In great anticipation of the upcoming superhero MMORPG, Champions Online, I've decided to address a few concerns I have with the playerbase that has been established during the closed beta.
One of the most attractive selling points of Champions Online is the fact that the character customization has been taken to an unprecedented level. MMO characters for the longest time have been bland cookie cutter versions of one another. Your hunter looks like my hunter, my warrior looks like your warrior. Boring. Champions gives players the opportunity to make their dream hero. From spandex suits to technological suits of armor to wolf heads and demon tails, Champions offers players everything they need to make sure their character is truly unique.
Outfit
The Verdict
But, despite all of these great options being afforded to players by the people at Cryptic, it has come to my attention that a great number of players seem to think that "Superhero" means "black demon character with a hood", "robot that looks like a terminator and would surely never save a human life", or "stupid shitty character that is just bad by virtue of its own existence". Oh, and there is always the extremely horrible "furry" hero for when my faith in other fans of this game is starting to reach a comfortable level.
The Rate My Champion feature on the game's web site allows you to rate user-created Champions on a scale of 1-5. Some people have made some awesome characters during the beta. Other people seem to be okay with languishing in mediocrity, and a select handful of individuals seem to have missed the part where the game is about super heroes and not angsty kids with super powers or dark and brooding anti-heroes1. Not simply content with a 1-5 scale, I've taken it upon myself to review some of the worst (and some of the best) character designs that I have found while perusing the Rate My Champion page.
Now, since I don't know what these characters' bios are like, I can only manage to guess at the theme or idea the creator had in mind when they designed their hero. I admit that this is somewhat unfair as I've made a fair number of characters in City of Heroes/Villains whose names have nothing to do with their theme or power set. Regardless, here are the categories I will be judging hero avatars on:
Name: How cool is your name? How well does it fit with the Champion you've created, thematically? What sort of images or themes does your name eschew? What is an alternate name that I would have given your character? 5 points possible.
Outfit: The main selling point for a Champion's outfit should be its style or theme. Thematically, does it work? From a design perspective, do all of the pieces seem to go together to create a cohesive, recognizable, and unique hero? 15 points possible.
Color Scheme: How well do the colors you've selected for your Champion match the choices you've made for clothing and armor? Does that bright green belt buckle detract from your overall appearance? 5 points possible.
For a total of 25 possible points. Extra points may be awarded or deducted if I particularly hate or love your character design.
So, without further introduction, I present you:
Why I Hate Your Character in Champions Online
Note: "Click Image to Zoom" text is added by the Champions Website. These images are not actually zoomable.
Name
First up, we've got Cynja, presumably a cyborg samurai emperor resurrected to fight crime in Millenium City by a secret cabal of Japanese wizards. There's just one problem. He doesn't really appear to be a ninja, as his name would imply. He's definitely cybernetic, you can tell by the hands and the gas mask (?). But I guess I really can't fault the guy for not naming his character Cymurai.
2 points.
Outfit
Honestly, I'm not lovin it. The samurai costume could use a lot of work, and it certainly doesn't look heroic.
Not pictured: Heroism
What is with the hands you picked? They look like robot hands, so I can only assume that you meant your character to be some kind of cybernetic hero. It also appears that you have lightning bolts running all over your body. Honestly, it looks really bad, like someone spilled blue paint on your black spandex jump suit and you haven't had time to get it to the super cleaners. Aside from the hands, though, at least everything else seems to mesh, with the exception of the keikogi chest piece. It looks out of place and quite goofy. You get an extra point for actually picking that foot design and not slapping robot legs on this guy.
6 points.
Color Scheme
Color Scheme
Blue and green on black is not necessarily a bad color combination. But here, it doesn't really work. Tip to all the would-be hero designers out there: Making your character wear mostly black with little splotches of color makes your character look like a villain. A C-class villain, the kind of character who gets invented during one of those lulls in comic books when all of the serious story arcs for the year have been wrapped up. It is entirely possible to have a superhero costume that has a lot of black in it, but you've got to balance it with some color, or your character comes across as lame, ugly, and unoriginal.
Cynja, the glowing red eyes and oddly colored gas mask apparatus only further promotes the idea that as a resurrected samurai cyber ninja, you'd be more interested in decapitating civilians and crushing small children with your robotic hands than saving the world from an alien invasion.
1 point.
The Verdict
Total Score: 9 out of 25
I'll be frank, Cynja basically sucks. He's almost everything that a guy can hate about a superhero in a video game. His costume has this look of being cobbled together by a 13 year old who just learned about Real Ultimate Power and somehow missed that it was about ninjas. He even has a stupid name to boot. Even a few cohesive costume choices couldn't save Cynja from setting the bar extremely low for Samurai-themed heroes everywhere.
Oh yeah, and he looks fucking evil.
1I really have no problem with people playing anti-heroes, as long as they have reasonable thematic ideas for doing so. And not all anti-heroes need to wear black trenchcoats and skulls. One of my favorite COH characters was Ace Patriot, a rich, young business tycoon who wore an overly patriotic suit and only saved people who could get him good publicity.
