Tree of Savior Forum

More Character Creation Options

Gameplay Feedback Features
#1

I feel the character creation in this game has a lot of potential. There’s a lot of Ragnarok Online in this game, I feel it and it’s definitely there, but as it is now the amount of character creation options in this game are microscopic. No other game I’ve played has less of a character creation option, which takes some fun out of customizing how you feel you should play the game. So here’s a few things I think could be done to increase the variety in characters and give the player some more freedom over how they look:

  • More Hairstyles - This one is obvious, right now hairstyles are the only avenue of customization aside from classes. Having more of them means having more variety in character creation. Take a look at Ragnarok Online in this instance, aside from the different class-body types, they had close to fifty unique hairstyles for each gender. Having this many would be great. Games such as Mabinogi have made quite a bit of money on making more Hairstyle options available to characters willing to purchase premium cards, the same thing could be done here.
  • Hair Dyeing - The ability to change your hair color to more match your personal preferences. If you like a color you should be able to make your hair that color. It’s not too difficult a thing to implement, as color sliders typically are very varied in the options they provide. I don’t think that complete control over color should be given, as some people will just drop their colors down and the art style the game tries to keep to would be ruined, but I don’t see any problem with having the normal hair colors, blonde, brown, black, gray, white, along with a few pastels, like purple, pink, light blue, etc.
  • Garb Options - The ability to change the color of your class garb to your own personal color preference would be a great option for being able to further customize your character. Ragnarok Online had Dye job tickets and allowed you to choose between one of three different palettes in this regard, but I’m sure that ToS has more than enough capabilities to expand the color options available to players who wish to change the color of their class uniforms.
  • Costume Options - Accessories exist in this game, but not nearly as varied as Ragnarok Online. More head accessories to accompany existing clothing options would be great, but not just that. Cash shop costumes would be a great way to monetize the games revenue without necessarily making the game Pay to Win. Stuff like Sexy Bunny Costumes, Mascot suits, Martial artists clothes, Seasonal Halloween or Christmas articles like Black and orange stockings, Witch hats, and things of that nature. All of these are great monetization options. People love sex appeal, Some of the Ragnarok Online sprites proved that (C’mere Stalker baby, rawr), so I’d love to see some of these options available to those wishing to shell out the dime.
  • Weapon skins- People like when their cool +2 glowing swords of awesome can be seen by other people, it makes looking at the game feel nice. So add class-specific weapon skins that change the default animations for spells and throw those skins up on the cash shop. Its cosmetic and it isn’t Pay to Win, and increases the amount of monetization avenues available to the game while giving the players something that looks nice in the process. Path of Exile has done this to great effect. It’s a great source of revenue.
  • Pet Skins- Some classes have access to pets, why not make even more pets and throw those options on the cash shop? Wolves, Rams, Golems, Tree spirits, Alpacas… You could go really far with this one. I’m sure there are more than a few Hunters out there who would enjoy Having a cooler looking pet besides the default. Bonus points if there are some kind of custom animations available for the pets that plays when specific skills are used.
  • Custom Spell and Death Animations - The ability to change the way that your spells look would certainly add another degree of variety into an already great game. The ability to change spell affects could spice up the game, make the grinding more interesting, Giving monsters unique death animations would also be a great customization option to those willing to invest to make their characters look and feel the way they want them to.

Does anyone else have any other ideas for things they’d like to see on the cosmetic side of the game?

Edit: Added Pet Skins idea.
Edit 2: Added Custom Spell and Death Animations idea.
Edit 3: Changed Garb Options to reflect ideas posted elsewhere in the thread.

I’d love to hear any feedback on the matter, @GM_Erick @GM_Fuji @STAFF_Shawn @STAFF_John @STAFF_J

7 Likes
#2

Defeats the entire purpose of class outfits.

as for hairs and colors some are available from achievements and i would be surprised if we didn’t see them in the cash shop.

#3

I don’t share your sentiment that the changing of class outfits shouldn’t be allowed. The class system present in this game pretty much makes it so that the class and skills of a person at a specific level may be completely different from the class of another person who chose a different set of classes at different levels, which is already an absurd level of customization.

People should be allowed to look the way that they want to look. However, I do agree that in PvP that could get confusing, so perhaps in PvP the character’s class garb would appear as whatever class they were currently playing on at the time.

3 Likes
#4

nooooh thats BS xD
most of your ideas arent really fully thought out. >ou probably saw them in other games where they actually fit (or not) and thought hey, i want that in ToS aswell!
this sentiment doesnt roll super well with ToS simply because you need to display what you actually are to a certain degree. Our charsprites arent all that big and the resolution is also a thing to note. 2D artists and design is super expensive, just as a sidenote in case you didnt know that.
Im not gonna say that you thought its as easy as drawing some stuff on a piece of paper, scanning it and its all done for an apple and an egg, because that whould be mean, now whouldnt it?

honestly the only thing they reasonably could add whould be Hair dying, but since you unlock some, the others will surely be cash only. whcih is good. more money to them = longer livetime (and =better game, if the dev’s actually stand 100% behind the game)

#5

I believe based on my knowledge of art development for sprite based games that developing a 2D sprite is a lot cheaper than creating a 3D model of the same character. From the concept documents and storyboarding to the pixel art stage, Since Tree of Savior has eight directions; The Cardinal And Tertiary directions, only five sprites have to be created for each movement frame in the animation cycle. You only need front, back, right, facing away right, and facing down and right.

Once you have those you can flip the sprites and you have a complete set of sprites that maps to all the available directions in the game. Once you have those you draw and create their animation frames in accordance with the sprite coding already present in the game and you’re done. By the time a 2D sprite would be finished, a 3D artist would be working on optimizing a low poly model for implementation and texture painting.

I’m taking everything you say here with an extreme grain of salt. I don’t believe that you have experience working with any game development companies or have knowledge of the development process in general so I don’t believe that you know exactly how much it costs to commission an artist to work on any kind of game, whether it be 2D or 3D. My ideas are very well thought out and they are exactly that. Ideas. Ideas aren’t already in the game, they are concepts that can be developed further before implementation, while some of these might not fit Tree of Savior currently, there are little issues with changing the initial concept to make the idea mesh successfully with the game concept.

And Ragnarok Online is close to Thirteen years old and it has many of the options that I’ve mentioned above, in the same genre as Tree of Savior, and you’re trying to tell me that for a game such as this that the only one that could be “reasonably added” would be hair dying options? Please.

3 Likes
#6

ToS does not use sprites besides I believe the head (which is why you get those funky headless models from time to time)

It’s all 3D models.

1 Like
#7

Ohh i think its cool like 2~5 colours to choose in the costume class clothes and u can choose the coolour when u change ur class Sorry bad english xd

#8

Ah, That’s interesting to know. That means that all of the bases that they use for each of the classes are already optimized Low-Poly models. I just assumed that they used sprites based on the art style, but if they use 3D models that means that the level of difficulty in creating some of these effects is actually about the same as most other MMORPGs, Aside from the fact that a new model needs to be created for each individual costume instead of just clothing being placed on a model as in most games.

I haven’t really peeked into the art design side of the building of ToS so I’d love to know more about this subject personally.

1 Like
#9

Ah yes, that’s a great idea. Ragnarok Online had a similar system in which you could choose between one of three different color palettes when changing classes with a dye job coupon. I’m sure it would be rather easy to implement on ToS’s side as well.

1 Like
#10

ToS is a 2.5D game and not 2D, not sure if you know the difference between the two but I will let you do your own research on it. It makes a difference for game development purposes.

Some of the stuff you are asking for, these are usually not things any game developer would add to a game that is just being released. You may think that aesthetics is important and is easy enough to add just because other games have it but from a game developers stands point, these are things that are better left for a later stage, usually after the release of the game.

Its not that your ideas are not possible or anything like that, just that they aren’t a priority due to time. RO, if you played it since day one, did not have any of the customizations it ended up having over its gaming stage. When the base game came out, it had pretty much the same stuff ToS has. I am sure that these ideas have already been talked over by the people working at IMCGames (seeing as RO Lead Designer is leading this game) and I am sure they are just waiting to get the time required to spend on these things. But for now, they need to first release the game and have it working before they can spend time on character customization.

Ofcourse, you can take everything I say with “an extreme grain of salt” even though there is no such saying as “take everything with a grain of salt” is sufficient in itself.

1 Like
#11

The only thing I really miss is an in-depth character preview option at the creation screen.

Let us try on any outfit, hairstyles and color combinations available so we can see what our characters will look like in the future, at higher ranks and such.

#12

Different classes costumes would be great. Pyromancer Costume n. 1, n. 2, n. 3… Cleric Costume n. 1, n. 2 etc.

#13

Nah I don’t really have a reason to argue with anything you’re saying. Your points are well thought out and everything you’re saying is mostly true to my understanding. The one I was speaking about had a bunch of poorly worded, un-proofread sentence fragments strung about without a cogent idea in the mix, so I really have a problem taking anything he says with anything but a grain of salt.

I’m just voicing these ideas now so the developers can start thinking about possible implementation and whatnot now, so that perhaps six or so months down the road the customization will be there. The Closed Betas are where a majority of modern game developers take a lot of information and feedback in as to where they want the direction of their game to go, and the ideas presented here by all of the Closed Beta Testers are Invaluable to fixing problems that exist within the game as well as making the game a success by determining how the game will be monetized.

1 Like
#14

ToS’s model strategy is pretty clever, actually. It’s very similar to Guilty Gear Xrd, using very smooth, hand-painted 3D models with purposely-low-frame-rate animation to give it a sprite look, for both players and enemies.

Check out http://www.tos-db.com/classmodels to see every class’ 3D body.

2 Likes
#15

Ahhh this definitely clears a lot up. If they’re doing modeling like this it should be quite easy for them to create costumes and cosmetics. Pretty much what I’m seeing is that they have a Low Poly 3D Model for Male and female characters and then edit that base file and repaint textures after baking them.

Since all of the characters of that specific race use the same base model, and there isn’t any body type variation, all they have to do is edit the base file in Maya or 3DS Max to make pretty much any kind of costume they want, bake it, paint it, and then have their programmers add it into the game and sell it on whatever variation of a cash of costume shop that Tree of Savior is going to be using.

Thank you very much for linking this resource to me, I’m very appreciative. This information clears up a lot of missing holes in my knowledge and gives me a good grasp over how easy it should be to monetize this game via costumes, dyes, etc.

2 Likes
#16

I’m willing to throw my money at the devs just to get some awesome customizations. There need to be one feature implemented though. If you buy a certain hairstyle/haircolour/clothes colour/anything, it should be permanent and you shall be able to switch between your owned stuff anytime free of charge.

2 Likes
#17

Yes please non of the rental cosmetics as soon as a game does that i buy nothing.

#18

That’s something we can all agree with, Hahaha.

1 Like
#19

Here is my thread similarly discussing the topic of customization!
I recently updated it with more info & pictures which you will see at the bottom of the thread
(Since I am no longer able to edit my original post)

I share and like most of your ideas, although i’d personally prefer for costume dye to stick to limited palettes made by imc individually for quality control & assurance that the harmonious vision that is ToS isn’t marred by wildly dyed costumes that stick out like a sore thumb.

I also don’t think I had mentioned weapon skins, so I added it to my thread post as well. I hope they continue to expand upon these things as development continues! :smile:

1 Like
#20

Pretty sure IMC will implement that in the future , with a price of course :ok_hand: