This skill and stat customization system provided a unique co-opportunity to me, one that I have seldom experienced in other games. I often roll healers in MMOs (which pretty much screams group-play), and for CO, I selected many of the healing and support skills. I also chose Archery, as I have a soft spot for its aesthetic. Since I was doing a lot of healing for my group, I picked Presence as one of my Super Stats, as it passively boosts healing and decreases threat while in a non-tank stance. I’m definitely used to stacking the healer stat in MMOs, but as a natural consequence my damage usually suffers severely, or (I simply don’t have very many damaging abilities, depending on the game). This was definitely not the case in CO. Since Presence was my Super Stat, I could stack it AND increase my damage on all my Archery abilities! I could switch between damaging enemies and healing my teammates at will without having to worry about how one was suffering from neglect stat-wise. I really enjoyed that I could pick a Super Stat to stack based on what passives I wanted to stack, but at the same time it would boost my damage. This definitely enhanced the group play experience for me.
Another neat cross-over between personal experience and group play involves the Nemesis system. Each of your champions in CO has a Nemesis, which you also handpick what general skills he or she uses as well as his or her appearance. Throughout the game, you’ll get Nemesis missions or quests which involve your Nemesis stirring up trouble (e.g. robbing a bank, kidnapping the mayor, all that kind of good villany stuff). You must confront your Nemesis and save the day. I’ve played a couple games that have similar systems, but the things you do you usually have to do alone, since its a personal experience. Not so, in CO. You can bring your friends to help you out in true superhero team fashion. I really liked being able to show off my Nemesis to my friends as see what kind of Nemeses they had created. I just found it to be a really nice touch for grouping when I’ve seen other games not allow grouping for such cases.
CO certainly has many other great grouping opportunities (they have group story missions and challenging lairs, for example), but these are the ones I found to be delightfully unique to CO. If you play or have played CO, what are your favorite co-opportunities of the game?