Samaia the Witch: Appearance changing, height & body-type mechanics

[SQUIGLONKER99]

This is a pretty broad idea since it's basically two suggestions that are interconnected to each other, mainly for game-balance purposes alongside additional customization. The short of it is adding a bit of extra personalization to our player characters while also expanding gameplay variety slightly in the process.

Additional Character-Creation options

While the texturing and style of Valheim's simple, the game also has limits on what kind of 'fashion' can be worn that remains practical in gameplay. Most of the current options of customization boil down to gender, skintone, and hair color - skintone being a differentiating factor is limited by how much of the player's body their current armor covers, and that's doubly true for hair options, which instead of being partially covered, is entirely covered when you have a helmet or hat on. For players that are closely synched in progress through a game this can potentially make telling who is who (without utilizing nametags) more challenging.

The core of the suggestion is to expand this with two extra settings that have minor gameplay adjustments included with them:

Height

Height would be implemented as a simple slider that changes the full size of your character. Treating the default character model as being 175 cm, the minimum height would be 130 cm, and the maximum 200 cm. The default height would have a tick-mark on this slider that can allow players to quickly identify this scale.
Being taller allows swinging of your tools and weapons to cover a larger area and reach farther, and increases your base running speed (but not your sprint speed.) However being taller also makes it easier for enemies to hit you or see you, and can make moving around certain tight corridors more difficult.

Body Type

Body type would be implemented either as a set of preset body shapes, or as sliders that allow the player to alter traits of limb and torso thickness, and head size (with middle-ranges being equivalent to the current character model). Depending on taste of the developers, these changes would either have no effect on gameplay, or could alter a 'weight' stat of the player that balances traits of knockback resistance and tool/weapon swinging efficiency at high weights, with sprinting/jumping efficiency at low weights.

Samaia the Witch

Because most players would already have a character created, with the default proportions on them, it'd be necessary to introduce some way for them to change their look mid-game (especially if even the slightest gameplay ramifications are involved with it.) Likely an option that would appear in mid-to-late game. Probably most thematically important would be a Witch NPC in the Swamp biome, Samaia - she will ask the player for a selection of common components from the Black Forest (thistle, yellow mushrooms, greydwarf seeds) to concoct a brew that can be used to transmogify your appearance. After this is done once, all players in the server will be able to change their appearance once for free, then for a low single-component cost for additional apperance changes after that - though this will impose an Appearance Curse on your character for 60 minutes that will prevent you from changing appearance again (lest Samaia accidentally turn you into a Neck, or worse...)

[Panfilo]

This is a really interesting idea, and I would love it IF and only IF they could do it in a way that makes either 'extreme' equally worthwhile in its own right- ie asymmetrical balance.

So for instance having a diminutive avatar lets you squeeze through areas inaccessible to bulkier counterparts, which gives you access to loot or shortcuts (or simply make it easier to flee enemies in places like swamps). Certain crevices could have the player interact with it "Press 'E' to shimmy through" and if the player was small enough they would quickly slip through, but if they were too big they'd be penalized by struggling and wasting stamina to no avail. If the seed RANDOMIZED the size thresholds of these mouse holes in the game, it gives great incentive to explore. Smaller avatars would also probably be better at sneaking, so a little manlet of a viking would be great as a scout in co op, helping to find safe paths.

Conversely being big could certainly have combat benefits, but I can tell you right away that this in of itself sounds like so much of an edge that any perks to being dinky start to look rather situational. You described a witch that could change you a la Alice in Wonderland, so you'd have either option available if it suited you. Though it would be fun from an RP standpoint to try and decide at the start which you want to focus on, being slippery and sneaky, or loud and strong.

The weight thing is interesting as well, I'd add modifiers to stamina and maybe even potion/food duration as well. So you might be tougher and tankier but you're going to burn through consumables faster- this isn't really a concern in co op but if you were playing solo it might be risky, vs being waifish and knocked around like a wiffle ball but making much more efficient use of resources in the process.

Overall an interesting idea.

[SQUIGLONKER99]

Conversely being big could certainly have combat benefits, but I can tell you right away that this in of itself sounds like so much of an edge that any perks to being dinky start to look rather situational. You described a witch that could change you a la Alice in Wonderland, so you'd have either option available if it suited you. Though it would be fun from an RP standpoint to try and decide at the start which you want to focus on, being slippery and sneaky, or loud and strong.

Done right, I think the benefits of being shorter could equal those of being large and in-charge of combat, but it'd absolutely be two separate playstyles - be large if you wanted to focus on using stuff like Block and Melee Weapon skills, or be small if you wanted to focus on using Sneak and Bows. Shorter characters could also benefit from improved dodge efficiency or similar benefits like that versus shields.

It's absolutely something I've seen done correctly in other games (best example I can think of is Dragon's Dogma which yes the inspiration on the OP is pretty visible.) Frankly, the less you can actively feel or "compare" the results easily, the better. DD does have an easier time getting away with that due to the fact it doesn't have any kind of live multiplayer or PVP though.

The weight thing is interesting as well, I'd add modifiers to stamina and maybe even potion/food duration as well. So you might be tougher and tankier but you're going to burn through consumables faster- this isn't really a concern in co op but if you were playing solo it might be risky, vs being waifish and knocked around like a wiffle ball but making much more efficient use of resources in the process.

Yeah so a really early draft I had of this idea separated the body type idea into archetypes that would do precisely this: the basics were that each type would have 2 minor bonuses tied to them, so like the default setting would have their 'rested' status last 1 minute longer and all food grant an extra 3 stamina and health, being thin would slightly increase movement speed and give all food eaten a stamina bonus, being muscular would let you get the rested status in 15 seconds instead of 20 and add a damage buff vs. creatures per food item eaten, and being round would increase your base health and stamina, and the duration that food buffs would last (fat usually being a great evolutionary trait if you're spending long periods without easy food access, i.e. in the winter or at sea!) But then I thought the implications of tying direct game-mechanics that closely to how you want your polygons to be shaped could be seen as a bit skeevy, so I passed on all that.