Ninjtsu's guide on rating, creativity, flow and other tips and tricks for character making

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20 vote(s) since July 27, 2011 15:09

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Posted on July 27, 2011 15:02

ninjtsuuchiha
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NOTE- reserves are over. You may now post. I am still editing it a bit, but all tips are welcome (read last section)

You’ve looked up guides on character making and can now make a character.
You checked up on all the picture making guides and make decent pictures.
You’ve even checked one or two balance guides, and have a good idea on what makes a character balanced.
However, your characters are still not getting rates above 8 and are not winning any contests, but you can’t see any reason why.
The reason is that there is a lot more to character making than good pictures and balanced skills. You need flow, creativity, and a lot more to make your character good enough to impress the people of the boards.

Welcome to ninjtsu’s guide on rating, creativity, flow, and other tips and tricks for character making (Also known as the guide with an incredibly long name).

WARNING- Being a food lover, I have decided to compare character making with food. It's surprising how similar they can be.

Rating

I decided it was necessary to include a section on rating for two reasons-
1. Despite a few rating topics on the boards, people still ignore some aspects about the character while rating.
2. If you know what people are going to lower their rates for, then you would know where to focus on while making your characters.

First Rule-
Comment and Critique (CnC) with your rate. It’s hard to believe that you are that busy that you can't spare one sentence on how to improve. Numbers, without CnC, are rarely going to help anyone at all as they wouldn’t know where they are lacking.
~Don’t be so caught up with trying to increase your post count. A large post count without helping anyone won’t get you as much respect as a smaller post count that was used to help others improve.~

Now we come to the rating-
People have different ways of basing their rating, and none of them is actually worse than the other. However, what is important is which aspects of the character are given more priority.
In my opinion, the adding all qualities and dividing by 10 takes too long (but could be used for CnCing).
My method is the subtraction method. Its steps are-

1. Start off from 10. I start off from 9.5, cause I believe nothing’s perfect (but I do add later)
2. Now subtract marks from the following categories based on the number of flaws you find.
A) Pictures and Presentation (max 2 point deduction)
B) Balance (max 2 point deduction)
C) Creativity and Flow (max 5 point deduction)
3. If something is incredibly impressive (never before seen or something like that) you may add points.

Additionally, when it comes to choosing entries in a contest,
Creativity and flow > Balance > Pictures.
Which means if a character has better flow but slightly poorer pictures, it should still get your vote
I shall now get to explanations.

PICTURES

This is one of the least important criteria. Reasons-
1. It is unknown what facilities are available to the character maker. They may have slow internet making them unable to download episodes or something.
2. If you're good with pics and improving quality, chances are you will be good with gfx. However, in the same respect, those who are great with character ideas, but not at pictures don’t really have much else to do and they definitely deserve the same chance.
3. In the game you play for the skills, KBD (Kisame Body Double (S)) could have crap pictures or high quality- he would still be one of my favorite characters to play with.
[Would you rather eat a food which tastes good, or looks good?]

However, realize this, there is no excuse for absolutely horrid pictures. Some amount of effort can always be made. (No matter how tasty food is, you wouldn’t eat it if it looked like barf, but you would eat it if it’s a bit messy.)

Major errors -for which at least 1 point can be deducted- this is when it is not at all clear which skill the character is using . The pictures are hideously blurred and nothing is clear.

Minor errors (.5 can be deducted)-
• Oversharpening/Undersharpening
• Poor positioning/cropping of face pic and/or other pictures

Negligible errors (.1, for characters which are otherwise nearly perfect)
• Slight bits of sharpening, or color are needed. Usually, if a picture looks fine, there's no reason to go nitpicking into minute details like these as people probably need high definition videos from the start for this level of perfection.

PRESENTATION

This is pretty basic (Deduct -.5 at most for each)
• Part of the character outshines another for no good reason. Example: Excessively large text, extremely fancy font etc.
-Italics around good because a person trying to be creative in their presentation should not have deductions unless it makes the presentation look bad.-
• Some text is impossible to read due to extreme messing with text color, small text size etc.

Basically, the character should be presentable enough to read easily without having to squint or read twice. These are the basics and are important.

BALANCE
This is not the most important criteria, for some, for the following reasons-
1. Balance can be changed in a few seconds.
2. Balance is unpredictable. In-game, teammates, and what not may change. We can make educated guesses about a character, but we can never be 100% sure.

Major balance problems (at least -1 deducted )- if every skill is unbalanced, or if the whole character turns out to be highly OP or UP. This can include many amateur errors, and shows the character maker has very little clue what they are doing.

Minor balance problems (-0.5 can be deducted) – one highly unbalanced skill. This also shows some uncertainty in the character maker’s mind.
A good example of this is:
Skill A- deals 25 damage to an enemy for 1 specific and 1 random
It’s a common mistake I see in newer character creators, but such skills can never survive in this meta.

Negligible errors (-0.1 deducted, for otherwise perfect characters)- This depends on situational imbalance, or a slightly abusable effect which can often be ignored.
Example: If a character may fit in too well with stun teams, it doesn’t mean that the character is flawed, but he will need a small nerf to avoid abuse.

[Balance is like over-salting or under-seasoning your dish. Even over-salting one part can slightly ruin the taste. Over-salting the whole thing can ruin it. Making some parts over-salted, and the rest bland, doesn’t make the dish great either.]

CREATIVITY

One of the most important, but misunderstood, aspects of a character is creativity.

Creativity does not mean effects which have never been seen in-game, nor does it mean an extra long skill with multiple effects stacked into it.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with the above 2 features. (though people don’t like reading that much, there is absolutely no reason to deduct rates for too much text, its even against a few n-b rules.)
Fancy effects here and there are nice, but keep in mind there are limits to the number of effects that can be thought of.

Creativity means interpretation of a skill set in a way that hasn’t been done before.
If dozens of people make Gaara into an instant-killer, and you make him into a destructible defense giving support, you are being creative.
That doesn’t mean people should make Sasuke a healer, but they should think outside the box.
Creativity also involves working off skills in a way that hasn’t been done before.
Something outside of the usual prep, spike and stun (and more, considering the level of character making has gone up).
[You could compare creativity to the styles of preparing food. Food will get boring if you keep on deep frying it, so that’s why new methods are developed.]

FLOW
Flow is as important as creativity and goes hand in hand with it. In fact, it is often the most ignored aspect when rating characters.
It focuses on the main question: How will this character help me in battle?
In the end, the skills must work together, and you should be able to have a decent strategy in battle.
A character can have 3 skills , each with unique effects, but if they don’t work together, the character can be pretty pointless. In-game, you use a character with a basic plan behind using him. However, you don’t use him if there's no continuity, and all you can do is randomly use skills once getting the chakra.

The above 2 are complicated, ill go into detail later when I describe how to include these aspects in your characters.
Notice, for rating, you need to keep the above 2 aspects in mind. If they grasp these concepts, then they definitely know how to make decent characters.

Everyone sees creativity and flow differently, so I can't dictate how to rate for these 2 aspects.

Keep in mind the following things during this part of the process-
1. Look at the character as a whole and not just the individual skills. Focus on how well the skills work together to make the character complete and give it a proper role in the game.
2. Don’t be lazy to read it all. Some effects take a little more space to explain.
3. Keep in mind how you would use the character in-game.
4. Make a huge deduction(4-5) for no effects at all, but also for random effects which seem to be added just to fill up space and not for the character(2-3)… its pretty easy to tell.
5. Observe how much the character actually does in battle. Some may have lots of fancy effects, but may just actually be doing damage in different (sometimes unneeded) ways

[In food terms- you can have your favorite sausages and your favorite potato crisps, but you can't have them together. However, sausages do go great with mashed potatoes. So, while being creative with your ‘ingredients’ , you have to make them go together.]

thanks to neji000444 for my avatar and Kaosdin for the tags
click on tags for my guide of tips in cc making
my prizes! ~~~~~~mods were here.. if a mod wants to sign.. just pm me.. and ill find room

Posted on July 27, 2011 15:02

ninjtsuuchiha
Rank: member

Forum Rank:
Jounin

Posts: 2511
Joined on:
September 19, 2008

Now we’re done with how to rate, so keep in mind what are the main points to focus on are.
Now we’ll go into most of the aspects in detail. I’m mainly gonna go into tips and tricks for improving characters in most of the sections.
Look out for the Great Conundrums of Character Making, which are quite a few of the doubts which may pop up, and none of them actually have a definite answer

PICTURES
There are thousands of guides on this. I’m not gonna go into too much of detail, frankly because I’m not the best person to ask about this aspect of character making.

1st Great Conundrum of Character Making
Q- Pics are the absolute most important part about character making
Ans- Yes and No.
No. – A lot of great cc makers will tell you that. Ive covered all the reasons in the rating section. And I will stand by it.
Yes- This is the sad bit. A lot of people won’t read my guide, and still believe bad pictures makes the whole character bad. So it’s a decent idea to put some work into your pictures, even if you cant make them flawless.
I have seen a lot of newer char makers, openly tell anyone that pics aren’t important, so they haven’t bothered. That much of hostility to pictures isn’t right. True, they aren’t the defining point of your character, but nicer pictures always healp.

Tip 1- Don’t overwork on your pictures
That’s the one tip I can give you, which I haven’t seen in other places. Sometimes you have to admit that there are a few limits of your photoshop and your abilities, or that you need to have a better screenshot to start off with.
Other than wasting time, the too many effects may work against each other, leading to the pic being worse than it could have been.
It’s a personal experience, and I’ll show an example later.

Other than that, nothing much. However, what I will do is post a lot of screencap sites for all animes that I can find… including rarer ones, for those people who are looking to step out of the simple naruto and bleach zone.
If any of you know of such sites, please pm me, and I will add it.
Keep in mind, downloads are likely to always give you the best quality, but if you have limited time/computer memory.. and you can do a bit of quality editing.. you can make do of quite a few of these. You’ll find plenty of download links in the ‘Where to watch/download anime’ section, so I’m not gonna go into those

Naruto-
naruto-kun- has a few screenshots from shippuden… it had more, but been taken down for now
animay.net- most of naruto shipuden .. go to home page for most recent arc
myfavoritegames- pre-shipuden naruto
Captainnaruto- small screens, but useful as a reference (thanks to hwdphg for giving the link)

Bleach (needs more, pm if you know)-
animay- front page for the most recent arc.. has a few other animes like kurohitsugi

One piece(needs more, pm if you know)-
onepiece.desome german site- but its pretty good

Pokemon
filb.de one of the best… missing a few episodes for now… but you shouldn’t need anything else
pocketmonsters consistent quality- for anything filb doesn’t have
serebii- last choice for pics, but one of the best for info
bulbapedia search for the move you want, and get it… great for info too

Dragonball
myfavoritegames- the best for dragonball… you wont need much more… despite the small size of screencaps

Prince of Tennis
random fansite- if you click on the links of associated sites, you’ll get animes like shaman king, fullmetal alchemist and more… im not gonna go into each one of them

Yuyu Hakusho
myfavoritegames- ive covered this one thrice.. it has a few other animes, but random episodes of each, so check it out

Yugioh/ Inuyasha (need more)
naraku.us
Not great quality, but considering these anime aren’t so common , this is useful

Getbackers
small collection by enaki
another fansite
these 2 combined should be enough

fairytail
screenshot collection by firebane from fairytail arena
great quality, need to be downloaded (still looking for a nondownloading site)

Still looking for-
KHR, soul eater, gurenn lagann

General-
For most of the minor anime, you wont be looking for huge screencap websites. For most characters in minor anime… you can make a character with pictures from multiple episodes

wikiasearch, and you can get info on any anime, along with a few pics (check quality though)

animestocks- has quite a few anime

animegalleries- quite a few anime… but a lot of good facepics if your willing to look

Lastly, search a few anime blogs as they upload pics with their updates.
Some examples are random curiosity, star-crossed anime blog, whatever anime blog etc.
They may not always have enough for a full character, but they may just have a few pics of a rare anime you’ve been wanting to make a character from

PRESENTATION
Nothing much here. A few tips-
1. Stroking/ Highlighting your text is not at all necessary. You may do it for presentation, but it may go against you, if it becomes unreadable. However, nobody can complain if you follow the simple colour scheme of n-a and s-a.
2. Fancy templates are also avoidable. Most fan-made arenas , also stopped using them recently, because not only are they a pain to edit, they can effect the readability of the text (colours may clash etc.)
3. Stick to the correct size and font. It looks more professional as a whole. In case, your text is a bit long, its not so tough to increase the box size, as long as you’re using a basic template. Just be careful to extend it enough so no line is sticking out more than it should.
4. Chakra boxes should not be extremely far apart, as I’ve seen a few times. This doesn’t mean you have to zoom in 3 times to get the box, but you can be relatively accurate without zoom. (again, this is more convenient in simple templates)
5. A tip I got from Mirrorforce. If a word doesn’t fit in a line, move it to the next, instead of connecting it with dashes/hyphens, Once in a while, for long words like destructable , it may make sense (but only if it is going to save you from increasing the box size or something like that… no other reason), but don’t repeat it many times in a character. Consider this-
Naruto Uzumaki deals 25 dam-
-age to an enemy and stuns th-
-em for 1 turn. He gains 10 destr-
-uctable defense and 5 points of
Damage reduction that cant be pie-
-rced for 1 turn.
Most texts wont be that bad, but I think some computers automatically do this, severely effecting how the character looks. Reading like this may cause someone to miss out one of the effects (Its happened to me)

Also, waterone has made a guide on increasing the box size, so good presentation really shouldn’t be a trouble.

BALANCE
My specialty, and I could analyse a single character’s balance problems for ages, but Lder’s guide to balance will help a lot. I as usual, will just give a few tips, which I haven’t seen in his or mistakes that a lot of people make. But firstly, something that popped up from Lder’s guide itself.

The second great conundrum of character making
Q- Each damage+ effect has a fixed cost. Eg- 1 random= 15 damage
Ans- Yes and No (Again)

No- This is what Lder said. Its more or less true. The cost of a certain damaging skill should depend on the character as a whole, and what role its supposed to have, what boosts are available to its skills etc.
Its perfectly possible to have 1 character deal 30 damage for 1 tai 1 random, and another to deal it for 1 tai, if both have cooldown of 1 (this would only be if the second character has no other skills, and cannot boost it in anyway).
Similarly Shizune and Inoichi can be compared (Note- giving cd of 1 doesn’t always mean 10 extra damage. The extra damage is due to it being his only damaging skill, and the only one which uses random… in fact increasing cooldown to improve damage is not a good idea)

Yes- This is true in the sense that every skill has a basis where you work from. Its better to add the damage as per a fixed standard and balance it depending on the overall result when you see your character as a whole.

So I’m gonna make a tiny table. Don’t follow it as a hard and fast rule, but I have seen many people who have no clue where to start from, so even the balance of simple skills is messed up. This is mainly for them.

Single target aoe

1 random – 15 damage, no cd 1 random- 10 aoe, 1 cd
1 specific- 20 damage + tiny effect 1 specific- 10 aoe + tiny effect
No cd No cd
2 random- 30 damage, no cd 2 random- 15 aoe
1 specific , 1 random- 35 damage, 1 specific , 1 random- 20 aoe
No cd No cd
2 different specifics- 40 damage 2 different specifics- 25 aoe.
Tiny effect, 1 cd
1 cd
2 same specifics- 45 damage 2 same specifics – 30 aoe+
, effect tiny effect
2 cd 2 cd
3 random- 45 damage, no cd 3 random- avoid for an aoe

Note- heals can be equivalent values to damage

I repeat, don’t follow this guide as an almighty rule, but just use it as a small basis. This guide mainly works for extremely simple chars, so once you progress into better characters, you will have to make your own judgments.

Note that this is a guide for the basic chars, which consist of 2 damaging skills and 1 friendly skill(excluding damage boosts, in that case, the damage of the skills would be a bit less)

By tiny effect, I would mean piercing or inability to reduce damage or something very small. For partial stuns and drains , you may need to add 1 cd or reduce 5 damage. For full stuns and drains, you probably will have to do both.
Remember, for multiple turn and aoe stuns/drains, the cooldown is much higher. I’ll cover DoT skills (damage over time) later

Tips and tricks #1- multiple damaging skills
Simply putting it, the more damaging skills a character has, the comparatively less damage each skill should do (with respect to their cost). So my guide above was considering 2 damaging skills. If you make a character with one damaging skill, it would do relatively more damage as per the cost. If you make one with 3 damaging skills, then they would deal relatively less.
The more damaging skills a character has, the more opportunities it has to attack. It has greater ability to avoid partial stuns and drains (normally, when you give a character 3 damaging skills, they should have relatively different costs, classes and effects, otherwise there is no point).. and hence, the less its damage.

Tips and tricks#2- Damage over Time
One of the most misunderstood concepts.
DO NOT compare the total damage dealt by this skill to the total damage dealt by single turn skills.

Here are all the disadvantages of DoT-
1. You lose a turn of damage, if the target goes invulnerable
2. You lose a turn of damage, if you are stunned (pretty easy to do)
3. Point based damage reduction can screw you over.
4. If you die, the remaining damage is wasted
5. TIME. Each turn is precious. The longer it takes to deal your required damage, the grater trouble your getting yourself into.

So basically a skill that deals 10 damage for 4 turns for 1 blood 1 random is highly underpowered, irrespective of the cooldown. Sometimes, I even see a character doing 15 damage over 2 turns for that cost. (Keep in mind, most DoT are action class, making them instant is difficult to balance)
So DoT is not a bad thing, it’s a great way of putting long term pressure on your opponent , but you need to be a bit lenient with the damage.

So, basically, for each extra turn a DoT lasts, its damage needs to be approxiamately 50% more than the single turn damage for the skill. Eg- 25 for 2 turns, 20 for 3 turns
You usually cant add huge effects for DoT…. But make the changes accordingly when you add small effects. Usually effects like damage reduction on you or the enemy makes sense for such skills

As for cooldown- It should usually be 1 less than the duration (another misunderstood point). This is because their main aim is continuous pressure on the enemy, so you want to use it as soon as it ends.
If it has no effects (like Gin in s-a or KBD in n-a), and its net damage is not huge (less than 50, which is ok for DoT), then you can make the coodlown 2 less than the duration.
In case of effects like cooldown increase, cooldown can be equal to duration (just to give a momentary break), and incase of big effects like cost increase, cooldown should be a bit more than duration .

DoT’s a handy effect with possible creativity, so I hate seeing people muck it up. Hopefully, you wont now :blink

Tips and tricks#3- Chakra/reiatsu usage
The more different chakra a character uses, the more versatile it is, so the moves are relatively weaker.
Most characters use 2 different chakra.
If all the skills of a character depend on the same chakra (excluding invulnerability), theres a good 25% chance that your character wont be able to make a single move . (note this is different from single chakra users. In this case, the character may use 2 different chakra, but 1 chakra will be in all 3 skills, whereas the other may be in one of the skills which costs 2 specific)
So keep in mind the following details-
1. There attacks should be relatively stronger.
2. They should have atleast one good DoT skill with decent defensaes to keep them going
Examples are Kurenai from n-a and ikkaku and sajin from s-a

Tips and tricks#4- Percentages
1. Keep in mind that s-a uses more point based effects, and n-a uses more percentages. Also, n-a has more piercers, so 75% damage reduction for xyz no. of turns is balanced in n-a (for the right cost), but OP in most cases in s-a. Keep that in mind when planning costs etc.
2. Unless you’re planning on making it permanently stack, don’t bother dealing with DR or damage increase in the order of 10%. Mathematically, a normal damaging skill of 30 damage, will only be reduced by 3 or receive a 3 point boost, which is pathetic.Even 50 damage skills will get a 5 damage boost/nerf. Keep in mind that a lot of skills deal even less.
3. To keep calculation relatively easy, rely mainly on these percentages, 20%, 25%, 50%, 75% (most recommended), 33% and 66% (this is one-third, and two-third, so in most cases its decent)

Tips and tricks#5- Preparation skills
1. AVOID THEM. That’s a simple start. It’s a waste of a skill, may kill off some of the flow and creativity, and makes it tougher to balance. This is mainly against simple preps which give some defense and allow use of xyz skill. Damaging skills which act as preps, and skills which act as a boost in innovative ways are still easy to put in, without harming creativity.
2. Incase you’re making a character who severely lacks skills and needs a preparation, keep in mind that skills which require a preparation are stronger than those that don’t. eg- Naruto’s Rasengan. This is not only because you’re using up some chakra for your preparation, but also some valuable time.
3. Keep in mind that a preparation skill’s cost should never be too high. 2 randoms is the most. If both of the character’s skills cannot be used outside of the preparation, never make it cost more than a random.
4. Only if you’re giving access to an incredibly powerful skill or boost, should the prep cost 2 randoms or 1 specific. Even then, the preparation should have some other effects(normally defensive) to make it worth it.
5. If the preparation only gives minor defense, and doesn’t give access to very powerful skills, make it costless.(the skills should still be slightly bit more powerful than normal, cause you still have used up a turn)
6. The duration of the prep is important. Shorter the duration, more powerful the skills can be, because the more turns the person has to use up prepping.
7. If you’re trying to make a prep for an incredibly powerful effect, then its sometimes easier to convert it into a skill boosting effect, for a small duration (basically, allow that powerful skill to be used outside of the prep, just with weaker effects). It makes the character more strategic and easier to balance.

Skill-boosting effects(IMPORTANT)-
1. The biggest mistake I see here is- XYZ skill is improved for 1 turn but costs 1 more random during this time. That kills the point of a boost. Remember, you’re wasting both time and possibly chakra getting that skill active. And cheaper skills are more effective. This can be ignored for incredibly powerful boosts.. but I’m talking beyond double damage.
2. For preps, and boosts, it makes more sense to lower duration than increase cost for strong effects. Remember, if you’re stunned etc, a lot of chakra will be going to waste.
3. If a damaging skill acts as a prep/boost, don’t make it incredibly weak in the excuse that it allows a more powerful skill. Make it still worth its damage, because theres a chance you may not get to pull off the second skill.

thanks to neji000444 for my avatar and Kaosdin for the tags
click on tags for my guide of tips in cc making
my prizes! ~~~~~~mods were here.. if a mod wants to sign.. just pm me.. and ill find room

Posted on July 27, 2011 15:04

ninjtsuuchiha
Rank: member

Forum Rank:
Jounin

Posts: 2511
Joined on:
September 19, 2008

CREATIVITY

Nobody can dictate creativity to you, or give you many tips to you on it. Creativity has to be your way of thinking. Basically, you should keep your mind open, and possibly be inspired by in-game characters, and other cc maker’s characters, (without, obviously, ripping skills or ideas). However, keeping in mind the flow of the character, in a while, you may be able to create a similar(note- not same) character, with your own touch to it.

Firstly, you want to move outside of stuns and drains. So here are a few more simple effects to work with. The minor effects don’t need a heavy decrease of damage and cooldown
1. Unable to reduce damage or become invulnerable (minor effect)
2. Increase of cooldowns (minor effect)
3. Increase of costs
4. Decrease damage by xyz amount/percent.
5. Increase damage by a small amount
6. Target ignores friendly effects for 1 turn (heavily underestimated effect as it disables all preps, heals defenses for 1 turn)

And friendly effects-
1. Inability to be killed
2. Ignore/remove afflictions
3. Improve damage.
4. Inability to be stunned
5. Ignore all enemy effects but damage (again, very powerful)

Another suggestion is to stun skills which deal a certain amount of damage, have a certain cost etc.

One other creative thing you can do is-[/u]
If that enemy uses a skill, xyz happens.
This is incredibly strategic, as your opponents future depends on the decision he makes.

So, basically, theres a lot you can do, outside of the usual stun, drain and aoe.
Now you have to make these effects work together in new and different ways . That’s up to you and all on how creative you can be.
You rarely need to go much further than that, different working combinations of these basics can lead to good characters

A few uncodable options are (these are not even necessary to use, and they make balance and flow tougher, but if you have good ideas, then only use them)-
1. Maximum health- It’s the health beyond which a person cannot be healed. Its 100 health for most.
2. Messing with the chakra exchange system
3. Messing with the classes of the opponent
4. Messing with the time duration of each turn.

Just be careful when using complicated effects. A character with all of these uncodable effects isn’t considered great, if they have no flow. Keep in mind that the skills need to work together.
And its not necessary to pack a character with a huge number effects. Theres nothing wrong with long text, but small amounts of text also works well. Infact, avoid more than 2 additional effects to any skill(unless vital to the flow), or some aspects of the character will become less effective.

[super creative effects are like exotic meats like alligator. Alligator can be tasty (I know XD), but not everyone will be willing to try it]
[And when you consider making simple effects creative, Everyday potato crisps, in many unique flavours, have arisen from the most common ingredient, the potato, cornflour, with a few basic spices]

So that brings us to the last part about making a character, choosing the best combination of skills. This falls under flow.

FLOW

To start off with, example of good and bad flow using the effects I described above.

Good flow-
1. Chakra removal + increasing costs- this way your opponent is screwed if you can use these skills successively (note- both the effects in 1 skill can potentially be OP)
2. If opponent does not use a skill xyz happens + invisible counters- you’re playing mind games with your opponent (keep in mind to not make that effect so high that it becomes OP)

Bad flow-
1. Stun effect+ enemies take xyz effect if they use a skill- that makes the choice easy for them.(when any one of these effects lasts more than 1 turn).. otherwise its decent, as you’re continuously putting your opponent under pressure
2. Decreasing maximum health + making target ignore heals- They both basically have the same goal.. a target with low max health is likely not to be healed as he wouldn’t heal the full amount (read description of max health)

In all the above cases , you need to keep in mind the duration of the skill for maximum efficiency.
There are many cases, when skills neither hinder nor benefit each other.. however, that rarely makes for good flow, it just makes it a random character

The most basic form of flow-
One skills boosts the other.
Eg- naruto uses his kick to deal 20 damage to an enemy. Next turn aengan deals 10 more damage and fully stuns
This is an example, and not related to any real character, and with no balance in consideration.
But it is a basic form of flow, and the characters skills work together to make it more effective in battle. So consider such effects even in beginner characters,, and you can move onto more indirect forms of flow later on.

The many Aspects of flow –

I. Damage flow
This an important aspect which is not often noticed, but is important not only from flow, but for balance
People on the altar often complain- nerf sasukes chidori to 50 piercing damage. That is never going to happen.
Reason- He is meant to get a kill with a combination of his skills. If you think about it 3 specific chakra, 2 random chakra, and 3 turns is not bad for a kill, most instant killers take that long.
Anyway, this is not the place for n-a ingame balance. But I want to bring to your mind a very important aspect of flow.
The sum of a characters damaging skills should not be between 95 and 100.
(If its less then you can consider multiple uses of a skill to add up to the nearest kill)

The reason is- that assuming ideal conditions, youre gonna leave your opponent with 5 health.. and very few skills deal that little damage. This has 2 hindering effects- firstly, you provide that enemy with an extra turn, and secondly, you have to waste all the damage of a skill (possibly an extra 25 damage), killing off that enemy, which could have been used to deal its proper damage to another enemy.
I haven’t just come up with this idea. I’ve observed that nearly all characters in game follow this rule… whether for balance or flow.

II. Effects flow.
This is basically the examples given earlier. You need to make sure that the non-damaging effects compliment each other. Use your judgement, and imagine a proper strategy with them, to make them work together.
I repeat,
Simple effects that work together easily trump complicated effects that do not work together

III. Ally dependant-damaging effects.
These are basically effects such as , if this character is targeted by abc effect, then xyz happens, when the user of the skill cannot activate such effects.
Eg- sasuke charges. If sasuke is healed next turn, then the target of this skill will be stunned for 1 turn.
Keep in mind that these effects severely limit your team.. you have enough restrictions thanks to chakra costs and a base strategy, so you don’t want to limit things more.

Conditions which are fair are, if the target is damaged/stunned/effected by a friendly skill then xyz effect happens
So basically, don’t use any effects that require a specific character as an ally, or the effect wont work.
However, if in the sasuke example, if sasuke himself has a healing skill, it makes for good flow. So now healers are no longer necessary, but still a possible option.

Similarly, don’t use skills which are overreliant on an enemy using/being targeted by a particular effect.
For example, don’t have a skill-
For 2 turns the target cannot switch to their alternate skills.
Because it may be useless in most cases.

Keep in mind, you may still use such limited effects as an addition to your damaging/healing skills, but they do consider as a minor effect, and should neither be a basis for the character to work, nor shoukd they be used if damage/another useful effect has to be compensated for it (eg- in kabuto(S), although healing is not very common, he still deals a good output damage, so he is pretty useful)
In such cases, these effects are merely a bonus. Another example is ganteibannes punch in s-a, whose destructible defense destruction is like a bonus against few chars, with no damage being compensated.

[food example- you can only have a certain chicken dish with egg. No other option. So, if you hav egg allergies(or theres some egg-based disease goin round :P),or if you just don’t feel like eating egg you’re kinda screwed XD]

The third great conundrum of character making
Q- You should imagine your character in-game.
Ans- (any guesses) Yes and no
Yes- This is mainly the answer. You ALWAYS need to consider these 2 factors
1. Will I enjoy playing against this character?
2. Will I enjoy playing with this character?
If both are yes, then it’s a fairly good character. Nobody wants to play against a super abusable character. At the same time, nobody wants to be using a character whose every move is predicted by the enemy, and ends up being useless.
Keep in mind how it does ingame, if any obvious teams pop up (eg- stun effects last 1 turn more on the target, is usually gonna be abused)
Remember, if you answered yes to both, that means your character probably has good flow , creativity, and balance , which makes 80% of your character.

No- the only contradiction here is dont limit yourself by what can and cannot be coded.. thats something to be worried about far far in the future, when character submissions open up again (in which case you limit yourself). The other fact is, dont pester any admin to put your character in-game, no matter how good it is.

thanks to neji000444 for my avatar and Kaosdin for the tags
click on tags for my guide of tips in cc making
my prizes! ~~~~~~mods were here.. if a mod wants to sign.. just pm me.. and ill find room

Posted on July 27, 2011 15:04

ninjtsuuchiha
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Tips for character collections-
1. Face pics are important. They provide the first impression about the collection as a whole. So while I believe pics are nowhere near the most important aspect of the character, try and make the face pic look good as possible. It helps the presentation. You could try text based links as I have seen some people do, nobody can kill you for it.
2. Keep the characters different. This in terms of costs, effects, damage , role etc. You don’t want people to see similar things repeated multiple times. [food example- you want some variety in a menu]
3. If you’re making characters from a rarely made anime, be careful when you think about the cost system. It should be such that equal number of characters can be fit in for each cost. Eg- a jinchuriki chakra in naruto would be a terrible idea. Additionally, energy is the most common word used instead of chakra, but try to be creative as long as it doesn’t sound too weird.
4. A common system of energy, can be based as – physical/ weapon, energy based, mental/tactical/willpower, and unique/special/inherited etc. You can make the necessary tweaks, use the necessary names, but build it around that.

For convenience sake, I shall now add all energy systems over here. Whenever you come up with one (assuming it is not too limited), inform me by pm/ posting, and I shall update.
So basically, this can be the universal source for making characters from any anime.

*To be Updated*

Example Haven-
Basically, this can show you characters covering different aspects of this guide (bad/good presentation etc.). If you have any character which you feel highlights a common mistake (your old crummy CC’s – don’t be afraid, youre helping others learn from your mistakes) or indicates an aspect of cc making very well (eg-good pics made from online screencaps etc.) pm me or post here, and if suitable, I shall update it.
1. overdoing effects on pics makes them look wierd

*To be updated*

Credits-
1.Dasakeuchiha- for the general help in making this guide, support, editing etc.
2.It could be You (see below)

Help Required (credit given)-

1. Suggestons are welcome (constructive)
2. If you have any screencaps site, please inform
3. If you feel you can make banners, go ahead.
4. If you have an energy system for an anime, go ahead and inform me.
5. If you have any examples (and I would prefer examples of mistakes, more than examples of perfect characters.. its easier to explain with, and what may be perfect for you, may not be in everyone’s eyes)

~Thank You. Hope its of use.

thanks to neji000444 for my avatar and Kaosdin for the tags
click on tags for my guide of tips in cc making
my prizes! ~~~~~~mods were here.. if a mod wants to sign.. just pm me.. and ill find room

Posted on July 27, 2011 19:04

hwdphg
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Great guide, nin :D
I read it all and its very helpful and stuffed with good info (:

Oh, and here's another site for screenshots that I use
Captainnaruto
-The thing is, is that the screenies are small and a little LQ so I just use them as reference-

You should include video sites too! (Hulu, crunchyroll, etc)

Looks like it took a long time to type out! Anyways, good job (:

Posted on July 27, 2011 19:36

ninjtsuuchiha
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hwdphg wrote:

i think the anime sections had links for those, and i know very few sites which are specific for any anime... plus, some of those evil sites dont work outside of USA :evil

thanks :D, for the comment and the site,, added

thanks to neji000444 for my avatar and Kaosdin for the tags
click on tags for my guide of tips in cc making
my prizes! ~~~~~~mods were here.. if a mod wants to sign.. just pm me.. and ill find room

Posted on July 28, 2011 10:16

Firebane
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Sannin

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Well I didn't read all (honest), I just overlooked and it is fine.

Present:

Fairy Tail Screenshots

There are screencaps of 75 episodes (all HD) of Fairy Tail. :amused

S H O W C A S E. By piqueneu. Zoe <3. 「

」

Posted on July 28, 2011 11:56

ninjtsuuchiha
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September 19, 2008

thanks... at first i wasnt considering downloadable screencaps... but they take such little space (comparitivelY0... that they will be very useful :amused

imma gonna edit them in later, im tired of this edit botton :P

Spoiler

yeah, reading it all is a long shot, even i did it short batches

thanks to neji000444 for my avatar and Kaosdin for the tags
click on tags for my guide of tips in cc making
my prizes! ~~~~~~mods were here.. if a mod wants to sign.. just pm me.. and ill find room

Posted on December 30, 2012 15:15

Rasengan_89
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Sannin

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March 1, 2008

Boomarked :)

Sig Stock by tremblax ~ First to ever make a Naruto Bijuu Mode ~ IT'S OVER 10 THOUSAND views, thanks a lot!
Avy made by ME, Stock by Andrezoe ~ Want to be a Character Maker ? ~ It seems somebody paid you enough money to live without working, SvN. ~

Ninjtsu's guide on rating, creativity, flow and other tips and tricks for character making

Ninjtsu's guide on rating, creativity, flow and other tips and tricks for character making

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