Fixed or own characters?

[Sicar Eneco]

Now that MOTB is closing in, I'm currently revising some of my ideas for the Chronicles. A few questions came up. Most still need to be brainstormed about, but here's one I cannot decide on my own. How do you people feel about playing modules with fixed characters? Or would you rather have your own personal character?

To give an example of a fixed character, let's take a look at Rose of Eternity (http://www.roseofeternity.com/index.html). RoE has two main characters the player takes control of: Aramus, in the first part and Challseus, in the second part. These are pre-made characters made by Chall himself, and players do not create their own character, but rather play as this pre-made one. Think of how Final Fantasy works, or any FPS.

If I could use pre-made characters, I can make the player more involved into the story and it would be easier for voice-overs. I'll be able to fine-tune combat much easier and I won't have to add things half of the players will never notice anyway.

A'course, this disables the player to have it's own preferred race/class and all that. So, what would you prefer?

[kgambit]

My preference is for bring your own. :D

But there are advantages and disadvantages with EACH system.

If you go with a pre-fab character, you can make the mod incredibly deep with lots of character depth and lots of choices. It is simple coding for a SINGLE character rather than for multiple character types. You DO have to make sure that those choices actually MATTER too. If not, then it's simply a single player railroad mod. If the story is immersive enough even THAT might not be a problem. The BIG downside is that with pre-fab characters there is NO replay value - not really. People are NOT likely to replay a mod like that just to check out what this dialog string does versus that string. So its a play it once and that's it mod.

If you go with bring your own characters, replay value is probably higher, dialog will be tougher to design and balancing is tougher. But it might also have multiplayer value. You can make this type of mod as immersive as the first type but it takes a LOT of work.

:)

[Liso]

I have played RoE. I liked the mod a lot however. I do not like pre made characters in the least. I have played a few modules like this. I do believe in RoE you can make your own though. But they have to carry the correct names of the pre made characters? and classes?

Anyway. that is my vote. I like to make my own! :) You can do both though. Leave it up to choice.


Liso :)

[Sicar Eneco]

The problem I have with custom characters is that they can be everything. The difference in game design is, that when you let players play a pre-made chara, you know everything this character can do or would want to do. If not, I'll have to make sure I have support for mages, fighters and thieves. And make sure that a jack of all trades can't just take all three paths. With custom characters, I'll have to spend some time making sure people can pickpocket NPCs, steal from their homes, etc. You get the idea. It's not impossible, otherwise I wouldn't have asked. I'm just curious, good to see some replies so quick.

Also, on replayability: I'll have some "unique" (note the ") stuff planned. Take guilds for example. There are three lords in the city of Nyic, each one who owns the information you seek at that moment. Two of them are leaders of two different guilds, the third one is leader of a not-so-good organisation. In other words, the player will have to choose between these three 'guilds' which will each bring up a different questline to follow. That should already add some replay value, no?

However, don't vote to please me the most, I'm curious in what you people would prefer. I want to make the Acts a big interesting module. The Intro was a little test, from which I learned a lot. Now it's time to prepare for the big work.

[Liso]

I'd never vote just to please you. I'm not that nice. LOL *grins*


But as far as you having to cater to all the classes. Not true. A lot of modders will even note which classes will work best etc.

However I think you choosing a few more popular classes to work around and make some pre gen characters could work. Give the choice whether they want to do it themselves or chose on of yours. :) Choice is nice. :)


Liso

[Sicar Eneco]

And the more I think about it, the more I'd have to agree. Having both would be pretty nice and would help unsure or new players.

Some modders seem to railroad choices as well. And not much people seem to complain about it. I guess it wouldn't really matter, as long as I'd make it clear before they play it.

I'd never vote just to please you. I'm not that nice. LOL *grins*
I always knew you where a bad girl.

[Liso]

And the more I think about it, the more I'd have to agree. Having both would be pretty nice and would help unsure or new players.

Some modders seem to railroad choices as well. And not much people seem to complain about it. I guess it wouldn't really matter, as long as I'd make it clear before they play it.


I always knew you where a bad girl.

haha bad? I said not that nice. Never said anything about being bad. :eek: :D :D

[Ree]

Personally both suits me just fine. I mean having people create their own characters will give them the ability to have a more customized experience and it will also up the replay value of your module. Then again as you said on the other side, if you have pre-made characters you are more likely to have a better game design fitting the character. Both battles and role-play will fit the characters a lot more. You may narrow your userbase a bit if you do limit players what sort of character you enable them to play, cause I do know there is a lot of people out there that loves this fact about the NWN engines. I voted that both suits me, for the reason that I'll have fun playing either one. I do urge you to keep the option to make your own character enabled though, for the sake of others.

Hey! and Liso may be a bad girl, but only I should be able to state that fact! As far as the rest knows, she's a very good one :cool:

[kgambit]

Also, on replayability: I'll have some "unique" (note the ") stuff planned. Take guilds for example. There are three lords in the city of Nyic, each one who owns the information you seek at that moment. Two of them are leaders of two different guilds, the third one is leader of a not-so-good organisation. In other words, the player will have to choose between these three 'guilds' which will each bring up a different questline to follow. That should already add some replay value, no?



Yes it would! That's exactly the sort of thing that gives people the feeling that their character's choices DO matter. :) It ALSO allows for flexibility if you allow build your own characters in the game.

The more choices like this you can give a player, the happier they are going to be. :)

[arathalion]

ko

i wrote a big rant then found that i was arguing wiht myself over two different definitions of character.

how do you define a fixed character?

ff: YOU are x character, YOU WILL DO THIS. HAVE SOME STORY
deus ex: you ARE JC DENTON, you can advance the way you want. have several posibly storys
nwn2: you are the swamp child with a shard in your breast. everything else is up to you.

and then how do you define a custom character?
nwn: you create a character, the story has nothing to do with you. you are just in it.
nwn2: you create a character, keep in mind, however, that you are live in a swamp, your father is this person and you have a friend called x. (no i dont remember his name)

imo its all about the story you want to tell. if you want the character to be part of the story then how much do you want them to be part of the story.
are they the random adventure that happend along and decided to help for a)the grater good, b) the reward or c) the joy of killing or are they tied to the plot in intriquet ways.

keep in mind however, i broke the nwn2 story at the begging quite easily cause i decied to play a character that just didnt fit in the setting.

[Sicar Eneco]

Though the American date system is somewhat confusing, I'm assuming the above is a recent new post. If not, soz.

I had the same problem at the beginning of NWN2, as I always play SP games with someone from the Eneco bloodline.

Still, I was thinking about the Otherside Chronicles when I created the thread. In which you can create whoever you want, for whatever reasons. You wake up in an inn after being attacked by someone, or something and eventually found by a group of patrolling guards. The prologue brought the player in the situation I needed for the story to begin, so I won't have the same problem as the OC.

I'm currently working (slowly) on the mod with the 'create your own character' thing in mind. As that seems to be the favorite choice. Hence, scripted character development will happen only with your companions and certain personages than with the player him/herself.

[Fletchman1313]

It really depends on what kind of story you want to tell. If the class/race/gender of the character really determines the outcome, then a pre-made character would be the best. But if not, then a "create-your-own" would be best.

I think a good example of this would be "Curse of the Azure Bonds." It was a Forgotten Realms novel written about 20 years ago, and was followed by an SSI game (which was awesome on a Commodore 64). The novel was about this girl named "Alias" who woke up with no memory whatsoever, but had these weird tattoos on her forearm. The SSI game just kinda started the party off the with Azure bonds and went from there. So despite the fact that the novel was about an individual, the game did not think it necessary to start you as Alias herself and let you create whatever characters you want (or import it from Pool of Radiance).

Although I vaguely remember that you actually meet Alias in the game, which would make the SSI game a sequel to the novel. Hmm... well that would make the example different.

Nevermind.

[ball lightning]

I definitly prefer custom characters.

[sirchet]

As far as I can remember back, I can think of only one module I've played that forced me to be a specific character, and it worked. (Dark Avenger) I would be willing to accept using a predefined character if the story and writing were really good, I mean to the point I would start making my own characters, (in other mods) to mimic him/her.