So what really made this game less enjoyable?

Hate to keep bringing up the past but am I the only OG player that wonders what happened to all the fun things that used to happen in this game?

Like the random visits from Mepps that placed PvE bosses in the WT or HOD that we had to team up on to beat.

Or Friday night live when they had a group or league doing PvE or PvP content and it was being reffed by the Devs.

Or when Mepps would go on a killing spree in the WT or HOD and we had to run away from him.

Was it mostly because Sony sold the rights to Daybreak? I noticed the game has declined from my personal experience since Daybreak has taken over for Sony. I also noticed that Daybreak has made money making decisions that Sony would have never done to their customers. (Time Capsules, Artifacts) they just weren't needed. The game was in a pretty good spot without all those things so I know I can't blame the Devs anymore.

At the end of they day they are paid to do a job. They do their jobs wonderfully, it's new management, new agenda. The devs have no control and don't have the freedom they used to.

I just want to apologize for always wanting something done in the new era of the games management without thinking about their circumstances.

I'm sorry and understand that the game we once had will probably never return under the new management the game has today. It seems more focused on ways to make more money instead of the actual enjoyment of a certain group of players. I DO NOT BLAME THE DEVS.

All in all, in my personal opinion when Sony had SOE it was a blast. Now the game is far, far, far less enjoyable because it has been taken under new management and the Devs have no choice but to do what they are told or it will cost them their jobs.

Sorry for being so hard on you devs. Hope the games greatness can return one day.

Sony didn't sell their game studio to Daybreak. Sony Online Entertainment IS Daybreak.

Loot boxes and micro-transactions are in almost every game from mobile to console. They generate money so the game studio can afford to keep their employees.

It's sad but the game is going downhill pretty fast without any word on anything PvP. U can't keep putting out just pve the game will get super boring. Let's hope that 2020 is all about PvP and nothing to do with pve. Bye bye elite content useless crap in the game anyways waste of dev time. 5% of ur player base run elite just stop lol

^^^^ It's also one thing when the villains share the same open world experiences. The various Gothams, Doomsday Metropolis, etc...

But when they share the same mission vendors and teleport..?!?!

I mean, come on...you brought back the Metal Mimes in Metal Gotham but they don't include some snappy conversation while you're fighting them. *heavy sigh* The large metal bat bounty should have been the Amusing Alloy. And instead of the bat mobs it should have been various metal mimes jumping out of its body. Again, taunting us with hilarity.

*while attacking me* "It's my turn to feed Rinty. You'll do."

The game became less fun when all the flopped innovations and crappy changes happened.

-CR Scaling 2014-2018.

-WM/AM's

-CR relevancy aka no more marks from content past a certain point.

-Monthly Content which completely broke tier progression... I mean Tier 7 A. Tier 7 B. Tier 7.5? That entire tier is busted and is long overdue to be fixed.



Like I'll grant these ideas as unique, but they never did enough with them before completely scrapping them.

-CR relevancy, okay.... but why do you still need to back-track for feats? If you want people at end-game via buying CR skip tokens, replay badge usage, and all forms of scaling gear; it should've been made a lot more streamline to progress through this game. Progression still feels very messy.

-WM. Honestly, nobody cared for this unless it was either the few that knew 2 handed into arrow storm was great; or most just used dual wield into explosive shot. All other combos were either too gimped for DPSing, or were too risky to melee with.

-AMs. Great idea, lack of options, and really awful balancing. I liked the idea of each powerset having a combo, but when they arrived at Gadgets/Ice that's when they should've stopped and reworked other powersets to match. Gadgets and Mental with their 2 instant big damage booms made Quantum irrelevant to use; never mind the fact that Quantum still had the damage cap on it.
Ice was superior to fire in every way.

Electric and Nature- Yeah that was the moment they realized they messed up, and here we are post stats-revamp.




The Stats Revamp it's self tried to fix many of the crappy issues that persisted post GU 47, but in doing so; also created it's own meta game and things are still not perfect.

-Dual Wield into Flurry shot. Everybody uses this one, and nothing else. So much for weapon balance.
Earth. Jackhammer for days on end.
Rage. Combos are irrelevant to use while the two handed power combo thingy is superior.
Electric. I was everybody's go to until they nerfed Tesla.
Nature. I was only used when Apes could smash people with Beach Balls.


Yeah I don't need to say more.

The game is still alright to me overall, but in the state that DCUO is: it's nothing really I'm jumping at the chance to play, it's just something I just enjoy every now and then.

Mann stuff hasn’t been the same since fnl ended..

I remember playing back in Beta, at launch, at the start of Megaservers, the first couple of expansions, and I honestly do not remember things being nearly as rose-colored as you seem to recall.

What I recall was the game being a month old, and the server population having dropped to the point that I couldn't get ANY group content to pop. I was so desparate to gear my characters that I bought a second account, leveled it up to 30, and then grouped with myself so that I could queue in and solo my way through duos. That was what I had to do to earn T1 and T2 gear, because the game was a ghost town.

What I recall was even after Megaservers merger brought us together, villainside was so dead that the first day of Fortress of Solitude 1, I was on a full T2 Controller and I had a friend on with a full T2 Healer, and the two of us spent 8 hours of US Primetime advertising in /LFG, shouting in the Hall of Doom, and openly queued up with the random queue, and we couldn't get a group of 8 to run it. The first day, and we can't run the raid, because there aren't 8 raiding villains online during primetime US hours on PC.

What I recall was, before the introduction of FTP and Premium models, I had to pay a subscription fee, and I could log into a game that costs me money to play... and then still not be able to play because there weren't any other players. We had to pay real-life money for the privilege of standing around in the Hall of Doom, listening to our own echo.

What I recall was having a character on villainside with full T2 and 110 Skill Points (almost at the max), and I had to quit them and restart as a hero because the first month of T3, villains simply couldn't assemble a group of raiders.

What I recall was group loot that would drop, and you had to roll against the rest of your group for the chance to get it. And a Fire character could roll /Need on a Healer Only or Controller Only piece of loot and win it, so you had random yahoos in your group who are literally vendoring the gear that would have been upgrades for you, and you're lootlocked for another week because of it.

What I recall was paying $10 for a PvP expansion and then for the next 3 weeks, exactly ZERO of the new PvP maps I just bought popped for a match, because you couldn't play on them unless all 8 players on your team, AND all 8 players on the other team had all bought the DLC. So if there was anybody else waiting in the queue who DIDN'T buy the DLC, then you were getting shunted over to Australia or Moon Base to play on the old maps for them. We paid $10 for a DLC that we weren't actually able to use, and the only solution they could come up with to make those maps usable was to give the DLC away for free... so then we paid $10 for... Utility Belts?

What I recall was when PvP introduced lootlocks, so you could only get 1 win on each map per week. That meant if you didn't do your PvP on Thursdays right after resets, there weren't any other players to play with/against and nothing popped.

What I recall was when their idea of a new Episode was to create open world "Operations", where we didn't have instances to protect our groups. So your boss kill could be stolen by another raid and you would receive no credit, or you could end up missing out on the fight because you had to Acrobatics run from the Atlantis docks clear to the Specter Square.

I remember those old "OG" days as well. They were not as great as you're remembering. The game has seen massive improvements. The old game was unplayable. Literally, you could log in, but there was no guarantee that you could actually PLAY the game because it required other people and it didn't have them. The game today? It has it's flaws, and there are areas where I totally recognize that it could use some tweaks or changes or it's not exactly what I would want, but if you want to compare things to the way it was back in the olden days, then we should be singing their praises for what they've done, because today I can log in every single day and run a raid off the random queue, and back then we couldn't even assemble pre-fab groups during primetime hours.

I'm not even an old player and I agree with all of this. I also saw many players glorifying the old days of this game, but I always felt the only reason was because of nostalgia. I saw just a few videos of how the game used to be and instead of wishing it was that way or that I played then, I felt very thankful for all the changes they have done that I get to experience in the current game. I probably would not be interested in playing at all had the game been the way it used to be. The game could certainly use more work or big and even little changes, but it could definitely be a lot worse than it is right now.

The forums

Also,

Sorry that's just not true. Many companies were making money hand over fist long before they ever introduced micro transactions. The thing that drains the money is 'live services'. If anything it's almost a zero sum game, the more live services, the more employees needed to service it, no live services, no extra employees needed.

Games that do not have a strong online presence generally will not have any micro-transactions. We should also recognise selling extra items such as a fighting games selling alternative costumes (technically a micro-transaction) should not be considered in the same way as a game which allows for faster progression by paying.

Friday Night Live??? No, it's Friday Night Legends. Such great memories from that point in time of DCUO, though. I've been pondering and making such cases from the exact same perspective for years. Since you've put it into great words already, all I have to say is that 2020 must be a year for those DEVS to turn things around for this game from EVERY aspect. Enough with the excuses, it's time for a real change that truly helps this game evolve.

I can see why people miss "the old days". Even though I do not know these "old days" myself. But watching FNL and talking to OG players made me understand and feel like I missed a lot. Now I'm gonna be honest about a few things.

I joined around 2016, so I'm not much of an "OG player" because I haven't played since Beta. But I played before the revamp, after the revamp, with the addition of Artifacts & Augments, etc. I have a good league I know I can come back to if I ever feel like returning to the game. But I had to listen to myself for once, and I uninstalled the game. Not because I hate it, not because I don't want to play it, but I had to free myself in a way from the game. The game is very still, not much has changed. I'm happy we got Thanagar content, as a Hawkgirl fan- I was very satisfied. But the last three years I've been going through a lot and DCUO was like a shelter of silence in those dark days, but the moment it became apart of my issues, I decided to let it go. I have nothing to miss here because I'm generally haven't played more then three years, I did like rewatching the old FNL videos once in awhile and tried to hint at the devs to bring it back in one way or another (New show, or something.)

few points I'd like to make regards the game:

• I don't think the PvE part of the game is in bad state. I don't know how it was before, but I think It's balanced enough to enjoy.
• PvP is a whole mess that I still don't get why they never bother to fix it. It was such a huge part of DCUO in the past it seems.
• It's so nice to see the Dev interactions on the forums, when they themselves coming to see our feedback on stuff, and It doesn't feel like a broken phone conversation.
• I love the artifacts system, but it should've been a grind system only. Same for augments.
• Still want to bring in the point that CR Skip is a massive problem that gives us players that have no idea how to play the game.
  Makes content completely unbearable to complete. And some in-game guide for roles is a MUST.

I don't know what are the Devs priorities, and we don't get much information either. So it leaves the players in the dark about the direction the game is going. I've more or less played for styles and solo content. It's not because It's hard for me to get groups. I was Trying to involve myself in the community, I never quite was fitting in. Tried to reshape my bad image aswell. I tried to do it with the Gotham Gazette, My YouTube Content and the DCUO Creators twitter, and of course here on the forums & Official Discord. I even became a mod (Still is) on the DCUO Switch server. I'm extremely sensitive (Because I've been through a lot) and It's not a good thing to have within this community. I don't have a shell to "protect" me to just brush off things people say. So I'll most likely overreact.
This is pretty much what made it less fun for me to play in general.
Well, enough about that.

May DC change the way They're doing things. I might return, who knows. But as I said It stands still and became repetitive to me.
One thing I can give to the Devs that they truly understand the DC characters and it does feel like a DC world for people who love
and read the comics. Gameplay is stale, though.

I never really wore a cape in game but "I'm hanging my cape" when it comes to dc. Not out of hate, but out of love and respect to myself and to the game. After so many times I said I will quit (but out of anger) now it comes from a peaceful point of view and Acceptness of the way things are.

I will still lurk around the forums now and then to see what's new. But yeah, this is pretty much what made it less enjoyable to me.

Artifacts are the biggest thing that ruined my enjoyment for the game and is the rason my off role is not very sustainable. (You can forget about alts unless you have literally thousands of dollars to spend on this game.)
Seriously, people complain about Time Capsules being the worst but artifacts are way worse. I'm not sure why people gloss over these things so much.

If you were a Fire user these both were well received and needed. It made Fire competitive again.

The fact that at higher levels you have to progress is ridiculous. Without paying for Seals of Completion you feel like you've hit a brick wall. And totally cuts your motivation in half.

WMs and AMs led us down the path but the revamp sucked all the fun out of the game.

we have had some nice quality of life changes, we get a few nice styles to chase after every few months but none of that really matters if basic gameplay sucks...and it sucks. combat sucks. dpsing sucks. healing sucks. tanking sucks. controllers arent even really needed anymore. Its more cookie cutter and fotm than ever with a heavy dose of ptw on top of it.

it broke the game so much they can't even fix their mistakes. thats gotta be a bright spot...come play our game where we mess up so bad we can't fix it...

at this point ive decided to drop my monthly spending on the game to zero. i have about six weeks left on my sub and seeing as i've already taken half a year off away from the game post revamp looks like the new year is going to be getting kicked off with another one.

they dont seem to care...why should we?

What ruined dcuo for me was artifacts and augments, not so much the systems but how they are handled with break through at 140+. Basically forcing you to yet again pay for stats and perks.

Then for the better part of 4 years we asked for more and better styles, and how was that handled? More pay to win nonsense.

Then as wilder mentioned above healing sucks, look at the 4 healing powers, water sorc and elec are the 3 most used. Because of burst heals are actually what's good for solo healing currently and God forbid there be 2 healers in a raid group. People loose their minds.

I'd love nothing more than to be my original power which is nature for healing but again everyone and their momma expects healers to solo heal. So I been water for last 3 years.

Yeah, exactly! Like I totally understand that the game needs to make money and I totally support that but the fact that getting just ONE to 200 costs several hundred dollars is just nonsense. Artifacts should have stayed at 160.

You, uh, might want to rethink why a mime wouldn't have snappy dialogue. It isn't a clown, it's a mime.

But otherwise, yeah...the lack of actual villain things is getting depressing. The only thing I can even count partially in that column in the current episode is that we get to help repress a historically marginalized religious group.

So would you all say this game is in need of another revamp without artifacts? I don't think the management at Daybreak would want to get rid of their cash grab "surprise mechanic" or whatever they call them now.

I will agree that the entire main reason for the revamp was overlooked to fill their pockets. Balance if I can recall was the original goal but by introducing artifacts, it completely throw whatever balance we had out of the window.

So in a sense the revamp was pointless in some ways.

What you think you would enjoy is not the same as experiencing it yourself. Your opinion would be vastly different if you were from that era like the rest of the original players.