The power of change for City of Villains/Heroes

City of Villains and Heroes have a fairly flexible system where one can choose the skills (powers) from a few powerset pools. Each power can then be allocated slots as the player chooses, which can then be used to boost various properties of the power - more accurate, more damage, shorter cooldown timer, longer lasting effects etc.

With that flexibility also comes the possibility to make choices that are either good or bad, which is just fine. Howerver, the point where I think this system breaks down a bit is that the game itself does not provide enough information for the player to make an informed decision.

While there are various fan sites out there that can provide some added information and reading game forums can also contribute a bit. But for a new player this can all be a bit hard to grasp at first and the player may not even be aware of all issues involved.

So a new player will likely make a couple of bad choices and the first character, or even the first few characters, may simply suck. That might not be noticeable right away, but perhaps after 15-20 levels. To get to that point is still a fair amount of invested time.

While the game provides opportunity to respecify the chosen powersets and the slots used, this still requires completing a group oriented quest, which at its earliest can be completed at level 24 - more likely it will be done in the late 20s though.

This is frankly a bit too harsh on new players and may discourage them from continuing the game, just because they made some bad choices early in the game, before they learned all the details.

I would rather see that the game provided at least one free respec opportunity until at character reached level 20, plus also actually provide more information in game that can help the player making a better decision.

Unfortunately, building these power and slot set-ups will many times be a bit different for different purposes, e.g. PvP (player vs player) will have different requirements than fighting regular mobs (PvE). But since each character only has one build, a player must level up two different characters if he/she wants to have optimized builds for both PvP and PvE.

It would be better if similar to the ability to have a number of diffrent costumes for a player, a player could also have a few different power builds and be able to switch between those - at the very least two different sets.

The ability to respecify a power profile could similar to costumes cost some money to perform, or the already existing trials could be completed for a free respec.

If a player have multiple power profiles he/she would need to buy separate enhancements for each profile, to put in the slots.

I hope there will be some changes in how the power builds are handled eventually. While it is one of the really nice features of City of Villains and Heroes, it is also a fairly painful part which limits the fun factor, due to its shortcomings.