Character Creation

[Mrstrato]

The Morrowind type character creation is fun for the first time, but for later start overs it gets annoying if you don't have a shortcut. If you don't like the questionnaire you should be able to choose from building your own character by selecting skills and allocating points, or to choose from premade characters. Morrowind gives you these shortcuts.

I prefer the free choice method because I like to customize even my character's tiniest bits. But for the first time, when I am new to the given RPG system and I do not see the connections between the attributes and skills, I like to browse and study premade characters. Even better if you can select and edit a premade character. That way you can keep the main characteristics and only fine tune the character to your taste.

So my choice is point 4 combined with point 2. The questionnarie is an option on top of them.

[fallen_hero]

In several games (I think they're mostly not RPG*s. Currently none comes to my mind...) you can change between characters - or sometimes you also have to to solve some situations. Is that something you like to do or is your prefered choice to play the full game with your own created character?

[DrHoo]

It worked something like that in Planescape: Torment. The protagonist could specialize as a fighter, mage, or rogue, and could multiclass, but only had his special class tricks like spellcasting or stealing available when he was "trained" by an NPC in that specialty. Which meant that in his party he had to have a warrior/wizard and a thief to "train"/switch him when he wanted to multiclass. It was clumsy.
Now I'm playing a game called Divine Divinity which works rather more like TH will (not stealing from their idea, neither of us played this game before, but great minds think alike apparently). You start as an archetype mage-rogue-fighter and then can add abilities freely and special class skills when leveling up. Much freer, but again the archetype is there. Seems really hard to get away from a certain amount of predestination in games.

[kolo83]

I didn't like F3 questionnaire, for me questions were confusing with the answers i would never give. I end up with character i wouldn't like to play, so for me there is no point in it.

[subbassman]

I didn't like F3 questionnaire, for me questions were confusing with the answers i would never give. I end up with character i wouldn't like to play, so for me there is no point in it.

Which one do you prefer and why?

[DrHoo]

I'm still mulling this over, even more after trying a number of other games. In general, characterization is almost universally stereotyped: you get your choice of being a warrior with outstanding physical ability, a mage with outstanding mental ability, or a thief with high dexterity. Those three seem to be the irreducible minimum. It's boring--next step in some games is adding priests/paladins/druids who have a "soulful" ability as their strong point. And beyond that--no games I've met with a synergy of several abilities, say a class that just can't make it without a high score in both strength and intelligence, or constitution and dexterity. Besides dubious assumptions such as strength and intelligence being mutually exclusive, this reduction to archetypes leaves me wondering if life is really so simple. Is this all we need, one really good ability, with the right armor to make up the difference?

[fallen_hero]

After some re-thinking I agree on what you wrote. It's mostly that simple that you only need to build up the proper ability to make it through most of the games. It make's gaming easier and it's quite clear for the player which route leads to success. Some action-focussing RPG games let you often choose between completing a game a action or a sneaking way. Anyway, I mostly had the feeling that the action way was always easier and more fun to go.

[subbassman]

fallen_hero

Do you prefer using brute force or smart actions?

[fallen_hero]

Normally brute force since it's faster and you get a direct feedback on your actions. You fastly learn what went wrong and can make a new try with a different tactic using the quick load function.

Smart actions can be fun,too. But it depends upon the gameplay and the rewards. If smart action is way too hard to go (experienced it in one action RPG) I loose the interest and patiece it needs and change to the action-option.
It's also a question of the reward. Sometimes games reward players using smart possibilities with special items or even unlocking new quests etc. that action players don't have. That would be something that could give me motivation to try smart ways instead of action.

[subbassman]

Do you spend a lot of time creating a character?