CoX I16 news … and some Going Rogue news, too

So, lots of word over this last week on I16 goodness.

There’s the big overview:

At last, our next free content update unveils the all new, much requested and long awaited Powers Customization system! You wanted more control over what your characters’ powers look like, and you are getting it! Issue 16: Power Spectrum takes City of Heroes’ unparalleled character creator to the next level by unveiling a kaleidoscope of colors for your characters’ powers. Become your own pyrotechnician as you select themes for your characters’ powers and color coordinate the hues of the power effects.

If I had a nickel for every time the Devs said that power customization of this sort was utterly impractical, I wouldn’t have to pay for CoX for several years. I guess getting some serious competition cleared out some development time

New Character Creator 

Not only does the newly updated Character Creator allow players to jump directly between Archetype, Powersets, Costumes and Character ID in any order without losing progress, but it also allows you to select your colors and theme for each individual power or apply it to the entire powerset. These themes will allow for color tinting of geometry and particle effects such as energy blast colors and force field colors. The primary and secondary colors of any power effect can be changed individually for each power in the set.

Nice. And nice to hear that there will be easier way to maneuver through the CC … including the name.

Customizable Powers 

Customizable powersets include Cold Domination, Dark Armor, Dark Blast, Dark Melee, Dark Miasma, Earth Control, Earth Melee, Electric Armor, Electric Assault, Electric Blast, Electric Melee, Electricity Manipulation, Empathy, Energy Assault, Energy Aura, Energy Blast, Energy Manipulation, Energy Melee, Fiery Aura, Fire Assault, Fire Blast, Fire Control, Fire Manipulation, Fire Melee, Force Field, Gravity Control, Ice Armor, Ice Assault, Ice Blast, Ice Control, Ice Manipulation, Ice Melee, Illusion, Invulnerability, Kinetics, Mental Manipulation, Mind Control,  Necromancy, Plant Control, Psionic Assault, Psychic Blast, Radiation Blast, Radiation Emission, Regeneration, Sonic Resonance, Sonic Blast, Spines, Stone Armor, Storm Summoning, Super Reflexes, Thermal Radiation, Thorny Assault and Willpower.

Here’s hoping for a free tailor token for each character.  There are some very subtle things I’d love to tweak with power colors …

Super Strength and Martial Arts will each receive an alternate animation for their powers, and Stone Armor and Necromancy will include limited customization.

Also nice.

Other Issue 16 Features 

Powerset Proliferation – More powersets are now in the hands of Archetypes who couldn’t use them previously! Blasters will have access to Radiation Blast, Brutes will get their Claws on, Controllers can now freeze it up with Cold Domination, and Corruptors get to feel the “twang” of Archery and Trick Arrow. Defenders can go high-tech with Assault Rifle and Traps, and Dominators can pulverize their enemies with Earth Assault. Masterminds heat things up with Thermal Radiation, Scrappers and Tankers get ready to fry their foes with Electric Melee and Electric Armor, and finally Stalkers get to swing their own mighty Broadsword.

Sweet! Especially liking Rad Blasters.

Enhanced Difficulty Options – Players can now fine-tune their difficulty levels by telling the game exactly how they want to be treated. They can choose to be regarded as a specific size team (even if they are soloing), and even have control over the level they are detected to be when it comes to the dynamic spawn system. So if you ever wanted to see if your Scrapper could take on a map that is populated for an 8 person team, four levels higher than your own, now you can! The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled, just as before, and you can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.’s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.

This is less of an urgent thing for me than the others. The current Difficulty slider is pretty straightforward. I’m not a fan of limiting where you can do this, though, or (ahem) charging for it.

Meanwhile, Posi talks about the design background for the Going Rogue expansion … where he mentions a couple of things coming in GR:

So that meant we needed a Hero-gone-bad and a Villain-gone-good. Looking back into my stable of old RPG super-heroes I remembered a gun wielding vigilante I used to play called Maelstrom. Since we really wanted to get a dual pistols Powerset into Going Rogue I thought that he would be a great guy to dust off and bring to life in the City of Heroes universe.

[…] That took care of our vigilante Hero, but I still needed a redeeming Villain. I looked to the other powerset we wanted to put into Going Rogue, Demon Summoning. This was a Mastermind set, so it was already exclusive to villains, making it obvious that whoever we came up with was going to be a demon summoner.

So … Dual Pistols Blasters, and Demon Summoning Masterminds. In addition to side-switching. Yay!

The CoX team is certainly pulling out all the stops to add stuff that people will want to play.