Why aren’t there more open world superhero RPGs?

Easier to use already made stories probably

If they wanted the expand Infamous it could easily be something like that.

Holy shite. An open world infamous game with Skyrim and Witcher like qualities would be incredible.

It wasn't open world, but I'd also like something like Freedom Force, which was a super hero RTS with RPG elements. You commanded a team of original superheros but could also create your own to add to the team. You could pick and upgrade different powers as you progressed through the story. It leaned into the semi-campy golden age era of comics, but I'd love to see a more modern take on a similar premise.



But I do think the sad truth is that the general population wants licensed superheros. If they don't see Superman, Batman, Iron Man, or Spider-man, they aren't buying.

CoH and Freedom Force have been the best two superhero games.

One big problem with superheroes who have "powers" and don't have a limited set of utilities is the sheer creativity that they inspire/require. It's easy for swords and guns - you have different guns for different effects, or swords...different swipes and moves. Spider-Man works like this because it is mostly traveling and brawling (and Batman again is tool focused).

Imagine trying to make a game around a Vision or Martian Manhunter or Iceman, etc.

A large majority of the environment would have to be built to reflect the power on it. Freezing water, building slides, etc. I think that often gets in the way of conceptualizing something that isn't "tool/weapon/brlawing" focused.

City of Heroes is still up and running on indy servers (look up Homecoming) and it still blows me away how well that game was done (not just for then, but now as well). The time and effort put into the content was top-notch. The only superhero MMO that touches it was Marvel Heroes and that was mainly due to the bajillion V/Os they had which would trigger randomly (giving a crowded area the more living feel as the character V/O's seemed to interact).

DCUO's main issues are relying on small but more frequent DLCs instead of massive, full-blown expansions as well as resistance to migrating from Unreal 3 to Unreal 4 (just the dungeon generator alone would save them shitloads of time in content creation).

Champions Online had some really great ideas but their game suffered (at least to me) from being so customizable as to be overly complicated. I never could wrap my head around their crafting system and how it impacted powers (at least not enough to feel competent in what I was doing).

If such a game as you describe came out, it would ideally be a voxel-based world, something along the lines of what they planned for EQ: Next (also: Landmark) so players could really have some fun with not just the standard powers but ones which would normally be game-breaking like phasing or growth/shrinking.