Larian Studios Forums Divinity General Discussion Full Character Design ?

I was thinking which really cool feature I would like in a fantasy game.

Obviously the big recent idea for science fiction games was that you can design your very own spaceship.

So I had the idea that the really cool thing I would like to have is probably a full character designer, as it is or was in some MMORPGs, like Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

That means you can choose the height, width etc of your character, and design the head in great detail.

TES4 Oblivion also had something like that, though only for the face.

Another great idea would be by the way if plate armor was actually rigid, as it is in reallife.

One feature I would love to see in a future game is a transmog/glamour system similar to what many online RPGs have, especially the system used in World of Warcraft.

While playing Divinity: Original Sin 2, I often felt that some of the strongest gear had stats I wanted, but not always the appearance I liked. Sometimes players simply want to create their own character style and outfit combinations, but the gear with the best appearance may not have competitive stats.

It would be amazing if players could keep the stats of high-level equipment while changing its appearance to another item they prefer, similar to the transmogrification system in World of Warcraft. This kind of customization gives players more freedom for roleplaying and character identity without affecting gameplay balance.

I really hope a future title from Larian Studios could include a transmog system like this.

One feature I think Larian Studios could learn from World of Warcraft is a more advanced equipment socket system.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 already has rune sockets, which is a great feature. However, I believe the system could be expanded further in future games.

One concern I have is that if future titles no longer allow players to repeatedly refresh vendor inventories for powerful divine gear, then certain high-end equipment combinations may become impossible to obtain. For example, gear with two sockets, strong rune combinations, +5 attribute bonuses, or +2 skill school bonuses could become extremely rare.

In multiplayer games, this can create a problem where only a few “best” unique items exist, and friends may end up arguing over who gets them because top-tier gear is too limited.

My suggestion is to introduce a socket expansion system similar to equipment socketing systems seen in games like World of Warcraft.

For example:

* Normal equipment could start with one rune socket.
* Unique or legendary equipment could naturally have two or three sockets.
* Players could buy, craft, or find a special “socket item” that adds additional rune slots to non-unique equipment.

This would allow players to customize gear they personally enjoy using instead of everyone competing for the exact same legendary items. It would also improve build diversity and reduce loot-related frustration in co-op play.

I think a more flexible socket system could make future Larian RPGs even more fun for both solo and multiplayer players.

Usually, the problem with this is designing armour that fits a shifting model.

MMO's often get away with this by having low quality armour design, where most things are based on a skin texture rather than actually modelled items (Basically, everything is a skintight suit...)

When games model individual items, it's harder to use body morphing because the items remain static in size while you morph your body. Thus they have to create multiple copies of the items to account for this (This is true for even games where there is no body morphing and it's just male/female options. 2 copies of every single item tuned to fit each gender's body sizes). Unless they simply try to morph it and let it look ugly with bunches of clipping and texture stretching.

For Larian, things get even more complicated. As they are utilizing motion capture to do animations. Which only really works when all the bodies will use the exact same structure that the motion capture model has. Any morphs away from that will cause the animations to not work as the bones are in the wrong place when being manipulated. You can see similar things happen in older games, where they might not even be using mocap but they clearly animated around a base model for the face, so more extreme morphs look awful (I recall this happening to my characters in DA:I a lot. Trying to make a not-ugly face can lead to really uncanny animations...)

As far as plate armour goes...

Joints are generally fine to be flexible. Given that they are specifically made out of overlapping plates that slide underneath each other to allow for movement (With of course, places like armpits and back of the knee being exposed, usually with mail covering them, later they also incorporated dangling armpit protectors to further shore up that particular vulnerability)

As for things like the breastplate acting as though it's made of rubber... Yeah, that's not realistic. Though it comes down to the animation problem. All the animations of a character were done as if the character was unencumbered by any armour and they didn't bother to make any with a character more restricted by a solid piece of plate, so you get these rubbery "Plates", this is also often exacerbated for boots because games love to make boots entirely out of metal rather than actual armour which is just plates that go over the top of someone's boots (Or in a lot of modern cases, trainers)

Of course, a way to alleviate this is by using overlapping plates to allow for movement, not very realistic (Since it provides a very big vulnerability by having that gap between plates vulnerable to a weapon being thrust in, both directly and also the weapon can simply glance and then catch on the next plate and be forced into the gap. Not only that, but the plates would have to be overall thinner to allow this to work) but at least better than solid steel acting like rubber.

Or you know... Get some realistic armour for your mocap models to wear for some additional animations... Just make sure it's actually fitted for them and not some pre-made junk (As oversized armour will greatly affect mobility when wearing it)

Why yes of course MMORPGs have low graphics for obvious reasons.

TES4 Oblivion didnt at all though.

Just to clarify, MMORPGs have low graphic demands for simple reasons:

- There can be any number of players on the screen at any point in time

- Almost all MMORPGs are really old by now

That to me doesnt imply you cannot have high quality graphics and good customization.

Which is irrelevant to the point.

The point is, MMO's that feature body morphing, have very basic implementation of items. Whereby they are just a texture overlaid onto the model rather than a unique item.

This is primarily done as a means of optimising performance, but it also allows them to feature body morphing as it's not an issue to stretch a texture to fit (Sort of... You will still get some jank due to stretching/shrinking of the texture)


The conflict isn't high quality graphics and good customisation.

The conflict is with animations/item design and customisation.

Older MMO's (Like City of Heroes) could do body morphing because it used simple items, where everyone was wearing skintight suits that were simply textures on their body (Which worked well because... It was a Super Hero/Villain game so wearing skintight suits is what you're generally going for)

Other games, that use actual models for their items can not facilitate body morphing because it would end up just distorting the items (Or clipping your model through an unchanged base item). You can see this with some older games where this sort of thing happened. Instead, the way that games incorporate model differences (Such as between a singular male and female body) is by creating a unique version of the item for each model, which is of course not feasible for body morphing where you have infinite different size and shapes...

Of course, there's the other thing that can be done by certain items which is replacing your characters model with a default one when using the item. This of course disregards your actual customisation and simply forces you into a default model.

Then in regards to games with high degrees of customisation, they come with the cost of having more limited animations. Since the bones being manipulated for an animation only look correct when they're in position and customisation modifies their size and position, this causes animations to not work with customisation. You can see this in some older games where if you manipulate your character's face, all their animations break and look awful.

So yeah, you can have high quality graphics with good customisation very easily. There are plenty of games that do it. But if typically means that items (If body morphing is included) or animations will not be as good.

The better the items and animations are, then you end up with less customisation options so as to facilitate them.

It's a trade off. You have to pick which one you prefer and sacrifice the other.

You have described what games of the past have done.

I cannot find any fundamental limit in your argument though. Those are all problems that could be solved.

Also I dont see that there are many variables for the body:

- height
- width
- fat amount
- muscle amount
- length of appendexes (arms and legs) relative to body size
- size of hands and feet relative to body size

Thats pretty much all I could think of.

But even if one could only vary height and width that would already make sure that there is more visual variance than there is now in BG3.

This in of itself can have tons of variables.

Like, even if you can only scale by increments of lets say, inches...

You have what?

4'
4'1"
4'2"
4'3"
4'4"
4'5"
4'6"
4'7"
4'8"
4'9"
4'10"
4'11"
5'
5'1"
5'2"
5'3"
5'4"
5'5"
5'6"
5'7"
5'8"
5'9"
5'10'
5'11"
6'
6'1"
6'2"
6'3"
6'4"
6'5"
6'6"
6'7"
6'8"
6'9"
6'10"
6'11"
7'

That's 37 different variables. And only if you shift by increments of inches.

If you have a slider, then you have all the variables between those inches...

With just this one variable, it can mean making at least 37 completely unique items in order to ensure that the items fit the model properly and aren't stretched or warped.

You add in a second variable, like width and then each of these 37 variables also have all the variables of that width.

Like, imagine you have the option to adjust width by up to 5 inches, again in increments of 1 inch. That means each of those height values can have 5 different width values. That means at least 185 different bodies. Which will require at least 185 different items to be created to make sure they fit properly and are textured right.

Again, ignoring the possibility of a slider that incorporates values between inches (Which massively inflates the number of potential unique models)

And this is only for one singular body type. Having this for both male and female bodies means any value is doubled, so that's at least 370 different unique models. All requiring that many iterations of all items in the game. Instead of just 2.

This is why body morphing is so uncommon. It quickly compounds to having ridiculous numbers of variables which require colossal effort to incorporate.