A discussion on Character Usage

About how many characters do you generally have that require artwork? Do all of your characters in game have faces? How many characters do you usually put in a game? Not including random townies.

I'm trying to figure out a good number of extra characters in my game, and I'm just wondering how many of them should have faces and what not. My numbers right now are between 15 and 27. XD 27 would be every on of my characters having a face and 15 would just be 'important' characters. 

Only important characters need a faceset\bust, I don't want to confuse the player making him\her believe that every damn character of my game is important. That said, I don't like adding a lot of important characters in a game too, because you'll struggle with their development for sure after a while.

I like to add some extra facesets\busts also for very important NPCs (but only if they're relevant).

I think there are two schools about that.

The "faces for everyone" and "faces for important characters only" schools are both correct actually.

If you make a classic RPG, it's probably best not to show faces for everybody. That way, the player can concentrate on who is important.

For a more story driven game, this can be the opposite. For my game, I chose to create busts and names for everyone.

Since it's an interactive story, it has to look more like movies or real life, that is you get to see everyone's faces.

I can't imagine a movie where only the stars would be shown and the other people have solid black rectangles on their faces.

Personally, I try to have faces for everybody, but I have no problem re-using the same faces for unimportant NPCs.  Otherwise, I'd have literally hundreds of different busts.

My game is a Harvest Moon style game. But is way more story driven than that. The 27 characters I mentioned are literally the only characters you will see in the game, period. That is including a couple of townies from a specific piece of the game. 

I'd say, if all 27 are important, all 27 should have busts.  I know if you purchased the nice Farm Tiles set from the online store, they gave you a character generator (or pieces) to create sprites and busts in that style.

With Harvest Moon type games I prefer everyone to have at least a basic face and the important (love interests primarily) to have a few emotions for interacting with them.  They are so much about getting to know the people that it is just nice to have an image to tie things together.  If time or budget is tight though I would just do the important ones (still with a few emotes). For more typical RPGs I am totally good with just the important characters having a picture, no reason the random innkeeper has to have a portrait in my book.

I'm more of the "every character needs a face" school, but in most games I generally say it is safe to use the same face for each shop owner, innkeeper, etc... Sort of like Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy from Pokemon.

However, in a Harvest Moon style game where everyone has their own opinion of you and that effects events and character reactions, I think everyone should have a unique face so it is easy to tell who is who at a glance.

well normally my most important character have more expression and graphic's because they are more important but generally I put graphic's to all my character but only regular NPC I just don't put face because It make the game to much overload in my opinion