Difficulty

[JCServant]

Salutations. 

My friend and I have been playing City of Heroes Homecoming together and ran into a persistent difficulty issue that became increasingly frustrating. While running alignment missions as a duo, we repeatedly encountered minions that were one to two levels above us, which meant lieutenants and bosses were significantly more durable and time-consuming to defeat, resulting in very slow progression. As group leader, I lowered the difficulty incrementally from mission to mission, yet it appeared to have little to no effect, and I was making sure to be the first one in. By the end, the settings were at minus one with one player selected, fully aware that the game would still scale to two players, but minions were still consistently yellow and orange to us, including basic minions, indicating they were above our level. Afterward, I ran a police radio mission solo, and the enemies were finally at my level, which was an improvement, but this raised a consistency concern. With difficulty set to minus one, the expectation was that enemies would spawn one level below my character, particularly since police radio missions are scaled to player level by default. Instead, they appeared equal level rather than reduced, suggesting either difficulty modifiers are not applying as expected or there is a disconnect between team scaling, mission scaling, and radio mission behavior. What do you guys think?

[Snarky]

Some content, TF and such, have a base difficulty. +0.  It sounds like the Alignment missions follow that as well 

[JCServant]

It's happening on Police missions.... If we're at -1...why are minions the same level or +1s ?

 

 

[JCServant]

Another group... 4 minions, 1 LT at our level in a group...makes sense if it was +0, but not -1 (for 2people)

[JCServant]

'

So here is a five pack of +1s...again, seems off for -1 settings for two people.

[CountZero]

There's a known issue with missions set to -1 not giving the proper enemy levels on some occasions, this was after the new higher difficulty were introduced.

[legendaryjman]

The observation of the difficulty setting not being what you expect it is a valid observation.

 

That being said, how are you not tearing through whites and yellows as a beast mastermind? You and your good boys should be eating those minions like they are kibble.

[Snarky]

Also, missions were originally written to have some natural variation.  This was evidently to make the game feel more dynamic. So you could not always count on a +0 and instead would see a +1 somewhat randomly 

[JCServant]

19 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Also, missions were originally written to have some natural variation.  This was evidently to make the game feel more dynamic. So you could not always count on a +0 and instead would see a +1 somewhat randomly 

Oh yeah... totally. I expect that with Story Arcs, but less so on Police/Alignment missions.

And it was everrrry mission, which is why it was starting to bother me.  So odd!!

[JCServant]

This is very frustrating...Duo'ing with another friend....-1 settings, and so many yellows, oranges and reds. We're dying left and right (level 20s with Enhancments of course).  

[Lunar Ronin]

The +5 to +7 difficulty setting options added in Page 3 broke difficulty throughout the game in some places.  -1 mission difficulty being one, it's broken.  -1 is effectively +0 now until whenever it's fixed.  Others are level 55 and above critters being in places that they shouldn't.

[JCServant]

39 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

The +5 to +7 difficulty setting options added in Page 3 broke difficulty throughout the game in some places.  -1 mission difficulty being one, it's broken.  -1 is effectively +0 now until whenever it's fixed.  Others are level 55 and above critters being in places that they shouldn't.

Good to know!! Thank you!!!

[Psyonico]

I also noticed today that in a +4 mission we were getting +3s randomly, which did not used to be the case.