City of Heroes Issue 6 features revealed

The developers at Cryptic Studios have revealed the content of the next big update for City of Heroes: Issue 6 (Along Came a Spider). Issue 6 will open up for the cross-compatibility with City of Villains.

New features, if you only own City of Heroes:

New Zones
As they become available to the players of City of Villains, the following PvP Zones will also open up for player of City of Heroes:

• Bloody Bay
This is a PvP Zone for Villains and Heroes with a minimum level to entry set at 15.

• Siren’s Call
This is a PvP Zone for Villains and Heroes with a minimum level to entry set at 20.

• Warburg
This is a Free-For-All Battle Zone for Villains and Heroes with a minimum level to entry set at 30.

Arena – New Gladiator Battles
Collect all new Gladiator Badges to create a host of new pets you can battle in any of the Paragon City Arenas.

Names
The number of characters allowed in the name will be increased to 20.

Super Groups
There will be all new SG Badges and an upgrade to the SG permissions system.

Tech Changes
City of Heroes will now support 3D Sound, have added Visual FX Upgrades and Dual CPU Performance Enhancement.

Costume Creator
Drop down menus are just a part of the UI upgrades for the costume creator.

Pets
We’ve added an all new Pet Window for managing your pets.

Trade Window Upgrades
Trading with your teammates will be quicker and easier with the new UI in place.

If you also own City of Villains you’ll get:

Of course there is also the huge Enhancement Diversification change, which in many players view negates all the new content. In short the ED change reduces the percentage you can increase your power with significantly and so tankers can take less damage, blasters can do less damage, healers can heal less etc. This is the most drastic nerfing of powers ever seen in City of Heroes and it follows a string of reduction in power levels that players have endured since the beginning of the year. The question is whether the player base will accept ED this time around, though. If you look at the official thread, it’s now up to 420 pages. However, there was a thread before that, which had more than 300 pages before it was replaced by the new one.

Sadly the developers have settled on the vision that one hero = three minions. However, being a game about superheroes that seems to be plain wrong. Have heroes and Wolverine or Captain America ever been defeated by four regular thugs? Here’s one editor/gamer who hopes that the developers will realise their error and change the game back to what it used to be – fun, fast and with the sense that you were the coolest guy around.