Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

I’m not sure whether or not this topic has come up, to be frank I’d be extremely surprised if it hasn’t. But just the same, I’d like to discuss as my title suggests some in-game way of altering a character’s appearance in-game after the initial character creation. I’m refering specifically to cosmetic things like hair style/color, tattoo style/color, for in-game currency. I’d also like to see something done where one can change their character’s physicality, such as height, skin color/patterns, horns, physique, face, eye-color and even gender etc. However, I understand if the latter required gems or real-money (though I’d -really- prefer it to just be in-game money, and not too spendy for the ADD people like moi!). I also realize that changing one’s race would be -far- too complicated (impossible basically) due to the personal story feature (which I -LOVE-!) or class, I’m talking -purely- aesthetics, not function.

The reason I mention this is because as mentioned above, I suffer from a chronic desire to have my character be exactly the way I imagine him or her to be in my mind, otherwise I find it difficult and even impossible to enjoy playing the character, which often results in my inability to play. Now I’m not saying all people who want for this feature to as severe as I, but come on … Anybody can say that they might change a thing or two about their character, if not from a mistake not noticed in the initial character’s creation until recently or just some change in one’s favorite and higher-level characters who couldn’t stand the thought of re-rolling them. Speaking personally, I on average, create a character 7 or 8 times until I’m (more or less) either too weary of re-rolling to do it again or am moderately pleased with the character. Usually, some of those times I don’t even actually change anything. What I’m getting at is, it would probably put my mind at east just knowing I had the (easily accessible for a price) option to alter my character’s appearance in some way should I have the overwhelming desire to.

I sincerely appreciate all the work that Arena Net has put into making the game better for its’ players, something not often found with such large and complicated games like MMO’s, and after playing World of Warcraft for 5 years, am already favoring GW2. But, being someone who seeks immersion above nearly all else, it would help me continue to avidly enjoy all the game has to offer if I (and my OCD) can actually stand -playing- my character should a desire for change arise (which I think most people can admit they are guilty of). From other GW2 related blogs, I find other people struggling with the same desire for such a feature. This is something I’d like to see done in the near future, and would love any support from fellow GW2 players in giving this idea a greater voice.

Thank you everyone for reading!

Sincerely,

Sheaboy.8720

There has to be something in development. There was an option that was in the BLTP when the game was released for changing your appearance again but they removed it because it was either bugged or was not supposed to be released yet. Im sure Its coming, Im waiting on it too.

I have a tendency to create characters over and over, as well. However, I do not feel this is ADD or OCD and by saying that, you detract from your argument and demonize your own post. Everyone has things they are passionate and perfectionist about. I was in school for illustration and character design for animation and games, so this is simply what I like to do. I would spend up to 4 hours working on the design of a character in City of Heroes because it was fun. I especially liked the randomize button. Sometimes the random characters would give me a jump-start on a whole character idea. Me and my husband joked that we would pay the monthly fee just to play with the character designer program — which, by the way, never kicked you off if you were taking too long. >_<

Let me reiterate that. I get really POd at GW2’s character creation time limit. What the heck is that thing for anyway? Please stop shoving me out of character creation just because I’m trying to decide what colors would look good on the newbie armor! I feel insulted by the game kicking me off simply because I’m taking a long time fine tuning everything and making sure I didn’t miss any of the options, going back through them all three or four times, cause if I change the face, then everything else could be out of proportion and requires adjustment. Can’t the game detect that the mouse is still moving? At the very least, a pop-up window asking if you are still working on your character and if there is no answer for like 15-30 seconds, then it boots you back to the character selection screen. That would be peachy, in fact.

And then to not know what freaking height my character is going to be, compared to other species and even their own species! There’s a vague scale between the shortest and tallest of your own species, but there’s no foot/inches/meters/centimeters. It’d be nice to see a size chart comparing your character to, say, the average human??? There’s no indication at all of how short or tall anyone is compared to each other. Drives me absolutely bonkers. I’ve seen new people make norns for the first time and after they see the few NPCs in the norn village that aren’t norn, they exclaim over map chat something to the effect of: “Holy crap, norns are TALL!” Not everyone knows that they are titan/giant type humanoids. I was warned by my husband before I made one, and I was like “Cool! But, where does it show that…?” Currently, I want to make a human who is really small for a woman (like myself), but if I slider her all the way down, is that shorter than myself? I don’t know!

And once I finally get everything how I want it — as far as I know until I get in the game and go “Well, crap!” at some minor thing that isn’t so minor to me — I have to recreate them. Now, let’s hope I remember what color I used for skin and hair and such, and deal with the timeouts all over again. Ugh.

And one more thing. Accessories. You can’t dye them and you can’t remove them, the former being more important to me. You get basic colors to choose from and bam, you’re stuck with those basic colors for the rest of the character’s life, trying to make sure you get armor dyes that match or complement your headband/hat/ribbon… etc.

So, yeah, an in-game editor would be awesome, along with the other things I mentioned.

I’m a perfectionist in term of look and naming, (well naming is something also related to work ;D working around branding and design for many years that’s why). It’s something I hope to see soon, and considering the objectives in this game and the fact that ncsoft has a good past with other games in term of visual customisation like Aion, I think we have good chance to see great improvements in this area.

The game is young, mmo are big beasts to develop and improve.

They’re working on a gem store appearance change package. . . hilarious how they can devote resources to this but not major game flaws

BurnWeed.5902:

They’re working on a gem store appearance change package. . . hilarious how they can devote resources to this but not major game flaws

One of the main selling point is the appearance here, so they are supposed to put some resources in this area. How do you know that they are not working on fixing also game issues? Are you passing by their offices and watching their screens? Or you know someone working there and getting spoilers on what’s next planned?

Flaws? May I know what exactly is troubling you?

I myself would love the ability to alter my character’s appearance post creation. I can see something along the lines of a Black Lion Portable Barber maybe. Or one time use access such as Transmutation Stones. Because lets face it, after a few months of staring at the same thing it tends to get old or boring. Perhaps you really liked your helmet or hair with one set of armor. But maybe it clips or does not look right with another. For instance, I am currently using a Bladechipped mask/helmet with long white hair given my name. The hair along the side of my head clips weird with the mask. This actually brings me to my last and final point.
EDIT: Posted before finishing sorry.

With the ability to change character looks it would be amazing if we had new hairstyles. Like myself, I am sure everyone wants their character to look as aesthetically sound as possible. One of the above mentioned hairstyles is a spiky hair option for humans. I would pay hundreds of gems for the opportunity to change my hairstyle to a spiky look for RP purposes. And I am not the only one.

Basically, it would be a smart move on the developer’s part to add this feature if they aren’t planning on doing so already. Many players would purchase gems for this I’m sure.

I see there is a new update that includes a makeover kit which lets us change our appearance. Thank you to the dev. team.