Char customization x recogniton.A different approach

[DoctorMort]

[QUOTE]“We did consider a player customization system,” says Newman. “We looked a bunch of them, we watched them on YouTube. In some cases people were spending a couple of hours designing their character. The character design part of the game had more work put into it than the game itself. And these were games where what you looked like was completely irrelevant, where it was obviously just on some list that a publisher handed a developer.

“So we thought fuck all that. Fuck spending months making a character designer, lets make the game about the game. Then the more we started thinking in that direction the more we liked it. Assigning based on steamid means that everything we add gets evenly spread across the playerbase. We don't end up with 90 percent male white guys. We end up with a full spectrum. Players have to live with and accept who they are. They are recognizable, so more gameplay mechanics emerge. The long term goal in the back of our heads is to hide player names and have them only recognisable by familiarity. I think we are approaching that.”[/QUOTE]

I understand the concept and would agree to the fact that it makes the game more realistic. By other hand it is far from being "game realizable". Let me expose some thoughts:

a) Human faces and bodies have so many differences and "micro different" nuances that would render impossible to make any game capable to portrait all those little details with fidelity using the current hardware, specifically thinking in a game that is multiplayer AND IF you make the bodies "perfect" and "similar" like they currently are;

b) As said, with the present system, everyone is "perfect" which makes harder to tell who is coming in you direction. Until is too late.

My idea is to make characters more "human". With "real" diversity. So how could we add more diversity keeping in mind the constraints of the present hardware?

1- tattoo and piercing: I won't start here a cultural analysis of tattoo. But I cant think in a post apocalyptic society with "untatooed" people. The use of tattoo for tribe recognition is clear also;
2- Scars: So you are in the middle of destroyed world fighting bears with not even one scar? Wow, looks like a 50's movie...
3- Glasses: So, for some reason, everyone who lives in post apocalyptic society have a perfect vision?
4- Disabilities:
4.1 Why not make someone who are injured or get shot use a crutch for some minutes (maybe even when respawn?)
4.2 Why not make people with only one eye (eye patch) or using an artificial hand/leg?
5- Weak, Skinny x fat, strong bodies: presently the game is too 'nazi', with similar bodies everywhere
6- Hair/beard: well, this really could lead to hundreds of differences.
7- "Ugliness". So, everyone in a destroyed world is beautiful? No big chins? No strange hears? Perfect skin everywhere?

All the above ideas could be implemented in an easier way than trying to accomplish something that the industry wasn't capable of until now (the 'perfect face'). And would be much easier to recognize in the distance.

It is interesting also that ALL those "differences" above mentioned were (are) cause for someone to be bullied in a school (being fat, using glasses, having a scar or disability). It would be funny to see someone being fat, using glasses, with a scar in the face and having to live with it. No matter if only in a game.

Well, I hope it could help somehow.

[itisjuly]

I want hair options. Tattoos sounds cool but my character is black so they won't be that effective. But the ability to style and dye hair would be really cool. Hell, even ability to do warpaint with blood and charcoal would be sweet.

[DoctorMort]

[QUOTE=itisjuly;48071258]I want hair options. Tattoos sounds cool but my character is black so they won't be that effective. But the ability to style and dye hair would be really cool. Hell, even ability to do warpaint with blood and charcoal would be sweet.[/QUOTE]

I don't think that because a char is black he/she cannot have a tattoo. Such opinion is based in lack of research.

Please, take a look:

[url]http://blog.tattoodo.com/2014/08/30-beautiful-tattoos-dark-skin/[/url]

[DoctorMort]

I was rethinking the matter a bit, and a problem emerged: an what to do when someone is using gear?

Seems that all those body marks end useless after someone start using full armor.

Sure. Tattoo, piercing and hair still applies if you are not wearing a mask, but if you got a bucket helmet... Well your identity at distance is gone.

Therefore either the head gear is changed in a way that body (head) identity is shown (or portions of it, like lips, eyes, hair and hears), or the clothing should be allowed to have unique paintings over it (clan marks). But that would create another variable: how to administrate clans and grant rights (like a unique mark to be placed over the clothing. Remember wow and the clan mark?).

I guess that the addition of some basic individual marks (hair, beard, scars and tattoo) with the changing of helmets would be easier: keep the anti-rad helmet, delete the bucket and the faceplate, create a bike head protection and a motorcycle type helmet (open model). That would be more easier to get done.

Beyond that, I think that the present helmets can be changed anyway. Even today, in real life, helmets do not protect bullets that come to your face (frontal shot), but only the head.