Fayre

Hi @Blackfeather Thanks for the ping. Interesting discussion in the thread. I hope I can add to it. Though there are certainly people that have more insight into CoH's inner workings, I've tried to provide feedback and my general thoughts. Regarding No enhancement set bonuses As general feedback: I like the idea, but I'm not sure if it will work as is. The thread already has some discussion so I'll add some points that I see: Pro Set bonuses are one of the main problems in team balance. I think it's the correct item to address. If the option were active I think I would enjoy team play more than in its current state. Con It's a very specific option. The more specific an option the less likely it'll get used. As an example FF14 has (had?) an option to run dungeons with the min required level. The overall motivation was similar and while fun it was very difficult to find people for this mode. I fear this would be similar here as well. The modifier would apply only to some members of the team. This doesn't feel good in general and is more of a perception problem. Members with powerful characters would feel like they specifically get nerfed with this modifier. We've seen some of this in the thread and it is valid feedback. The option needs to provide fitting rewards. Without a fitting incentive the option will not be used. We should strive to design for all players not for a niche wherever possible. The option should be attractive to all players, if it's available, even if not all would go for it. I am also not sure how well it would work in endgame where characters are heavily built around set bonuses. About difficulty As additional food for thought the following has some points that I feel might be helpful for the difficulty discussion: The main idea from my previous post is that there are actually multiple topics involved, when talking about difficulty. Often the discussions are hindered because people talk about different aspects of difficulty and how it applies to the game. Focusing on each one individually can provide some insights imho. I think the difficulty question mainly consists of these four topics: Team balance (often revolving around IO and set bonuses) Encounter difficulty High level content Rewards Team balance What do I mean by that: Avoiding spikes in character power inside a team both up and down. If a lvl 10 Blaster joins a high level team he should be able to BLAST, maybe not as powerful as a fully decked out lvl 50, but still close enough that he doesn't feel irrelevant. Similarly the high level char should be able to join a lvl 20 team that is level synced and still encounter a fun challenge, if they are going up against purples. I think the best way to address the topic would be via the level sync feature. This is already part of the feature's original intent. Back in the SO times If you were at lvl 47 and examplar down to lvl 20 you were still more powerful but not to the extent we see today. One of the reasons being that the sync does not work as well for the newer systems (hence your idea for no set bonuses makes sense). The main idea behind the level sync feature is still valid though. This is why I think it still is the correct way to address this part of the problem. Not that the sync feature is perfect mind you. Exemplaring down and losing access to your powers isn't fun. To some extent this could also be said for set bonuses as well. This question then becomes: Can you change the level sync feature to something that accounts for the new systems and potentially improves the process for high level players that exemplar down? I think you could, but the question is also about the involved efforts, which further complicates matters as we need to look for solutions that are feasible given the current dev team. Some thoughts for this: The system should account for the current balance of the game and factor in set bonuses and other high level systems. Currently while exemplaring you lose whole powers, so set bonuses could be on the table as well. Ideally they would not be eliminated via scaling but toned down. Make it so that the differences in character power are within reasonable limits and still fit to the content. The main goal here is to address the major outliers from characters that have dozens of set bonuses. WoW's current scaling is also worth a look. There the idea is different in that your character (and the world from your viewpoint) stays the same but the way you affect the world and other characters is scaled. A system like this has the benefit of not losing access to abilities and changing the way your character plays etc. but is harder to implement. Still I think this would be a good inspiration and is worth a look. Encounter difficulty After addressing the team balance issue I'd like to see more options for encounter difficulty, i.e. how hard or challenging enemies are. As mentioned in my other post the current selection has mainly lost its meaning. With a restored team balance this might look a bit different already, but I would imagine we could still use some more options. The easiest way to start would be to increase available options for scaling. The content in City of Heroes shares a lot of similarity with content in ARPGs like Diablo and Path of Exile in the way it is generated, e.g. dynamically scaling levels and group sizes. We could look into these areas for inspiration. I would like to see additional scaling of enemies beyond the +4 with additional modifiers for increased difficulties thrown in. Important would be that it's still easy enough to select and communicate, i.e. something along the line of: "We're playing Synapse TF on Hard" or "We're playing Synapse TF on +6". We should avoid: "We're playing Synapse TF on +6/x13, lvl 30 enhancements, no sets, no alpha, fox only". There would also be enough room to experiment and add modifiers for specific groups or extra mobs for the encounters. I think it would be important to keep the system pretty simple though. But still thinking about this one. This is also its own discussion. High level content This one is similar to the encounter difficulty questions and I'm personally not sure if or how much CoH needs specific endgame content. The problem that usually arises in other MMORPGs is that the further you level your character the smaller the relevant world becomes. In WoW you can currently see this in its endgame structure. The only relevant content for progression is all instanced and nearly all of it only from this expansion: Mythic+, the one raid, arena and battlegrounds. The rest of the world with all its years of content has lost its relevance at least in terms of progression. For CoH on the other hand it always felt like that the world became larger when you leveled your character. I love this about the game. You have more options not less. Now CoH also has its endgame content (and the associated pros and cons), but the main idea is still that the game has the ability to make the whole available game world relevant, due to its flexible content design in a similar fashion to ARPGs. More concretely: I'd like to see some additional high level difficulty options that go beyond the normal options provided during leveling. Someone in the thread already brought up the Flashback mission system, which is in turn similar to WoW's Mythic+ system (or Diablo's Rifts) and its affixes. Modifiers, let's call them Hazards according to our comic theme, could further increase scaling of enemies, add more enemies, add time limits or environmental dangers. Those could cycle between seasons or be specific for certain areas of the game world. A benefit would be that the system would be fairly expandable meaning you could start with a few elements and add to it later on. And if certain content is still to easy or too hard you can turn it up or down a notch. Elements that have proven themselves in endgame content might also become available for normal leveling later on as well. I'm currently leaning towards having a dedicated entry point for the system to make it feel more like endgame content (even though you could then try to run most content in the game with it). Maybe those missions can then only be started by max level characters or even stricter requirements (e.g. alpha slot). The key points here are simplicity of the system and corresponding rewards. If the system is too complex the risk is to fragment the user base or just have unused options. I.e. a feature that requires four hours of searching for like minded players is probably not a good dev time investment. Again this is a longer discussion, so I'll cut it off for now. Rewards: Fitting rewards are important for each of the topics above. The notoriety system provides additional rewards when scaling up. I would expect this for all additional difficulty options as well, ideally according to their challenge level. The endgame system could then provide additional rewards according to the specific challenges. The discussion what forms those might take is again a bigger topic. TLDR: When talking about difficulty we should try to separate the different subtopics for a better discussion. Team balance could be addressed via the sidekick/level sync system and is important to solve for the overall difficulty problem. Encounter difficulty could be adjusted by providing additional scaling options (and potential hazard modifiers). Endgame content could have further scaling options and strong use of hazard modifiers. Rewards should mirror the challenge levels. All points imho of course and happy to discuss and exchange ideas.

I see your point. I didn't mean to say that no additional harder content should be generated. As you correctly pointed out that is still beneficial and has the option for interesting new additions. My concern is more about scalability. The Homecoming team is rather small, so a solution would ideally affect the game as a whole instead of only providing a limited number of new story arcs. If I only had one chip to place it would be on the system change. But if I had more chips I'd like some cool new missions as well please 😄 WoW and other theme park games always run into the problem of having to constantly produce new end game content with the old one becoming irrelevant. What I like about City of Heroes is that all (or rather most) content is relevant.

Just to add my 2 cents: I also feel that my enjoyment of the game suffers due to balance and challenge level issues. My perspective in essence: For me City of Heroes is a game about teams of super heroes working together to overcome their enemies. For me this also implies that the team needs to work together to be successful. I also enjoyed the game more in in its earlier iterations than now (though of course there are massive improvements that I wouldn't want to miss). I think that these issue are a main hindrance to the further renaissance of the game and that by fixing them the game's appeal could be widened to a bigger audience. And while I can't provide a specific way to solve the problem I think there is a way to at least improve the situation. That said, as we've seen in the thread there is no one opinion on the matter and that means all changes have to consider the different kinds of players and what they enjoy about the game. It's no use improving the game for some while breaking it for others. While I can't offer a solution I would invite everyone to look into what makes City of Heroes so special to find the answers. Despite being flawed in some areas many parts of CoH's game design were brilliant and still are. Using those design principles and existing tools will helps us to address the issue. I would phrase some of the principles as such: Play your own custom super hero Play with whoever you like Play the game in the way you like Those principles still stand out among other MMORPGs and should always be true. Some concrete game elements that relate to these principles and that we should look at: The sidekick system aka. level sync feature The design intent of the level sync feature is that all characters in a team are roughly of the same power level. While not a perfect system it worked better in the past because characters were far easier to sync. The later phases of the game introduced more progression elements and parallel advancement tracks which the system does not handle well. In the current game a level synced team can have characters of vastly different power levels. This leads to problems and breaks the design principles. To "play the game in the way we like" and "play with whoever we like" we now have to adapt to the game. Some examples from the thread include making smaller teams, not inviting powerful characters and so on. Instead the game should adapt to us and the level sync feature could be expanded to do that. If I want to go hunt kill Skuls with my level 20 team and my friend Mr. Super Incarnate joins, the rest of my level synced team shouldn't feel irrelevant afterwards. The difficulty or notoriety system The intent here is to offer the players a choice in the difficulty and composition of encounters and to alleviate some problems from the game's flexible content design (in contrast to WoW's dungeon design with fixed mobs etc.). This choice is supposed to be meaningful, i.e. as a player I want to have something like "easy", "normal", "hard", "very hard" options. Meaning I don't really care about the difference between +1 or +2 instead I care about the difference in the resulting gameplay. Similar to the level sync this system also hasn't grown with the later phases of the game. Given the additional power characters can accumulate there often is no meaningful choice in the system anymore, especially when looking at teams of 8 players. Adjusting or expanding the difficulty selection would restore the "Play the game in the way you like" and "Play with whoever you like" principle and allow us to avoid workarounds like avoiding enhancements or smaller teams. There already have been some suggestions in the thread how to address the problem (additional levels, buffs and modifiers for the opposition). Ideally the solution should try to target the difficulty system itself instead of addressing it solely by introducing more specifically-made harder content. I also don't think there is a need for perfect balance in the game, due to this system. If an old piece of content is too easy we could scale it up or vice versa. Imho this also makes a better fit to CoH's flexible content design. If coupled with a fitting reward structure the system would also allow for a more flexible endgame and not limit the high level players to current endgame content (though the reward structure is a separate topic). Note that to work the difficulty system relies on an improved level sync feature. If a team's power level is all over the place it becomes much harder to define what easy or hard means. Tldr: The current game has problems with balance and difficulty. These problems stem from not adapting to systems that were added in the later phases of the game. It is important to not break the system for the existing players who enjoy the current playstyle. The existing design and tools of CoH are great and can help us improve the game for all players. Especially the level sync feature and difficulty selection system should be addressed.