People already suggested a slider for scaling the body, but why not have certain types of sliders for particular types of costume pieces?
Here are some ideas that would apply to pieces of gear that don't conform to the body like suit. For example, shoulder pads, helmets, chest armor, big boots, big gloves, almost anything that would add geometry to your toon.
Transparency slider:
Lets say you have a helmet with a visor, but you don't like that you can't see your characters eyes, or vice versa, not only could you have things like color options, but certain parts of costumes can let you adjust if/how much they can be seen through. Maybe even make it to where an entire helmet can be transparent, if you want a ghost helmet for what ever reason.
Glow slider:
Lets say you want certain details on your costume to glow? You can do that (within reason) or make the entire piece glow, even decide what color it glows. You'd have to limit this option quite a lot though, especially of the glow would apply to a real time lighting module, assuming they go with that on cot.
Y,X,Z stretching:
Lets say you have a big and bulky body, and because of that, lets say your gloves clip into your arm/shoulder armor and vice versa, or you have a jacket and the gloves clip through the sleeve, or don't cover the sleeve enough. Perhaps with certain costume pieces that add a lot of geometry, they can can be scaled up or down on the x, y and z axis, to a certain extent, mind you. I understand with how rigging works, you probably couldn't actually move the object on the x.y. and z axis, but it might be possible to have some limited scaling.
Now think of how you could combine these things!
Lets say I want my character to look like he has energy construct armor and sword. I make all my armor one solid color, I give them all transparency, then I give them a glow, bam, construct armor.
Or hey, I want to make a spooky themed character, I put chains on his body, but it made him look more biker gang than cryptic spirit. How do I fix this? Add transparency to the chains, oh look at that, spectral chains, now we're talking.
Could be a cool set of option sliders for hair too.
The "danger" that you run into is one of Too Many Options such that "settling" on a character design could potentially take longer than a day to get [i]just right[/i]. I know that I could easily spend multiple hours in the character creator tweaking looks in both TERA and Star Trek Online, since both systems have sliders by the dozens for their costume creator. In one sense it is certainly fun to play with, but beyond a certain point it becomes more "work" than it's really worth, since I'm "playing the editor" rather than playing the game.
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My feeling on sliders is the more the merrier, provided the difficulty in implementing the effect is not too great (either in terms of the engine supporting it or the resources the result would require on the client, etc.). I am not familiar enough with what CoT will have to work with to be able to know how difficult your suggestions would be to implement, of course. I especially like the transparency slider idea (since it is frustrating to have that tied to particular shapes of glasses or visors or whatnot).
I do agree with Redlynne that just sitting someone in front of a bunch of choices is not a great approach... some folks will like that, but a lot won't. The thing is, even the CoH designer was too much for some folks. Some of my friends would start by hitting the Random button for a bit until they got close to something they found interesting, and then they'd just edit the bits/colors they didn't like, for example. So, MWM is already going to need to look for ways to allow folks who are not into adjusting everything from scratch to still get to something they are okay with. Character creation interfaces in games have come a long way since since CoH was introduced, fortunately, and their plan to make the creator available ahead of the game should allow them a lot of opportunity for collecting feedback.
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I'm not sure I'd worry too much about having too many choices in the character creator. Having a large number of possible settings with the sliders isn't necessarily a bad thing, IF it's relatively easy to use so that someone that isn't too picky about the precise appearance of their character can get it to where they want to in 10 minutes or less. Leaving the options for incredible detail available for those that may want to spend the time getting things just right, hey... it's their money, if they want to spend 3 hours getting their new character just so, more power to them.
Me, I rarely spent all that much time in the character creator. I'd slap together something that I liked and moved on, but I know some people that did spend hours in the COH creator.
And with the plans to have an "offline" character creator app to work with, I'd say having the ability for someone to spend several hours getting a new character just right is actually a good thing. Especially assuming that the app has a "save progress" option so that you can work on it on the bus/train ride to work or whatever, pick it up over lunch, etc.
Again, all this is predicated on it being relatively easy to get a character created and reasonably close to what you're envisioning and not requiring hours of work to get to that point, just leaving the option open for those that wish to do so.
They're just options though, you don't have to adjust them at all. If you really don't care about your look that much it's a simple matter of ignoring a lot of the options and keeping it simple.
You could even have a more options button if you're that worried about it bothering people that much.
Besides having a lot of options is really in the spirit of cox, it would honestly be kind of embarrassing to not kick it up a notch compared to a game that was made nearly a decade ago.
One of THE most popular privately owned restaurants in my town, has 58 different sandwiches and the lunch menu isn't even their main focus. I say more is good, imo.
Do like idea of weapon sliders make interesting chars, can make it option have just basic sliders for people not in to them
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I'm in the camp of the most options possible the better the creator is. A compromise between this camp of people who'd LOVE to be able to alter the transparency , glow, and maybe stretch and those who'd rather keep it simpler could be similar to many other situations: even search engines have an "advanced" search option, so why not have a checkbox/dropdown/radial/whatever prompting "advanced options"? What could be even better would be degrees of advance, like "low" "medium" and "really?".
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That's an excellent idea. Also gives the devs some flexibility in tweaking the actual design: they could release the basic options at first and then when they have more ideas or the tech improves, they could add features under the Advanced button without affecting the original options.
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