Trials Garage Update #3: Customization
Welcome back, riders. This month’s Garage topic is customization and this could prove to be an interesting one. Customization is something that nearly half of all Trials players, from first timers to seasoned pros, will touch at some point in their time with the game. In Fusion 46% of players customized their bike or rider. Customization is also a feature that has changed a lot between almost every version of the game so let’s start by taking a look back.
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From the early browser based games on MiniClip through Trials 2 SE on PC, Trials games didn’t have much in the way of customization. Trials HD was the first Trials game to feature the ability to customize your bike and rider. Everybody’s bike had the same model and their riders all had the same clothes but each piece was colorable and for the first time players could truly differentiate their rider from others.
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Trials Evolution brought many big improvements to the franchise including to customization. Bikes still only had one skin but retained most of the color options from Trials HD. Options for the rider however were busted wide open with a number of items to unlock and equip as players progressed through the career mode. This brought a lot more options for players to customize the look of their player but it also brought some limitations. Not all gear was fully colorable with most items having some parts that could be colored while others remained the color set by designers. We’ll touch on this a bit more later.
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The addition of a collection of rider gear in Trials Evolution also meant we needed a system for unlocking them and for the first time Trials had an in-game economy. Like many first iterations the economy wasn’t perfect. It was very easy for players who completed the game to collect all the gear and players who spent a lot of time with the game, like leaderboard grinders, ended up with a large amount of currency and nothing to spend it on.
In the DLCs we added more items players could purchase with career mode currency and set the prices significantly higher than those in the base game. We wanted to give dedicated players more objectives and rewards for grinding tracks but we may have taken this idea a little too far. Getting even one of these high value items was very difficult for most players. It’s great to have some items that only the most dedicated players can get but in Evo we maybe had a few too many. This left a lot of the post launch customization items out of reach for many players.
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Trials Fusion had a number of firsts for the series including having an overarching theme and story tying everything together. Customization in Fusion was developed to support this new direction. Again we had a collection of gear players could unlock through progression of the career mode and earning in-game currency. This time however the outfits weren’t just a collection of helmets, shirts and pants, they represented different types of characters who would be present in Trials Fusion’s world and each outfit had different tiers that became more and more elaborate. As players progressed and became more experienced their rider’s appearance could rank up with them. Fusion also featured multiple skins for most of the bikes, another first for the series.
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With these more elaborate outfits a limitation that first popped up in Trials Evolution became much more pronounced, colorization. Some players felt like they had less control over customization because while rider gear and bike skins did have color options many parts were not colorable and the piece by piece color options that bikes had in previous games were replaced with only a few options. There are limits to how we can manipulate certain materials in the game and in order to create the more detailed outfits for Trials Fusion we had to make some tough decisions about how they could be altered by players. This month in the Trials Garage Radio podcast we speak with Lead 3D artist Arno Male and during our discussion we go a bit more in depth into the limitations of coloring 3D assets. Check it out now on the Trials radio Soundcloud.
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That wasn’t it for Trials Fusion though. Like Evolution before it we added some new items for the bike and rider through DLCs. Yet another first for the Trials series was the inclusion of a female rider. This of course meant a whole new set of customization options to use with the female rider model. And finally in the second year of Fusion’s life we added premium items and a premium currency, Acorns.
Premium currency is a touchy subject for some players but the introduction of a new source of revenue allowed us to put extra resources into creating more items for the bike and rider than we could have otherwise. With the inclusion of Acorns we were able to continue adding items for the bike & riders throughout Fusion’s second year. We also took this opportunity to include some high value items, as we did in Evo, for players who had collected more in-game currency than they could use. This time we let players from the community provide input on which items we’d use, how much they’d cost and what they’d be called.
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Now that we’ve taken a look back we can start to look at how we can improve. When we think about what we can do with customization one important factor is what we’ve learned from previous iterations. What did they do well? Where did they fall short? The answers to questions like these help us determine what we should focus on when thinking about customization in Trials.
First is color. The lack of color options compared to Trials Evolution was the biggest customization related feedback we received from players of Trials Fusion. We know players would like more control over how they can color their bike and rider but we also want to be able to create the best looking items we can and sometimes that means limiting color options. Finding a good balance between the two will be a focus when we think about improving bike parts and rider gear. Particularly, when it comes to bikes, we know that the options available in Fusion did not meet player expectations and need to be revisited.
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Another frequent source of feedback was the themed items in Fusion. There are a lot of mixed opinions about what is appropriate rider gear for Trials. Some players favor more traditional looking motor cross outfits while others like the crazy helmets and outfits that make them stick out on the X-Supercross starting line. The challenge for us is trying to find a balance that will please both types of players. There has always been a wild side to Trials and customization is a prime area to convey this. Funny, wacky or downright strange customization items aren’t likely to be going anywhere. What we’d like to do better though is to create enough variety of items and options to allow players of all types to more easily express themselves with their in-game character.
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We’ve had lots of great feedback about customization over the years but this is the Trials Garage after all so now it’s your turn. Sound off in the comments section and let us know your feelings about customization. What do you like? What don’t you like? And why? Of course we’ve also got a new survey covering customization. This one is pretty quick so please take a minute or two to fill that out as well.
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That does it for this Trials Garage Update. Thanks for joining us. To stay up to date on all things Trials be sure to follow us on Facebook or Twitter and of course check back in to the Garage next month when we’ll be discussing an all new topic. Until then, we’ll see you on the leaderboards.