I would ask for the option to be able to customize not only the base skin-color of those characters but also please the lip-color and maybe the color of eye-shadow.
I made a human female character with a brown skin-tone but around 70-80% of the face-options there have really pink lips or massive eye-make-up. This looks really weird because it just does not fit in. It looks painted on.
Not to talk that its impossible to make a face that doesn’t look Caucasian, Asian(some available faces look Japanese or Korean)
Its possible to make a female chara with brown skin that just looks like a white character painted on with really pink lipstick or with massive eyeshadow.
So making a face structure that looks more like some african people or making a face that looks more like arabian or desi (pakistan etc) seems nigh impossible.
So I would ask for more options, a bit more diversity in face structures.*
I would also ask for the option to choose color for the lips and eye-shadow and for intensity so it would be possible to make a female character that doesn’t wear make up if we want to.
It would add so much more if we just could choose the color for that (and one option would be “clear” which means no make up. (Ideally those option would not be locked to one gender. I mean there surely are men who wear make up?)
Another thing is gender-locked hairstyles. I looked into the new options we have when utilizing a total-makeover kit or a hair-kit.
Why are those hairs gender locked? Why cant I choose the big Punk-hairdo/Iro that is available to the male norn model? Why are almost all female models long and flowy?
The hairdos for male asura are also great- why cant we use those? The spiky one for example…
I mean for all races.. There are a lot of great hairdos and they are gated so one would have to play with a character of a different gender just to get them..
I get that 2 packets could mean more money, but still.. Hairdos dont have a gender..
My female warrior wouldnt want long flowy hair to fly in her face or get hair or (dangly decorations) tangled on thorns and the ripped out by some mordrem-thingy.
Maybe it would be possible to unlock the hairdos in the kits for both genders of that race but make two versions of the kits: Long hair and short hair. Ideally that would give the same number of hairdos but a greater number of options to choose from.
It could go like: You activate the Kit and then it asks you to choose between short hairdos and long hairdos. You would then be able to choose from all hairdos under short(race X) so my fem sylvari Revenant could get those great horn-ish “hair” to channel Ventari better..
I just like a lot of the male-locked models but want to play a female model. I think that should be possible and I don´t really see any reason for why it should be locked. (wanting income from selling kits is no reason- if you make those open for all other people might want to get them because they give the option to choose a hairdo that would have been locked or unavailable in the character-design step.
I would also like the possibility of adding scars and such. Let me make a character that looks like a human battle-hardened warrior or a skittish poor thief, not a super-model with beautiful hair and impeccable make-up.
The same wish goes for adding 1,2 old faces. The in game-models for “old woman” look like a 35 year old with white hair. Which is weiiiiird.
(Maybe people in Tyria age until 40, who knows..? There is one older face, but even that is not really old but maybe in the 40J range.)
tl:dr
*More diverse faces, face structures that make it possible to make a PoC (black, arabic, desi) character that does not look like a white with painted face but has appropriate structure. (See Asian faces)
Options to choose color of lips (to avoid the painted on-effect) and eye-shadow. For both genders. Male necros should also be able to look like a panda too (fem. human face. You know which one I mean)
The option to not choose make up at all.
More scars for female faces in general.
Old people should look old.
No gender-locked hair. More diversity for hairdos for all. Male models with beautiful hairdo, “flowerdo” and jewelry, female models with short hair, iro, spikes, whatever.
Maybe make two kits for long and short hair, but don´t restrict them to male or female character models when it has no real reason beyond stereotypic ideas of appropriate looks.
Thanks for your time.