Newsletter Discussion: How Much Customization?

One of the most impressive parts of NCSoft's upcoming Aion is the sheer amount of customization available in character creation, with dozens of little body sliders ... but on the other hand, it can get a bit overwhelming. This week, we'd like to know:

How much character customization is "too much" in an MMORPG?

Share your thoughts with us and post in the comment thread!

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With City of Heroes/Villains, your costume is your character, and I've often found myself spending a couple hours in Icon getting things just right. More options in this case is a good thing.

Gear-based games don't need as much, since the appearance of your outfit will change frequently, but something early on to vary what little does stay relatively constant(face, hair, height, etc) is a nice touch. I'd still like to be able to point myself out in a picture of a crowd of people wearing similar gear.

With the exception of height and girth everything else is just gravy, but not everything needs gravy to taste good.

I would much rather a developer spent time fleshing out a system to allow color dyeing or systems for allowing you to display one graphic but get the stats from another.

Another thing to consider is that there are reasons that most MMOs standardize the player models. It's because it improves the performance when multiple people are on the screen.

There is never "too much" customizations, but rather, "how effective" it is.

Point being, I would prefer to see a customization system that actually impacts the character build and its abilities, instead of focusing on visual impact alone.

From a female gamers point of view, there can never be too much customization. I spend hours getting my character just right at the start of the game, but still want to be able to change her appearance during the game as well. I have found that most players, male and female, young and older will try to customize their character to look as much like themselves as possible but that being said, it is also important to be able to change things during the game. Things like; changing hairstyles and hair colour, changing armor styles and colour and being able to mix and match armor pieces, even to little things like changing accessories; earrings, necklaces, belts, gloves, shoes etc.
Who wants to play a game for months and often years, looking at the same old character.:-)

Jill:
From a female gamers point of view, there can never be too much customization. I spend hours getting my character just right at the start of the game, but still want to be able to change her appearance during the game as well. I have found that most players, male and female, young and older will try to customize their character to look as much like themselves as possible but that being said, it is also important to be able to change things during the game. Things like; changing hairstyles and hair colour, changing armor styles and colour and being able to mix and match armor pieces, even to little things like changing accessories; earrings, necklaces, belts, gloves, shoes etc.
Who wants to play a game for months and often years, looking at the same old character.:-)

I agree with you here. It is nice to change your appearance later on. That is one of the things I liked about Everquest 2. They had a barber shop where you could change hairstyle and etc. They eventually added an armor appearance system where you could have 1 setoof gear for your stats then a whole nother set so you could wear your best armor but also wear your coolest gear. My shadowknight finally looked like a knight, not a clown.

I like where there is alot of customization, it makes your toon actually look more unique.