Catering to Casual Crowd Hurting the Game

Anyone else feel that the catering to the casual crowd hurts the population. I know the argument for casuals is that if the game is more appealing to this crowd there will be more players. However I think the opposite is what is happening. The game has devalued the routine player so much that they have decided to become casual players in favor of playing other games that value the routine player. In a sense the game has given us routine players the reasons to be casuals. A casual player can now take long periods of time off from the game, come back months later, sub for a month, and be at the top CR again within a week. The routine player is not properly rewarded for the time spent building a better character vs. the casual player that doesn’t play.

Some of the best examples of devaluing the routine player in this game are skill points, mods, content skipping, and mark caps. All of these things in game now are hurting the routine player. Skill point only offer a small increase in stats that don’t matter. A 200 SP player has no advantage over a 50 SP player. Mods don’t effect CR anymore so the casual player doesn’t need to farm exo’s to get to max CR and the stat boosts are so small you wouldn’t notice the difference between a fully modded VII player and an unmodded player. Content skipping allows the casual to skip completely over the content the routine players did for weeks to get further in the game. Mark caps only exist to limit the wealth of the routine player so when casual come back they are not at any disadvantage to the amount of gear they can buy.


This game needs to change course and put more value on being a routine player. A 200+Sp player should far out class a 50SP player, no matter the power. Fully modded players should far outclass an unmodded player. A player that plays every day should have thousands of marks at their disposal. Casuals that only play once every 6 months should be at disadvantage to the players that play every day. If you give players reasons to play more, then they will play more. This game is giving players the reasons to be casual. The routine player needs to be the standard that the casuals want to reach, not the opposite.

I think in doing so, they've made a few casuals pick up on their gaming.

You're either talking about strictly dps. In which case you should be more specific. Or you're very misinformed. You can easily tell the difference between a modded or unmodded tank and troll. A troll with 50 sp will be noticeably worse

Again the SP arguement. Again, a player that has spent time on their craft, regardless of SP will be better than a player who may have the stats from SP and gear.

I would rather have a player that has 60 SP and knows what a troll role is than someone who has 200 SP and just swapped powers and never trolled before.

Sorry, I believe skill rains above SP, CR, gear etc...

Just because a player does not play DCUO regulary, does not mean they do not have skill.

[Insert dead horse pic here]

There are not enough high SP & high CR players to support the game.

PS Profiles tracks more than 2.2 Million PSN accounts.
Of those, 230K PS3 and 60K PS4 accounts "own" DC Universe Online:

• PS3: http://psnprofiles.com/trophies/714-DCUO
• PS4: http://psnprofiles.com/trophies/2259-DCUO

Note the number of tracked PSN accounts that "own" each DLC:

• Fight for the Light: 10,845 PS3 : 3,689 PS4
• Lightning Strikes: 9,945 PS3 : 3,333 PS4
• Battle for Earth: 8,212 PS3 : 3,257 PS4
• Last Laugh: 5,040 PS3 : 1,797 PS4
• Hand of Fate: 7,001 PS3 : 2,959 PS4
• Home Turf: 6,762 PS3 : 3,118 PS4
• Origin Crisis: 4,391 PS3 : 2,315 PS4
• Sons of Trigon: 2,872 PS3 : 1,882 PS4
• War of the Light I: 2,419 PS3 : 2,180 PS4
• Amazon Fury I: 1,948 PS3 : 1,862 PS4
• Halls of Power I: 1,186 PS3 : 1,310 PS4
• War of the Light II: 710 PS3 : 928 PS4
• Amazon Fury II: 331 PS3 : 592 PS4
• Halls of Power II: 181 PS3 : 359 PS4

Percentage drop between DLCs:

• LS : - 8.6%
• BfE : - 13.6%
• LL : - 40.4%
• HoF : +45.9%
• HT : - 0.8%
• OC : - 32.1%
• SoT : - 29.1%
• WL I : - 3.26%
• AF I : - 17.2%
• HoP I : - 34.5%
• WL II : - 34.3%
• AF II : - 43.7%
• HoP II: - 41.5%

From the above data, one can see a sharp drop starting with Origin Crisis.
The Last Laugh DLC that was primarily PVP had a sharp drop but many returned with the Hand of Fate DLC.
The difficulty of Origin Crisis content possibly caused many to permanently leave.

Note that 29 Million PS3 & 9 Million PS4 consoles have been sold in North America.
So 2.2 Million tracked PSN accounts is only a fraction of all PSN accounts but the data can be used to show a trend.

I'd want to see the monthly revenues before making an opinion on this issue.

Sorry not misinformed. It applies to all roles. Have you tried to use a character without any mods or limited skill points recently. I can solo troll without mods in any content no problem. My unmodded healer does just fine as well. I was in throne with a tank without any mods and less than 80 SP, tanked ares and the adds just fine at level. I was actually surprised at how well these roles could be performed without the mods and skill points that my main character has. want more proof, just pug any content and inspect your role players these days, more than likely there will have no mods. Look them up on wavedox more than likely less than 100 SP. Run the raid with them and you won't notice a difference.

The only type of player to them {devs} are the ones who spend money ; casual and elite alike.

If they are turning up profits, what does it matter what a small percentage think? They still will keep making money one way or another.

Seriously how can you say DCUO is catering to the "casual crowd" when there's Elite content, Survival Modes, etc?

I think your perspective is wrong

I think you might be confused on the definition of a casual player. Elite content and survival modes have nothing to do with casual players. You're talking more about them creating content to challenge skilled players vs unskilled players. There is no correlation between casual players and skill. What I am talking about is what keeps players playing after the challenge of beating hard content or any content has been conquered. Why grind for feats, why farm for exos, why grind the current content. The incentives to do so have been devalued in this game and in my opinion is hurting the game.

I agree with Magician. All the changes they have made almost require you to be a more committed player to progress. No casual player is going to spend money on DLC or membership. They might spend the money to get the booster gold boxes for the auras, but they are not going to take the time to create several different characters all with different powers. They are not going to sign in every day. They are not going tp visit the forums. They just don't care that much. Casual gamers do not spend hundreds of replays to get to the best level in just a few days or hours.

They may be catering to the moderate player who will spend a few bucks on the DLC's, may or may not be premium, and like the game, but don't really care if they are good at it or not.

I consider myself somewhere between hardcore and moderate. I am a member. I visit the boards almost everyday to check on new stuff or issues or fixes. I sign into the game almost every day, even if it's just to run the vault or the daily, but I don't make it a point to run all the content I can every day. Sometimes I don't run the new stuff until weeks later just to stay away from the true hardcore gamers who already know everything 5 minutes after the content is released.

If they were catering to the casual player they would make everything easy, let you run everything from day one, and give you access to all content. That is not the case. In my opinion, they have been routinely increasing the need to be more dedicated to progress in this game.

cause minus SM boards are easier now. OC and previous would dropp %99 of 2days dcuoer. no chance

High skill point totals have never meant "guaranteed advantage." At best it's meant "higher potential." With this game's more active combat, you've got to have at least some knowledge of your power set, weapon and chosen role to be able to take advantage of that higher potential. But higher skill point totals (and the stats that come with them) have never guaranteed one player will have an automatic, no-question-about-it advantage over another player. You still have to play and perform to do that.

As far as mods and maxing out a character, there's very little content in the game that requires a maximized character. Kind of brings into question the need for having a maximized character. And once again, having those mods still only means "higher potential." Still gotta perform to utilize that potential.

Oh no! Content skipping means players can, if they so desire, get up to the end game content faster than those before them did. And folks end up getting a larger player pool to run end game content with! How terrible!

And yes, I know that can end up with having less-than-knowledgeable players in that end game content. That's a consequence of players making that choice to skip content, one that those players who make that choice will have to deal with if they want to run with the end game crowd.

Mark caps? Those are in place in large part to prevent long time players from saving up Marks, buying ALL the new stuff off a vendor once it's available and then complaining that they have nothing to do/nothing to spend their Marks on.

So, I tried to, but I couldn't edit your post ... is it ok if I post it here??

I'm guilty as charged at not being specific myself. I was referring to better as

I do notice a huge difference. As a tank I notice a troll who doesnt have the means to push the proper power. As a healer I notice a squishy tank. I notice the difference in difficulty in keeping the unmodded tank alive vs modded. Ill give you healing. As you can easily solo with nothing but gear.

far as potential power out. Not skill. My fault

You too have also confused skill with casual. There is no correlation between skill and casual play.

Skill points. Thank you for agreeing with me. These are not a guaranteed advantage, but why not. If 2 equally skilled players are put against each other one with 200 SP and one with 50 SP you won't notice a difference between the 2. The stat increases are so small that you won't miss them if they are not there. The incentive to play more to get these is removed and there is no need to grind so then the routine player becomes more casual in their play.

Mods. I didn't say that a character needs to be maximized to run content. But a maximized character should outperform a character that in not maximized. The content should be easier for a maximized character. This is not the case in this game. Modded and unmodded characters perform equally in this game. Mods used to matter to get your Cr to the highest in game but now they have no meaning. the incentive to farm to get the best mods has been removed.

Content skipping. You are arguing the same statement we have been fed for the reasons it was implemented. However I would argue that the exact opposite has occurred. Since players can now content skip the end game population has decreased since playing each piece of content is no longer necessary. Mr. Owl's statistical data above only further proves that point since the owners of episodes trends downwards closer to end game meaning population decreases. Why, because it is no longer important to play all end game content to stay at end game.

mark caps you again are only reiterating what everyone has been told. The only reason this exists is to keep players all on the same level day 1 of a episode release. Again it caters to the casual player that does not grind for marks but doesn't want the routine player having more than them when they decide to return. The incentive to work for more marks is removed.

Are you serious???

The game went F2P because there was not enough hardcore DCUO players to support the game.

If not for the casual players..... this game would have been gone 4 years ago.

When DCUO tried to please the hardcore players with OC....... there was a mass exodus of players.

There is not enough hardcore players to support this game.

DCUO NEEDS the casual players to survive.

You do realise that there are about 10 000 players with 200+SP???

How long do you think DCUO would survive if it catered only to those 10 000 players???

There's an interaction between skill and potential in your example. Sure, you or I could run unmodded with low SP and still do well. That's skill. The average player would be at a noticeable disadvantage. Similarly, I've seen plenty of poor players with fully modded gear and a bunch of SP; they're still poor.

SP and mods set a baseline upon which CR scaling works. Those, in turn, are affected by the skill of the player. Yes, even the 1-2-3-4 powersets can be played poorly. I've seen it. Are some easier to master than others? Sure. That doesn't mean they automatically make you good at the game.

There's also an experiential component to this. The longer you've played the game, the more stale it will seem. Sure, there's new content, but it's the same game. Same grind. That's one reason I play every role in the game. If I just ran one toon and one role, I would have quit this game years ago. That's also why players take breaks or play multiple games. Some of the drive to keep playing a specific game needs to be internal. You can't just rely on the game to give it to you.

As to the casual argument, as the game gets older, there's a longer road to end game, where most of the players are. If it took the same amount of time for new players to get there, the game would die of attrition. All games place short cuts to get new players to the end. For DCUO, it's speeding the gearing up process. They purposely made it so you can jump content. Other games just let you buy up to the end game. They all do it, though.

That all said, could they improve crafting or add other busy work to keep folks in game more? Sure. I wouldn't be against that at all.

Awesome post.

1000 thumbs up.