Are the DCUO Devs going in the right direction?

There is no "right direction"

Will you continue to follow the game or not? That's what you guys should be asking yourselves.

Burnt did not say anything that I highlighted in green. 2nd what I highlighted in blue will NEVAAA happen.

100% agree. Its about keeping the entertainment good. Not dumb down/ nerf/ balance.

Sypnosis

Playing this game in early 2013 felt like a breath of fresh air, but it seems as far as route this game is forgetting one thing Character creation, I was shocked up until now there's nothing new when you create a new toon.

When started playing this game people were more social, but now most players are antisocial

Lags and Dcs are becoming quite unplayable, the kicking mechanic is abused and unfairly used.

Conclusion

This game needs alot more group content, the route is not cleared by the naked eye

Wasn't sure if you knew this or not but subconsciously you must agree that he can paint people that way. The double negative is a dead give away. If you don't like his categories then what would you call them instead?

No two players are alike. Can't really push them into such a limited amount of categories. And the "ain't no" comment is just the southern in me leaking out.

It's much like saying there's only two types of people in the world. Those who like seafood and those who don't. Leaves out all the other possible types of people who like food.

Again. That term."The right feedback". Right is a matter of opinion. The Devs dont listen to the "right or wrong" feedback. They listen to all of it, and on the end, make a decision they think will the most positive impact on their game. If you choose 3 people, that fit into "been playing the game for 3+ years", and ask what is the "right decision", they are going to give 4 diferent answers, none of then the absoloute true, or more important then the oponion of all the people who weret ask. I think there is 2 basic misconceptions made by the people on this forums:
The game is ours. It is not. It is a service we pay to use. You dont like the service, you can either dont use it, or provide constructive feedback to the people who run the service.
Our opinion on something is either a universal truth, shared by every single pearson who play the game, or more important then someone elses opinion. It is not.

A brief coment about the "casual gamer" thing. ( no specific directed towards you, more like the term).

I have seen a lot of game devs, from several mmos, talk about something most people tend to ignore. When you are making a product, your goal is to appeal to the large number as player as possible, and is more or less a know fact that the so called "hardocore gamer", like the people who either think a raid is not that hard, or like it because of it, is a minority of the total player base. Thats a trend of the entire grenre, not just this game.
As a game dev, you gonna disappoint someone. So you dissapoint the majority or the minority of your player base. As intelectual exercise, can you tell me one sucessfull mmo know for its harder raids ? As far as i know, even WOW, a mmo that have about 45% of the market or more, is moving away from that tenency

They are correcting Jump Cancelling...not getting rid of ways to cancel animations (clipping).

Wow. Where to start... Okay, I am being completely constructive here. Here's what I think will make the game better...

1) GEAR
The current increase in statistics of gear compared to the next lesser tier is far too great to sustain long term playability. Gear increases between each tier, and half tier, jump up between 15-30% over the prior tier. This is far to great. I understand that you want players to feel stronger, but what is happening is all of the prior content you created for players to enjoy is getting curb stomped and made irrelevant within a few hours of release. There needs to be a level of challenge remaining otherwise the game becomes mind numbing button pushing. Prime battleground can be completed in 2.5 minutes with Rage gear... the slowest part being the cut scenes. that is not good. While you should feel and be 'stronger' content one or two tiers lower should still be somewhat of a challenge, albeit a lesser one

Here is what should happen: (in a perfect world)
Increase of half-tiers should be between 2.5%-5% over the next lowest tier. Whole tiers of gear between 5%-10%. Yeah, nobody likes being made weaker, but if this game is to stand the test of time. Something needs to be done about this.T1 is around 350 precision while rage gear is over 1700 precision. That is to great a differential. While it may be too late to address it now, I am talking perfect world here.... it should be. This change will make existing content last longer.

2) Combat Rating
I understand the need for a combat rating system. It makes sense, in theory, but plays out to pander to elitism, bias, etc amongst players. The developers did something right with PVP gear though. You could not even view the other sets until you fully collected the prior set.

Here's what should happen: (again, perfect world)
CR should be a hidden mechanic within the game. Instead, players should receive feats when they unlock a new tier of content via a mission that automatically pops up in your journal. Simply have a prompt that states, "You do not yet qualify to purchase this gear"

All tiers should behave with this same mechanic as you cannot even view the vendor until you reach the 'hidden' cr to purchase the gear. This should qualify for every place you can purchase gear, especially the auction house, as you can completely skip T1-T3 purchasing AH gear and modding it.When you finish one tier, you get some feats baby... congrats, you now qualify for new tiered stuff and have those journal entries pop up. WOO!

Here is how this helps... It will force new players, and current players not T-Rage, to progress through this game naturally as all of use first year players have. Fact is, the content is great.... but it becomes irrelevant far too quickly and you can completely skip large chunks of it and never visit them. Having feats when you unlock new tiers of content makes you feel like you 'won' something for doing so. This takes some of the pressure off the developers to constantly spit out 4 new raids and 8 alerts every year because players are playing the game and progressing the way it was intended. This will not remove combat rating elitism, but it will curb it as you cannot shout in LFG for something you cannot view in your on duty tab.

3) Legends training room - I don't think I need to explain this

4) Min/Max gear statistics - Gear progression is the name of 'this' game. Gear progression trumps all and is the end all and be all for how good your character can be. One of the BEST things about this game was prior to the gear statisical revamp. The current problem is ALL GEAR in alerts, duos, and challenges is temporary. These are for marks and temporary statistical increases, not permanent ones. That makes rerunning these a chore once you start putting a dent in the next tier of gear.

For myself, the best part of this game was the first year of release. This was when there was gear of every color that dropped in challenges, duos, alerts, AND raids that had statistical advantages over the tiered gear or gear from elsewhere. Reinstituting this will make alerts, duos, and challenges worth running again for more than just marks. You will feel you ARE getting stronger as you can and may replay that particulat challenge, for example, because the shoulders that drop in it have higher resto than the tiered gear (but lower health, power, defense, whatever). This made your gear progression an integral part of your character's progression and created a lot of variance and experimentation within the game. It also made more of the game rewarding to play

Solution: Bring back wacky odd statistical gear.... just make it balanced (as the scarecrow helm was in a T1 alert but had more might than T3 helm) this will help make us all different. Which is what superheroes want to be.

5) Jump Cancel - LEAVE IT if the issue is balance, balance out the power sets and weapons first. JC would naturally get balanced in the process. Making the fanboys think that fixing JC is the end all be all so they can top a scoreboard is like putting a band-aid on a shotgun wound. In terms of balance, between weapons and power sets, the developers have woefully failed on this, and continue to do so... sadly. Thinking JC is the fix is a laughable sugar coating. If the issue is players being hazed for scorecards, the soultion is to not allow them to skip four existing tiers of content so they are playing alongside veterans who utilize it and have been since launch. Again, band-aid on a shotgun wound... fix the real issues first, not one of the better mechanics of this game.

I'll have more... later.

I know you dont care, but....no matter what i think about the ideas on this, the post is more or less a example of how to present constructive feedback.

I know what's going on. The devs gave weaker, less skilled players a crutch to keep up with people who clip. Whatever. I'm just about done with this game anyway. After three years of breaking it it's just not as much fun as it used to be. Enjoy

I get you and you are right. I editied my first paragraph. You are correct. I am slightly jaded as the jump cancelling discussions have devolved into being called hackers and glitchers by the fanboys. Granted, the discussion never got off on the right foot to begin with from the FNL announcement, but that said... you can understand my disdain for the opinions of some of the others here on the forums.

the game is going in the right direction its the community going in the wrong direction.
Too many negative people:
insulting
stalking
shouting in the chat
people trolling the forums for no reason
harassing female users
asking to nerf everything

Off the top of my head the mistake developing a stupid unicorn trinket... there are more pressing matters to devote time and resources towards not something that has nothing to do with the DCU.

See i get that clipper vs. wpn mastr thing. But what I don;t understand is what is the REAL issue with clipping specifically JC to begin with. And if players choose not to play a style that benefits them greater, who is to say they are going to use another method being forced upon them? Balance is not hte issue as you are simply replacing one method (speed) with another method (timing). And if both weapons AND powers were truly balanced, JC would never be an issue to begin with.

The real problem is imbalances amongst power sets and weapons. And pandering to players who have skipped 4 tiers of content, get to T5 and are hazed because they can;t compete. If they addressed those two issues, jump cancelling would never have been an issue... and isn;t IMO.

I get it, trust me. To paraphrase "when you gaze long into the forums, the forums also gazes into you" or "The forums tends to corrupt, and to much time on the forums corrupts absolutely

Overall, I like the path we are taking. I started to doubt quite a bit with the replay badges for pvp, last laugh, hands of fate. However, Since Home turf (wasn't really DLC worthy in my opinion) this game is evolving and moving toward what the players want. We are starting to get more story-oriented DLCs (3 part WOL, 3 part AF, and 3 part HOP). On a side note I would love more completion cut scenes. They are working toward balancing powers now. We actually have about 7/12 in top tier for DPSing (Sorc, Mental, Celestial, Rage, Gadgets, HL, Nature); I'm sure some of you will disagree with me on that list but that is what I'm noticing in game now. Granted some of the powers take more dexterity, etc. to be better with.

Weapon mastery is allowing players to actually advance your characters in a sense by something other than stats. I hope most of the future DLCs do something similar.

I'm extremely curious to see what is in store for this year and next.

What? That's impossible, we would still need some sky left for it to still be falling....

The void is falling the void is falling! *Runs around like a headless chicken flailing noodle arms*

That is pure assumption. There are people that cancel because it increases performance but would still prefer to be able to see there powers in a superhero game. Canceling the animation of my powers was something that came instinctively to because of my extensive play of fighting games. However , to be good it meant that I could no longer enjoy my power set. The developers might as well just remove effects entirely. It seems to me that experienced canceler want the game to keep canceling because they find it rewarding and fun. On the other side why should those people get their fun as well as function while other people have to settle for either or?

The bold statement only holds true for scrubs who don't want to get better. This argument is coming from a place of "you don't like canceling the animation of your powers so you must not be good at the game". There are people like me who strive to get as close to 0 animation time on a JC as possible but would rather get to enjoy the visuals of the power set I play without without having to compromise function. The people who don't like to clip because they can't will likely not like WM either. In Fighting games Cancels are infinitely easier to do that links. The act of canceling a power is stupidly easy in this game but the ability to chain cancels into a competent rotation with as little down time as possible is what takes skill. WM should effectively be the equivalent to links and should be Harder to perform than cancels because they yield a better pay off for less demanding work.

As far as pandering to tier skipping, that is the Nature of the MMO beast. They want as many people playing together as possible. In the long run it will unfeasible to expect the devs to purposefully gate players from the next tier if we make it to something like T15. No one would want to keep playing with a gap that huge between the Top and The bottom. The entire purpose is that we play together so we are supposed to help each other get better. Yes, "this takes two" but it is the ideal and not the reality majority of the time unfortunately.


Weapon and Power Balance is something that is its own beast but I agree with you on the subject. I just feel that HL(due to it setting the precedence of combing into prec damage) paved the way for the imbalances being hard to fix. I am sure they thought about the might vs prec issue and probably tackled first before weapon mastery but for w/e reason it didn't pan out. My idea is have the powers do precision damage but feed off of the might stat. This idea actually came from an attack in pokemon that used special attack stat to deal physical damage. This prevented special sponges from walling sme special attackers.