Does anyone here even LIKE comic books?

Poison Pen, post a picture of your avatar

To address the costume choices:

This game is always adding more costume bits. Specifically, there is an animal themed booster pack coming up next, which should hopefully address some of your concerns about the lack of heads.

Also, try mixing and matching parts more. The objects you can layer, like a helmet with it's various additions, can be simple or very complex, depending on how you use it. It's not perfect, but this costume editor is far and away the best in the business.

To address the immersion problem:

As others have said, some servers are more geared for that than others. However, I suspect that if you're looking for the type of immersion a PnP game gives you, you'd be better off playing a PnP, which lends itself to that type of role-play better than a computer game that is limited by the mechanics of having to be a game first and a role-playing experience second.

If you're running into level 50 characters, chances are these are people that have been playing this game for years, and when you've done the same content for years, you tend to ignore the game world and focus on mechanics. It happens in every game.

Another reason for the abundance of Level 50s is that they just added the start of new content for Level 50 characters (Incarnate system) so there are six years of Level 50 characters being dusted off and played to prepare for expanded content.

This is on top of those players looking to pimp out there level 50 with the best "loot" (rare and ultra rare Invention Origin Enhancements) in the game which necessitates grinding for drops or money, which is easiest to do with a Level 50.

Also after six years, classic sounding superhero names are pretty well used up leaving you with names like the The Flaming Lisp (note this video, "Your Superpowers and You" was done 4 years ago and we had this problem back then). Also not all characters need to be traditional spandex clad superheros, this is City of Heroes, so secret agents, aliens, dimension hopping elves, accidental time travelers, mythical beings (admittedly have been used in comics as superhero origins) are wandering about, why shouldn't they have "names pulled from a telephone book".

The original selection of costume parts for CoH were quite limited until CoV came out. The number of items for things like shoulders and belts tripled or quadrupled. Yes this meant there are 35 bone spikes and a dozen skulls pieces and let's not spend to much time discussing eye plugs but basic chest and leg pieces, the addition of jackets and coats (original CoH had the whole suit as one fixed piece) have added valid "hero" looks as well as the "darkity dark dark" pieces. And now with side switching, "villains" can be found anywhere now so if they want to keep their edgier look, who am I to disagree.

Lastly, nobody likes unsolicited advice. Nobody likes a spelling or grammar Nazi. If you want to hang and play with people who are willing to RP their characters, basically Virtue but there are a few RP groups on every server, players who bothered to include a character description and background, then wait until you become friends with them.

Love comics, havent read some in awhile, since, well, they keep changing or getting rid of my favorite characters and I don't like it! Grrrr...

Or some of my favorite comics just didn't survive for one reason or another. I miss The Tenth, Adrenalynn and all of Tony Daniel's other comics!

While I do devote 4 of the 5 costume slots to civvies, when I mission, I almost always (99%) of the time run in my characters hero outfit.

I agree with you though, it sucks to see a lot of non super hero characters running around, and don't believe what people say, this was ORIGINALLY a super hero MMO, it even said so on the first page of the site (it stopped doing that sometime last year tho).

I think this has more to do with most players playing a CoH as just another MMO and less as a superhero comic MMO.

IE...they make their fantasy based characters in the game.

Sadly, this is going to happen in ANY MMO.

You know those licenced games we can't mention? The one's with established properties and histories? Yeeeeaaah, the same problem in those too. :/

Even in fantasy based MMOs you're going to see "Jimmy Two Tone Cyberpunk"

As for some of the names, some of it goes into the category of the players just mentioned, they're here for the game aspect only, they could care less about the setting, some of it will be due to names being taken that have the more superhero/villain sound to them being taken.

basically what others have said, Freedom or Virtue are the most populated, also keep in mind other factors as well, i.e. school is back in session, one major MMO just had a major expansion, another one just launched( which generally creates temperary lools), some of the most exciting bits added here lately is the end game part. One thing I am curious about, not just from the Devs here, but Devs of other major MMO's as well, if there is a general feeling that the state of the economy has had any impact on the MMO Industry.

Really... the made-up pronouns hearken back to the 80's. I haven't seen them attempted to be used by anyone for 20 years.

I though the OP was using German pronouns.