City Of Heroes XP Getting An Adjustment

NCSoft posted an interview with Matt “Positron” Miller last week that detailed their current efforts to smooth out the “XP curve” in City of Heroes. Two of the biggest issues that most players of City of Heroes cite, are the inabilities to go back and complete previous mission arcs that they missed, and that the game was just to “grindy”. The former concern was addressed in the last content patch, Issue 11: A Stitch in Time!, and the latter looks to be somewhat addressed in a patch that looks to be hitting before Valentine’s Day. You can check the full interview here.

Q: Please tell us what exactly this XP Curve “Smoothing” means.

A: Well, the leveling speed “curve” looked like a jagged mountain slope more than a smooth line. There were some levels in City of Heroes and City of Villains that just took players longer to get through. This was due to a variety of reasons, mostly in the realm of available mission content. We have tried to add new content in those areas over the past few updates, but a stronger hand was needed in some of the real problem areas. We went in and, through data mining, determined how long characters “lived” (existed) at any given level. This pointed out exactly where our problem areas were and exactly how we could address them. In addition we did a near global increase to the XP earned for defeating enemies. This will have everyone leveling faster than previous issues.