Superhero MMOs - Epilogue

As a final post on the matters of superhero MMOs, I am now severely 'meh' on Champions Online. I understand I should take everything I read with a grain of salt, everyone has different opinions on what makes games fun, etc etc, but from a read-through of how combat, leveling and gameplay works in the game? It's really not jumping out at me. And perhaps the nail in the coffin is this. I'm not sure if it's ironic that the unofficial character builder is what turned me away, or what.

The truth is I struggle to wring out builds with personality that I would be happy to play from that. They all feel a bit samey to me as I wrestle around the open ended character creation. Let's see, I've made a super-strong tech-suit guy, a sword armed vampire (with 'bite' and 'summon wolves' and everything), a rejig of one of my lesser villains I played in City of Villains, hell, even a beastial werewolf among other things.

It hit me when I looked back at the builds I made. They all centered around a small number of powersets. Tech suit, Might, Martial arts (usually unarmed, occasionally 1 sword), very rarely Munitions (and then only for characterful reasons) and Supernatural. The only character who used none of these was the villain rejig who was a mix of 'Force' and 'Fire'. I have no interest in elemental or sorcery superheroes, and only a minor (it being a secondary thing) at best interest in heroes who's focus in ranged combat. If I play this 'open ended you can make anything with your character' game I'd be missing out on about 2/3rds of the character possibilities, and from the remainder I struggle to put together a really characterful build that is unique enough that it's worth putting in the builder.

I am a major Roleplaying nerd, I need to feel a character I make is not only unique enough that it's unlikely others have made them, but interesting and captivating enough to me that I want to play them. Hell, one of my favourite characters I ever made up back in City of Heroes was a sociopathic super-hero-hunter who did it for sport, then developed an obsession with a superheroine who beat him. That was some fun roleplay.


Well, drifted off the point a little bit, but it's my blog so I can do what I want! Ha! And my audience just have to sit and read the ramblings I go on ab- wait, where are you going, come back!