Does anyone notice this?

TL;DR The game starts off at a fair difficulty and the becomes way to easy end game, due to OP stats and skills.

Quick backstory before I get started.

I just purchased the game about 10 days ago, rolled a few classes to figure out what I wanted to play. Ended up rolling an Emp/energy(Yay for useless energy) Defender. As soon as I logged on I get ninja invited to a sewers group, so I roll with it. Being the healer for a group of level 2's fighting against level 5's was interesting. Later on I ended up doing the Positron TF at 3am, constantly asking can we sleep yet? Nearing the last few quests it ended up being a 3 man TF , but none the less at least I had to actually pay attention.

Upon hitting 32 I started getting no whisper invites to PI runs. At first I was skeptical, but I learned to not question it soon enough. Possibly the least interesting aspect of this game is when you near 50. As an emp I hardly bothered to heal 50's that would run around mowing down 54's. I found that my job is just to spam RA's when they're up and figure out who's the best dps and keep AR up on him. You really do notice a lack of challenge endgame, it seems that most enemy npc's really don't know what to do when they can't hit a tank or can't get out of controllers cc.

Which brings me to my question. Does anyone else feel like the difficulty of the game drops off, due to an inability to incorporate powerful skills such as Thunderstrike, Chain induction, and Lightning rod creatively so that they're necessary and not just a harder hitting skill?

So far it looks like the only worth wild pve fight is Hamidon. Even that I heard was nerfed.

In general, I agree. You shift from trying to take out one foe at a time at lower levels to trying to take out whole rooms at a time at higher levels. NPCs don't maintain the same ratio of power throughout the game; players do seem to become more powerful by comparison. Player character attacks typically affect more foes and are more devastating later in the game.

I've heard some people say this shift in ratios makes them feel "more epic" at higher levels.

/e shrug

My preference so far has been to play alts up to about 35 and then abandon them. I like the stripped-down, bareknuckled feel of the lower level game. But if the game revamped the upper level content, the experience might be more attractive at higher levels, and I might play more past 35.

Just my perspective; others will see it differently, I suppose.

Just as a friendly FYI:

Missions, not quests.

Tells, not whispers.

City of Heroes, not WoW.

I return you to your forums, already in progress.

Minor note - Hamidon is still the most challenging, teamwork/coordination intensive encounter in CoH/CoV by a fair margin. The Hamidon fight was changed back in Issue 9 (about 2 1/2 years ago), but this change was not really a nerf so much as it was a restructuring so a more varied array of ATs and powersets were required for a successful run, and a 'failed' run was not such a cataclysmic failure. (In the original Hami raid, if Hamidon was not successfully held, when he reached 50% hp he would summon an Archvillain-level reinforcement for every hero in the zone, right above their heads. Instant raid-wipe, game over.) New Hami (which really isn't very new) allows a max of 50 players to join in, which means somewhat less lag than the 100+ man messes of yore, and is more interactive for more players.

Main point - While your characters do indeed reach much greater potential end-game, letting you demolish far more daunting hordes of enemies than a low-level would dream of, this does not necessarily mean that it is trivial and challenge-free. At all level ranges, there are some enemy groups that are simpler than others, or that your character build is uniquely adept at handling, and these are the ones that many players will focus their attentions on. For example, while an Invulnerability scrapper might not even break a sweat clearing a room full of Council soldiers, plinking away at his iron hide with their mundane bullets, if a couple Rularuu bosses walked on the scene with their crushing debuffs and heavy psychic damage, you might be looking at a much different picture. While the power creep at high levels will make regular encounters much simpler to deal with (and seemingly too easy), you can still try and test your upper limits. Sure, your scrapper can take out that Archvillain with a bunch of teammates at his back, but does that scrapper dare to defeat the AV solo? You can slaughter Rikti with the best of them, but can you last against +4 Rikti bosses? Can you do so without inspirations? How fast can you pull it off? How do you fare against live prey (PvP)? How about end-game TFs and raids? You don't need to be content farming away at grunts that you are perfectly designed to counter (unless you want to), you can go for the brass ring.

And yes, you can get scarily powerful endgame, but CoH isn't nearly as focused on the endgame as something like WoW is. The game is more focused on enjoying the journey to the top, and making lots of different characters to try different powerset combos out. If you wait a few months, Going Rogue should also introduce many new end-game challenges that are actual challenges.

A squad of tooled up 50's letting fly with their best toons on 54 enemies isn't really indicitive of normal high level play. Yes you generally can handle higher con enemies at higher level but not everyone is playing amped up toons.

You were probably on a team of people who were looking to enjoy their game while bringing profit and playing their real "superhero" toons it seems. Your average pug team is not gonna run that smooth.

A 50 is powerful, an IO'd 50 can be a superhero, sadly at the moment there isn't a lot that can actually challenge a team of IO'd out 50's, doubly so now the TF's which had some of the nastier stuff are difficulty locked (hint hint ) but this is a temporary thing.

Yea I've been watching some hilarious Hamidon videos, can't wait. As for the difficulty I didn't think there was a point to having it set to anything less than max unless you're sub thirty. Was planning on doing a few TF's today, like my friend said a few nights ago. It seems that this game has a lot of potential, but not enough focus.

Though I was looking at a few of Hamidon enhancements, really I could only find a few places where I could put them.

As for the people who have Emp's/Pain's with the mentality that having the most healing skills in the game obviously means your roll is to cc or dps, please catch a train with your face.

If you have a heal use it, simple logic.

Hopefully they put out more content like Hamidon.

@Angelstar yea you're right, what I've noticed about normal play is that...
It's normal for Scrappers to not slot for defense and to get hit harder than most controllers. Not only that, but those same scrappers are the same ones to charge in first. The difference between normal play and playing bad is starting to blur.

Sorry OP, but it really really sounds like you forgot to hit the reset button on your attitude when you started playing this game. The AT/powerset system is a lot different than other games, and the necessity for heals is always going to be trumped by the power of buffs and debuffs.

Something others have alluded to, but not explicitly said, is that your choice of powersets is likely to have disproportionately influenced your experience. Empathy...well, especially the "healing" part of Empathy...is well-known for becoming something of a fifth wheel on higher-level teams. Players spend a lot of effort, influence, power picks, and slots to make themselvs tough enough that they won't need constant healing, and eventually it works, marginalizing the healing aspect of the Empathy powerset.

By the way, I was on an Abandoned Sewer Trial last night, and I think that one might be trickier than the Hamidon raids.

If you stick to easy mobs and full teams, and stack buffs/debuffs or use a tanker, this game is indeed pretty easy.

There's an easy solution to that, of course ; fight harder mobs, don't do full teams, don't stack buffs/debuffs, don't use tankers. Now if the real issue is you don't want to do that because it gives less rewards than the easy way, it's a reward issue and not a difficulty issue.

I think it should be required people show a video of them doing the RO arcs on +4/x8 solo if they want to claim the game is too easy.

Hmm, so what everyone is trying to say that is they prefer the quality of balance to a point where an entire Archtype is rendered pointless. Oh well I guess I can always hit 50 and screw around with a Peacebringer or Warshade.

Still I think I could manage to amuse myself with the numerous amount of missions long enough for HR studios to finish up with their work.

Still curious to know if anyone knows of a way to scale the UI so that the map isn't taking up so much space.

@Nihilii, see it's that type of mind numbing ignorance that makes games like Guild Wars have a terrible PvE system, Guild Wars thought it a good idea to reward players for their ability to gimmick solo through group content. Now I would agree with badges for maybe solo'ing arch villans or something, but building a game around solo play yields a very boring play experience.

Also someone who has been playing the game as long as you have should easily realize that controllers and scrappers can easily fulfill a Tankers job, in fact most of the midnight or later runs I get into often don't have a tanker. In fact that's how my team on hero side has been running, Scrapper/Controller/Emp.

Now the Issue with your request for "I think it should be required people show a video of them doing the RO arcs on +4/x8 solo" is that it's not a skill check, it's build check. Is your build set up specifically for those solo situations? Personally I don't build my Emp around solo gameplay, generally people would start throwing fits if my Heal other hit less than a transfusion. Not to mention I can't really see the point of a solo based Emp when you can make Fire/Kin solo build or something of the sorts.

One last thing, if you're someone who cares about game design and what not, you should realize that just because you can make a mob hit harder or have more HP does not make for a higher difficulty, personally I see more skill in coordination of a Hamidon raid than anything you could possibly do solo.

Awesome hopefully I can do that with the rest of the areas of the UI, I prefer a minimal UI over a clustered one.

Someone said this game doesn't have healers?
That's an old-old misconception of words that's been fought many times over on these forums. There are healers in this game, because they have the ability to heal, therefore they are healers. If your toon can heal, you are thusly a healer. That is what was meant by the OP, and that is what was understood. So, yes, in that context, there are healers in this game.

Someone else said healers become a 5th wheel at higher levels.
That is so true! The only time I get to actually play as a healer is if I look for lower level teams. They always want/need healers. Higher level teams just ask me to go get my kin (also a healer).

To Judgebanks. WoW is that way --------------------->

Have fun!

If you want this game to be another game.... which is what it's sounding like at this point.... the GO PLAY ANOTHER GAME. Because obviously you have different goals than the playerbase of this game.

I don't actually think it's necessary for the regular content to become harder* as I level up. I think it's much better that you actually have to increase the difficulty level to be challenged. After all, we have quite a few different difficulty levels available (40, taking in all combinations of level / number of heroes). It makes me feel much more super when I can at level 50 fight enemies two levels higher than I am set for four players. It's a definite increase in power (which I think is how it should be) from level 1-10 where I prefer -1 enemies set for one.


*I realize the level of the enemies does change and they get more powers at their disposal, but their relative power doesn't really change.

Let me apologize to you for what our community is giving to you as a bad taste of what CoH / CoV can have. I feel many people here get into what they coin as "Scrapper Lock" or "Fury Mode" and they have a tendency to forget that not everyone enjoys the same pleasures as they do. Especially to someone new and coming from a different game with a whole new outlook.

After reading some bits, I would have suggested NOT to start your first character as a empathy defender. Mostly due to the aggravating situations you have mentioned and some you haven't come across yet. Before I9 (issue 9), Emp defenders were more sought out far more and almost as high in priority as a kinetic def / controller, even in 'end game content'. I feel people forget those past days and are currently focusing on the min / max aspects of today. Since the introduction of Invention Origin enhancements, we have the ability to tweek our character into astonishing levels of performance that they have created a nasty side effect: rendering empathy defenders "near useless" beyond level 20 in terms of regenerating health.

Has you may have noted; all people want to do is rush into the fray and kill as many minions as possible and as fast as possible. This shows quite a bit beyond level 35 when your characters are near its peak performance. Many people rush in working on cruse control, mashing buttons, and killing the mobs 10-20 at a time without caring for the rest of the team... perhaps its the adrenaline rush of beating the odds, perhaps its the feel of being super, perhaps they went tunnel vision... whatever the reasons maybe, people start to act as an individual within the team instead of working together.

So what does that leave you? People in overdrive need to slowdown to 'recover'... but they don't want to wait, thus people use emp and kins for their recovery powers. Instead of focusing on the tank, as if you were made into the 'holy trinity' team, focus on the blasters, and scrappers, and if plausible Khealdians. Those who do higher DPS will tend to die more often in higher levels. Of course you do get the occasional 'one man army' player who loves to rush in without thinking, despite their archetype and build. Let us also not forget Fortitude (buffs damage and to-hit accuracy) and Clear Mind (grants mez protection and increases perception) powers in the Empathy set. True they are not heals, but they are a core buff in that set.

Besides focusing on buffing your allies, in later levels I would suggest to start adding more attacks into your set, OR, even better yet, take some power pools to help buff your allies even more like the Leadership Power Pool. While one can do the damage of many, I would rather be the support for twenty.

I always hated playing games where a single enemy 10 levels below me can clean my clock.

In this game, on some of my characters, I can beat up 17 enemies at a time who are 2 levels above me.

This game has -1 to +4 level settings, and 1 to 8-man spawns. If you're having a hard time being challenged, start upping the difficulty. Fight at +4/x1 if you want to face small groups of really powerful badguys. That would be a severe challenge for most regular characters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

I sort of agree with the OP in that full team missions seem like a push-over much of the time, assuming that everyone is around 50 and not a bunch of SSK'd lvl 10s. I think a lot of this has to do with team dynamics and the power of AE skills, both offensive and defensive. Large groups of mobs get blown away and AE heals and buffs become more potent for their stamina cost.

But, while I sort of agree, I don't really want to see it changed too much. Because, solo, the dynamic is different again. I have two defenders at around lvl 50, one of which is soloing Praetorian villains (as elites, I'm not awesome enough to solo AVs) in hair-raising, knuckle whitening, inspiration-popping battles that I lose about 40% of the time. The other still struggles against standard groups of minions and Lt's when solo. The difficulty in the game can be so dependent upon AT, team size, enhancements, etc that I really think we have a good balance now where you can make the missions considerably harder if you choose than to crank up the difficulty for everyone across the board.