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 daedalus wrote:

nomotog wrote:

It's more then just 3 choices and that's it. It's often 3 or more choices about everything. That gives you a lot of chances to bend and shape Shepard into a different character. Not to mention the subtext you attach to each and every choice. You know why your Shepard did this or did that and that informs their personality in addition to the direct action they took.

I guess. All I can think of is the number of times I've thought to myself, "man, all these choices aren't what I'd say here."

Of course, only one choice for what gets said isn't exactly better. I guess I'm just saying that between three responses generally consisting of something similar to "donkey-cave/snarky", "uptight/serious", and "angry/crazy", there's only so many personalities you can express, no matter how many times you get to choose from them.

But then, as this thread continues, I'm beginning to wonder if I actually even LIKE games.

Why?

 daedalus wrote:

nomotog wrote:

It's more then just 3 choices and that's it. It's often 3 or more choices about everything. That gives you a lot of chances to bend and shape Shepard into a different character. Not to mention the subtext you attach to each and every choice. You know why your Shepard did this or did that and that informs their personality in addition to the direct action they took.

I guess. All I can think of is the number of times I've thought to myself, "man, all these choices aren't what I'd say here."

Of course, only one choice for what gets said isn't exactly better. I guess I'm just saying that between three responses generally consisting of something similar to "donkey-cave/snarky", "uptight/serious", and "angry/crazy", there's only so many personalities you can express, no matter how many times you get to choose from them.

But then, as this thread continues, I'm beginning to wonder if I actually even LIKE games.

Im in the same boat. A few months ago I actually stopped and thought about video games and realized how much I didnt really like video games. I used to play video games 20-30 hours a week, now I barely get 10 hours a week and im much happier.

I too felt all video games are too limited and AI offered little challenge. Players online are jerks much of the time and well like you, I felt most of my options where limited and not me or what I would do.

So I stick to a small selection of games that suit my taste and leave it at that. And even those games dont quite do it. Wargames do it better because unlike video games, I can change it up how I want and there arent any crappy AI to do the same few things each time haha.

Chongara wrote:Anything that a user generates with a set of tools as narrowly defined as a character generator, owes a non-trivial portion of the credit to the designers. Everything the player creates is possible because a designer gave thought to it being available. Trying to claim oneself above, beyond and superior to the creators by virtue of how you've assembled their assets is hyperbolic self-aggrandizing.

You're mixing something up. I'm not claiming myself above the people who created these tools I work with.
I'm claiming myself above those creators who have ultimate influence on a game (in that they can have tools made according to their specs), yet still fail to come up with something that looks as varied as my characters, created within a much more limited framework.

I am certainly not saying "all designers suck", as I have seen a lot of premade characters that break with the standard. But when I'm looking at the apparent majority of videogame protagonists, I can safely say that my creations have a little more variety, which is insofar remarkable in that unlike them I'm not getting paid to design characters.
Then again, maybe that's the problem. How much of the status quo is really lack of creativity, and how much is company policy and/or lack of enthusiasm? Considering certain interviews, I'm willing to bet the latter is the greater problem. And one that transcends character creation or gender representation.

nomotog wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Lynata wrote:
When I'm looking at the average premade character's appearance, and compare them to the ones I create ... I think I'm going out on a limb and say that I do put more thought into them than the designers of Generic White Male Space Marine #417.

+9001 to this post. Quite frankly, any character I create is more imaginative than game devs are going to write ninety nine percent of the time anyway.

You still cannot go beyond what the designers allowed you to do anyway, though. But that said, I can spend literally hours designing a character in some games!

In real life, you are stuck wearing the clothes at market, but that doesn't invalidate the choice you have in your chosen style. The artist may have added in that cute hair option, but they didn't really picture you pairing it with those shoes and that top.

Applying this analogy to games, the artist might not have pictured you pairing those things but the QA department probably did to make sure it didn't lead to graphical bugs or even potential game crashing bugs.

 AdeptSister wrote:

Why?

I guess my suspension of disbelief is finally gotten to the point that I find it intolerable to play something and then hit some wall in the game that just reminds me that I'm on rails, no matter how well concealed they are. Even massively wide open games like Skyrim have bounds. I used to like to explore games to the point of hitting those walls. I had a copy of Link's Awakening that I had managed to run the missions out of order on, even neglecting to collect a lot of the "essential" items. I did pretty much the same thing to Super Metroid by exploiting the wall jump and weird combos of the few powers I did pick up. That used to be my drive.

Now, I can't seem to unsee the things that just remind me I'm playing a game. It's just cliched tropes of "You need a better item to get here", "the invisible wall", "unavoidable cutscene", and "binary conversation in an infinite world". They're jarring when they hit, and sometimes it just makes me want to walk away and read a book or paint a mini. I actually spend about 10 minutes working on making the coolest looking guy I could in skyrim, and would have spent more time until it occurred to me that no one else would see it, and the only way I could even see it myself was when I had moved the camera to an angle where it would be impossible to actually be playing the game. Maybe the fact that I can't get myself immersed in games anymore is the reason why I don't care if I'm playing a male, female, transexual, or featureless white cube. Even if I get to choose from any of those, or even a myriad of other still more absurd choices, it doesn't matter because I'm not that person, nor am I controlling that person, I'm juggling a hitbox wearing that person like a mask. So I play a woman named Steve when presented with the option, because it matters not at all. I don't even know why Steve. I guess it was just the first completely mundane regular sounding name I thought of at the time. The Stanley Parable really does a good job articulating what I'm trying to convey, I think.

I still play multiplayer games, but I play them with a close set of friends I've had since college, and it's more about an excuse to socialize over vent than it is anything else. I can't think of the last single player game I actually tried to play, let alone completed. Couldn't get myself to finish Dark Souls. I played Transistor for a while, but it quickly became repetitive and completely gamelike. The story was kind of interesting though. I might go back and play it again at some point.

Anyway, I'm done ranting at this point, but you asked.

Thanks for the response.

You realize that skyrim had a third person camera, right?

Not trying to diminish your experiences, just asking.

nomotog wrote:
In real life, you are stuck wearing the clothes at market

Not really. And beside, those do not all comes from the same supplier.

 daedalus wrote:

Spoiler:

I guess my suspension of disbelief is finally gotten to the point that I find it intolerable to play something and then hit some wall in the game that just reminds me that I'm on rails, no matter how well concealed they are. Even massively wide open games like Skyrim have bounds. I used to like to explore games to the point of hitting those walls. I had a copy of Link's Awakening that I had managed to run the missions out of order on, even neglecting to collect a lot of the "essential" items. I did pretty much the same thing to Super Metroid by exploiting the wall jump and weird combos of the few powers I did pick up. That used to be my drive.

Now, I can't seem to unsee the things that just remind me I'm playing a game. It's just cliched tropes of "You need a better item to get here", "the invisible wall", "unavoidable cutscene", and "binary conversation in an infinite world". They're jarring when they hit, and sometimes it just makes me want to walk away and read a book or paint a mini. I actually spend about 10 minutes working on making the coolest looking guy I could in skyrim, and would have spent more time until it occurred to me that no one else would see it, and the only way I could even see it myself was when I had moved the camera to an angle where it would be impossible to actually be playing the game. Maybe the fact that I can't get myself immersed in games anymore is the reason why I don't care if I'm playing a male, female, transexual, or featureless white cube. Even if I get to choose from any of those, or even a myriad of other still more absurd choices, it doesn't matter because I'm not that person, nor am I controlling that person, I'm juggling a hitbox wearing that person like a mask. So I play a woman named Steve when presented with the option, because it matters not at all. I don't even know why Steve. I guess it was just the first completely mundane regular sounding name I thought of at the time. The Stanley Parable really does a good job articulating what I'm trying to convey, I think.

I still play multiplayer games, but I play them with a close set of friends I've had since college, and it's more about an excuse to socialize over vent than it is anything else. I can't think of the last single player game I actually tried to play, let alone completed. Couldn't get myself to finish Dark Souls. I played Transistor for a while, but it quickly became repetitive and completely gamelike. The story was kind of interesting though. I might go back and play it again at some point.

Anyway, I'm done ranting at this point, but you asked.

I've actually felt very similiar on occassion, and I wonder if it has to do how graphics have better than ever before. It's like we're running into the uncanny valley, where now games are now so graphicall expansive, we're now noticing the little details that don't seem to fit in. Invisible Walls, spotty hit detection, pop-in texturing, etc, are all more glaring because the games worlds are getting more immersive.

In an older style game like Might & Magic or Ultima, an invisible wall was just a quirk of the RPG, where in something like skyrim/gta/whatever, they now take you out of the experience.

 Melissia wrote:
You realize that skyrim had a third person camera, right?

Not trying to diminish your experiences, just asking.

Absolutely. You had to spin it around to see the front part of your character though, which made doing stuff and looking at your character not exactly things you could do at the same time.

So other than "admiring myself in the mirror" moments, the character creation effort was pretty much pointless.

I had the opposite feeling. It made the game better, as playing as someone I created helped me immerse myself in the game.

The little touches I added made the character my own, and thus made me that much more invested in playing.

It's funny really, I don't share that, and yet I have no problem with people who do become more immersed having the option to be so.

Oh well.

Really I think it comes down to the fact that the character's appearance being alterable doesn't really detract from them, even if it doesn't engage you like it does others. While design and appearance are big in shaping the first impressions of a character as well as how you perceive their actions, there's leeway there. Take the armor customization in Halo. Damn awesome, and frankly I can't say Noble Six was hurt by his/her armor being alterable.

You can just use a default character if that doesn't matter to you. I typically used the default Shepards simple cause I didn't care much about changing the appearances male or female (I also just found the face maker in ME to be wonky and I never managed to quite get it to work like I wanted in any iteration of the series). While I've never been in on the hype of FemShep, I do think default FemShep was a damn fine looking lady. Felt no real need to alter that.

Every time I make a character different from default, I deliberately make an inhuman monster.

Every single time.

 MrDwhitey wrote:
Every time I make a character different from default, I deliberately make an inhuman monster.

Every single time.

Please bro. I play a Predator in Skyrim;



Cause if a steroid pumped muscle man is worth hunting, so is a giant ice breathing lizard

The character creator I really love is the one in STO. The 'Alien' race builder is amazing. In need of some updates (like allowing proper Cardassians or Jem'Hadar) but it allows some pretty insane options.Bioware's editors have just never worked for me. The defaults look nice and smooth, but then you change one thing and the face just starts looking wrong and it's a real hassle to put it back together in a way that I like.

 LordofHats wrote:

 MrDwhitey wrote:
Every time I make a character different from default, I deliberately make an inhuman monster.

Every single time.

Please bro. I play a Predator in Skyrim;

Spoiler:

Cause if a steroid pumped muscle man is worth hunting, so is a giant ice breathing lizard

The character creator I really love is the one in STO. The 'Alien' race builder is amazing. In need of some updates (like allowing proper Cardassians or Jem'Hadar) but it allows some pretty insane options.Bioware's editors have just never worked for me. The defaults look nice and smooth, but then you change one thing and the face just starts looking wrong and it's a real hassle to put it back together in a way that I like.

I just started playing skyrim this morning. The beginning was crappy, but now its kind of awesome.

I honestly found everything 'Dragon'* related in Skyrim to be the worst part of the game (though I did like the Greybeards). It would have been infinitely better focusing those resources into the Civil War storyline, which could have used a little more detail and love to really bring it fully into its own. Oh well. We have mods to fix that for us

*One shotting Alduin the destroyer of worlds with an Iron dagger was pretty funny that one time I did it.

 MrDwhitey wrote:
Every time I make a character different from default, I deliberately make an inhuman monster.

Every single time.

Saints Row 3-4 are great for this. I had more fun making things I would no longer classify as human in those games than anything else. The bone structure of one thing I made made caves in his face. His cheeks where so sucked in and the cheek bones so stuck out and curved he literally had caves on his face. His nose suffered the same fate.

Its just a pity nobody got scared of you or treated you differently because of your horrid sick phase.

 LordofHats wrote:
I honestly found everything 'Dragon'* related in Skyrim to be the worst part of the game (though I did like the Greybeards). It would have been infinitely better focusing those resources into the Civil War storyline, which could have used a little more detail and love to really bring it fully into its own. Oh well. We have mods to fix that for us

*One shotting Alduin the destroyer of worlds with an Iron dagger was pretty funny that one time I did it.

The vampire dlc was just as much fun. Though man they are hard as balls.

What i dislike in some games is the illogical things the character does, for example Max Payne

Spoiler


On the other hand your choice for choosing a male or female Shepard has no effect on the story-line even the choices you make don't do gak.

 LordofHats wrote:
Really I think it comes down to the fact that the character's appearance being alterable doesn't really detract from them, even if it doesn't engage you like it does others. While design and appearance are big in shaping the first impressions of a character as well as how you perceive their actions, there's leeway there. Take the armor customization in Halo. Damn awesome, and frankly I can't say Noble Six was hurt by his/her armor being alterable.

You can just use a default character if that doesn't matter to you. I typically used the default Shepards simple cause I didn't care much about changing the appearances male or female (I also just found the face maker in ME to be wonky and I never managed to quite get it to work like I wanted in any iteration of the series). While I've never been in on the hype of FemShep, I do think default FemShep was a damn fine looking lady. Felt no real need to alter that.

They also got tweaked every so slightly between games when imported. In ME1 my Shepard looked pretty good, I hadn't rotated the view enough so his lips looked kind of odd from the side but otherwise fine. I swear by ME3 despite my best efforts he looked like some kind of deranged gorilla man.

 Chongara wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
Really I think it comes down to the fact that the character's appearance being alterable doesn't really detract from them, even if it doesn't engage you like it does others. While design and appearance are big in shaping the first impressions of a character as well as how you perceive their actions, there's leeway there. Take the armor customization in Halo. Damn awesome, and frankly I can't say Noble Six was hurt by his/her armor being alterable.

You can just use a default character if that doesn't matter to you. I typically used the default Shepards simple cause I didn't care much about changing the appearances male or female (I also just found the face maker in ME to be wonky and I never managed to quite get it to work like I wanted in any iteration of the series). While I've never been in on the hype of FemShep, I do think default FemShep was a damn fine looking lady. Felt no real need to alter that.

They also got tweaked every so slightly between games when imported. In ME1 my Shepard looked pretty good, I hadn't rotated the view enough so his lips looked kind of odd from the side but otherwise fine. I swear by ME3 despite my best efforts he looked like some kind of deranged gorilla man.

Hahaha.

Oh god.

But anyway lets get back on topic on females in games. K? k.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Saints Row 3-4 are great for this. I had more fun making things I would no longer classify as human in those games than anything else. The bone structure of one thing I made made caves in his face. His cheeks where so sucked in and the cheek bones so stuck out and curved he literally had caves on his face. His nose suffered the same fate.

My Saint Row IV character had the face of a troll from Warcraft.

 Melissia wrote:
When City of Heroes/Villain shut down, someone released the chargen system with mods that unlocked all items for everyone.

For many people, that was enough to continue providing hundreds of hours of play.

Aw hell; do I ever miss that game. *sigh*

In a (somewhat) more related tidbit - CoH had one of the best distributions of female players in any MMO, near to parity if I remember correctly.

Dshrike wrote:I've actually felt very similiar on occassion, and I wonder if it has to do how graphics have better than ever before. It's like we're running into the uncanny valley, where now games are now so graphicall expansive, we're now noticing the little details that don't seem to fit in. Invisible Walls, spotty hit detection, pop-in texturing, etc, are all more glaring because the games worlds are getting more immersive.

I'd say a good RPG's world is always immersive, it's just that back then there was more focus on options or the writing rather than graphics, causing more stuff to happen in your brain whilst nowadays you're being spoon-fed what you are supposed to think/imagine. It's part of why I like Shadowrun Returns a lot, as it compensates its oldschool graphics with excellent novel-quality writing. Conversely, I still have a soft spot for games like Ultima Online just because it allowed you to do all sorts of crazy stuff and the game world wasn't segregated into instanced zones.

Though I don't really mind being railroaded if it's done well, meaning that you still have some freedom and the borders aren't as obvious, so that you don't stumble into them all the time. I know they're there if I'd go looking for them, but why should I? Better to kick back and enjoy the movie, so to say.

The only problems I had with graphics was a couple years ago when the gaming industry was in that weird phase where games looked good enough to override your own imagination of the characters, but not good enough to actually look awesome. Case in point: NWN2. To this day I swear that NWN1 looked better, even though it had older graphics!

LordofHats wrote:While I've never been in on the hype of FemShep, I do think default FemShep was a damn fine looking lady. Felt no real need to alter that.

Have to agree here. I actually liked this design so much that I went back and "conformed" to those looks when I replayed ME1 and ME2 before tackling 3, rather than re-playing my original designs.

LordofHats wrote:The character creator I really love is the one in STO. The 'Alien' race builder is amazing. In need of some updates (like allowing proper Cardassians or Jem'Hadar) but it allows some pretty insane options.Bioware's editors have just never worked for me. The defaults look nice and smooth, but then you change one thing and the face just starts looking wrong and it's a real hassle to put it back together in a way that I like.

Aye, Cryptic is extremely big on customisation. Still not as extreme as APB, but close! The only subjectively "bad" thing is how they also allow all sorts of changes to uniforms and ships, which gets weird quickly as that doesn't really fits to Starfleet etc. Too many skimpy-clothed cheerleaders and MU Terran Empire troops on ESD, lol.

Where it fits, however, is Champions Online. You've got even more options there and can create all sorts of stuff from fish-headed giants to steel-winged robots to brains in a jar. And because the setting is superheroes, anything goes without looking out of place.

Even better, you can mix and match your powers, recolour them or give them different effects. One of the more recent patches even added the option to add "auras" to your character where you glow, have lightning run across your body, are on fire or covered in a sheet of ice etc. And you can choose whether it's permanent or only in combat. Awesome.

LordofHats wrote:I honestly found everything 'Dragon'* related in Skyrim to be the worst part of the game (though I did like the Greybeards).

Personally, I think dragons are overrated. They've become the centerpiece of way too many games, so much so that they displace more interesting and older stuff. When I was still playing WoW it bothered me immensely that you couldn't walk two meters without stumbling over a quest involving dragons. /hyperbole

Personally, I think dragons are overrated. They've become the centerpiece of way too many games, so much so that they displace more interesting and older stuff. When I was still playing WoW it bothered me immensely that you couldn't walk two meters without stumbling over a quest involving dragons. /hyperbole

Agreed. thats why the creatures in my book the mainstay are Loch Ness Monsters or really creepy creatures called Nucklavee or Wyverns, or any other creature from my world. XD

There are so many creatures to choose from.

I think undead are done poorly and i've never seen Revenants done right either. Its kind of sad really.


I think that should be a separate thread as its own. I think female creatures are a lot more common than you think. How many spider queens have we faced?

I don't think a variety of enemies is too different in some games, in skyrim.

BUT THE REAL MONSTERS... ... ...
... ... ...
... ... ...
... ... ...
... ... ...
... ... ...
... ... ... ARE HUMAAAAANSSS!!!



... sorry, couldn't help myself. A lot of games do use that cliche, but I guess it works as often as not.

 Melissia wrote:
BUT THE REAL MONSTERS... ... ...
... ... ...
... ... ...
... ... ...
... ... ...
... ... ...
... ... ... ARE HUMAAAAANSSS!!!



... sorry, couldn't help myself. A lot of games do use that cliche, but I guess it works as often as not.

I think people say that about minecraft and they point to monsters killing villagers and disproving that idea entirely.

My nephew fits that cliche when he plays minecraft . He's more interested in blowing up villages with stacks and stacks of tnt than he is in building a city out of their village. But then again you can count his age on just your fingers so....

 Lynata wrote:
RPG's world is always immersive, it's just that back then there was more focus on options or the writing rather than graphics, causing more stuff to happen in your brain whilst nowadays you're being spoon-fed what you are supposed to think/imagine. It's part of why I like Shadowrun Returns a lot, as it compensates its oldschool graphics with excellent novel-quality writing. Conversely, I still have a soft spot for games like Ultima Online just because it allowed you to do all sorts of crazy stuff and the game world wasn't segregated into instanced zones.

Though I don't really mind being railroaded if it's done well, meaning that you still have some freedom and the borders aren't as obvious, so that you don't stumble into them all the time. I know they're there if I'd go looking for them, but why should I? Better to kick back and enjoy the movie, so to say.

The only problems I had with graphics was a couple years ago when the gaming industry was in that weird phase where games looked good enough to override your own imagination of the characters, but not good enough to actually look awesome. Case in point: NWN2. To this day I swear that NWN1 looked better, even though it had older graphics!

You're right. I suppose my choice of "more immersive" regarding graphics wasn't quite the right set of words. I agree though. One of the major things that stuck out to me about the NWN2 graphics were the animations. They felt very stiff. While the NWN1 animations were also stiff (and a bit slide-y) the graphic fidelity wasn't so great so it didn't distract too much.