Character creation

[Althernai]

I am curious what kind of character creation will be in Project Eternity. I take it for granted that we get to pick the class, race, gender and probably a couple of initial spells/skills/talents. The part I'm curious about are the attributes (e.g. Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, etc.). What will they be and how are they determined. There are a few systems popular in RPGs:

 

1) Roll the dice and assign the random numbers to attributes. Examples: Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Might and Magic II.

2) Point buy: attributes start at some medium value and the player gets a fixed number of points to distribute among them (in addition, it may be possible to subtract from one attribute to add to another). Examples: Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights.

3) Similar to point buy, but the numbers are hidden from the player and the choices are presented in the form of dialog (e.g. "When you were a child, did you prefer playing with swords or reading books?"). The same can be used to determine the class. Examples: the Elder Scrolls games.

 

Do we have any info on what Obsidian is planning? What kind of system do people prefer?

[Captain Shrek]

I would say that the first option is "point"less. The last two have been implemented well in many games, but finally the Point buy options create a standard model which can be used easily and may even be necessary to design a balanced game.

 

The Q&A system sounds great and interesting but its failure to capture user preference may be noticeable. Not all ideas are interpreted in the same way and psychology is still MOSTLY a pseudoscience.

[Lysen]

They didn't say much about the attributes, come to think about it. If I remember correctly, we know that attributes are in and other characters supposedly will react to them in dialogue (for example, you can make a stupid character like in Fallout 2). I don't really care how they will be determined, just no Elder Scrolls silliness please.

[Osvir]

In Baldur's Gate I was rolling like a boss. I spent so much time on it that I could see freaking patterns in what was a good roll and what was a bad roll. Mathematically I could see with a blink of an eye "Okay good/bad roll".

 

This is very bad. Because I wanted to roll once and that would be that. But I knew in the back of my head that: "I can get a better roll". So I continued rolling.

 

My personal suggestion is that you press roll once, and it rolls 25 points (always) randomly into the slots.

 

Why only 25 points? Because it's just an example but bare with me...

 

In Baldur's Gate, a really bad roll would be like 7 extra points, and a really good roll would be at 24 extra points. Way too big difference. So instead I would suggest you roll once and all the points get thrown into it randomly and you jump instantly to Class selection screen where you have the stats given to you side by side and thus can decide which class you want to choose based on those stats you randomly got.

 

Of course, there should be an option wherein you get to put out the points yourself. But for the lazy person, who just wants to start the game as quickly as possible and kind of "wants" a random character, that option should exist as well. Kind of how League of Legends and Dota (and 2) function with the "choose random" option.

[ogrezilla]

forcing us to roll for stats is pointless in a computer game. make it an option for the people that want it, but I will always just keep rolling until I get a good roll.

[Jaesun]

I like Point buy. It worked very well in NWN2.

[Lady Evenstar]

Point buy, please.

[Amentep]

I used to be a really big die-roller, but ultimately I think die-rolling only encourages re-rolling to get bigger numbers (since a DM can adjust to weaker characters in ways PC games can't), so have slowly come to appreciate point buy.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Amentep

[rjshae]

Yeah, dice rolling is just a big time sink that doesn't add value (even though it was kind of nerdy fun to see if you could roll up a slightly better character). Point buy makes more sense if the ability scores are in the 1-20 range. For percentile, I'm not so sure.

[Amentep]

I'll be honest - I have a problem with starting over from the beginning and trying out different characters for a few hours. The idea that I had one really awesome roll a few times ago made it harder to get started because I'd be all "If only I'd thought of this character when I had those numbers...now I must GET THOSE NUMBERS."

 

Hello, my name is Amentep, and I'm a character creation addict...

[Orogun01]

I'll be honest - I have a problem with starting over from the beginning and trying out different characters for a few hours. The idea that I had one really awesome roll a few times ago made it harder to get started because I'd be all "If only I'd thought of this character when I had those numbers...now I must GET THOSE NUMBERS."

 

Hello, my name is Amentep, and I'm a character creation addict...

Hello Amentep, welcome to CAA and thanks for sharing.

 

It's been a year since I stopped moving sliders to make characters and learnt to use the presets, before that I was very unhappy with the way their faces look and restarted games constantly just so I could fix their nose. Ever since I stopped obsessing about those details I finally got around to actually playing Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, ME, ME2,ME3, DA:O, and DA2. After playing those games I wished I wasn't cured.

[khango]

I don't really care so long as there aren't trade offs that completely screw certain classes or characters in general.

[Larkaloke]

I strongly prefer rolling, although I'm not averse to a pointbuy such as in Icewind Dale II -- when it's one-for-one, and you can subtract down to three if you like. I don't like it where you have to pay a certain value to get up to a certain stat, and I don't like it when you can't get a stat lower than eight without having a racial penalty. I like occasionally making characters who have a few truly awful stats. I don't usually take the first straight roll of the dice, true, but I do take the first one that works for what I have in mind. Also, sometimes I like to play through and just take the first roll and go with it.

 

I found the pointbuy system in Neverwinter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic to be extremely limiting and aggravating, so I would at least like to have a larger pool than that available if a pointbuy were used. Not that I like having characters with all of their stats being high, but I like to have the option of it, and it tends to screw over some classes and types of characters if you can only have one or two really good stats.

 

The third option is also okay with me, although it can get a bit tedious if you aren't sure what sort of character you want to make and keep restarting (which is something I have a tendency to do, the first time I play any game). Still, I do find that to be interesting method of stat generation.

[AGX-17]

Since character creation is my (oddly) favorite part of any RPG, anything works.

 

Rolling the dice is self explanatory, and it feels more arbitrary than the others since players can just keep rolling until they get the optimum build.

 

Manually controlled works well, although it is vulnerable to metagaming and min/maxing. But RPers can still make choices to fit their character rather than ease of play.

 

Choosing narrative answers is the most immersive, and can be a lot of fun, but can also be quite opaque, leading to frustrating, unintended builds and forcing players to repeat CC until they figure out the "right" answer for what kind of character they're shooting for (unless you have quick and easy respecs available.)

[Captain Shrek]

Since character creation is my (oddly) favorite part of any RPG, anything works.

 

There is nothing 'oddly' about it.

 

Character creation done well is an amazing minigame by itself as NWN2 has proved.

[Piccolo]

Point buy, after answering some questions about your character's past (like Darklands or Daggerfall) to generate some base stats, and perhaps also to determine starter items.

Edited October 9, 2012 by Piccolo

[Jarmo]

1 or 2 and I'd prefer it be 1.

With infinite rerolls, or with as many as you want. If it's just one try, it simply means you'll have to restart the game.

Takes longer but the same end result.

 

With point buy, everybody is more or less equal and you might not be able to make a character you want.

In NWN I once wanted to play with Conan, meaning average wisdom and ... well pretty much maxed up everything else.

 

So it's time to open the cheat console and do the adjustments that way.

 

I tend to cheat the least if I can reroll a few times, like in ToEE.

 

 

3 is a nice minigame, but then I'd always start thinking which stat is which answer and then redo the whole thing.

In the end it's just a more laborious way to do the 2nd option. In Elder Scrolls kind of game it works, because the

beginning stats are meaningless in the long run.

[SesameTree]

Point buy definetly. I remember rolling in Baldur's gate untill i got 30

 

Rolling is kinda pointless as many here said already, you are just going to continue

until you get good score.

[Greensleeve]

Either pure point-buy, or a mix of both. Maybe a bit like Daggerfall, where you roll for stats, but can add a few points to customize. Or remove from others for even more points. Being able to have truly terrible stats is something the system definitely should allow, even if it's just through backgrounds, like Arcanum did it.

[ogrezilla]

if you want terrible stats, can't you just not use all of the available stats? You don't need to roll for that

[Jarmo]

if you want terrible stats, can't you just not use all of the available stats? You don't need to roll for that

 

Never my problem, but actually you usually can't. The games won't let you continue until you've spent it all.

(alhtough you can splurge it all on charisma or something, but still)

[ogrezilla]

if you want terrible stats, can't you just not use all of the available stats? You don't need to roll for that

 

Never my problem, but actually you usually can't. The games won't let you continue until you've spent it all.

(alhtough you can splurge it all on charisma or something, but still)

well that seems silly

[Sensuki]

I loved rolling, op stats for the win

[curryinahurry]

Darklands remains my favorite character creation system ever in a CRPG. Anything similar to it would be terrific; heritage, and initial point buy followed by occupation with additional point buy. All of these affecting skills, with some discretionary points to throw around.

[Ywerion]

I'm pretty sure that in the end we will like final form of character creation, I can only hope that low intelligence stat will actually give me again my beloved chance to play Idiot character, I would so love to see return of this feature!