City of Heroes Issue 16 now in open beta

I'm a pretty big fan of CoX myself, but seriously, do you work for paragon studios.....

I16 is funny to me though, for years people have been asking for customization on powers, and they've always said "NO, not going to happen, it's not in the mechanics to do it, and we aren't going to change it!" Then Cryptic gets to make a comic game in their original image, and puts power customization in, and NCSoft/Paragon rushes to implement it.

Again, long time fan of CoX, but I think CO has potential to fully take CoX's place in my heart.

@Ruffianopatsu:

What they actually said back then was 'It's possible, but it's a huge amount of work and we can't justify doing it right now.'

All that changed, of course, when NCsoft bought CoX and there was a lot more money available. Things like the marketing survey suggested powers customization was coming, and the devs started dropping increasingly heavy hints. That was in 2008. They haven't rushed it out to compete with CO, they've been working on it for over a year now.

Too little too late. They played with this idea and teased us with it for years. Now when their first major competition comes out they release it? No... way too late.. not interested.

that sounds like a pretty tall order for an mmo. like too tall to be realistic at all. maybe try freedom force?

Example (using COH terms): I pick Energy Bolt for how the power works (knockback), choose to use one of the Fire animations/eminations (maybe the one where you raise your hands over your head), make it look like an Ice Bolt, then color it sort of a green color (just because).

Freedom Force and its sequel are now available as downloads over on Steam for $5 US -- all tweaked up to run on modern systems.

Definitely worth a look for those who missed them the first time around. Presuming you can handle dealing with Steam, of course.

Power custimization isn't the only thing they've added. Probably even more importantly they've improved the sidekick/lackey system. It's the one thing EVERY MMO SHOULD HAVE! Yet nobody has ever followed COH's lead with this system. And now they've improved it:) Basically when you join a team your automatically set to the proper level for the mission. no pairing up with high level teammates you don't have to do anything at all. also if a high level is exemped down to a lower level team HE STILL GETS XP! and can use powers up to 5 levels above whatever level he's fighting at. Also because of this they've removed most level restrictions for most zones.

This effectively makes your level irrelevant for teaming You can bring any character you want to a team and not worry about having enough mentors. or being effective

Also now pets can cross zones with you! Masterminds are screaming hallelujah today. This also applies to controllers and dominators too!

So what else... You can access the arena screen from your menu.... you can block all emails that don't come from your friends.

I'm sure there's more things i haven't found yet, so far i've spent most of my time tinkering with the character creator and not so much in the game.