Please fix the character creator or let us modify for free for a period of time

[StrikePrice]

The old character creator was a decent facsimile of what your toon would look like in the game. The current character creator looks nothing like you character would look like in game. Further, you cannot even zoom all the way out to see your entire body. What gives?

Please make it possible to tell what your character will look like in game or allow us to modify our character before level 10 (or whatever) for free at appearance stations. 

[Ardrossan]

16 minutes ago, StrikePrice said:

The old character creator was a decent facsimile of what your toon would look like in the game. The current character creator looks nothing like you character would look like in game. Further, you cannot even zoom all the way out to see your entire body. What gives?

Please make it possible to tell what your character will look like in game or allow us to modify our character before level 10 (or whatever) for free at appearance stations. 

I think the major issue with the current character creator is that it uses different slider numbers than the original, and the appearance modification station still uses the original system. That is, a #10 head for the original system is different than a #10 head in the new system, it doesn't line up properly. 

[StrikePrice]

That does seem like an issue, but it really does seem like colors are rendered differently than in the character creator than in the game. My hair always looks lighter or darker than I think it's going to be and so does my complexion. Maybe it's the lighting? I don't know. Something is off tho. It never used to happen to me that I was like "wait! what?" in the first cutscene.

[Traceguy]

The lighting system hits differently on the character customizer than it does in game. They really should offer some kind of sandbox room where we can make unlimited changes and try them out, and only pay when we exit and confirm changes.

1 hour ago, StrikePrice said:

The old character creator was a decent facsimile of what your toon would look like in the game. The current character creator looks nothing like you character would look like in game. Further, you cannot even zoom all the way out to see your entire body. What gives?

Please make it possible to tell what your character will look like in game or allow us to modify our character before level 10 (or whatever) for free at appearance stations. 

That's only true for extended numbers for newly released hair styles and such. Like You may own 10 hair colors in your legacy, but the character customer has 15 because they are selling you colors you don't own for extra cc. Another thing you might be seeing is the difference in OG Story. Bounty Hunters and Troopers have special tatoos that Agents, Jedi, and Sith cannot have. The Empire and Republic also have different tattoos and colors for Twilek.

If you take the same character, everything will indeed match up with the sliders on both creation screen and appearance modifier.

 

 

[Aries_cz]

The lighting in the new creator is indeed terrible. I have no idea why do people at BW like dark rooms for character creation so much.

But, I think it is pretty easy to reroll the character instantly if you find out in the first few conversations that you made a Quasimodo on accident

[Traceguy]

Just now, Aries_cz said:

The lighting in the new creator is indeed terrible. I have no idea why do people at BW like dark rooms for character creation so much.

But, I think it is pretty easy to reroll the character instantly if you find out in the first few conversations that you made a Quasimodo on accident

I have to admit, before changing my appearance these days I'll take a screenshot of my characters sliders, and go rebuild them on a foreign server with slight changes to test them out. Once I am satisfied, I'll switch back to my real character and lock in the changes. It's a hassle, but it does help greatly.

[KianSri]

There is legitimately nothing I like better in the new creator over the old one. The old one allowed you to see the full character, in good lighting, let you hear the voice without switching genders, didn't cover up the character model with UI elements, I personally found the sliders a lot more visually appealing and easier to work with. If there was an actual reason for changing all of this beyond a questionable sense of 'aesthetics' I'd be open to re-evaluating my stance, but as it is - yeah. Terrible.

[DawnAskham]

Another bunch of wasted development changing something that did not need changing and doing so for the worst.

It is 2023, not 2003 - there is no excuse whatsoever for a game developer to have a character creator that uses different rendering and lighting than the game itself.

Also, I don't give a fig about whatever 'creative vision' the designer in charge of the change had in mind - making something less functional is just a fail.

 

 

Edited April 18, 2023 by DawnAskham

[SteveTheCynic]

1 hour ago, DawnAskham said:

there is no excuse whatsoever for a game developer to have a character creator that uses different rendering and lighting than the game itself.

Actually, there is one *reason* for doing it.  How would they use the same lighting as the game without having a huge array of buttons to set up all the styles of lighting (colours, directions, etc.)?  (The light on Korriban is tinged with orange, that weird reddish light in the final bits of Belsavis, etc.)

And think about how careful they'd have to be to avoid spoilers, and the cost of adding more lighting presets each time they add new areas.  (Or the new areas would have to reuse only existing lighting presets, which might not be well received.)

As for the rendering, to my knowledge there are only two rendering schemas - I call them "in-game" and "cutscene".  The creator and the character select screen use "cutscene", and, strangely, so do cutscenes, but the rest of the in-game action happens in "in-game" rendering, and they differ mostly on texture resolution and polygon count.

[DawnAskham]

54 minutes ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Actually, there is one *reason* for doing it.  How would they use the same lighting as the game without having a huge array of buttons to set up all the styles of lighting (colours, directions, etc.)?  (The light on Korriban is tinged with orange, that weird reddish light in the final bits of Belsavis, etc.)

And think about how careful they'd have to be to avoid spoilers, and the cost of adding more lighting presets each time they add new areas.  (Or the new areas would have to reuse only existing lighting presets, which might not be well received.)

As for the rendering, to my knowledge there are only two rendering schemas - I call them "in-game" and "cutscene".  The creator and the character select screen use "cutscene", and, strangely, so do cutscenes, but the rest of the in-game action happens in "in-game" rendering, and they differ mostly on texture resolution and polygon count.

A bit of a pedantic reply.

Sure, there are areas in-game with highly specific lighting and color schemes and such, but there are also plenty of areas with 'general' lighting which all look similar, and which the old character creator more closely resembled.

So I'll qualify my point - what I expect is a character creator that most accurately represents the way characters are lit and seen in most areas of the game.

The updated creator fails as characters are now less accurately represented than before - thus it's a stupid change.

[StrikePrice]

On 4/17/2023 at 11:37 AM, Aries_cz said:

The lighting in the new creator is indeed terrible. I have no idea why do people at BW like dark rooms for character creation so much.

But, I think it is pretty easy to reroll the character instantly if you find out in the first few conversations that you made a Quasimodo on accident

If it was easier to find names, I would agree. 

[Aries_cz]

10 hours ago, StrikePrice said:

If it was easier to find names, I would agree. 

You find out you made ugly character, just delete it and start over. The likelihood of someone grabbing that name in those 5-10 minutes between deleting and recreating the look is extremely low.

[DarthCasus]

13 hours ago, Aries_cz said:

The likelihood of someone grabbing that name in those 5-10 minutes between deleting and recreating the look is extremely low.

So you're saying there's a chance? 😁 No really, Bioware, can you folk at least be responsive to criticism in some form, or open up and respond to dialogue/feedback? I haven't seen a word on upcoming corrections or additions to the  awful new character customizer, let alone new cosmetics to expect, no new races, nothing on a name eligibility checker after more than a decade and making people wing it, etc. It would be one thing if things were so busy with a bustling content schedule pumping out new thing so much that things fall on the backburner, but this feels like one of those things that will lie there for years before being suddenly touched because something adjacent to it was being touched too. 

[Aries_cz]

8 hours ago, DarthCasus said:

So you're saying there's a chance? 😁

Yeah, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of getting hit by a meteor

[StrikePrice]

22 hours ago, Aries_cz said:

You find out you made ugly character, just delete it and start over. The likelihood of someone grabbing that name in those 5-10 minutes between deleting and recreating the look is extremely low.

 

36 minutes ago, Aries_cz said:

Yeah, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of getting hit by a meteor

Are you certain your name becomes immediately available when you delete the toon? I thought it would stay unavailable. Let me test it. 

[Aries_cz]

1 hour ago, StrikePrice said:

 

Are you certain your name becomes immediately available when you delete the toon? I thought it would stay unavailable. Let me test it. 

Yes, I am 100% certain, because that is how I do new characters.

That is, after I figure out a name, which takes me like a month and a half...

[StrikePrice]

1 hour ago, Aries_cz said:

Yes, I am 100% certain, because that is how I do new characters.

That is, after I figure out a name, which takes me like a month and a half...

That does make it a lot better. Thank you for the work around

Edited April 20, 2023 by StrikePrice

[Lakemine]

Adding my 2 cents to yes wish it would revert to the old one and wish better lighting options to view.

[SteveTheCynic]

On 4/18/2023 at 9:40 PM, DawnAskham said:

A bit of a pedantic reply.

Yeah, I'm like that, a bit.  Not sorry.

On 4/18/2023 at 9:40 PM, DawnAskham said:

Sure, there are areas in-game with highly specific lighting and color schemes and such,

Like, say, all of the outdoor parts of Korriban, the late parts of Belsavis, all of outdoor Quesh, sunlit parts of Coruscant, outdoor parts of Dromund Kaas, most of Zakuul, etc.  And the orange-tinted late-afternoon light on Tatooine compared to the much bluer noonish snowlit lighting on Hoth.  And the night-time light on Imp Taris.  And the awful sandy lighting on Darvannis during KotFE-XIV, and ...

Nowhere important, I guess.

On 4/18/2023 at 9:40 PM, DawnAskham said:

but there are also plenty of areas with 'general' lighting which all look similar, and which the old character creator more closely resembled.

Which one?  The Imp and Pub start-at-1 screens weren't remotely the same colour, nor the same brightness.  (Impside was bluer and brighter).  The start-at-60 screen was uniform between the two factions, but not the same as either Impside or Pubside start at 1.  The start-at-70 screen was different again, although also the same between Impside and Pubside.

On 4/18/2023 at 9:40 PM, DawnAskham said:

So I'll qualify my point - what I expect is a character creator that most accurately represents the way characters are lit and seen in most areas of the game.

Which the old creator did not provide.

On 4/18/2023 at 9:40 PM, DawnAskham said:

The updated creator fails as characters are now less accurately represented than before - thus it's a stupid change.

The current CCS lighting is, I'll admit, less like areas in the game than before, but none of the old screens bore a consistent relationship to each other nor to the in-game stuff (not least because it used cutscene textures instead of in-game textures).

But regardless of all that, I think a few options for different lighting in the new creator would be a good thing.

[Ramalina]

On 4/17/2023 at 1:45 PM, StrikePrice said:

That does seem like an issue, but it really does seem like colors are rendered differently than in the character creator than in the game. My hair always looks lighter or darker than I think it's going to be and so does my complexion. Maybe it's the lighting? I don't know. Something is off tho. It never used to happen to me that I was like "wait! what?" in the first cutscene.

It is absolutely 100% the lighting, which is terrible.   Bioware knows that it is terrible.  They were told, in detail, by many people, that it was terrible during the PTS.  They were told this within a few days of the new character creator going live on the PTS.   There was plenty of time to fix it, and given that it's mostly just color and intensity that need adjusting it's probably fairly simple as a fix.

 

Specifically: There is an overly strong neutral white light source located above and just slightly in front of the character.  This makes the hair, forehead, and cheekbones washed out due to excessive specular glare.   This is on both factions.

There is background lighting from below, on both sides or possibly a ring, that is a moderately strong blue for Republic characters, and a ridiculously strong red for Imperial characters.   This will moderately to strongly shift the highlight colors on the neck and lower half of the face, and distort the clothes especially if they are light colored.

 

In a photography or portraiture class, if you were going for fairly normal "representative" portraits that allow customer to accurately pick color choices for products they're purchasing, no competent instructor would give the current character creator lighting setup a passing grade.  It's that bad.

 

For art photography, it would probably be a passing grade, but not above a B-.   The neutral light from above washes things out too much and isn't very interesting in overall effect.  If you're going to go with strong deliberate color shift and high dynamic range, you need to lean into the stylism consistently enough to get a worthwhile aesthetic effect out of it, and the character creator doesn't manage that.

 

Note that they're trying to hype up the interest of a new player with the faction themed lighting, but in a really ham fisted way.  The intent is good, it's just the execution that's rubbish.  You could have the intended effect by having thematic lighting for the Faction, Story, and Combat Style selection screens, then go to good neutral standard portraiture lighting for doing all the selector sliders, and then going back to strong thematic lighting for a final confirmation screen.   So you get the badass Republic/Imperial theme bits, but you also get functional lighting for making accurate color choices during character editing.   I promise you that the art team doesn't use this sort of lighting setup when they're working on character art, and would probably throw a fit if someone asked them to.   However, this is Bioware.   Having done something that is obviously incompetent, they will stubbornly stick with it for years before admitting that it was a bad idea in the first place and doing at least a partial fix.

 

The best workaround is to make a character, get in game and go find an appearance modification station on Fleet Stations.  Modify the character in that interface and note the slider number options that work for you.  The lighting in there isn't perfect, a bit washed out and a bit cool, but it's a lot better than in the character creator.  Note your choices, then go back to the character creator and use those slider values to get an appearance that looks reasonably consistent with what you intended.

[xordevoreaux]

Quote

Please fix the character creator or let us modify for free for a period of time

I don't follow this. If I'm paying $300 a month for my used car, and the a/c suddenly goes out on it, and the used car dealer refuses to fix it, I bargain with the used car dealer to let me not make payments on the car for a couple of months and then I'll stop complaining about the broken a/c, but... after those couple of months... the a/c will still be broken.

I don't get the OP's request. If the devs grant the OP's request, the OP will never again complain about the character creator if he's allowed to modify for free for a period of time?

Edit: So suddenly, after the time has elapsed for the OP to modify characters, and the OP desires to modify another character much later, but is now stuck with what the OP considers to be a broken character generator.

I don't understand what's gained here.

Edited April 22, 2023 by xordevoreaux

[eabevella]

On 4/18/2023 at 3:30 AM, KianSri said:

There is legitimately nothing I like better in the new creator over the old one. The old one allowed you to see the full character, in good lighting, let you hear the voice without switching genders, didn't cover up the character model with UI elements, I personally found the sliders a lot more visually appealing and easier to work with. If there was an actual reason for changing all of this beyond a questionable sense of 'aesthetics' I'd be open to re-evaluating my stance, but as it is - yeah. Terrible.

7.0 "aesthetic" is simply ugly.

Whoever made it should be sent back to kindergarten drawing class.

[xordevoreaux]

3 hours ago, eabevella said:

If there was an actual reason for changing all of this beyond a questionable sense of 'aesthetics' I'd be open to re-evaluating my stance, but as it is - yeah. Terrible.

If I remember right, the devs said something that the old one was a coding maintenance mess so started over.

[felleto]

They can just make the appearance terminal more accessible somehow. It has been suggested time and time again to remove the CC cost for changes to your character. I don't think it will ever happen though. They know that appearance is their greatest cash cow in this game so cool armor and hairstyles and customization will always cost CC. Maybe more people would play the game if you got stuff from idk PLAYING THE FREAKING GAME.

Sidenote: I really like the rewards offered on ruhnuk though I think it was a step in the right direction. Armor, decor and mount are pretty unique, and I hope to see more of that in the future. 

[StrikePrice]

On 4/22/2023 at 7:12 AM, felleto said:

They can just make the appearance terminal more accessible somehow. It has been suggested time and time again to remove the CC cost for changes to your character. I don't think it will ever happen though. They know that appearance is their greatest cash cow in this game so cool armor and hairstyles and customization will always cost CC. Maybe more people would play the game if you got stuff from idk PLAYING THE FREAKING GAME.

Sidenote: I really like the rewards offered on ruhnuk though I think it was a step in the right direction. Armor, decor and mount are pretty unique, and I hope to see more of that in the future. 

What I'm suggesting is that every new toon gets a bound, one time use "token" to use an appearance modification station for free. Could even be required to be used before level 10 or whatever. Such a device might even drive *more* revenue as it would teach players how to use appearance modification stations. 

Edited April 24, 2023 by StrikePrice