Let me start by stating that I understand that making changes to character creation would likely be a huge process that would involve significant portions of the code being changed to accommodate it. These are simply my experiences, and things I've found that have left me somewhat disappointed. I'll try and order everything here nicely, and roughly in order that I remember encountering them.
First off was stats. It took a bit of fiddling to learn that I could actually take points away from stats to put into others if I wanted, below the base. I'm not even entirely sure if that was intentional or not, but I could do it. Except for luck. For some reason I couldn't reduce my luck, even after I'd raised it. It was very unintuitive to figure out where my points were, and I restarted the chargen several times at this point just to help me figure out what the bases were, empty out points, etc.
I figure there are RP reasons for not showing exact numbers in stats, but I think at the point of chargen, it would be nice to be able to see those numbers purely for the sake of simplicity in seeing how your points are distributed. It would also be nice if it were possible to add multiple points at a time to a stat, as well as subtract all points from a stat. It was a massive pain having to go through number combos dozens of times just to get your stats where you want them.
I don't know how many people know this, but getting an high Int gives you a bonus language. Getting a -really- high Int gives you a second, but the game doesn't say where the changeover is at all. The only way to figure it out is to adjust all your stats, get past skills and to the language part, and then go back and completely redo the skills to figure out where that crossover point is. A simple indicator that you're getting 2 instead of 1 would be very nice.
And finally for stats, it wasn't until I got out of generation that I discovered that it apparently takes 2 UE to raise str and luck, but 1 for everything else. I'm not sure if this is reflected in the cost to raise them in character generation as well, but it comes as a serious shock that I might be paying double to raise those after generation as opposed to during. If anything, I would think strength would be among the easiest to change from a real world perspective. Getting smarter (literally smarter, not simply more learned) is very difficult, as is gaining coordination or being more perceptive. If the difference in costs is envoked during creation, it isn't a problem, but if not, it creates a weird incentive to make a super lucky strong, but otherwise stupid, unaware, etc character, since those stats are easier to raise.
Skills I had no real problem with, other than the fact that I only knew from watching through the entire 'how to sign up' video that skills have increasing costs at high levels after chargen, so it is potentially a really good idea to max out one or two skills instead of spreading yourself out. I don't mind that mechanic being in place, but for the truly new, it should really be at least mentioned in there somewhere, to prevent them making a jack of all trades and potentially gimping their character growth without realizing it (If they want to go that route, that's fine, but they should know the potential costs).
One other little thing with skills is it might be nice if there were some indication of how common a skill is. It might be something that would need to be manually changed occasionally, but it kind of sucks to roll up a mechanic or hacking character or something, only to find there are a dozen grid posts about people with those same skills looking for work. I know having an over saturated skillset is potentially interesting, but it can be a real turn off to a new character to find that their skills are in very limited demand, especially if they have little ability to do anything with them themselves without some huge initial investment.
Languages, which I guess everyone won't encounter, had one major problem: You couldn't select Euro as a language at all, because it used 'e' and so did English, and it always assumed English and wouldn't allow full names, just the first letter. Also, I've since learned that you can apparently make something besides English your native language, but there wasn't any sort of instruction or indication of such. Also, when selecting additional languages, I don't remember it indicating what level of fluency you had. I had thought it was fully fluent instead of simply tourist level, makes playing a truly bi-lingual character difficult. An option to put some of those skill points or some other points from somewhere into language would be a nice possibility, to allow creation of more traveled or linguistic type characters.
Finally, you are done with character creation, and are dumped into the city (well, right outside the city with no real option but to go in) with virtually no money, zero equipment, and no real instruction on how to do anything at all, and you're IC. Hell, you're even naked. Could we at least get some pants for our journey to the city?
I think the game would benefit from having an OOC starting area where the game can go over some of the basic commands and rules that people should know. It could be fully skipable if people want, but it should be provided as a chance to figure out how to talk to people before you get a helper showing up and you're standing there naked for... whatever IC reason.
The OOC area could be as simple as a couple of rooms that list some help files you should go through, a room where you can buy some basic clothes, and the exit. It could be expanded to include the basics of how combat works, or other things. It might also be nice to give characters some sort of chance to get some starting equipment. I know that working for your gear and such is rewarding, but it is really weird being someone who should supposedly be an accomplished hacker with no computer, bounty hunter with no gun (okay, guns are contraband, but still) or otherwise have a character who might be coming to the city supposedly well off starting with nothing. Perhaps give up a few stat points for a bit of starting money (that can only be used in an initial OOC shop perhaps, to prevent potential abuse of new characters with max money rolling in, dropping their cash, and vanishing forever.)
So, these are just my various initial thoughts and complaints and such about character generation. I'm overall enjoying the game very much so far, but just feel that the first experience that any new player gets could be improved quite a bit.
Once again, I know that many of my suggestions are the sort that would require significant effort to implement, but others would likely require an extra line of code somewhere. Also, they are simply that, suggestions, ones that I think would improve the new player experience, but just suggestions.
