Another I13 interview, this one at Ten Ton Hammer. Most is stuff recapped before, but a few items stood out.
Ten Ton Hammer: Can you talk about the power rebalancing at all? How are you balancing you PvP and PvE powers?
Matt: One of the things when we started the studio was to make hires in the “Powers” department. Not only do we have more people to work on the powers, but we can also now take a fine-toothed comb to the power system and get some data mining and cold hard facts on the powers and how they’re being used.
To start, we rebalanced the Patron powers and the Epic powers that villains and heroes get so they’re more in line with each other. We looked at what players were picking more often and changed some powers completely and pruned some powers.
In addition, we wanted to make sure PvP remained fun. We were getting into a situation with the games because PvP was getting less and less fun because of how some powers interacted with players. Back then, we couldn’t adjust the powers without having an adjustment made in PvE as well. Basically, we got more people, had more code time, and created a new technology system so that when you’re in a PvP zone some powers act very differently than what they do in PvE. Hopefully this will bring a more balanced PvP game to the CoX franchise and allow new players to find this enjoyable.
Which makes it sound like the Epic Pool Powers are going to get a bit of love. Which is good, because there are a lot of characters I’ve mapped out where they were pretty much unnecessary, or fairly trivial adds to the build.
In online threads, Castle notes that the precise changes won’t be announced until Beta.
I wouldn’t get too excited over the Epics getting better. In all likelihood certain Epics will be nerfed rather than buffed. The Patron Powers OTOH, stand to be more diverse and more powerful overall, to bring them more in line with the newly rebalanced Epics.
The Epics have had a monopoly on all the unbalancing powers up to this point: Personal Force Field, Force of Nature, Power Boost, among many others. Compare that to what you get in the Patron Pools currently: underpowered shields, a pet you can call once every 15 minutes, snipes that do all of 150 points of damage, among many other very disappointing powers.
I’m very excited to see there are upcoming changes, and the curiosity is killing me. Can’t wait to find out what happens with them.
I’ve never had a Villain up to that level, so I can’t speak to that side. While I’ve been happy to grab EPPs on the Hero side (how else is a Controller to get the damage mitigation?), they are generally pretty wimpy.
EPPs should not be a chance for a hero (or villian, on the PPs) to get a second or third-level power from another AT. It should be … um … *epic*.