Character Creation/Customization

In games that let you customize your character's physical appearance, like the Elder Scrolls or Mass Effect, do you spend a lot of time in character creation, tweaking every little detail? Or does your character's appearance not matter that much to you, and you would just rather get into the actual gameplay as soon as possible?

I was thinking about this earlier because someone showed me a video of the character creation process for an upcoming MMORPG called Black Desert, and the customization looks insanely detailed:


I tend to spend a lot of time in creation suites myself - I know most of the time you're either going to be looking at the back of your character's head or be in first person view, but I'm generally more immersed in the game if I create a character that fits into the game's world and setting, and is somewhat attractive.

So, do you normally try and make your character resemble yourself, or do you have some other specific image in mind when you create characters? Have you ever made a character look ridiculous just to get a laugh out of seeing such a bizzare person in the game (like these), or do you try to make them fit in the game world as much as possible?

It... kinda depends I play a lot of the two most recent Saints Row games, both of which have character creators that provide for a lot of modifications, down to some fairly fine details. Usually, though, I end up changing mostly only stuff like clothing and skin color. So I end up with things like this (worksafe, though my Steam display name uses inappropriate language), where I create something a bit odd, but without adjusting the super-fine details. I would probably never get around to playing the game if I did that, though!

Yea it just kinda matters, if the stronger protections for your head are helmets I don't really worry about physical appearance because I'll never actually see that except for the first hour or so maybe of gameplay.

Black Desert's character creator looks so amazing, gah. But, I'd probably wouldn't even bother with all of those options of customization LOL.

Anyways, I do not spend much time crafting the perfect character. I'll just play around with the character creator for 30 min - 1 hour, just seeing what my possible options are.

In all games that offer character creation, I always strive to create two of my OC named Arc and Arcaia. Arc will usually have a red anime-ish (spiky) hair with yellow eyes. With Arcaia, I want to give her long silver hair with red eyes. (fun fact, I was able to make Arc in Saints Row 3 LOL.)

It all depends for me. If the game promotes their character personalizing feature enough and make its use mandatory, then, yeah, I'll definitely be utilizing it. How much would I customize? That also depends, haha. If I'm the mood to make my player look nice, then I'll be putting a ton of effort into it. If I want to get through with it just so I could proceed with the storyline, then I'll be rushing and trying to complete it as soon as possible. :b

It depends. Suppose I have a lot of time to waste then I spend hours customizing my character. Otherwise if I'm in a hurry, I just go on with the original character.

I usually just spam the random button until I find one that looks good! I don't really care what my character looks like since it's the game play that matters and I practically never spent proper amounts of time customising them unless I'm completely out of interesting things to do or have time to kill. So in general no, I don't spend time on this because the game play is usually 100% more exciting and interesting to be spending the time on.

In games where it's applicable, I actually do like to take the time and try to make my character resemble myself. I mean, if I have to look at something for the entirety of the game, it better be pretty. :P so vain

When I can't do that -- or if I will honestly never see my character anyway -- I'll just take the default one. If that's not an option, I'll apply minimal effort so they're not a complete eyesore. /shrug

inb4 Fashion Souls

I love character customization too much. I love to pimp out my character with stuff.

Preferably I just love it so much, but it depends on only one thing, how much you can customize.

If it gives you like 10-20 absolute hogwash of hairstyles with predefined color, I'll just nope.
If it lets you change things to the strands of DNA in the character, I'm in.

Considering I picked Argonian as my race in Skyrim, I don't think I care about making my character look like me. :P

I will spend forever customizing my character. I love character creation so much. I don't really know why, but I do. It's just interesting and fun for me. The thing I hate the most is when the game allows you to customize, but everything is preset. As in the hair has to be a color like what Fernbutter said, or in order to have this one feature, you have to have these other ones. It always looks really bad.

I can spend hours in character creation. In one game I used to play in the past, the creation was incredibly detailed and I regularly made new characters not because I wanted a new character, but because the creation of a beautiful character that expressed through their looks the attitude I wanted them to have was so fun for me - it was a game in itself.

I rarely like to do very much customization in video games, usually I really don't care. :L

I love games where you can do custom stuff. It makes it more personal. I try to make my characters look like me as much as I can. In some games, because of lack of options, or graphics it can be hard, but I make due

definitely, if i'm going to be playing the whole game i need to make sure my character is perfection! :3 if she isn't then i'll restart, remake and then replay like, twelve hours worth trying to see if she's okay. cx

once i spent a whole week making a character, hehe. o#o'

Not really. They just have to have a face I appreciate looking at. I prefer gameplay > character design, anyway though my Skyrim character has some good looks in mage robes.

Depends on the game, In a game like Elderscrolls, Aside from a few options, all characters end up looking the same. But with something like in the video, HOURS UPON HOURS WOULD BE SPENT ON THAT!

I like to make my character look good, and with character customization I can't do that to male characters, so I make them female instead. I rather like the male characters of certain games, like Link from TLoZ.

Did I miss the point here?

I could potentially spend hours upon hours trying to perfect my character, but I restrict myself to trying to complete it within an hour. Having an abundance of customization options is both an advantage and disadvantage to me because I can make them look exactly the way I want (given the options in the game), but at the same time sometimes I never actually begin the game since I'm diddling around with the editor for an insane amount of time. Guild Wars 2 had a really nice character customization system, and I spent a generous portion of my day developing my character XD That goes without saying that being able to customize my character is one of the first things I look for in online MMORPGs.