Sebiale wrote:I felt that the customization was nice, but still just aesthetic.
For the appearance of the character, it's supposed to be.
It's not an old MMO fantasy Universe where one gets a shiny new sword every two hours to replace the last one, where the new one is larger, more brightly coloured, and has better stats.
I'd cringe if I ever heard Defender (the Captain America of the Champions Universe) talk about phat loot and was changing his costume twice a day (or more).
The idea of a superhero Universe is that the hero in question is supposed to be recognisable by appearance. Look at iconic heroes like Green Arrow, Superman, Wolverine, The Punisher, and so on, and whilst they have the odd cosmetic upgrade (the costume tailor is there for that, in-game), they generally look the same.
This is because a superhero isn't a flavour of the month hero who can barely be recognised from one moment to the next.
The inevitable conclusion of this is that they had to separate the powers and stats from the visual appearance, so that you could grow in power whilst not really changing how you look. Thus the superhero ethos is maintained.
If people were constantly swapping out mismatching costume bits, it wouldn't be a superhero game because none of the heroes would be recognisable from day to day.
If you see me in game, you'll know me, you'll remember me, just as you would a comic book character. Whereas if you were to see a character from most MMOs, they are -- by their very nature -- exceedingly forgettable and faceless.
The cosmetic side of things has to be aesthetic for this very reason, and I'm actually thankful it was that way.
Sebiale wrote:Abilities could be thrown together, yes, but there were no real new mechanics in the game.
This is true at the very start of the game because it's designed to allow all characters to start out on even footing with no obvious 'best' choice (because then everyone would pick that). As time goes on the powers available become more varied as they become more powerful.
It's rather silly to think that an army of drones which chase you and your friends around and heal them up based on need is the same as, say, close quarters dual sword-fighting. Or that either is the equivalent of a character that can scatter mines, stealth up behind a bunch of critters, surprise them, and speed away leading them over the aforementioned mines.
These are just a few examples and each of them detail a very different way in which the game can be played, each with their individual mechanics.
There's plenty of variety that has a huge impact on the game, just not in the first hour of the game. But in all fairness, that time is spent as a tutorial in which the player is acclimatised to the game and the choices aren't too important, hence the lack of variety within that tutorial area.
This approach is common to all MMOs though, even the class based ones. In a class-based MMO you may pick any one of a number of classes but they'll all start out with a singular offensive attack that works in slightly different ways.
That's true of Champions Online too, and that tutorial element is exactlyy what you're describing. Such a sampling of the game is hardly indicative of what makes up the rest of the game.
Sebiale wrote:It's good, just not my kind of game *shrugs*
I can understand that, but you're painting a portrayal of the game based on a very short time spent playing it (I can tell) and that's something I can't help but want to counter, given that I've put time into developing a strongly individual character which renders such a portrayal incorrect.
You may not like the game, but it's still an incredibly varied game and one with some of the most off-the-wall characters and ways of playing that any game will have.
The only way to get out of that is if you follow a very cookie-cutter path and just pick all of your powers out of one pool, but thankfully very few people seem to do that. Classes in other games have to be made to seem varied via abilities that seem different but they're still cookie-cutter because someone who plays the same class and build as you is inevitably going to be very similar.
In Champions Online, finding two people who actually use the system properly and play the same way is amazingly rare. There have been instances where I've just had to stop and think "Oh my, that's clever." because some people will use groupings of powers in even ways perhaps the developers had not anticipated.
When considering how one plays Champions Online, it's as varied and different as one wants it to be and as one makes it to be, one can take a cookie-cutter approach or they can do really out there things.
The tools are there.
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In fact, I think I'll stress this point further with my own character.
My character is sort of a hit-and-run character who lives in the moment and takes insane risks but isn't afraid to bolt out of a situation if it's necessary, he sizes up a battle, takes the best route in, and if things aren't going his way he already has the best route out.
I find a nice ledge to start on first, somewhere away from my prey; and then I open up with dual pistol-fire, I also use a taunt to draw them in, all the while I'm blasting at them as they're running in close. From there, they either come in close or they start hitting me with ranged, which lets me decide the next element of my attack.
If I think I can take them with ranged and they're using ranged attacks too, I'll keep up my gunfire, if not I'll use a diving kick attack, which can take me across a great distance. If they're primarily close quarters fighters then they'll come to me and I'll keep up the gunfire until they're close enough for me to open up on them with close quarters attacks.
If close quarters does come into question, then I open up on them with my arsenal in that regard; I'm an all out feral fighter with a bit of training, I'll use claws, bites, and even a bit of kickboxing since my character has particularly powerful looking legs. And I'll keep at it. If they're getting the better of me and they have no ranged, I'll utilise my zip-line, swing a distance away, and then I'll open up on them with the pistols again to see if that'll do them in.
If things aren't going my way, I'll use a smoke bomb which gives me a means of exit, and I'll either heal enough to swing in and take another chip at them or I'll retreat to fight again another day.
That's my way of doing things, I don't use drones, mines, gadgeteering, crowd control, healig, or anything of the sort, it's just me and my prey. When looking at my character, he's a werewolf who's been trained in basic firearms and kickboxing-based fighting styles. My stat-build means that I don't have a whole lot of heatlh, so I can't last long, but my energy regeneration is fast and my attacks are powerful.
So I either get my prey or I have to bugger off, I'm not built to last, but some people are. I'm also built to be a very finesse-based fighter, with my Upgrades and my power focuses I'm designed to do a lot of accurate strikes, not that powerful ones but my increased chances for critical hits often make up for that.
And that's another thing to consider, focuses and upgrades can switch stats around, and these can greatly change how powers work too, it's a system one needs to understand if creating a truly individual hero.
The thing with Champions Online is that you tell the game how you want to play, rather than picking a class and having the game tell you how to play. If you don't know what to tell the game, it doesn't know how to respond, and the end result can be uninspired. But I've seen such inventive characters that I know that the game can be played in many different ways.
And anyone here who has a character in mind before playing the game, who knows how that character will fight, and who can tell the game what sort of hero they're going to be, is going to have a character which is different than most (if not all) others out there, because the player creates the game mechanics, and that's how it works.