Barrier to Entry for DC Universe Online

I tried a few of the portals in the WT in my early days.

Heck when SoT was just released I walked into the Tunnel of Lust wondering where this would take me.

I made my way to the very end... only to be permastunned and realise that this was not a solo mission.... and the devs have made extra sure that we could not solo it.

The devs are working on tips in the loading screens, that should help with some of these issues.

They should do another mission in the ship or something similar when you reach level 30 that shows you the basics of your role.

I remember I googled "how to go to Metropolis dcuo" when i started the game 2 years ago, and people still ask how to do that in shout chat.
Besides, the "tutorial" which brings you from lvl 1 to lvl 30 doesn't teach you how to play your support role because the solo content is meant to be run in damage role.
Another issue is PvP. On the Brainiac ship you are informed about the combat mechanics but they don't tell you that a counter in a PvP situation grants immunity (and anyway speaking of the ship i don't know they say "channeling" instead of "block breaker", kind of confusing imho).

The only thing I take issue with (and I see this becoming more and more prevalent on the forums) is the idea that its the developers' job to grab every new player by the hand and walk them through everything. Frankly, if I was a new player reading this, I'd be insulted that people thought I was too stupid to find information on my own.

Information is everywhere in the age we live in, accessible simply by moving your fingers across a keyboard a few times.

Besides, the last time they did an update that was strictly for players in the leveling process, this playerbase completely flipped out because it was an update that didn't directly affect them. So I have no reason to believe that going back and including tutorials would elicit any more of a positive response.

I apologize for not seeing this thread before.
It doesn't appear that anyone has really answered your questions.

Not only is there no in-game tutorial, the official game documentation both in and out of game is completely lacking, wrong, or non-existent. I have brought up some of these same points before, and I agree with you completely.

An MMO or MMORPG for that matter, doesn't have any "final objective" other than possibly leveling-up and collecting the best gear or rare items in the game. There are mission arcs that have final objects to complete the story arc.
An MMO is broken down into two parts. Leveling-content where your character proceeds from being level 1 to the highest level in the game. End-game content where your character grinds or farms for better gear or equipment in content that has been slapped-on the end of the game to gain player-retention once the leveling-content has been completed.

The point is to enjoy the immersion in the virtual world and it's genre.
In the case of DCUO, this means being part of the DC comic world as your own super-hero or super-villain.

Raids, Operations, and Alerts are all accessed through the My Duty menu. These are instances that are separate from the open world. In this way, they are like door-mission in the leveling-content. The point is for a group to battle their way through to the end-boss and defeat the end-boss. Along the way, loot is dropped that you can use to improve your character's stats. These are meant to be co-operative; that is to say that the group of players is generally supposed to work a team to complete the objectives and that it can not be completed by a single characters actions alone (unless someone in the group has a might higher level and/or tier than then instance).
All of these include content where the group must move into an area as one or their is the possibility of locking some players out of the interaction with a boss or sub-boss. In these situations, anyone that is defeated and not revived in time respawns outside of the locked area and must wait with the other players that were locked out. The battle proceeds until all players are defeated (and, therefore, locked out) or the players manage to defeat the boss.

Raids are 8-player content that are unlocked once you have reached level 30 tier 2. These tend to take longer than other instanced content; plan to put aside an hour or 2 at least in order to run a raid - some teams take much longer to complete raids.

I haven't bothered with Operations. Off hand, I think they 4-player content that is longer and meant to be harder than Alerts (which are also 4-player). Same basic points of a Raid. I don't know how long these usually take.

Alerts are 4-player content. This is the most basic of group instances in DCUO. These start at level 9 and continue to be unlocked as a character progresses. An Alert generally takes between 20 minutes and 1 1/2 hours to complete.
Generally Alerts have quite clearly defined boundaries where a player can see the divide between one section of the mission and the next. Players must complete each section in order to receive directions in order to proceed to the next sub-mission.

The difference is how many players can participate, the difficulty level, and how long they generally take to complete.

Playing with friends. That's really a good question. The grouping mechanics in this game are very bad and the leveling content is not conducive to grouping.
Leveling-content is geared in such a way that if you want to play with your friends, you need to all pick the same mentor. Once you have done that, you will each have to run individually to get out of Brianiac's ship. Once that has completed, you need to group up using the /invite feature (generally, I use the F4 menu. You can use the nearby, recent chat, or friends option to add your friends to your friends list and/or simply select the invite option once you have selected one of their names). You can only have 4 players in a group. You are f2p, you will have to find someone to help you invite people to your group; I would use the /shout channel to do this (type /[channel name] to change channels - example /LFG, /shout, /group). Once you are all in the same group switch to the /group channel and use it to communicate - only those that you are grouped up with see /group chat. You should all go to the first contact listed. Everyone talk to them independently. Then go to where you are told to go and always have everyone talk to whatever contact that you are sent to. You will also all need to make sure to each complete your missions inside of your journals before proceeding to the next phase of each mission. If you get out of synch with another player, they will have to back track to help you; you will not get the same kind of credit if you try to skip ahead to where they are.
My Duty menu instances works a little better for teaming with friends, but you must already be in a group together if you want to be a part of the same Alert instance. Once again, make sure to switch over to the /group chat channel. Whoever is leader of the group - usually the one that did the inviting of the others - can pick a My Duty menu instance. This will activate the option to join this instance. All players will then need to pick their roles and click the option to indicate that they are ready. Depending on how many friends you have, you will either instantly be taken into the content or you will have to wait for other players to be selected by the queuing mechanics to bring you group up to the necessary number of players for the content (4 for Alerts, 8 for raids, etc.)
Once you reach level 30, you have reached the end game. At this point, you don't have to worry about gaining exp in any order so you can be a bit more free-form about teaming with friends. Most of the content is going to be through the My Duty menu by that point anyway. The only real issue is if some of the group doesn't have the CR (combat rating based upon gear in your inventory or equipped) to go into higher tiered content. There is no CR cap, so if one of your friends unlocks higher tier before you, they can still play the lower tiered content with you.

Gear drops by defeating enemies. The higher the level or tier of the content has correspondingly higher level gear, so you get better gear as you progress through the game content.

Gear can be upgraded by replacing it with better gear.
Also you can use exobits to form exobytes that can be crafted with a plan at an R&D station into a socket item to be placed into a gear socket. As your character's level progresses, you can purchase better sockets and plans for socket items that will generate higher stat bonuses.
You can also unlock socketing items in your base by activating the generator and paying the required price to charge generator power cells and unlock items (note the power cells degrade and you have to pay to recharge them each month. Also some base gear-modification items expire in a months time).

I don't know what reputation is.
Renown is a function of how well you are accepted by your faction. This has more-or-less been phased out of the game. The only thing it really does is unlock faction armor once you reach level 30 - as far as I can tell. I don't know anything else that it does. I did an experiment and had a character run their renown up to the 2nd unlock point and it didn't appear to do anything.

At this point the DEVs and SOE are only really focused on the end-game. I am very doubtful at this point in DCUO's progression that they are going to go back and add thing to make this game more approachable to new players.
I agree that the deflection angle on this game is huge.
The fact is that there have been so many changes to this game that I doubt the DEVs are even sure of how many changes that they have made and what impact it has had on a new players experience.

I just had to muddle through it and find out new things as I went along. Fortunately, my first MMORPG was City of Heroes and that was a tremendous game that was well documented through out with plenty of in-game tutorials. So I wasn't too taken aback by DCUO. Supposedly Brianiac's ship is a tutorial, but it seems to have no real relation to the rest of the game at all. I mean the game appears to me to be almost entirely different inside the ship and once you are out.
I had one friend that really had a problem with the concept of armor getting damaged and needing to make sure to repair it every time that they visited a vendor. Finally, they were just swinging around because they had damaged their weapon so badly it was broken. Luckily I was over at their house at the time, I had them open their inventory and virtually everything was broken. This wasn't a new gamer either. They had extensive gaming experience, but it is a good example about how this game has so many functions that clearly are not explained well, correctly, or at all.

I wish you good luck, and I'm sorry I didn't see your post earlier.

LMAO.

I've been playing this game quite happily and progressing nicely... And even I didn't know you can expand those stats to get descriptions of the currencies.

Anyway, I see half of the dev's position. The biggest problem I see, is the lack of role instruction or even pointers in the right direction. When the penalty for not knowing how to play your role is abuse and ridicule, the devs might want to think about helping players. The fact that we all (more or less) got there without instruction wouldn't make it any less useful.

And whilst I agree with the points about people using the internet to find information, I will add this: it's hard to search for information on something that you don't even know exists,

I agree with you. If there isn't a game manual physically put in your hands then the game have in-game documentation and tutorials to explain the game systems and questions that you have during gameplay.
This seems to be a trend in MMOs and MMORPGs. I have gone into this further before and had my posts yanked, so I can't say what is really on my mind in regards to this.

It looks like you ran into another reason that people leave MMO's. The MMO community itself.
Players have bad attitudes and little respect for other players - especially those that they feel that they have the right to look down upon.
I, however, see you point. The Journal at level 30 is a pile of garbage. It really doesn't direct you to what you can do or the order that it really should be done in. When I reach level 30, I try to gear up first, then I start doing the Alert of the day. I do this because once you reach level 30, it's all about gear and running the Alert of the day gives you extra tokens/marks toward purchasing better gear.
Generally once you hit T3 is where you are really going to start hearing garbage in-game from other players. There are some pretty vile people that feel that it is okay to treat other people anyway they like. We can take the time to use the /report feature, take screen shots of the dialog, and report them to customer service, but who is being punished for the bad behavior at that point? Sometimes it I best to just put that player's character on /ignore and move on.

Roles aren't explained at all in the game. Basically, it's like this.
Every character is by default a damager/DPS. They are able to dish out more damage than anyone else.
Then there are the roles. The roles are dependent upon your characters power set. So if pick Fire power set, the your role is tank,;if you pick Nature, your role is healer; and, if you pick gadgets, your role is controller. Roles are for support. Tanks are meant to attract enemies (aka holding agro) and absorbing damage (their damage intake is reduced). Healers have powers that allow them to protect and heal members of a group. Controllers have powers to restore power to group members and other powers to use for crowd-control.
Typically, in an MMO, the support roles augment the group so that the healer keeps everyone up while the tank draws the enemy fire, the controller slows the enemy down, and the damage-dealers take out the enemy. It takes a coordinated effort and tactics to make this work.
In practically in DCUO, the DPS/damagers tend to run berserk and expect the roles to chase them, keep them healed, and keep them powered so that they can spam their powers for might-based damage. The tanks are merely there to hold a boss's attention when the DPS/damagers admit that they can't do it without the tank.
Once you get into the higher tiers, some people start to learn how to work together. This is mostly within leagues. Otherwise, it turns into a blame game where the roles are always to blame for the DPS/damagers failure and infighting ensues.

I agree with you 100%. As soon as something new appears in the game, there should be an explanation. Here really is no excuse to not have an interface somewhere in the game (most probably in the police stations, safehouses, Watchtower, and Hall of Doom) that I can access, and it will give me a list of game terms and definitions at the very least. I would hope that I cold activate it and it would provide a tutorial on important game mechanics.
I want to go on, but if I express my views in regards to his issue to much I will have my post yanked. It has happened before, and I know about where the limits are as to what I can say and what I can't say in regards to game design, etc. So I have to stop here in that regard.

It will definitely kill a game. Any MMO must have a steady stream of new customers to start playing at the beginning. End-game players think that they support a game, but it is simply not the fact. That goes for any MMO or MMORPG. Any MMO or MMORPG that forgets about the new players and focuses totally on the very end of their game is doing just that - focusing on the end of their game.

I'm very glad that you brought these points up , and, once again, I apologize for not seeing this thread earlier

Wow! Appropriate Account Name.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone.

Just remember that sometimes a simple, text based walkthrough is enough to get people hooked.

I still can't believe they don't tell you with powers/skills/weapons require with base stats like prec, might, so on and so forth.

I acknowledged that someone mentioned that it would be too "pricey" to make excellent "dynamic" tutorials, but what about a wiki ingame? It could even be managed by the community - how? The Managers and consortium could create an official wiki for DCUO and could push drafts from players into an appropriate section which then would be available in the game.

And to respond to some posts in here - DC isn't that bad if you compare it with other MMO's. Sure, some have excellent tutorials but most of them are managed by communities throughout a respective forum, youtube/video instructions or replays, wiki's and such. I've even played an MMO where nothing was explained. Yes, nothing - and to this day it's a very popular game in the South Eastern Hemisphere.

What needs to be done is to include the community into the process while moderation is applied from the people in charge. It can work.

/edit
nevermind

in parts that is a fault of the community. why do walk ins to gate, fos3 and other instances'? to feel superior? i stopped running teleporter runs if it isnt a league run (3, 4, 5 man runs) just because of that. one gates run and a fresh lvl 30 is in full 2 or half t3 - one reset and he is full t3 without knowing anything about game mechanics and their role.

Is a tutorial needed yes very much so how ever with all that there is out there on the web for this game the answers are very easy to find.
One of the best sources ive seen is built on by the players the dcuo wiki can be found here ! There is a lot out there and until the devs release the app or actually get to build the tutorial. My suggestion is to play through 30 and check out a few leagues there are good ones and ones not so good. If your on pc and over 21 our league is recruiting on both hero and villain side. Elseworlds Finest our villain league is Elseworlds Eclipse same site.

I don't know how other people view it, but it still isn't 100% clear to me which instances are supposed to be walk-ins and which are supposed to be queued into. There is no indication on the teleporter or access door in the real world.

I remember once of the first times that I leveled up to 30, people were shouting for help with Arkham Asylum. It was in my journal. It said level 30 (no idea why theses still don't indicate tiers) and joined a team to try to run it. I assumed at the time that it was another door mission (maybe I am still wrong about this as I haven't bothered with trying to run it again). As a fresh tier 1, of course, there was little hope for me to be able to help the group much, and it appeared that everyone else was in the same position or lacked as much tactical ability if they were higher tiered.

I'm assuming that Central City isn't really a walk-in as much as a different city/zone like Gotham and Metropolis, but this is not clear in any way other than it not showing up in the My Duty menu. This is confusing.

I do understand that your point is about power-leveling and power-tiering.
If I'm understanding it correctly, players that are at a lower level than should be getting access are doing in order to jump gear tiers.
Central City has a tier lock on the transporter, why don't these other instances have the same?

I think the issue with roles starts in the character generator. It doesn't mention roles at all. It doesn't breakdown which power set is associated with which role. From a game design point of view, there is really no excuse for this.
Then it is increased by getting access to the role at level 10 with no explanation other that may be a hit T to change roles (on the PC). This is when you learn what your role is unless you noticed references to the role in the power descriptions. There aren't even references to the load-out trays or how to place powers in them. (And color distinctions in the role load-out as to which powers have a role-related form and which are FX/damage only powers)
The Alert system is supposed to be the first place that players learn interaction in groups. However, from my experience there is virtually always a level 30 trying to get the speed feat on these - and they tend to do nothing more than try to power through the Alert (this goes for all the general Alerts). This overrides the grouping mechanic and a reason for learning proper role behavior; part of this is also do to the design of the early Alerts.

But people will always have friends/leaguemates that will walk them in...I dont blame the community as much as I do the developers for not halting their progress at least a little bit

There needs to be a harder cap on how fast you can go from level 1-CR103...Id really like to see a higher CR requirement for the lower tier levels (T1-T4) before they can purchase the gear

I agree they need to explain the basics at the beginning of the game. I remember when my friend joined the game and we tried to find each other for days. We swore we were both at Gotham diamond district PD. Didn't realize we were in different phases for over an hour lol

If only the game only allowed for Leagues/Guilds for mentor-ship and guidance.....?

I don't think they need to raise the CR-unlock on the tiers.
I'd rather see CR-locks on the walk-ins like the way that Central City.

I'm not for slowing down people's progress, but then there are things that really seem like exploits and/or power-leveling options that should be removed.

When you make the end-game seem like the reward rather than enjoying the rest of the content, you can expect most players to want to rush to it.
Which to me is a shame because the leveling-content is the actually game, and the end-game is there just to give players something to do once they have completed the leveling content.

I understand that most of the emphasis is on the end-game at this point. The DEVs should not make it harder for new characrters to reach the end-game because players with characters that are already there don't want them there.
But again, I do think that that new characters should go through the path of CR tiering and not have a way to bypass teirs as they progress.