What Game allowed you to create the Kind of Character you wanted?

Making Character's is where some of us Find the most fun. Bonus if the game allows our characters to exist within the game world.

I think overall Daggerfall hit the sweet spot between all factors (Creation, Living Game world to exist in). It was such a good way to determine your Character's identity. You could trade off disadvantages for advantages, you could get some nice items or money. And the game world was awesome (less awesome graphics wise, but it remains my favorite game memory; and like most memories, care should be taken in trying to relive them)

There was PC Game in the 1990's based off Twilight 2000 franchise that had really good Character maker. The game itself wasn't too fun, but the character generator I thought was unequaled. It's premise was you started off, an unknown amount of turns before World War 3 and every turn you made a choice about your character's life that gave you points in a skill. For Instance, you went to college, what did you study...You went to a trade School, what did you learn? You got a job, what was it? And it went on until the war started and based on your choices were what points you earned in the skills that it used. But you never knew how many turns you had before the war started. Sometimes it was One or up to ten (I think). But you get the idea. I don't think any game ever duplicated it, but It seemed such a good mechanism.

MMORPg (Everquest, Everquest 2, SWTOR) all do a good job of allowing you to create your own identity, but their biggest issue is you have to share the world with other people (Which brings real drama into your Fantasy). Mostly though their character generation is limited and simple. But your ability to create your own story is increased to compensate.

What games do you think fulfill the need to Create the Character's you want to play. Discuss please!

Many parts go into a character's creation. Keep in mind, I have not played every game ever made, so my thoughts are quite anecdotal

For clothing, I have yet to see a game beat City of Heroes' costume creator. This was an MMORPG based on superheroes, so the costumes were grand indeed with many, many options.

For face and body, I really have not found one that I would call great, yet. Some games allow quite a lot variety, but hair style and length, facial hair, hair and eye color just seem very limited right now. Even make-up choices for females seems really limited. Body types seem to be another shortcoming. Not much variance in height and weight (if any at all). "Boob sliders" still seem to be overlooked in most games. I guess I would say Skyrim has come closest here for the games I have played, though it is a stretch for me to call it great

Another aspect that games are getting away from are attributes. This is a baseline "must have", in my opinion, for a good Role playing game AND character creation. Attributes physically define your character. It says, in terms of game mechanics, what they are good at and what they need to work on. It helps characters cross over from our imagination and place them into the game's world, by using numbers.

Other than City of Heroes, I have yet to spend more then 10 minutes in any character creation screen. There, I could literally spend hours creating super heroes

Yeah, I had so many alts in CoH, so many costumes to make

From a similar visual & costume standpoint, Star Trek Online (hey, what a coincidence - also made by Cryptic, who did CoH ) has a pretty good system. Not quite as much outfit freedom as CoH, but also quite a large number of head & body sliders. As an additional bonus, quite a few of the ships - particularly Federation ones - have lots of visual cusomization, too.

But yeah, no picking stats/etc in those games. (CoH had a wide choice of powersets, but STO just has Faction, Race, and Tactical/Engineering/Science.)

Some new MMOs apparently have pretty major physical appearance options (Black Desert, Blade & Soul, etc), but I haven't played them.

ESO : many races and factions to pick, a lot of appearance customizations sliders, a huge world to get lost in and choose to be the lone wolf or a team player, many character abilities to customize your own playstyle.

Many seem to be against ESO as a part of TES but something I really wish to inspire the next TES is the character appearance sliders.

I think Darklands has the best character generation I have ever seen.

I take it we're not talking about appearance here? I assume we're talking about things like stats, background, classes? If so, my vote would go to Daggerfall. Out of all the roleplaying games I have played I thought Daggerfall combined the most interesting options for defining a character without becoming unnecessarily restrictive, as in D&D-styled games.

We can talk about any aspect of a game that allows you to play the character you want. At least until the MAN (Subjective term used for Authority, regardless of six, skin tone, social standing, educational level, religious beliefs, etc.) comes down on us for doing so!

When it comes to character generation, I think visually. Saints Row 3 has to be one of the more complex character creations I've seen. While the Sims 4 is on the same level, something about the overall direction for character design makes characters look kind of the same. It's still quite good though.

For me, all the developmental aspects of creating a character are achieved through playing the game... not necessarily by picking stats, skills, traits, etc. So I appreciate games likes Skyrim that kind of flip the "pick some skills" approach on it's head and reward you for playing the way you want play. I guess the challenge for future RPG games will be accommodating different play styles. So far, it seems like it's becoming more and more restrictive.

Street Gangs for the NES - you just pick Alex or Ryan and off you go!

Yeah, I got Saint's Row 4, partially because of the character customization, partially because the superpowers meant I could avoid one of the big things I disliked about the SR3 demo (driving!), and partially because the superpowers seemed like a way to play CoH again . The one disappointing thing was how many of the clothes are stuck as complete "outfits" - i.e, you can't mix-n-match lots of pieces, because they can only be worn as full sets. /sigh

That's one of my pet hates, as much as I like SR3 & 4. FO3 & 4 are culprits too, it's annoying having to fire up Blender if I want to mix and match.

I too will pick Daggerfall . . . for all except face/body adjustments. Not sure which game(s) I'd go with for those. Daggerfall has it's faults, such as being able to use some of its creation options as cheats, but no one forces us to do so.

For me it's a toss up between Daggerfall and Star Wars Galaxies.

Saint's Row 2. I saw some progressive removal of features between 3 and 4 that I didn't like.

Oblivion had sliders, though they weren't independent from each other. Moving one would move the other.

With the word "sliders" I have a hunch he is really asking for more customization options. ESO gives us an entire page of body adjustments, for example. I think that is the kind of thing he's probably asking for.

Merely asking for sliders would make little sense, I think, since all of Bethesda's games from Oblivion onward have sliders.

Dragon's Dogma.

Pretty much the most detailed creator I've ever seen. AND your choices have an influence on gameplay. (Tall people grapple better, muscles help you carry more, small people can crawl into secret passages, etc.)

Something TES could learn from, in certain regards.



But also...

Any Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle game that lets you pick between the four turtles is clearly the quintessential identity choice for beat-em-up gaming.

You know exactly what your combat style will be like, and you also get to pick the personality you identify with.

Oh I'm all for more, as long as they also don't feel limiting.

I think you confusing attributes and skills. Skills are what your character is good at and what they need to work on. Attributes is your overall physical ability (Be it strength, intelligence, or simply just having a nature charismic voice). Both are required, in my opinion, but it's hard to find a RPG that treats both respectfully the right way at the same time...

For example, with Bethesda's works... Attributes are amazing in Fallout 4 and were treated in a great way. Allowing a great custom character each time. While Skyrim, and the other TES games, treated skills pretty well done. Especially in Skyrim with the nicer perk system (though it still needs to be worked on).

To me, your overall attributes shouldn't change that much and be on a system of 1-10... Having the ability to raise your attributes every single level (or at least, you HAVE to do so) is just a stupid idea and ruins character for me.

Another common mistake in RPGs is having classes. Your character shouldn't be defined by a class (even if you can create custom classes, though it is more tolerable with custom classes). Your character should be defined on what you do in-game with your choices and skills you have improved/use.

I would agree that your character shouldn't be defined by a class but I think there should be background choices. What you become should be decided by in-game choices but you should be able to choose what your character began as. Don't think any crpg has really hit it for me although MW and DF came closest.

Classes aren't that bad, Think about military roles (any era) and how those pretty much are classes.

I agree. I feel that classes give a character a great sense of who they are and how they see the world around them. Kind of like jobs in the real world

I enjoyed Soul Calibur 5's create-a-fighter. Does that count? As far as RPG games go, I'm fairly happy with Fallout4's. Skyrim's was ok.

I saw this awhile back. I really found it interesting. Would like this a lot.

I second this

The ship my Gorn character has, my Vo'Quv, i love it, so much customisation has gone into it:

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/437200827346599692/796B3D663D10D0401A8D0014495F5240E42DD2BB/

For reference, here is what it looks like without customisation

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/4/4a/IKS_Chang_%28Vo

The ship customisation really makes it "Yours"

Talking about fighting games, I thought Virtua Fighter 5 had a really impressive clothing system where you can mix a bunch of different stuff and they all fit very well.