Producer's Letter: State of the Stats Revamp!

All the changes (I could understand lol) sound great. SOOOO Stocked about the stat point counter upgrade!

I would also consider doubling the stat relavancy window. If it was 30 CR to 40 (I know that's not correct, just an example) I would expand it upward to 30 CR to 50. But glad you are listening, sounds awesome. Thanks guys.

How would that be different from Time Capsules???

People with plenty of $$$ can "Time Capsule" their way to the top.

I wish you would not. The Vault desperately needs updating to make it relevant again (this has been the case for years), but not with scaling gear. There's already far too much scaling gear in the game with all the Time Capsules.

Could you please do something serious to compensate those of us who spent a great deal of Real Money purchasing Total Recovery Kits and now have seen our purchases become worthless garbage? It's seriously unjust to not Make TRKs equally relevant again. Turning them into universal mod removal kits would work. Thanks!

This is a fantastic dream come true. It's quality of life issues such as this that make the most important, and yet net overly-neglected, differences in the game for players. Thanks to all for all their hard work on this revamp and attached issues!

YES!!!!


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Nope. And there are still a few pieces I still don't have.

Excellent point. That is the state of the game. So sad. I hate to admit that I get my TC gear off the broker, because, "That's the way it is." It does need to go.

I agree that powers aren't balanced across the board yet, I guess it's a work in progress, as there are a few powers like Earth and Elec, etc. that are hitting hard than the rest, but it seems like the rest are fairly close. Even if they could be within 10% from highest to lowest, that's not bad, 5% would be better. Before the Revamp, there was a much greater disparity between the highest damaging powers and the lowest than there is now. I just switched from Mental to Quantum and I had a loadout on Mental that could average 15k on three sparring targets, which from what I understand is pretty decent. When I DPS'd, usually only Earth, Elec, maybe Rage or Nature would have more damage with players at a similar level. I have no experience with Ice, but have a leaguemate who could do about as good a damage as I could on my Mental.

the biggest thing i dont like is people quit in the middle of raids worse than before and i find that if im chasing a feat and the raid never finishes and after an hour or so trying it gets frustrating.I even tried a tier 2 hive moon base and im a 200 cr 195 sp and before it finished besides myself it took like 7 other guys to finish because of people quitting.I feel sorry for the people who are just starting out and want to feat farm.Ever since the revamp i have not been on any teams that have made it thru any of the amazon fury 3 raids in which means i cant get onto any of the elite raids if i cant get any teams to make it thru the normal raids, so i guess the renown are gonna be a thing ill never get to finish now.I imagine the elites for the ultimate soldier and justice for all will be the same problem at least until all the players are able to get thier sp up to where it needs but that could be a looong time

Did they announce when the skill point allocator will hit the marketplace and what the cost will be? I assume it will be like other convenience items and added to the marketplace.

Everyone's preferred gameplay is a little different. When in heal or troll, I like the challenge of solo healing/trolling. I would prefer the raids not take too long. There's enough content to keep me busy on three toons to try and keep up with the current gear, including OP, that my preference would be that once we're "geared" up, regular raids don't take too long. Elite raids for feats or SM, that's another story. I understand needing multi-support for that.

The roleless buffs needed to be buffed. Simply because DCUO is turning into a game where teamwork does not matter. Simply doing mechanics of blocking when you see the skull matters.

The game needs for alerts and lower tiered raids to be able to be completed by any group make up. And if that means putting roleless buffs in lower tier raids so players can progress, then it needs to be done.

In DCUO there is no benefit to running as a support player and as such they need to accomodate the sheer amount of overwhelming number of dps players who play the game to encourage those players to spend money so the game can thrive.

Mental and Rage might be similar, but Earth is definitely hitting harder. This needs to be adjusted to be "balanced".

The Stats Revamp is live, and we are incredibly thrilled with the response thus far.
I'm not sure that you should be thrilled about it. A lot of that response is negative.

For starters, it’s great to hear people note that they feel the power sets are well balanced, how varied loadouts and abilities are, and seeing stats and gameplay mechanics actually matter!
You're obviously reading different forums. Are they balanced better than before, yes. But balanced...not really. To be competitive, HL must clip everything, while Earth must spam Jackhammer. Tanks do more damage than they should. There's big inconsistencies between the way the pet classes work when actually using a pet, which no longer is an automatic choice.

Veteran players feel it in the time it takes to complete end-game content.
It's odd. In my experience, Raids are taking 25% longer, while Alerts are taking 100% longer. Also, Alerts actually seem more difficult than Raids, which again makes no sense.

Most players feel it when returning to content that they have out-leveled. Previous content that may have been trivial for a player at a certain level is not trivial anymore, making it more difficult and making it take longer.
I'll admit, this is a tough one to figure out. On one hand, it's really frustrating to spend an hour on something you could have done last month in 5 minutes. On the other hand, I can see why a small section of players didn't like early Raids being bulldozed. But, there should be a happy medium. I don't want to spend an hour doing FoS2, but I'm willing spend more time than before. As it is now, they're taking too long for most players to want to do them.

Newer or more mid-game players feel it in on-level group content, noting generally that most things seem hard or too hard now.
Assuming that content is the same regardless of the presence of a high-CR player, I can't see how any group of appropriate level players is getting through a lot of the low level content.

We don’t want newer or mid-game players struggling through challenges, and we want everyone to feel that progress and character strength noticeably increase.
I'm glad to hear this as it has been my primary area of concern throughout this process.

We will adjust NPC stats lower in the earlier parts of the game lower, making more generous assumptions about how quickly and when players will fully be participating in ALL avenues of progression.
Good. This should fix a lot of problems and end a lot of the complaints.

We will adjust some of the roleless buffs in alerts to better enable 4-player groups of any combination to tackle content and to make the buffs more equal to each other.
I like this, but the people who have been championing this Update as the greatest thing ever are gonna hate it.

We will update the vault to drop scaling gear.
Well, assuming you're referring to worthwhile (for increasing CR) gear like you get out of AoJ boxes, this might be the greatest change this Update has brought about. The Vault is an absolute wasteland of pointlessness and this might actually change that for a big chunk of characters.

We will standardize early and mid-game vendor gear sets so that these sets are the best gear available in their content or tier (best-gear-on-vendor).
I personally hate this concept as it marginalizes raiding, but if that's gotta stay, standardizing it is fine.

We will implement unique vendor currencies for tiers 1-7, and update gear costs.
So, I assume this means an increase in cost. Not good. I really hope this means one currency for 1-7 and not a separate currency for each Tier. You already had that and got rid of it long ago. Hopefully, they'll actually stick to a rotation and move T8 down into that category once the next Tier becomes available. Honestly, this is one of the areas where they've stabbed themselves in the back. Create grouping concepts, but not continuing those concepts beyond the initial conception.

We will add the vendor discount system to tiers 1-7, for obtaining additional gear sets or gear on alts (in conjunction with the feat unlock system).
That's not a bad decision at all.

We will drop some (older) gear mods directly in content to make baseline modding more accessible.
That's interesting. Hopefully it won't be as tedious as the constant stream of Teleport locations that we get in loot now.

We will add a universal mod removal kit (both for marks and in the marketplace) that will make transferring mods much easier.
Good. The system is unnecessarily complicated.

In the long term, we will be exploring ways to solve this problem, both in improving the clarity of feats and in eventually providing other avenues to gain skill points.
Here's an idea. Get rid of the slowly scrolling details when you hover over the Feat. Just let us click it to get an expanded description. And use more details. Direct details. For instance, instead of saying "on the second boss", say "when battling Sinestro".

P.S. Oh, also? We TOTALLY hear you about how tedious it can be to re-spend skill points one at a time.
Umm...yeah. Highly tedious.

Overall, I'm more positive on these plans than I was with the Update itself.

Sorry, I should have been clearer in what I meant. I meant the icon design, not the colour. Looks like some kind of liquid puddle.

There's no need to make any changes or make things easier.
Before all the am/wm era we all learned to play with mechanics, we block, roll, wipe 20 times until we learn how to beat an instance.
Now all this newer player's cry a Little cause they dont want to learn, or mobs dont die fast enough.
We (long time players) never had this issues before, if content was hard, then we learn , we adapt, we change our playstyle, WE DONT CRY IN FORUMS, etc.
We focus on learning how to evolve our character (farming sp) cause we know that with more sp, the more we can help the group by not being carried.

Please consider how all the players that now are VETS learn to play the real game.
Focus on fix bugs, balance powers, weapons , but please dont waste more time with making content easier. If they like the game they should adapt and maybe then they realice how fun the game is and how much better they can play.

sorry for my english,
adios

I have a hunch stabilizers will give you more value for your dollar than a vault ticket will. Not that I'm saying "go out and buy stabilizers they are great" but I am saying, "If you are going to buy a vault ticket or a stabilizer you are better off buying a stabilizer."

Can we get a Dominance/ Restoration mod?? C'mon. It's difficult enough as it is now. My Virtuous Light is almost useless now....and the accelerator I am assuming is only for Divine Light cause I no longer feel the speed up.

Hmmm. I don't see it.

Water you seeing?

I agree, if anything trolls need buffed and roleless buffs need a nerf to where its more of a passive regen unlike it is now where you can spam and spam without a single issue.