About the relative difficulty of fights in this game vs. others

[BasiliskXVIII]

18 minutes ago, temnix said:

@srmalloy What is that declaration you are talking about? I do agree with it. @Spaghetti Betty Thanks for the info on Dark Souls. Overall, increasing difficulty in ways that are possible in this game will make missions interminable. It also won't solve the problem of the gameplay not being... epic? I don't like that word, but there needs to be a serious challenge leading clearly and quickly to a serious result (saving innocents, disarming a bomb and so on). I don't think this structure is optional in a book, a film, a game or a life, whether or not a lot of people may enjoy wasting their spare time steamrolling, farming, collecting badges and otherwise doing familiar rotes. The concept of farming itself is strange and antiquated. I don't see a single reason, first, why a game needs to be an intentional time sink (and what moral right do any developers have to designing time sinks?) and second, why the time that IS spent in the game needs to be devoted to repetitive fights. If it is to be fights and not, say, dialogue, quests, choices, exploration, reconnaissance, resource-gathering, crafting, then, as I said, the time can be spent in killing three minions in a life-or-death struggle instead of thirty in a yawn. Wouldn't that be finer all around?

 

CoH lacks everything but combat, that is one problem with the concept from the beginning. It doesn't even have an inventory. Life could be put on the line exploring, spying, but death doesn't come with serious consequences - and if you factor in patrol XP, with any consequences, so there was always little point to real risks. MediPort will catch you if you fall. Diablo II with a different skin, that is well-put. However, Diablo II does have a direction - through the Acts, towards its end. These old online grinders are like Diablo II looped. That is why I asked whether newer games use some different, denser formula. Dark Souls seems to have been a stepping stone to more substantial, deliberate mechanics, but if newer games are still about running around killing orcs or what have you, only with Poise, Stamina and some other bar to watch, then nothing much has changed.

 

Shadow of the Colossus may have been a movement across the spectrum. A game where there are only bosses to fight.

I think the fundamental problem here is that you're treating games as a monolith. You can make Poker harder by not letting players see what cards they have and making them play blindfolded. This doesn't make it a better game or more fun (beyond perhaps the novelty factor) because it undermines the core game loop. 

Games derive their enjoyment from very different kinds of reward loops. Some games are built around mastery: Dark Souls, for example, is about reading animation tells, managing stamina, learning boss patterns, and steadily refining your execution. There, difficulty creates tension and satisfaction because you can directly express skill moment-to-moment and improve through repetition.

The problem is that at it heart there is no mastery of City of Heroes. It is at it heart more akin to Stardew Valley or Factorio than it is to Ghost of Tsushima or Shadows of the Colossus. The core appeal isn't moment-to-moment execution, but long-term progression, build experimentation, and sandbox expression. You refine your build, experiment with power choices, and enjoy the power fantasy of becoming stronger rather than the adrenaline of narrowly winning a fight through pure mechanical precision.

More crucially, every attack rolls a die. Streakbreakers exist in the game to ensure that even if you succeed win the roll (or lose it), if you've done so too often, the attack hits or misses anyways to ensure statistical stability and specifically to prevent the kind of mastery-based gameplay that some people want. You can fine-tune mitigation, optimise defense and resistance layers, prioritise targets smartly. But once you're actually engaged in combat, you’ve mostly made your meaningful decisions already. The moment-to-moment fighting is a controlled math problem, not a reactive skill test.

That’s why tuning City of Heroes to create high-stakes, high-failure-rate combat simply doesn’t work. You can absolutely make the numbers harsher (give enemies bigger attacks, more mez, more health, etc...) but that doesn't deepen the gameplay. It just moves you closer to the coin flip zone, where an encounter becomes "you either survive the alpha or you don't," and where failure is often just a reflection of build mismatches rather than execution errors.
 

Dark Souls/Shadow of the Colossus/Ghost of Tsushima works because you lose because YOU failed: your dodge was mistimed, you misread a tell. City of Heroes doesn’t give you that same lever. In CoH, you lose because the numbers no longer favour you. That's not mastery, that's rolling a die.
 

The game isn't broken because it's not punishing. It's built around accessibility, progression, and casual empowerment. And those are legitimate game design values, just as much as the deliberate punishment loops of Soulslikes are legitimate. One design isn’t automatically superior to the other just because it happens to align with current taste in certain circles.

[Snarky]

21 minutes ago, temnix said:

 

How would they do the impossible, if every encountered villain was a purple and had special attacks and intelligent scripts instead of standing there getting beaten up?

poke around these forums and you will see tales of soloing GMs, ridiculously low Pylon times, speed runs through content that appear to be my loading screen times and travel between missions, but are complete TF/SF/Trial complete times.  I have seen people get Sally off track and had her up on land for a half hour.  People crawl through holes in the architecture.  TP to fellow teammates in a map without line of sight, and about 2 dozen things nobody publishes because they do not want YOU to know...

 

indeed, how do they do the impossible?

[Psyonico]

2 hours ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

The problem is that at it heart there is no mastery of City of Heroes

I’m going to disagree with you.  There *is* a mastery to this game, it’s just not a mastery that requires reflexes.  The masters of this game are the expert build crafters and before IOs, the masters were theory crafters.  I honestly believe that Repeat Offenders was founded by masters of the game.  Most people would look at empathy, for example, and say “it’s an ok support set”. But a few people said “we can make defenders with capped regen, soft capped defense, and almost blaster level damage with this set”.

 

Similarly today, the masters aren’t the ones just finding power combinations that are great, but the ones that say “I can make a build that makes all but the hardest content completely trivial”.  And can craft builds that do just that.

 

finally, there is a certain amount of skill involved in playing this game, @Linea created the 801 AE missions as a means to test player skills in more ways than just “how good is your build?”  You can have the best build in the game, but if you approach 801s with no strategy you will faceplant within 20 seconds.

 

3 hours ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

Streakbreakers exist in the game to ensure that even if you succeed win the roll (or lose it), if you've done so too often, the attack hits or misses anyways to ensure statistical stability

This myth won’t die.

 

streakbreaker only prevents missed, not hits.

[BasiliskXVIII]

2 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

I’m going to disagree with you.  There *is* a mastery to this game, it’s just not a mastery that requires reflexes.  The masters of this game are the expert build crafters and before IOs, the masters were theory crafters.  I honestly believe that Repeat Offenders was founded by masters of the game.  Most people would look at empathy, for example, and say “it’s an ok support set”. But a few people said “we can make defenders with capped regen, soft capped defense, and almost blaster level damage with this set”.

I will grant you that, I meant it more in the sense of mastery as a function of active play, rather than build-side. No matter what your build is, a hit is always a hit. The game runs an RNG, and if it decides an attack hits you, you can run through the map with the projectile homing behind you until it lands. There's no dodging or blocking, the best you have is attack chain optimization and potentially timing. It's possible for someone playing a Soulslike to get good to the point where they can run through the game without ever getting hit. In CoH you're beholden to the will of the RNG. To your 801s example, there's not going to be a "Let Me Solo Her"-type character who can run that mission unleveled and unslotted, relying on their proficiency alone.

Because of that, there isn't that kind of incrementalism that is the reward for soulslikes. If the condition for winning is "don't roll three ones on a die in close succession" there's no way to improve your skill at that on the fly. The best you can do is either throw yourself against that challenge again and again until the RNG plays nicely with what you want (which isn't mastery, it's obstinacy), or pull out, rework your build and restart, which is an extremely long work loop that I don't think is actually appealing to a significant number of players, particularly in light of how godawful the respec tool is. 

[Psyonico]

1 hour ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

I will grant you that, I meant it more in the sense of mastery as a function of active play, rather than build-side. No matter what your build is, a hit is always a hit. The game runs an RNG

Oh, I agree with you there, this game is nothing like Dark Souls which is why I play this and not Dark Souls. there is some learning involved though, with ground patches and some of the mechanics in incarnate trials, so sometimes you can learn through an encounter, but there is also the role of chance.

[Solarverse]

On 6/7/2025 at 10:45 PM, Andreah said:

Yup, it's not, and I like it this way. It's what makes me feel like a superhero.

 

You all keep bringing me out of retirement...don't make me slap you in the face with a slice of bologna. 

All kidding aside...this game for me had a slice of both during the leveling experience. You had the easy stuff (the blue zones) and then there were the hard ones (the red zones). If you wanted virtual easy, you had Atlas, Steel Canyon, Talos, and so forth. If you wanted a challenge, you had the Hollows, Faultline, and so forth. Then they changed those zones to be far easier than they were. Now all that is left is just the easy stuff. So at one time the game felt like it had a little something for everyone. Now, it feels to me like it caters to only one type of player...and that was the primary reason I left the game. So I am happy that you enjoy the game the way that it is, but there is some players who liked the game as it was before it was changed. If the Devs were to make the red zones actually challenging again...I just might come back. I shit you not, I once fell asleep and woke up with my face on the keyboard while playing. I woke up after a few minutes and realized I killed everything around me with only my aura...yeah, I woke up and realized the mobs were dead and I literally just stood there completely oblivious. I just can't roll with that.

[Paradox Fate]

14 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

 

You all keep bringing me out of retirement...don't make me slap you in the face with a slice of bologna. 

All kidding aside...this game for me had a slice of both during the leveling experience. You had the easy stuff (the blue zones) and then there were the hard ones (the red zones). If you wanted virtual easy, you had Atlas, Steel Canyon, Talos, and so forth. If you wanted a challenge, you had the Hollows, Faultline, and so forth. Then they changed those zones to be far easier than they were. Now all that is left is just the easy stuff. So at one time the game felt like it had a little something for everyone. Now, it feels to me like it caters to only one type of player...and that was the primary reason I left the game. So I am happy that you enjoy the game the way that it is, but there is some players who liked the game as it was before it was changed. If the Devs were to make the red zones actually challenging again...I just might come back. I shit you not, I once fell asleep and woke up with my face on the keyboard while playing. I woke up after a few minutes and realized I killed everything around me with only my aura...yeah, I woke up and realized the mobs were dead and I literally just stood there completely oblivious. I just can't roll with that.

 

The Blue Side low-level area factions definitely could use a slight uptick in their repertoire, no idea why the Council and Crey (again?!) get a adjustment while anything in Atlas/Sky/SC and Talos are mostly untouched.

I thought the deck was newly mixed since Galaxy's fall and we already saw that a few 'thug factions' gotten their hands on new stuff or a shift in their hierarchy, making them more dangerous than before. 

[temnix]

If players can overcome challenges which, for their power level, should be very steep or indeed impossible and do all those things like soloing Archvillains, what that tells is not how brilliant they are but how flawed the design of the game is and how poor its actual balance. Whether that is because Inventions are overpowered or because of set bonuses or there being overly useful, almost cheating powers, or all of those things together, the combined result is that system-hacking players make themselves almost into gods. This kind of mastery should never have been possible. It represents nothing in real life or in comic books. No Olympic athlete can hack himself to run at the speed of sound with any clever training techniques, Wolverine could not have boosted his regeneration rate to the point where he would survive an atomic blast. Both are bullshit. You've got something, you use it smartly and you take your chances: that is how it should be. Yet here in CoH, to respond to the demands of those min-maxing players and obsessed Veterans (as if power play is somehow a virtue instead of a freakish one-sidedness), the developers focused on the Incarnate system and content beyond the point where, to put it plainly, the game is over. Homecoming knows no better than do the same thing, cranking out high-level content while for low levels you can just go and talk to Matthew Habashi's wife on the communicator again.

 

Why does this game and other games of its sort cater to the obtuse, the idle, the obsessive and the petty?

 

In fine, what I'm missing here is not a reflexes mastery or a build mastery but an intelligence mastery: a real way to understand the enemy and ways to use his weaknesses and the environment against it while being, of course, fairly strong and competent. That is how fights and battles are really won: you strike hard in the right spot. Better yet, you outwit the enemy and win without a fight, which should be rewarded as well if not higher. Why must I have to grind meat in CoH's boring missions in order to advance? Why aren't there more opportunities to use Stealth? Thank god Stealth exists, to be sure, and that I can sometimes sneak to the glowing objective, click on it and obtain the cure, disarm the bomb, crack the safe. That is the actual objective of the mission. But its accomplishment is not rewarded. Beating goons is rewarded.

Edited yesterday at 07:04 AM by temnix

[Snarky]

6 hours ago, Solarverse said:

 

You all keep bringing me out of retirement...don't make me slap you in the face with a slice of bologna. 
 

[Seed22]

12 hours ago, Psyonico said:

I’m going to disagree with you.  There *is* a mastery to this game, it’s just not a mastery that requires reflexes.  The masters of this game are the expert build crafters and before IOs, the masters were theory crafters.  I honestly believe that Repeat Offenders was founded by masters of the game.  Most people would look at empathy, for example, and say “it’s an ok support set”. But a few people said “we can make defenders with capped regen, soft capped defense, and almost blaster level damage with this set”.

 

Similarly today, the masters aren’t the ones just finding power combinations that are great, but the ones that say “I can make a build that makes all but the hardest content completely trivial”.  And can craft builds that do just that.

 

finally, there is a certain amount of skill involved in playing this game, @Linea created the 801 AE missions as a means to test player skills in more ways than just “how good is your build?”  You can have the best build in the game, but if you approach 801s with no strategy you will faceplant within 20 seconds.

 

This myth won’t die.

 

streakbreaker only prevents missed, not hits.

Im gonna disagree slightly here. There is mastery in the form of IO usage sure, but there is no incentive or reward for it. So to me, there effectively is no mastery in the game. Whether you clear in 5 minutes or 30, you still get the same reward. There is also usually a CD period in the most valuable content(i.e iTrials and HM) where this mastery should shine the most.

 

Also there is no depth to skill expression in this game on two fronts. Whether it's wacky builds in a team or minmaxed builds, in a team of 8, your individual skill expression is moot. Solo, I can say sure there's some there, but thats as simple as do you use insp or not as even with seriously wacky builds face tanking is the same as minmaxers with insp usage as they'll probably be hovering around the same level of defenses, that is to say, little to none.

 

CoH is basically Stardew Valley that some people want everyone to take seriously(some argue for big boy difficulty which will never be a thing in this game as even the hardest content is miles behind modern games let alone modern MMO standards). 

[Psyonico]

30 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

Whether you clear in 5 minutes or 30, you still get the same reward.

Not entirely true.  If you clear a mission in 5 minutes, you can do 6 missions in the time it takes the person who does it in 30, so you get ~6x the rewards.  I’m guessing most people don’t say “it doesn’t matter if it takes 5 minutes or 30, I’m only doing 1 mission” and are more likely to say “I’ve got 30 minutes to play”

[Octogoat]

You try to beat City of Heroes,

I try to eat City of Gyros,

We are not the same.

[Riverdusk]

This game is closer to Diablo than Dark Souls.  With all of the possible builds and IO sets maybe closer to Path of Exile even.  Although when it comes to ARPG's I'm more of a Grim Dawn fan than either of those.  😄

 

Anyway, it's about the fun of the build and mowing down a ton of enemies.  That is perfectly fine.  No need to try to turn it into something else. 

 

Since it is an MMO you also have the social aspect.   I find when multiplayer games tend to become too extreme, they also tend to attract the more 'extreme' players, and the social aspect suffers.  The 'casuals' are chased away.  A generalization yes, and disclaimer that I'm sure many who want things 'more challenging' are fine people.  

 

A last issue with trying to turn this into something more 'difficult'   When you do that balance becomes even more of an issue.  Right now a favorite set gets nerfed I get a bit miffed or even slightly upset, but at the same time I know I can still do just fine with it.  Make things really difficult and suddenly even slight nerfs and characters can get destroyed.  The 'meta' builds become even more important, diversity tanks.  

 

I love that currently when people ask, "What should I play?"  The most common answer is, "Whatever you think looks fun", well except for kinetic melee (I joke).  Anyway, I don't like the idea of losing that.

[JKCarrier]

9 hours ago, temnix said:

Why must I have to grind meat in CoH's boring missions in order to advance? 

Somebody got a gun to your head? If you're this vehemently opposed to the core gameplay, it's probably time to look elsewhere. Things can always be adjusted, but hoping for a top-to-bottom rewrite of the code to be more like [insert name of cool modern game here] is unlikely, to put it mildly.

Believe it or don't, some of us like the way this game plays. This is the only MMO I've spent any significant amount of time in, and that's precisely because it's so chill and casual. You couldn't pay me to play a "Souls-like" game. Who needs that level of aggravation in their leisure time? But if that's your jam, go for it. There's plenty of it out there without trying to force a round peg into a square hole.

Imagine me going onto a Dark Souls forum and posting that it should be more like CoH. 😂

[Neiska]

Personally, I rate this game on the easier side of things. Other games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Darkest Dungeon, etc can be much more difficult. Most of the hardest things in this game isn't really hard, or unfair, it's just knowing the fight. (dodge the purples). That or the fights just take a lloonngg time.

 

Now, to be fair, the same could be said of those other games. People have beaten Dark Souls using nothing but mudpies and not taking a single hit. But I would argue the "Ceiling" to get to that point is much higher in those games than this one.

 

But at the end, it isn't a contest or race. And if you want a harder challenge, you have that option here. You don't HAVE to optimize. You can increase the difficulty. You can take different powers. If you want a challenge, you can give it to yourself. But if you want it easier, well, that isn't really an option. Personally, I try to view +2 as the "normal." Any build can do stuff on +0 or -1, pretty much any AT can do +2. +4 is where you have to know what you are doing, and to do harder content you have to plan ahead. So its easier for me to see +3, +4 and beyond as a kind of built in hard mode or difficulty (+).

 

Short version - I say this game is on the easier side of things. And that's not a bad thing. Its nice to have a game where you have the option to go full chill mode and relax, as well as push the envelope if you want to. Not all games have such options in the same game.

[Seed22]

2 hours ago, JKCarrier said:

Imagine me going onto a Dark Souls forum and posting that it should be more like CoH. 😂

I always have to ask, do you all know there are difficult games that ARENT dark souls or do you all legit think those are the only difficult games?

 

Thats my only gripe with these post. There are so many other challenging games, and souls games actually rank pretty mildly among them really. There are soulslikes and platformers harder than the entire souls series.

 

I get examples n all but idk I just wish more were used, like the tried n true Crash Bandicoot 🤣

 

Admittedly, this stems from my own frustrations that every time I say BASIC MECHANICS should be added to certain fights in the game im met with the "Go play Dark Souls".  It gets to be annoying and when those people would hit me with that my instinct says they don't play anything but CoH, because literally everyone else in modern gaming understands that there are plenty of games harder than the souls lineup.

 

Hell, I'm playing one now that is and played a few months ago that were. They're very common actually. 

 

All that said I still appreciate how chill CoH is for the most part.

Edited 23 hours ago by Seed22

[BasiliskXVIII]

5 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

I always have to ask, do you all know there are difficult games that ARENT dark souls or do you all legit think those are the only difficult games?

 

Thats my only gripe with these post. There are so many other challenging games, and souls games actually rank pretty mildly among them really. There are soulslikes and platformers harder than the entire souls series.

 

I get examples n all but idk I just wish more were used, like the tried n true Crash Bandicoot 🤣

Well, of course. I remember the NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, for instance, but I don't think that that is an aspirational target for difficulty. Soulslikes just happen to be very prominent in gaming culture, and a really good example of difficulty moderated by skill. They also tend to be an example of what players who are looking for a "hard mode" typically bring up. One could even bring SimCity(2013) or Daikatana into the picture, which were hard to play for a variety of reasons utterly unrelated to gameplay, but they don't exactly make the point.

It's like if someone was looking for an example of a large aquatic mammal, people will tend to gravitate towards the blue whale. Even though others exist, that's the example that will tend to spring to mind.

[Riverdusk]

27 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

I always have to ask, do you all know there are difficult games that ARENT dark souls or do you all legit think those are the only difficult games?

 

Thats my only gripe with these post. There are so many other challenging games, and souls games actually rank pretty mildly among them really. There are soulslikes and platformers harder than the entire souls series.

 

 

 

It is just an easy example that people use, but I feel you.  It has kind of become a meme at this point, so I just roll with it.   There are also other kinds of difficulties that are rarely held up as an example, like say strategy and tactics games which are an entirely different skill set.

[Octogoat]

26 minutes ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

Well, of course. I remember the NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, for instance, but I don't think that that is an aspirational target for difficulty. Soulslikes just happen to be very prominent in gaming culture, and a really good example of difficulty moderated by skill. They also tend to be an example of what players who are looking for a "hard mode" typically bring up. One could even bring SimCity(2013) or Daikatana into the picture, which were hard to play for a variety of reasons utterly unrelated to gameplay, but they don't exactly make the point.

It's like if someone was looking for an example of a large aquatic mammal, people will tend to gravitate towards the blue whale. Even though others exist, that's the example that will tend to spring to mind.

i would argue daikatana was difficult for gameplay reasons but completely unintentionally 

[Psyonico]

52 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

I always have to ask, do you all know there are difficult games that ARENT dark souls or do you all legit think those are the only difficult games?

I find it funny that you complain about people specifically saying Dark Souls when the whole genre you’re referring to (and you even used the word) is called “SOULSlike”

 

(At least for me) referring to Dark Souls is shorthand because, while I know harder games exist, I can’t tell you the names of any because that genre doesn’t interest me.

[skoryy]

Hard content needs people playing it and if the critical mass of players aren't, well...

 

(There is a discussion to be had of CoH running on an outdated Skinner box model, but that's for another discussion.)

[Quasar Seraph]

3 hours ago, Seed22 said:

 Admittedly, this stems from my own frustrations that every time I say BASIC MECHANICS should be added to certain fights in the game im met with the "Go play Dark Souls".  

Although I agree that you funnily enough defeated your earlier point with complaining that people only reference Dark Souls while you yourself used the genre "soulslike", I do agree with this point.

 

I love this game as is. I love the sandbox and the lack of a meta. But if the game were to take a page from Destiny's raids and dungeon mechanics that would be just straight fun. I haven't played Destiny 2 in two years but the thing I think that Destiny did that was revolutionary was multiplayer challenge activities. I would have a hard time seeing anyone getting upset at mid-fight mechanics and puzzles that break up the normal target-priority and DPS gameplay. 

[golstat2003]

8 hours ago, Riverdusk said:

This game is closer to Diablo than Dark Souls.  With all of the possible builds and IO sets maybe closer to Path of Exile even.  

And I and a majority of those who play this game are fine with that. If others want challenge they can unslot their IOs and form teams of like minded folks who want to run at +4 / x8 all the time and fight nothing but AVs all the time. 
 

The rest of us will be here enjoying COH as we always have.

[golstat2003]

3 hours ago, skoryy said:

Hard content needs people playing it and if the critical mass of players aren't, well...

 

(There is a discussion to be had of CoH running on an outdated Skinner box model, but that's for another discussion.)

yep that’s the rub. A majority of this playerbase don’t want the game harder. If they did, you would not see for example, most team leaders waiting till they got 8 players before heading into a mission. lol

 

A majority of COH players want the game to be as easy as possible a majority of the time.

 

the other evidence of this already stated early is most TFs /SFs staying on the lowest difficulty so that they can clear it as fast as possible.

 

Keep in mind that a large portion of this play base for COH aren’t kids anymore. We have jobs, kids, etc. So spending hours banging your head against difficult challenges isn’t something wanted.

“Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

 

There are other games for that when the mood strikes.

Edited 19 hours ago by golstat2003

[Octogoat]

2 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

yep that’s the rub. A majority of this playerbase don’t want the game harder. If they did, you would not see for example, most team leaders waiting till they got 8 players before heading into a mission. lol

 

A majority of COH players want the game to be as easy as possible a majority of the time.

 

the other evidence of this already stated early is most tags/SFs staying on the lowest difficulty so that they can clear it as fast as possible.

 

Keep in mind that a large portion of this play base for COH aren’t kids anymore. We have jobs, kids, etc. So spending hours banging your head against difficult challenges isn’t something wanted.

“Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

 

There are other games for that when the mood strikes.

Exactly. I'm into relaxation games. Currently playing Flock some.