As you may know, Champions Online has got a fairly complicated powers system. One of the tenets of the game at launch was to provide a very flexible powers systems to allow players to mix and match powers to make their idealized super-hero. But with that level of flexibility comes potential problems: powers not working properly, unforeseen balance problems, and the potential for exploits.

We’ve been doing a lot of powers revisions in the game these past few months, addressing outstanding bugs, balance issues, and exploits.  Why are we making these revisions? Here’s a run-down on our philosophy behind these changes.

Powers Bugs

Powers Bugs covers “Why aren’t these powers working the way they are supposed to?” There may be power descriptions don’t match with their actual in-game effects, some secondary effects are not going off properly, or the numbers don’t seem quite right. While annoying, these typically aren’t game-breaking.

Addressing Powers Bugs: If we come across them or have them reported, we put them on the fix list to be addressed as time and resources permit.

Power Balance Issues

Power Balance Issues are a stickier wicket. If a power comes out that is balanced poorly and is effectively underpowered, no one is sad when it gets a proper boost in a powers revision. But when a power ends up being overpowered and then nerfed, there are typically some Very Upset Players. Of course, our intention is not to upset players, but to provide a game system that has proper checks and balances so gameplay is fun, interesting, and challenging.

A prime example follows: If everyone has a particular power, then that power is probably unbalanced.  “If you don’t have power X, your build is worthless!” – this feels especially bad to players who a trying a concept build but don’t want to take a non-concept power with balance issues. If it comes down a to a few powers every player should have out of the 100+ powers we have in the game, then we should probably take a look at those key powers to see if they are broken.  In some cases, they aren’t necessarily broken: the powers have enough pre-requisites or are dependent on enough other powers for their effectiveness that it’s not a power imbalance: it’s just players being clever (and we like clever!)  In other cases though, there’s something wrong with the power that’s causing it to behave beyond it’s intended operating parameters, which typically comes down to bad math or a flawed implementation.  That’s when we have to decide how to address the power imbalance.

Addressing Power Balance Issues: Unless it’s a power that everyone (players and devs alike) agree needs its power reduced, we typically don’t like nerfing a power outright. Instead we try to provide some tradeoffs.  For example, Ice Blast lost some of its damage, but as a tradeoff got the ability to refresh Chill stacks and cause Cold Debuff on targets, making enemies more vulnerable to future cold damage (and more interesting to play and more thematic!)  

Please note that it’s much more feasible to address singular powers than to do sweeping power balance changes/buffs across the board, as the latter has potential to cause even more balance issues with powers, enemy difficulty etc. Seriously, there are a lot of spreadsheets involved and hundreds of powers and critters. Re-testing all of them all after a change like that is not realistic.

Power Exploits

Power exploits quite simply break the game.  While most are legitimate bugs, it becomes an exploit if it’s used consistently for personal gain or for griefing other players. Because of this and its effect on the long-term health of the game, using or propagating power exploits violates the Terms of Service and is considered grounds for banning players from the game.  Please report any power exploits to Customer Service, as the sooner they are reported, the sooner we can implement fixes before they cause problems.

Addressing Power Exploits: Power exploits are very important for us to fix because of the potential harm they could do to the game. Sometimes they take a bit longer to address if they involve code revisions, but they do get fixed eventually.

Keeping the Game Healthy

At the end of the day, powers revisions are intended to keep the game healthy.  If the game consists of a few “I win” buttons, then gameplay becomes static and boring. But if players have a suite of relatively balanced powers to choose from,  it makes experimentation with all kinds of crazy power combos a lot of fun!

Have you spotted any power bugs or balance issues in the game?  We’d love to hear from you!  Post in our Combat and Powers thread on the Arc Forums!

Charge ZEN now and pick up the latest items on the C-Store, or upgrade to Gold and get bonuses including freeform power selection, Gold costume sets, and Veteran Rewards!

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