So what really made this game less enjoyable?

Well we are discussing this game in particular, DC Universe Online. Perhaps you've heard of it? I am aware there are some games that exist without micro-transactions or any extra purchasable content, and a lot of those games are a part of popular franchises with a heavy fan base. They don't need micro transactions, they make a fortune just selling remakes/remixes/new versions of the same product every year.

This game, DC Universe Online is a free to play game: free to download, free to create a number of characters, free to play content with many purchasable DLCs/episode content. It also has a subscription business model. You may be completely unaware but once upon a time this game, DC Universe Online, was NOT a free to play game. You needed to purchase a subscription on top of buying a physical/digital copy of the game. Why do you think they shifted business models after almost a year?

I dunno why this keeps happening with us Lorax. Perhaps I'm not very clear in my wording I admit but I swear it feels like you're reading someone else's replies when you are responding to me.

Just so we are clear, you brought other games into this when you said most games have micro-transactions. I was pedantic to call you on it, but to go back to acting like we are talking about DCUO when you very clearly brought other games into it and I clearly was responding to that part of your comment. It's baffling to me our conversations end up like this.

For me, it's the following things:

1) At the times of day when I play, it's nearly impossible to get into anything other than Current End Game Content, as no one's queueing up for the older missions. So I have tons of Alts that are unable to complete missions they need for feats and skill points, and that are unable to obtain styles they need that only drop in that content.

2) WAY too many old styles from old content still haven't been made available in other ways, such as Rare Style Vendors, or drops in the Vault and Promethium Lockboxes.

3) Tying into that, way too many styles still need to be added to Style Unlocking. But the progression there seems to have stalled.

4) And way too many styles are still tied to stupidly rare collection drops that can only really be obtained by most of us if we buy the collection pieces in the Broker and pay way too much in-game cash to do so.

5) Lastly, WAY too many styles are still tied into the Time Capsule RNG Money Grab. It's time to bulk move several TCs worth of styles into the Boo$ter Gold Vendor where it's much easier to obtain what you're actually after!

TL;DR -- It's time to move many, many rare styles and items into in-game vendors en masse to make that stuff easier to obtain, and it's also time to fix the completely broken and unplayable state of older game content. It's impossible to run those missions if no one queues up for them anymore. Something needs to be done, such as converting them to Solo content with walk-in portals.

I say to the OP almost every game (not all but most) has some form of micro transaction.

You say that's not true (when it is). You cite games in the past when we are having a discussion on the present. Than you said "Games that do not have a strong online presence generally will not have any micro-transactions."
Horse ****.
I remind you we're playing a free to play game and free does not equal profit.
But sorry no we're not talking about free to play games. Nonsense. Insinuations. Pedantic. Yes, games do and have existed without micro-transactions, that's not really the point that you keep overlooking... Probably because you're too busy being baffled.

DBG is not up there with Capcom, Bethesda, Blizzard, EA, etc. They do not and I believe can not generate enough profit to stay open without the little purchasable add ons. So despite the OP's opinion that micro transactions "ruined the game", I see them as a necessary evil and will continue to support this game within moderate reservation. Is there anything you would like to add Scarlet SeptycTank?

Yep i'd love to add something since you so kindly asked,
"Than you said "Games that do not have a strong online presence generally will not have any micro-transactions."
Horse ****.
I remind you we're playing a free to play game and free does not equal profit." This is not a counter to my statement, normally when you call someones opinion horse **** you follow it up with an actual reason for it being so. This is not what you have done here.

You keep acting like i'm overlooking something when I never said anything against micro-transactions, my list of things that have made the game less enjoyable does not include anything about micro-transactions, why you keep projecting this idea that I don't like or don't understand micro-transactions are necessary is indicative of your comprehension skills, or lack thereof.

Because I shouldn't have to. I shouldn't have to explain to you why that statement was horse ****. You know it's horse ****, I know it's horse **** and the guy that's going to shovel this thread to the 404 bin knows it's horse ****.

You really get on my nerves Scarlet.

...and another thing:

Pets.

Just what the hell is going on. You go into an 8 man instance and the next thing there are 12 boos, 5 void gazers, nine henchmen, 3 sidekicks, turrets, crystal golems, floating eyes, robot sidekicks, acolytes and a partridge in a pear tree.

doesn't anyone remember this is what initially killed pvp? we didnt have nearly as many then as we do now. i've lost track of how many times ive gotten stuck in the watchtower trapped between them, how many times i've gotten ko'd because they wouldn't let me roll out of a one shot or an aggro'd boss in just the past week or two. they get in the way of pick ups and its gotten to a point where its just irritating.

Utilizing a few...sure. Turning the game into pokemon super. No. Just worlds of no. Its tacky and very much takes us out of the lore.

& there it is. I've long come to just accept the awful rng & the whole time capsules nonsense. I just don't get involved, or, at least, no more than I want to be involved. I don't care about pvp or legends pve. I don't even care about balance that much ( when I started this game, I fully expected that my street level bowman vigilante was not going to be as strong as an Amazon warrior or a Green Lantern or a Kryptonian, & I was cool with it ). I'm happy with my toons, my bases, my ridiculously convoluted back stories, I'm confident enough ( & good enough ) to hold my own in group content. that's the one single ongoing gripe that I have with this game. if they could somehow magically come up with some way for me to be able to get into older content with either smaller groups or on my own, I would be perfectly happy with this game.

From "MY" point of view the recent issues with this game's ECONOMY has been the TIPPING POINT........

I've been a paying member since 2013 Jan....been on the forums since 2014 or 15...I've seen gripes / complaints about a LOT of stuff since then...even had a few myself.

But the RECENT economy issue has been the TIPPING point...and I don't think some of us are seeing that....giving some folks who were HEADING into quitting or taking a break even more reason to do so.

I get it. I don't blame folks for leaving for whatever reason.

I believe things WILL get better with the economy in 2020. Mepps even alluded to this after they cleaned up the glitch. He stated that MORE changes were coming. I believe him.

I ALSO believe that some of these gripes folks have WILL be looked at in 2020. Which ones? Who knows?

The fact that you're triggered by an opposing viewpoint really highlights the weakness of your argument.

You believe that DCUO needs these micro-transactions to continue operating over and above the subscription / DLC purchases that all end-game players have to make. This is purely speculation on your part, since for all you know they simply do this to boost their profits even more. You have no basis for believing that microtransactions are necessary rather than simply a trend that has caught on in the gaming industry due to requiring minimal capital investment and producing significant profits.

You bring up the matter of other MMOs when it suits your argument, and then simultaneously criticize this very point when it doesn't. Then you state (again, your "feeling," which I guess we're supposed to take as law, while you mock other people's ideas) that DCUO simply can't compete with other MMO companies, so they're forced to implement these "necessary evils."

In other words, you're acting like a jerk.

The "good ol days" were rarely as good as we want to remember them being, time has a way of romanticizing things.

The original head (Cao) far over-sold the game in terms of what it would be. We got the original game but then later found out that DLC's were basically just new tiers for endgame gear with a little storytelling thrown in (although the time-jumping starting with DLC 2 was pretty good once you had all the story laid out in front of you). As with any game, it's first 6 months or so is a honeymoon period. Tons of people flock to it to find out if they will like it or not.

One of the biggest issues for DCUO was that it got hit with the speed-hack right around the time SOE got hit by hackers and had to shut down for a few weeks, this was during that prime "honeymoon" period and the game never really recovered from that.

Going FTP and migrating to the Megaservers were big helps because they made the game feel "full" again. Mepps dropping in every once in a while to spawn random bosses in HoD or WT, Jens playing the game often (and streaming it) and FNL also helped in making the game feel more active.

Another big issue though is the DLC's, especially when comparing them to the original game. The original game made you feel like you were a real part of the DC universe because you had these long solo story arches where you and your mentor worked together to do various things. Once you get out of the 1-30 game and get into the DLCs though you are basically just doing missions for Oracle or Calculator along with a group of others. There's no more discovery of new abilities within your powerset, no going from one mission to the next, no sense of new wonder (aside from the first few minutes of a new DLC's sandbox zone). This seemingly two different games can be off-putting to people who enjoyed the premise and layout of the original 1-30 game.

A third big issue is the all-but-absolute death of PVP. Part of the game's appeal at launch, and then for a while thereafter (not including the speed-hack period) was PVP. The RPS aspect and balance of powersets at the time made it challenging but fun. It could be mastered but it took work and there was little FoTM due to RPS. As new powersets were added, changes to powers were made and new aspects (orbitals, WM, augments, etc) powers began to get a bit skewed. The devs tried to address this but it was patchwork at best. Then they removed RPS and that took out a vital aspect of what made PVP in this game unique. Today the PVP phases of the open world are pretty much ghost towns in all but the most rare of times.

All is not bad though. The creative direction SJ has taken the game has been a great positive. Chromas, styles, new high-def character models, the recent revamping of how Skill Points work, DLC and TC content coinciding with comics canon and/or DC movies, etc. have all been huge boons, etc. in my opinion.

What I would like to see is for PVP to return to RPS but without the fluff of DLCs being added in (meaning base buffs, augments, etc), more and deeper content in the DLC's (the Gotham Gang War DLC was a good example, it had 2 duos, an alert, 2 raids and a sandbox world with a lot of solo missions), more interactions with Iconics in the DLCs (and more of them as well, having just 2 or 3 like in the Anti-versary event feels lacking for the level of importance of the event). I would like to see mid-season events to cross the time between events as well as a new mission added to a seasonal event at least every other year (we're at the point now where the current content isn't really enough for new players to catch up on gear/furniture feats within even 2 runs of the same event unless they reeeeeeally grind and buy seasonal marks). I would also like to see DC get off their backside and do some fracking cross-promotions of the game in their comics and cartoons/movies as well as even on their streaming service. Finally, more dev involvement playing the game in both the random spawning events as well as streaming their play (or at least playing a character whose name they make known to the community), etc.

To reply to the OP, the reason I left (and haven't come back in over a year, other than to check in on the forums every once in a while) was because of the p2w nature of artifacts. I also understand the frustration with TCs, though they bug me less personally (except for the blasted feats). Above all, the nature of microtransactions and progression in the game has completely removed fun for me. After a while, there is somewhat of a burnout when you're talking about 400+ feats, plus augments, plus artifacts, plus seals of completion, etc. There are simply much more enjoyable ways to spend a $12-15 sub and buy the cosmetic items I want to buy rather than being forced to spend money on literally nothing more than imaginary numbers.

As for people that say, you can beat most of content without spending on artifacts/augments, etc. that's beyond the point. Performing at top level in a game should not hinge on spending real-world money over and beyond a subscription to access said game. At least, that's what turned me off personally.

Plenty of reasons, you name it:
- Game has failed to innovate.
- Repetitive DLCs, progression is lost, older content rewards are not worthy, we can't play it via gates...
- Time capsules
- Marketplace is empty and dead now, we get all the cosmetic items via luck and NRG.
- Customization based on gazillion color variants of auras, materials and so on.
- Powers lost uniqueness and never got new higher tier habilities, iconics and weapons were never expanded with new ones.
- Subscription its not enough, we always got to spend more on capsules and artifacts.
- Subscription perks are outdated and out of sync with current state of the game.

I can go on for all night but I'm tired of this...

I'm gone now because of the horrible economy, constant money grabs and boring dlc structure used over and over and over and over. The game was fun, it's not anymore.

I could be snarky and say likewise but I honestly don't feel that way and I literally hold no value on your opinion of me, have at it mate you've said you stuck other people on ignore, I don't have any hard feelings if you do . I still find it fascinating you're holding strong on the HS thing, that statement is quite obviously not HS so it's bizarre you're being so adamant. @ me for being pedantic sure, but it's weird, you're just wrong I play current games right now that have online play but not a strong presence that don't have micro-transactions. It's like so easily provable not to be HS that I dunno, just rambling. It's weird, what a weird day on the forums.

The real answer to the question?

We got older...

...and online gaming changed.

And? Every time I want to speak my piece on a particular subject, it's the same clowns that pop their head out of the ground to tell me I'm 'wrong' or correct me in some sort of fashion. Now if we were discussing actual facts vs make-believe and I said something incorrect, that's on me. I'd welcome the correction but we weren't discussing facts and figures. I was sharing my view with the OP who lately seems very confused as to what he wants to be in this game but that's for another conversation.

I understand this is an open forum and all that want to be a part of the conversation have every right to be. However, when you come at me with an attitude every time to tell me my opinions are 'wrong' or 'nonsense' because they don't align with yours I'm going to reply with 100% that same energy. Again I didn't come here to argue standpoints with Mysty, I just seem to fascinate her for some reason. Must be my charming smile.

But thank you so much for taking the time to leave your rock to address my attitude. If there's anything else I can assist you with please don't hesitate to ask.

-Sincerely
Jerky McJerkface
Prince of Jerks

You couldn't hold value if I handed you the Hope Diamond. Stay baffled.

Stagnation
No innovation
Non-stop lootboxes
No QoL updates

I really didn't care for any of the things you mentioned. It isn't that it isn't fun. I still have fun. It's running raids with league mates, throwing base competitions, or gorilla races. You can have fun, but you might have to put a little into it also.