Looks like customization of powers is still important to alot of players - - I know i'd love to be able to change a few powers
- one of the reasons i refuse to play radiation is the way the characters shoot eyebeams (can't stand)
I know it will be tough but it seems a large portion of the base would like this option -
I won't drop the game over this but it would be nice - now if the new marvel had custom powers and COX didnt then i would be upset. (notice marvel is NOT capitalized) 
SFC America Assault/Dev Blaster LVL 50
Cpt Patriot Inv/SS Tanker LVL 40+
Entropy MA/Inv Scrapper LVL 30+
Warbot En/En Blaster LVL 40 +
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Am I the only one that sees a problem with everyone being able to tint any power any color?
Right now certain types of powers have certain colors, for instance, heals are green. If all of a sudden someone can make their heal purple or red, or blue, then if/when I team with them, I'm going to be pretty confused as to whats going on. Dunno, maybe I'm just not smart enough to figure things out otherwise, but for the most part I think the colors as they are, are a big indication of what power is being used. Custom colors is just going to muddle the whole thing up.
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Am I the only one that sees a problem with everyone being able to tint any power any color?
Right now certain types of powers have certain colors, for instance, heals are green. If all of a sudden someone can make their heal purple or red, or blue, then if/when I team with them, I'm going to be pretty confused as to whats going on. Dunno, maybe I'm just not smart enough to figure things out otherwise, but for the most part I think the colors as they are, are a big indication of what power is being used. Custom colors is just going to muddle the whole thing up.
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With a limited selection of power colors this shouldn't be too much of a problem. For example allow the heal to be green, blue-green or yellow-green.
Alien 51 - Emp/Energy/Energy Defender
Average Bob - Rifle/Devices/Munitions Blaster
Fusion Avatar - Triform Warshade
Grumpy - Nec/Poison/Mu Mastermind
Metallic Guy - Kat/Inv/Weapons Scrapper
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I won't drop the game over this but it would be nice - now if the new marvel had custom powers and COX didnt then i would be upset. (notice marvel is NOT capitalized)
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SFC_America, I suspect that's exactly what will happen.
CoH was released in 2004. The tech used to build it was the best available somewhere in 2000 to 2003.
It had and has limitations.
In theory, there could be a CoH 2 at some point, and it's probably cheaper to code CoH 2 from scratch, using the lessons learned in CoH and the upcoming Marvel game.
As much as I'd like to have power customization, I'd rather this be done instead:
Move the character database to the Guild Wars model, where everyone can play with everyone, because there's a shared character database farm, and players can group, and then when they enter a zone or instance, that zone or instance is handed out dynamically to one of CoH's 11 servers.
Consider this a Paragon Crisis, and everyone keeps their existing hero name, but their original Server Name is the name of the "alternate Earth" they came from.
If you were Superguy on Champion, now you'd be Superguy (Champion) and be able to team with Superguy (Justice) and Superguy (Virtue).
We would regularly see several instances of Atlas, Talos, etc., which do their usual job of capping the # of players in a zone instance.
Essentially, it's a huge database merge, but we PRESERVE the server info as the Alternate Earth you're from.
Future characters would be created as normal, where you pick a "server" (or original Alternate Earth) and still have 8 (or 12) slots for each.
When you pick a name that's already taken on at least one Alternate Earth, you'd then get a menu to pick one of the remaining Earths.
Further, Cryptic could create more Alternate Earths, so if for some reason your fave name was already taken 11 times, you could have that name and be from the 12th or 50th or 5,000th Alternate Earths.
This also introduces story possibilities, as foes could pay attention to what earth you are from, so that if Champion heroes have defeated the most Hellions this month, then they are attacked by preference in a group of heroes from various earths :-)
First off, THANK YOU Brawler for this post. You're the bestest.
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I really dislike the glowing on my Invuln tanker, and at times it has been nexeccary to turn the toggles off in order to 'see' something close by.
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There are some powersets that I simply will not take due to some combination of visual effects (Spines, Invulnerability) and audio effects (Invulnerability, Force Field.) A fade-out on some of these powers would make me mad-happy.
It stinks that stuff like this, which many players, want, is so hard to implement, getting in the way of what can reasonably be argued to be more substantial content. (See also, those of us way more interested in droppable costume pieces than invention sets.) Then again, CoH has, over time, implemented a lot of time-consuming or impossible things.
...have I mentioned how much I adore the flight poses...?
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Am I the only one who chuckles everytime someone asks for 'endgame content for 50s'?
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No.
Somethign else I was wondering. Is it pssible to slot and IO that would have a 100 precent Proc of changeig the color or the sword or whatever for that power?
Just a slight counter-point here.
I know what all the powers look like. I create my characters knowing what their powers are gonna look like. What throws me off usually is when the character's already created and then the power appearance changes. Most extremely, my invuln brute, but also my fire tanker seems to have got the CoV only fire shields now 
instead of the oval shaped original fire shields.
I don't mind power customization as long as it always leaves a way for my powers to be left alone in appearance. Unless the power graphic is crashing people... please let (me at least have the option that) my powers look how they looked when I created the character or it can ruin the character for me 
If my invuln scrapper stopped being shiny I'd cry she's one of my 50s
For the longest time we heard similar explanations as to why we couldn't craft from the start and here we are with Inventions. What would it take from the fanbase to get custom powers put at the top of your list of things to do? I mean most of the pwoers are the same exact animation as You've said BAB but with diff FX and the same basic power with small side affect differences (blasts for example one debuffs enemy def another drains stamina etc)
So really just the color even being capable of being changed would create a hundred new possibilities per power for customization and players to say "plasma bolt" or "grease lightning" is what they're using instead of every blaster using blue energy, etc...
Add in ability to pick from a handful of other animation options for origin (sapper gun for energy blasts anyone?) and those two combined add hundreds of "powers" w/o ANY of the work of balancing new game mechanics and power powers...
It's just as much if not more the look of the powers for some players that determine the choice as it is the type or side effects...
I'd absolutely LOVE to see priorities goto more invention sets for high levels (and all levels really), bug fixes, QoL, and Power Customization, even if we needed to do a TF to do it. And maybe a new trial.
Issue 10: Dreams Do Come True...
-Power Customization
-New Trial
-QoL Improvements
-More Invention Sets
There you go, just added 2,000+ regular subscribers with that issue.
One thing I think players need to realise is that powers customisation is at least three different things:
1) Weapon Model Customisation: so that your Katana Scrapper can choose what their Katana looks like (or even if it is a katana). The power function is the same, but the weapon model is different. Since I don't have to do the work, this is probably the easiest form of customisation to implement, but also the one with the smallest reach (because not all powersets have weapon models).
2) Power colours customisation: as discussed by BAB. Make your powers all the colours of the rainbow (and my retinas die a little thinking of the possibilities...).
3) Power animation customisation: also as discussed a bit by BAB. Players can choose the animation that goes with the activation of their power. The widest reaching of all the customisations and one that opens up the most worms.
I can see a lot of problems with colour and animation customisation. Ignoring the difficulty of actually implementing the change, it would change how players interact with each other when suddenly the established visual cues of how powers work were thrown out the window. Someone already mentioned how recoloured heals would be confusing, but it could also lead to some fairly ridiculous things happening to some powers eg auras / shields (I can easily imagine the flourescent pink Dark / Dark character - "Look mommy, a walking ball of cotton candy!").
On top of that, there would soon be the 'best' animations for each powers - people would pick the one that rooted for the shortest time, for instance.
So, popular as it might be in some circles, full power customisation is a huge step with a lot of ramifications. For the record, I don't think powers customisation is going to attract new players - CoH/V already has a character customisation system that is seen as best in MMOG genre, so adding more options to it isn't going to attract more people solely on the ground that they can customise their character further.
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One thing I think players need to realise is that powers customisation is at least three different things:
1) Weapon Model Customisation: so that your Katana Scrapper can choose what their Katana looks like (or even if it is a katana). The power function is the same, but the weapon model is different. Since I don't have to do the work, this is probably the easiest form of customisation to implement, but also the one with the smallest reach (because not all powersets have weapon models).
2) Power colours customisation: as discussed by BAB. Make your powers all the colours of the rainbow (and my retinas die a little thinking of the possibilities...).
3) Power animation customisation: also as discussed a bit by BAB. Players can choose the animation that goes with the activation of their power. The widest reaching of all the customisations and one that opens up the most worms.
I can see a lot of problems with colour and animation customisation. Ignoring the difficulty of actually implementing the change, it would change how players interact with each other when suddenly the established visual cues of how powers work were thrown out the window. Someone already mentioned how recoloured heals would be confusing, but it could also lead to some fairly ridiculous things happening to some powers eg auras / shields (I can easily imagine the flourescent pink Dark / Dark character - "Look mommy, a walking ball of cotton candy!").
On top of that, there would soon be the 'best' animations for each powers - people would pick the one that rooted for the shortest time, for instance.
So, popular as it might be in some circles, full power customisation is a huge step with a lot of ramifications. For the record, I don't think powers customisation is going to attract new players - CoH/V already has a character customisation system that is seen as best in MMOG genre, so adding more options to it isn't going to attract more people solely on the ground that they can customise their character further.
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I'd definitely like to see # 1 happen. I mean the main reason why I've never made an AR Blaster/Corruptor is because of the gun. 
Leader of The LEGION/Fallen LEGION on the Liberty server!
SSBB FC: 2062-8881-3944
MKW FC: 4167-4891-5991
Power colors? Is this really what we want devs working on? Would folks really rather have this than say lvl 50 content?
"Oh look nothing to do, but I can make Laser Beam Eyes green"
For what it's worth, I for one vote no to any serious deveolpment effort here.
Infinity and Victory mostly
dUmb, etc.
lolz PvP anymore, Market PvP for fun and profit
*Smirk* They thought (or at least acted like) Faultline was this great, tremendous thing, this grand accomplishment of mission content. It's like 4 hours tops. They could put out level 50 content at that scale once a month and it wouldn't be enough to feed our appetite for content. Or at least my appetite given that I was handing them $15 a month. It's simply become a better use of my entertainment dollars to buy a new Playstation game every three months than to pay their fees for the no-vission, least we can do, that's just not possible developement style that Positron is heading up.
They can put all the "serious effort" into it they have - they know they're entirely incapable of keeping up. Thats why you see stuff like inventions - it's an attempt to leverage what they've got, to multiply the content rather than just add to it. Its was a failed attempt in my case, but I'm sure some folks like it. Power customization is the multiplier I would put money on, and I consider it a red herring to say "you can have missions OR power customization" when writing new missions isn't an art project.
Personally the game has become something of a dry well - the amount of new mission writting going on is less than pitiful. Any new additions are being hidden behind hours or weeks of mindless repetition, and their "well, Inventions were supposed to be part of i8, so we'll try to get it out soon" is just annother example of practical consequences of the stagnating pool of talent being applied to Cryptic's second most important undertaking.
But you keep hoping, K?
If it's such a problem for you, cancel your subscription and renew it for one month every time an issue releases.
I already have and that's what I'm expecting to do in the future, if the issues appear to be promising based on their website presentation. Thats how several of my friends are interacting with the game now (one in seven of them chose to give i9 a hands on after quitting 7 months ago. two of themare not able to because of finacial concerns, the other four asked what there was in the way of new villian misison content and laughed it off when I told them).
However, from that prespective, anything the issue blurbs say about "New inventable items" will not be going in the "I should sign on again" side of the balances, since I won't be on long enough to see the benefit. I'm too casual for the game I guess. If that means the costume system has become 94% stagnant for me (which has been the case in i9), that will increase the odds I'm not gonna bother. I realize that makes me a marginal customer that Cryptic is even less interested in serving. Its a negative reinforment loop for both parties (a.k.a. a death spiral) but that's where we're at.
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I already have and that's what I'm expecting to do in the future, if the issues appear to be promising based on their website presentation. Thats how several of my friends are interacting with the game now (one in seven of them chose to give i9 a hands on after quitting 7 months ago. two of themare not able to because of finacial concerns, the other four asked what there was in the way of new villian misison content and laughed it off when I told them).
However, from that prespective, anything the issue blurbs say about "New inventable items" will not be going in the "I should sign on again" side of the balances, since I won't be on long enough to see the benefit. I'm too casual for the game I guess. If that means the costume system has become 94% stagnant for me (which has been the case in i9), that will increase the odds I'm not gonna bother. I realize that makes me a marginal customer that Cryptic is even less interested in serving. Its a negative reinforment loop for both parties (a.k.a. a death spiral) but that's where we're at.
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You shrug off the praise of Faultline by citing hours. It's true that the story can be completed in 4-5 hours. That's an "accomplishment" style of play: play it, beat it, forget it. There are still hours of explorer-ranged experiences and even "puzzle" discoveries of appreciating the hidden references in character stories & NPC dialogue. There's also the ability to street-hunt in a new area with new experiences. The game also introduced safeguard missions the same issue, IIRC, and many of the "throw away" stories have their own little discoveries that can make them last much longer before seeming too "repetative."
The greatest MMO's have never been about passively consuming someone else's story, but giving you a playground to create your own. You choose not to- others get a great deal of value out of their $15 and would be disappointed had the devs taken your direction.
Your contempt for the game is common, but usually misplaced: $15 doesn't get you very much nowadays, as far as entertainment goes.
Your $15 won't even get you a 4 hours of entertainment at the movies... even excluding popcorn. Most $60 games are gearing for under 20 hours of playability- in fact, many game reviewers now cut on a game if the story drags on for too long. Many games that do claim more than that have gameplay that makes that "hunt for the last darn glowie" tedium seem rich in comparison.
I know this won't convince you not to leave- you're not satisfied here... just don't be surprised if you're not satisfied elsewhere either.
Err... sorry for the threadjack.
Back on-topic: anyone get a chance to try setting this up yet?
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You shrug off the praise of Faultline by citing hours.
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Its a better unit of measurement than qumquats .
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It's true that the story can be completed in 4-5 hours. That's an "accomplishment" style of play: play it, beat it, forget it.
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Um, maybe my memmory just works too well - once I've played a mission (and carefully read every clue, breifing and review), I don't have a burning urge to do it again. Even with other powers, since at this point I have played through with every powerset that interests me. Now if there were a new powerset to explore, I'd be reasonably interested in running a fair swath of the game again. That was sort of my hope for inventions - that they would change my play experience. So far, not so much. The funniest thing being that I was starting over with a villian alt and took Burke. His very first mission, kill a very minor number of mobs but run around planting bugs made me really wish there were more missions out there where there are goals (even simple ones) other than fight, fight, fight.
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There are still hours of explorer-ranged experiences...
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Did you skip travel powers? I had a decent feel of the zone shape and flavor in about 40 minutes. I have to admit, my new choice of MMOs has really spoiled me on how well done outdoor maps can be. By comparison, CoH (and to a lesser extent CoV, which shows a more expereienced hand) seems like a lot of empty space put there mostly to bog you down between instances. If the Cape mission were at a fixed location with a unique map that you could visit any time you wanted too, the world would feel a little more significant and substantial to me. I could longue around the Hero One museum for a few hours now and then and feel a connection to the world. You read web articles about an old newspaper building, but you really can only go and stare at it from the outside and notice that it's a mirror immage of 2 other buildings in the zone and about 8 across town as a whole.
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and even "puzzle" discoveries of appreciating the hidden references in character stories & NPC dialogue.
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*yawn* *smacks lips* I guess I'm just not hard core enough. Not one of the cool kids who gets all the in-jokes.
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There's also the ability to street-hunt in a new area with new experiences.
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Ppphhhhhbbbbbttt! Fighting the Lost next to a new bulding doesn't constitute a "new experience" to me. Then again street hunting has always trenscended the pointless barrier for me. Its exactly the sort of thing I could be doing in ANY game, and ussually could feel is a more interesting tactical exercise in most.
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The game also introduced safeguard missions the same issue, IIRC, and many of the "throw away" stories have their own little discoveries that can make them last much longer before seeming too "repetative."
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*Snort* I didn't include police missions, but since you brought it up, mix and matching 5 enemy types, 4 maps and 11 plots is still just 11 missions to me. Its not like I havent had to butcher Circle of Thorn guys in the 5-layer cave before, ad nauseum 
. The Dragoon balls and P.L.O.T. Devices were cute, in a sort of vaguely sterile, popcorn like non-significant plot sort of way. I appreciated the writing, but at the end of the day its just annother go there and kill job. It made me actively miss the handful of patrol misisons in the game.
I did enjoy the Safeguards somewhat. Count that as another 8 or so missions worth of good clean fun. None of my friends cared, naturally, since they don't play heroside.
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The greatest MMO's have never been about passively consuming someone else's story, but giving you a playground to create your own.
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Sounds awesome. Care to point one out that meets this criteria? I'll be over by the trainer clearly playing second fiddle to someone else's Mary Sue.
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You choose not to- others get a great deal of value out of their $15 and would be disappointed had the devs taken your direction.
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*shrugs* Yup. That's the bet they are taking. Could be they won that bet overall, but my money says COX is on life support now and will be shut down in, lets say, 20 months. This estimate based not on spite, but apathy. Or I could be completely off base and the introduction of lewt has successfully lured in a whole new crop of players that will also get 1-2 years of enjoyment out of the body of content they have now. That's actually a testable hypothesis since apparently population numbers are sort of available from the corperate site. I should go see if I can check.
Then again, maybe the whole "new threat" thing the seems to continuously hover in the "available within 1 year from now" range will really blow my socks off. That would be nice. Having that in our hands before year's end would be nice too, but the time frame really isn't pressing to me anymore. I'll re-up whenever its ready, assuming it looks cool.
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Your contempt for the game is common...
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So you're thinking less than 20 months then? Common contempt is not a recipe for success .
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but usually misplaced: $15 doesn't get you very much nowadays, as far as entertainment goes.
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Uh, if they put out an issue every month, I'd be tickled pink - and far more forgiving of the flailing they've displayed lately. Generously speaking they manage one every 4 months, and by that standard, Hell Yes, there are TONS of things out there that give me more pleasure than each of the last 3 issues have for $60 or less.
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Your $15 won't even get you a 4 hours of entertainment at the movies... even excluding popcorn.
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Hmm, you tout all the secondary benefits of Faultline, but you don't talk about movies with your friends afterwards? Kinda a double standard. I can manage movie + an evening shooting the breeze about it for maybe a smidgeon over $15 - but then again I don't buy theater sodas .
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Most $60 games are gearing for under 20 hours of playability- in fact, many game reviewers now cut on a game if the story drags on for too long.
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Most videogame reviewers strike me as idiots, and I've got a shelf full of RPGs telling me I can do 20+ hours of good story-based gaming for less than $60 casually. Usually with a new set of player tools (classes/powersets) to explore, as good or better a score, equal or better graphics, and stangely very little lag or crashing. Not bug free certainly, but plenty of folks on these boards will remind you, "what is?" I certainly got my time and fun out of God of War II as far as non-RPGs go. Next you are gonna tell me I'm missing out on all the combative bidding over at the auction house. A shame that :P.
yes, I have meet some nice people on-line. Ive gotten loads of compliments for being a generally nice player to work with and praise for my costuumes and back story, so I know I've also contributed to the fun of others. I don't regret my time on CoX, I just think that the Devs are failing to serve long time players and are strategically trying to dress up old content to appeal to the churn. Your loyalty and entertainment dollar demands different things. Nothing wrong with that. I'm saying 20 months because I'm not particularly in the majority I think. If eveyone was like me the severs would go dark by year's end.
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Many games that do claim more than that have gameplay that makes that "hunt for the last darn glowie" tedium seem rich in comparison.
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Wow. You have some really rose tinted goggles for playing CoX . Or don't know what the hell you're talking about. Or maybe just buy a lot of bad games. Not sure. Occam's razor doesn't immediately offer a solution on this one.
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I know this won't convince you not to leave- you're not satisfied here... just don't be surprised if you're not satisfied elsewhere either.
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Your concern is noted, but so far I'm liking my new MMO reasonably well, and having paid once for a lifetime membership, I don't have to reassess it every couple of months to see if it's still a worthwhile transaction. I've sunk about $600 into CoX, and I don't regret it, but the last year has been a steadily declining level of enjoyment and growing irritation, and i9 finally cracked the floor. Its the first issue that not only added intolerably little, it also actively pissed me off. My biggest concern isn't where CoX is at, which I like less than I did a year ago, it's the direction it's going. Your forecast is clearly brighter.
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Hmm. Some animation-prodigy needs to do the Thriller dance on this CrypticAR rig thing. Then we can finally give the Banished Pantheon something to do in Dark Astoria.
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You mean like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XVdxOkKqbo
(not done with coh but still very cool)
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Quick and Dirty Solution to Power Customization:
In new CoX box sets, include squares of tinted polypropelene (cut to fit, square, 22" on diagonal) and scotch tape.
Pick the shade you wish, and tape it to your monitor. Voila!! Instant power color customization!!
They even have printed polypropelene for patterned effects.
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How about just putting out a new box for retail with the game disk and crayons?