Here is a taste of what CoH looked like years before it released.
http://web.archive.org/web/20011202225356/http://www.cityofheroes.com:80/
See how many things you can spot that didn't make it into the game or were substantially altered.
Sat, 06/09/2018 - 20:06
#1
Just to show how much things change during development
Man, that all sounds great! I'd totally play that game when it comes out :).
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Yeah that game seems awesome!
Spurn all ye kindle.
I find it interesting that the old alpha page talks about some things that never made it in and many of them are being discussed in some form here. For instance there have been a lot of discussions here about reputation and alignment, and the alpha CoH page talks about having a "fame" system which is somewhat related. Kind of. The way it is described in that alpha page looks poorly thought out and we know it never made it into the release of CoH.
The powers and archetypes look like they changed a great deal as well. The alpha page seems to describe more of a classless system where you picked a theme (ice, fire, strength, etc) and built whatever kind of character you wanted out of the options available in that theme.
I was thrown when I first started playing CoX by the terms "influence" and "infamy", which sounded like values in a reputation system but were actually igc.
Frequently requested but never released in any SH MMO are density and stretching powers, and there's density mentioned right on that alpha page. Whatever happened to that? Makes you wonder what might have been.
Solid Form--perhaps especially if combined with the right Tertiary and Mastery--will work well for a density concept, but MWM have said that the complexity and versitility of the charachter model ironically makes stretching powers problematic--though I don't think they said impossible.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Stretching powers might be more doable if the aesthetic isn't the exact model deforming, but more like having a goo/flesh/liquid metal aura, and that aura is what stretches and deforms to make big fists or long thin ranged pseudopod slaps and the like.
Kinda of like the old armor animations in CoH where you piled rocks or ice on top of your tanker. Imagine that, but silly putty. Then you can have a variety of aesthetics for the goo and animations using it.