Problem isn't support/dps or the devs... it's us

Soylent Green is people!!!!!!!

At this point, its far too late to try to enforce 2-2-2-2. It would hurt the game more than 5-1-1-1 has. It would have been ideal if this was enforced at launch. But now its a waste.

Honestly I have run out of ideas to fix the problem with support roles and general gameplay.

It will be most interesting to see how devs pull the game out of this hole it has fallen into.

Yea the guy is just a mess at this point. So many ifs and maybes..... Very little to look forward to.

And didn't devs purpose the removal of role- less buffs, removal of scoreboard, and added mechanics the last time you guys had this discussion 2 MONTHS AGO! Lol

Same problem, same arguments, same answers, and nothing changes

Why is it too late? I think the only hard part of that 2-2-2-2 setup is the 2 tanks, and people have been managing that for raids like Throne and HH. There are plenty of healers and controllers out there just waiting for action.

That being said, I don't want 2-2-2-2 really. 1 tank 3 DPS is preferable for me.

One reason would be you don't have the population to enforce it. If you don't have a well defined friends list or a league that will run with you, a lot of people would potentially be left out of content. If Content is made to where only a balanced setup can get through it, what happens to the people who are not in leagues or have a well defined friends list? They leave the game would be my guess. Less people playing = less people paying.

If that was truly the case, you wouldn't see 4 dps alerts as often as it is portrayed to happen. I personally haven't been a part of 4 dps runs yet although I pug everything. I also play both roles.

Simply because there arent plenty of healers and trollers out there just waiting.

On USPS, you mostly see 3dps 1 heal runs for new alerts. Every piece of old content I que for even with role enable alerts on, its always 4 dps with people who just Q their role as well to get a faster Q. And when you ask them to switch, its always," I dont have support role gear".

Makes me rage quit and play another game every time.

But what are the chances you can change that with the upcoming dlc structure? I know you guys n gals got great info so I may be waaaay off, but do you think people want shorter instances because they replay the hell out of them? I personally limit myself to a replay a week so it stays fresh, while others will spam an instance over and over until they can do it in their sleep. I'm sure by the 5th NgN run of the day they're ready for it to be over before it starts.

My point being; when you start pumping out new content monthly, don't you think that the freshness of instances will keep people entertained a bit better than now? I know people will still spam replays. I know there will be instances that people will not enjoy. I just hope that with the ammount of time dlc's are gonna be coming at us, maybe the game will hold our attention longer. It seems like a great way to keep people from boring themselves or wanting to get something done just to get it done.

It would be nice to see if you could possibly gradually incline the length/challenge until you see that point where the diehard's are satisfied and the tryhard's get better at the game.

After freeing then fighting alongside the npc, the npc gives insane compliments to the player to immediately make them feel part of the DCUO world. Compliments such as "Holy crap, you're a beast dps. What's your cr, bro? It's gotta be like 150 with that amazing burn. Im going on the forums to let everyone know your powerset is waaaaayyyyyyy op and needs a nerfing because you're destroying everything before I can finish my rotation."

Oh yea, and then the npc thanks you and tells you how excited he/she/it is to fight alongside you in end-game.

↑↑Just joking around with your comment but I do like the idea. Hopefully the devs' idea will get more players off of the ship.

I wonder if it is possible for the devs to lock a player into the role that they queued for. Allow them to only access armories that are a part of their queued role and put a restriction on any other armories. I see this a lot when I queue, too. It's dang near impossible to get players to switch to the support role they queued with sometimes.

Of course this armory locking mechanic would only be for groups that aren't pre-formed. But then again, this could be a bad idea. Hell, I don't know. I just want ****ers to quit queing as a support role and then staying in dps role pretty much the entire time. It gets annoying.

I join groups as both tank/damage. I then ask players in the group if they would like me to run as a tank. Most times, they tell me to go damage. If they ask me to tank, I tank. Wish more people who queued as both were willing to play whatever the group preferred.

Locking roles would punish good players in order to police bad ones. I see compet....err, capable groups swapping around which roles people play in the middle more often than I do these people who won't play their role. There's no benefit putting someone into a role that they're terrible at.

Damage vs. support role is just a switch people flip. You can flip it while wearing damage role gear, with bad modding, without SP allocated correctly, and without knowing how to actually play the role. For example, you are not suddenly going to get 'leet and well geared trolls, ones who know how to use POT and debuffs, simply because you forced them into the controller role. The players people are annoyed by today are just going to run damage gear and loadouts while locked into troll role, so they can get moar burn!!!

This isn't even a DCUO specific problem. I was amused the other day to see a long Reddit thread about support roles that reads just like the messages here, except referencing a whole pile of other games. There are only two ways to get people into support roles: make content impossible without them, or make the net burn faster if you use them.

Reading this thread is like trying to cut away a spider web one strand at a time. There is a lot here that people have pointed out and no clear winner as to the root of the problem. The reason is that there is no clear winner to the problem. Every part of this game is guilty of something not being done or not being done right. Developers and community members all have various ideas of what needs to be accomplished and it shows. It is such a rough patch, but we can get through it.

1. Toon Accounts: The data about not leaving Brainiac Ship, is that from an account basis or names within the account? like toon A is a fire and toon B is a quantaum? There could be several things leading up to that. I also do not know if the data supports those who have deleted toon names that never got past level 1 for whatever reason. Now, I made quite a few toon names goofing around and putting names in our private league channel to signify the name is usable. The names ranged from obscene, comical, serious, to just plain out there. I still do it, and I am sure others do it too. Also. there are name holders out there that carry a specified name just for the sake of having it. Even with the purge those names could be scooped up and never seen again. The main account is active, but the names remain frozen. Lastly, on this point are the accounts that were made when the recruiting offers were in place. The great gold belts, that people wore, not all of them were done by bringing their friends in. Sure, they slapped a few bucks and gave the game some money for a time, but long term use was out of the question.

2. The new system in place with the CR min/max: What this has created is a reluctance to do older content for no real reward other than helping your fellow man/woman. People do not want to waste their time to do a duo, alert, or raid, with no real incentive. There are balance issues as well, that makes some of the older content harder than newer stuff with max gear and tons of skill points.

3. Styles and stats. Retaining people is going to be hard if there are areas of the game when there is little to no help. Again, going back a bit to point 2 if there is no reason for a player to give their time to help another they generally will not. People can essentially leap frog content with gear from inside instances and leave the vendor styles alone. The reduced cost was nice for some tiers, but if a toon is 117 CR, then the style from the older content beyond tier 3 should go into the vendor style maybe at a cost of 15 or 20 marks.

4. DPS issues: Yes, this game has been notorious for high damage to breeze through content. Balance issues have also hurt the player base with the other roles. Some just want one nature healer or one seriously good controller with a tank or two while the rest are DPS. This game has never been truly balanced for a group of 2-2-2-2. It used to be one tank, three DPS, 2 controllers and two healers. Now all that is in the air to compensate the need for more aggro takers and to damage down bosses as fast as possible. Things like speed timers, (reinforcements) mean more DPS will be necessary to push past a thresh hold. Not everyone is a leet player that can zip out millions in a few minutes. Others take longer, it is just a fact that not everyone is a premium player. The hot damage dealers tend to be the newer powersets, controller powersets, and anything that got a slight tweak. Flavors of the Month. The sad part is that it generates revenue, but not all powers are equal and going back to revamp them over and over again proves this point. Yes this is a business,m but some players can spend the money for the FOTM, while others cant and have to make due. The competitiveness of the game is also an Achilles's Heel; not everyone wants to see a scoreboard with the damage as the number one thing. Change it out or give an ability to turn it off. In PVP that could matter, but to a healer damage out does not mean jack.

5. Other support roles: kinda falls in line with DPS, not all support roles do the best at their job, depending on content. a gadgets could be better than say a mental, or an ice tank better than rage. It is not the fault of the devs or the player, but how chips fall. Content feels like it must be done in a hurry, so only certain powertypes in a role will do. Remember, in one of the aforementioned points one healer and it generally is a bug formed nature user, because of the limits of the other healer types. The situation varies and that can screw players. Cant make everyone happy. Controller debuffs and power replenishment. Tweak some of the debuffs to add more strategy to the game. Attack debuffs are not adequate. control resistance should be weaker or stronger to non existent depending on the CR of player and the content.

6a. Player staying power: this game is 4 1/2 years old. Since that time, the games reputation has built up a lot of word-of-mouth that game magazines do not need to be paid to talk about. Remember each area of gaming has players dedicated to playing that genre. The niche for super heroes may not be as large as say a bloodbath of Call of Duty multiplayer. There are plenty of other games to choose from and with no clear direction as to WHO this game wants to cater to hurts it. 1% one week, and casuals the next is really flippy floppy. Instead of eye candy, fix the broken or outdated crud that plagues the game. We all know that the Playstation 3 is nearing the limit of what it can handle with this game. It is a shame that players will be alienated from a game they put money into because PS4 and, in the future, PC will try to keep them away from raids due to slowing them down. Sometimes cuts have to be made, this is a business after all. Personally, people do need breaks from games too. Sometimes, in those breaks, players just lose interest to log in at all.

6b: The tutorial is not bad, it could be better, but it is not super bad. One early on feature that people praised was the fact leveling to 30 was a snap. Other games could take weeks to get through, but not here, it takes a good solid day to march to thirty and then the real fun begins. However, that can mean the story immersion can be dull to almost pointless with multiple stores that just end and on to the next point of interest. But again, this game is old, there are newer things to play, and the lack of help all contribute to a player feeling less inclined to play or stick around.

7. So all this stuff means it is a player and development issue. Never assume the community are all going to be happy or police itself too much. Players will always find ways to exploit or cheat the system and if the response to action is not quick enough, then those honest players might give up the good fight. It happens. Not everything is going to run smooth, it is a game. Devs need job security. This is their job and the communities recreation after all. Spytle pays bills due to games he works on and that we play. So, they do good work in some areas, but the data needs to find where there was the best revenue and then compare it to a graph of how many players became inactive. Find the pattern and then potentially move from their with what isd left of the current player base. Find the sweet spot and take my money.

I do love the game, I take a break for stuff like real life, but I do love the game. It was how I was turned on to MMOs. I met some really cool people that have stayed and others that have left. In the end this game will eventually close its doors and we will all be searching for the next big adventure. Until then, I will be flying, zipping, or speeding my way through buildings and on ledges waiting to punch my objective to death. I look for the game to last a long time, I hope it does, but it will be finding the mix of player and development feedback that will steer how fast this game closes.

**Now can I please get a joker backpack from the vault. I have been going through it everyday and bought many fricken tickets to get it and still have not gotten it on Roxley and he has been playing since March 2011. So please, hook me up. Other people could use it too, I bet. So, all in all. keep on working to find balance and let the money guide you. I wish the Developers and the community success on what direction the game goes. I am still here playing it. So, I have not lost my faith. ~I just want a backpack.~

[quote="If that was truly the case, you wouldn't see 4 dps alerts as often as it is portrayed to happen. I personally haven't been a part of 4 dps runs yet although I pug everything. I also play both roles.[/quote]

People run 4 dps alerts because dps are overpowered and can complete the content faster. It is not a lack of roles it is the fact that one role is 2 to 3 times stronger than other roles. The game is in trouble if you can complete everything within 10 minutes.

Instead of balancing the game against the different roles there has been far too much focus on balancing the dps powers.

I wouldn't say it's because DPS are overpowered, I would say, it's because there are skilled players in those groups that are capable of doing that. What would be interesting to know is if the devs could provide some details on how often that setup is successful versus how many times it has been attempted. I would suspect because of the varying level of skill in the game, it is not as successful as people seem to think it is. I would also suspect that the faster completion times are being done by skilled players.

I play on the pc. In my daily adventures on DC I see a wide gambit of skill level. Like I said previously I pug everything and I have yet to see a 4 dps run in any alert I have done. My perspective is limited to the stuff I run, so I'm not saying it don't happen, or even how often it happens, just that in my daily runs I have yet to see it.

There is a style vendor, it's near the rare style vendor, sells the styles from old tier gear for 10 marks per piece.

Yeah mentioned this while chatting to league mate last night. Really hard to believe. (not saying we don't believe u)

Depending on the loadout damage out matters with celestial healing

Perhaps the devs should make new content, alerts and raids, have some slightly more specific mechanics. Let's say a boss goes into a certain mode where he/she cannot be damaged except while under a controller's defense debuff. Let's say this same boss has one shot mechanics which can be dealt with with the controllers damage output debuff. There could be plenty of ideas but that's just one of likely many. It would force a controller to be needed and become useful rather than only wanted for feeding power in raids. Similar things could be implemented for healer and tank also I'm sure.