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I happen to be one of those people who is largely unhappy with character design choices. I think much of this could be remedied with character sliders for the face. Many games have them. Does anyone know if Larian has talked about this or is open to the idea?

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I think it'd be amazing too. However based on how the models are made, I don't think they're easily converted to morphable meshes. At best I'm hoping that all the voices wanting it has, or may over time inspire them to consider it for future games. Because from the feedback I've seen, it's a pretty popular request. The downside on the other hand, is that typically to enable sliders for morphing nodes on a mesh, the actual texture and mesh fidelity goes down significantly. A super simplified but not entirely accurate way to look at it is... Very pretty but limited options, or potentially pretty enough to not feel last-gen graphics but very customizable. At least that's how I've come to understand it, but I'm not exactly particularly skilled in the whole 3D modeling/texturing field. Just very general impressions based on lurking and moderating modding channels for a while.

TL;DR - I wouldn't encourage anyone to get their hopes up for sliders in BG3. I believe it's pretty unlikely (unfortunately) :c

Last edited by The Composer; 13/08/21 04:45 PM.
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I think it's far more reasonable to expect/ask for additional premade props to diversify character creation.

It's not as simple as "adding sliders" when the parts you are starting with aren't made to be deformable and can't be morphed at will maintaining plausibility.


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I wouldn't mind not having sliders, but having some more variety on the characters' heads would be great. So far all character looks too old. Save one or two that still looks over their 30s would be nice to create a younger adventurer. Or a rally old wizard, etc.

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Originally Posted by Avallonkao
So far all character looks too old. Save one or two that still looks over their 30s would be nice to create a younger adventurer.
Funny, I thought the problem with current options was the exact opposite.
Everyone seems a young model out of the Zoolander cast.

Last edited by Tuco; 13/08/21 05:46 PM.

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Originally Posted by The Composer
I think it'd be amazing too. However based on how the models are made, I don't think they're easily converted to morphable meshes.

There's another game which I can't mention because it's a massive, massive spoiler for the plot, but the way that works is you pick two meshes, and then you have a slider where the far left is mesh A, the far right is mech B: anything between is a mix you decide upon. I think GTA5 online did something similar? Problem is as others have aid I think this 'simple' thing is a massive, massive slog that will probably compromise the originals. I would prefer the current system, because I am gifted at making potato faced characters to the point I usually take the 'stock' face.

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While I love sliders, I would be ok with a bigger variety of heads to select from. I like variety in character creation - in the visual aspects as well as building your class and skills.


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If not sliders It would cool to have the same thing as in SWTOR. You have limited selection of heads there too, but in addition to those heads you have variety of textures, which make same faces look younger, older, sunburned, freckled e.t.c.

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Originally Posted by Zellin
If not sliders It would cool to have the same thing as in SWTOR. You have limited selection of heads there too, but in addition to those heads you have variety of textures, which make same faces look younger, older, sunburned, freckled e.t.c.

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Originally Posted by Zellin
If not sliders It would cool to have the same thing as in SWTOR. You have limited selection of heads there too, but in addition to those heads you have variety of textures, which make same faces look younger, older, sunburned, freckled e.t.c.
That's true, SWTOR has a nice mixture of heads and textures. The cosmetics could be better though.

Last edited by fylimar; 13/08/21 06:59 PM.

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The only slider I could possibly want is one that would shrink/enlarge the entire model (by a reasonably small amount) so that it maintains its proportions. Otherwise sliders allow players to create deformed characters and I don't want to see those in multiplayer or even in character creation. It's also really tedious to create a character when you have a slider for everything.

More head and body models, hair, tattoos, scars and skin textures would be much better than sliders that get only weird results.

Still need more body types than the "slim muscular" we have though.

Last edited by 1varangian; 13/08/21 07:09 PM.
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"more heads" is one of oldest demands on this forum ...
I Can only hope that we get faces instead ... and separate ears. frown


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More heads, more hair. Agree. But beyond that, they could add changeable skin textures (ie, beyond color) and more makeup options (beyond eyeshadow). Those should totally be possible and would add alot of char creation improvement.

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I'm not really happy with character gneration either. It eels too bland and samey to me. There just isn't a lot to do or choose - I can spend hours in cahracter creators for some game,s but I can't really fathom people spending more than afew minutes tops in this one.

I'd love to see more facial variety, rather thanthe same six same-face we have to pick from now. They're beautifully scanned, sure, but if you don't want one of those exact 6 faces, you're out of luck.

I'd desperatly like, if not sliders for body build, then at least a few different build options to pick from. More than that, I want to be able to adjsut our chacter's height, within the bounds for whatever race we select.

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Originally Posted by Niara
I'm not really happy with character gneration either. It eels too bland and samey to me.
This is the actual problem they need to address, not sliders.

You can't make a big mean rough looking warrior. You can't make a slim scarred middle aged rogue. You can't make an unattractive character. There's a lot you can't make. Everyone looks young and attractive. There's only one look to choose from.

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Originally Posted by 1varangian
Originally Posted by Niara
I'm not really happy with character gneration either. It eels too bland and samey to me.
This is the actual problem they need to address, not sliders.

You can't make a big mean rough looking warrior. You can't make a slim scarred middle aged rogue. You can't make an unattractive character. There's a lot you can't make. Everyone looks young and attractive. There's only one look to choose from.

I don't find a lot of the models attractive tbh, especially the female ones, which is why I want sliders.

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SWTOR is fine to look towards as a game that scratches the slider itch, but without actually providing a back scratcher lol. SWTOR has been Bioware's cash cow for more than a decade now, and they seemed to figure out quickly that one way to keep players playing is simply to lean into outfits and looks. To the point where they don't even really need a game to prop it up, it's just like GI Joe or digital Barbie, an outfit designer set in the Star Wars galaxy or something.

Characters there don't really have skills or attributes or stuff like that to set them apart. They are all the same even down to the voice depending on what initial class you choose for the character. They rely almost entirely on gear and face/species to mix it up and make a character seem unique. But throw some dyes in there and some extra helmets and robes, and damned if people don't show up anyway just for that. lol

It just continues to confirm my long held belief that what D&D really needs is just a truly beautiful character designer. The character creator to end all D20 style character creators. Do it up to the umpteenth degree, maybe with a basic arena module, then worry about building the actual adventures and game modules for it later.

They should sell the character creator like a digital PHB, the environment builder and toolset like the DMG and MM, then make adventures for it with different studios and writers all working within the same base system. Artists all using the same tools and systems to create content over time at the industry standard. Basically what they said they were going to do with Neverwinter Nights, but never actually produced, which was Baldur's Gate: Unlimited Adventures. You know like the Unlimited Adventures they did for the final Gold Box.

Instead they keep farming it out into separate computer games from separate studios and so it has this rapid turn over and the most important thing (char design) always suffers. I think if NWN had been designed to support adventure modules for full party instead of single player characters in large groups (MMO or PW style), it would have lasted forever. The problem with it was that it lacked the party dynamic for level scaling, and its not as fun to build modules for a single PC as it is for a party. The same shit always happened every time, they could scale it well enough for an individual player, but anything more and the everything was thrown way off, so it was either an insta-kill for the monsters or a TPK for the players, because there were no scaling guard rails. The game was designed for SP/SC, not a party. Which is why it couldn't achieve BG status. You couldn't make a tactically interesting game like BG in a system like that, cause everything had to be easy enough that the single player character wouldn't get murdered constantly. All the adventures were basically solo adventure mods, and Bioware has continued in that vein unfortunately, but they still do a really nice job of capturing what people enjoy about developing a characters aesthetic, and aesthetic progression as a substitute for other more tactical/mechanical meat on the bones stuff.

For digital Dungeons & Dragons D D&D, it'd be rad if they planned it out in phases. Like first we get the Operating System and everyone designs for that OS. They could really work on creating a physics for a 'real-world' environment, design and animations for character mannequins in the char creator, some standards for how things like cinematics and the art will present in the PHB. With the MM it could be all about creature creation, dressing the bads basically. The DMG sets up the god mode, and a toolset for behind the game masters' screen. And THEN they launch the inaugural campaign module series. Like after that other stuff is all already in place. That would just be such a better way to do it. Like hire a studio to make the basic D&D OS, and have that be proprietary, but then go to individual studios to write the modules or the supplemental books basically. There's also room for something like a subscription to Dragon magazine (MMO style) to complement the one and done starter materials, just to go with the analogy of how it was done in pen and paper. But the starter set materials, those should basically be like really elaborate Character and Monster design and Adventure design studios. With the DMG more like a model train set, building of environments and stories stuff, creating NPCs and campaigns, controlling the camera. Then every new Official Adventure game that comes out brings add ons to contribute to the whole and it can continue like that for some longer period of time than we usually get, one offs, or maybe two offs if we're lucky. I just wish they would approach it more with a grand plan, the way they do for the physical materials and books.

I guess that's more an idea for NWN3 than BG3, but still I think it could work quite well for D&D. I think they just screwed up when they didn't make things backwards compatible moving from 1 franchise to the other, or from NWN1 to NWN2. But otherwise the idea was genius, and a perfect fit for D&D.

AD&D Analog Dungeons and Dragons
DD&D Digital Dungeons and Dragons hehe

Where each gets like it's own grand plan every 10 year period? 6e should maybe be that, where the digital game gets it own full treatment and publishing slate aimed at making it all cohesive. Instead of like banner sales to the latest picture show one off, make it more like a long haul serial. And have the Char creator as the tip of the spear, vanguard out the gate. That would be cool

Last edited by Black_Elk; 15/08/21 02:11 AM.
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I am probably one of the few here, but I have always hated sliders in character creation. Mainly, because any subtle changes are really just lost in the details when your normally playing a game so you have the use the end of the sliders to make the changes easily noticeable, which is no different than just a selection. And, at least I felt this way, making sure any slider doesn't lead to awkward or bad animations takes a bit of work (too long limbs or lots of clipping due to large meshes).

But, what this does mean is that more options for selections are needed. A few options comes to mind:

- Body type (muscular, average, obese, and maybe a thin)
- More head options (as been stated too many times)
- Height
- Animation sets (every humanoid fighter that wields a single 1h sword should not swing/wield it the same way)

Just adding the above selections would already let characters really stand out.

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Originally Posted by Zellin
If not sliders It would cool to have the same thing as in SWTOR. You have limited selection of heads there too, but in addition to those heads you have variety of textures, which make same faces look younger, older, sunburned, freckled e.t.c.
I would absolutely love being able to have more scars on characters. I like the idea of characters potentially looking like they've been around getting into fights that haven't always gone well.

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I have registered to throw in my 2 cents as well. I like the aesthetic of the game and are considering of buying it, but it sorely needs body and face sliders, character creation just feels cheap and shallow without them... No character will truly feel unique and like belonging to the player until everyone has the freedom to truly create their own in detail.

When looked at other modern games most include face sliders and some body sliders to an extent, off the top of my head graphically beautiful games like black desert pull it off, while other games have the framework and some sliders in it leaving the ability for modders to fill in the gap like in Mount&blade bannerlord or Conan's exiles or SoulCalibur VI. Heck. Even vanilla Skyrim had sliders 10 years ago. Its honestly sad that erotic games and modders have done significantly more progress at delivering the experience of joy in creation or recreation of your dream characters.

This is slightly a rant, but point is, an expanded character creator aka sliders would be a much welcome addition to players.

Last edited by Faustus; 16/08/21 09:17 PM.
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I have to say, I think the faces look fantastic. Sliders perhaps for "girth" for the tubby lovers could be included but other sliders really seem largely unnecessary. I wouldn't complain seeing an even more stacked elf but is it really needed and take away time from other development?

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