The Importance of Solo Play in DCUO

I love solo content.. It actually is good for people that dont like to raid but also for people who hate shouting and waiting for ques

I will take anything but the raids , I personally prefer solos ALOT because when I play alone , i forget that am playing an online game and it feels like more like teen titans game and justice league Heros from ps2

And as you stated , players play the game not because it's an MMO but because of batman and superman . Well for me am not playing because it's an MMO game nor for batman or superman but because they have LANTERNS , if this game had not a single green lantern in it , I won't be playing it whatsoever

No... I did not know about them Championship.
Thanks for the info.... I will start playing right away.
And all this time I was wasting my time playing DCUO??? I should play where the real money is.

1) You'd have to ask Mepps about that, that was a straight-up copy-and-paste of the update to power balance he posted.

2) The biggest problem with AI is that it can't and won't adapt. It just runs the program. And yes, there are players who are just as bad at following their own patterns as if they were AI themselves. We've all got those tendencies. But even with language barriers or people simply not communicating in instances at all, we can adapt to the situations at hand.

As for my AI examples, I was using them not so much as a comparison but more as my own experiences with various AI in games. And my decision to dismiss the NPC ships in the Rogue Squadron games was because the AI was bad and it made them useless. So let's use an AI example from DCUO.

Take a look at Steel's behavior in the Home Turf Ace Chemicals instance on the hero side. While he's supposed to be guiding the robots to the teleporter pad, he will attack any goon that comes within a certain range of him, without fail. Doesn't matter if you have it under control or have already defeated the goons. He'll come lunging in at times, removing any sort of progress he's made along the path to the pad and slowing down your mission progress in the process. Even with a language barrier or other communication difficulties, a player could recognize that they DON'T need to go after any NPC that looks at them funny and keep moving to the teleporter pad. The AI can't.

And as a side note, I think Tunso and Loche at the very least might have some opinions on how much dev support it got (they did work on SWG, after all), but even after the announcement of the game shutting down, they kept developing and working on stuff for the game right about to the very end. Otherwise there wouldn't have been atmospheric flight for space ships put into the game before it ended.

Provided for some great videos, too. LOL

I much prefer solo/duo content and open world to the rest. Partially because Im anti-social but also because the 4 and 8 man queue NEVER FRIKKING POP! YEAH!! I'm playing an MMO that refuses to be multiplayer when the devs have forced me to queue up for multiplayer content to get anything done! Wooo frikkin hoo!! THIS IS SO MUCH FUN I COULD BARF!

Sarcasm aside, even SWTOR was never this bad. Sure they had 9 bazillion daily grinds to get the "currency" to get your endgame gear, and all of their "best" endgame gear is locked behind multiplayer content but I don't need to get the absolute best of the best gear to play the rest of the game. Here I have to grind gear to get gear to play content I paid for to get the gear I need to play the other content I paid for. Doing so in a relatively timely fashion? Only if you play 4 or 8 man crap that never pops.... YAY /sarcasm

edit:
How about if they open content, like someone suggested on pg3, to be solo. Like if you are tier 4, you can queue up solo for anything tier 2? Barring anything that might have a creative mechanic requiring more than one player do an action of course. You could open up stuff that you are just overpowered for to be done solo. Let it give out 1 mark, relevant style-only items, and crap loot. People get more to do, can complete style sets, replay badges aren't devalued, nor are the highest tier multiplayer content queues.

Not even remotely a GOOD solution but an easy one for the Developers, which seem short handed and in need of easy/quick solutions.

I think opening up all the mentor missions as higher tier solo missions would be a good start. I wouldn't mind being able to run all the magic, meta and tech missions one one character without having to bother anyone or be bothered to find someone who bothers.

I'm all for more content~solo's, duos, alerts and raids, open world, bounties.

i really wish we could have an open world mission where we stop a natural disaster like a tidal wave or an earthquake and part of the dailies would be running around rescuing people according to our movement mode and powers (healers would have to heal, controllers would have to charge some things up to save people,tanks would have to absorb damage away from people, catching falling citizens according to super speed, acrobatics or flight...). Bounty villains could be the responsible parties. major Disaster, Weather Wizard, Felix faust or Psimon...

but i also want our next chapter to star mr. mxyzptlk turning everyone into bizarros for april fools...

Lots of great ideas in this thread. There's a couple of obstacles standing in the way:

1) The PS3. Them supporting it still is holding them back from even attempting anything like this outside of instanced solo content. The PS3 couldn't handle an expansive open world with missions all over the place. They really need to drop it..now.

2) How would solo and open content generate the same type of revenue as forcing raids down our throat combined with monthly content in turn pushing RB sales? It might increase the overall number in population and potential subscribers. But, 'potential' and 'might' are the key word here, it would be a risk that i'm not sure they'd be willing to take vs guaranteed RB sales.

So what can we do as a community to get this to happen?

Stop playing "their game" and not participate in raids or spend RBs? Not gonna happen. There's too many raiders and people that are overly concerned about being the highest CR as soon as possible that, that won't happen. And they're probably the very same people that play this game the least. Grind the new content for a week, get all the gear and not play again until the next month because there's no reason to.

A game can be an MMO and be more solo content then group content. It can be difficult and challenging. I know because I play one. I see people go by all the time but i'm not forced to play with them in an instance..which is the point.

I won't be playing this game or subscribing anymore until something like this is in the game. I loved DCUO for the longest time but I just can't justify paying money for a game I don't enjoy anymore.

They really need to update their business model. Sure replay badges are a good cash cow but so are a lot of other things... again look at SWTOR. Another very punitive f2p system where even freemium get hit pretty hard compared to subscribers (tho not as hard as DCUO) they have tons of items that sell really well in their cash shop. Daybreak needs to stop wearing blinders, and seeing only one cash cow.

I know I'm necroing this post, but it's an important topic to me. First off, I really enjoy this game, but I'm a solo player and I wish all priority missions were soloable. But that is notthe case, almost all content after level 30 is grouping content in some form. It is extremely difficult to complete those group related missions for someone that has no friends and is not in a league. This makes this game very anti-soloable. ESO, WOW,and SWTOR all have content suited to the solo player. So why not DCUO? I think it's more then time that DCUO got on the same level as those other mmo's and started making group related content more solo friendly. More people would enjoy playing this game if they did this. I also believe it would draw in new players to the game.

I didn't know about this topic and I liked the idea. I always missed more solo content. I think there's a fair amount of solo tasks in open worlds, but they could be explained more to players.

I really enjoyed the repeated solo missions in Themyscira. It would be nice to have solo missions in every episode.

Having an optional stat clamp instead of being forced to endure it as it is would definitely be a step in the right direction for more solo-based content. It's already there, just let people do it solo or however they want to. It's their game too just as much as someone else's who might disagree.

I don't think the stat clamp has anything to do with the topic of the thread. The idea is solo content, because to enter a raid eight players are needed. Just changing the stat clamp doesn't change the fact of having to call seven other players.

Solos and raids are always my favorites. Duos and Alerts are stressful for me because of the potential for backlash from another player if I mess up. This fear goes back to my early early days of when I first started playing DCUO. Now, for Alerts, and Duos espcecially, I only run them with people I know, although there is still that fear of messing up in front of my friends. Solos it is all on me, and Raids I can feel safer in numbers lol.

Well, it's not like the devs are going to focus on new solo-based content anytime soon; so start small, think big.

I'm just saying that if the option to run older content alone as solo, regardless if it's a raid or an alert, that'd be a step in the right direction in my opinion.

Though I doubt the person who created this topic still plays (or at least would comment in this thread now), but I'm betting he'd agree more with my point and disagree.

MMORPGS have been leaning far too much into solo content destroying the very thing the genre was built on. We need less of this catering into solo content. If youve grown up and don't have the time anymore, then i think its time to pass the torch to the new generation and let them experience experience MMORPGS as we once did. Rather then changing the genre to fit our lifestyle we can no longer maintain. If you cant keep up with the cutting edge, their is nothing wrong with keeping to the middle of the pack.


Having solo content isnt bad, but trying to have the game cater to solo content, is what i think is what we need to stop trying to do.

Get with the times. ;P

Old-school MMOs are slowly dying out. People don't want to invest their spare time playing a video game that's more like a (terrible) second job. Why do you think mobile gaming has surpassed both PC and console gaming combined? It's really not that hard to figure out why and that does have a sizable effect even on the MMO genre.

The more options a game provides its player base, the more people will play and stick around. And I'm not saying people should put in a little bit of effort and be over-rewarded, but it basically boils down to what kind of ROI are you getting for the time you're investing. Playing solo, even in an MMO, can be more efficient so finding the razor thin line between solo and multi-player content that makes everyone satisfied has always been a tricky and challenging thing to do. Too much one way, and you alienate half your base. Go too hard in the other direction same thing on the other side. And that's the beauty of more options. The more options people have access to, the more gratified they'll (hopefully) be.

ignore this.

I would like to point out the even FF XIV is like 70% solo 30% group on the MSQ. There is nothing wrong with having solo content. Sometimes, I just want to be alone and game by myself. That’s the wonderful thing about DCUO, it allows you to game how you want at your own pace.

This was more than just a necro. Given the date it's a full-blown summoning. LOL

Thing is, a LOT has changed in the nearly six years since the last post before this was brought back to the forefront. The past year alone opened up ALL the solo content in the game, 11 years' worth of it with a decent amount of new solo content added to the game since March of 2016. Plus running three pieces of solo content via the Omnibus per week will now net a player some more Marks and some extra goodies in addition to all the Marks one can get from diving into older content.

There's also been a better balance of solo and group content coming in with Episodes. In the past it'd be a back-and-forth between concentrating on small group/solo content to large group content with Episode releases, but now Episodes have something for everyone.

With the clamping it's much easier now to go it alone and keep a decent pace in progression, and CR skips can help fill in some SP gaps as they award some feats from early group content. Whether or not that gets expanded upon now that all Episodes are free remains to be seen.

The barrier to entry for the mobile platform, is far lower then PC and consoles, i believe. its far easier to get into a mobile game, that doesn't require an I5 proccessor with 4GB of RAM needing a 1080TI to get more then 35 FPS frame out of it. Not to mention the shift to Free2Play with La-carte purchases. Making subscription based MMORPG a steeper investment many people arnt willing to make upfront.

The PC/ Console market is far different then the mobile market. Yes it surpassed PC/ console. But its a low barrier to entry and insanely easy to monetize, but its not something the PC/ console game market ever took well to.