From the CoH website...

City of Heroes' latest offering, Issue 16: Power Spectrum, forever changes the way all super powered beings will look at their powers. Now, changing the colors of your powers is as easy as changing the colors of your cape!

At last, our next free content update unveils the all new, much requested and long awaited Powers Customization system! You wanted more control over what your characters' powers look like, and you are getting it! Issue 16: Power Spectrum takes City of Heroes' unparalleled character creator to the next level by unveiling a kaleidoscope of colors for your characters' powers. Become your own pyrotechnician as you select themes for your characters' powers and color coordinate the hues of the power effects.

New Character Creator

Not only does the newly updated Character Creator allow players to jump directly between Archetype, Powersets, Costumes and Character ID in any order without losing progress, but it also allows you to select your colors and theme for each individual power or apply it to the entire powerset. These themes will allow for color tinting of geometry and particle effects such as energy blast colors and force field colors. The primary and secondary colors of any power effect can be changed individually for each power in the set.

Customizable Powers

Customizable powersets include Cold Domination, Dark Armor, Dark Blast, Dark Melee, Dark Miasma, Earth Control, Earth Melee, Electric Armor, Electric Assault, Electric Blast, Electric Melee, Electricity Manipulation, Empathy, Energy Assault, Energy Aura, Energy Blast, Energy Manipulation, Energy Melee, Fiery Aura, Fire Assault, Fire Blast, Fire Control, Fire Manipulation, Fire Melee, Force Field, Gravity Control, Ice Armor, Ice Assault, Ice Blast, Ice Control, Ice Manipulation, Ice Melee, Illusion, Invulnerability, Kinetics, Mental Manipulation, Mind Control, Necromancy, Plant Control, Psionic Assault, Psychic Blast, Radiation Blast, Radiation Emission, Regeneration, Sonic Resonance, Sonic Blast, Spines, Stone Armor, Storm Summoning, Super Reflexes, Thermal Radiation, Thorny Assault and Willpower.

Super Strength and Martial Arts will each receive an alternate animation for their powers, and Stone Armor and Necromancy will include limited customization.

Other Issue 16 Features

Powerset Proliferation - More powersets are now in the hands of Archetypes who couldn't use them previously! Blasters will have access to Radiation Blast, Brutes will get their Claws on, Controllers can now freeze it up with Cold Domination, and Corruptors get to feel the "twang" of Archery and Trick Arrow. Defenders can go high-tech with Assault Rifle and Traps, and Dominators can pulverize their enemies with Earth Assault. Masterminds heat things up with Thermal Radiation, Scrappers and Tankers get ready to fry their foes with Electric Melee and Electric Armor, and finally Stalkers get to swing their own mighty Broadsword.

Enhanced Difficulty Options - Players can now fine-tune their difficulty levels by telling the game exactly how they want to be treated. They can choose to be regarded as a specific size team (even if they are soloing), and even have control over the level they are detected to be when it comes to the dynamic spawn system. So if you ever wanted to see if your Scrapper could take on a map that is populated for an 8 person team, four levels higher than your own, now you can! The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled, just as before, and you can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.'s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.

Other features to be announced.

I think they screwed up AE and the recent PvP changes seem to have been poorly received, but this issue I'll resub for at least to check it out.

And there were several powerset combos I avoided just because they looked to awful together - which is not something I need to worry about after this. I may stay and play a while longer :)

Yes, the looming spectre of competition is finally starting to pay off for CoH players. Now the things we've been asking for for years, but were told would be too much work, are on the way.

"Please Mr. Developer. Could we please be able to change the color of our power sets?"

 "Oh, no no no. That would require to much code rewriting". And now I-16 Power Spectrum. 

"Please Mr. Developer. Could we please be able to switch heroes to villains and vice-versa?"

 "Oh, no no. That would cause too many balance issues". And now the 'Going Rogue' expansion is in the works.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Issue 17 will be called "Backpacks".

Say what you will about Champions Online, but it's probably the best thing to ever happen to City of Heroes.

Its nice that they are giving the game features which people have been asking for for a LOOOOOONG time. But I don't see anything here that makes me think I'm going to re-sub to the game. At most I might spend an hour playing with the new character options, picking colors for my powersets and such and then it would be right back to being just as bored as I was when I quit playing.

Originally posted by Raltar

At most I might spend an hour playing with the new character options, picking colors for my powersets and such and then it would be right back to being just as bored as I was when I quit playing.

Originally posted by X-Porter

Yes, the looming spectre of competition is finally starting to pay off for CoH players. Now the things we've been asking for for years, but were told would be too much work, are on the way.

 

"Please Mr. Developer. Could we please be able to change the color of our power sets?"

 "Oh, no no no. That would require to much code rewriting". And now I-16 Power Spectrum. 

 

"Please Mr. Developer. Could we please be able to switch heroes to villains and vice-versa?"

 "Oh, no no. That would cause too many balance issues". And now the 'Going Rogue' expansion is in the works.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Issue 17 will be called "Backpacks".

Say what you will about Champions Online, but it's probably the best thing to ever happen to City of Heroes.

Back Alley Brawler has stated in the past that power customization would be a pain to create as all powers had their colors essentially "locked in" and that the current  design of the game didn't allow for  customization.  Then game the ownership change and more staff was hired in. BaB has stated that this is why now Customization is happening. They have been working apparently for sometime to get it online and ready, CO not withstanding. 

As for sideswitching, I think many players wanted a permenant side switch and be able to take their villain through the hero content and badges and send their hero alt to the redside. What we are getting instead is something much better. Going Rogue has piqued my interest but I want more info on sideswitching, what will be involved in it, and what if anything (ie: badges) will be lost from the character in the process of switching.

Originally posted by grimmstone

Going Rogue has piqued my interest but I want more info on sideswitching, what will be involved in it, and what if anything (ie: badges) will be lost from the character in the process of switching.

If you lost any badges as a result of switching sides that would be VERY lame. Badges should be permanent once earned, no matter what becomes of your character after that. If they took away badges for switching sides that is the kind of thing that would actually ensure that I would NEVER return to this game, just as a matter of protesting aginst such a stupid design decision.

Originally posted by grimmstone

As for sideswitching, I think many players wanted a permenant side switch and be able to take their villain through the hero content and badges and send their hero alt to the redside.

This interests me because I never play 'baddies' but I've always liked the look of masterminds.

So this essentially adds whole new ATs to the game for me.

Wow.. you can change the colors of powers and they're even throwing in recycled powers and animations for heroes now.. wow that really makes me want to play..

This game desperately needs more CONTENT. Stop worrying about what Champions Online is going to have just to compete with.

Well I'm not too excited about this either. Maybe I'll make a minor change on a couple of my characters, but that's about it.

However, this is something that a vocal portion of the existing users have wanted for years. And if they are improving the game in a way that existing players want, rather than going hopefully after new customers that may never materialize, I can't fault them for that. It's a lesson they took long enough to learn.

As for content, I'm not sure they know where to go. AE is unlimited content in terms of stories, but obviously that's not going to keep us entertained forever since it's really just the same old fights with varying looks.

What I want is something that transforms the way I play. Inventions did that. To a minor extent Day Jobs did that. That's about it for the last 2 years. Nothing too new on the enemy side. A "tough AV fight" means they give him 225,000 hp and 99% resistance, so it takes an hour to bring him down. That's not interesting. But that's been their go-to move for years now.

I don't mind them adding new systems, like AE or power customization, even if they're not for me. It's a permanant addition of a new game dimension. But if one update stretches to 3 issues, or moves an issue months behind schedule, I start to wonder when they're going to get around to doing something for me?