Meaningful Customization - IV: The Dynamic Character

[Evil Minion 943]

I like the aspects of survival and charcter customization and in my opinion it would be great if those could be combined to allow for more choices. Some might be "just for show" while others might have some special use or general utility. Instead of only having "joke", "low tier" and "high tier" items there should be a variety of options that can prove useful under certain circumstances while also having some drawbacks attached to them. On the other side there should also be room for purely cosmetic aspects.

I decided to make multiple topics instead of a single long one but will use former thoughts in later ones (thats why the topic name has a number in it). This part centers around dynamic (ingame) changes to character appearance that mainly result from gameplay choices and should help making every survivor unique in some way. This topic is not about clothes but other options to customize your character during gameplay.

 

Part I - Stamina & Weight

Part II - Temperature & Wetness

Part III - Character Creation

Part IV - The Dynamic Character

2 CHARACTER:

2.4 Weight and Training

Instead of keeping the same shape all the time you should be able to change your body ingame for the better or the worse. You progress towards "Fat" when you consume food that would put you above your maximum energy capacity and you progress towards "Thin" when you are hungry. Progressing towards "Trained" is much harder: You need to consume stamina while being healthy and either tiring or exhausted due to physical activity (you need to run for quite a while before progressing even starts). For the sake of simplicity I suggest a semi-onedimensional approach: You can only ever be "Fat", "Thin" or "Trained" and transition is only possible via "Normal" state. So you can either progress further towards your current state or the normal one (if you do something that would make you progress towards a different one). So a thin person that starts to train will first gain weight until he/she reaches the normal state and then start to build up those muscles. Besides affecting your characters appearance and weight (and thus stamina costs - a trained survivor would have about the same weight as a normal survivor) there could be some other effects:

Normal:
- no positive or negative effects

Thin:
- faster temperature loss
- lower maximum energy
- lower stomach capacity

Fat:
- faster temperature gain
- lower movement speed
- higher maximum energy
- higher stomach capacity

Trained:
- higher stamina
- higher moevement speed

The more you progress towards a certain state the bigger the effect and the more your survivor will look like it. The exact appearance should depend on your body type:

Athletic males would look especially skinny when "Thin" but when "Fat" most of the weight concentrates on the belly while arms and legs stay thinner. A trained one would - as the name suggests - look similar to a professional athlete.
Muscular males would keep their broad shoulders even when very thin. Weight gain is more significant on the torso and arms so "Fat" one tend to look bulky while "Trained" ones would look more like bodybuilders.
Rectangular males would still be relatively stocky when thin, gain weight all over the body when progressing towards "Fat" and a "Trained" one would be well muscled without looking like he was on steroids.

Hourglass females would have the typical supermodel figure when "Thin", keep a defined waist even when "Fat" while gaining weight elsewhere and hardbodies when very "Trained".
Pear femnales would keep wide hips even when "Thin", a relatively slim upper body when "Fat" and a very feminine shape even when "Trained" but with well defined muscles.
Androgynous females would be boyish when "Thin", quite bulky when "Fat" and pretty masculine (in body shape) when "Trained" (comparable to the athletic and rectangular males).

2.5 Hair and Beards

 

also here

You hair and beard (if male) start out relatvely short (for both genders) and grow slowly over time. This means that growing long hair would take multiple ingame days and Rapunzel hair would be a strong indicator for a character that survived a long time. Still growth should be faster than it would be in real life just to make it possible to grow long hair. Hair (but no beards) could also have an effect on body temperature with long hair offering better protection against cold but also taking longer to become dry if it got wet. Hair can be cut and altered with different tools, where the specific options depend on the tool itself (you can't get a very orderly hairstyle when all you got is a Machete) the length of your hair, our hairtype (curly hair will always be curly) and the cut (if you use scissors it will look very different than if you use a sickle).

Cutting tools:
- Razor (best for shaving, relatively clean cutting)
- Scissors (best for cutting, clean cut)
- Knifes (okay for both cutting and shaving but might not cause the best results)
- Machete/Sickle etc. (only for very crude cutting)

The basic length and cut might be altered using other tools. A comb or hairbrush might result in much less savange looking hair. Use a band to create a ponytail and hairspray to make it stand (headwear will probably ruin this). Dreadlocks and braids should be possible as well. I am not quite sure if loose and long hair should have some drawbacks like impairing your vision (smaller FoV or blocked vision during rapid movement) - it pretty much depends on how much it forces players to tend their hair (which should not be one of the more frequent or important things to do in my opinion) and the technical possibilities of course.

Finally you should be able to do these things (and maybe even more) to other people (buddies, strangers and prisoners). Maybe even cut off someones long hair as some kind of trophy.

2.6 Body paint & Piercings

Pretty simple: paint your skin with different colors and shapes which of cuase requires you to find suitable equipment (like those colors) before. This includes makeup, bright colors and also camouflage and mud. The equipment should be able to be used more liberally - for example lipstick might be used to give you red lips but also to paint your face with red stripes or even color your whole face in red (which might require multiple lipsticks to be used). You should be able to color most body parts (everywhere) with a wider array of possible patterns or symbols although more elaborate paints might require another survivor to apply them to your skin.

Getting rid of the paint should depend on the equipment in question. Simple colors and mud might only need you to jump into a body of water to wash them off you while others might require the use of alcohol. However, no bodypaint should be permanent and the colors might fade or blur over time (maybe faster on wet survivors and slower on dry ones).

Piercings could work similar to clothes but applying them would be more elaborate (finding suitable equipment, desinfecting the equipment and choosing the place on you body) and might require another survivor to do the job. With the right equipment you should be able to take them off pretty easily and maybe even reapply them.

2.7 Tattoos & Scars

Lets talk about permanent marks. Tattoos are basically the big brother of body paint and should always require another survivor to apply them. Just like in real life they could work as identification marks especially because once you commited to them you won't we able to change them (until your survivor dies). In general almost everything possible with body paint should also be possible with tattoos and the bigger the tatoo the longer it takes until its finished. Tattooing by itself should require special equipment and take quite some time (and maybe even carry some risk of infection if not using sterile/high quality equipment) so not every survivor is able to affort it.

Scars should come in two flavors: combat scars and decoration scars. As the name suggests the first kind is aquired by being wounded in combat while the second kind works similar to tattoos but with some differences: decoration scars don't come in different colors (unless combined with tatoos if possible) and can't be as detailed. On the other side you don't need that much dedicated equipment. Still it should take quite some time and the process might be painful and cost some health as well as risking infection as well.

Combat scars are aquired by getting wounded. Bleeding wounds (or worse) would have some probability of leaving a scar. This probability should depend on the quality of the medical equiment used for treatment and further reduced by letting another survivor treat your wounds. Depending on those factors you will keep a big scar (pretty ugly but might look badass), a small scar (visible but not disfiguring) or no scar at all if you are lucky. So treating your wounds yourself with bad equipment has a high chance of causing a big scar, a smaller chance of causing a small scar and a very small chance of causing no scar while getting treated by another survivor using good equipment might have a good chance of causing no scar at all and a small chance of causing a small scar.

There might be even more specialized items that reduce the probability of leaving a scar even further at some cost (more inventory space needed, heavier, much rarer). This way scars could also help to give away people who like to fight often and mainly carry equipmemnt that helps with fighting as the tend to have more and bigger scars than pacifist medics. And battle hardened loners would also look like battle hardened loners with quite some scars all over their body.

2.8 Skills

 

also here

Now DayZ is obviously no role playing game where you collect experience points, level up and buy shiny new abilities with your skillpoints. But on the other side its not very realistic for a random survivor to have the skills of paramedics, soldiers, hunters, tailors etc. combined. Now I believe knowledge should stay on the players side - you should not be required to read a book ingame to perform specific actions. But training and experience should play a role: A freshly spawned survivor might know how to do something but lacks the experience to do it perfectly.

So similar to shaping your body you might be able to passively shape your skills by just doing things. If you perform one action over and over again you will become faster or the effect might be increased. Maybe some actions (like clothes modification or crafting more complex items) might even require a particular skill to be advanced enough before you can do so. Still most actions should be available to everyone although in a less effective shape (an untrained medic might take much longer to treat woulds than a more experienced one making the patient lose more blood in the process).

Skills would affect multiple actions (e.g. a medicine skill would affect treating woulds, giving and taking blood etc.) and should slowly degrade when not used for a longer period of time - faster you skill level is higher as it takes a lot of work to maintain extraordinary skills. So your actual skillset would depend solely on your playstyle instead of some starting preset or skillpoint distribution. If you concentrate on a few of your abilities you will end up as a specialist while doing everything on your own would make you into a generalist.

 

Possible Skills:

- Medicine (bandaging, taking or giving blood)

- Firearms (reloading, cleaning, switching stances, drawing guns)

- Brawling (drawing melee weapons, damaging melee weapons, melee attack speed)

- Crafting (tool usage, repairing or creating equipment)

- Mechanics (with vehicles/machines implemented)

- Survival (skinning animals, cooking, making fire, gathering wood)

... (further suggestions are welcome)

Edited May 27, 2014 by Evil Minion

[Nesuma (DayZ) 108]

I hope all of these ideas get implemented when the times come :)

[xenology 61]

I actually like this idea beans!

[matejkvassay 13]

That would be really realistic but I would cry because of my death even more if I had gained some stats :D This game is awesome because it's only game where you are really afraid of death. It's like real life, this would make the game double awesome.

[Redstar Payne 54]

Honestly no stats i mean i get it that it would be cool to gain something from healing people or sneaking around a lot but its not what this game has been about. As for the beards and customization im all for it because our characters are supposed to reflect ourselfs so of course we should have some facial hair and tattoos. Beans man all Beans!