Villain Patron Powers to get overhaul in CoX Issue 13
When the announcement broke that the Mission Architect feature for City of Heroes was being moved to Issue 14, some additional features were listed for Issue 13, including revamps to some of the powers. We got to quiz Matt Miller and Brian Clayton extensively about the PvP related changes coming to CoX, but some other overhauls have come to light since. From what powers specialist Floyd 'Castle' Grubb has told players on the forums, the Villain Patron Powers and the Hero Ancillary Power Pools are going to get a serious rework.
Both these power pool types affect only characters at level 40 and above. Players have been protesting the lack of equivalence between them ever since the City of Villains Patron Powers went live in Issue 7: Destiny Manifest. The obvious place where the disparity between the two counts is in PvP. The heroes get uber powers like Focused Accuracy; the villains don't. The heroes get Power Boost as an ancillary power; the villains don't. But now, although he can't talk specifics yet, Castle has promised 'widespread' changes to the PPs and APPs.
Villain Patron Pools have always seemed to be an example of developers designing themselves into a corner. Unlike the Hero pools, which a character can freely select from the options available to his AT, the Villain pools were not only permanent choices (that's changing in Issue 13) but were locked into the storyline. If you wanted the Ghost Widow power pool, you chose Ghost Widow as a patron and played through the relevant story arc.
What was even more aggravating was the way the pools were constructed. As they were a permanent choice, each one had to contain much the same sort of stuff, or they would be unbalanced and all the players would pile on to one Patron. So, each pool for Dominators, for example, contains one armor power, one blast, one pet summoning, and one other choice.
We obviously can't tell yet what Castle has in mind, but the changes to the pools seem to be pretty radical: 'The basic tack we took was "if the power is not being taken by the players, replace it with something that is." So, a number of formerly heroside only powers are now available on villainside, and a number of powers have been replaced by something we feel will be more useful in general.' The prospect of some of the tastier Hero powers migrating to the Villains is excellent news for redside, but replacing powers is always a dangerous choice to make. Even if the majority of players don't take a given power, the chances are that some will have, and they'll prove to be very fond of it. See under 'can't please all the people all the time'.
Update: Corrected Castle's name. Sorry Castle, and thankyou Snorrii!
