Feedback Character portraits

[Deleted member 32699]

Immersion in an (MMO)RPG is very important to me - and the fact that none of the selectable portraits resemble my character (especially since my character has a mark on his face) really bothers me.

And it's not just my own character.
The "best" example is the first NPC you come across within the game: Dante, whose portrait bears absolutely no resemblance to his actual character.

Would it be possible to introduce a better portrait system with character portraits which show the actual character, similar to other MMORPGs - or is it technically too complex?

 

[Undone]

Immersion in an (MMO)RPG is very important to me - and the fact that none of the selectable portraits resemble my character (especially since my character has a mark on his face) really bothers me.

And it's not just my own character.
The "best" example is the first NPC you come across within the game: Dante, whose portrait bears absolutely no resemblance to his actual character.

Would it be possible to introduce a better portrait system with character portraits which show the actual character, similar to other MMORPGs - or is it technically too complex?

Early in development portraits were added as an extra layer of customization that allowed players to express themselves in a slightly different way. They were generally well received and hence were kept as a feature. Adding live avatar portraits is not necessarily an issue of technical complexity. The primary concern here would be the performance requirements for additional rendering cameras; we are already pushing the envelope performance wise and don't want to make it worse.

 

[Deleted member 32699]

Thank you for the explanation - I wasn't aware that live avatars were such resource hogs.

Alternatively, would it be possible to expand the current selection of character portraits to show more avatars that actually represent the faces from the character creator?

I'm not talking millions of variations with 99 different eye colours - just a small selection of faces with some basic hairstyles and hair colours (and maybe even face paints?) that better represent the faces of the actual characters.

I know you're a small team, but that would be a *really* good and significant improvement.

 

[Undone]

Thank you for the explanation - I wasn't aware that live avatars were such resource hogs.

It might not be a huge hit, but the rendering pipeline we are using (Unity's High Definition Rendering Pipeline, or HDRP) doesn't do great with multiple cameras.

Alternatively, would it be possible to expand the current selection of character portraits to show more avatars that actually represent the faces from the character creator?

I'm not talking millions of variations with 99 different eye colours - just a small selection of faces with some basic hairstyles and hair colours (and maybe even face paints?) that better represent the faces of the actual characters.

I know you're a small team, but that would be a *really* good and significant improvement.

Unfortunately, the art team just doesn't have the capacity for this right now.

 

[Deleted member 32699]

Originally I was going to leave it at that, but now that I've decided to continue playing the game beyond the trial, I realise how important this issue is to me.

The lack of representative character portraits bothers me - in fact, it's one of the biggest criticisms of Embers Adrift for me right now - and I'm sure it's putting a lot of people off giving the game a fair chance.

Especially in a role-playing game (*especially* a group-centered online game), how my character looks is extremely important - and that includes not only the look of the character itself, but also their portrait.

I really hope the team will reconsider their stance on this matter at some point.

New content is all well and good, but it's also important to improve existing content - especially important aspects like character portraits - and I think you should be willing to invest resources in these things as well.

I'm sorry if I come across as stubborn / nagging, but the fact that I'm willing to give feedback (on this topic and in general) only shows how much I care.

 

[Undone]

I'm sorry if I come across as stubborn / nagging, but the fact that I'm willing to give feedback (on this topic and in general) only shows how much I care.

No need to apologize! It's a reasonable request that I'm sure we'll get to at some point. But like many other things we have to be very selective with how we spend our time and resources