In the latest edition of their Champions Online Q&A feature, developer Cryptic details how powers in their upcoming superhero MMORPG can be tweaked by players for a more customized hero.
A big issue for me in City of Heroes, which was also developed by Cryptic, was the fact that I had a superhero with a cool-ass visor shooting beams from his hands. Every comic book fan knows cool-ass visor equals eyebeams. Champions Online looks [[link]] to fix this flaw by allowing players to place their beams wherever they’d like.
The current plan is for players to be able to choose emanation points, hues, [[link]] and alternate effects for some powers. For example, if a player chooses a force beam, they can elect to have it originate from their character’s eyes or as a chest beam [[link]] instead of coming from the hands. The color, or more specifically the hue, of the force beam can also be set by the player. For powers that don’t have such obvious effects, such as Martial Arts, the sweep of color that trails behind the move is what would change.
For the non comic-book savvy this might seem like a piddling thing to worry about, but trust me – it’s a huge difference. You cannot have The Green Glove shooting plasma out of his nipples. I mean, you could, but that would be just a bit disgusting…yet intriguing at the same time.
Ask Cryptic – January 6, 2009 [Champions Online via Massively]