection for the cars to make those races more exciting. They got baselines, rules and a community which works around those things because the are set that way.

Your ask is similar, you’re asking to take away resources from important changes, improvements and future actual content to instead put those efforts into a basically useless and minimally seen aspect of the game.

Oh, by that same logic we should also do genocide, because more then a single person in the world wants that to happen.
It has no basis for action.

To others - Yes.
To many - No.

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Have you considered that the sole purpose of a game’s existence is to entertain humans?

Just look at Nexus - there are tons of appearance mods for every game that allows them. That proves how much players care about visuals.

Or maybe it’s you and three other people here?

What? :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

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Yes, lets look at them.

Grim Dawn: There are 143 mods. 30 are appearance ones. Not a single one is for changing the character models.
Titan quest: 72 mods, only one for character customization, way down the list of downloads.
Wolcen: 68 mods, not one changes character models.

We could go on (mods are only for offline games, so none for PoE or D3/4) but looking at Nexus it clearly shows that for this niche genre, players don’t care about character models at all. The ones that do are a very small minority.

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66

What if this ‘small minority’ actually consists of millions? We don’t have exact figures, right? I saw a topic somewhere where someone was asking why retention is low. I have no right to speak for others - only for myself (which doesn’t make me an egocentric, selfish person, Mr. Kulze), but I quit playing after one class because I liked the character and simply couldn’t force myself to play others. So, in my case, retention could have been four times higher. And having a high number of daily players on Steam is beneficial for the game’s discoverability in the store. Am I right?

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Because it’s insanely difficult to change appearance in those games. Why not look at Resident Evil or Tomb Raider, for example? Of course, I’m not even mentioning the top six games

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You mean story games? Those are a different genre entirely and have a different target audience.

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69

So, by divine decree, arpg must never have character selection? Then TQ and GD must be blasphemy!

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Huh? Nobody said that. It’s just that character customization is a lesser priority for the majority of ARPG players, that’s all.

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71

There is already one game that is targetted towards your type of player, and that is D4. It’s for casuals and it has character customization (although it doesn’t have what you ask for here, which is using models from one class into another. The barbarian is always a beefy boy, you can just change a bunch of stuff there).

There is no point in EHG or GGG spending months (probably years) and millions competing with D4 because Blizzard has more money than those combined.
Games have target audiences. Genres have target audiences. This genre targets non-casual players. The exception being D4. And those players in this genre don’t care about character models.

It’s as easy to change the appearance in those games as in the ones you mentioned. Easier, most likely. Modders don’t waste time on it because they know it wouldn’t be popular.

Also, those games are completely different and for completely different players. There are other games that have in-built character customization where it’s important for players.
For others, it’s not.

For example, players don’t care about the character models in platformers or metroid/castle/whatever/vanias.
Players don’t care about character models in rogue-likes/lites.
Players don’t care about character models in card games.
Players don’t care about character models in vampire survivors-likes.

Likewise, players don’t care about character models in diablo-likes.

Some games are more about the gameplay than they are about appearance. And the players that care about appearance in those games are a minority.

There you go with your “it’s either my way or against me”.
Players aren’t against having character selection/customization. They just don’t think it’s important enough to waste resources when other things are more important.

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You seem confused when I speak from my own perspective, while you always generalize for all players. But I’m polite and won’t say ‘please, talk for yourself only’

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That is because you’re apprently new to the genre while it’s been my main genre for over 25 years. And I’ve played and interacted with many players over the years.

And because we can see in this thread that not a single person is against this change, even though you keep saying that everyone is against it (so much for speaking for yourself only, huh?).

Maybe we can try to put this into perspective:
What you’re asking is the same thing as if you went to the forum of the game Limbo and asked for character customization.
Or if you asked Nintendo to add character customization to Breath of the Wild.

It’s not something players would be against, they would just see it as a waste of time because the character model is not the point of the game. The gameplay is.

Whereas in a game like BG3, the character model is half the point of the game.

So yes, from all indications from years of players interacting both in-game and on forums and other media, you are a minority in this genre.

However, no player would oppose this feature. They would just oppose doing it now, when there are still lots of things missing in the game, especially more endgame content.
In a couple of years, it’s probably fine to start working on it.

But it’s not likely to bring many new players that stick around anyway. Because a player that will prioritize appearance over the gameplay isn’t likely to be a regular player for long anyway.

And you can clearly see this in D4, where the retention rate is horrible, despite having pretty graphics and character customization.

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74

Yes, those who already bought the game don’t care, but for hesitant players, this could be the final deciding factor. I mentioned this earlier in the thread. Do you realize how many people who had never played classic rpgs tried BG3 just because of its visuals and customization? Why not just cater exclusively to hardcore fans who don’t care about visuals, make BG3 an isometric old-school game, sell 2-3 million copies, and call it a success?

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Classic RPGs were always about character customization. Almost all have it, at least the ones that have nameless heroes, as opposed to fixed ones like Witcher 3.
It was always this way. That hasn’t changed with BG3. BG3 just did an excellent job with the visuals and voice acting, and the story in general, but they are by no means innovative.

So players that were new to BG3 didn’t play it because of the character customization and models, they joined because of all the hype.

You seem to not grasp that games have different genres and that different people like different genres for different reasons.

And that some genres don’t care about graphics at all, it being a very secondary feature. Games like platformers, world builders, puzzle games, etc. And diablo-likes.

In fact, you can find way way way more games that have excellent graphics and have totally failed because of a worse gameplay, than you can find games with less excellent graphics and good gameplay failing.

So, to recap for the Nth time:
-Yes, character customization would be nice to have.
-No, no one opposes this.
-No, now is not the time to waste time and money into making this happen in LE.

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76

If no one is against my proposal, then why are there so many posts?

And this is the very first time someone has agreed that this feature is worth trying :tada:

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What? There’s more than ten different posts that all said “Would be nice/ No one is against it” but all said that now is not the right time. Samhein literally just summarized the arguments of the whole thread.

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I must be blind. Quote at least one, but don’t interpret it like Kultze did.

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Because you keep saying that they are against it and misunderstanding what people are saying.

This was at the start of the conversation. Most players have voiced similar views in other words.

You mean like you interpret every reply that doesn’t immediately agree with you as “they are against this”?

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Those ones for example.

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