Champions Online vs. City of Heroes

[HalloweenKnight]

Man oh man, where to begin.

 

The concept of a Champions MMO is delightful. I was happy to find out such a thing was in development. I've played / GM'd Champions and HERO System pretty much exclusively throughout my life, so a chance to see it "live and breathe" as a participant-player is like a dream come true.

 

I am, however, a little jaded - there was a Champions game for the PC announced back in the 90's that never materialized. Plus another PC game called "Guardians: Agents of Justice" - which looked very Champions-ish - also vanished soon after its development was announced.

 

"Freedom Force" was on-target. No, it wasn't Champions per se', but by God it was close! Your character's appearance was unrestricted, though you needed some tutoring and some free downloads to do it just right. The powers were fairly open - with a little work, you could make just about anything. Time, patience and the right mods were all you needed to bring your own personal Champions game to life with the Freedom Force engine.

 

Then came "City of Heroes" and "City of Villains" (CoX), and Freedom Force was quickly forgotten and tossed aside in favor of the "newer and flashier" thing.

 

I've played CoX now for four years, with a small pause to try "Auto Assault" (I once loved "Car Wars" as much as I did Champions, so you can see why I was drawn to it). CoX is NOT Champions. Attempts to re-create my beloved Champions characters in CoX were frustrating. The character archetypes in CoX are strict and narrow compared with Champions' flexibility. A strong ranged attack in CoX meant your defenses were practically non-existent, strong defenses meant you had no ranged attack.

 

Bottom line: Just to see them running around as "living" 3D characters in CoX, nearly all of my re-created Champions characters ended up as Tankers or Scrappers just so they would survive. And that didn't seem right to me, especially when, during their Champions careers, most were ranged attackers.

 

On my own, I came up with a simple solution that would bring CoX so much closer to being Champions that it would please even a hard-core Champions fan like myself: A new Archetype (AT) - Multi-Class. Pick and choose from ALL of the available (non-Epic) primary and secondary power sets instead of just the few available to other ATs. The upside: Incredible, Champions-like versatility. The downside: You'll never do as much damage or have as many hitpoints or have as high a defense as the other ATs. It seems so simple...why haven't they done it already? Would it be all that unbalancing? NPC enemies can already do it, so it can't be that bad.

 

So we look now to the future, to Champions Online (CO).

 

I say if CoX just had Multi-Class ATs, it would be so close to Champions that it would almost *be* CO already, just add VIPER and PRIMUS instead of Arachnos and Longbow. And then I could be truly happy, right?