Dev Discussion Episode 41: Early End Game

Hello everyone and welcome to the Early End Game feedback thread.

Lots of news ideas are coming to DC Universe Online in Episode 41. This thread is for for feedback on the changes related to the "Early End Game" which is being defined as all post-leveling content that isn't part of the three newest episodes. At this time, the three newest episodes are Episodes 38: Wonderverse, Episode 39: Long Live the Legion, and Episode 40: World of Flashpoint.

Below are details about many of these changes:

• End-Game Tiers have been reconfigured. There are now 6 Tiers, and all On Duty-accessed content has been organized into those Tiers. In order to access content within these Tiers, players need to have a Combat Rating (Gear Score) of:
  • Tier 1: CR 30
  • Tier 2: CR 60
  • Tier 3: CR 100
  • Tier 4: CR 150
  • Tier 5: CR 210
  • Tier 6: Episodes 38, 39, and 40 content maintains existing CR requirements for the time being

• Early End-Game content in the On Duty and in Open Worlds is now set up to scale players who are outside the range of the content.
  • Players below the Combat Rating of the content are scaled up to a "floor"
  • Players that are at the Combat Rating of the content are not scaled.
  • Players that are above the Combat Rating of the content are scaled down, to a "ceiling"
  • League Buffs, Skillpoints, Artifacts, Allies, etc. do improve you beyond scaled stat values and have a proportional return so that you still receive a worthy benefit from those
  • Remember: this scaling does not occur in the 3 newest episodes which at the moment are: Wonderverse, Long Live the Legion, and World of Flashpoint

• Players receive a passive buff when in Normal Mode Early End-Game Instanced content (but in not Elite Modes).
  • Players scaled up to the floor of the content receive the biggest buff, players that are at-level receive a lesser buff, and players that are scaled to the ceiling of the content receive the smallest buff
  • Unbalanced groups in Alerts/4-Player Operations no longer receive the “Roleless Buff” in Early End-Game Instanced content
  • The “Roleless Buff” is still applied in the latest three episodes 4-Player content and also now in Open Worlds for those three episodes

• Missions in the Mission Journal have had their Combat Ratings/Levels updated to correspond to the new Tiers

• Open World Bosses have been changed to be more in line with scaled stat values. Raid and Group bosses have been set down to a lower rank where applicable which is intended to make them easier to defeat with fewer people

• There are no longer Alerts available to players who are below level 30.
  • The two Alerts which didn’t have a “Hard Mode” (Level 30+) version are now set up as Early End-Game alerts
  • There are no longer “Novice” Raids
  • Existing feats and collections which were accessible in the sub-level 30 instances should still be accessible in these Early End-Game instances

• Certain Alerts have been streamlined, whereby the objective counts within them have been reduced, so they don’t take as long
  • These include “Bludhaven,” “Gorilla Island,” and “Area 51”

• Early End-Game content that spawns in Metropolis and Gotham has been adjusted so that it’s complete-able by players as soon as players are able to get the missions which lead to them
  • This includes missions entitled “Threat in South Gotham,” “Deconstruction,” “South Gotham Agenda,” “Uncivil Engineering,” which are all now playable by CR 30+ players, and “Virtues and Vices,” which is now playable by CR 60+ players
  • Similarly, Episode 6 (aka Home Turf) open world content that goes to Arkham Asylum, Stryker’s Pentitentary, Steelworks, and Ace Chemicals, has been adjusted to be complete-able by CR 60+ players

• Existing Teleporters in the Watchtower and Hall of Doom, which allow access to locations associated with Early End-Game content, now have CR requirements corresponding to the Tier updates
  • Urgent Warfront Mods similarly have been updated

• Mechanical Gear Vendor has been removed from all Safehouses, the Watchtower, and the Hall of Doom
  • Instead, players will be able to speak with Tempus Fuginaut in the House of Legends to get what they need to advance through Early End-Game content

• Loot Locks have been removed from the Early End-Game instanced content (content accessed via the On Duty menu that isn’t part of the latest three episodes)

• Current “Event Mode” and Seasonal content are now granted and accessible to players when they’re either level 20 (instead of level 14), or when they finish "Reap What You Sow" (Hero), or "Faustian Response" (Villain)

• All Early End-Game On Duty and Open World content will reward Source Marks (regardless of CR), and offer choice loot including Scaling Gear that will help players progress from CR 30 all the way the CR needed to access the latest Episode

Please let us know your feedback in this thread. How does the early end-game content feel, difficulty-wise? Have you located any bugs/issues? Did we overlook something that you feel needs attention? Thank you for helping test these content changes! Your thoughts on this are of immense value and very important to us.

The problem is the grind for source marks.. Its not fulfilling to know everything is so heavily priced, but the content only gives a CHANCE to drop source marks.. but not only that, The source mark grind is a bit STEEP.. People are quitting older content because of the clamping difficulty.. This is adding to the lengthy time it takes to grind 1 source mark.. This is not going to be sustainable for mains and alts.

With stat clamp we've increase the amount of time it will take to farm source marks, which is a bad thing in a sense because it takes sooooo long to earn 1 source mark.. Source mark grind shouldn't be this close to end game grind.. Its supposed to be a bit more casual and a bit more REWARDING... my solution is to INCREASE The source mark payout to keep up with the NEW DEMAND for source marks.. The only chances should be to get extra source marks.

sols 3-5 source marks
DUOS: should be paying 5-7 source marks
alerts 8-10
raids12-16
elite 20-25


The demand for source marks is too much of a strain on MAIN and alt character DEVS. And having the ability to run older content unlimited times a day doesn't even matter because of how long it will take to gain source marks.. Please reconsider the numbers

Just Ran POWER CORE... Last boss numbers is off the CHAIN.. OMG.. please look into it.. As well as the AOE orbs in that room too.

The inside portions of the Patrol Catastrophe mission in Gotham Under Siege aren't being scaled down, outside my character is scaled down to 113 and as soon as i go through the portals CR goes back to 301.

Not sure where to post this, Nth Metal Caches, give less nth metal now from the nth metal detector. I have membership/lifetime and yesterday before the new episode, I opened Nth Metal Caches, I got a purple (500) blue(200) green(100) then a 50 and 20 that is 870 nth metal from the nth metal detector.

Today I have opened 10 Nth Metal Caches and the max I get is 650, stack of 5 blue that is only 100 now, then an extra 1 blue by itself, and 5x10 so 50, total of 650 nth metal getting over 100 less nth metal from Nth Metal Caches, at least we should be getting the same as before.

There is def something off!

Just ran it myself it's awful some of the AOE you can't see.

That is the point, those floating orbs were in the original Fos2

There's floating ones and ones that you can't see as well.

I ran the clamped version of Phantom Zone with three other randoms and I ran Power Core with a few league mates (the rest of the group was a mix of low level characters), the runs themselves went fine but they were just too slow. Carrying a group is not fun and carrying a group with a forced handicap feels even worse.

Also tried Desecrated Cathedral elite (tank) with a league mate (healer) plus one of his friends (DPS). That was awful. We wiped repeatedly on Jared for a few reasons: (1) the controller was brand new and useless. (2) we were following the mechanics but we were struggling with survivability. (3) I attempted battle tanking because the burn was too slow and that was my immediate down fall. The fight with James was easier but we ended up kicking the controller afterwards and bringing in another high level character to DPS. We eventually disbanded after wiping on Raven a few times because (1) too much visual pollution was obscuring her reflect attack and (2) her self heals were mitigating enough of their damage that it was just slow sailing. 45+ minutes in and we just lost interest in finishing.

As someone who wasn’t really opposed to the clamp, I am very disappointed. I did three omnibus duo runs and I’ll take you through my experience.

1) JLD: Pub Crawl: Virtually identical to being in top level gear for that episode. I didn’t feel powerful at all. It wasn’t too bad for this duo, just a little tedious because it’s one of the easier ones, but I had a bad feeling about what would happen in a more difficult one. Which brings me to…

2) The Demon’s Pit: First impressions were good, everything was a fair bit squishier than in JLD, so I thought, well this is good, there’s still a sliding scale at play here. Then we got to the second boss. I knew darn well that I needed to avoid the gas, I was ready for it, and I still nearly got destroyed when one spawned directly under my feet and emptied 3/4s of my health bar in a second. Wildcat in the last battle also seemed to doing very high damage in general.

3) STAR Labs Satellite: For the longest time, this seemed great. Enemies weren’t being oneshotted, my health bar was moving a little bit but I was never really in any danger. This was exactly what I was hoping the clamp would be. But then, I looked at my 92cr teammate some more and noticed they were having largely the same experience.

Look, there’s been some content, non-elite normal content that I had to go back to 30cr or so higher, just to finish it. Paradox Wave, LH: Lockdown, Love and War, Throne Of The Dead, to name just a few. Will I never be able to finish any of this content ever again? And this omnibus business, do you really think people who hit that quickplay button aren’t going to have a bad time?

Some issues ive seen so far -

1) people are afk'ing in duos expecting the other to just complete it - they move in range to get loot but dont do anything else - so people are afk farming marks

2) people are leaving the longer alerts when they realise what it is - arkham was a revolving door for example - we are already seeing people figuring out which alerts etc are giving the optimal marks per run and are bailing if those dont turn up on the random quick que

3) multiple quick ques are giving me the same runs again and again (i had 5 earth3 duos in a row for example)

4) the whole point was make older content doable by reducing que times - ive been sitting a que for a custom raid for over 5 hrs for a bat cave raid (sub construct)....

5) raids in quick que are turning into complete %^*& shows - revolving door of people, 3+ hours - this isnt going to increase particapation, this is just going to cause people to just give up on raids outside of a league

on a personal note - if the custom que content is not loot locked whats to stop people just qu'eing chinese theater solo and farming salvage / marks every 3-4 mins? - as much as i dont want that to happen when people see the mark grind people are going to start looking at efficiency and doing that instead of quick ques...

for real!!! this clamping status break all my fun about this game why i play 1 game about super heros and i dont feel strong like super hero??? I don't have the feeling anymore that my character got stronger with the time I spent in this game, now the feeling is that I can die to normal ads, and look that I have all artifacts in the 200 and 500 sp

It's always a chance that you'll be in a group that's able to get through the instance. Especially when queueing random Quickplay Omnibus (as opposed to building a group on LFG or with Leaguemates).

First day impression; there is a MAJOR PROBLEM.

Players can queue up for Tier 1 Raids at Level / CR 30 such as Power Core. But Raids are no longer a joke (not even Tier 1). The effect of Stat Clamping is that teams must know and play all roles to beat the bosses. The Level 1-30 process does nothing to teach players how to play support roles (and because you don't get all your Power Set's abilities until Level 30, new players really don't even know how to play the Damage role). And obviously the buff up that players get when entering Tier instances is not enough to make up for the lack of skill and knowledge necessary to be successful in multiplayer instances.

Due to all that it's highly likely that senior players (people who have been around long enough to know how to play roles) will just make a group with LFG / Leaguemates / friends for any instance instead of random queueing, so they can ensure they'll be in a group that will get through the instance (that goes for every instance up & down the Tiers). (Which, by the way makes the Quickplay concept irrelevant) That means new players queueing into Tier 1 will end up in groups mostly made of people who don't know what they're doing. Sure maybe 1 or 2 senior players might random queue, but 2 players who know what they're doing won't be enough to get a team through a Raid anymore.

All of this will lead to a lot of frustration in new players, making it very difficult to get through instances, difficult to learn how to play, and very difficult to increase CR. That in turn means fewer new players sticking with the game.

So if players hate Stat Clamping and want it removed, but devs are absolutely unwilling to do so, how about a compromise that doesn't fully satisfy either side (usually the best kind of compromise): allow players to reenter boss fights after being knocked out (just like Event versions of instances). That way you don't have to start the whole fight over again and again and again, etc. This should apply to every instance except Elite versions. You get knocked out there, gotta fully restart.

Personally I would love to have a pen and paper discussion with a group of other players and a Dev to bounce around voiced ideas and thoughts.

The brine hulk in atlantis got so much health the other bounties are fine

That got fixed internally today. Coming soon to a hotfix near you.

1) AFK farming marks are there in literally every instances, and I really don't think stat clamping changed the occurrence rate of these bums leaching off others

2) yep, that's the whole point. We optimize the fastest instances to Q into and get marks, and get out. If there are specific instances you want to Queue into, there's always LFG. The whole point of this is "if i want quick source marks, I'll rando Q omnibus and complete a quick run of something". If you want an arkham run, you should get an LFG.

3) Look at #2

4) no, the whole point was to make content easier to Q into and find instances faster. Again, if you want a custom raid, GO TO LFG.

5) we ARE talking about omnibus right? I Q'ed into PBr other day with players (support roles) with arts at 80, barely, and it was stupid easy.

I'd estimate that almost 90% of all raids in reg can be done with tanks that pull aggro and healers that spam heals, and this game doesn't have a high learning curve to complete these raids.
Also, last I ran an omnibus solo, i got ONE source mark. from your calculation, I'd be getting 10 source marks every 30 min... no, people won't grind solos/duos for source marks.