As a lot of you probably know from the recent thread or elsewhere, City of Heroes is an MMORPG that generally involves heroes and villains running around killing things, for well-justified and poorly-justified reasons respectively. I got my current hero to a level where he isn’t very fun to play anymore, so I’m starting a new character… which brings us to what is arguably game’s best feature: its character creation utility is unbelievably rich compared to many MMORPGS, such that you can create pretty much anything you can imagine, within reason. Since I’m useless when it comes to this kind of thing, I thought I’d ask those of you who have better fashion sense: what would be a cool appearance for a hero?
Here’s some background detail for anyone who’s interested: the character is male, and that’s pretty much the only thing set in stone. For anyone who actually plays the game he’s a kinetic/electricity defender built to act as a sapper. For those who don’t, he’s basically The Flash on steroids: his super powers are all oriented towards slowing down or stopping the bad guys, and speeding up the good guys.
One of my alts is Phasenleitung (loosely translated from the German: “Live Wire”), an Elec/Elec Blaster clad in red tech armor with yellow lightning bolt designs.
Sounds fun, though my original guy was tech with a lab coat so I’m trying to veer away from that… I’ve been playing with variations on buckled leather, but I can’t figure out how to accessorize it properly.
Two Questions: How old is your character? What is his background?
I’ve played other games that involve details such as: occupation, education, home-ownership etc. and I’ve played others that don’t bother.
Does your character have a life outside of super-heroing? If so, do you “play” that part of the game?
I guess that’s four questions, but I’m intimidated when it comes to making fashion choices.
Well, I’ve found that my costume designs in CoH really depend on the name and concept of the character. You’ve got the concept; what about a name? Quantum Redshift? (fitting, for a kinetic :)) I’d be going with tights and a black/purple or black/blue color scheme.
The Frenetic Fall Guy? (okay, I’m just pulling them out of my … hat, here ) Jeans, work boots, a duster (if you’ve got those yet); the buckled leather would work well here.
I dunno… without more details, I’m not sure I’d be much help.
I’ve always liked a well-themed look, though. If I look at a character, I want to see their costume reflecting their theme – and their name is a big hint for the theme. It’s one reason I don’t care too much for characters that don’t have a ‘heroic’ name – like, Alexis St. John, for example (another random name) doesn’t tell me anything about the character. You’re free to do whatever, of course, but I like the themes.
Anyway, basic advice: don’t mix patterns with wild abandon. I saw someone the other day who had the Spots pattern on their torso and stripes on their legs, and it didn’t look like it was a deliberate attempt to clash; the colors were well coordinated. Ugh.
How old is my character? I’m up for suggestions, but as it stands he’s in his late teens or early twenties.
What is his background? Again, I’m up for suggestions, but thus far I laboring under the assumption that he was a new, but particularly well-trained hero. The powers themselves were X-men style innate, e.g. “As well as inducing other awkward changes, adolescence activates your abilities”. Since the story in City of Heroes has a well-developed infrastructure for employing and deploying heroes, I’m assuming that it also has training facilities. He would’ve attended one of them in lieu of an ordinary highschool, and graduated just prior to his entrance to the game. (If you happen to read webcomics, aside from being a great comic the central setting of Magellan is almost precisely what I had in mind.)
Does my superhero have a life outside of hero-ing? Not really. I’m sticking with the game’s standard assumption, which is that heroism is a paying, full-time profession.
Great questions!
Oh, and to answer Lute Skywatcher, I’m thinking less Golden/Silver Age and more a Firefly look: casual, functional, slightly futuristic clothing that happens to be extremely cool-looking.
I’m probably going to name him The Anechoic Man, so that doesn’t really help with the color choice.
I am going with a central theme, which is why I was experimenting with buckled leather earlier… I want it to honestly look like something somebody would want to wear. I’m playing with pseudo-western themes, too; I thought the high-tech Malta Gunslingers you meet at levels 40-50 were a neat way to mix and match genres, so I’m considering a variation on that.
And yes, thank you for mentioning clashing patterns: my characters tend, if anything, towards being a bit too bland, because I’m really tired of getting eye-raped by badly designed color schemes.
I’m a fan of the tights look, both because it’s traditional and because it’s versatile. The buckled leather, while good for certain looks and character concepts, doesn’t look good with most patterns or chest symbols on it.
Off the top of my head, a few of my “rules” for good costumes (I’ll probably come back with more as I think of them and/or encounter bad examples in the game) are as follows:
Any given costume component must correspond with some other part of the costume, in color and/or style. While it’s not unheard of for me to make, for example, the chest symbol a completely different color than anything else in the costume, more often than not it’s simply jarring. If your guy is mostly in leather except for armored gloves, it looks incongruous and poorly-thought-out. Add armored boots of the same style and it can look sharp. I’m not sure I’m explaining this well, but thematic consistency is the watchword.
Don’t go hog-wild mixing and matching patterns. I routinely see absolutely ghastly combinations of, say, Celtic with Magic with Lightning with Flames – and there’s no good reason for any of it.
Which brings me to
2a) Think about what it would make sense for your character to wear. If he’s not magic or Celtic or doesn’t have fire or electrical powers, you don’t get to use those patterns. Furthermore, no martial artist (I know that’s not what your character is, but go with me for the sake of example) would wear the “Sinister” style boots – big, heavy boots laden with leather straps.
Please have continuity between the top and bottom as demarcated by the waist. Stripes going up the legs and suddently stopping at the waist looks odd to me. A look should “flow” visually. (An exception can be made if the top and bottom are clearly two separate pieces of clothing, such as a T-shirt and leather pants; then by all means put a stripe on the pants. If it looks like a one-piece body stocking, I’m going to wonder where the stripe went to).
I really wanted cirlces to represent him being a bubbler but I didn’t see any circle patterns for the pants and, like you said, stripes up the legs would look weird. So I went with something that’s pretty much limited to the knees.
I think that in general arbitrarily mixing and matching patterns leads to horrific results, as you guys have said, but occasionally it can lead to surprisingly neat-looking combos. I’m guilty of sometimes using the Random button to get a neat theme, and the tweaking it to look better… and every so often it comes up with a really spectacular combo by combining two completely unrelated things. (Unpatterned baggy sinister pants look really great with large tech boots sporting a camo pattern, for instance)
I don’t know much about Firefly, but I’m picturing a brown trenchcoat and duster, with silver metallic or tech gloves. If not a mask then the metallic eye plate to continue the tech-y theme. Buckled leather pants and a T-shirt, tank top, or the bare chest with leather straps, plus a tech-y belt.
He’s already made, actually. I made something remarkably similiar to Ectomorph’s sugggestion, under the name DC Offset. I’m hitting the sewers now, so I’ll probably be level 9 today, but I play sporadically so it may take a bit to hit 15.
) Jeans, work boots, a duster (if you’ve got those yet); the buckled leather would work well here.
