Is this game under risk of dying?

Dcuo also has some of if not the worst decision makers in the history of gaming.

2011 tutorials were begged for and still are
2012 by then we end gamers had our share of end game newbies.

Dcuo responded by dumbing down the game so a blind guy with 1 hand can steam roll the game

Subscription is and always has been income source #1 market place as a second and everything else icing on the cake. Dcuo however disregarded all the subs they drove away because a few people spent in droves. Where are the whales from the OG smoke aura? Right moved on and had enough as did so many cheated by such awful buisness models

Remember when the seasonal alerts could kick you butt if you had a couple goofballs in the group. And, needing to know how stats worked so that you could mod your gear right to get the best CR you could. Man good times.

I think that DCU got a big boost in players last year when Marvel online went out of business. Many people who I played DCU online with before Marvel came out, migrated there (as did I), but have now returned. To us, DCU is now the only game in town.

And since I've been back, DCU has done some very smart things to keep us playing … like free previews of later chapters at level 10, and TWO free advancements for characters, once to 170 and once to 210. When I was last here I never knew how good or how varied the storyline and graphics were. I was in the position of having bought a membership that gave me all the new chapters, but I didn't have the CR to use them. Extremely frustrating. Now that frustration is all gone.

So, from my POV, DCU is doing just great. Looking forward to more.

this game probably isn't dying, crooked or not, no development team sells lifetime memberships when the game is a sinking ship. there's also the fact that they seem confident enough to release willingly a knock off version of one of their biggest money making styles by releasing the wings of glitter. one of the biggest things which helped dcuo age gracefully is that it's graphics aren't quite outdated yet like other games roughly it's age and higher, with it's only real defect being focusing on multiplayer content when the population is so low. if we had more players, especially one's who actually know each tier's mechanics, even this wouldn't be a problem. dcuo just needs advertising like WoW, final fantasy, league of legends etc. cause think about it..........the last public dcuo commercial ad was for amazon fury III.

DCUO isn't dying, it's gone to the nursing home of games, however, Daybreak.

The reality is, and I know this will outrage the fanboys, the only thing paying the bills as as of 2019 are the "whales."

In game development, that's what we call long-time loyalists who invest hundreds of dollars in their gaming activity monthly. Fortunately, these people have been there since the start and have a long term investment in the game. They don't want to lose the progress they've made or the money they've spent. Whales are the driving force behind any Free-to-Play MMO.

What has hamstringed DCUO is the competition. In 2014, it was the top grossing free to play game on console. Fast forward 5 years and they've been buried beneath the likes of games like Fortnite (2.4 Billion), League of Legends (1.4 billion) and even Candy Crush Saga (1.1 billion). Even the lowest on the F2P tier for gross intake,Clash Royale Supercet Tencent cam in at 0.9 billion and DCUO found itself well beneath even the top 20.

The problem with DCUO is subscriber retention and acquisition of new players who transition to from free-2-play to a subscriber. The content is too repetitive and the episodes featuring new content have a short shelf life- players expend much of the new content in days. They trying to do some damage control now, understandably: They're updating character models to higher resolution to appeal to player having a first look experience. They don't want to risk being dismissed as antiquated.

They introduced source marks to give new player easier access to old content to expedite the CR climb and minimize the wash/rinse/repeat grind so they're exposed to later content sooner rather than later, thus reducing the exhaustive, repetitive nature of doing the same thing every day for months on end.

They've tied to balance and restructure combining the pursuit of skill points rather than just gear. They're tied to incentivise subscribing by locking out content that doesn't really have any impact on player potential, but instead makes it feel like you're not simply a pre-designed template. "Sinks" are what we ask people to spend money on for sheer convenience, so if they don't subscribe, they'll pay to increase inventory space or bank slots or buy a top tier character to avoid the annoyance of the surreptitious haul to top cr so they might be competitive in PvP if thats their interest. Sinks are the cosmetic things you buy, or the stabilizers you buy to open capsules. They aren't highly relative to the game experience. A lot of player prioritize character customization and lair decoration above gameplay mechanics thus will dump tons of real cash into things like that.

But the mechanics have not aged well, and while it might be appealing to people who like comics and love the movies, getting them to subscribe is a whole other problem, and currently there's just not enough incentive given so many things lock per account, not character, so progress, even experiences, can only be had by one character making diversifying your playing of others pointless. So one character, relentless repetition, short "episodes" of brief new content makes it teeter on the edge of obscurity when compared to other, more recent options. Daybreak is relying to heavily on comicbook/movie stans instead of expansive expeiences. They haven't really grown or developed past initial release except for the short episodes that don't stop the repeat cycle or induce the feeling of progress. Most game, when they introduce expansions, introduce new end game mechanics. Not DCUO. It's just a few new instances of "collect 54 of these" or "Kill 20 of that" or "Do this mission 5 days in a row." That's lazy and the attention span of younger generations are not as patient.

The two faction system is also largely inhibiting growth. Have you queued for fr things to find they never prompt? Lot's have. One side (Heroes) is much more heavily populated thn the other (Villains) and solo progress in most cases isnt an option. You queue for the same instances every day with the hopes others will also. You stop seeing new things, having new experiences, developing new goals.

DCUO isn't dead, but it's on life support. It's being taken care of by the same nurses changing the diapers and checking the vitals of other decade old titles with a core base of player who grew with it.

Sincerely,
A game developer

Every game is at risk of shutting down.

CoH is the most profitable successful superhero mmo to date, but it shutdown years ago when it was still earning profits. CoH shutdown, but it now has a private server that players can play on, for free. They are currently negations with NCSoft.

If DCUO does shutdown, maybe they can do the same. Although I doubt it because DC is a rather prestigious IP. You never know though.

all yall must be wearing necromancer style in game

Hmmm... Yeah, well, if the game does shut down, in the future. I hope i'll be able to seek revenge (against my, very, very old league leader) quick, quiet and respectful. The man's done a lot of bad things for me he deserves that" ^

With the new skins removing the black censor patches... I've been seeing it more often!

(Yes, I know what you actually meant, but I am seeing it more often than I remember.)

Have you tried playing this game without a subscription? It's nigh-impossible to do anything meaningful. There's no way subscriptions aren't a decent part of the game's income.

If I may...I've been playing since launch and ever since 2011 not a month has gone by that we haven't heard, or speculated ourselves that the game was dying. The short answet to your question is that ...WE'RE STILL HERE.

While ALL games do eventually come to an end I wouldn't count on DC shutting it down any time soon

and a ....
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.


right back attcha

(Who says DCUO players ain't literate? )

Agreed! AND you get an extra ten points for using "nigh" in a sentence

I'm curious to see how they handle the jump to next gen consoles. I think that'll give us our answer.

That is not why they updated character models. They did it because they can do it now.

The reason why new player retention is so difficult has two reasons from my perspective:
The way to level 30 and endgame are still quite different with the shift from heavy storytelling to MMORPG endgame. The insane queue times are just the nails for that coffin - and are most likely related. It lacks fun - because even if you get in as a new player, there is nothing to do!
What is worse: There is solo content but it is very difficult to locate....

It helps a lot for the lower tiers - but as stated above, without fun there is very little impact in making progression easier. Instead it most likely makes the problem of one-shot content and deserted queues worse.

There are a lot new game mechanics in recent episodes and too many to list them all here. I do agree that the amount of kill/fetch missions is still too high.

All true, except that the root cause is not the split factions, but the deserted queues due to lack of new players and the absence of fun in lower tiers.

That's true, but that started quite a long time ago: With the first big round of lay-offs and these only continued with vacant positions being removed.
Now the dev team seemingly seems to have only one or two developers for each departement. There's not enough manpower for a new UI, the long needed PvP revamp, survival modes, translations, webshop updates or event community events. That's also the obvious reason why bugs aren't fixed...
Dropping the PS3 was a huge progress, but now there are not many devs left who could use the new options...

About the same as they handled the jump from PS3 to PS4....

If they think it's worth the assets and man power it will be. Porting to two consoles isn't a cheap endeavor. When they never got a Pro / X upgrade, this thought definitely crept into my head lol.

The game is not dying, it's just the company. The game can always be taken over by someone else.

well maybe, dcuo is dying, maybe not.
its in a bad state thats for sure, they are pushing so many ways to squeeze money out of DCUO that there must be an other reason behind than just making profit (except if Larfreeze is running Daybreak).