When it comes to rpgs one of my favorite things is designing my character, pouring over all the options, tweaking this and that and getting them "just right" for myself. I can literlaly spend hours making a character before I even start the game.

One of the things that can GREATLY help wit this is the ability to "save" a character's looks.

Some games allow this, from Bioware's Mass Effect, to mmorpgs like Final Fantasy XIV: ARR, where you can save the characters look before you get into the game, so if you find something "off" or wnat to change something small you can.

This also makes it super easy for people to be able to share character designs with others. Having very talented people who can make good looking characters and then being able to share them with others is great, especially for people who aren't that good at it and can simply go to the forums and browse threads for characters, find one they like and just plop the code into their game to get that look.

Also I hope that the base game will have a way to alter your appearance post-character creation, like in both Fallout 3 and NV (NV required Old world blues IIRC). Being able to change your looks after a while is a very welcome design choice.

I don't know… Bethesda's been great when it comes to a modding community working together, but aside from that Fallout's strictly been a single-player game, yes? The idea of sharing something like that is too close to multiplayer for me to think they'll bother with that. They could however have made it in such a way that you could send a facial character data file easily when it comes to PC modding and whatnot.

As for changing your character's appearance later in-game, I'm sure there'll be a way, there usually is. But, I don't know about making it easy. Some might feel it clashes with the believability of the thing. You might have to find a facial surgeon in the game or something.

If you've ever modded a game, saving a character, and importing a character has been a thing from like always and forever.

There's a site called Nexus.

It hosts a pretty active modding community.

I wouldn't be surprised if the PipBoy app for your phone will allow you to share your character. As far as changing small things about your characters appearance, I'm usually fine with the final editor right before you come out of the starter dungeon (I was a little miffed there wasn't one in Skyrim). Even though it was dumb, having the plastic surgeon was a good option in F3 to change what you looked like if you wanted

Inb4 OP is playing on PS4 and will have to wait for mod access. This wouldn't be an issue otherwise.

There is also the steam community, and man are they active and vocal and down right militant at times!

The option to save character presets would be nice, this would simply be the settings you have used. Its more important than in earlier games as you don't have the sliders.

This preset would show up with the others then you create an character.

And yes as its an file it can be shared.

Face-gen allows this; but they don't include the feature in the game or GECK; (at least they haven't before). I wonder if they are allowed to include a file export.

It will probably be the case that players can save before exiting the vault, so in effect, the saved game will load the face, and in all likelihood, the player can undo every choice they made up to the end. So players might be able to pass around save game files as face-presets.

I liked Mass Effect's system; unsure if it will work for FO4 since there are no sliders.

Remember taking screenshots of character creation in ESO beta, then stored image of character with slider settings so I could create character fast then I started playing. A preset save would have worked better.

The problem I always had with downloading a pre-existing character's save-game from the Nexus was that you (usually, as I understood it) missed out on the entire tutorial. There could be save-games that start immediately but even so, I'd rather that there be a way to trade the information used to create a character look, and not actually trade the character save-game itself. Some people use Custom Races in Fallout-3 / New Vegas to do this, but aside from the fact there IS no "race" option in Fallout 4, so that probably would not work anyway, the Custom Races were plagued with crashing problems, as I recall.

A "simple" save/load option at character creation would just be ideal.

Yeah, a lot of good RPGs have this. NWN2, Wasteland 2, etc...

I don't know why would anyone want to play someone else's character, but at the very least saving your character is easier when there's an actual support for it, not just saving between character creation and "finalization and confirmation".

At least in Oblivion and FO3, a saved game at the exit presents the player with a menu that allows full respec of everything. So that would just mean that the face defaults to what they saved, but I think [IRRC] that you can change anything. If not... That's something they could easily allow.

This

Yeah, Nexus is a fine community of Modders. Good people, quality stuff. Way better than the steam workshop.

And this is accurate, especially if you can save during the prewar opening with the facial designation you desire.

I would like this as well but I don't think it'll be that difficult to remember face stat numbers. I know my Face from Skyrim by heart, after creating her so many times.

Well, we're not dealing with sliders anymore, if you remember. It's reminiscent of The Sims 4.

I'm not very concerned with sharing my character, but it would be nice for a simple mechanic where finding a mirror would let you activate it and at least change hairstyles, if not your entire appearance. It doesn't actually change anything or give you any advantage, and the whole face surgery thing is a laughable concept. It's tremendously complicated to undergo facial surgery especially in the wasteland of all places and it's not like people react to you like they've never met you when you do it. It's a silly justification, so an easily accessible optional mechanic where the game just acts like you looked that way the whole time is much better, in my opinion.

Just being able to use a mirror or something at least moderately easily accessible to change hairs and whatnot would be nice since I would LIKE to be able to have my character go from clean-cut pre-war dude to grizzled wasteland wanderer as time goes on.

Exactly! It's nice to be able to change hair to make your character seem like an ordinary human being who, you know, grows hair and won't necessarily be actively shaving while roaming the wastes.

I would love to see an Export/Import feature, but those that are less creative (like myself) may have to rely on mods and other people's save files.

Granted I will spend hours and hours on the CC for sure.

I would love a 'save' feature in the face-gen. My reason is that in FO4, you can customize both the male and female characters, but you can only exit the face-gen as one of them. I'd like to model both myself and my wife, and then play as her for my second playthrough. It would be nice to just load my two saved presets at that time instead of remaking both of them from scratch.

Yeah there needs to be a way to save the other as well. I may want Scarlett Johansson to be the mother of my child, even if just for a very brief time...

I always like to "age" or make my characters appear more rugged as the game goes on.

I mean after all, it makes sense, especially in this game. I'm going to make my guy clean shaven with a normal haircut at the start of the game. It wouldn't make since for him to have a rugged survival beard with a raider war hair cut in the pre war. So I hope they give us at least the opportunity for a hair cut in the game (and don't make us pay 2000 caps a pop or what ever like in Skyrim). The same principle applies to aging, scars and other bodily features.

On the same note- I really hope they give us an opportunity to remake or change stats at the end of the tutorial so that we don't have to replay it at every new game. Running Helgan over and over was one of the most annoying things in Skyrim.

I would like to see hair and beard growth.