I have noticed a trend in RPG and MMORPG development that is a bit concerning for me. Now, not everyone is going to agree with me. That is fine, but I really would like to know why developers have reduced the amount of avatar customization available for players. The number of item slots has gone down ( We saw the leaked gameplay footage of TESO and there were a shockingly small inventory). The way a character looks is very streamlined; meaning the gear game is tiered and everybody essentially looks the same.

Look at EQ in terms of inventory slots... lots of customization and gear available to the player. Look at Anarchy Online... again, lots of customization. We have come a long way since these games. We can now animate a sword sheath, and we can place unique items on the avatar...but we don't. Why? Todd Howard commented in an interview that it's hard to tell what games are RPG's today because every game is doing some kind of upgrade, level, or reward for your play ( e.g battlefield 3). Let me tell you, it's not because shooters today are becoming more like RPG's. No, RPG's are becoming more like action/adventure games.

Game developers are going to do what they want or whatever their research shows them, so I am no expert or really care what happens in the end. If the game is fun, I'll play it. However, I am really curious to find out what it is that makes the inventories shrink. The physical representation of customization on the avatar is really a second thought isn't it? It would have been easy to give dual 1h sheath on skyrim but they didn't put it in the final product.. Yes, we modded that issue and, in fact, they had started to develop that part of the avatar, but stopped... WHY?

Really... It's funny to me that less customization... Less growth of how we represent the character's presence in the game by reducing how we make them feel about their avatar. If I was helping in designing this or any rpg game... I would want my character to look at his avatar, with his weapons on him, and his recently added pouch that increases his carrying capacity AND is shown on his avatar...His mount that has a new saddle... or maybe he didn't like his weapons on his hip, and he places them on his back... HIS/HER CHOICE... on how they look... how they carry their weapons and items... how many items they can equip...

Nothing ridiculous of course... I mean is reducing the item size have to do with how the game is balanced? That doesn't seem like something that would be too difficult to achieve.

Let's say I play a hunter.. I have swords and a bow and arrow... so why in MOST games does this character have his bow magically pop out of the sky and into his hands when the weapon is changed...MOST game companies will totally not care about this detail....Maybe most people don't care either, but I would say it would put a little RPG back into our adventure games... no?

This is why leaked videos should not be leaked.

The itemization of your character has more options than what was shown, the sliders in customizing your avatar is extensive, actually in that vid some of the sliders from PAX were not in, which could be the testers were using an older build and the devs where testing for something else.

I am not talking about customization in terms of building your character at creation screen. I am talking about itemization and how your avatar looks and feels by allowing you to add more weapons. I also said this isn't just a TESO thing ( and only a TESO thing in terms of ITEM SLOTS...unless you are saying that there are more item slots than shown in the inventory in the leaked video. ) I am talking about the way your character is represented by his gear and weapons... or player housing.... or whatever... I am saying we went from lots of item slots to a few... Instead of placing more items on the character, we reduced it... anyway.

You bring up 2 main points. The first actually has 2 causes. Balance and complexity. The more options given the more difficult they are to balance because of how complex the math becomes. Complexity in general stat wise is kinda silly. If you are bringing in meaningful loot, meaning each slot is not just a carbon copy of what stats you want, then the larger loot tables are and the more stats that players have to keep track of. While a little frustration is good, and can even be great, too much quickly leads to dissociation. The second point is mainly due to constraints placed on the art team. 3d modeling is a tedious pita at the best of times. That ever present clipping (widely considered to be a worse problem) makes weapon placement a huge issue. The rest really comes down to preference. I for one do not like my character to look weighed down with his infinite piles of crap. When mods like Frostfall for Skyrim make you carry backpacks, I went in and edited the .nif so it would not show. Similarly I use mods that unequip arrows when I sheath a bow. Animations are some of the hardest things to get working right. There are plenty of guides on working with things like 3ds Max, and easy ways to get it legitly for free. If you want to better understand it I recommend you go take a look at them.