City of Heroes Issue 5 Interview
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Q: We understand that there will be large-scale changes being made to existing characters in Issue 5 for play balancing. Can you please comment on some of these changes?
A: Comments from users, combined with our own experiences, have shown us that game play in the upper levels (basically everything after level 25) was not as exciting as it should be with certain powers and powersets. Upon closer inspection we found the root of issue was that the game didn't offer the same challenge to higher level players. One or two powers in a powerset was all anyone used to complete entire missions. Controllers could lock down entire maps worth of spawns with one well placed Area Effect Hold, and Tankers could "herd" the entire map with so much resistance to damage that 100 attackers could not hurt him. We have taken some pretty drastic steps to balance the game in light of these powers, either by reducing the effectiveness of some of the powers a more realistic level, or simply limiting the number of things that could be affected by an Area power.