Both of your responses are correct. And I do think that the new superhero MMO genre (as it's soon to be) needs these issues reformulated in order to give players exactly what they want. They're also coming from a pen and paper system that is very dynamic, but already has rules in place to make it cohesive. So that's a strength.

I've watched the alpha videos of City of Heroes, where you didn't have a class, and you did just pick your powers on how you wanted to play. It also had combat stances... I think Jack Emmert is reaching back to his original vision for CoH and making sure he does it right with Champions this time around.

But I'm still going to assert that having features going out the door versus having added them on later in an MMO's lifecycle isn't a strong enough argument to shut a game out of the running. Champions is going to have to go through the same growth and expansion that CoX has, and four or five years from now, people will have clear opinions about both games... and I doubt either one will hold a clear victory. The MMO generation lines are blurring, people pick games based on the features they provide and the gameplay that makes them comfortable.

I'm not trying to shoot down Champions. I'm looking for a successor to what I consider to be my favorite MMO, so I can continue to enjoy superheroism online. I'm just saying that there's no sense putting nails in CoX's coffin when right now, CO is still vaporware. It still needs to go through a full dev cycle, and it will have its own features crimped and chopped before it hits the shelves... only then can we start making genuine assessments to its quality.

For the record, the flight poses are animated subtly, and I simply hit my fly key to pose into them. But I get your gist, it's totally a taped on feature. I'm just saying, they have a few years to redesign the mechanisms if they feel it's important to the players.