Character creation being truely creative...

I'm over the 35+ age category, and as much as I still have fun playing MMOs the character creation part getting more stale and and less unique. We are talking Human beings, not all of them are 20 the same height and weight with just a slight skin tone to barely show a hint of nationality and a couple of hair styles. Sure it cuts down on programming... but, really, can't we have just ONE MMO to go the extra mile with Girth dimensions (Fat - Skinny) and Height scaling, and Age appearance ? I might want to be a skinny gnarled out coot that can kick some young wipper-snapper's butt.

What do you think?

I truly want character customization to be a vital part as well (APB and champions online is fun to tinker in ).

Would be fun to have an mmo where there actually are some fat people (hey! I'm just being realistic...), really skinny ones, "normal", etc etc. Anyway, RP gets a big boost from this as well from my point of view.

Would be fun if some towns would have a barber shop as well, change hair now and then, I would like some in-depth character customization anyway.

oh oh oh, wouldn't mind some kind of clothing customization as well.

I'd certainly enjoy having that in the game, might not be realistic though, it's a lot of work that could go toward more critical aspects of the game.

the tutorial could be the character creation. Its like you start as a boy/girl and through the tutorial you mature and gain all the skills and looks that you end up as "full grown" MMO's... MMO's never change...

I'm surprised this thread didn't get the attention I thought it would... *sad face*

A previous threads about haveing many races is running rampant, go figure.

Anyways if Human or maybe 1-3 others will be gamesas's choice, then a highly customizable character appearance be needed more then?

I have played many MMOs and the static, limited appearances of people's characters is really making interacting with 100 clones of myself being bland, it truely does. I realize people just hit random appearance and jump in for the game play with a randomized ingame name and play... I guess that fine for some.

Maybe I'm playing MMOs for far too long, where all the NPCs look alike and all the player characters are the same age with slight skin tones and hair colours?

If the story were something along the line of "You are a refugee, running from the harsh reality of the waste's."
It could be used with different age groups, like if you picked an old person "Having lived most of your life in safety in the city of LALA-LAND, it has now been overrun by Supermutants. Now you are forced to relearn everything or die in horrors of the wasteland."

Yeah, I like the idea of there being different age groups.

I agree, the more I can customize my character, the happier I am. If I can make my character short and fat, awesome! Also'd be nice to have a character with hairy arms or a tall skinny nerd looking guy.

To me, customization is key to having a good RP experience.

It happens because most of MMOs are fantasy-styled and all the features of your character will be covered by an armor, early or later. But the Fallout is different, Power Armor is the single full-covering armor in the setting, all another are leaving some parts of body uncovered.
I am fully agree with you. BTW, I had created a similar topic some weeks ago, but it was about an outfit customization. Excuse my bad English... I am a Russian bear, it's hard to type with claws.

Well if I can mention it, the Gene Projection from F3 is a nice example of tool to create your face. Expand it on entire body and here you go, your own, original character. I think that having 3 or 4 races to choose is just raping the whole sense of Fallout. It's like calling Borderlands (very good game BTW) a true RPG.
Hope you guys know what I mean

Customization gamesas, customization - this is the way to the true and realistic Fallout experience. "Shit. Shit never changes."
Shit happens

In my opinion there should only be one playable race, and that's humans. I had a long rant about this quite a while back, where I said that I'd like to see only humans, divided into different factions, but nothing set in stone. What do I mean by this, you ask?

You could select and customise your human char in a number of ways, face, hair, girth and so on. But the faction thing could determine where you'd start, but not where you end up. (I.e. a vault dweller going slaver/raider or a raider joining the "good fight") Like a vault dweller faction where you start off in a open vault with a burning desire to explore the vast nothingness of the world. Or you could be born in one of the settlements that has popped up around or even born in a raider clan. Your chosen birthplace could give you a perk like i.e. a vault dweller got a perk giving him or her more SCI because of the access to education and books and the like where a raider child would have somewhat better outdoorsman skills and maybe even better guns/meelee skills seeing as they grow up around weapons and other people who live more or less in the wild.

As for the appearance of the chars i really hope there will be the possibility to make your char truly unique by having the opition to mix and match different outfits and looks. At the same time I honestly think there will be good options to customise them because if all you have to tell people apart is gender and armor (leather, metal, combat and power) the game would look more like "Clone Wars" than a post-apocalyptic RPG.

Just my two cents... Renesco the rocketman

/Signed

I totally agree. What is the point of having an online avatar that is supposed to represent our fantasy when it is ruined by the fact that we all look the same?

Yes these are all great ideas for character creation and developement.
As for playable "races" I would like instead have racial Perks, still Human but Appearnace is altered a bit to match the Perk with Traits/Flaws instead. For examples, being totally made up:
Ghoul Perk - Small loss in Charisma and dealings with NPC merchants but take less Rad damage and sma radiation Resistance boost. Alters Human appearnce with various radiated/dmage skin.
Vampire Perk - Lowered perception in daylight, gain some health killing things/drinking blood. Altered appearance with red eyes and paler complexion.
Mutant Perk - (not quite Super Mutant) Small loss in Charisma, Small gain in Strength. take even less damage from radiation, even more rad resists at start. Even lower interactions with vendor NPCs.
Pure Strain Human Perk - Take more rad damage than normal and lower Constitution, small increase in Intelligence and Charisma better dealings with Vendor NPC at start. Human appearnce allow a less rougher complexion or basically the default.

I don't know what the game mechanics or Stats/skills or traits are in this MMO, this is just a guess and samples of Perks one could choose at start. What do you think?