Letter from the Producer, XLIII (02/15/2013)Follow

As a man who has no experience with that, I'll take your word for it. I agree with you. Even coliseum gear was a bit unrealistic for the females and had no battle purposes :o. For someone with your disposition, it would be very uncomfortable indeed.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/50558-New-coliseum-gear-too-lewd/page36

I do hope they don't go the whole overly skimpy route. Skimpy is fine in moderation :) To be fair, the male coliseum gear was equally skimpy. Though they didn't have mammaries to worry about during combat roles.

Exactly. It's a far cry from misogyny in other games. I played Tera for a bit, and boy that was very skimpy. Feel free to cry sexism there. I think that S-E is trying to pander to some of the audiences in that game type without completely going there. Like... nude art vs vulgar nude cam shows. Hard to please everyone, but they are probably going to stick to their standards and culture when making video games.

For the record, I don't think that sexy is a problem. What I do think is a problem is offering a boob slider and no other real decision making power over how my character looks. That's all I am looking for, is the ability to make a choice about whether I want a character that looks like a speed skater or a marathon runner, or a breast augmented coke fiend.

One can respect that. I hope we can all receive a small portion of the things we want in game.

I don't think so. Lots of other games offer more robust character creation menus than XIV did. It may be a combination of customization and high resolutions (players keeping their settings high) that's the problem, in which case my preference would be for more customization. From their side of things, their graphics are more future-proofed, which makes good business sense in the MMO market. But it does contribute to the question of, "Will there even be a future for FFXIV?"

Edited, Feb 19th 2013 2:29pm by Kachi

GW2 and SWTOR off the top of my head. The problem with XIV was that it started with too few base options, didn't differentiate between them enough, made enough of them flat-out undesirable, and didn't give you much slider control. So while perhaps in theory you had almost as many options as other games, the amount of noticeable and desirable differences you could make were often barely discernible.

I vividly recall almost more than anything else how much disappointment there was across the board about the XIV character customization options.

They did. That was probably responsible for a good 50% of the use of the term "PS2 limitations".

@Xoie


That´s something I never fully understood. The way I *presume* (mind you, I´m not an expert!) it works is that every character model is internally represented as a multidimensional vector, with each number in the vector representing a specific configuration for the corresponding asset. E.g., 1/3/2 would mean "hair type 1, face type 3, body type 2". If so, the loading times for characters in a large crowd would indeed increase in a linear fashion with the number of available customization options for each asset. (e.g., in comparison to loading times with no customization options at all, loading times with 15, 7, and 3 options for hair, face, and body type, respectively, would roughly increase 15+7+3=25-fold.

However, this layman assessment of mine is based on the (possibly simplistic) assumption that each asset actually exists as a complete, fixed entity somewhere in the database. However, if this would be the case, each individual assets would, once again, be defined by a number of mesh nodes and their spacial relation to each other.

And here it gets interesting.

If I am right and each asset is, on the most basic level, again made up of data detailing the spacial relation of mesh nodes, then the question arises what computational impact the possibility to directly customize the spacial relation of mesh nodes (via sliders) during character creation would really have. As the respective basic-level data (the spacial relation of mesh nodes of an asset) will have to be loaded during the rendering process anyway...?

In short: anybody able to enlighten me why SE does not allow for a fluid customization of body features, and uses a fixed-block "lego" approach to character creation instead? Anyone understand the question?

Yah, well,... the character creator for the alpha version... I mean, the one presented in the corresponding preview here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR7ZfIyuHp0, of course, certainly didn't. At least no continuous ones. But! There are a few more options possible already; for example, you can now select from 4 face types (as in 1.0), but those face types are then additionally qualified by different outlines (hollowness of the cheeks), eyeforms, and so on so there's already a broader variation than in 1.0.

My question was more of a theoretical nature: what computational benefit is there to locking players to a combination of fixed templates instead of allowing them to directly influence the distance parameters of the basic meshes?

Lol, I appreciate the pitch black characters I see people running around with. There is a highlander in my LS we cal "paper bag," and he owns it as his nick name. I know the feel. The same with names. Only so many Uchihas I can take lol.