City of Heroes developer happy with Incarnates reception

Launched two weeks ago, City of Heroes' Issue 20 update introduced 'Incarnates', adding new missions, powers and group options for up to 48 players.

Developer Paragon Studios spoke out on large scale raids and the response of the players.

In an interview with PC Gamer, City of Heroes lead producer Nate Birkholz highlighted that the difficulty for both small and large groups seems to be scaling well.

"In fact, both the smallest groups and the largest groups have been able to earn the 'Master of..' badges that we award for completing the Incarnate Trials as close to perfect as possible," he stated.

Birkholz went on to talk about the new powers and boss encounters that have proven popular so far, as well as lessons learned from the introduction of the new endgame:

"Players were regularly defeating the Siege and Nightstar battle first, but we expected to see that. The Marauder battle is more integrated into how successful you are with the rest of the Lambda Sector Incarnate Trial, so we knew it would take a bit longer to get into the groove of his fight," explained Birkholz

"The Judgment and Lore powers are very visual, and players are really digging them a lot."

In a separate interview with Gaming Angels, lead designer Melissa Bianco talked about her personal experiences of working on City of Heroes, attributing the game's success to "a combination of being the first in the genre (so that gave us plenty of time to iterate and add content), being the right genre at the right time (look how popular comics and movies like Spider Man are!), and having a game that was attractive to the casual player."

City of Heroes launched in 2004 and is available for PC and Mac.

Thanks, Joystiq.