Custom Characters, This would be cool Options

[Purple J, The Strongest One]

Think about it. You could make your own character sprite, and have it stay the same in every dream you go to. So if it was a Sonic character, it would stay in that form in all the other dreams. And if you wanted too, you could change that character's form by words, or by dreams. My life would be complete!

[Kain Ragnorok]

An avatar Digo (like a portspace but for your walkabout) has been suggested and turned down before, for multiple reasons.

A) It wouldn't be canon. All of the current Digos are at least partially canon.
B) It would take control away from dream owners trying to uphold their continuity. You say you want to be a Sonic char everywhere you go--but my continuity doesn't acknowledge the presence of the Sonic "universe."
C) It would clash immensely with game art.
D) It would be 20 shapes for DEP staff to check for problems--like excessive gore, nudity, etc. This is one of the reasons why animated portrait spaces (if they come out with them) will be more expensive than normal ones--it adds a lot of work for DEP.

[Kamose]

This popular suggestion has been rejected on the grounds that it would create massive lag and would give players too much control over the appearance of main maps. See Frequently Suggested Avatars for other threads that discuss this.

In 2004, Talzhemir wrote an excellent explanation of why we won't see custom avatars. Although it's an old post, most of her points are still relevant.

2. FURREALITY

I'm against patching individuals' avatars in Furcadia because that gives more main-map control away than I want to. Furcadia is, first and foremost... furries. I've got nothing against walking teapots or stormclouds, but we're advertising ourselves as a "furry" place, and, by Mickey, that's what patrons are gonna get.

I'm grateful that Furcadia players tend to upload mostly furry animal portraits. Every so often, though, there are some non-furry ones. As long as they're not R-rated, we just smile, and say Thank you VERY much.

Having custom walkabouts on the main maps would be much more disruptive, though. I say this because the games I've seen that permitted it (for example, http://www.thepalace.com/) were chaotic and "twinky." By that, I mean, the avatars that people tended to choose were as extremely god-like as they could find, and sometimes they weren't a character, they were just a big picture of a
face.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with an anything-goes kind of game like that but if done on Furcadia, it would have severely hurt the potential for Strict RP.

(While they're an almost tiny minority, Strict RPers tend to also be the furres who give the most of themselves. I strongly want to give them something back if we can.)

3. DOWNLOADS: THE DREADED N-SQUARED OVERHEAD PROBLEM

Bear in mind that Furcadia runs on ONE machine. Every portrait being viewed for the first time is being spewed out the same byte spiggot. A portrait is 10K. A small avatar such as the bunny is about 82K.

Viewing a portrait doesn't affect what you see when you move around the little scenery window. It takes a fast machine just a blink but a player on a slower connection (say dial-up) would be frozen for around 4 seconds each time a new walkabout was downloaded.

Now imagine what would happen to them if they walked into a Dream where 5 furres with custom walkabouts are standing there.

Bear in mind that, as this furre had to get 5 new downloads, at some point, all of those 5 also got sent copies of each other.

(If the number of furres is 5, then the number of downloads total is 5 to the second power, or, 25. N to the second power, or N-Squared. This is the dreaded N-Squared Overhead problem, where the resources needed for things you trade this way can skyrocket out of control fairly fast!)

When you buy a Port, you're partly paying for some DEP person to peek at it and okay it. But a bit of your moolah also went to defray the future bandwidth sapped by every time someone had to download it to look at it.

4. MUTUALNESS

For those who had limited bandwidth, I didn't think toggling Custom Walkabouts to "OFF" was a good idea. It solves the freezing problem but Furcadia is meant to have "mutualness", meaning, we all see the same thing. You could patch all your avatars to be fruits with big eyes and big feet but you have to go fairly out of your way to accomplish it.

Knowing that we are seeing the same thing brings a sense of unity with others in our virtual space. Experiencing different things drives us apart like a wall or wedge.

I wouldn't favor letting furres see the custom avatars but letting others turn them off. It kicks mutualness in the 'nads. Some furres seeing furres, and others seeing a giant talking apple, is confusing.

When someone turns their Music or Sound FX off, Mutuality has just been kicked in the shins. We didn't like adding it but we did see the point and we added the buttons.

[Purple J, The Strongest One]

And if you wanted to, you could change that character's form by words, or by dreams.

You forgot to read that part, didn't you?

[Justin StinCoy]

While hypothetically a nice idea, customized avatars won't work on Furcadia for the various reasons listed above.

Quoth Purple J, The Strongest One:
And if you wanted to, you could change that character's form by words, or by dreams.

You forgot to read that part, didn't you?

That only addresses Kain's B point and, to a lesser extent, C point. Talzhemir's 4. MUTUALNESS section covers why they don't want a toggle for the rest of Furcadia. Whatever one's views on the feasibility of avatar toggling, the other issues are still major stumbling blocks.