it's pretty important for me-- it's not a necessity nor is it a major loss if it's not one of the game's features, but it is certainly a big plus.

this issue can be alleviated in other ways, since the ultimate goal is to differentiate players in ways that makes them feel special- a prime example would be the yellow aura underlay when a character goes SSJ in any typical DBZ game. in addition, if the art looks nice on its own merit and each class has its own individual graphic, it helps a lot.

another less considered way to solve this problem is to simply include player names and miscellaneous buff/debuff graphics whenever affected. this recognition of individuality and temporary graphical changes really liven up the experience

There are a lot of people who think that Paper-dolling is the bees knees. I have a feeling most of these people like it because they've gotten used to seeing it in all the BYOND rips. They're the same sort of people who'll log into Plunder Gnome and ask "Where's the p-bags/dummies/training-poles?".

I've always hated paper dolling, and I've never understood why it's so popular on BYOND. It takes away any uniqueness from the characters, exposing the fact that they're just an assemblage of equipment and stats. Games with paper dolling just seem droll and generic to me. Though this is probably the most poorly written article I've ever done, I do believe in the points I made: Why Your Icons Suck

Kaioken wrote:

I believe I speak for most readers reacting to this when I say, WHAT THE FUDGE?! Visual character customizblah blah blah blah...

Every once in a while I'm tricked into letting myself hope that someone will take the time to read my posts and understand the direction I'm coming from, instead of bypassing what was said in the post an replying based on my conclusion, and their preconceptions of it. Yes, I hate paper dolling. Yes, you believe that paper dolling leads to customization. ZOMG Iain must have overlooked the connection! I must correct him!

It takes away any uniqueness from the characters, exposing the fact that they're just an assemblage of equipment and stats.

Hey, look at that, it's the part where I already addressed this, and you even quoted it for me. You know what? I even expanded on this idea in the article I linked to, providing three reasons why paper-dolling is a false solution to customization. Allow me to quote the relevant section:

Before we move on, there's a couple more problems with the equipment overlay system. 1: Players rarely have all of one set (Example: all dragon armor), so almost all players look like walking piles of garbage, because the warlock gloves don't fit with the thief coat or the colors on the bishop's hat. 2: Players that want to look like knights (but can't afford all the dragon armor) don't want to look like a cross between a bishop, thief, and warlock. 3: All players at the highest level will have found the best armor, and will then look exactly the same. All in all, equipment overlay systems turn out terribly, and shouldn't be attempted without good reason.

Hm... perhaps there's something to this "Players may not want to look like what their equipment looks like" thing. Imagine that one player wants to look like a Ninja, and another wants to look like a Samurai, and a third wants to look like Royalty, and they're all on level 99. Aha! I have the perfect solution! They've all reached the highest level, so they must all have the best equipment in the game, so it obviously follows that they all want to look exactly the same! After all, what sort of idiot would ever give three people (who are all wearing the same thing) three different icons?



But, hey, why give REASONS backing up what seems to be an obvious argument, when I should just know that ASSERT(PaperDolling == Customization) will always work. In closing, my hair is a bird. Your argument is invalid.

Ah, what an ironic post. I do usually think much of you, but man, did you really have to ridiculously get defensive and automatically assume I didn't understand your point and skipped it, all the while actually disregarding the basis of my point in your reply?

First off, this is just merely a casual discussion. On the internet, even. Chill down. Don't be spoiled and get ticked if someone happens not to agree with you. Also, always consider the possibility that you might, in fact, actually be wrong - since that possibility is there most of the time, for everyone.

IainPeregrine wrote:

Every once in a while I'm tricked into letting myself hope that someone will take the time to read my posts and understand the direction I'm coming from

Which I understood, otherwise I wouldn't have replied with a post concerning that very direction, miraculously enough.
Besides, putting aside your expectations of a reply, you know you could've gotten a far worse reply, as far as the community goes. I did not question your intelligence, I simply questioned your statements, and I don't see what's so wrong with that.

instead of bypassing what was said in the post an replying based on my conclusion,

Heh, that's pretty funny, mate. Let me tell you why so. Your post did not include an opening, body and conclusion (nor the basis for the conclusion). The part of your post that I replied to was only 2-3 sentences. Therefore, I am sorry to inform you that there wasn't even anything to bypass in the first place - had I bypassed anything you said, I wouldn't have had anything left to reply to.
I only discussed those 3 mentioned sentences of yours I quoted in my reply, and didn't reply to the article, as it's mostly completely irrelevant to the point at hand (as I'm not talking about icons), other than the first point in it, some of which is quite wrong, something I did touch upon in the "diaper man" comment but you completely missed "the direction I was coming from", to quote.

and their preconceptions of it.

Obviously, as you know, any sort of meaningful reply to something would be based not only on what is being replied to, but the speaker's own ideas and thoughts on the matter, or the reply is only rehashing what was already said. If you expect that a person will not include his own 'preconceptions' or understanding of the topic when he replies to it, and will only use your own concepts in the reply, then you have a highly unrealistic expectation.
Yes, I realize that by "preconceptions" you meant something more like prejudice, but there was none in my reply. To be completely honest with you, there was more prejudice in your initial post (and the first point of the linked article) and that reply than in my post - and I mean including on the topic itself, something I will get to.

Yes, I hate paper dolling.

Indeed, as I acknowledged.

Yes, you believe that paper dolling leads to customization.

And now we're beginning to get to the flaws in your view.
No, it is not a mere belief that adding any sort of feature (visually-wearable equipment or another) that allows players to customize their character's appearance gives the option of character customization. It is plainly clear enough that it can be considered factual.

ZOMG Iain must have overlooked the connection!

What you have overlooked is that the drawbacks you present to the allowing of visual character customization aren't drawbacks of that thing itself, but rather are drawbacks of the implementations you've seen of it - in order words, drawbacks of the games you've seen 'paper dolling' in. This also means that, as I mentioned before, your current view of this game feature is biased. It doesn't look like you're looking at it objectively.

Now that I think about it, it isn't the first time I encounter such a situation in the forum. What people need to understand is that <font color=gray>if a certain implementation of a feature can create issues, it does not mean that the feature is bad.</font> It can simply mean that the implementation is bad and needs to be improved or replaced.

The implementation of visual character customization can, very easily, be done differently from those examples you know and regard as everything the feature has to offer, in a way that eliminates the drawbacks you've mentioned and you hate.

I must correct him!

More like, "I want to express my own view on the matter and my disagreement with him" - and obviously, I have the right to do so.

It takes away any uniqueness from the characters,

Even if you feel so, that is factually wrong. On the contrary, it adds character uniqueness because it adds the ability to make characters actually differ in appearance from other characters, creating character diversity. This topic's title isn't so off.

exposing the fact that they're just an assemblage of equipment and stats.

Objectively, it doesn't expose it any more than it is already known. Also, note that while acknowledging this assemblage may hurt immersion, it does not mean that it is bad. Incidentally (or not so), real-life humans are actually the same. We are all the assemblage of the human body + various differing stats (one [or a lot, to be exact] of which is the DNA) and a collection of various belongings. So there's nothing bad about characters being assembled, it's normal, they're just like humans - granted, typically without the same big amount of differing stats [and adequate intelligence], but while on that matter, there is, theoretically, virtually nothing stopping you from giving a character a thousand different stats, if you so wish.
Allegedly, from what you're saying, when you look at a character wearing armor, you look at it more as something along the lines of "feh, a part of that character's being is sticking out" - I'm sure you don't do the same when you look at a person on the street's shirt, even though the situation is barely different. When anyone but you looks at a character wearing some nice strong and shiny cuirass, they think something different, such as something along the lines of "hey, what a cool armor he has" - quite similarly to what they could think if they saw someone wearing a cool shirt in real life.
You exaggerate the... 'exposition'. So what if the character doesn't visually wear a shirt - it's not any less exposed, perhaps on the contrary. You still see that it's a character, made up of that icon and some stats (or vars, even). Might as well say not to display the character at all, neither its inventory, because doing so exposes its hidden and horrible secret that all in all, in the end of the day, all it is is a collection of data.
And if you wanted to, you could say that everything in the world is a collection of data - or atoms, or what have you. So yes, there's nothing bad about it.

I even expanded on this idea in the article I linked to, providing three reasons why paper-dolling is a false solution to customization.

As said, in reality, you're just providing examples of problems that arise in games where the implementations of things causes those problems to arise - not problems that are inherent in paper-dolling.

Before we move on, there's a couple more problems with the equipment overlay system. 1: Players rarely have all of one set (Example: all dragon armor), so almost all players look like walking piles of garbage, because the warlock gloves don't fit with the thief coat or the colors on the bishop's hat.

Obviously not a problem of "the equipment overlay system" at all. If "players rarely have all of one set", then that's a problem of its own, don't misrepresent it as a problem of the aforementioned system.
Like the other problems you mentioned, this problem could be solved in games by applying thought when designing them. If you think that players rarely having all of one set is an issue, then remedy it, such as by having shops sell whole sets, by having a player that has a piece of a set in his possession more likely to encounter a new piece of that same set in random loot, and of course by having equipment items that still go well even when not used in their set, including general equipment that has no set at all, which many games have anyway. Another thing you could do is allow players to customize the look of their items (like equipment) itself, e.g. by allowing players to dye their items in different colors (or even perhaps change the appearance in more ways like altering the texture), so they can dye their armor parts and have their mixed set of parts have the same color scheme, essentially making it into a set of its own - again, games (even BYOND games, including anime rip games) already sometimes have this functionality anyway. It has much the same purpose of displaying equipment on players in the first place.

2: Players that want to look like knights (but can't afford all the dragon armor)

How is that a problem? "I want to get X but I can't afford it", or "I want to beat Y but I'm not strong enough" - you'll always have that kinda situation in your game - so what.

don't want to look like a cross between a bishop, thief, and warlock.

It's their choice to look like so (or the game's fault for not including enough diversity of sets). You seem to miss the fact that in games with paper dolling, people will even use weaker armor on purpose because they like how it looks better - because how their character looks is important to them. If it is, then the player simply either shouldn't wear a mix of equipment pieces and work towards obtaining a whole set that he likes, or endure wearing a mix for a while as temporary clothing, until his situation is good enough that he can change it. This relates to the previous point - there will always be minor situations when players aren't completely satisfied with the game, be it "I don't like how my character looks" (which could still happen when there is no paper dolling BTW, in which case the player is much more screwed) or "I don't like how my character is [so weak / so poor] at the moment because I'm just starting out".

3: All players at the highest level will have found the best armor, and will then look exactly the same.

What a bad assumption. Schnitzel already partly covered this before me; this will only be the case where there is a certain problem with the game itself: lack of item/equipment variety. There's no obligation for a game to include only one master armor type that tops all others, in fact that's a pretty stupid thing to do as far as variety, replay value etc go. There can easily be a whole tier of 'master armors', each with their unique appearance, effects, advantages and disadvantages.

All in all, equipment overlay systems turn out terribly, and shouldn't be attempted without good reason.

All in all, a terrible conclusion achieved through bad reasons.

Players may not want to look like what their equipment looks like

In that case, they have more options, like wearing equipment that they like more, or other options such as wearing a shirt/robe/costume over it, or perhaps paying an NPC to dye it in see-through color. ;D
Yet again: you can't avoid these kinds of situations. Sometimes players may not want to look like your game's characters look (or even not like how your turfs look) - i.e. dislike your "base icon". In that case, normally they're completely screwed, unless you expand visual character customization even more, and allow players to customize even the character's appearance itself, such as by having a variety of body icons to choose from (for one, BYOND DBZ games are known for letting players choose their character's skin color), or by having other attributes modify characters' appearances, such as high strength making the character more muscular or characters having the option to be thin or fat depending on how much they eat, etc.

Imagine that one player wants to look like a Ninja, and another wants to look like a Samurai, and a third wants to look like Royalty, and they're all on level 99. Aha! I have the perfect solution! They've all reached the highest level, so they must all have the best equipment in the game, so it obviously follows that they all want to look exactly the same! After all, what sort of idiot would ever give three people (who are all wearing the same thing) three different icons?

Ahhhh. As already discussed, indeed it is pretty idiotic for a game to have all the best armor types look the same (or have only one) - has the game designer ever heard of variety? What a bum.
Just to give you an idea, it makes sense to have different top armors for different types of characters/classes, such as different top armors for barbarians, knights, ninjas, thieves, royalty and wizards. Again, some games have this kinda thing already. If you've heard of Oblivion, it has classes of Light Armor and Heavy Armor, and its predecessor, Morrowind, had Medium Armor as well (indeed a known problem with Oblivion is that a good bit of features and variety that were available in the previous games were scrapped) - each class has its top armors. Also, each armor piece has various unique characteristics such as protection value, durability, weight and enchantment potential (and/or enchantments) - so what the best armor in the game is depends on which characteristic(s) you want to focus on. By the way, everything in this discussion can also go for weapons, and in Morrowind there are about 5 different weapon classes with variety in each, so it's not a problem if you have a blade whose appearance you don't like, either.

But, hey, why give REASONS backing up what seems to be an obvious argument

Indeed, typically you wouldn't explain an obvious argument a lot - when a person states that the sky is blue, he is not typically expected to then give the scientific explanation as to why. But here, I explained the matter with very much detail, and I also strove to regard every part of your post, so you don't automagically assume I ignored parts of it and didn't understand what you are on about. I hope my post meets your expectations!

ASSERT(PaperDolling == Customization)

Hopefully by now you understand that PaperDolling == Visual customization. As far as just "customization" goes, just letting players choose which items they want to equip, paper dolling or not, is already customization.


In closing, your argument is invalid, for the reasons detailed above. :)

Hiro the Dragon King wrote:

I always find myself taking on enemies at terrible disadvantages because I like my current armor rather than anything better that I can get my hands on.

"That cape is on fire!"
"I know. Cool, isn't it?"
"But it's constantly doing fire damage to you..."
"But it's COOL!"
"...Idiot..." >_>

Paper-dolling forces customization. I dislike being forced to do something, especially something I like.

This is where the game designer should consider another arcane art, which is often belittled and laughed at, namely illusion.
While you can't kill that fancy dragon over there with the illusion of a rose, you could always win the maiden's heart creating one out of thin air, just for her.
Though, there is nothing to stop you from growing that rose into a thorn barred hedge, which might fend off a horde of Orcs by the sheer look.
This could always be used to 'cast a magically altered appearance' on you, granting the players a maximum of customisation by providing the best of both worlds (paper dolling by default and spells that alter the visual appearance).

UmbrousSoul wrote:

When a point is made and the post is short it will be more likely to be read than your 7+ paragraphs.

I do not know about you, but a detailed description and argumentation with source and evidence will always be more convincing to me than a quick sentence that states a hypothesis and nothing more.
You are right, a bunch of young, low attention span kids is more likely to read it, but then again, these most often come with a prejudice that is neigh impossible to alter, so are they really your target audience when trying to lead a decent discussion?


UmbrousSoul wrote:

As for character diversity? Stop copying and pasting and make it by hand.

Is this supposed to be an argument?

Well apparently according to garthors standards if you can't do something on byond than you should just give up.

UmbrousSoul wrote:

Well apparently according to garthors standards if you can't do something on byond than you should just give up.

If you're unwilling to put the effort into doing something that requires effort to do, then yes, you should not attempt to do that rather than bothering other people to do it for you.

For example, I cannot run a marathon (I dunno, maybe I can, I've never tried). I'm not willing to do endurance training to be able to train a marathon. So, I do not run a marathon. I do NOT pester somebody who CAN run a marathon and ask them to run it under my name so I can say I've run a marathon.

Garthor has Troll like tendencies, if it his opinion and not an actual, factual comment I tend to ignore him.

Get to the point, Kaioken. That post is longer than any book. Ignoring it, considering the few parts I read were irrelevant - This may be relevant to the topic.