Thoughts & Feedback So Far

[rnblundell]

Overall, I'm enjoying the character creator so far, though there are improvements I hope to see to it.

The Pros:

-Color Wheels - Not only can you change the colours of your clothes, but there's a full on colour wheel for hair, skin, and eyes (so if you want to make a green person with purple hair and red eyes, you can).

-Hair Highlights - On top of making your hair any colour you want, you can also change the colour of different portions, similar to how you could in the Sims 3. Therefore, you can have blue streaks if you want to.

-Strong Face Editor - Took a little to learn, but you can tweak the face more or less to your liking.

-Custom Face Presets - In addition to saving your whole character as a preset, you can just save their face. I don't know what the game's genetics system will be like, but, in the mean time, being able to save a character's face will make it easier to create would-be family members.

-The Photo Studio - You're able to choose a background (which you can then change the colour of), position your lighting (and change the colour of that), and pose your character, a tool that will not only be fun, but invaluable for youtubers looking to make attractive thumbnails. This feature removes the hassle Sims players have of downloading a pose player mod or downloading different colour backgrounds into create-a-sim.

-Diverse Gender Identity & Orientation Options - You can't actually select these options yet, since the menu is labelled as "in development," but you can clearly see there will be options (including "non-binary" in addition to male and female) so that's nice to know. I am curious if any additional options will be included. The Sims 4 recently added polyamory, for example, and has options like pronouns, if a character can get pregnant or not, how they pee, etc, so I'm curious to see exactly how robust this menu will be.

-Beautiful Graphics - This is the game's selling point, but, overall, characters are pleasant to look at. They might be uncanny-valley for some players, but I personally have no problem with the style.

The Cons:

-Limited Clothing Options - I imagine there will be more options in the future, since this is just a demo, but I was surprised there weren't more accessories like bracelets and watches. For jewellery, I'd also like to see less "fancy" options, since not every character would be able to afford full on jewels. Finally, I hope there are expanded skirt and dress options. I'd like more flowing gowns, summer dresses, and some maxi skirts. Ideally, all clothing options would be gender-neutral too, given characters can identify as any gender or orientation.

-Limited Body Range - I'd like to see a greater range in body types across the spectrum (skinnier, heavier, more muscular), as well as more control over the individual portions. Didn't feel I could do much with the breasts or bum, and, after the face editor, I was expecting a detailed body edit mode. The creator isn't bad, but I have greater range in the Sims 4. I'd like to make people who are athletic, bony, obese, bodybuilder muscular, and so on. More range on shoulder width, the neck, the waist, the hips, the breasts, and the butt especially would help.

-Lack of Height Slider - I understand if the animations between characters make this impossible, but it does prevent differentiation between characters. I wanted to make someone tiny and waifish to pair with a muscular, 7 foot hunk, and the lack of a height slider, paired with a limited body range, will become more noticeable when I make multiple characters.

-Limited Lips & Head - Overall I like the face creator, but couldn't make the lips as thin as I'd have liked. I found it weird that moving the chin forward also pulled the lower lip forward - the chin and lips should be completely separate from each other. I wouldn't mind an option to adjust the head size either - nothing cartoonish, but a slight range would be nice.

-No Waist Length Hairs - This is a complaint I have about most games (including an unmodded Sims), but most of the clothing options here wouldn't clip if longer hairs were offered. I imagine modders could step in on this one, like they have for every other game, but it would be nice to have waist length (or even floor length) hair be a part of a base game.

Tattoos - Not a deal breaker, but would be a nice touch.

Things I Hope to See:

-A Cat Creator - The game opens with a very cute cat, so I'm hoping that's a hint there will be pets in the base game. I hope there are dogs too, but I'd be very surprised if I couldn't customise some kitties, since they feature so prominently.

Summary:

Despite the list of cons, the creator is good overall. Time will tell if this runs well on my computer or not. I had no problem with the character creator itself, but experienced lag when the opening animation played before I opened the creator, making me a little nervous in regards to how the actual game play will go. I hope the release date isn't too far away; at the same time, I want the developers to take as long as they need to incorporate feedback. Some of the comments on here make the creator sound bad, but we've been spoiled with the Sims (especially if your game is modded) and I appreciate that for other developers this is uncharted territory.