City of Heroes / Villains Issue 13 and Issue 14: Features for Issue 13

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So What Will Issue 13: Power and Responsibility include?

The newly named Issue 13: Power and Responsibility will include most of the features originally announced for Issue 13: Architect, minus the mission creation system. Specifically:

  • Shield and Pain Domination powersets
  • Merit Reward system
  • Day Jobs (that include a suite of new costume pieces)
  • Additional Cimerora and Midnight Squad mission arcs

Thoughts and analysis of those features can be found in my Issue 13: Architect preview. Suffice it to say, the Merit Reward system is the only one that appears it will add worthwhile new content. The others will be more of the same, unfortunately (or in the case of Day Jobs, nothing much at all since everything takes place while you are offline).

Is There Anything New for Issue 13?

A few additional features were announced for Issue 13 as well. They are all touted as “new” even though some of them have been known about for many months.

  • Leveling Pact
  • Multi-Builds
  • PvE & PvP Powers rebalancing
  • Villain Patron Power Respec
  • Supergroup Base Repricing

The villain patron power respec, the PvE/PvP powers rebalancing, and the SuperGroup base repricing are neither new nor are they actually content. The villain patron power respec has been needed since the release of City of Villains back in 2005, power rebalancing is a constant thing, and SuperGroup base repricing is little more than a few tweaks to a data spreadsheet. An attempt was made, however, to make the PvE/PvP power rebalancing sound a little more expansive:

Floyd “Castle” Grubb and the powers designers have been hard at work in finding ways to strike a better balance between the many powers in the game. The scope of what they are doing is too broad to go into details here, but we’re very excited and we’ll share more information soon. Suffice it to say that we know that you don’t want your PvE powers adjusted because of how they play in PvP, so we’re taking a new tact in power balancing with Issue 13.

This is an excellent example of a developer using an entire paragraph to say nothing. The interesting thing is how often the developers specifically tell their customers how “excited” they are about unreleased content. It is a shame the players never end up being anywhere near as excited with the same content once it is actually released. Furthermore, players are rarely “excited” about rebalancing once it comes down the pipe. It usually results in the ruination of powers or builds they previously enjoyed.

This post is part of the series: City of Heroes / Villains Issue 13 and Issue 14 Information

This article discusses recent official information about Issues 13 and 14 for City of Heroes.

  1. City of Heroes / Villains: Issue 13 Mission Architect Delay
  2. City of Heroes / Villains Issue 13 and Issue 14: Features for Issue 13
  3. City of Heroes / Villains Issue 13 and Issue 14: The Leveling Pact
  4. City of Heroes / Villains Issue 13 and Issue 14: Multi Builds and Bases