When creating any character in various MMOs, ranging from Runescape to Elder Scrolls Online, the character customizations are essential. Although these are essential for any MMO, some have taken them a bit too far and don’t see eye to eye with the people playing.
Before Making the Character
Before customizations occur, many people who play Elder Scrolls Online love to have a backstory to their avatar, giving them a more attached approach to how they play the game. This is essential, but many MMOs and RPGs are doing the character development backwards, where the customizations occur first, and then later you choose your skillset and class.
By doing this backwards, it can affect the thought process during the beginning of the game–by changing this, Elder Scrolls Online will benefit.
Body Art and Marks
Although the MMOs and RPGs don’t have much facial recognition with characters, they bring a heavy influence to the facial customizations. In my experience playing Runescape, I’ve rarely looked at my character’s face and have seen more of my character’s backside. This is very common with the MMOs and RPG layout. I don’t particularly find this a necessity, and instead would enjoy more customizations that would make your character stand out from the others.
When I’ve played an MMO such as Runescape, I notice characters more by their body figure and armor that they wear. Runescape has done a wonderful job in the clothing options, but I think Elder Scrolls Online could take a bigger approach to this subject.
With these customizations, a good idea would be battle marks and tattoos. When fighting in any MMO, you will encounter many foes and I think they should leave marks on the skin like scars. This would help differentiate between characters, and let you live your character to the fullest.
We aren’t playing an anime game, after all!
Races in MMOs
Many of the MMOs I’ve played have different races available to the players–but not many racial customizations. Although their lore speaks of different creatures such as elves, dwarfs, and humans, I find there isn’t much customization available for your character to look extremely like the race you chose. This would remain true with Elder Scrolls Online, where there are three human races and three elven races. If there were better ways to differentiate between the races, it would give players a more attached feeling to who they’re playing as.
Character Development
One of the major problems seen with the Elder Scrolls Online would be the way characters can develop overtime. If you played this game for many years and decided you don’t quite like the choice you made in character creation, there isn’t a way to change it at the current time. Many people have brought this to ZeniMax’s attention, and they’ve responded in a way that is unclear on a time-range for changes.
“Over time, players want to change their appearance as they develop their characters, so we do have plans to release additional hairstyles, tattoos, adornments, etc. in post-launch content updates.”
There are many aspects when considering what character you want to pursue when joining any MMO, and especially Elder Scrolls Online. The choices shouldn’t be taken very lightly; you should be putting heavy consideration into your character’s appearance.
What kinds of character creation elements are you looking for? Have certain MMOs/RPGs satisified this while others left you in the dust? Share below with a comment.
