This is why people don't like the CR cap.

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by Savior Prime, Sep 11, 2021.

  1. MrWood Well-Known Player

    My bad theory is this is all a ploy to increase stock prices, but I also dont know enough about stocks to know if that would even make sense haha. It's obvious they need money, and they need it now.
  2. Plowed In Loyal Player

    Just think, after November when Wonderverse is out of Endgame you can run the solo over and over with no loot locks. ;)
  3. MrWood Well-Known Player



    Cant wait haha. I have 2 color crystals left for that solo feat. 8 more Blue, and like 40 more red. I keep getting boons. I wish their was a trade in system like 10 boons of hermes for 1 New Genisis Seed. Anything.
    • Like x 1
  4. TKMcClone Steadfast Player

    I had made a reply to your other post the other thread was locked. It relates to the point of the stat clamp as well.

    Not spending money on a f2p game is not necessarily 'giving up on' the game. By playing casually, it could also be said that I gave up on the game. I see the points many are making about the stat-clamp, perhaps more objectively that you do. I'm no longer invested in levelling up and earning SP, so I don't have a horse in the race.

    What I find most fascinating is the way the game is monetized in 2021 and how the player base seems to embrace it. The new subscription system of the game is driving the stat clamp more than anything, yet no one looks at the co-relation. Players were eased into several XP/SP monetization schemes over the past 5 years in preparation for the stat clamp and new subscription model.

    If you want to feel powerful in old content, keep your widgets topped up to the max with XP...only 450SC or subscribe and save. I hate to say it, but stat-clamp is the new cash cap.
    • Like x 1
  5. Savior Prime Dedicated Player


    Sorry for the late response. If you ever have read any of my posts. My main complaint about the game is that gaining feats is more for bragging rights than for skill points to make you stronger. The moment they added CR to the game, SP became obsolete, yet feats are atleast 80 percent of the game, 10 being gear, and 10 being allies and artifacts. Yet there are people like myself who has not slotted any SP and able to complete current elite content with minimum deaths and still topping the scorecard. I have invested in my SP, which is why I grinded every episode as much as I have.

    Now all that grinding, years of playing, are now all for nothing b/c CR is king. When a 348CR toon with 200 SP can out perform a 348CR with 630SP player, something is broken or wrong. (I've seen it, not experienced it)

    And now, they wanna cap our hard earned (and if you bought replays) expensive gear CR instead of increasing the difficulty of the instances. It's like they slapped us in the face with the hand of SP not making you stronger, then kicked us in the nuts with the foot of CR clamping on top of that.
    • Like x 1
  6. willflynne 10000 Post Club


    In most games where stats are king and the be-all, end-all determining factor, your example would be a warning flag, true.

    Here? The ability to play your character carries more weight. So it's not outside the realm of possibility for a player with lower stats to outperform others if they know and play their character well.

    And SP does carry more weight in clamped content than it did before. Even if it's a percentage those stats still count and are likely to have more impact now than before.
    • Like x 1
  7. hhussk01 New Player


    Until they nerf it.

    No, seriously. That's a great strategy assuming nothing ever changes. But things always change.

    And why would developers nerf/change things in the game? It actually generates money as players recalibrate to the new changes.
  8. Steamboat2302 Well-Known Player

    1) No... I've been apparently spending my money on the game for the last few years... while you haven't.
    2. I just can't believe that there are people out there who would give up on a game, but then lurk in the shadows for years and then pop back up the second a change is made that they like and suddenly sing its praises...
    Sorry if I don't see people being that inane.
    3. We don't really know the outcome of this move..... You're just fancifully projecting.
    And no, not all voices are equal in all things.


    1. It's not about who is spending what money in the past. Its about who could spend money going forward. Its like, paying a hall of fame receiver in year 13 of his career when he's a shell of himself. They need new, returning users, so while you can logically argue that your opinion should carry more weight from your perspective, and I get the thought process behind it.... that's not how life works.

    Lets use cable tv providers. It used to be they were VERY generous with loyalty programs to stop people from leaving their company to go to another one. Now, they pretty much don't even question you when you leave. Why is that? Because by that time you've already made arrangements to leave and it will cost a significant amount to retain you. So, loyalty has been left behind by realities in how things work.

    Similarly in DCUO, they are struggling with attaining new users. New users that are much further from end game stats than you are. These users are not only necessary to keep the attrition from the game turning into stagnation, but also have much more opportunity for profit. In the long run, the game can't run with only veterans. That means, that when a business looks at customers, they tend to look at new customers while trying to keep old ones as well, but when it comes down to it... the business model doesn't survive without new customers.

    2. There are other games, other things to spend time and money on. In my case, I started spending a significant amount of time playing pokemon games, Spiderman, cities skylines, and just a bunch of other games over the past couple years because I wasn't going to pay for a game that the experience was broken for me. And it was absolutely broken. There was nothing fun about it. I remember 7 years ago going into the league of assassins alert, being left in the first room and being told "screw off noob" when I asked if they could at least wait for me. I was CR relevant to the raid and they were end game.

    I found a league, had some fun interacting, got that character up to end game, but once I got there I got bored of endgame. After all, after a few weeks you've done everything and you have another few weeks to go, but see the game has all this content I didn't get to enjoy so I started really using alts. But the experience just kept happening. So I decided that it wasn't worth it to continue to sub, because honestly even back then there were not enough new people to really just LFG for random 56 CR instances. Even the ones there, usually used CR skip to get close to end game. A few weeks later, I realized that at the time the game was pointless for me to play without subbing. Because of the cash cap more than anything else.

    I kept the game downloaded... because sometimes my son just likes to go into metropolis or gotham and goof around. Next two years..thats just how it was, I'd see him play it randomly. Then one day I get frustrated with the other subscription game I play when I am not on here, and sometimes when I am. Either way, got frustrated so went to check on what was going on here. And wow, they were gearing up to actually do a stat clamp, allowing premium unlimited cash. Almost everything I had asked for before I left but looked as if I was never going to get because the most outspoken people in the game were so vehemently against it so I started looking around, playing around in test, seeing what it was all about.

    I played free-premium for a couple weeks, then decided to try a month subscription and see if they continue in this direction. Having more fun than I did before, and slowly seeing old friends who hadn't been on the game in 18 months to two years themselves show back up online. I'd rather struggle with content than just be irrelevant to the content. In the end, I don't have a significant amount of time to play games.

    3. I'm not projecting, I'm speculating based on the available logic and my experience in business. Of course I don't know if it will work out, but I know for a fact that the status quo was not working. Look at the past years stats... they were getting around 1% growth in total players and no statistically significant increase in daily players. Games not getting any newer. They can't fix some of the things people find as a problem with the game without a sequel. And to get a sequel, they kinda have to prove they can retain players within the concept in 2021.

    I've said many times... If they reverse course...its fine. I'm not going to complain about it. I'm not going to go through the futility it would be to have them reverse a reversed decision I just won't be here. There are plenty of other games I enjoy. I have spent significantly on the game over the past 10 years, which is why I always have it around. I have a connection to some of my characters and things I've done on them over the years. But its not enough to keep me being an active player if I'm not enjoying it.

    Besides, if you leave because of this change, are you not doing the same thing I did two years ago?
    • Like x 1
  9. The Con Dedicated Player


    Once again... You just make excuses... Yours is a very low bar.

    Why not just honor loyalty?

    Nobody ever really questions sales drives... and do you know why?

    DISCOUNTS FOR NEW CUSTOMERS DON'T COST THE OLD CUSTOMER ANYTHING.



    Figure out a better way to entice new customers.
    • Like x 1
  10. Tiffany6223 Loyal Player

    I work for a marketing company, and I assure you, corporations spend big money to develop brand loyalty. A customer who is brand loyal and consistently spends money on the product as well as other offerings from a company are highly desirable. These are the bread-and-butter customers as they are classified. They support a company even during a downturn. Never dismiss brand loyal customers; they are important. Just look at what loyal customers did for Apple.
    • Like x 1
  11. Steamboat2302 Well-Known Player

    Because focusing on retaining customers allows attrition, and in the case of cable companies, you can't afford to keep the old customer by matching what a new customer can make. In the end, someone has to pay full price. The cost of new customer promotions is built into the price increases for non-promotional rates. So, yes, it does cost the old customer something. The older customers subsidize the newer customers rates.

    The game is broken for new players, or was before the change. In the end, the attitude of veterans and their unwillingness to consider the playing experience of newer players caused this to become a necessity. In the end, you must account for behavior when you change things.

    You can't just hand out free stuff to new players to keep them when the playing experience is ridiculously bad on top of it being a dated game, with mechanics/systems that aren't considered to be modern. The types of things that could attract new customers without doing something like this would require an upgrade to the engine, which would mean, in this case, reworking the game from the ground up because of the incompatibility of UE3 and UE4/5
    • Like x 1
  12. The Con Dedicated Player

    Dear lord...

    You live for excuses.

    The point, Mr. Toad, is that the company doesn't take away my HBO so a new customer can enjoy the experience of having HBO.



    I'm still not convinced that this is "the great fix" for new players.....


    But... the vice versa okay in your book?.... Gotcha. :rolleyes:


    Never really offered that as a solution...

    There has to be a better way the new enjoy the game without kneecapping old.. and loyal... players.
    • Like x 1
  13. Steamboat2302 Well-Known Player

    1. It's not an excuse, its reality.

    2. Cause and effect. I identified the cause that ended with this being necessary when combined with dwindling new user numbers significantly enough to make the other fix for it not able to be done. This isn't vice versa... you are not being kept from enjoying the content. You are being kept from enjoying the content in the narrow way you want to define your enjoyment.

    3. Then offer a solution. What, in your mind, would you do to both retain old customers, return customers who have left (which is a HUGE amount of untapped potential in revenue), and attract brand new players that doesn't require a new engine, or changing gameplay, both of which would likely require a sequel, instead of an update.

    For 7 years, people like myself said we needed something to help the new player experience, and for 7 years we were laughed at and ignored. The devs finally saw the benefits in changing things to try to both attract and retain customers who are new and returning. The only thing I'm seeing is that its being suggested they should abandon the idea entirely or make it optional, which undoes that entire purpose of the change. They compromised by adding SM back to end game. Which I still think was not a great idea.

    If they had done more 7 years ago, maybe this wouldn't be necessary, but at the same time, they have been trying. Why do you think CR irrelevant people didn't get rewards for old content? Because they were trying not to incentivize people running the old content. They still allowed feat runs etc. But the new customer base continues to stall out to the point that population growth for retaining customers is completely stagnant up until this update. The next step after stagnate is losing population. No game survives a prolonged period of losing customers as a 10 year old game so something must be done.

    What would you do?
  14. Steamboat2302 Well-Known Player

    Literally the only thing I can think of other than stat clamping, is to have everyone immediately go up to endgame relevant CR for free. But then, all these new people who you don't want to deal with would be in engame raids with you even if you don't run event stuff, and it would seriously limit the amount of enjoyable content for new users on top of it. One of DCUO's strengths is also a weakness. The amount of playable instances and worlds.
  15. Own Dsg Level 30

    What would I do?
    Simple.

    New stuff like Diablo 2 resurrected, New world, Lost ark, path of exile 2, blue protocol, tower of fantasy etc.

    Or old but better stuff like FF14 or wow or runescape.

    AND I'll spend my money in those games, hell anywhere instead of here in DCUO and encourage all friends to do so too.
  16. Steamboat2302 Well-Known Player

    Yeah, thats exactly what I was asking for... *rolls eyes*
  17. The Con Dedicated Player

    No... It's an excuse.

    And.. It's not reality: Cable companies don't take away from my services to make new customers happy.


    You're literally making excuses for your excuses.




    It's literally vice versa... You are just swapping my enjoyment for yours.
    You write: " we needed something to help the new player experience"..... and you take away from the old player experience...

    You, as a new player... JUST LIKE MY ALTS (low leveled).... weren't being kept from enjoying the content.... You are being kept from enjoying the content in the narrow way you want to define your enjoyment..




    I'll think on that one... Off hand, I'd say that:
    Full rewards on old content sure helped replays on old instances and maps.... which helps cut down on que times which helps new players advance quicker....
    • Like x 3
  18. Steamboat2302 Well-Known Player


    They don't take services away...they CHARGE MORE for their services. Which is much worse than this change. Would you rather that a subscription for a new account got a years subscription for 40% of what it cost you to entice new users? Oh, and they'll give away free legendary allies and their pick of the three most dominant fully leveled artifacts.

    Except, its not a narrow way that we want to enjoy. There are dozens of ways to enjoy the content. Different powersets, different weapons, different artifacts, allies. So many different ways to go where you can try something new or more/less challenging or different. If you just simply massively over-level your characters... you can just spam a basic ranged attack through entire events. When someone can just faceroll the content and leave you behind... its not fun.

    What point is it to have new players advance quicker? Seriously. They get to endgame and they are useless to you so you'll kick them out of the alerts and raids you find them in or you'll be able to overpower it in spite of them, making them irrelevant...again...to the content.

    Please do think about it. Because the status quo was not ever going to be an option and I have yet to see anything ever suggested to actually fix the game experience.
    • Like x 1
  19. The Con Dedicated Player

    Dear God, man... You can twist facts...

    They don't really charge existing customers more.... They just charge new customers less.. for a short period of time... or a trial period...

    They don't come to an existing customer and say "Look we're giving The Petersons free HBO for 3 months... during which time we'll be billing you an extra 10 bucks to cover the cost"


    It's not even that your excuses aren't really excuses... It's just your excuses are just soooooo lame.


    Dude... I have low level alts... I still have fun leveling them up.. without ever getting "left behind".

    Why do you have this weird negative view of how play with others???
    • Like x 2
  20. Qwantum Abyss Loyal Player

    Nope, i will stroll along with my 500+ an be content getting new as new comes available.
    Also no, thats not a concern at all. Clamping has nothing to do with SP and also theres no reason to correlate the two or think it will happen to sp either.
    • Like x 1