A few thoughts on "Hard Mode" from an old school (and very grateful) player. Please note, this design feedback is to be constructive towards the end of preserving the (sometimes unique) qualities of the game that many enjoy.
1) Difficulty Levels and Rewards
Many games conflate these two to the detriment of the design goals. They do it due to a shared belief that effort should equal reward. A game will introduce difficulty levels but as the difficulty goes up the reward quality or drop rate also goes up. This creates several problems. One, it often partially or completely negates the added difficulty. Sure, the difficulty went up, but the rewards went up to match. Two, the game then becomes a "one difficulty" game again as players pursue the path of optimized play time. Even in games with a half dozen or more difficulty levels, you will often find these reward systems mean everyone simply plays on the top difficulty. Inevitably, in the pursuit to keep players playing, the game is balanced around this paradigm. It completely eliminates the point of adding a difficulty slider.
The principle goal of adding a hard mode should be to enjoy the mechanics and challenge presented and not the pursuit of loot.
I expect a lot of people will disagree with that statement because that's not how games are generally made, but by understanding the above two points it should be obvious that is necessary to preserve the entire breadth the game has to offer. City of Heroes has always been more about the journey than the destination. Hard Mode should be about using those things one has collected, not the most optimized means of acquiring them. As long as traditional farming methods remain superior, this shouldn't be a problem. City of Heroes has generally not had this problem because of what loot entails in this game, and comments in this thread make me feel this is understood at least on a basic level. However, this problem is best handled by everyone understanding this principle design goal.
2) Role Selection
Obviously the power creep monetization brought in the later years before sunset made the game too easy to the point anything but damage becomes insignificant. However, a principle design element that separates this game from its peers, both past and present, is the unimportance of a 'trinity' or other forced role selection. There is a huge difference between my controller or defender being useful and being necessary. I think a proper design goal here is to emulate the leveling experience of small groups. A controller is very welcome in those groups but they can complete the content without one, just in a different fashion.
This is easier said than done, and the past developers deserve a huge credit here. I think it's even more difficult these days as the concept of a 'meta' has emerged. A danger here in an endeavor to welcome archetypes is to not then alienate certain combinations or entire archetypes through the development of a meta. This is not an easy task for a developer as a rise in difficulty, almost by definition, tends to begin excluding less optimized elements. If the game evolved to the point players only wanted 1 blaster and it had to be a fire blaster, that would kinda defeat the purpose of the endeavor.
These two points go together in this sense. If the primary motivation to play Hard Mode is to experience the content then players are less likely to attempt to optimize their performance through a rigid meta.
