What major changes have other MMORPGs done that DCUO could learn from?

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by Dragon Power, Jun 9, 2018.

  1. Dragon Power Well-Known Player

    I'm not too familiar with other MMORPGs, I've tried a few but DCUO is the one I've stuck with the most. I played oldschool Ultima Online for years, and have dabbled in both classic WoW and Final Fantasy Online. That's pretty much it.

    My question goes out to the players that have a lot of experience with other MMORPGs. What significant updates that you know about that they have made that actually revitalized their gameplay in a positive way or completely changed their game (for the better)? Was it in the way their group or solo content was changed? Was it quality of life changes? New areas to explore? Something completely different that they took a gamble on that no one expected? Has any MMO been able to pull this off or do they always boil down to just more of the same due to the design and mechanics of the game genre? On the flipside, what changes do you know of that did the opposite and killed their game off?

    I''m also interested in hearing from DCUO devs if possible. How much do you pay attention to other MMOs? Has it been done a lot in order to keep DCUO relevant or do you guys not pay any attention at all? I'm also interested in hearing from players on what updates you have noticed that got added to the game that resembled things from other MMOs, and do you feel it was good or bad?

    Also, to play devil's advocate, should DCUO even bother paying attention to what other MMOs do and just go their own route?

    I ask because I'm concerned about the future of DCUO. We've spent so much time here with this game. I'm still amazed that the game and other MMOs are still around after all these years. Look at Ultima Online and WoW. I never got to play the DCUO beta, but I still, to this day, remember that faithful first day of the game's release when I went to Gamestop and brought the game disc home to install it. Do you guys think DCUO will keep going? Or will we just slowly die out until not enough players left to justify keeping the servers up? Will we ever get any truly good game changing updates or will it just be the same kind of updates over and over? Will the dropping of PS3 support help any with getting new kinds of updates that we have not been able to get before when PS3 was still in the dev pipeline or does it just mean more of the same? Will we ever get a new city (*sigh*) to play in? So many questions...

    Interested in hearing what everyone has to say... *Grabs popcorn*
  2. FoolsFire Devoted Player

  3. Saami Loyal Player

    I havent seen any major changes in other MMOs with success. Some MMOs like SWG may even die after bad decisions.
    Lets hope that DCUO is the MMO that break the mold.
  4. willflynne 10000 Post Club


    To be fair, SWG did keep going for another six years after the NGE and could very well have gone longer if LucasArts had renewed the license. From all appearances the announcement of the shutdown took a lot of people (including those working at SOE at the time) by surprise.

    I won't ever deny that the NGE harmed the game and the population, but they did get things fixed pretty well in the aftermath and (most importantly) SOE/Daybreak learned their lesson from that incident.
  5. myandria Item Storage

    Hmm..

    Revisit and expand on older content. (Examples; Everquest: Ring of Scale [which revisits and expands on Kunark, the Combine Empire and the Dragons of the Ring of Scale] and WoW: Legion [which revisits and expands on the Burning Legion expansion] )

    Timely Communication: Not enough can be said about this for ANY MMO.

    Do not alienate players by offering a' la carte items/services as a main focus for in-game items and QoL. (Marvel Heroes and Infinity Crisis are gone mainly because of this ).

    Allow heroes to be heroes and villains to be villains: for example; allow villains to rob stores, banks, and cause everyday havoc on the streets while allowing heroes to remedy those situations in the open world in real time, instead of instances and timed open area alerts. City of Heroes basically allowed this and is one of the most missed aspect from Superhero MMO's. The world isn't always in a major crisis and it would be nice to have basic everyday havoc happen in game. I would LOVE to queue in as a villain and have one of Lex Luthor's main henchman, Calculator or Lex himself send a text to my "cellphone" to let me know of a nearby monetary "opportunity" or a chance to put a thorn in Superman's side. I would play a villain in this game more often if I could just "knock down" a civilian npc or two just for kicks...

    Utilize the player base more often for costume/content inspiration; for example, hold costume contests among players to find that new "gear set" bring to WB's and DC's table. Who knows... they may accept them! Perhaps DC would allow something similar to Everquest's "Player Studio" that allows players to create weapon, item and costumes inspired by the game; if it is accepted those item(s) could be put in the Marketplace for purchase. From my experience, players will ride or die with game(s) if they feel they are truly part of the creative/decision making process or that their concerns are heard and/or met in some way.
    • Like x 1
  6. lukelucky Devoted Player

    Sadly dcuo makes money off forcing players into spending and using highly coveted items in a lovely based extortion method such as time capsules.
  7. Imaginos Dedicated Player

    I'll talk about Guild Wars 2 as I play that on and off too and they have some really good ways of doing things.
    1. No Monthly Fee. GW2 Is a Buy2Play game. You pay a retail full price and play forever for free. The game itself isn't crippled in any way once you've bought the game itself.
    2. Decent cash shop. They sell no pay to win items, or have any sort of paywall like Escrow. You can buy convenience items, like gathering tools that never need to be replaced (with various special effects per tool). You can buy cosmetic items and you can buy various upgrades like bank storage room or more bag room for your characters, or personal resource nodes for your home instance for you to gather from once a day.
    3. No kill-stealing. You can't kill steal from someone as experience/loot is all based on if someone participated or not, this includes passive participation such as healing or crowd control. Anyone who participates gets rewarded.
    4. No Resource Node-stealing. Everyone has their own resource node on the map so Billy and Jimmy can both interact with said node at the same time and both get the node's resource. This way Billy isn't a jerk when he runs past Jimmy, who's fighting the enemies by the node, and interacts with it.
    5. Players get rewarded for helping other players. If you find a downed or defeated player you can stop and resurrect them, in doing so you gain some experience and save them a run back from a respawn location.
    6. You get rewarded just for exploring the map in experience and perhaps in finding some cool hidden things, like small treasure chests, or a Rich resource node that rewards more resources then a normal node, or a hidden quest giver.
    7. Indepth character customization at creation and makeover kits you can buy if you're not happy with your looks.
    In general it seems to me that a key part of their design philosophy was "How are Players Jerks in other games" and "How do we turn that around so that whatever the issue was (like kill stealing or leaving defeated people on their own) and make it a positive thing".

    GW2 has it's fair share of problems too. Their designers are far too fixated on butt-capes for almost all the outfits and other less frivolous or semi frivolous issues, after all a fair portion of Guild Wars is how cool your character can look, but that goes for many MMOs. Who want's to play a character that looks like everyone else or looks bad in general?
    • Like x 1
  8. Rockhound665 Steadfast Player

    Age of Conan-They lowered their monthly subscription from $15 to $13
  9. Schimaera Devoted Player

    1. Tier'ed alerts scaled up to Endgame difficulty
      non-Endgame minimum players are boosted in stats (like in event zones)
    2. Tier'ed raids scaled up to Endgame difficulty
      non-Endgame minimum players are boosted in stats (like in event zones)
    3. Weeklies for X amount of Alerts and X amount of Raids done
    4. Bonus daily reward for queue'ing up for all alerts and joining a random one.
    5. Bonus weekly reward for queue'ing up for all raids and joining a random one.
    6. Weekly random Focus-Raid with bonus loot for completing it.
    7. Introduce new Currency for running alerts and raids, plus this currency as the rewards mentioned in 3., 4., 5. and 6.
    8. New vendors where you can spend the new currency. Possbile items: desired base items (maybe even lair npcs), styles that drop only rarely, maybe even open up role-only styles - I don't care that I respecced for them before), Nth Metal (not the crappy ones but better ones), whatever the fudge we need for Augmentations

    9. maybe weeklies for Challenges and duos as well, maybe even PvP
    Point is I don't care about weeklies of current DLCs. Right now I log in, do my daily doomsday stuff and get my free Starro Appreciation Reward and log off. Things like mentioned above would make me more enticed to run more content. At the moment, there isn't much why I would run older content at all.

    Oh and ideas stolen by Star Wars: the Old Republic. When I was playing I was really engaged in getting all my weeklies and dailies done. It was fun to me.
    • Like x 4
  10. Fatal Star 10000 Post Club

    I really like that 5th one
    • Like x 1
  11. Starblast Well-Known Player

    I've only really played Final Fantasy 14 online. it seems to be a mix between WOW, a final fantasy-esque game, and actually it has a lot of similiarties to DCUO. the end game really is more less styles and how cool you make your character look. it is a gorgeous game but just has so much padding. very long que times. and they did actually take a page from DCUo where you can turn off stat clamping but must form a group. many do this unti they get the rare cool mount.

    they do have something though that is need as far as queing. if a role is needed in high demand they have a roullette on the duty tab where that person gets more rewards. you also really don't need an alt unless you want your character to be a different race, gender etc, because you can literally level every powerset or as they call it job. that is pretty cool. it also has a lot more customization with the interface. but playing on the PS4 it plays largely similar to DCUO. Also something i like that game does is after a couple years they retire seasonals or events then if you want the outfits or rewards then you have to buy them.

    i woud play more MMOs prolly if they were on consoles. I just can't get into PC gaming.
  12. Fatal Star 10000 Post Club

    I'll add on to the thread, only other MMOs I have even play tested before was Skyforge and ESO. Skyforge I really liked the combat system. It was fun and required skill/relfexes, makes DCUO look like a sick puppy, other than that nothing really stood out.

    ESO I played for a couple weeks before saying screw it, but I have their Facebook page liked and I see constant updates about expansions they're releasing. That's one thing dcuo has never really done. People probably call the dlc expansions, but that's not a real expansion. The game has never actually expanded before, we just keep getting redone maps of the same old cities and/or small chunks of newer areas that never expand. ESO as an MMO has evolved, and it seems DCUO just makes small improvements here and there and call it a day, they don't actually evolve. The stats revamp was the biggest endeavor they ever did, and the game is still arguably in the same state it was before the revamp, with the only exception that every power is now capable of good damage when used right. Everything else remained the same, the poor state of support roles (excluding tank), content being too easy, PvP being trash, 9 months of testing with barely anything to show for it. It went alot better than it could have, but so many missed opportunities and the rushing towards the end killed it in the long run, now we're barely seeing any improvements to balance, or the revamp as a whole.

    I guess what I've seen other games do that dcuo hasn't, is evolve for the better, and expand.
    • Like x 1
  13. Schimaera Devoted Player

    Oh, oh!Speaking of ESO:

    Craftbag!! Either for members only or for purchase. In ESO the bag has infinite space for crafting materials and iIrc it's account wide. Would save me time relogging between my toons for crafting stuff.

    Oh and what I would love to see is a training area for your movement mode where you can focus on special traits regarding your movement mode. Like not being slowed down outside of boss rooms when getting hit (or less slowed down) or being faster when not in combat. With training stages of course.
  14. Wiccan026 Loyal Player

    That's something we've suggested to DCUO but that you can't exactly do (sure you can walk into content but you can't do that for everything... and there are some things you just can't walk into anymore... ie paradox).. so ffxiv didn't really take a page out of DCUO.
  15. Starblast Well-Known Player



    i think so. if you need the content to move forward you can form a group and burn and move forward. and many do to get the rare mounts. If they could just take a page out using a style with the higher get but I digress. but regardless. both some to have an endgame of styles/etc. and as far I as i know you still can for a party in ffxiv and que up. i have played in a bit just cuz it has sooo much. gorgeous game though. much of its content is just super fun to play regarldess of rewards.....much o the amanzon fury stuff is and war of light stuff is and Fos raids. but yeah i'm not saying they stole it. just saying.
  16. calvin_0 Dedicated Player

    the only game company DCUO can and should learn from is Digital Extreme...

    -Actual Free to Play
    -Free DLC and update
    -Not buyable lootboxes
    -Meaningful crafting system
    -Tradable premium currency
    -Keep the player base happy with respect and quick response to any problem.
    -Improving the game constantly
    -Monetization option that doesnt have any impact on the game.

    game developer now days, especially those who make "free game" rely too much on lootboxes instead of making a good game.. DCUO is no differ.. just look at the time capsule and the quality of the content..

    Digital Extreme prove that gamer can be very generous, as long as you dont treat them like wallet with legs..
  17. lordexecution365 Loyal Player

    Hmm, somebody is unhappy I see.

    DCuo don't have to look outside of what they already have they just need to step up and stick to their ideas.

    All they have to do is look at FOS2 older video's from 2012 back to 2011.

    Tweak the NPC's to where the mechanics stand out more and delete the Nerf threads.

    Quick to close threads for being nonconstructive but not for calling for nerfing.

    And they need to defend themselves a little or at least say what they mean.
    • Like x 2
  18. Skandov Well-Known Player

    You have absolutely no logic in your head... Those things you listed, are the reason why this game is still alive and if you did those things, then the game would have no income. Now, before you tell me that they should come up with better / free to play monetization, then tell me exactly what you have in mind, because it doesn't seem like you know what it takes to run a business...
    • Like x 1
  19. Roocck Committed Player

  20. lordexecution365 Loyal Player

    Interesting, I got curious and searched a couple of other MMO's I have played and I'd have to say I wasn't impressed by the other games as much.

    Sure their subs work for the types of games, even for the game you have here, mounts???well OK.

    But movement modes is what they would have for DC, be pretty hard, I assume, to do some type of mount for a superman type character, other than changing how a character flies(switching from 1 hand out to both hands) then charging enough to entice people to sub to forgo paying 9.99.
    • Like x 1