A few suggestions regarding the new CoH game design

[DreadCanary]

One opportunity for customization that I always thought CoX missed was simply doing away with archetypes entirely.  What if, during character creation, a player picked two power sets of different types and then picked a mastery.  You want melee and ranged damage with no defense?  Sure.  You want team defense and self defense?  Well you'll be great in groups.
I'm sure people would manage to build super powerful characters and others would manage nearly unviable ones.  But I also think the CoX community would love one more way to build a unique character.

[silvers1]

One opportunity for customization that I always thought CoX missed was simply doing away with archetypes entirely.  What if, during character creation, a player picked two power sets of different types and then picked a mastery.  You want melee and ranged damage with no defense?  Sure.  You want team defense and self defense?  Well you'll be great in groups.
I'm sure people would manage to build super powerful characters and others would manage nearly unviable ones.  But I also think the CoX community would love one more way to build a unique character.

From past posts I've read, this is pretty close to what they originally tried during early alpha.  And it failed miserably. 

The great thing about the primary/secondary powerset design is that it gave a good framework for balancing powersets, and kept players from creating grossly overpowered or severely gimped toons.

[PartyKake]

If you haven't already, I recommend that you check out FireFall and see how it's structured.

It has some awesome components that would be welcome in any MMO.

One that is currently a shadow of its former self is the chosen taking over watchtowers in Coral Forest. Previously, the primary enemy of the game would take over a watchtower, and then use that as a sort of base to launch assaults on nearby watchtowers and outposts, until a huge swath of the game map was red. (the in game map displays chosen controlled areas as red so that you know to head there).

The game is, however, filled to the brim with well-done dynamic events.

currently you have to stay within a zone that's within 5 levels of you or you get less xp - which is a bummer because if you're skilled enough, you could actually handle stuff way higher level than you. That's because of a group of exploits that they had to deal with right after launch. I suspect that it's still a band-aid solution and it'll get lifted at some point. I could be wrong.

If you're a game designer though, it's definitely worth your time. Firefall was, after all, the first game to boast that there would be a completely free to play, triple-A title in the near future (a promise made several years back). They might not be the first but they've finally launched.

[Aggelakis]

I don't generally like first-person or third-person shooters, and Firefall is pretty flippin' awesome. I love thumping. I barely do anything else than thumping. Probably 75% of my play time is thumping. I love that it gets marked on the map for everyone, and eventually you have a group of strangers defending the thumper against the bug/Chosen onslaught. LOL