Work In Progress Mid-Year Development Update: Announcing Large Content Releases, Open Episodes, and Summer Plans

So it's cool to announce things, say this is what you can look forward to in 2016, then 6 months later say, these features aren't planned to launch until 2017? And people shouldn't question it?

That's like a child saying, "Uh-uh, didn't count 'cause I didn't say promise."

He is actually right. Notice how a good portion of the sp are just grinding. Most of them are busy work to extend the life of he game. Jens even said on a stream a lot of these things were meant as lifetime goals and not meant to be completed right away. They made the perplexing choice to attach such things to stats. To this day that boggles my mind. Do a lot of frivolous task to get stat increases makes no sense to me. Usually feats in MMOs grant some fall bonus like extra gold drops, bag space, xp, and titles etc. Sp inherently prevents new players from catching up with veterans as they will always be inferior. That to me is a design flaw especially since they advocate catching up. Look at how segregated the community has become on running content with x amount of sp.

Definitely the right thing to do. Some of us are willing to wait as long as everything's done right. I'm excited for the future now.

Nice ideas,

But agree with below post that they are as boring as boring is....basically this game will be a ghost town, due to poor planning and contracting on Xbox instead of content.
i think people don't realize how long four to five months with no content is....many will take a break...grind skill points? Why they mean crap?
This is a nessary evil but no one is stating the obvious is this content layover is due to poor planning, making content per month instead of creating content for a cycle and then releasing monthly...I.e. Again poor planning.

I mean look at bombshell, how much content was left unused for that world?.....again poor planning.

Now we will wait one fourth of a year for new content....I think it's going to be a bumpy ride.....

Btw survival mode as anything is ridiculous, that like going to restaurant and them saying we are out of everything on the menu but we have bread...and h yeah legendary members...here is still your normal check.....

Your assessment is predicated on the idea that SP should give your character stats at all. I disagree with that idea for several reasons. The two main gripes I have with the system are

1) grinding SP is far too much of a time sink for new players to catch up to long-time players. That fact basically precludes them from being too meaningful or else a large part of the population will be at an extreme disadvantage.

and

2) the system ends up producing carbon copy toons as players acquire large amounts of SP. There are no compelling choices to make, no real customization or specialization of your characters once you acquire a pile of SP. It makes for a boring, bland progression system as you approach homogenization with the rest of the high-SP toons. Limiting the number of SP you can have along with a revamp of the trees will force real choices and allow for real diversity.

The revised progression system is an opportunity to fundamentally change how we build our toons while allowing us to experiment and play around with our characters. I'm thinking the changes will touch not only Skills but Powers, mods and gear, too. Done right, it could be a deeper system that gives us real choices that also makes it easier for the devs to balance the game as a whole.

Nope, I simply didn't know you were in favour of monthly content. You didn't need to try to be clairvoyant.

I still don't see this fixing all of the problems....

SJ said on twitter that the monthly release somewhat hampers her storyline. I think we can all agree that Wastelands Wonderland felt like filler along with Deep Desires. Perhaps if they were released as part of a larger DLC with DC and UM it would not have felt like filler.

Personally, if quarterly content gets us back to more alerts and less duos I will be happier.

what are the plans for water to not look like quantum? and since quantum looks already like water, y is water so much demanded anyways? im happy imagine that quantum is water (only the name of power and stuff differs anyways) so, no need for it for meee ^^ suggestion: change quantums name to water and give us serums pls...

It's not a 6 month wait, people are doing wrong estimatives trying to make the change the worst as possible, 6 month is the same as saying it'll be released in february, and mepps said end of this year or beggining of the next one, something near november, december or january, we'll have episode 26 to play in august, so, you start counting it from week 2 of august to december.

So basically there isn't anything coming out that will be interesting until next yr mostly. And then by the beginning of that yr its not guaranteed that it will be in the first 6 months of that yr. Well i guess i will just continue to stay premium until that time comes.
Disappointed with this. I have played this game for years and expected more and continued getting less. The people i played with don't really play anymore so its really coming more and more less exciting to play. But maybe they will come back next year when some better things are released.

Yeah, they had to work a lot, but they were getting a ton of instant money from replay badges and membership.
I really think they got our feedback about monthly content and saw how it was making players run away, with the quarterly or whatever they make now, we'll have more time to test things and play content, also they'll have more time to build new ways of progression.
I'm not trying to be rude, but i'm really happy to see just like 20% saying yes to monthly content and 80% saying no, this mean they are finally getting what most of us wanted, and may change it for even more in the future, we may agree with each other when it's released, you may be able to get this post and say : You were wrong, or i may be able to get your post and say: You were wrong. Future shall tell us.

all these new players coming in i am starting to wonder if some of them just same people with new accounts?

Why wait???

You were wrong.

And sadly.... I strongly doubt it is because they "heard our feedback".
Most likely they just could not keep up with the extra workload.

I think if they bring enough other content like survival mode, PvP and seasonal events, it should work. Amazon fury 2 was a large content dlc and was a pretty darn good one as well. If they release quality content it will be worth the wait. I do understand your concern and enjoy the monthly content myself. It's kind of a make or break time for the game.

I disagree that it's quality and substance which maintain player interest. It depends a lot more on progression and longevity than anything else.

One of the best raids they've ever done is Assault and Battery. Each boss was an iconic DC Comics character (if you went to Metropolis, at least). It had that fun maze mechanic and the final boss fight was fantastic, where Controllers actually had something to do which hinged upon the success of the instance. The storyline was superb, too and really helped launch the WOTL storyline. It's basically the raid you're describing in your comment.

Yet that episode completely failed because of progression and longevity.

The raid was dropping Level 90 gear guaranteed (but perhaps not for your role), which was the same level as the vendor gear. You could save up 90 Marks within a week, run A&B and see which gear you got and then fill in the blanks with vendor gear. It took absolutely no time at all to reach CR103 and there was nothing else to do except run that raid once per week or revisit old content (like Nexus and Paradox Wave) and flex off your new strength in there.

The quality of A&B didn't improve longevity, at all.

Game Updates rarely bring in new content/features and when they do, they don't do anything to hold over interest. The fourth colour pallet is one hell of a good feature that improves customisation a lot, but it does absolutely nothing to encourage me to play more DCUO.

The only GU which has done that, for me at least, was the League Halls update, by which me and my friends spent so much time running so much content to get enough prestige to buy our league hall. That was fun and kept the game enjoyable. Ironically enough, the longevity of DLC11 killed off that league to the point where there wasn't even enough of us online to make up half a Survival Mode group for Trigon's Prison SM about 2 months after that content launched.

Like I said in my first reply to this thread, it depends ultimately on how progression is going to be handled going forward. The new cadence could be the miracle tonic this game needs. But it all ultimately hinges on how much progression is going to change. If it barely changes or is re-balanced to be exactly the same as it always has been since DLC7, then all we've done is lost our regular flow of content and reverted back to the broken model that quarterly DLCs had.

My thoughts:

Beginning of next year could mean March!

So: AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, DECEMBER, JANUARY, FEBRUARY, MARCH ...
I count 8, maybe even 9 month of no new PvE content.

I am sooo glad that I still sub with old 30 Day cards
For sure I won't sub from August on.

You could have created content first and after a 2-3 month break come up with episode 27 in October?
Looks like you can NOT do it, because you are understaffed.
THIS IS NOT THE PAYING COSTUMERS PROBLEM!
Get a new good team together, or bring good old people back, or do something else to bring in manpower to get things done, rather than just cut your costs for share holder value and profit maximization!

Together with all the shortcomings of the last months and years, I think this will be the straw that breaks the camels back.
In 2016: Water won't come, major powers (Nature, Electricity ...) won't be fixed, Loot & drop tables are "fixed" to bring in maximum profit for DBG (Exceptional recovery kits, cosmic material, etc ...), still not possible to sub with PayPal or any other form of 21st Century payment method, remember new GUI?, etc ... AND the list goes on and on and on and on ...

"allow you to enjoy your achievements longer" ... could have been achieved without a 9 month break from new PvE content.
In fact, it could have been achieved without changing from monthly content.
The monthly content was a good thing IMHO. People had new stories to tell/write/play every 30 or sometimes 40+ day month.
(Yes, we noticed we started with the monthly episodes on the first Wednesday and now we are down to the last Wednesday a month)
But being understaffed prohibited you to fulfill your promises and obligations.
Now we are not only getting (Rick') rolled back, we all have to sit in the penalty box for ~ 9 month.

I won't pay for this anymore. After episode 26 I will watch the forums, hear what the remaining league members have to say, maybe go back to Champions Online or Star Wars:The Old Republic or find a new Superhero/SciFi-MMORPG.
Will I come back in 2017? Ask me in January or March.
But from today's point of view I seriously doubt it.
My superhero fanboy heart is bleeding and sheds a waterfall of tears ...


Or maybe tell me that you start developing DCUO 2.0, without the PS3 support,
in the coming 9 month?
Do a Kickstarter and count me and my money in ... right NOW!
hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last. hope dies last.

By and large the gap is looking to be 3 months to provide the equivalent of 3 months content...I don't think we can look to miracles in what is provided. What I do feel we can expect is a more consistent plan to make that content last.......the monthly cycle offered us an hour or so of content to burn in that month....just making it 3 hours for three months won't cut it - there needs to be a new approach to content that broadens its appeal and ability to keep us online, tasks that usefully occupy us between queues, or nothing has been gained.

It seems to me that these guys can't make up their minds. They made such a big deal about switching to monthly content, and then a year later we are switching back. I love how they always use the explanation that they are giving us what WE asked for. Is that really the case? It just seems like since day one, Daybreak is consistently inconsistent.

The initial cost of DCUO was 54 million, better get that kickstarter going now.