City of Heroes Issue 13: Power and Responsibility enters Open Beta
by Adrian Bott 
Nov 7th 2008 at 10:00AM
Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Patches, PvP, PvE
It's those latter elements that have drawn the most comment from CoX players. The Epic and Patron changes sought to balance out heroes and villains by replacing unpopular powers with new ones; this, however, brought a backlash from players who either didn't like the new powers they were given, wanted to keep the old ones, or both. In response to the player feedback, this has now been changed: the new powers will simply be added in as additional options instead of replacing the old ones wholesale, the first time in the game's history (so far as we are aware) that powersets have been expanded rather than altered. And there was much rejoicing.
There's reason to be optimistic on the base building front, too. Although bases are in a state of flux right now, developer Pohsyb has given an indication of where they are heading in the future. Base builders will enjoy much greater levels of freedom, because players will be able to choose whether bases abide by raiding restrictions or not.
To explain this: as a raidable base is essentially a custom map for PvP, the system needs to know that a crafty base designer hasn't taken advantage of object placement to make key targets unreachable, or built inescapable prisons for invaders, and so forth. This means that objects have to be a certain distance apart, can't block doorways, and the like. However, if a base is meant only for PvE and will never see PvP, there's no reason to hinder base builders' creativity in this way, so in future there will be a selectable option to deem a place PvE-only.
We're also interested to see that in future, base raiders will be able to destroy all of the objects in the defenders' base, meaning that prisons can be broken out of and walls of furniture smashed, and making pathing restrictions much less important. The plan is to replace all destroyed objects automatically after the raid, so players with beautiful bases that took hours of work needn't be concerned.
As for the PvP changes, though many players have had a great time with them (battles now last much longer and there is a lot less rapid one-sided extermination) and there is overwhelming support for the selectable arena maps feature, the path to changing the system has been pretty rocky. Many of the established PvPers didn't like the original changes, and have felt alienated. It's significant that a new patch (coming either today or early next week so far as we can tell) will incorporate a lot of player feedback. Our ongoing advice to CoX players who are involved in the testing is, as ever: please give clear feedback and don't flip out over changes that aren't yet finalized.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Epiphanize said on 11:12AM 11-07-2008
A lot of us in the CoX community are very excited that they decided to just add the powers in instead of replace them. NCSoft has done a great job of listening to the community since they took over the game.
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Stark1 said on 8:08PM 11-07-2008
It will take more effort than NCSoft is currently putting into this game for me to want to return. Shuffling pieces of a puzzle around(aka redoing awards for missions/TFs, rebalancing PvP and replacing APP/PPP powers) is NOT content imo. There are a couple new shiny pieces in new powersets and missions but overall it is just business as usual. Tweak existing mechanics/gameplay and call it new content. Too much rehashing in this game. Glad I'm not paying for it anymore. The next two Issues are a waste imo and by the time Issue 15 rolls around there will newer, shinier MMOs to play.
I'd be willing to pay for an expansion if it offered more than the usual rehash/tweaking of current content and systems but I think they just do not have the ability to create something truly new in the game's current incarnation.
Wow, I get Merits instead of a Random drop. Wow, they are tweaking APPs, powers that were never truly Epic because they are powers that were borrowed from existing powersets and had their stats tweaked. Wow, dual builds, I get to spend twice as long doing my own tweaking of the same content. Wow, they are rebalancing PvP. Sounds more like quality of life improvements that should have been done in-between Issues. Such exciting [cough] content.
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Jeromai said on 2:04AM 11-09-2008
That's because the game's current engine is four years old. They've got to patch in new code over the old, refine their game design and make sure it holds up before they can launch new stuff.
After all, there's no point having any PvP content if the only real contending classes are blasters and scrappers with a healbot lurking around for buffs. Villains have been crying about an epic pool choice imbalance for ages. Nor will it tempt many existing players into PvP if it means screwing up their fancy PvE AoE builds - hence dual build capability.
So it's not fancy new MMO hype. But the NCsoft team running CoH knows how to do things right and listen to the community in the process. I rather they take things slow and right, rather than just dumping in a few artificial 10s of levels as more grind through fancy art. That only makes an MMO that is top heavy and will fall under its own weight when people get tired chasing the cheese.
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Stark1 said on 12:48PM 11-09-2008
Exactly, there is no way to make any significant changes beyond shuffling the pieces around the board and hoping players think they are getting new content.
The extra 10 levels are only artificial if they don't put the effort in. Considering how much they try to tweak existing zones, powers, mechanics and other content, I highly doubt they have the ability to add anything truly new. I have no idea what you mean by doing things "right". That is such a subjective term. Speaking of chasing the cheese then you are obviously forgetting purple recipes. Yes, I know you can still play without them but they are 'cheese' nonetheless. I'm still glad I am no longer playing this game.
Again, most of these changes should have been in-between Issues as QoL improvements.
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