But Baby Bear's Pillow Was Just Right

Posted on Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Filed under Champions Online, Customization

Like many people, and certainly most of the blogosphere, Syp has been playing Champions Online. And as bloggers are want to do, he posted up his impressions of the game thus far in what I consider to be the most fair approach one can take to review an MMO that's only weeks old: he wrote about the qualities he thought here positive and negative.

What stuck out at me though is his thoughts on customization. He mentions CO's customization options multiple times in both posts, speaking about the power sets and the character creation tool. What he reveals is what is the amazing dichotomy of the human brain: we crave freedom and customization, but we can't handle it when we get too much.

On one hand, he praises the character creator as allowing players to make virtually any hero they want, while on the other hand he states there's just too much there and that it's not intuitive enough. He also loves that powers can be customized easily, also allowing players to make the hero they want, but hates that you can easily gimp your toon by picking poorly matched skills.

The thing is we as people need organized freedom. We need to be able to customize within reason. We want to be unique, but we don't care to spend too much time getting to that uniqueness. I certainly have no idea how to solve the problem, but it's one problem that I'm sure will continue to cause developers to pull their hair out at every step. How can they possibly give us all the freedom and choices we want while still making them easy and accessible?

I suppose they could offer "molds," like pre-determined builds, then allow players to customize from there if they choose. This could allow people to see a solid power build and determine if that's for them or not, but that would likely lead to many, many people playing those builds because they would either perceive them as better (if the developers made it, it must be the best, right?) or because they are lazy.

All I can say is good luck to Cryptic on trying to solve this conundrum. Hopefully by the time I finally give in and try out Champions they have streamlined things just a bit.