Guild Wars expansions: Trend of decreasing face / hair customization...

oh well...helmet on

Well I am just going to come out and say it. I am not going to dance around it like most will. Having Black characters in this game is just a little weird. It just is. It is just as weird as Black Barbie Dolls and Ken dolls. Why do we even have to have standard skin colors or even try to mimic skin colors of real races of people? In a game like this it wouldn't be out crazy to introduce a completely unique race rather than making these Elonians out to be Africans. I hate to say it but I think you are going to see ALOT of fairest skinned Nightfalls characters. I just know this is what will happen. I don't think it is cause anyone is racist exactly, but I just don't think there are many Black GW players out there. There I said it.

Depending on the hair styles/color i might remake my ele (shes only a low lvl right now) because i want her to look very nubian. >.>

I think its refreshing and very daring of Anet to make a game with Africans as the main characters thats not in some sort of crime game setting.

^_^ ganbare Anet.

Wow, brave sole. Well, I'm not going to flame you for speaking your mind, even though I disagree.

And since we "went there", allow me to post my thoughts on the Fantasy genre and racism.

I think Fantasy has always been a little "racist", even if it was not intended. Look at Conan: the big, white conquerer killing the black savages. Even Tolkien's work is oven mis-construed as being racist. (It doesn't help that in the movies, the orks are played by the Maori people. But I digress).

The reason why you find it "a little weird" is simply because you don't see Fantasy heroes of color in movies or TV very often, if at all. The majority of our exposure to Fantasy heroes is the stereotypical white guy with bulging muscles and a big sword, or "babes in Chainmail."

At least Anet is doing something to counter the first stereotype, if not the second.

As I said on another thread, I'm purposely making all my Nightfall characters darker toned because it fits the campaign, and I already have enough while toons for my taste.

Or they could let us pick any hair/face style from any chapter for anyone (as long as we own that chapter).

That makes perfect sense. I was gonna make a my Paragon with dark skin just cause I don't wanna look like a silly white guy trying to do the "beat it" dance.

I will say this though. Be careful making your armor too dark with black dyes cause with this being Nightfall and all you wouldn't want to lose your character in the darkness.

I was thinking about making my Dervish as dark as possible, to see what he looks like with a hood on.

The more like Death, the better!

(and no, not like my Avatar... )

I have to agree about new face / hair combinations. There's just less and less nice-looking ones and we'll see loads of clones, since there's also less to choose from.

Hopefully a lot of the people who complain about "too much african" are just americans, Id expect more from countries that actually appreciate culture.

Even two generations after MLK jr., its still a major problem in our schools, law enforcement, television... If anything Im very happy that a game like nightfall can present something to bring a sense of cultural respect to native african traditions, even if just through a fantasy setting.

racism ftl. I hate white people more than anything, and Im mostly white.

Why must there always be an issue when "minorities" are represented anywhere.
They do exist. Who cares what a toon looks like. If you really have that big of a problem with it, why play.

IMO, it's gratifying to see a region represented correctly, whether it's Europe, Asia or Africa.

Really, people complaining about the color of the toons...get over yourself.

Hypocrite FTW.

Back to the real debate....

Yeah, the dwindling choice of character faces and hairstyles is a bit annoying, but in the end, there will always be mass reproduction because, true to form, one or two styles become more popular than all of the others...and that's what you see...akin to the popularity of warriors to mesmers.

More face and hair options would be great, but in the end...everyone will look the same anyway.


Wonder if you can dye your blade too.
It would be cool to see a shiny black scythe...what do you think?

as it was intended, gene. Im ashamed at what my ancestors have done over the centuries.

So dont try to flame me about it.

Im sorry if my comment made you uncomfortable, but seriously any realistic person can see it for what it is. So if you want to stay on topic, stay on topic.

Want a different looking character?

Don't make a white character.

I was running around as my paragon earlier and got to looking around and realizing, wow I'm the only dark-skinned char in the district...

I play a black monk anyway. :: shrug :: I remember when I started him in Prophecies, I only saw one other black character in pre-Sear (and it was one of my guildies at that).

I was considering doing the same, and very likely will; it's really cool to see that someone else was thinking it. Some of the faces are absolutely lovely in darker tones (at least to me). The only beef I have is that not all classes have black hair as an option, because I think a dark skinned/black haired character is exotic and very sexy.

Of course, it's all a matter of taste - many people like characters that look somewhat like themselves, or that are familiar. It's not necessarily racist, either; it just isn't what some people find familiar.

-kel
who sees enough pale skin/blonde hair every day when she looks in the mirror

When it comes to that screenshot the Prophecies is the best followed by the 3rd one Nightfall and the 2nd one being Factions.I am a little more particular to Prophecies since I beta tested it and started playing it preorder.

yeah factions was the worst

I really like the new faces, at least for the females, haven't looked as closely at the males yet. Yes, they look 'wrong' with white skin, but that is because they have an African bone structure and facial features. They look beautiful with a darker skintone though, and I applaud Anet for stepping away from the standard 'white-man-fantasy-fare' and introucing not just Asian and African based settings, but faces and hairstyles to match.
It is nice to see today's multicultural society reflected in a MMORPG.
GW does not have different races like elves, dwarves and so on, so seeing different colored humans in the game is nice.

As for the OP: I agree that they could have stuck in more effort into providing more faces and hairstyles. Once you have a mesh, it is only a question of reskinning to make a face look different, and that doesn't take too long for an experienced graphics artist. (I've released several facepacks for another game in the past myself, and I'm sure an eperienced artist works faster then me )
This game already does not allow a lot of customisation (IE: Eyecolor), and then giving such a small pool of premade faces to chose from means we run around as clones of eachother. Besides that, hairstyles seem to be reused for different classes, making the clone-syndrome worse.
I am hoping Anet will improve this before the game comes out...

I was noticing that today too... especially for the hair options. I hope we'll have a lot more by release!

What is pleasing to the eye is highly subjective. I might find one face absolutely amazing and beautiful, while someone else would find that same face utterly repulsive. Just keep in mind that when you say a face is ugly, or the selections we have are just crappy, remember that there are people who completely disagree with you and that is only your opinion, not a fact.

In my opinion, I think most of the faces are perfectly fine and beautiful, myself. I looked at every face for every class, male and female, and noticed I liked most of them. Sure there are a few that I personally find ugly, even some class/sex combos that had a lot of ugly faces, but most overall looked great, to me. My wife was going through them at the same time and we even contradicted on a few.

Now, I agree that there is a decreasing quantity of faces in each release, and that sucks. I'd much rather love the ability to change the geometry and details of a face rather than the face as a whole, anyway, to discourage multiple copies. Seeing as how that's probably unlikely, I can make do with the current system, just please give us more faces!

I think males really get screwed over on the customization of faces and hair in the expansions.

Most of what I've seen of the hair so far in Nightfall (the selection is probably finalized) are braided hairstyles, nappy heads and afro-ish. As for the faces... I'm not even going to begin on those. When you look over to the females, their selection has more variety and when you change the skin tones on female faces, they actually look like they're from a different race while compared with the males, it doesn't have the same effect.

I don't really mind it that much but quite honestly, with only this selection for males, I am really tempted to give my character a name that spins off from the hip hop culture in America.

While I think the armors we can build for our characters made a huge step from prophecies to factions, the opposite goes for facial / body lookings, with a few exceptions, mostly for females.

I don't care about the whole dark vs white skinned characters, really doesn't matter to me.

I do care, with the OP, and hope to see some more options in the future.

I smell GW Store option... just cause Anet knows so many people would buy it.