DO YOU INCLUDE CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATIONS?

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(This isn't asking if I should, or how to.)

Just -- do you often do this in your games? Do you allow it?
For my creations, it's going to be an old age rpg game, but I've currently made like, uuhhh....40+ character sets of the main character JUST for the start because they all have different eye colours, skin and hair. I'm thinking this is a silly way to clog up my game, but I really like the idea of character customization! Bah!

Do you think I should just take it out and leave one with each skin colour/ and call it that? That would probably allow more chances to change clothes. I'm worried I'll clog up the game! :P

Do you guys think it's an important aspect?
I really like the idea of being able to make my character someone, not just have it 'premade' as such haha.
I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean like in FF5 where each character has a different sprite depending on their class?

I think it's reasonable if there's only a small handful of characters who will change outfits. But if you have 20 playable character with 40 costumes each, you might want to reconsider.

EDIT: Oh you mean a customizable avatar for the main character. I honestly think it's overdone these days in a lot of games that don't really benefit from it. It works well with MMOs, games with any sort of online social aspects, and games like Fallout, where you might spend hundreds of hours. But I think for an RPG Maker game, it probably isn't necessarily needed.
Haha, yeah, I'm thinking that too.
That idea of a character sprite depending on class sounds cool, maybe I'll do that.
Well, for the main character!

It's interesting to know what others have done! Thanks!
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
If your main character is just an avatar for the player, and not actually a "character", then there's definitely a ton of value in, at the very least, letting the player pick between a male and female version of the character. It draws in so many players and requires so little work.

Other smaller physical differences like skin color, hair color, age, fatness, etc. are things that far fewer people really care about. So adding them as options is less useful. Each choice you give the player doubles the number of assets you have to make, while being less and less important.

This is all talking about character customization for the sake of including players. There aren't actually that many people who like to create themselves in a game, but there are definitely a lot of people who feel awkward playing a game where the main character differs from them in a certain way (being the opposite gender or playing as an animal character are the two most common).

The other side of the coin is character customization for the sake of coolness, which is something that serves a totally different purpose. Choosing your character's clothes or giving your character horns or tattoes has nothing to do with making audiences feel comfortable and is just part of your game's artistic style. These options appeal to certain types of players not because they care about who they're playing as, but because they enjoy making artistic creative choices. Although it's neat and might make some people enjoy the game more, the lack of it won't ever really drive anyone away, so it's generally far less important unless you fuck it up. If you fuck it up then it becomes really important. The easiest way to fuck it up is to give the player options that clash with your game's overall aesthetic. For example, when they let players customize their horses to look like motorcycles in World of Warcraft, or when they give you the option to wear all pink in Diablo 3.
I do think it is important that if you include customization of looks of your character to make sure it is representative of a potential audience. My wife (who is african-american) often gets very frustrated when a game basically says 'this is you', and any options to make a character look like her just looks like a Caucasian person spent way too long in a tanning booth. I know it is really hard in RPGMaker games to do so, so it might be best to temper expectations.

I'm actually wavering on having a player character for Binding Wyrds, instead of just an avatar who doesn't actually fight, but it will likely just be a choice of different pre-made characters with different skillsets.
I find it ironic that advanced 3D graphics are easier in terms of making characters customizable than games using 2D sprites.
To be fair, a lot of 'indie' games using 3d graphics tend to use the same engines, and also buy pre-made assets for them. So they get a huge collection of facial assets and such, and its fairly easy to give people a few sliders for them.
To explain why 2D and 3D are different in difficulty.

2D is an image that changes from frame to frame. However, in 3D you actually have an object moving and not having to change the image of the character. Just resize and what not. :P

Also the most I do for RPG Maker customization is allow to pick between 2-3 characters. No point in wasting that much space on useless sprites.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
Generally I don't see many people use dark skin colors like black for their avatar/character building in games that allow it.
so i'll second what LockeZ said about those kind of features not being super important to implement. Though it is nice for the option!
But even just having a female/male option is cool, as well as differing outfits for characters.
I think eye color and all that is abit meh overall for indie games. Things like Fallout or Skyrim, sure it's nice but like does it really matter at that point?

Stat customization however is awesome and can lead to multiple playthroughs which is a good thing for players.
I think customization is overrated, the point of a game designer is to decide these things on behalf of the player. And if customization is included I think there's nothing wrong with keeping it as minimalistic as possible (e.g. option for male and female, and possibly a choice of a few skin tones)
While I like customisation for a non-story/character-driven game, and would like to implement high-customisation, I usually end up cheaping it up by just doing the ol'
"hair, eyes, skin, gender" and then having a couple of options.

That, or letting the player pick from a couple of avatars.


Here's a few examples of what I've used in games.
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