Rushing to end game and skipping content

Rushing is, in general a bad thing, but hard to combat.
In MMOs one of the major driving factors is getting that rare/strong piece of loot, this means you are already predisposed to want the end game content. It leads to not learning your role well enough as well as not properly enjoying the content as you progress, the goal is always complete and move on.
I joined late and rushed myself. I did suffer a bit from it, but I tend to read and watch a lot of tutorials to supplement that. I would have liked to have started playing earlier and enjoying and learning the FOS days, but that is fairly impossible now. there are not a lot of up and comers playing that content and it's not the hot topic discussed in the forums. There is also not a lot of in game info on them.
It would be nice if there were something to make you slow down a bit.

Honestly, I can see why new players would want to skip content.

What? I have to spend months running FoS and BC raids? But everybody else is running Nexus and Paradox and saying how easy they are.

And even if the new players did grind the older instances, odds are that some over-powered T5 player is in the group smashing through everything chasing marks and styles.

It's a conundrum...we want better and more skilled players, but new players don't want to be grinding for months before they get to the latest content.

My view, let people speed through content - as long as they're open to advice. Show a little patience, teach those that can be taught, and hopefully at the end of it you get some folk on your friends list who can finish content without overpowering it.

When it comes down to it though, a bone-head will be a bone-head even if they skip content.

i don't try and teach anymore, but I'm always happy to help. I just wait to be asked first now. I've had my head bitten off too many times for trying to help

I know the feeling and it is so frustrating to watch the same players continually fail and not want to hear how to do it correctly. I don't understand why some players think if they keep trying to fit the square into a triangle it will eventually fit.

What are you doing? Your sitting on the couch, playing DC, still CR45 itching to get to gotham wasteland and paradox and nexus. I know what you need. You need Booster Golds guide to 90 CR in less than a week that is composed of walkins and no pvp content whatsoever.

Find a walkin group to gates and begin today!!!

That's just what I need! Where do I find this fantastical product? Do I just throw money at SOE?

Personally, I abhor content skipping. The only time it's acceptable, in my opinion, is if you're "cloning" a character via an alt. Even then, if you're raising a new role (i.e. your main is a controller but you're raising a healer alt) you should start at the bottom and work your way to the top.

There's nothing worse than tier and content skipping. It dilutes the game. Incapable players do not see themselves as the problem. They blame the game. The blaming of the game results in nerfs and changes (i.e. Nexus and Paradox). Making the game easier makes the game less exciting and fun. You can't build a loyal fan base around a game which isn't fun. DCUO's genre demands a heavier fan base than stand-alone, self-contained games so it risks alienating the people who are most likely to return if you remove the challenge.

You also risk attracting too many casual gamers. Casual gamers are good for a quick buck, but they are never loyal to a game. The second something else catches their eye, they're gone and don't look back. They also have no patience and are more likely to quit than wait it out. There's already too many of these in the game so it's a risky strategy to build the game tailored to their gaming habits.

You can't change the mentality of people wishing to skip tiers, but you can kill it completely by installing restrictions. No more walk-ins. Or disable people who aren't the correct combat rating from receiving anything by completing the instance. Remove the item level from all tradable armor or make it so that it doesn't influence the players CR, removing the ability for them to purchase tier-skipping armor from Broker or trading/being donated it from friends.

At the same time as installing these restrictions, make the earlier tiers really easy to progress through and make the current tier really time consuming and hard to progress through. In my opinion, it should NOT be easier to get Level 85/86 armor than it is to get Tier 4 armor. Likewise, when T6 launches, Tier 5 shouldn't take too long to advance through.

good post +1

The only ppl that should be rushing to endgame content are ppl’s alt’s who already have the end game knowledge and experience

The true double standard is this:
Experienced players look down at newer players who skip content and rush to get to T5 (soon to be T6)
But see nothing wrong with requiring CR 90+ for gates or 80+ for FoS.

Someone who does not get carried and skip content can't progress.

Que for content: Your CR is what? Kick.
LFG: No we want a smooth run. Denied.
form your own group: Your CR is what? Leave.
and Leagues are just as bad. If you're not part of the "in clique" of the league, you might as well not be a member.

Of course people rush to end game and skip content. You expect people to wait around to find groups for batcave1? Kandaq? inner? No one runs that content. Now even if you do run old content for new players guess what they just run around while everyone else completes these raids for them. It is boring. Why wouldn't anyone try and skip all the boring useless content over just rushing through and play the content the community is actually playing?

This mmo is way to small. It is way to difficult to catch up. The community expectation for new players is insane.

When is the last time anyone in this thread got in a group of 8 people all in t2 gear to do Khandaq? heck I rarely see anyone doing any t2/t3 raids at all, much less as they were designed to be done.

Content skipping is more complex of an issue than what some are saying.

Playing old content is never the same once it's old content. When it was fresh and new you had multiple groups running it, all in the same gear, all treating it as a challenging raid.

Now you have folks who are running it in t5 gear, grouped up with the t2 newbie (if they even let that t2 guy in the group) making the entire raid a joke and that t2 person learns basically nothing from the experience.

As far as no walk ins, I'm not against that at all. I can get a toon to t5 without walk ins in 2 weeks. That's fine by me. But I don't see it fixing the issue much. It may take newer players a little longer, but duo drops can get you in to t4 pretty quickly. With the introduction of synthetic mods you can much more easily bump your CR up a bit.

The way I see it you're either going to have a huge gap between newer and older players, such that it pushes newer players away as they are so far behind. Or you make it somewhat easier to catch up, but then you have less experienced players mingling with the more experienced in the same content. Neither option is particularly great.

You can progress without walk ins and carries, but not doing raids, which leaves those players inexperienced in raiding. Which means nexus/PW may be their first raiding experience.... LOL. heck even if they are carried when your first experience of a non carry raid are these t5 raids....

Removing walk ins isn't going to suddenly make t2/t3/t4 content the same as it use to be. Chances are if you are in a group for those there's going to be a couple people way overgeared for it making the raid much much easier, meaning the newer players learn less.

Remember in batcave 1 when people pulled the spider to the bridge? LOL when is the last time you have seen that? 2011????? Again i will keep saying this the expectation for new players is insane.

I went back and started running content as it was meant to be run; I ran it in CR 48-50 gear for the Outer Caverns you mention (I think that's what you mean, anyway). However, I never learned the tactic you suggest, so I am wondering what advantage there is to it, and forgive my ignorance, but what bridge? lol

Here's what I learned in going back: I knew nothing about how to complete the raids with a group geared for Tier 2 content. I have now started teaching those players how to run it and it is a lot more fun with the challenge of players who are properly geared and not over-geared. Most players don't know you have to throw the bombs at the spider; many still try to bash the spider with the bombs. That leads to another question I have: Why is bashing not an intended way to bring the shield down but throwing is? Did the developers ever give a reason in the early days of this game?

*By the way: I assume by the spider you mean the Riot Control Prototype (RCP) in Outer Caverns?

The reason there isn't anything on that content is because everyone is rushing into end-game and not doing it. The ones who don't want to rush or don't have the means to, end up not staying in the game due to everything being about end-game. It's a cycle that is not ending because in MMORPGs players will use what they can. And who can blame them? Really it comes down to the Devs having the foresight to implement things into the game that will not cripple beginning game while still adding to end-game.

The state of the game's barren and dead beginning game, and less skilled but well geared end-game (like being described here) is the Dev's fault. Maybe not intentionally, but they opened the door to this possibility and are really the only ones who can effectively shut it.

Well would it make more sense if people had to play 3 months per DLC to catch up ?

They have to decrease the time for older content else you'd be stuck working lower tiers for ever.

In either case halfing the marks needed for t3 and putting replay badges in there show that's how they want it.

And I think it also makes sense that people move up from buying discounted content.

Yes, but that content wouldn't need to be discounted if they didn't make it easy for people to rush past it. If they kept it necessary like it once was.

They would also have more time to work on new content, since people wouldn't be getting through everything they release within a couple weeks. Therefor leading to better quality content with less bugs being released.

People wouldn't be stuck in lower content, they'd just have to take the originally intended game pace through it, leading to more skill gained most likely before they reach the end-game content.

But yes, the Devs seem to want people to be able to easily rush through content. They're just creating their own problems though.

Well said

I think the problem has partly to do with the open world aspect of higher tier people picking on level 5 or level 20 characters during their quest. At some point people say, "I'm tired of being a victim in this world, I'll do whatever it takes to knocked get ko'd in 1 second!"
I play the game for the open world aspect, don't care about the league or group content. Just to have a place in the world is exciting enough. But seriously, if people could enjoy their experience without some moron, who probably was mad they got ko'd in some higher tier quest stopped standing in a lower level area for hours just ko'ing people for fun, maybe new players wouldn't have this philosophy?

Blame the mark of triumph consolidation.