City of Heroes vs. Champions Online - The Data

[Sovera]

6 hours ago, TheOtherTed said:

Consider also the fact that COH Homecoming may still benefit from the "homecoming" effect.  I can't speak for other players, but I know my own cycle with MMOs follows a standard pattern:

• Phase 1 - playing as often as I can and trying out new things
• Phase 2 - playing regularly, but not as frequently as before
• Phase 3 - popping in once or twice a week to catch up with in-game friends
• Phase 4 - popping in once a month (or even once a year), mostly for nostalgia's sake
• Phase 5 - (very rare) well and truly done with the game; zero interest in even poking my nose in.

I had hit phase 4 in the original game a couple of years before shut-down.  I'm still in phase 4 with regards to CO (and a few others).  Now, however, I'm right back in phase 1.  Had COH stayed "alive" all these years, there's a good chance I would have reached phase 5 by now.

I tell you. Back in the age of plenty when MMOs came out and I blithely jumped from one to the other and was super picky (it's fun? it's good? But it has no RP community? UNTHINKABLE!) I had left CoH since I had nothing really to do. This was when they had just begun murmuring about Incarnates so I believe I joined at I6 and left at I14.

 

At one point I came back to CoH, paid a month, logged in, and went eeeew, the old models, god, no fingers! And didn't even play. I logged that half hour and didn't return for the rest of my paid month.

 

Now CoH returns and I have been ADDICTED. Like, holy crap, I've not been addicted to a game this hard at least since GW2. Talk about waking at 6 AM on a week-end (I tend to always wake at around then, but then I roll around and continue sleeping) and consider getting up to go play. And sometimes I actually did so!

 

It's been eight or nine months and only now am I losing steam. And I say this but I just re-rolled the same character four times with different combos and gave myself iron man rules to not transfer cash or play the market.

 

Even then the losing steam is mostly the fact the RP server is US based and as an EU I'm missing out on the majority of the community.

 

2 hours ago, UltimateXao said:

CoH is a game that, in a lot of ways, didn't age well. There's a ton of stuff that feels incredibly dated, mostly because it IS dated (conventions that came out of more limited technology, mostly. Some design stuff, too, though). But the few things that did age well are things incredibly fundamental to making an MMO work properly. Such as allowing very easy mission coordination where everyone

gets rewards, very easy team building and PUGing, especially once all the ATs were open to both sides, which fixed the cookie cutter trinity design blueside.

 

While I agree with everything you've said this here is very important.  I remember trying to coax friends to come play with this line, 'You can play a tank from level 1! A healer from level 1! You can TANK STRAIGHT AWAY! HEAL STRAIGHT AWAY! You don't need to slog solo all the way to max level on a DPS spec despite having rolled a tank because you wanted to tank! You get -more- XP if you team up You're encouraged to team up from level 1 on!"

 

You have to understand my other game at the time was WoW, before double builds, before uber XP from dungeons and cross realm LFG allowing (having allowed, it's been nerfed since) to level solely via dungeons and in groups. At the time leveling together was -slow-. The killing speed increased but the XP was cut by a good amount and in many cases quests were not even made to be duoed with all sorts of problems involved.

 

So this was completely novel to me. Imagine this! Playing together since level 1! Tanking from level 1! Even now this is my call to friends.

 

Unfortunately zero have taken the bait. At most they play 2-3 minutes, promise to return, and I never see them again.

[ArchVileTerror]

I hear you on that one, Sovera.  I have a whole group of tabletop roleplayers; about eight of them are very active and make it to scheduled sessions.  

I got four of them to try City of Heroes.  None of them stuck around longer than two months.

[SwitchFade]

3 hours ago, UltimateXao said:

CO did a lot of things that blow CoH out of the water, stuff that the superhero genre absolutely needed.

 

Shame they built the entire thing on top of the corpse of CoH's design, both the bad AND the good.

 

CoH is a game that, in a lot of ways, didn't age well. There's a ton of stuff that feels incredibly dated, mostly because it IS dated (conventions that came out of more limited technology, mostly. Some design stuff, too, though). But the few things that did age well are things incredibly fundamental to making an MMO work properly. Such as allowing very easy mission coordination where everyone gets rewards, very easy team building and PUGing, especially once all the ATs were open to both sides, which fixed the cookie cutter trinity design blueside. 

 

CO's regressive design on that front is one of the two big things that actually killed the game. People DO solo in MMOs. Frequently, even. But few people solo most of the time. And most players want to team up where possible. Especially if it increases XP! CO made coordinating this a dumpster fire, and any other games in the genre should be very careful to emulate CoH instead of CO in this regard. Honestly, almost all team based games should try and emulate CoH when it comes to this. Warframe, for instance, more or less uses similar design, and it puts a PUG matchmaking queue on top of it.

 

Back to the sad story of CO, though.. The other problem being the developer's complete and total obsession with nerfing, and the weird half baked design that was seen all across the powers and build systems.

 

The freeform system was terrific, but it became a bane of the game because people min maxing got so many things nerfed that pretty much everyone had to min max just to get an effective character. They did start to fix this eventually, but then they brought on a developer that fancied himself a WoW dev wannabe, who started nerfing again, designing really, really broken bosses (one shot damage everywhere) and was obsessed with emulating the endgame gear grind other games have (CoH developed this problem too, if I'm being fair, but they mitigated it better).

 

Blocking was a nice addition, but the way it worked was really clunky and half assed. It didn't stop crowd control, so the moment you let go you were instantly stunned. Enemies didn't experience blockstun or any kind of parried state, regardless of how well you timed it, so mechanically its functionality was flat. You can't "block and punish" enemy shtick attacks like you can in a proper action game. Block was functionally just a damage reduction that lasted as long as you held down the button. Bit underbaked.

 

There was a lot of stuff in the game like this, many powers and upgrades had interesting concepts that just didn't function well or were underpowered to the point of uselessness in practice. There are these little inklings that they wanted to better integrate travel powers into combat, the fact they used no energy and auto suppressed down to something comparable to running hover or combat jumping, so there was no need to switch between travel powers constantly, it was brilliant.

 

But they short changed what could be done with that, Superspeed had this interesting upgrade that was supposed to allow you to deliver more damage from an attack if it was executed after moving at high speed, but there was no meaningful system for building speed (it was all or nothing, like in CoH) and the ability didn't even seem to do anything (it probably did, but was so weak it was difficult to see what it was doing).

 

...I say all this to make a pretty basic point: The CoH relaunch seeing such success is one part legacy and nostalgia, and one part complete incompetency on the part of its competition. You can tell a similar story to the one here about CO for DCUO and probably any other bit competitor that came out.

 

Which I actually say to make another pretty basic point: There is a vacuum in the market to capitalize on here. Anyone who wanted to make a new Superhero MMO right now would be facing virtually no modern competition. Hint hint.

 

If Homecoming can snag the licence, and they have the talent to do it right, considering an actual CoH2 might not be a bad idea.

Co did exactly nothing that could even blow pong out of the water.

 

CoH is vastly superior on all fronts.

 

And the block mechanic is beyond stupid.

[Blackfeather]

I'll have to try Champions Online one day to see how it plays, but the "building energy via a basic attack" mechanic doesn't sound that appealing to me. Certainly it works for specific kinds of superheroes/supervillains (i.e. those that primarily blast/punch their way through things), but it's less appealing for other kinds of characters, such as what CoH would consider Controllers and Masterminds say. What use is a basic attack to a hero focusing on locking down an enemy, or directing pets across a battlefield? Personally it makes much more sense to cut out the middle man, which CoH very much does.

[DR_Mechano]

Yeah it is kind of unfortunate that the way CO freeform works is that you normally pick 1 energy builder, 1 single target attack and 1 AoE attack and that's your entire attack change. There were some really cool powers that I wish we could replicate in CoH.

 

My favorite was always the Orbital Strike Cannon which in it's base form had a really cool buildup of a large targeting reticle slowly focusing in around the mob and then suddenly a massive blast came down dealing huge damage. However whilst that was awesome it was the 'Anvil of Dawn' (a clear play on the Hammer of Dawn from Gears of War) advantage that turned it into this huge tracking beam (it followed the mob targeted) of energy that not only dealt the huge blast damage but also large Damage over time in an area.

 

Unfortunately the fact it had a very long wind up along with, at least back then, a fairly sizeable cooldown, meant it was basically junk as an AoE power since it couldn't be spammed.

 

The other advantage was the 'size growth on Enrage' one which let your character get bigger and bigger the more stacks of enrage you had until you could have a character who towered over everyone else in combat.

[nhisso]

Honestly, CO is leaps and bounds better than CoH graphically and combatwise. More and better costumes too. And you can hybridize more than 2 meager sets.

Except there is one MASSIVE problem which in the end makes CoH immensely better: CO was abandoned. It was.

We've had 1 new powerset and just a few new powers in the old sets, 4 or so sweeping changes to power sets for QoL and updated looks, and ZERO expansions. We were promised numerous things and NONE were implemented in regards to being able to be grey heroes or villains and an expansion. The level cap is the same as it was 11 years ago. And I assure you, your data is correct. I log in from time to time and you're lucky if there is 200 people on at once and you can see the amount of players by looking at the maps and servers. It's sickeningly sad. What a waste of potential. 

First, they focused on vehicles and that was all they did for like 2 years. Then they did nothing. NOTHING. Now they have the predatory lock boxes. 

Secondly, and to top it aaaaall off; theyve now gotten rid of subscriptions completely. Once a credit card you have in the game expires, you can never re sub again. No one new can sub either. And if you have 24 characters like me, guess what? You have to spend about 300 dollars to upgrade them all from silver to gold so youre not stuck with just one powerset. Hybridization is a HUGE part of champs online. It makes me fking sick thinking about the waste of a game CO is.  My card expires in 2021. When that happens, I will never play CO again. Very sad. But Cryptic and perfect world are pathetic.

[nhisso]

1 hour ago, Blackfeather said:

I'll have to try Champions Online one day to see how it plays, but the "building energy via a basic attack" mechanic doesn't sound that appealing to me. Certainly it works for specific kinds of superheroes/supervillains (i.e. those that primarily blast/punch their way through things), but it's less appealing for other kinds of characters, such as what CoH would consider Controllers and Masterminds say. What use is a basic attack to a hero focusing on locking down an enemy, or directing pets across a battlefield? Personally it makes much more sense to cut out the middle man, which CoH very much does.

It isnt like you think. It never feels like you have to use weak attacks to build energy and then use the energy for good attacks. It flows very smoothly. 

[Blackfeather]

1 hour ago, nhisso said:

It isnt like you think. It never feels like you have to use weak attacks to build energy and then use the energy for good attacks. It flows very smoothly. 

Out of curiosity, how would one play a Controller or Mastermind in CO? Can one forgo those energy building attacks entirely? And what do you mean by flow?

[The Bobby Llama]

1 minute ago, Blackfeather said:

Out of curiosity, how would one play a Controller or Mastermind in CO? Can one forgo those energy building attacks entirely? And what do you mean by flow?

Controller:  You can't, really.  Control powers are trash in CO.  They don't last very long and there is a stacking resist mechanic that provides immunity from a control power after 3 applications.  The best 'controller' builds there are DPS hybrids that kill their targets before resistance stacks too high.

Mastermind: This is doable, but you only have rudimentary control of your pets, attack or passive mode like most other MMOs do it.  CoH's Masterminds are something special, and you'll never replicate them elsewhere.

Skipping energy builder: It's a required part of making your character.  Builds that can skip using them completely are rare, and they rely on energy return mechanics from attacking or being attacked instead.  Melee energy builders use a 'point and call out' animation at range instead of doing damage, so they can be used that way to keep your character from constantly attacking stuff.  The drawbacks there are that (1) nearby enemies will still be attacked with the powers' default punching behavior and (2) a melee energy builder forces you to take other powers from the same set until your options open up.  That last one is a big deal because usually you are only allowed to take more melee attack powers that early in your build.

Flow: This can vary depending on build.  Tank builds have poor energy generation and need to use their builder more.  Support builds are the opposite.  In most cases, building your energy means letting a few quick autoattacks rattle off.  It's usually not a big deal.

[Blackfeather]

Oh...that's a shame. I don't really care about dealing large amounts of damage myself. Crowd control's much more fun for me, as are Masterminds - locking things down to prevent groups from being overwhelmed is a great feeling. I have to say I really like CoH's flow, so I was wondering what was meant by CO feeling smooth and so on.

 

Taking a look at a quick video on the game, I imagine it has some appeal...but it's probably not my cup of tea, considering the archetypes that I prefer to play. It certainly seems much more action-oriented though, which I suppose is nice for some play styles.

[Blastit]

10 hours ago, Jaguaratron said:

1000x more twitch based than turn on your defensive toggles and go have fun, my mother in her 60s played COH and still does, thats a long haul customer base, "dynamic" defensive systems are for consoles, not MMOs because a MMO has to appeal to the largest demographics possible and those who buy the most games (young, twitchy, short attention spans) are not a retainable market which is great for pump and dump product distributors ala EA.

Currently existing CoH is also orders of magnitude more twitch-based than a turn-based game with no time limit. Why are you fine with that? It excludes players who can't play other games and would be very loyal to the games they can play. CoH never did appeal to the largest demographic possible because it was specifically about super heroes before super heroes got real big. Why are you fine with that? The popular thing was fantasy MMOs and history has proven that fantasy MMOs remain more popular. CoH was shut down because it couldn't give better return on investment than fantasy MMOs could and CO is a wreck. WoW, FF14, GW2 and even Everquest endure where non-fantasy MMOs fail.

 

The answer is of course that at some point you make a choice about what the game is going to be like and what the game is going to be about because it's what you, the developer, would like to play yourself.

 

An MMO doesn't have to appeal to the largest demographic possible. It simply needs a fanbase that is large enough to sustain it for years. Some of the design choices made will inevitably exclude a portion of potential players and if all you're doing is making choices based on what you cynically think will appeal to the largest amount of people then you'll be left with a game that lacks soul and vision. You set it up from the start to merely maintain a customer base instead of having something to actually provide to people.

[Hyperstrike]

On 3/20/2020 at 8:50 PM, the_visviva said:

I DO like the Nemesis system though. I used to suggest something similar in CoH. Heroes could go to a police station to see "Paragon's Most Wanted". Villains would go to "Rouge Island Bounties" And there, using Mechanics similar to AE they could craft a Nemesis. The Nemesis could then show up Randomly in Radio/Newspaper and Bank Missions.

I like the "Roll Your Own Nemesis" too.  Too bad all the systems tied to it are (and have been) broke for the better part of 10 years.
And unless it pushes lock boxes and keys, it's NEVER going to be worked on.

[biostem]

On 3/23/2020 at 2:02 AM, Blackfeather said:

Out of curiosity, how would one play a Controller or Mastermind in CO? Can one forgo those energy building attacks entirely? And what do you mean by flow?

Playing a Mastermind is not really a thing in CO.  Basically, several sets have pet powers, and if you're freeform, you just take whichever ones suit your theme.  Most pet powers do have a degree of customization, (different pet appearances), but for many, it's just different colors.  A few, like one that has you summon 2 wolves, can be adjusted to have you summon bears, raptors, or even spirit wolves, which is quite cool.  Still, the controls are fairly limited, and you're still basically making a character that also takes pet powers.  What I've done in the past is to take one of the "aura" powers from arcane, which grants a defensive buff to nearby allies, then other support and healing powers, to bolster my pets' performance.

 

As for control powers, while there are a good number of options, they basically come in 2 forms - ones with longish charge-up timers, which then only hold the enemy for a short time, or ones that require you maintain the power in order to actually get the hold effect.  On paper, these sound good, but in practice, you might as well have just used some hard-hitting attacks and just killed the enemy.  Enemies also gain stacking short-term resistances to your mez effects, which means you can't reliably stack mezzes for any meaningful amount of time.  Still, I'll often keep at least 1 mez powers in reserve, in case I'm fighting a group with an enemy that heals, buffs, rezzes, or is otherwise annoying to fight.

 

One other thing I'll say regarding pets in CO is that there are several "ritual" powers, which have you create a magic circle and summon a more powerful pet, but said pet only persists so long as you remain in that circle.  Powers can normally be ranked up to level 3, (so base + 2 levels using advantage points), but these ritual powers can be made "unbound", so the pet persist without the circle - but you then lose out on being able to fully rank up that pet.  It provides some more options & flexibility, but at the expense of maximum pet effectiveness.

 

Also, and as I mentioned earlier, unless you're a paying customer or bought a freeform slot, there is no full pet archetype available...

[Blackfeather]

That's a bit of a shame for sure. I play Controllers and Masterminds due to the feeling of strategy and order that I get due to them - it sounds like CO is better for playing as a more classic superhero: punch things out, charge up laser blasts, etc. Crowd control mightn't exactly be what playing as a superhero comes to mind for some, but it's fun in its own right for me.

 

Looking at some gameplay of it, it's certainly seems quite action-heavy - things like holding down the mouse button to charge up attacks, etc. Quite fun in its own right I'm sure, but definitely not my cup of tea. Even if it's optional, and powers can just be activated with a single tap without having to worry about it...well, the fact that it's a feature in the first place speaks to a system that asks for a different way to play the game, if that makes sense.

[biostem]

On 3/22/2020 at 10:48 PM, Blackfeather said:

I'll have to try Champions Online one day to see how it plays, but the "building energy via a basic attack" mechanic doesn't sound that appealing to me.

I'll try to make the system clearer so you get a better idea of how things work.  So in CO you have character stats.  Two of those stats that are important for this discussion are endurance and recovery.  Endurance determines how big your energy bar is, and recovery determines what your equilibrium point is and how quickly you recovery energy.  Your equilibrium point is basically how full your energy bar is "at rest", (i.e. when out of combat).  So, you can make a character with a high recovery to have a mostly filled energy bar while out of combat, thus allowing you to use more expensive attacks right from the get-go.  There are also powers you can take called "secondary energy unlocks" - these return energy to you based upon some thematic set of conditions that must be met.  For instance, there's one tied to firearms, which gives you some energy if you land a critical hit with a firearms attack.  There's one tied to power armor attacks that gives you some energy when your powers come off of cooldown.  There's one tied to supernatural powers that gives energy if you nearly deplete your energy bar using a supernatural attack.  IMO, CO's system is a bit more cumbersome than CoH's in many ways, but with freeform, you get a lot of options.  The question, to me, is whether investing in freeform is worth it to you.

Edited March 24, 2020 by biostem

[biostem]

4 minutes ago, Blackfeather said:

Even if it's optional, and powers can just be activated with a single tap without having to worry about it...well, the fact that it's a feature in the first place speaks to a system that asks for a different way to play the game, if that makes sense.

There are several ways to build characters that only use click/tap powers, and many that have a charge-up option can just be tapped for a lesser effect as well.  There are ways to set it to auto-target whichever enemy you put the crosshair over, but you can still tab-target as well.

[Blackfeather]

11 minutes ago, biostem said:

There are several ways to build characters that only use click/tap powers, and many that have a charge-up option can just be tapped for a lesser effect as well.  There are ways to set it to auto-target whichever enemy you put the crosshair over, but you can still tab-target as well.

Mmhm - I did manage to watch a powers tutorial about that; charging up is optional, but makes for a larger effect when used for some powers for example. It's a different system for sure, with different pros and cons, I imagine. The endurance management system it provides is an interesting concept, and it does seem to suggest that CO is definitely designed around trying to be more dynamic than CoH - that again might be a draw or a turn-off depending on one's preferences, I suppose.

 

Freeform characters from what I've seen definitely allow for a lot flexibility; a friend of mine touted their Final Fantasy-esque character wielding lots of different elements for example. That being said, it seems like a flexibility of a different kind. Or at least not the kind of flexibility that I'd prefer to have (e.g. playing as an Earth Controller rather than a 'superhero that wields the element of Earth').

[biostem]

Just now, Blackfeather said:

Freeform characters from what I've seen definitely allow for a lot flexibility; a friend of mine touted their Final Fantasy-esque character wielding lots of different elements for example. That being said, it seems like a flexibility of a different kind. Or at least not the kind of flexibility that I'd prefer to have (e.g. playing as an Earth Controller rather than a 'superhero that wields the element of Earth').

Another thing to take into consideration is that many sets have mechanics that almost never exist outside of that set.  For instance, many electrical powers apply "negative ions", while other electrical powers gain bonuses if used against targets affected by it, so while you can dip into many powersets with freeform, you are often unable to make the most out of that mixture.

[Blackfeather]

Just now, biostem said:

Another thing to take into consideration is that many sets have mechanics that almost never exist outside of that set.  For instance, many electrical powers apply "negative ions", while other electrical powers gain bonuses if used against targets affected by it, so while you can dip into many powersets with freeform, you are often unable to make the most out of that mixture.

I see - so in other words, freeform has the potential to make sub-optimal builds easier to create. I've heard CO is a bit more challenging than CoH as well; with that in mind, it sounds difficult to balance a character between desired powers to fit a theme and playing the actual game well.

[biostem]

1 minute ago, Blackfeather said:

I see - so in other words, freeform has the potential to make sub-optimal builds easier to create. I've heard CO is a bit more challenging than CoH as well; with that in mind, it sounds difficult to balance a character between desired powers to fit a theme and playing the actual game well.

Sub-optimal, sure - if you pull from too many sets, (especially in the case of attacks), then your performance may suffer.  There are ways around that, once you understand the mechanics of the game a bit more.  For instance, there's a martial arts ability that gives you stacking damage buffs for every attack that crits.  It's not too difficult to build for a higher crit chance, so this ability works very well with any crit-oriented melee set, even if you aren't using martial arts attacks.  As another example, there is an energy return power that grants you an energy-over-time effect whenever a power comes off of cooldown.  Now, not too many powers in CO actually have cooldowns, but there are 2 I often utilize as a reliable way to trigger this - a fairly potent self-heal and a lunge (distance-closing) power - they have like a 5 and 3 second cooldown, respectively.  So by using them every so often, you keep the energy coming in, and may never need to use your energy-builder attack.

 

Most enemies are pushovers, but there are some really annoying ones that can temporarily cancel out your travel power or can do things like push you away.

 

There's also a "break-free" mechanic where you have to rapidly push space to break yourself out of mez effects - there aren't really any full-on/24x7 mez protection powers, either.  There's also no dodging attacks per se - all attacks hit, it's just that dodging them means they get reduced by a significant %.

[Blackfeather]

That makes sense - and yup, I've definitely seen that "break-free" mechanic in action from some videos and so on; more action-y way of responding to controls, which seems to support my view of the game being much more action-oriented. The game does sound like a rather different system to CoH's for sure.

 

The endurance equivalent in CO seems to be designed around cycling around different powers, whether that be an energy building attack, or something else. I imagine that was done to help add to said action; interesting seeing how the two games differ I'll say.

[Indystruck]

On 3/20/2020 at 6:39 PM, Dreamboat said:

The weird thing is that Marvel Heroes (fun game - Thing main here!) was doing this! Adding new paid movie tie-in costumes, movie tie-in dungeons and so on, and Disney pulled the plug on it. To this day I've no idea why.

 

The higher ups started work on console ports to get them juicy console players into the money drip. This however was done at the expense of developing new content on PC. Led to hemorrhaging playerbase, and then the console releases went over poorly, and then Disney yanked the license right around the same time it came out the head guy was stalking female workers.

 

On 3/20/2020 at 6:59 PM, PyroNugget said:

don't want to derail this thread but, Marvel Heroes was made by Gazillion and headed by Dave Dohrman, he is a grade A , 1st class scumbag. i mean typical 80's era spend all the company's money on hookers/coke and had more than a few in office harrassment cases going.....Disney found out.plug pulled FAST. 

 

Minor note, Marvel Heroes/Gzillion at launch was under David Brevik, of Diablo/Diablo 2 fame. Dave Dohrmann took over, and spearheaded the push for console ports.

 

Champions Online was abandoned essentially in beta after the acquisiton of the Star Trek license. It wasn't ever going to be the main focus of the devs after that. Just look at how close the release dates were, even.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Indystruck
slightly more on topic

[TheOtherTed]

1 hour ago, Indystruck said:

Champions Online was abandoned essentially in beta after the acquisiton of the Star Trek license. It wasn't ever going to be the main focus of the devs after that. Just look at how close the release dates were, even.

Partly true, but I think both were stymied by Cryptic Studio's early push to market itself as a MMO factory.  I recall there was a lot of bragging about the engine they developed, that it was so powerful they could go from "concept to game" in less than 2 years.  However, content suffered for it, in both games.  Content takes time.  As a result, CO had at least one huge leveling gap, and STO content was just terribly written, often counter-immersive, and for the Klingon faction, it just wasn't there at all.

 

But, yeah, I think STO had (and still has) the bigger draw, so resources got diverted to it to the detriment of CO.

[Chris24601]

On 3/21/2020 at 7:52 PM, DR_Mechano said:

Mind you in CoH the first thing I do on female characters is shorten the legs because I swear the leg proportions are off in CoH, especially if you make a max height female character it feels like they become 80% leg.

My default re-scaling is to take female legs and hips to minimum, bust down at least 50% and, depending on the outfit, increase the waist up to 25%.

 

This is still a superhero game so I aim for more timeless comic proportions rather than the 90’s Dork Age/Image comics proportions of default or trying to go with entirely realistic proportions.

[Dreamboat]

6 hours ago, Indystruck said:

The higher ups started work on console ports to get them juicy console players into the money drip. This however was done at the expense of developing new content on PC. Led to hemorrhaging playerbase,

Ah yeah, I remember the console ports being announced. Never played them, but I remember the big "Omega" change and that sucked.