What new features would you want for character creation?

[p]While I was istting around the other day waiting for eq2 to reload (my last ditch effort at fixing SOE's bug), I found myself thinking at just how imersive the character creation process could have been had SOE just put a little bit more time into it.[/p][p]I for one feel that the Half Elves should be the most customizable race in the game seeing as how they are half human (should be the second most) and one of the three races of elves. They should be able to be nearly as tall as the tallest high elf, or as short as the shortest wood elf if they wanted to. Let them have the hair styles of their parent races and more of the skin tones. Wouldn't a dark elf/human end up with a skin tone similar to that of his Dark Elf parent? (Yes I know, Dark Elves breeding with humans is a VERY rare occurance) They should also be allowed to have the tatoos of a wood elf if one of their parents was a WE.[/p][p]As for humans, why are Half Elves the only ones able to get piercings? Lord knows that we real life human has our punk/goth cast... why can't there be one in EQ2? Let em have super pale skin and peircings... and mohawks if they so choose.[/p][p]More body types! Yes, I have the feeling that this will most likely come with the skeletal revamp, and people have been saying it forever... but, why do all halflings have to be fat? What if someone wants a chubby gnome (within reason) or a female avatar with breasts that would serve as the world's best flotation devices?[/p][p]Need I even mention the Iksar? This is the favorite race of a lot of the players, and 3 years after launch, you guys only have TWO scale patterns for them? Let the Iksar be unique![/p][p]I say the furred/scaled races should be allowed to have hybrid patterns. Who's to say that a certain pattern of Kerran always breeds with one of the same pattern? For example, my cat had an orange mom and a grey dad (both tabbies) so he ended up mainly grey, but he also has several places of orange accents. What if my Kerran had a cheetah pattern mother and a tiger pattern father? Should he not be allowed to have a mainly striped body with a few spots?[/p][p]More tats and glyphs! Personally, I still find it hard to believe that we have redisvoered Faydwer, and the Wood Elves weren't given any more tatoos (or what ever they are called). What about the dwarves? Are you telling me that after 500 years of isolation on Faydwer these two races didn't develop their own unique styles for their body art?[/p][p]Ok, I am going to cut my self off there so that other people can put in ideas as well. So, feel free to do so, and give comments on my ideas if you want.[/p]

With all the changes you can currently make to faces, I still barely see a difference, the only two overtly noticeable differences i see from one player to another of the same race is skin color and hair. I'm a huge advocate for the several body types, but I'd also like to see more noticeable changes in the face

While I agree with customization 100% I think that we see one issue unless I am dead wrong. EQ2 is already fairly memory intensive, and with the addition of more character models and skins would that not eat more of that already precious commodity?

[p]I would like to see new hair styles of course and better colors(for hair and eyes) that look in game like they do in the character creation screen. [/p][p]There is a lot of blue in character creation that just looks gray in game for instance. Also it seems I can make many choices on a color wheel or color gradient rectangle and only come up with a few color results as a number of spots seem to be yielding the same results as other spots. If its that limited just give us swatches maybe rather than the illusion of many colors.[/p][p] [/p][p]My favorite char creation request: I would like to see hair split into front and back parts so you can mix them. [/p][p]That would be so awesome as there are so many hair styles that I would love if only they didn't look so bad to me ether from front or back. Some hair has an auto streak effect that you don't choose. That needs to go away. If I pick the same color as a 2ndary color then I should not be getting the gray streaking in dark elf or high elf hair for instance. [/p][p]Combo accessories need to go away. let people pick for them selves and in a case where combo accessories are normally available then give them 3 they can put together them selves. Ratonga shouldn't have to pick a certain mix or match to have whiskers for instance. Actually whiskers needs to be a check box in face or fur maybe. All that being said just more accessory choices would be good for every race. Female half elves are face peircing only right now :cry: ... just make the accessories unisex for the races that dont use flowers ... as far as im conserned I would make the flowers for both choices ether but I wouldnt want to deal with any forum backlash even if we are more mature than wow players. :wink:[/p][p] Kerran's and Ratonga need a revamp of fur patterns. The females especially didn't get a lot of love in the fur pattern department. There is a tendancy for colors of the fur patterns of females to not yeild to color choices. Im talking about the brown that is hard to get away from.[/p][p] Half elves need to be able to make a bluish looking skin. There is one half elf at Hates Envy in Dark Light Wood that has a gray skin that has a cool tone to it but try as I might I can not get the same tone on character creation. There seems to be a warm color as the base tone for half elves and every color you choose just seems to go over it rather than take the place of it. [/p][p]Dark elf skin choices are all too dark. There isn't really much variety as this is another case of a color wheel that pretends to offer many choices but doesn't. Oh yes and dark elf eyes ... red does not equal pink hehe.[/p][p] [/p][p]Half elf hair looks like its made of plastic. Somebody needs to just go over it and consider redoing them all. [/p][p] [/p][p]Kerran females don't look like cats very much. Old complaint I know but despite that a lot of people have got used to them they still look odd to me. Also ratonga females have reddish irritated looking eyes. Some eye drops for the lady ratonga plz LOL.[/p][p] [/p][p]Wood elf hair needs a pony tail for those of us who would rather not have 5 year old girl hair styles or have a very short or bun hair style. I hate the buns because there are so many of them. Just one pony tail LOL [/p][p]I have noticed ( think its obvious) that the females somehow got a lesser than the males in the looks department in hair, accessory , fur and skin art. Im not sure what the reason for that was way back in devlopment times but it would be nice if that were fixed. [/p][p] It would also be nice if there was an option to not show certain parts of armor box. As in the under mesh , cloth of arm armor so that some of the skin art could show though. There is more on that but it begins to merge into the realm of armor design with all its controversy so I will stop there.[/p][p] Thats all I can think of .. for now 8)[/p]

I think a huge difference could be made just by having 2-3 faces per race/sex combo OR by adding subtleties to complexion such as freckles, redness of the cheeks, etc.

[size="small; color: #ff66ff"][face="comic sans ms,sand"][p]Accidental double post[/p][/face][/size]

Keep in mind this is a wish list. I understand that for some of this the technology isn't in place and that some is just going to be a major strain on the game. But wishes are free and who knows what will happen. More hair styles... I understand the reason they have so many buns: they can't do long hair. It would be nice to have long hair, curly hair (that doesn't look cartoonish, a soft curl), simpler styles (straight hair can be very attractive), more asymetrical styles (seldom do the left and right side match perfectly), less point spikes (you can do anime hair without going overboard), more color layering, chunky bangs (they do ok on this but more options). In a perfect world we could select a basic style, add length, volume, bangs, tails, braids, or spikes... but I know there are limitations. Accessories and Visible Jewelry: for both hair and body. Let us pick the flowers, bows, clips, bands, and so forth in our hair rather than locking us into a premade selection. I think visible bracelets, earrings, and necklaces could be done. Earrings and belly rings (if we had belly buttons) would be simple enough (though in most cases with the current armor not visible so that kind of makes it a problem).

Looking at the original models, how about some eyebrows on male humans? For some weird reason, visible eyebrows are tied to beards, so you look freaky if you're clean-shaven. I think that may also be the case with some other races, like male dwarves.

[p]First and foremost I'd love more hairstyles. I'd love at least one for every hair having race that was actually long I don't care if it has clip issues, we have tons of other clip issues and to me a little clip issue is worth having the variety.[/p][p]I'd love to see some tattoos available for all races as well.[/p][p]Freckles, moles, beautymarks, makeup, various stages of wrinkling for the face. [/p][p]More eyebrow styles.[/p][p]More accessories for all races (earrings, other facial jewelry, eye patches, glasses, monicles, that sort of thing).[/p][p] [/p]

I just want to be able to really customize my characters face more, especially human females and High elves. No matter how much you change them, they still look essentially the same. With human females the facial structure looks identical no matter how much you tweak any facial feature its pretty annoying, every human female looks like your sister or your close reliative. With high elves...that nose has got to be fixed, its like they had one too many nose jobs and botox injections looks very unnatural.

[p]More hairstyles, especially some "normal" stlyes like simply plain long hair or whatever. [/p][p]And they should bring back the "old" human females, you know the faces how they looked in the Beta until 2-3 weeks before EQ2 was released. For people who don't know what i'm talking about .. here some old pictures :[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p] [/p]

I'm a big custom-aholic myself. The first 3 months after loading the game, I never had a character over level 10 because I kept deleting them and creating new ones. Wish I had known about the barber... /doh Anyway, I really enjoy the fact that a character's height is adjustable, but it'd also be great if weight could be altered as well. Create a tall, lanky Erudite or that morbidly obese Ogre that you've always wanted. *smirk*

[p]In no order:[/p][p]# Animated hair - the braid is FUN to watch. It moves and looks more real because of this. Plus more styles that allow movement. Ponytail(s), pigtails, long 'flowing' etc. ** NOTE on hair - is there a way to fix hair showing through the shield???[/p][p]# More mouth choices- my characters all look mean or sad (yes I tried /mood happy and character looked like she had been goosed:wink[/p][p]# Colors to be more "true" = Examples - I create pale blonde hair in creation screen and get into game and it is Yellow/orange not blonde. I can't get Green Eyes - ingame all eyes look dark. Colors seem to 'morph' from character screen to game.[/p][p]# Agree with others = Fat/Thin slider.[/p][p]# Agree with Dark Elf skin color - give us some LIGHTER SKIN choices - in game they all pretty much look alike. I don't play "critter classes" so can't comment on them.[/p][p]I want to add = I LOVE, ADORE the fact we have "alternate" appearance! This is AWESOME! Thank You for keeping the originial and adding the alternate look. It is FUN to change if you get tired of a look. AND THANKS for the Barber!!!! (for the same reason).[/p][p] [/p]

Torso, weight, muscle adjuction

[p]mappam wrote: [/p]

[p]The old old screenshots show more of what I would like to see... varied skin textures, REAL obvious differences in eye color, etc. Granted, I think they changed those things for the sake of performance back at launch. They took long hair away because of performance - I remember when the female elven pirate at the beginning had long hair (screenshots somewhere, I'm sure...)...[/p][p]Perhaps it is getting to the point that they can finally add these things in. If not, then it will be a matter of revamping the engine at some point - which I wouldn't see happening til WAYYYYYY down the line with this game.[/p][p] [/p]

I believe those pictures of the human females were from alpha actually. I never saw that in beta. I know they changed a loooooot between late alpha and early beta.

For AV customisation check out Second Life's take on it. Sure there is no way a lot of the possible customisation abilities in SL could transfer to EQ2 (such as custom skins) as they are totally different games doing different things. The level of alteration possible to the face and body however is very impressive and i would like to see something similar in EQ.

Apart from a few tecture changes I had no trouble replicating that girl in the pre-change picture anyway.

Mostly what others have said, would like more hairstyle choises, all colours for hair for all races as well, who says we cannot have different coloured hair or maybe even 'dye' it at some time. I am dying to get red hair on my dark elfs Eye colour as well, give us back the option to have many many colours for eyes, like red eyes for dark elfs would be nice again. Iksar could do with some more scale patterns and colours too, they are limited to the small scale patterns now, and it just does not make me see diversity in the Iksar race; reptiles have so many different scale patterns, I think Iksar should too. Weight I can see as it would be nice having the option, but I am not sure it would be too common a thing. I mean people are adventurers here, we are running around fighting being chased, chasing things, riding horses, carpets, climbing walls. These does not allow for extra weight to stay on a person. I can see a tradeskiller or someone who watches the markets all day gaining a few stone after a time, but for your average EQ2 adventurer, it just does not look likely that there would be too many over-weight ones running around 0_o Also, more skin colours and textures... we are not all 18 years old with perfect skin, no matter what the race

I would definitely have to cast my vote for body sliders. Not just for the obvious stuff (wasp waists, thick arm muscles, female breasts, and so forth), but for the other custom variations that are completely lacking in this game that should be fairly simple. As someone mentioned, tattoos. Maybe the furred races couldn't use them, but any other race should have access to them, whether as purely decorative items, or possibly as symbols of, say, an organization that their Faction/Status rating...you achieve level X with, say, the Seafuries, and your upper left bicep can suddenly sport a tattoo that the barber provides for you denoting your camaraderie with the sea wolves of the Overlord. For pity's sake, height/weight variations...I would play an Erudite in a second (I have none) if he could be short and chubby with a scowl and a thick beard...sort of like the one I had in EQ1., height aside in that instance. And I am sick of overly muscled guys being wizards, necromancers, and so on. Sure, some might be...but this is nuts. I want an emaciated little sh*t with an ego the size of Kunark.