It's my intention in this thread to provide Cryptic with my opinions and ideas for the Character Creator. I'm a huge fan of characters and character development and as Trek is about diversity amongst many cultures I think that this is also an important thing for the game (especially with so many people playing - variety is good!)
Ideas for Future Preset Races - Starfleet
The first two options comes directly from the lead character designer in this article.
http://www.rarityguide.com/articles/articles/210/1/Exclusive-Interview-Star-Trek-Onlines-Matt-Highison-Lead-Character-Artist/Page1.html
1. Caitians (confirmed 1st post-launch by aforementioned article)
2. Tellarites (confirmed 2nd post-launch by aforementioned article -
should have been preset by launch IMO.)
Now I will go on with ideas for future playable races on the Federation side. I had a longer list originally but I am going to choose the races that are more visually different. There's no sense of putting a list of like 40 races.. I doubt anything that immense will ever get done. Nevertheless here they are.
3. Cardassian (Federation is currently allied with the Detapa Council - Dual Citizenship as well)
4. Denobulan
5. Android
6. Hologram
7. Talaxian (Suffice it to say if you like him or not, Neelix and the Talaxians are a big thing on Voyager)
8. Rigelian (The ones with the green faces from Enterprise - not the birds)
9. Zakdorn
10. Antican
11. Selay
12. Grazerite
13. Ithenite
14. Coridan
15. Antedean
16. Edosian (Lt. Arex from TAS)
17. Xindi-Primate
18. Xindi-Arboreal
19. Xindi-Reptilian
20. Xindi-Insectoid
I'm actually going to force myself to stop there as that's a pretty hefty list as it is. I do think that every few months that Cryptic could release a species or two. Most either have slightly remodelled heads or forehead pieces. There are some, that would purely just be awesome to have cause they look different.
In an effort to prevent this post to be too long (since I know 'walls of text' are discouraged I am going to do the next part in a seperate post.
Comments
There are a ton of these missing. As already mentioned, most of the forehead pieces that are currently in-game belong to races from the Delta Quadrant.
With that being said there are quite a few races that could still be put into the game such as the Romulan forehead, Takaran facial features, Zakdorn, Bynars, Elaysians, etc. TONS of races to choose from simply from the Alpha and Beta Quadrants that are just not in the game sadly enough.
I strongly recommend for Cryptic to look at the following link.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Alpha_and_Beta_Quadrant_species
Hairstyles
The hairstyles, like the foreheads are severely lacking. Especially for some of the alien foreheads. Some of them just don't go well together.
During closed beta and open beta I put up a graphics list of hairstyles that could or should be in the game at some point in time. Again, variety is key. There are tons of characters that end up looking the same either because of not enough alteratation in the facial features or simply because people aren't able to alter them enough to start with (speficially the eyes).
Though I didn't add it to the images, they should definitely add the Captain Picard and EMH hairstyles to the game.
Humans 1
Humans 2
Humans 3
Humans 4
Humans 5
Humans 6
Humans 7
Aliens 1
Aliens 2
Klingons
Orions & Nausicaans
Cardassians
Romulans
I think though it's awesome for Cryptic to add new content, character appearances in its current state will get old really quickly. At least, to me, I know Cryptic can add to what they currently have and I hope that by knowing so many people play the game, that they will expand it both inwardly and by also adding new content post-launch.
Although I doubt you'd ever be able to implement the Aquatics, they're stuck in their ginormous fishtanks...
I'm a huge fan of the Xindi and I'd love for them to be in there, especially the Insectoids.. but that's something I guess for a wait and see.
Great Work, hope Cryptic can use some of these ideas.
I'd be content if they could release 1 or 2 new races from my list every few months (1-2 months) as the Federation is all about diversity.
I'm anxiously awaiting for them to put in my Tellarites as preset. I miss them.
Great ideas. Especially interesting playing a hologram!
I think they told us at one point we'd be able to... not sure what happened with that.
I wouldn't say no to the Bynars, however they always operate in pairs. Though I think there was one Bynar in the novels that lost their other one so they were forced to be alone.
Come on Cryptic, let's add more races for variety's sake please!
Do your women have beards too JP? I kid though, let's go Tellarites!
Just one thing to add: They need to make sure ALL race's options are allowed for Alien so people can "remake" a species if they don't like the innates and don't mind giving up the exclusive innate.
The Borg eyepiece is limited to actual Borg, so no making a human look like a Borg. Well, at least for females. I don't play males ever.
If they limit the Caitian ears to actual Caitians, I'm gonna be very distraught.
The ability to move the camera around the character. Not just move the character around and zoom in and out, but actually move the camera to focus on certain parts of the body.
It's kinda hard to see good detail on your character's boots when the interface itself gets in the way because the camera is constantly centered on the character's torso. With the character always constantly in motion because of the standing position you put them in, sometimes it's hard to look at certain details.
The same applies to the Ship builder. Not being able to center in on certain parts of the ship makes it hard to tell if you really like a certain paint scheme or appearance sometime.
More importantly for the Ship Builder is the positioning of the Lighting. You have to rotate the ship to the right in order for the light to shine more on it. From the angle you look at it, it's pretty shaded and you can't properly see what each color really looks like in a well illuminated view. This also makes things a little difficult if you want to see which paint colors, paint schemes, and parts look best for your ship.
Please put the lighting on the ship builder directly from the camera itself.
PS... For the record, that interview linked to in the first post has some quotes and information that is "questionable at best", so I'd advise you to take it with a small mountain of salt.
My suggestion would be to create a vendor on Risa. Have this vendor sell an item for 1-100 energy that will go into the "Armor" or "Kit" slot. This item when equipped and set to show appearance, would give the wearer the outfit you see the Risa NPC's wearing. Then, when you finally decide to leave Risa, you beam to your ship where the temporary item in your Armor or Kit slot then disappears from your inventory. If you return to Risa, you can go right back to the vendor and cheaply purchase another temporary swim wear outfit. If possible the vendor could sell the items listed by their primary colors for diversity.
This would allow everyone who visits Risa to fit in and not have to wear your uniform while "on leave". Also by making it use the Armor/Kit slot, it completely over rights your appearance so you don't have to worry about the swim wear outfit conflicting with any other uniform options. Finally by making the temporary item disappear when you beam out, you don't have to worry about people running around space stations breaking immersion for others.
Exactly which part is "questionable at best"? We already know the Tellarites will be hitting Tribble shortly, if they haven't already (I haven't read the patch notes yet). Unless I'm missing something this leaves only one option.
Why do I have a sinking feeling your pushing off the Caitians? Please tell me this isn't true. As it is I've spent most of my time in game so far messing around with alts waiting on Caitians so I can finally have my "main", and I know for a fact I'm not the only one doing this. The information from this article was a major part of the reason I've been waiting. Tell me that your working on the Caitians and their coming next, please!
One of the other Dev's already confirmed that things changed and Tellerites are going to come before Caitians do. They didn't exactly say why, but I would bet it has to do with issues from adding a animated tail to the character models and that they can't wear footwear and have different ankles/feet than the humanoids do. They are working on them, their just not ready as of yet.
Edit: Here's the post from dstahl where he confirmed it. LINK
Tellarites SHOULD come first. Heck, they should have already been in the game. They're one of the founding members of the Federation.