What is the Ultimate "FREEDOM"?

My best character there was, in fact, in the above general model; but my second-best character was a very playable combination that's difficult in CoH, basically PBAoE damage + soft control + pets, with a bit of healing... I suspect a pet-optimized Crab with just the right mix of pool, patron, and Incarnate powers is now the closest we could come here, but you'd not really have your full concept until 53, where there you were pretty much rolling by the mid-late teens.

In general, one of the few things that worked well there was that if you had a cool concept, you could be into it very early; too many CoH concepts don't really come into play until much later in your career. I found it much easier to bring in existing superhero roleplaying characters from decades of P&P games and have them feel somewhat like "themselves" within hours of play, not months. Plus, personally I was more interested in exploring the space of "interesting-and-workable-enough" rather than focusing on "minmaxed"; I came up with a number of really cool concepts that were fun to play and effective *enough* for standard content, although clearly far below PvP-grade optimization monsters.

The other thing is that the types there were (by launch or a bit after, at least) arguably closer to typical comic book types; how often do "glass cannon" blaster types without significant defense of *some* sort actually become popular major characters, or really durable types with weak and short-ranged offensive powers? A much more comic-book (and comic-TV) split would be to give "heavy/melee" types Resistance, and "light/ranged" types Defense, for instance; but that's an entirely different discussion

Freedom's just another word for nothin left to lose.
And nothin ain't worth nothin' but it's free.

This is actually why I think city of heroes has the most capable system in place. The only thing that is limiting players in terms of concept(outside of specific game mechanics) isn't an inherent flaw in the system, but rather a simple lack of content. It's not that you can't pick any powers at random to create your own thing that's limiting, it's simply that all the options aren't there yet within the framework we have. but could be (relatively) easily added.

This also kind of represents a difference of opinion, in player type, I feel.

For me, this game is an abstraction of my idea. My fire-blasting character doesn't define his fire-blasting as only nine very specific abilities, he defines it as "Fire blasting" and uses it how he sees fit.

I think some other players, particularly proponents of an "open" system view the game as a very concrete representation of their idea. So when their fire-breathing characters have nine powers and only one of them is a cone/aoe, they feel limited.

of course there's the third that just doesn't care either way and just wants to min/max but I really don't know what to tell them except this type of game is supposed to be geared for lots of different types of players, and as stated before, full open creation ruins the diversity of player types/character types by essentially stripping it down to one big type that you have to pick the right path through. If that type of character isn't what you want, you can either

1: Shut up and play
2: go away
3: suck and die.

This is a good way of putting it, yes. When I make characters, I aim for very general concepts, such as "hitting things with fire" or "some form of psychic powers" (Pain is a good representation of this, as is Empathy). In fact, it's very rare for me to define a character down to the last visual aspect. For instance, Sam - my namesake - was pretty much defined as "dude with sword, guns and super reflexes." I never really stopped to specifically pick out anything in particular he could do with those powers, so any combination of katana-type sword, handguns and super-fast reflexes will probably work for him.

In many ways, I tend to define my characters more by capability rather than by ability. I want a character to be very strong and have the tools to handle a wide variety of situations while still fitting within the thematic framework, say of "sword, guns, reflexes." Whether that's expressed via Golden Dragonfly being a long narrow cone, a wide shallow cone, single-target or PBAoE isn't as relevant. So long as the character fits the given themes well and without extraneous abilities and this character plays as capable as I want him to be, that's a character built to concept.

Personally, when I still did that, I was making Blasters for the simple fact that I saw them as representing enormous power. They were built for extreme damage, after all, more so than Scrappers. I never specifically designed them with the idea that they would be specifically and functionally WEAK when attacked, however. Quite the opposite. The primary reason I no longer play them isn't that I didn't have "sword blast" or Shield Defence for Blasters or anything of the sort. It was simply that I could retain the theme while picking a character that was - in my hands at least - far more capable for far less effort.

The difference, at least in my eyes, between a Fire/Fire/Flame Blaster and a Fire/Fire/Pyre Scrapper is academic. They're both powerful Fire users, they're both adept at dealing damage, they both look cool.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Yeah, cash item for having access to more Epic sets will be a good idea too.