Honestly, the biggest reason is that it's often quite hard in a character creation menu to ever get a clear sense of how a character will really look over the course of a play-through in different lighting and angles and so on.
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This is a problem in so many games. You spend ages in the character creator, think they finally look good, then the very first cutscene of the game happens and they immediately look awful under the in-game lighting and you have to go restart the game to try again
I add that a problem with unchangeable character creation is that it frontload the play experience by asking you to make a bunch of annoying unchangeable decisions and tweaks. It adds to the weight of making the mechanical part of character building.
And sure, real people can't customize their faces (mostly), but they also can't choose to be an elf or a dwarf.
I don't think you lose much by allowing it (and given that its invariably modded in to every game almost immediately, it's not usually some sort of code/engine limitation).
Also, as an aside, just even being able to mix up hair and facial hair options as you go can help, I think, to add additional interest to an experience and is, you know, what actual humans do to mix up their 'look.'
Yeah, a lot of games offer different lighting for previews, but that really just won't tell you how it'll look moving out in the world a lot of the time.
> And sure, real people can't customize their faces (mostly), but they also can't choose to be an elf or a dwarf.
It is a concern in multi-player games, be it ttrpg or mmorpg the possibility of changes is limited to ensure some continuity. If you want something else that's a new character.
For solo:
- playing dolls (sorry I meant action heroes gi Joe & he man) can be important for the game. Options to customize appearance will be more present in third person compared to first person games.
- reducing the moving parts help reduce costs (technically feasible does not equate a good idea)
City of Heroes was like that from day 1, you can change anything you could set when you created the character. (Incl body type/gender) And it came with multiple costume slots, so you can have more than one.
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I don't think you lose much by allowing it (and given that its invariably modded in to every game almost immediately, it's not usually some sort of code/engine limitation).
It is a concern in multi-player games, be it ttrpg or mmorpg the possibility of changes is limited to ensure some continuity. If you want something else that's a new character.
- playing dolls (sorry I meant action heroes gi Joe & he man) can be important for the game. Options to customize appearance will be more present in third person compared to first person games.
- reducing the moving parts help reduce costs (technically feasible does not equate a good idea)