Warning! English is my second language so please excuse if the spelling or grammar don't feel right some times, I'm trying by best to write as clear as possible. Hello fellas, <spoiler alert> Hey devs, <warning, you might not like this> In the last episode (Justice League Dark) I was a able to get to CR 271 quite fast and got the OP back, so after achieving that in both my DPS and Tank armories I decided to stop playing daily and play some other MMOs while this episode arrived. That took some months and in the meantime I logged once a week or so to just check on the game for a few minutes and logout. A couple of days ago the new episode was released and here are some of my personal notes on it: 1) In the first day without doing replay badges I was able to do the Solo Challenge, All the Open World missions including the bounty the killing 218 and getting the 82 nodes, the Alert and both Raids. Everything in a couple of hours. 2) About the Solo Challenge: Meh The city felt unreal, If I were to start with a dialog with a police officer explaining things or a message from anyone from Team Flash will have been better. Only one around is The Flash. Where is everybody??? No explanation. 1st boss fight with Mirror Master -> Meh. I had better fights with him in the past. while I was fighting him I was asking myself, "Is this him? The developers could have just make a copy from the code of an old fight and tweak it. This doesn't feel like I'm fighting him". I'm not sure that it was because I kill him too fast or what but I just saw a simple mirror attack that didn't last much and a couple of vortex (since his influenced in with Metal that explain the vortex). But in general, the fight was too short. Now that I remember, that guy didn't even talk, he just make a transformation to metal and that's it. Let's go inside. Besides the mini movie with the Speed Metal dialog, nothing that we haven't seen in the past. Still feel like an incomplete development. Good idea but it lack polishing. 3) The duo ... wait... what duo? Ok, nothing to see here move along! Seriously? Duos are one of the most played content besides the Bounties and the devs didn't make a duo for this episode. Oh well. 4) The Alert: Meh Are we back to Tier 4 in the batcave? The recycling is awful so let's add a new room and get out of here before the player get more annoyed to throw him into Oa with the same map we did content before. Ok, so the juice is not in the maps, lets talk about the story ... Can someone shut the mouth of Robin. He is as annoying as a complaining customer in Walmart asking to return something he get from Ebay. And Nightwing is there like "Hey I have to deal with him so do you, I'm not saying anything besides a cheeky joke that everone ignores it", Ok, so let's fight the first boss ... again with the robot ... a nerfed version ... boring ... next is Bane ... I think I have more epic fights with him in the past, by the way, how the [hamster] did he end up in the batcave? Now everyone got an invitation and knows how to get there? Come on, calculator want's to know how to get there just ask Bane no need for technology for that "First make a left, then a right, then another left and there's Outer Caverns!". Now let's get to Oa, Where are the green lanters? All in vacations? Yellow lanterns invasion like a family visit eating the cake that was on the refrigerator. So let's have a meaningless fight with Sinestro ... and we are done. 5) Ok, let's do raids ... To Themyscira ... but shorter since this is an operation so let's cut the map to 20%! Then back to Olympus! I mean mini Olympus! Ok, we don't have enough budget so cut the map in 20% and let's call it a Raid. Story: Meh, I didn't felt like there was solid material there. 6) Let's do the other raid ... this is the last piece of content in the game ... nothing more, from this I'll be repeating everything for the next months. The maps -> Finally something new! This is where the daily missions should have taken place! A map that's new a refreshing ... and too small ... and will be boring very fast ... ok, that's why it was the map for a Raid. I think this was the only piece of content that was designed, tested and reviewed deeply, the rest was filling the gap to get enough content to call it an episode. -- In summary, The last raid is where the juice is. The rest of the content is a reused pieces to fill the gap. I really felt like there's a ton missing here in terms of story, complexity of daily missions, etc. The episode feel empty. After finishing everything I started using replay badges to try to play more and try to find the missing pieces that I might have not noticed the first time, but after a couple of days and some replay badges I must say that there are other episodes released in the past that the story and involvement of the player with what's going on is way better than this episode. I'll probably get really bored from this real fast in the first month and stop playing until the next episode that will be released by December. So I might be playing for the rest of September and getting a 2 months vacations from DCUO. I should stop paying legendary subscription yearly and start paying 1 month for the duration of an episode and be back a few months later. I'm GJGBlackDragon - Fire DPS/Tank - playing the game since the release of Origin Crisis, currently with 361 SPs and 278 CR on the first week of this episode. I'm a casual player and with this release, I will be even more casual. I don't know devs, check back what you have released in the past and try to keep the bar in place or higher. Before releasing content go back and compare with what you have released in the past. Story, missions complexity, amount of content, use of characters, involvement of the player character in the story. If the script make the player character feel like part of it, there's involvement, but if the story is like you are not even there, then it will get boring real fast since there's no psychological connection between the player and the story. Make the player feel like a hero/villain, not like an spectator, for that we just rent a movie. Those are my 2 cents. Others might see and think different but the idea is to share what I think so the devs can get the constructive criticism and keep improving. Ok, bye.
Yep. I remember when Atlantis was revealed, I thought that the Dev team was redeeming themselves and would start making better and better content, fast foward 4 months we get JLD ( pretty solid DLC: new alien models, new vendor rewards, New arts and a new route to the OP gear even though very controversial) JLD was a bit of downgrade from Atlantis but it was by no means as bad as DM1. Now fast foward 6 months and we get DM1(Recycled/Reused maps, No new arts, Old OP gear route when all they had to do is improve the JLD route,Tedious dailys, repetitive boss fights, ect ect) I think we all can say this is much worse than Atlantis and even JLD. They were on the right route but now we're going backwards. We take 1 step forward 2 steps backward.
I'm responding to the review as someone who has read the story in the comics and partly as a review of the episode as well. I think the story is fairly straight forward and although I dislike the length of the solo, I can see why it had to be introduced to the player. The solo puts out an alert that something is happening in Central City. We help out some cops because Flash is not there, and suddenly people are being possessed by Nth Metal, even Mirror Master, that turns them Feral. Inside the Museum we find out Flash has been used to make the ruptures and we get introduced to Red Death and battle him. In the comics, Red Death does come to Central City and takes over, in a way, the citizens of Central City. The DEV team adapted the story to DCUO and even though Metals was introduced differently in the comics this method does what it can. IF you watched the Live stream they admitted that they had to jumble some parts of the story around to adapt it to dcuo and in the comics this thing happens kinda in the middle of the story. After the solo we see that it has spread from Central City to Gotham and probably world-wide, even the Teen Titans have been turned. So why the Teen Titans? In the comics they also played a part in Metals, although in a different manner. And then the Alert. The Batcave. I understand it can be frustrating and accusations of re-hashed content and all. But there is a reason and I understand why the DEVS had to re-use the Batcave. In the comics, the Batcave is a very important location and something happens and will happen in here that is crucial to Metals. So crucial that if it had not happened, Dark Metals could have been avoided. There really is no reason to change the layout or defenses of the Batcave. It is still Batman's and he still uses the same ones and we travel the same map, except for the hidden room, so I understand why it is exactly the same. Frustrating; but do comic readers complain when there's an issue of Batman that occurs in the cave? Of course not, and the different styles of caves and areas are just because of artist's rendering. Dcuo is actually more consistent in that area by using the same map. Now using Bane and the trip to Oa is different and kinda disappointing as it replaces the original villain in the Cave and it's significance BUT I'll give the DEV team this. Only because we are talking about a 26 issue comic series that has so many things going on being compacted into only 2 Episodes with a total of a solo, duo, 2 alerts and 4 raids and a bunch of open world missions. Be understanding. From the Alert, we follow Batman's investigations and we learn about the Merciless and what he is forging, then off to the next raid where we see the impact of those Metal cards. There is a story here but it also leaves a LOT of questions. Who are these different version of Batman? We get such a quick 2 or 3 sentence of maybe their origin and something unique about them and it is so easily missed; it's almost criminal. It's really a shame. Where did they come from and how did they get here? Of course, these are all explained in detail in the comics but it is really missing here. I think the DEVS made a mistake in solo. The investigations here should have been a more expanded story of the Red Death with references to the Batman who Laughs. The Batcave Alert shoud have referenced batman's investigation to the nth metal. The False Idols maybe the dark multiverse and then Monster should have put in how they got here (in PoV of the Batman who Laughs), it would have been perfect, specially since you finally get to see Batman here. The use of investigations and briefings here is really bad. This should have been used as fillers for the story instead some are used to repeatedly talks about Batman's search for the different metals or how each villain will treat their area. IF they do the reveal on Part 2, it's already too late because we are left with the first episode of too much questions. Part 2 has to deal with solutions and answers on how they discover how to defeat this. The combat system and mechanics. I think it's fairly balanced. Speaking from the PoV of a player who has a lot of toons ranging from fully equipped to a poorly equipped 267 toon; the solo, as a high tiered player with levelled artifacts, skill points and augments can breeze through this while a bare 267 toon can get through it with a medium challenge and probably having to resort to Iconics. And just like any other instances from the past, everything is do-able; communication and team work makes it all the more easier.
