[Participating in the Nexon PEAK Post Challenge]

https://peak.nexon.com/post/2308

When I started a game, I used to decide my character’s appearance pretty quickly.

I assumed that once the armor was on, you would barely see the face anyway, and after a few hours I would just get used to it. So most of the time, I would pick a hairstyle and hair color and log in right away.

But Mabinogi Heroes was different.

I could spend ages in character creation and still not make it into the game. A face that looked fine from the front felt awkward from the side, and even a small change to the body shape could make the same outfit look completely different.

In the end, I spent more time revising my character than I did creating it the first time.

For me, the Nexon game with the most enjoyable customization was Mabinogi Heroes. I liked the detailed face editing, but what I appreciated most was being able to think about combat gear and cosmetic outfits separately.

The first character I made looked completely different once I saw them in town

The lighting on the character creation screen was flattering.

The face looked clear, and the skin looked smooth. After rotating the character through several angles, I thought I had made something I was reasonably happy with.

But the moment I entered town, it felt different.

Eyes that had looked natural in the creation screen seemed a little too large in the actual game, and the face shape felt longer than I had imagined. It looked fine in combat, but whenever I saw the character up close in dialogue scenes or around town, it kept bothering me.

So I went back and adjusted the appearance again.

At first, I made big changes to the eyes and face shape, but the more I edited, the stranger it looked. Fixing one part made another stand out, and if I got the front view right, I no longer liked the profile.

After a few failed attempts, I stopped making major changes to the whole face. I only adjusted the parts that kept catching my eye, like the eye size or jawline, little by little.

Just like over-editing a photo can erase the original face, changing too much of a character’s appearance at once pulled it away from the mood I had in mind at the beginning.

Even the same outfit felt completely different depending on the body type

In Mabinogi Heroes, I spent more time thinking about body type than the face.

Each character has a different base impression and build, and even the range of adjustment is different. Depending on how I set the height and proportions, the same equipment could give off a completely different feel.

At first, I always made the character as tall as possible.

I thought it would look stronger in battle, and that long weapons would suit the character better. And when I put armor on, I was fairly satisfied.

The problem came when I tried lighter outfits.

The build felt much more emphasized than the natural look I wanted. In the end, I lowered the height and body shape a little, then adjusted the shoulders and overall proportions again.

Only then did both combat gear and more everyday outfits look equally natural.

That was when I realized something. Customization should not end with the character creation screen alone. You really need to see the full look alongside the outfits you expect to wear most often.

The reason I chased gear shifted from performance to appearance

At first, of course, I only looked for gear with better stats.

If my defense and attack went up, I was satisfied, and I did not think much about appearance. But after I got one outfit I really liked, the way I played started to change.

Whenever I got new gear, I checked the design before the performance.

“Would this top go well with the bottoms I already have?”

“Maybe it would work if I only changed the gloves?”

Once I started thinking that way, I stopped seeing gear as a single full set. I began mixing tops, bottoms, gloves, and shoes separately.

Wearing a finished set as-is is the safer option, but sometimes mixing it with pieces from other sets gave me a combination I liked even more.

Since I could manage combat gear and cosmetic appearances separately, I also did not have to keep looking at a design I disliked just because it had better performance.

At some point, the game shifted from one where I geared up to beat bosses to one where I beat bosses so I could dress my character better.

I spent more time than expected on dyeing alone

Once I had settled on an outfit combination, the next step was matching the colors.

At first, I thought I could not go wrong if I kept everything black and white. It did look clean, but the problem was that it also made my character look too similar to others.

So I tried mixing in dark navy or deep red.

The tricky part was that even when it looked like the same color, the result changed depending on the material. Metal details reflected more brightly, while fabric looked much darker. Sometimes the colors matched perfectly on the dye screen, only to feel disconnected under the actual lighting in town.

After that, I stopped trying to make every part exactly the same color.

I picked one main color, then used a secondary color on smaller areas like gloves or shoes. For metal ornaments, it often looked more natural to preserve the original texture rather than forcing them to match the outfit color.

There were times when I spent an hour just choosing colors.

Even without doing a single battle, it still felt like I had properly enjoyed the game. At that point, customization had become its own kind of content.

Four standards I ended up developing while styling my character

After revising appearances over and over and changing outfits, I ended up with a few standards of my own.

First, I do not look only at the front on the character creation screen.
I check the profile and even the view from slightly above. In actual play, I spent much more time seeing the character from an angled view than straight on.

Second, I think about the outfits I will wear often before deciding on the body type.
The best proportions changed depending on whether I planned to focus on heavy armor or mostly wear lighter outfits and avatars.

Third, I keep the colors within a maximum of three.
If I used every color I liked, each part ended up feeling separate from the others. It looked cleaner to organize things into a main color, a secondary color, and a color for metal or decorative details.

Fourth, I check both in town and in battle.
An outfit that looks great under bright lighting can lose most of its detail in a dark dungeon. If I plan to take screenshots, it helps to check it in several places.

And the most important thing is not copying other people’s popular outfit combinations exactly.

It helps to use well-made combinations as reference, but if the face and body type are different, the same clothes can look completely different. Even changing just one part in a way I liked made me feel more attached to the character.

What kept me playing for so long was not powerful gear, but a familiar face

If you spend a long time with an online game, your gear keeps changing.

Weapons that once took real effort to obtain eventually end up in storage when new equipment arrives. Combat styles and skill combinations can also change with updates.

But the face and overall feel of the character I made myself stayed with me for a long time.

Whenever a new outfit came out, I first thought about whether it would suit my character, and even when I returned after a long break, I checked the appearance before the gear. Looking at the outfit combinations I had put together in the past naturally brought back memories of what kind of content I was playing at the time.

That is why customization in Mabinogi Heroes never felt like it was only about making a pretty character.

It gave me one more reason to keep playing.

On days when I was tired of combat, I changed outfits, and on days when there was nothing in particular to do, I went back and adjusted the dyes again. As I kept refining the character little by little, it felt less like I was controlling a protagonist someone else had made and more like I was playing alongside a character I had created myself.

For me, a game with fun customization is not simply a game with a huge number of options.

It is a game where I can keep seeing the appearance I made myself in battle, in town, and in story scenes, and where getting a new outfit gives me another reason to style the character again.

By that standard, Mabinogi Heroes is still the Nexon game that comes to mind first.

When you make a character, which part do you spend the most time on: the face, the body type, or the outfit?

#NPC01 #커마재미있는게임 #확률형아이템포함 #피크챌린지 #넥슨피크 #마비노기영웅전 #마영전 #넥슨게임 #커스터마이징 #캐릭터꾸미기 #온라인게임추천 #아바타코디 #게임코디 #캐릭터외형 #염색 #게임추억