Thank you for the replies!

The updates have have indeed read. In fact, the updates were how I learned of CoT in the first place as I started picking up the update notifications on my Google+ a while back. But skimming through some of it did remind me of some of the goals the custom options were going for and it gives me hope that some of my old characters will be getting a fresh start.

And you don't know how much it pains me that animal options won't be available from the start. That's like leaving out domino masks or capes out until later updates. It chops off a huge segment of possible characters people would make. Not going to keep going on about it but that is a huge huge limiter of concept right there.

For me, transformations I always considered to be partially a roleplayed thing and having transformation powers...I feel would be too convoluted to make properly without making it very generic. I myself tended to stick to transformations as costumes to be swapped to or even entirely different alt to roll. Technically speaking, if you have a proper framework for costumes and an easy system to swap between multiple costumes, that is just as good as transformation...like another character I created in CoX:

Character: Demon Revolver/ Daeva Pyr and Seb
[In CoX] - Dual Pistols/fire/ice Blaster. Creating this character was partially using the tools available and being imaginative. The character was two demons bound to a pair of pistols using a similar but different technique that Infernal binds demons. The two demons could wield each other so long as one stayed bound to the pistols, the other could materialize and hold those pistols and they could swap at will. One was a devilish/draconic-like female demon that could breath fire while Seb was a griffon like creature whose cold-faring nature accompanied his presence. Swapping from one to the other usually meant shooting fire or ice from the pistols while emitting the opposite from their body. (But OMG, another set of half-human looking characters I can't make in CoT :()

Part of the use of that character relied on me using keybinds to swap costumes when I swapped ammos but that was easy to do with a little reminder that the game wouldn't let me swap costumes more than once every 30sec.

Anyway, I'm reading a couple other threads regarding the archetype make-up and people's feedback on the kind of powers and animation themes they want. It's actually helping me visualize what I'd like certain characters to be but when it comes down to it, we'll just have to see what stuff will be put in the game first. Like for Zane at the top: I'd see how style being mechanically like a teleport-style melee with some target focused movement/charge attacks and/or a kind of teleport-nuke type of attack where he poofs around really fast and hits lots of people. The animation, I'd want him to strike with agile claws with the teleport/charge attack looking like electricity zapping him or coming out of him so it looks like he's going all Flash on people. Effect-wise, if I could have the damage be a mix of 'slashing' and 'electricity charging his claws', that would be perfect and if I could have one or a couple of attacks with 'controlly' effects like an immobilize or a hold with the control-aspect of the power looking like chains/shackles (colored so they look light energy chains/shackles) then that would be more than perfect. The changing into a massive electric panther isn't something I'd ever imagine being an option...if you guys could actually make that happen, I'd probably reprimand myself for creating a super-unique special attack that a game dev already thought of, animated and implemented into their game. That's purely a roleplay power, at best used to describe what he did when he used both Lightning Rod and Moment of Glory at the same time.

As for the Lock picking aspect, I hope if you do implement out-of-combat type skills like that, that you'd still limit them so not every character can use all ooc skills. You should have to choose which skills best suit your character or goals and leave the others other characters.

Animal parts are another way to portray a character as alien or demonic, so it's not like it's simply a limitation for a "Furry" character (as you say). Changing the skin tone and putting horns on it is another way, but if there are very few ways, I'd imagine many players using the very same method until more options were made available.

And a rapid teleport AoE only has to give the illusion you're getting ported around. If the animation were slow enough that you could literally see your character's form appearing and reappearing for every foe hit, then the animation is too long. And I think Burst of Speed was like Shield Charge, but with longer range.

I'm just going to leave the first part alone.

Rapid teleporting can be handled X-Men movie style where all you see is poofs of smoke and perhaps a shadow of an attack. You don't have to render a body or part of a body at all. And an animation like that could be interpreted as many things such as shadow melee, super speed melee, wind melee or something else...just depends on how you color the effects it creates (and I'd assume they'd have multiple animation types to reskin a 'teleport' attack since the main base of such a set would be a sort of displacement melee, where some of the attacks move you from the place you started).