Character Creator & Character Customization (Official Thread)

yes

That is bullshit. I guess I'll have to extract Scott's head and use Zbrush to make my own custom head assuming the modding tools become available.

You're not wrong; It won't impact playthroughs themselves, but it does hurt the fandom that likes to show off their customized creations in screenshot threads. That culture exists, whether or not one participates. The fact that Bioware has put up an URL dedicated to sharing off creations acknowledges and validates this particular aspect of gamer self-expression. 

I agree that it should not matter how your character compares to another person's.  I know many of the gals I used to chat with in the old Bioware forums used the same eye shape in DAI that I did (that really pretty cat-eye shape).  So there was some overlap.  Didn't bother me in the slightest.

But as I bolded above, there is no way...absolutely no way....that I can create a look even close to what I would like.  There is only one (maybe 2 or 3, haven't seen all the sliders yet, but am making an educated guess based on what I have seen) possibility for a preset that allows you to slide all the way to a fair-skinned complexion. That one option is by far the most unattractive preset of them all (but this is, of course, subjective). If I could adjust the hair/eye coloring and nose of the default female ryder, I could get a bit closer to what I would like, but that is not an option.  I

They are giving a 1-2 preset standard option for each race.  That's it.  If you don't like those 1-2, then tough.  Seriously...even in the current CC, allowing the full range of skin tones for each face would add waaaaaaaaaay more ability to customize someone you like. But even then, you may like their eyes and face shape, but hate their lips, etc.  And there is nothing you can do about it.

Honestly, the generic idea of race that they are presenting in the CC is a bit insulting.  My adopted brother is a pale and freckled white guy with a round face, but he has Asian-shaped eyes. What "preset" would he choose if he wanted to create his own Ryder?  There is no way for him to make a character even close to that because they have the racial characteristics completely locked into presets rather than being exchangeable.  In comparison, I made his face in the DAI CC (for fun) by  carefully rotating the eyes in the right way.  Granted, it was far from perfect, but it was close enough and he laughed when i sent him the screenshot because he knew it was supposed to be him.  Although he did say "what the hell kind of hair is THAT?" 

Anyway...whatever.  I am over it.  I'll just play the MEA game as an action-shooter with story elements rather than getting into the RPG aspects.  It's no big deal. It's just a little bit of a bummer to me. I'll still play the game!

You're not getting that correctly.

The point is precisely that you CAN'T create the look you want. You can't take head 2 and fix the skin tone to what you wanted, but change the nose shape and the eye shape and pick different eyebrows. All you can do is take head 2 and change minor things like eye spacing and nose height, to a smaller degree than you could in DAI. That sort of thing. It's far less than any other Bioware game, and less than games like Dragon's Dogma which has literally dozens of hairs. There are boxing games with more options than what is supposed to be an RPG. ME3 was more detailed than this. That should not be.

It's not that everyone's character is going to look like yours and omg status MMOz. It's that your character will look like the preset so much that to many it won't feel like their own; won't feel as if they have really customized it and it's to their personal tastes, but rather, it looks like you chose head 8 and just changed hair and makeup. Minor details.

If I choose preset 1 or 8 and can't edit it enough that it doesn't make me think "that looks just like Ashe's Ryder" or "that looks just like AbilityDrain's Ryder but with different hair", that takes me out of the experience.

That does have a tremendous impact on my playthrough and my enjoyment because that's the head I will be looking at for numerous hours, so I want it to not remind me of everything else I've seen, and I'm clearly not the only one. It is disappointing to expect to be able to switch eyebrow shapes to something that fits your preference, and find that you can't even do that. Can't even choose complexion, and can't make the skin as light or as dark as you want it, and there's only one eyeshadow option and two lipstick styles that I could imagine ever wanting to choose on any character. And on top of that, you can't switch feature shapes.

I'm not mad at the devs. I don't hate anyone. Preorder? Not canceled. I'm not freaking out. No drama here. I'm just--extremely disappointed and nonplussed about a feature that's been in every Bioware game after a certain point. A feature I love. The CC was one of the things that excited me most about DAI. This is the same engine--I thought at least it would be relatively similar, since a developer said that it would be. For whatever reason, that did not happen.

The fact that they are addressing this already is a pretty good sign that people care, and not for stupid reasons like "but my Ryder might look sort of like someone else's and my ego can't take that." For the reason that a cherished feature is missing and many will feel like they have not actually created or chosen the look they got, in an RPG where a developer compared this to the DAI CC.

Just curious (totally clueless person here) -- Does the standard rig work when you do that? Can you also customize the rigging?

My Ryder twins look fantastic imo and very different from presets. Ill post later

With DAI, you couldn't import rigged meshes, only the an .obj file and it had to be the same number of verts and triangles. Not sure what will be possible with MEA. I don't know if anyone is even working on making the DAI tool work with it.

I'm in access, the CC is really bad. It's a downgrade from DAI.

It's linked to the preset.
Eye shape, eyebrow style, lip shape, nose shape, skin texture, skin tone options - all depend on the preset.
It's...quite terrible.

Unfortunately for all of us the early access comes with the day one patch.

Also it's becoming clearer and clearer to me from watching youtubers (seriously) create their characters that once i actually get the free time to play my early access on Friday creating a character is going to come down to a single, extremely disheartening question:

"Will I gouge out my own eyes if I have to look at this character for the next 60+ hours?"

Getting a character that I actually want to look at is going to be a war of attrition, but I refuse to use default Ryder. This is a Bioware game -- as a player I shouldn't feel forced into using the default option because the CC is so awful.

I really want to see someone mess around with the 2# female face, only because I think she's supposed to be caucasian? Alec seemed to be if you choose her so I'd like to know what she looks like from the side and how pale I can make her...also how narrow I can make her face *looks at 8's lovely face structure and cries*.