A topic near and dear to my heart.
Full disclaimer, I hate the slot machine type character creator and I am sad to say that my first 2.5 days in the game was spent flipping through characters. Id find one I found passable and give it try but soon hate my character and start over just to spend another hour or more flipping. I almost dropped the game right then and there just over this awful system. I get what Rare has said about the statistics with players choosing the default option but I really have to speak out against this god awful system in place now. Here are some ideas to help the system maybe move in a more passable direction that still puts control in the hands of the "random" generator but also helps players like and target their creation experience.
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Allow us to specify gender!! Holy hells I cant begin to describe how basic this is and how this alone would alleviate like 60% of the frustration. I'm not sexist but I just don't like playing girls in games. I will forever go for the guy option because I was raised under the idea that men fight wars so women don't have to. "War is the province of men"-Lord of the Rings. This Idea as antiquated as it may seems still rings true for some of us. So you can imagine my frustration when at least 4-5 of the 8 generated pirates were female and they were automatic no choice options. Please give me the option to designate gender for the 8 chosen options. This will cut back on so much time.
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To caveat off of the first point, Give us some sort of specification as to preferred hair color and age. I'm just not gonna play some 80 year old grandfather so why cant I ask the generator to show me 8 random pirates with dark or blond hair and middle age or under? That still leaves power in the random element but at least it gets players close to something they are interested in.
To bring it all together I think it would be cool and super easy for you to be able to set setting like:
Age: youth-middle
hair color: dark
gender: male
Then the generator randomizes 8 pirates with the 8 slots being the 8 body types in the game. small, thin, dumpy, average, athletic, muscular, beefy, and fat. Each slot would generate random facial features and race and color but would retain the 3 settings you specified so that you could then have a narrowed but still randomized choice.
Base line minimal after creation needs (if all else fails):
At least give us hair color options from the vanity chest then and the ability to have the "5 o'clock" facial shadow if we want to. Currently my character is a redhead with no scruff and I'm really not happy with the color or face shadow option but its the only face I've liked so far on a pirate and I'm not a beard guy. Give us vanity options at least if you aren't going to adjust the character creator.
At the end of the day I appreciate the game for what it is but I just see areas for depth and I feel like so much went in to rushing the process with easy randomization techniques that now players are getting frustrated at the disconnect between them and their character. I was very happy to see the save option but I think we could have avoided that with a system close to what I have described here.
