New to the game. Beautiful character creation system…WHY?
So far I have not seen anywhere that my character comes into play except to make a snapshot?
Am I missing something?
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It was possible to walk around inside your home in a station and i think long ago it was planned but never finished to give the option to meet other players too but after the years this project was cut out of development and the walk around your home feature was cut out with it as a redundant feature.
So you are right, the char customization is there to create a nice photo and also you can pimp up your looks with special clothes (hats, t-shirts, armor etc. sometimes with logos) and other players can check the full body looks also but no other purpose at the moment. I think it is nice to have this customization, it hurts no one, and at least it is up to you how you present your char in your profile photo and how much importance it has for you. You can randomize and skip the process or spend hours to find the best looking pose for the best profile photo that represents you. Optional, therefore good/at least not bad, choose one.
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Legends say that the character creator’s foundations were built when CCP was still working on the World of Darkness project, and get repurposed for EVE when that project fell through.
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There were times, long ago, that “Second Life” and “Sims” were a big thing - don’t forget Eve is in its 15th year. Probably there was a plan to be fancy…
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As the others have said, CCP intended, long ago, to extend the game to allow us to walk around stations and ships in-person. They initially set up the character creation system and then added all these options for clothing that you can buy from the NEX store, and then the plan was to continue to develop a full-featured avatar system, where we could wear the outfits in station pubs and public hallways / areas, and interact / chat with each other. And maybe at a later stage, even use various small arms and electronic devices to shoot each other.
However, they only got as far as creating a single room (Captain’s Quarters) and then ran into difficulties or lack of time for development. So for a couple years we could walk around our single hotel room that nobody else could enter, and admire our own outfits.
They did pursue avatar combat, but decided to make that into a whole separate game that they could sell separately. It was called Dust 514, and featured ground and vehicle combat on the various planets in the EVE universe. They planned to fully interface the two games, but only got as far as letting some EVE ships do orbital strikes into the Dust 514 combat zones, when the Dust players called for it.
Dust 514 didn’t get as many players as CCP wanted, and was, basically, a flop, financially. So they eventually shut down the servers and closed the game. And for the avatar part of EVE Online, they abandoned development and removed the Captain Quarters, and went back to just the view of the spaceship in station.
However, if they remove character creation, they will also have to remove all the pricey clothing from the NEX store, and those clothes and monocles / eyeglasses bring them some money because we purchase them with PLEX. So, they’re very likely to keep the character creation and the NEX clothing, just because.
You can view what other people are wearing by searching for them in People and Places, then right-clicking and choosing Show Info, then View Full Body (with the clothing).
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While the above posts are true, real pilots know that doing anything of worth needs to be done with style.
-Stylish Gadget
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In addition, although this is a relatively small part of the game for most players, identification with your character (role-play) is pretty important for personal investment.
Not everyone is a serious role-player like some of us, but most people like to have a sense of connection, a visual representation of who they are (or play) in game. In my view, the character creation is a very well executed way of getting people to ‘connect’ with their character and thus prolong investment with EvE.
It’s also why the ‘lore’ is an integral part of MMOs (I think EvE was still considered a MMORPG when it started) and EvE’s lore is comprehensive (if latterly neglected).
As others have said, it also enables sales of things like cosmetic items. People buy SKINS for ships for example, even though most players will be zoomed out most of the time. We like pretty things.
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As others have said, it was originally designed and implemented for Avatar gameplay back when CCP had dreams of turning Eve Online into a Virtual Reality SyFy game.
Creating the Character Customization was the first part, then implementing Captains Quarters was the second part. The third part was to implement gameplay content for Avatars.
However due to lack of viable tech to make that content work and because of overwhelming opposition from hardcore PvP spaceship fanatics, CCP shelved that work and then eventually canned it.
It’s a shame they removed Captains Quarters, they could have done a lot more with it without actually involving other Avatars. Such as being able to customize the interiors, add some action scripted pets, etc. They could have opened ‘The Door’ and added an elevator so Avatars could go down to a sub-level maze of hallways where ‘Undercover’ Agents were located offering special in-station missions, requiring Avatars to open locked doors to rooms with locked containers that could be hacked open for access to loot and mission objective items.
The possibilities were endless, definitely a missed opportunity to expand the game and increase player subscription numbers.
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It would be nice if the full body view also showed the names of the items the person is wearing so you could show info / view market details / search contracts for them.
But I know, vanity is probably not so important.
o/
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I thought they put it in eve as a tech demo, and then WoD died a year or two later.
didn’t a new sims come out not that long ago? Big market that likes playing house/dress up, so there’s some sense to it. If CCP could deliver content it probably would have been a nice addition to the game. It seems they couldn’t deliver space content and wis content at the same time, so wis got canned.
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This ^
/thread
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I actually miss the Captain’s Quarters feature. It was nice to dock and exit the ship and retire to my room to lounge on the sofa and take in some vids. As brilliant as EVE’s character creation is (and it’s truly one of if not the best in the business) it’s a shame that our avatars aren’t utilized to their fullest extent.
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I really like the new avatar/character creation system.
I was absent for a long time, and this new system beats what they used to have in pretty much every way.
I spent between 30 minutes to an hour getting everything just so on what I think will be my future main, and that is after making and recycling 4 or 5 other attempts that just didn’t seem quite right to me after I got them into the game.
Those 10 hour waits really slowed me down, but in the end I think it was worth it to get the shape just right. I know that I could just spend some plex to make those adjustments, but for a new character I couldn’t justify the expense and decided to wait it out and try again while spending some time on a second new toon that I made and that I was less fussy about (at the time… Now as soon as I get one more space cleared up, where my old toon was, then I can see if I can maybe do a little better with a character of that bloodline).
Anyway, yeah… I wish maybe there was more to do, but all the same the avatar is it’s own reward to me, even if most other players might never click to take a closer look.
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