New Poll: Character Generation

The new poll question is for players of computer role-playing games: How long do you like to spend on character generation?

Comments

[Trevel]

Depends on the character creation method, really.

I generally spend more time than I'd like on it, most of which is spent looking up character builds online. It's not that I want to min-max, it's that I don't want to cripple my character at birth, which is all too easy to do in any involved stat-based game.

City of Heroes, I can happily spend AGES on character setup, but 99% of that is costume design. And the occasional changing of my skillsets because I made a costume that would look awesome for another set of skills.

Essentially, I enjoy planning out unimportant-to-game-play things and don't enjoy having to worry about setting myself up to failure in a game I haven't even played yet.

[Chris]

Trevel: interesting account... your relationship with the mechanical part of character generation seems to be a chore and an obligation, rather than a pleasure. I wonder how many people feel similarly.

[Michael]

Character Generation is VERY important; I identify with the person I'm spending 100 hours playing a game as. The more I can vary the better.

[Trevel]

That's the flip side of it -- If I'm offered Templates or Customize, I'm picking Customize by reflex, even though I'd probably be happier with a pre-built template. (And even if I customize to exactly the same template as is provided).

[Peter Crowther]

I want an answer between 2 and 3. I enjoy character generation (and later customisation - GURPSish skill points, please, none of this level junk). However, I don't want to spend "a fair amount" of time up front generating the character. Ideally, I want to get a "rough" build quickly, then refine it as I go. If a game would let me move points around later, that's great. I like WoW's respeccing system for this reason. Admittedly there's not much else I like about their system, but hey :-).

[Chris]

Thanks for the input everyone!

The secret purpose behind this question is to guide a design decision on "Reluctant Hero". The game already runs with a template system which allows players to make a quick start on play; but there are questions about how to approach the character generation outside of the template system.

Knowing how much time players want to spend generating characters helps give us some idea how important the character generation tool will be to the project.

[Neil]

Oblivion's system of letting you roll up and then do a little tutorial dungeon, before offering you the chance to change anything about character, is exceptional.

The idea is you will be spending perhaps upto 200 hours with this character - you don't want that to be tinged with regret (more than normal ;-) ) or for people to *not* play all that time due to irritating character flaws (theirs or the RPG characters'!).

As for templates/custom - I agree with Trevel - if there is an option I would *always* choose customise. I simply can't know or trust the person setting up the template will have "done it right", and obviously I believe I am better at deciding what I want than someone designing to please as many as possible.

[Chris]

The irony, of course, is that despite one's belief in ones' own perspicacity and the risk of the development team being muppets, there is every chance the development team has an insight into the mechanics you don't and thus that you'd be better off with a pre-generated template!

[Bret]

You mean, upfront before gameplay begins? As an Achiever, I usually find this stressful because I worry I'm making the "wrong" choices. The less there is to do, and the more cosmetic it is (name, photo, color scheme, etc), the safer I feel.

[Colm Mac]

I know exactly where you are coming from Bret. I generally hate my first play through of any RPG (it generally isn't a full play through either, maybe like ten hours or so).

Most of the time with new RPG systems I'd rather just defer making any stat decisions until I've played enough of the game to know what I'm doing. So I'd rather a short character creation but have the character states/skills/class remain fluid for longer.

Of course that leads to the jack of all trades problem but what is the solution to having a guy play ten hours and finding out that the game really hates thief characters?

When I was at Uni ten hours was nothing, now though I hit a wall in a game, it has to be really really good for me to restart.

[Chris]

Bret, Colm: it's interesting to see this common problem emerging. While there are clearly some players who want a detailed and involving character generation system and are happy to invest time upfront on it, there also appears to be many players who would prefer not to invest too much time upfront, because having never played the game before they have no ground knowledge with which to judge these decisions.

I'm going to spend some time mulling over this "fluidity" issue; clearly there are merits in allowing players to make changes after the start of the game... the question that faces me is: if the player is unrestricted in their capacity to change direction once the game is underway, is there any merit to allowing for retroactive character generation/modification?

Many thanks to everyone for the comments!