Catering to Casual Crowd Hurting the Game

number of players here vs 2 yrs ago says diff

"Just to a few thousands"???

More like
'just a few hundreds"...... or so it seems since GU47.

I love how people are still saying that OC drove so many players away, yet almost anyone in-game who's been here since launch or anywhere that close will say hade some of this game's finest content, with exception of people who played the FOS-Raids at-tier.

One would wonder, if the devs stopped listening to crybabies trying to chance MMO's to a "insert trainer here, im too lazy amagadzzzz"-type game, and kept developing content structured in the same kind of way as OC delivered, would the game's population have expanded? You know, there are more people than you actually let yourself believe, that wished DCUO had quality content. Take a look at the top MMO's, the mmo's with the most success and the largest populations. Take a look at the content, the mechanics, the strategies. They deliver content for their gaming community to learn, gain experience from and master. Right now we are at the exact opposite, we get content easy enough so people can't complain and whine about not being able to finish.

We need balanced difficulty, it's about time that people at the highest tier starts to actually learn how to beat a new, high-tier instance that's not beatable right away, It's needed for the community to grow.

You can be in denial over how OC did hurt the game.

You can even be in denial over the numbers pointing towards how there was a big exodus of players thanks to OC.

But Jens "Spytle" Anderson himself said how OC did hurt the game.

So being in denial is one thing...... but when the creative director himself admits that OC DID hurt the game...... how can you be in denial over that??

Not sure which part or stance you are taking, but there are many reasons why people leave a game.
A few examples:
Life, significant other, kids, money, time, other games, difficulty (easy or hard), PvP, PvE, ban, PS3 quality of life, loot tables, census data, glitches, "lack of content", not enough perks for members, premium, ftp, no mechanics, power imbalance, GU 47, FOTM and my personal favorite, a dev offended me. Again, these are some examples.

Prob not possible to make any conclusion from any one thing, it all contributes.

All I know is that people shouting in LFG want quick runs and not challenging content. (BTW, I am all for challenging content).

Here's the problem: that's your reason to play consistently. And while others may share that reason, that doesn't mean EVERYBODY shares that reason or considers it the only reason to play.

The incentive to play (and what gets them to play consistently) is going to vary from person to person. Some people play because they find it a fun game to play. Some because they enjoy playing content with the people in their league/friends list. Some play because they like the game setting/environments. And so on, and so forth.

You can be in denial in how much more it leans toward people crying "NERF!" before even learning the mechanics.
You can even be in denial of how both content time and time again have become nerfed to the ground because of "I COULDNT BEAT THIS RAID AFTER A 10 MIN TRY OMG ZOMGZOMG!!11one".

OC dropped in sales, that doesn't mean that the content that DLC gave us wasn't needed. It doesn't mean everything after it was exactly what we needed.
So being in denial is one thing..... But when you still try to use this "BUT BUT HE SAID" instead of not learning a single bit of what actually happened in-game after all these years...... how can YOU still be in denial over that??

As a fair question, if the Origin Crisis content was so needed and didn't do as much damage to the player base as you think, why hasn't there really been any more content exactly like it since?

There was nothing wrong with OC in theory. In practice, there were a lot of things wrong. Primarily, the bugs that came with it from rendering issues to certain gear essentially missing. Not to mention how many exploited it to get the best gear without actually earning that gear. As a result of the exploits: The gear structure was an issue because OC was the first DLC in tier 5, and the gear created exclusivity that hurt paying customers.

I have no problem with what you say in terms of content like OC being good for the game. I do have problems with what you say in terms of how OC was delivered. OC hurt the game because of how it was delivered and not because of the content itself.

Because a majority of the casual players in the community cried nerf allover the forums, I thought that was obvious already?
Honestly, if the developers listened less to these nerf-requests and developed actual content with balanced difficulty and just let people try to beat it or leave it, right of the bat back then, I believe that we could've had a good increase in actual experienced players.

Again, look at the statistics of the currently largest and most successful mmo's and check out the gameplay and mechanics over there. It's a whole different (and HUGE) crowd over there, because they did just that. They delivered content for the players to learn and finally master. That's how games stay relevant in the long rong, with actual relevant content. Sometimes "the majority" doesn't mean it's right.

I feel the same way, but if you put aside the obvious bugs and glitches we don't even have to add, my point still stands.

There were still a whole lot more people leaving because they couldn't beat it off the bat, but there were also people leaving because spending a lot of replays to farm the gear only to find out that several pieces were missing during all that time and not getting funded back for it or whatever, but that's not a majority of people that left, or a main reason people left for that matter. I remember the massive nerf-threads, I don't think I can ever forget them because there was so many. However, how people are trying to describe the "mass destruction" this DLC created in-game, I never saw even 10% of that, not in the way people are trying to make it sound like.

Yes, those of us still around appreciate the OC challenge, but there is a small implication that a population drop after OC could imply that the difficulty drove some away that perhaps would appreciate a BS level of difficulty today. But in reality, we don't really know for sure what drove some people away, but the today crowd seems like they want the quick runs.

Why doesn't this game have a survey for people who uninstall it? As you said, no one knows for sure what drove some people away just as no one knows why players stop playing before completing the first mission or before reaching level 30. The game does a poor job of getting feedback from players who quit.

Surveys aren't 100% helpful since there will always be those who answer with unhelpful answers, but even some sample of why players are leaving would be better than what we have. The forum threads with people who quit are typically from end-game players tired of drops, difficulty changes, mechanics revamps, etc. Those are not nearly as helpful as feedback from newer players who do not stick around long enough to see the game evolve or devolve.

That means nothing cause when nexus was new we wanted the same thing. Prime same, fos2 same, the one killer batcave same and yup way way back when khan same thing. End game IS NOT FOR TEACHING IS ALL THAT MEANS AND WE WANT PEOPLE WHO LEARNED RATHER THAN LEARNING.
Its simple. If raids been out X amount of time and I got it figured why cant u? I am not great. Bombshells is as easy as move away from the black holes and whomever has the orb close em. Of course I want 7 people who figured it out and can do it. Ofcourse after learning and being beat down in said instance I want the better stats. As u gear u dont need to be as good as ur OP.

I reread ur post and I am not sure I can explain it so u get it. This game began a casual MMO and has since been reduced to............ I have no words nor would I even try and guess what they are going for

The whole trickyness of it all is that because peoples inability or unwillingness to struggle in order to learn-content. The main reason content has the easy difficulty today is because of the nerf-complaints content like OC got. But the same, on-going route of easy-level content and quick runs is what keep driving people away. There is no actual balance in difficulty, but it is highly needed when not even the supposedly hard instances like Elite or SM's are that hard anymore.

Well I have no idea if 10k subs is enough to keep the game afloat. Mainly because I have no idea on operation costs, etc. And to discuss that just leads us into a lot of assumptions.

But what you consider nicely stated is funny. OC sold 6500 copies, from that point on the decline in sales of the content could be mainly from the experience players got from OC. Not hard to understand or see. OC was a bad experience and that bad taste in your mouth feeling influenced the future decisions of purchasing content in a direction of not wanting to continue ( evident by the number of sales ). I hope you can see that.

I am one of those transient/casual players, I play when I am in the mood and my decisions to stop playing/paying usually have nothing to do with the game itself. I sub when I feel like playing, when my interest goes elsewhere then I stop spending time in the game, not much the game could do at that point. When I return to playing it has been mainly due to wanting to play in a superhero genre. So few to choose from, and imo DCUO is best on market for that genre atm. Totally despise Champions, and CoH no longer exists ( man that was the worse experience for me with any game transfering from sub to ftp model ), Marvel Super heroes is ok but not a big fan of the top down view so I can only play that in short bursts, plus you can not just take off and fly/superspeed thru a city environment in MSH.

A lot of times the value of surveys are over stated, but I definitely do agree that it can give some valuable info if done by a survey co that knows how to interpret data. Often companies write surveys themselves that really boil down to opinion cards that offer no real insight.

OC had issues. Replay 2 hour long alerts that was high nealth pool after high health pool till u could raid. Then raid till u can win. Then win and NO REAL LOOT. Months and no real loot.

Ps3 was a huge huge reason dow was hard because the balls in the halway were invisible.

Stats huge hige problem going into t5 OC. We got the extra row of skill points so suddenly the 125 skill poknted dude who could duel spec and be super strong became weak. The raids had more than double the stats of us.

oc had so many sooooooooooooooooooooooooo many groups a hair worth of life away from dropping any one pf the bosses but wipped. Maybe the few hundred might the 88 gear gave could of helped. (Yes couple hundreds exageratted)


Since OC the grind was replaced with loot lottery. Further down the rabbit hole we go the worse things go.

U cut all the subs out and stick a fork in dcuo. That is garunteed bankable money. (Ajyone subbed for over a month that is)

Sounds like Origin Crisis had lots n lots of problems, most evident by the preceding content release numbers.

Do not think I was very involved in the game during that era.

Lets hope that DCUO can regain some momentum and get some oldies to return with new blood. The Older the game gets thou the less likely that is to happen.