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mrtaccgnol

Improve selection of skin tones in character creation

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I never suggested that I did, but since you ask: no, sorry. Seems irrevelant, because Wurm is not Europe. Also, you can visit Wurm in the present; old artifacts from medieval times are not necessarily reliable.

great then we can all agree that if this happens to other animals in wurm it could happen to wurmians

IuA8p78.jpg

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Anyone familiar with EverQuest or The Elder Scrolls lore should be aware of these descriptions of races of playable human characters:

Erudites:

"Originally hailing from Human lands and ancestry a great many Humans (now known as Erudites after Erud their leader) fled to Odus, after having become disillusioned by the war-like natures of their Human and Barbarian cousins. On Odus they have since built a huge, beautiful and majestic city, gleaming with polished marble and magical symbols and runes. It is famed throughout Norrath for its massive library and collection of texts, with one of the most comprehensive collections on the whole of Norrath."

Redguards:

"Redguards are a race of humans who hail from the lost continent of Yokuda and now reside primarily in the province of Hammerfell. Their name is derived from the corruption of the native Yokudan term "Ra Gada", which (translated loosely) means, "warrior wave". Due to their swift and decisive conquering of the province of Hammerfell, the Redguards are renowned as arguably the most fierce, versatile and naturally gifted warriors in all of Tamriel. Their ferocity and versatility is also manifested in their personality, which lends itself to why they are most effective as scouts and in small units as opposed to being deployed as rank and file soldiers."

In EverQuest2, the Erudites were replaced with a race of non-human "aliens" which totally contradicted the background story of their human origin; darker skin tones were given as options for the "human" characters. Even still, the Barbarian race was still an option in EQ2, but only pale skin tones were available ('white race'/Scandinavian).

In The Elder Scrolls, there is no "human" option as a playable character, but the Bretons, Nords, Imperials an Redguards are exactly that, with their own sets of skin tones.

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This is extremely important to be in the game, I wanna be a hot black chick with an epic booty

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I just checked with a mirror and I still can't be black. Bump


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+1 for overall more character customization.

Sheesh I can't believe the lengths some of you go and the BS you spin just to keep darker skin tones out of the game. How does it hurt you at all??

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Can we get this implemented with the coming updates to clothing?


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Are there any plans to tackle this issue when the devs return from holiday?


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Some people just aren't happy unless they are stirring up sex and race based controversy it seems.  I seriously doubt the Devs are "racist".  It's just that they don't have the resources to allocate to every little thing the community wants.


 


I mean look how long it took them to add a few hairstyles and stuff to the game!  When I started playing there were NO character creation options at all.


 


I just don't get some people.  My heritage is Italian.  But when I log into the game I don't instantly feel oppressed because there's no olive-skinned avatars with slicked back hair and oily complexion (yes I'm 38 and still get pimples) to choose from.  Life is too short to get worked up over crap like this people.


Edited by Proximo

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Varietas dÄ“lectat.   :)


 


+1


Edited by Annyil

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+1 and genders already have different abilities (Valrei spells). So should skin tones have different abilities? thoughts?


Edited by Omar

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Worth a  BUMP  prior to the upcoming Steam launch. 

 

How hard of a change could it be?

 

 

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Agree Brash Endeavors and plus 1, so sad this is still a thing in light of current events. I remember once helping out a newbie, who was so new that that he thought it was some kind of bug that he couldn't have darker skin on his character and was seeking advice on how to fix it. When he was told that darker color skin was simply not an option in this game, he left never to return. It doesn't have to be anything major like creating 'races' etc, just add some darker shades to the skin options before the Steam launch. Years overdue.

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Big plus 1 to this from me as well, especially ahead of something like the Steam launch. Way overdue.

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+1 

 

Honestly, the entire character creation should be overhauled. It's simply outdated at this point in gaming. 

 

Face, body shape, variety of skin tones, eye colors, hair colors & styles... This is just basic stuff in MMOs. 

 

I'm not asking for sliders, here... just a little bit more, pls. 

Edited by Amata
Messed up first draft

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On 3/3/2015 at 8:40 AM, Kammerz said:

+1 But rather at the same time add more hair options and customization of whole body such as weight, size and muscles! :D

+1 I always thought we should gain muscles as we gain body strength. I personally would love to see some strapping muscle men running around. ;)New hair options would be very nice! And as for the original post for skin colors, variety is the spice of life as they say. Though I also get what was said about Wurmians not being earthlings and therefore having their own genetic make up. It is indeed the devs option to stay within the origin story parameters. Given that though I have to wonder where all the earth like animals came from? 🤔

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351px-Moreska_Grasser06.jpg 80602fc15bd98c553d346c92c4650b5e1b8b2d5d

 

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First: People of color actually existed in medieval Europe. The Moors of Spain were an active part of Europe from 711 until 1492 (right in the middle of the Wurm "time and place") After they were expelled from Spain, many stayed in neighboring parts of Europe. Hundreds lived in Tudor England. These moorish europeans were  prominent subjects of Munich sculptor  Erasmus Grasser, whose work graced castles throughout northern europe. Date: 1480. Much of this was stamped out of later historical records, in some cases even later painting over the skin tones in paintings! Jesus was white! The three wise man were white!

 

'But this is Northern Europe! By which we mean, Swedish (except anytime we want something in the game that is not Swedish!') There were no black Swedes back then!'

 

In other words, the Moors may have been a major part of historical medieval europe,  but we're not counting them!  It's not THAT europe!

 

There are many many many things in the game that are not "homegrown northern european", and especially not "Swedish".  Some are more than a little out of place for a "medieval northern Europe" theme.  A few are items  brought to northern europe by global traders, many of whom were also of a wide ethnic diversity, but these items were NOT common to the time and place:

 

  • Basil is native to central Africa through Southeast Asia.
  • Corn is from Mexico. 
  • Potatoes are from Peru.
  • Rice is from China.
  • Tomatoes are from central and south america.
  • Cabbage is native to the Mediterranean (as are those moors!).
  • Cucumbers are from India.
  • Garlic is from Middle Asia. 
  • Carrots are from Persia.
  • Rosemary is from the Mediterranean.

 

And of course, as all Game of Thrones book readers know, there are no lemon trees in the North.  Yet there are lemon and orange trees growing wild throughout northern Swedish-style Wurm?

 

I could make this list REALLY REALLY long. But we put these items in the game anyway because it makes the game more interesting and enjoyable for the players. In those cases, we don't argue whether each and every one of these  are "historically accurate" because it is, after all, "just a game."  Like it or not, Wurm is already diversified.  Not everything in the game is 100 percent historically accurate, even for a completely made up world and place. Even if a few wealthy European nobility had access to some of these via traders, they were very rare and very expensive and not obtainable by the common folk, and certainly not growing in their backyard gardens. The commonfolk of europe did not find these foraging through the grass in front of their cottage. The wealthy did not get them that way either.  We won't even get into the issues of dragons and trolls. 

 

We gave up arguing years ago (thankfully) whether female characters "historically" wore armor and wielded swords. After all, Joan of Arc! Queen Boudica of Britain!  Brynhild  the Valkyrie!  All them totally badass Viking Women!   The fact that a huge part of the Wurm player base are in fact female, probably played a major part in that.  "Fine. Ok, whatever, woman can have swords and wear armor and be 'equal', sigh."

 

Now the developers say they are trying to open Wurm to a broad new market of gamers.   Almost every other "fantasy roleplaying game" based on medieval life, allows a broad ethnic diversity so that all players can feel they have a place in that game. Neverwinter Nights from 2002 allows very dark skintones, and player avatars that are obviously african or arabic or oriental. Dark Ages of Camelot from 2001, which like Wurm also is supposedly based on "northern european medieval settings," you can play a Saracen, who have darker arabic/moorish coloration.  You can play a Erudite in Everquest (1999), a Redguard in Daggerfall, Morrowind and Skyrim, a Gharu'ndim or a Sho in Asheron's Call.  It doesn't matter whether you call those "races" or simply allow a wider range of skin colors for generic humans. Almost every "medieval" roleplaying game except Wurm, embraces a wide diversity of skintones for its playerbase. It doesn't even need to be explained in "the lore". We are way past that stage, we have been for some time.  

 

Yes, there are a certain subset of gamers who hate abhor detest any sort of "diversification" in their games, books, movies, comics (as well as in their schools, places of employment, and general society). I do not believe they represent the majority of Wurm players, and I am not going to waste time arguing with them.

 

But for the rest of us ... do we really want to tell this "new generation of Wurm players" that we are trying to promote the game to, that this game is only representing people with the most absolute pale skin colors possible? Or do we want the game to fail just so we can keep up this "fantasy" of only having pure milk white skin tones?   Is that also the message that the new owners of the game, Gamechest Group, want to be promoting? Do we as the playerbase, want this to be -our- message?

 

Is this really who we want to be?

 

It's not too late, even now. Just change the current skin tones to a wider range than "pale to somewhat less pale", and give every preexisting one free silver mirror so they can adjust themselves if they ended up, horrors, being too dark.   If we can easily do this with gods and priests, why can't we do this with skintones?

 

 

Edited by Brash_Endeavors
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4 hours ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

 But we put these items in the game anyway because it makes the game more interesting and enjoyable for the players. In those cases, we don't argue whether each and every one of these  are "historically accurate" because it is, after all, "just a game."  Like it or not, Wurm is already diversified.  Not everything in the game is 100 percent historically accurate, even for a completely made up world and place. 


Well.... Brash Endeavors seems to be absolutely killin' it when it comes to both real-world historically accuracy and the application of "accuracy" in a fantasy-world-setting game. So, um, that approach has been pretty thoroughly addressed.

As for me... it is honestly much, much more simple and straight-forward than that. This is a game, made by a company, existing inside the context of an industry, and it needs both gamers and money to continue to provide game content. Follow the money, as they say. 

And I'm not talking about token diversification to pander to some small subset or special interest group. "Diversity for diversity's sake" as it is sometimes called. Nope, I'm just talking about plain and simple industry standards.

 

Even for a product of it's time, Wurm's character options have been narrowly defined. Comparable games, as noted before, created & published around the same time as Wurm provided more character creation options. It's now been almost 2 decades, and the industry standard has moved. It makes sense that a company wanting their product to remain viable would consider ways to meet or exceed the industry standards. That's just good business. 

Games tend to fall into one of two categories, broadly speaking.... 
(1) premade character games  (Mario, Last of Us, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Uncharted, etc)
(2) "avatar" games (Dragon Age, GuildWars 2, WoW, FF: ARR, ESO, SWTOR, BDO, even games like Mass Effect with a pre-scripted story include "avatar" type character creation)

Wurm falls squarely into category #2. As is reasonably obvious by now, "avatar" games do not pre-define characters for players to chose from. The game starts out with some kind of character creation where players are expected to customize their in-game avatar to their liking. Some games roll this customization into the story with some sort of plot line element (MassEffect 2 is an example off the top of my head). Some games just use character creation as a meta-game element; you do it and then the game immersion begins. Either way you do it, "avatar" type games are generally using character creation as a player-pleasing game play element. TBH, there's really no other reason for it.... my hair color does not have any game play implications,  my skin tone does not impact my skill gain or buffs. These aren't strategic decisions, these are preference decisions - and that means there really doesn't need to be any in-game or lore reason for having or not having options. It honestly boils down to having the sort of options that meet or exceed industry standards. 

The OP isn't asking for this to be about real-world concepts like race  - the OP is not requesting that "races" be added to Wurm. It won't be green-skinned orcs or leopard-spot cat people next. We're all Wurmians, and we all understand that. The OP is asking on a meta-game level for expanded options in character creation, starting with skin tones. (again, not the same thing as adding races). 

Frankly, I was a little surprised to see this topic. (I did not know this has been a topic previously addressed & discussed). ... I had honestly assumed that expanding & updating the range of options in character creation was already on the dev's To-Do list. Looking at the other games in the sandbox / MMORPG genre, how could it not be?? Even stupid Minecraft  has a custom character creator - including cat ears, tails, hundreds of different physical features, a default 20+ color palette, and prosthetic limbs. 

The OP isn't asking for the ability to play a blind character, or a character in a wheelchair, or a character living with the effects of OCD.... although people like this have also existed in real life in every age of human history.... Is it sufficiently clear yet how bottom-of-the-barrel the OP's suggestion is, yet??

Even fantasy setting sandbox / MMO games that DO have races always have a "generic human" race - call it Breton, call it Hylian or Hyur - and as of 2020, the industry standard for character customization for the "generic human race" is something along these lines: 

INKQ8G9.jpg

 

FF:ARR has multiple races & Hyurian is the generic human race; BDO doesn't have any races at all / everyone is considered the same biodiverse humanoid race; ESO has different races, and the generic humans are divided by region / culture of origin (Breton, Redguard, and Nord). Cyberpunk and WoW:Shadowlands are previews. These games don't use gradient-style skin options; they use a static picker with limited options - but, as you can see, those options have a much greater range than Wurm. 

As noted by other comments, skin options are just the tip of the iceberg. Wurm could improve the range of available options for eyes, hair, and body, too. Not as pandering to special interests, not as some kind of socio-political statement, but simply because "avatar" type games attract a larger playerbase & improved income opportunities by allowing players greater options in character creation. No meta-gaming necessary. 

TLDR: suggesting a wider range of options for the various sections of character creation in "avatar" type games is so par the course for the gaming industry that the request is mundane to the point of boring. 
 

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Wurm has grown graphically in leaps and bounds from my initial discovery of the game in early 2014.  I would really love and enjoy a rework of the character creation options (and we do have some wonderful art members on the wurm team) to give more choices in hair styles, hair colors, facial features, and most especially skin tones.  It's more than time for this to be added into the options when you make your character.

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I logged in here just to say that I read every old thread about this today, and the attitude from the devs and a lot of the community on this topic over the years has been straight up racist. This being left out of the game for this long is a choice, and the obstinance to it sounds really familiar to people of color. I'm not sure what I was expecting to find when I searched for why you could only be different shades of white in this game featuring fantasy creatures, but it wasn't this. I've only been playing a few days but reading this discussion has really turned me off.

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I have to admit, I'm actually pretty disappointed that this thread has been here for literal years and still isn't an option in game.  Why? Is there actually a valid reason for denying darker skin tones for players?

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