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[Catphish]

I don't understand this trend. It used to be, you either picked a character model and customized it with skins, or you had the ability to customize your character with a choice of faces, facepaint, gear, etc.

Now we get this nonsense where you have to choose a persona/personality preset. If you want to change their look you have to buy an entire outfit. There is no granular customization. The best you can hope for now is to buy or unlock an operator or specialist that you like, and an appearance that you like, or at least live with, because you're not going to be able to create/customize your own.

It's fucking stupid.

Not that I was happy with it, but MW 2019 and BO Cold War at least segregated the operators to each side. No more. Now, at the peak of its stupidity (who am I kidding, the stupidity is fucking limitless), you now have the same operators fighting on both teams, as in Vanguard and BF2042. The only hope you have for enemy ID is whatever red text might be above them, or perhaps some kind of red outline. The appearance of the characters themselves are no longer an indicator of friend or foe.

And everybody's doing it. Like a bunch of fucking lemmings. I mean, really, that's more or less what AAA FPS gaming has become. A long line of creatively bankrupt lemmings falling over each other to copy whatever the last one did successfully to appease shareholders. Clowns.

I don't want your idea of a cool character. I want to make my own, ya fucken knobs.

Bah.

 

[TintoConCasera]

It helps with selling skins tho.

Also... I guess it must be easier to balance the game with a set of preset characters, rather than balancing it with whatever loadout every player could come up with.

I don't like it either.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

The old way is dying for a reason.

Warfare is asymmetric. Giving players who prefer different playstyles a route for success simply appeals to way more people. My eyes really opened up on this stuff when I played Overwatch and saw how many women played Mercy (avoids conflict, low mechanical skill needed, less pressure).

Progress matches onwards.

 

[zeorhymer]

The old way is dying for a reason.

Warfare is asymmetric. Giving players who prefer different playstyles a route for success simply appeals to way more people. My eyes really opened up on this stuff when I played Overwatch and saw how many women played Mercy (avoids conflict, low mechanical skill needed, less pressure).

Progress matches onwards.

Say that when the team wipes cause support wasn't supporting or they're dead.

 

[MarkMe2525]

The old way is dying for a reason.

Warfare is asymmetric. Giving players who prefer different playstyles a route for success simply appeals to way more people. My eyes really opened up on this stuff when I played Overwatch and saw how many women played Mercy (avoids conflict, low mechanical skill needed, less pressure).

Progress matches onwards.

I mained as Mercy

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I mained as Mercy

I played the same 4 or 5 characters and they were all the lowest skill characters.

Mercy, Symetra, Reinhardt, Torb, Winston.

I can't stand playing arena shooters anymore where everyone is essentially Soldier 76.

 

[Catphish]

The old way is dying for a reason.

Warfare is asymmetric. Giving players who prefer different playstyles a route for success simply appeals to way more people. My eyes really opened up on this stuff when I played Overwatch and saw how many women played Mercy (avoids conflict, low mechanical skill needed, less pressure).

Progress matches onwards.

I agree, but that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm not against roles or classes. I'm referring to characters' cosmetic customizability (if that's a word). Why does Mercy, using your example, HAVE TO look like Mercy? Why does that role have to be a white female space angel? Why can't i take that role or class and make it look however I want? Why can't I take one of the other character models and use it as a healer?

They have the ability to do this. It's absolutely nothing new.

 

[Beer Baelly]

You know what it is... Clown world.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I agree, but that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm not against roles or classes. I'm referring to characters' cosmetic customizability (if that's a word). Why does Mercy, using your example, HAVE TO look like Mercy? Why does that role have to be a white female space angel? Why can't i take that role or class and make it look however I want? Why can't I take one of the other character models and use it as a healer?

They have the ability to do this. It's absolutely nothing new.

Ok, I see your point. I assume it's because they want other players to be able to identify Mercy in game.

I'm playing Rainbow Six Extraction right now and I'm having a problem identifying what my teammates actually do. If Ubisoft made it more obvious, I'd be able to communicate and formulate strategies based around the character classes. I've heard game developers talk about the importance of character silhouettes in these kinds of games.

 

[NickFire]

I don't think its shareholders they are trying to make happy. Unless, of course, twitter has been buying these companies up.

 

[Esca]

Healing as low pressure and more needing skill? Yeah right
I've been playing healers for years

 

[TheShocker]

Games like R6 Siege and Overwatch, sure. It’s cool. Not every game needs it. I’d rather have full customization over my character like the older ghost recon and R6 games.

 

[Catphish]

Healing as low pressure and more needing skill? Yeah right
I've been playing healers for years

 

[jakinov]

I agree, but that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm not against roles or classes. I'm referring to characters' cosmetic customizability (if that's a word). Why does Mercy, using your example, HAVE TO look like Mercy? Why does that role have to be a white female space angel? Why can't i take that role or class and make it look however I want? Why can't I take one of the other character models and use it as a healer?

They have the ability to do this. It's absolutely nothing new.

For your specific example it’s so people know who you are and what you can do. Overwatch and other games like League of Legends being able to recognize the character is an important aspect to the game and how you position yourself or if you should engage. Your actual size can be part of your disadvantage e.g. being small and agile. You see the pig or the hammer guy you know you should be careful for their hook.

Higher fidelity the graphics the harder it is to make things connect and look nice together so that’s probably why companies don’t like you over customizing every little part. A thin arm piece like leather might not look proper with a big armour piece without a coder and artist coming in to make sure they fit well together. And when you add more content it becomes unscalable to maintain as the permutations grow exponentially.

 

[MiguelItUp]

The whole moba and hero craze I think really pushed all of that. Because suddenly every character in every game needs to have unique personalities, etc.

In some multiplayer games it works, sure. Team Fortress 2, Overwatch, etc. But trying to push that into games like Battlefield is a huge misstep IMO. Not a fan at all.

 

[Catphish]

For your specific example it’s so people know who you are and what you can do. Overwatch and other games like League of Legends being able to recognize the character is an important aspect to the game and how you position yourself or if you should engage. Your actual size can be part of your disadvantage e.g. being small and agile. You see the pig or the hammer guy you know you should be careful for their hook.

Higher fidelity the graphics the harder it is to make things connect and look nice together so that’s probably why companies don’t like you over customizing every little part. A thin arm piece like leather might not look proper with a big armour piece without a coder and artist coming in to make sure they fit well together. And when you add more content it becomes unscalable to maintain as the permutations grow exponentially.

If a specific model is required for a role, like bulky hammer dudes, or small, spritely rogue dudes, that's fine. They can still allow for more customization within those models. And you can isolate the customization options to a specific model or models to avoid the scalability problem.

I mean, not to dismiss you, but there really is no valid reason I can see as to why deeper customization doesn't exist, when it existed just fine a decade ago.

 

[dwish]

Man, Quake Champions was fucking heresy for me, been staying away ever since. What are you doing to my FPS games

 

[MiguelItUp]

Man, Quake Champions was fucking heresy for me, been staying away ever since. What are you doing to my FPS games

The saddest part about QC is that parts of it were/are great, but the game was handled so poorly. I mean, a Quake game with characters that have their own unique abilities is such a bizarre call.

 

[JLB]

Yeah, 100% OP.
Most of the time I want to play on my own, not depend on another duderinos from elsewhere to compliment my game. Thats why I love games like Halo, CS and such so much.

 

[Skifi28]

And having different heroes is not enough, we also need to know their sexualities because how else am I going to slay my enemies.

 

[Catphish]

And having different heroes is not enough, we also need to know their sexualities because how else am I going to slay my enemies.

And that's another thing. If we MUST have fucking sexual orientation declarations in the characters (which obviously we don't and never did) why not make it something that the user chooses when they customize their guy? Why does it have to be baked into the fucking character?

Goddamned hero overload. Every dev trying to make their own superhero comic book universe. Utter shite.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

It helps with selling skins tho.

Also... I guess it must be easier to balance the game with a set of preset characters, rather than balancing it with whatever loadout every player could come up with.

I don't like it either.

This.

Its lazy game development. Giving people preset characters means they can bang out a game faster instead of having to worry about the (like you said) balancing issues.

I love customization myself and would hate for all multiplayer games going forward to adopt this preset nonsense.

 

[Valt7786]

MW2019 did it fine. Different operators, different teams. I liked that. But how they're doing it in vanguard and battlefield is awful. And it's pretty clear they're letting the "diversity" hires write the bio's for them.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

This.

Its lazy game development. Giving people preset characters means they can bang out a game faster instead of having to worry about the (like you said) balancing issues.

I love customization myself and would hate for all multiplayer games going forward to adopt this preset nonsense.

"Lazy developers" but also... hugely competitive, lucrative market and widespread crunch practice.

Kind of a choose one type of scenario.