City Of Heroes: Balance Goal

Statesman stopped by the Official City of Heroes forums today to share his thoughts on game balance:

Let me talk about goals in balance...

Originally, we targeted a basic formula. A hero equaled 3 to 4 minions. Or a Lt. and one minion. Or 3/4 of a boss. A hero could fight things one (or more levels) below him with only a slight chance of defeat. A hero could fight things his own level with some chance of defeat; mobs one level higher would be hard, but defeatable. If a foe was two or more levels above the hero, a player would have a relatively high likelihood of defeat.

Our entire spawn system in zones and missions depended upon these equations. But then we released the game 

The system holds up pretty well up until the mid to late twenties, but once players can purchase S.O.'s in the stores, their abilities rapidly outstrip the curve. Enhancements ended up being priced too cheaply (something that we'll change sometime soon). In order to find something fun to do (i.e. something that had an element of risk), players needed to hunt in zones; missions became boring.

We had a choice a while back - the easy way to fix the issue was to increase the difficulty of mobs. But this impacted EVERY Archetype. Some builds, we found, fit into the paradigm quite nicely. Others did not. Increasing the difficulty for them would have had a drastic impact. Instead, we added a difficulty slider. Those Archetypes and builds that could handle tougher foes now could ratchet up their Reputation. Admittedly, this meant that some builds could gain more XP/hr. than others, but we thought this would be the best solution. We wanted to make sure that the fun/risk in a mission could match what a person could find out in the zones.

Why? Because we feel that missions are a great part of the game. If a player eschews missions to street sweep, he isn't seeing all of the great City of Heroes content.

The difficulty slider allows a player to raise the difficulty of mobs he faces in missions up to +3 levels. The goal for the level 30+ game is for players to have fun battling those foes. So, if you're level 40, 3 to 4 +3 level minions should present a challenge. Does this mean a fifty/fifty chance of success? No - it simply means that there's a chance of defeat. A boss +3 levels should present a significant threat.

Certain Archetypes can handle more mobs than this - Tankers, for example, are designed to take on the agro of many mobs at once. Sure, a Tanker can survive tackling 10 or so minions, but his damage rate is relatively slow and he needs the other Archetypes to wipe out the opposition quickly.

A few other points. Arch Villains were NEVER designed to be solo-ed. Whenever a hero can defeat an even conned Arch Villain, there's definitely an issue. We're also aware of the significant imbalance that Hamidon Enhancements cause in the Arena and we are striving for a solution.

Here's the Thread