Nine years and nothing to show

I’ve been a subscriber and player this game for nine years and I’m closed to the door of reaching 500 skill points. I’ve been through times in this game where you didn’t even have combat reading, I went through the eight-man survivals, advanced mechanics, and now stats revamp. I’ve dealt with the endless wave of scam capsules but with the way this game has gone pay to win with artifacts there is no longer a point to play a game where the value of the reward is not determined by the effort but by how much money you pay the game masters. Honestly could you imagine this being the same scenario in education or in sports where your success is not determined by how much you know or what you can do but instead by how much money you pay. Nothing like that would ever be excepted and yet that’s what we have here today. I have submitted numerous tickets containing both photographs and videos to show discrepancies and bugs and instead of the flippers addressing them or even let alone resolving them get directly hit with the threat of having my account on the forms deleted. There’s no room for any form of discourse unless it involves kissing their *** about the next shiny aura or the new $500 pay out of your own pocket artifact that will somehow fix a bug a shortcoming in this game that they made intentionally by nerfing or breaking another power. That should be a serious cause for concern when someone is that close to accomplishing everything in the game has to offer, but because they don’t pay hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of dollars every few months for the new artifact what time capsule their effort and success is water down if not completely voided in value by someone who throws regularly their paychecks at the game. In any case since this will be my last posting on the forms I felt it was some relevant to pass along that bit of insight not that the developers are going to take it and grow with it but instead throw it in the trash. Perhaps one day when they find themselves in that same situation they might have a bit of an understanding for how broken all of this has become.

Welp, I'd comment but we'll see how far it gets me seeing as it has to get approved before I post it. If the criticism isn't what they want to see it gets tossed out. Ironic if this post gets through, doubt it but since someone has to read it first, thanks for treating your paying customers this way.*edit* Looks like I'm a free man for the time being, honestly didn't expect it seeing as I was just having to get approved earlier. I said what I said, fight me lol

Artifacts, you don't ever have to spend money to raise their rank or to break through the milestones. You can spend money, but you never are forced to do so. At worst you might feel like you need to spend money to unlock the content which provides access to new artifacts. Except you can get decent ones without ever spending a dime. It takes time to do all that, of course. But you aren't forced to spend money on any of it. You can get your artifacts, get the materials needed to break through, and get the materials needed to rank up the artifacts by playing the game.

In fact, other then one time I broke down and spent some of the MC I had from subscribing on a catalyst bundle, this is the way I do things. Do you know how much I've spent on artifacts across three accounts? (that's PC, PS4, and XB1) The answer is nothing. I subscribed on XB1 for a couple months to get access to Episodes I didn't already have so I could team up with my brother (who I bought the XB1 2017 Ultimate Edition bundle), and I used the cash shop currency left over from getting a couple of armories for my main to buy a catalyst bundle.

My issue isn’t regards to spending money on artifacts being a problem, my issue is the fact that you can spend money on artifacts and will automatically do better than someone who put the work in to amass hundreds of skill points. They’ve completely watered down the value of skill points so horribly become nothing more than boxes checked. The value they give to your stats decreases with the more of them that you have making the point in having them less and less valuable which is the complete opposite of artifacts. Artifacts take next to nothing for work and yet somehow they mean more than actual skill points. When artifacts can do more in the game for any player and skill points do you know there’s a problem. Now that we’ve checked the box on that aspect tell me instead of actually buffing up other powers the developers response of course is to Nerf and destroy other powers so they’re all brought down to the same level of dysfunction.

While I'll admit I'm not a fan of the Gadgets drone now blowing up a few seconds after it no longer has an enemy to shoot at, I've overall found that changes have made various powers and power sets more effective rather then less over the years. With Gadgets, originally there was only one truly viable subset to chose. And in that one viable set, most of the abilities were useless or worse. Encasing yourself in a present for damage immunity for a few seconds then erupting out in a poisonous gas cloud sounds useful, in theory. In practice enemies would pick up the present and throw it far enough away that the gas cloud didn't affect them. So all you were doing is taking yourself out of the fight. The boxing glove was useful, as were a couple other abilities from that tree. The healing serum supercharge was useful too, but the other one was kind of lackluster for it's effect.

The 2nd tree was very much gimmick centered. And that gimmick was "Stealth and toebomb". The more useful abilities in that tree were all proximity mines which you could be interrupted while placing. Which in turn meant they were only really useful if you were stealthed. The stuff useful in direct combat, mostly wasn't very useful. A single target crowd control, a couple of interruptible high damage attacks, and the supercharges.

And from my (admittedly limited) experience, this was true of many of the power sets at launch. Maybe five or six worth while abilities in each tree, at most, with the rest being things you skipped if possible because they were practically worthless. In fact, I kept getting several Iconic powers with multiple tiers on every character because there was a lack of worth while things to get in my power set.

How useful was having hundreds of skill points? Well, after getting your travel power and weapon skill maxed out, those additional skill points were just going into additional weapon skills. And most of those points were wasted because you couldn't use more then one weapon at a time. You were just after the passives at the bottom.

The current skill system just moved all those stat raising passives into their own section, so you don't have to keep wasting points on combo attacks for a weapon you're never going to use. And I suppose put a hard limit on some of the bonuses you can get like bonus crit damage percentage or crit chance. And as near as I can tell, the current system actually provides more of a boost then the old passives did.

Do artifacts overshadow the contribution of skill points? Maybe on a per point basis. But then you can make the exact same argument about any other piece of gear. And when compared to equivalent gear for the artifact's rank, they are rather comparable. Don't believe me? My Rings of Azar is currently rank 79. I just got it ready to break through to rank 80, but an currently focused on buying my CR 78 iconic set.

Entwined Rings of Azar (rank 79)
874 Health
0 Power
54 Precision
45 Vitality
2% Health
1% Vitalization

Noble Samurai's Kimono (current equiped chest, CR 65 I think)
411 Defense
617 Health
308 Power
139 Precision
271 Might
123 Restoration
77 Vitalization
271 Weaponization Rating

Chestplate of the Defiant Aurochs (CR 78 Controller chest I'm saving up for currently)
466 Defense
700 Health
350 Power
140 Precision
280 Might
140 Restoration
104 Vitalization
140 Dominance
280 Weaponization Rating

I'd be hard pressed to say having a rank 79 artifact is somehow outclassing my skill points to the extent you're claiming. In fact, it's probably helping them be more effective since it raises the base which gets multiplied by 1.04. Or rather, it would be doing so if it boosted Dominance at all or had more then a minor effect on Precision when I'm in Damage role. And from my experiences on XB1, I'd say that having a rank 160 artifact isn't significantly devaluing the contribution of my skill points.

Yes, you only improve the percentage based stat boost from skill points every 10 full points spent in the same thing. But how is that any different then the old system where you'd invest in a new weapon skill, spend 8 to 12 points on combos you'll never use, and only then be able to put 6 points (total) in the two passives you care about for your build from that weapon skill?

If you honestly think that then I dare you to go on the test server and compare someone with close to 500 skill points and a few 160 artifacts against someone with maybe 300 skill points and three 200 artifacts. I will be blown out of the water every time by a mile.

And what tier of gear for the rest of their item slots on each character are we talking about? Because I'm sure that has as much if not more of an impact. The boost from skill points had always been overshadowed by the rest of your gear. Those skill points make a difference, but it's never been as big of one as upgrading your gear to the next tier. With identical artifact ranks, artifacts, and skill point assignments the difference between a fresh level 30 and T2 is pretty big. Similarly the difference between T2 and T4 is pretty damn noticeable. Hell, even going from T3 to full T4 is an instantly noticeable jump in power.

While having a whole pile of skill points at low levels is a huge boost to your effectiveness, the comparative power of them goes down as your gear improves. Not to mention those artifacts you're citing as being the defining difference? They're making up a small portion of what the gear is providing. I might not have the stats for Tier 7C gear (my highest CR on any platform is 94), but I rather doubt the gear is going to be markedly weaker then a fully leveled artifact.

For some, they are forced.


- Team wipes multiple times.
- Someone checks everyone's gear
- "Your artifacts are only at 120?"
- Kicked
- Seven people now may not invite you again

It's called peer pressure.

Calling it peer pressure is probably misleading, it's not just peer pressure it's a 3-10% breakthrough chance, those are mathematically bad odds without spending money, that's not just peer pressure that's active compulsion through mathematical odds inserted in to the game, especially given the significant boosts artifacts provide you with.

Let's see whether you still feel that way after you've broken through multiple artifacts to rank 160 - 200 and you actually see what sort of success odds you're talking about, you might suddenly start to express a different tone when you see how many catalysts you start blowing through without making payment.

Artifacts are without a doubt one of the biggest revenue gatherers in this game for a very good reason.

Well, this may be the most hilarious comment I've read on the forums this year.

Doesn't pressure me. I level my artifacts as I can, without spending money. If you feel the need to boot me because I'm not spending money to race through content, but am instead enjoying the ride... I'd rather not be grouped with you anyway. So thank you. Also, I've encountered more team wipes because of bad play then being under geared.

Funny thing, over on XB1 I have one character with a level 190 artifact and a level 180 artifact. That's the character who spent excess "you're a subscriber" cash shop currency to get the mats for a 160 breakthrough because I didn't yet qualify for the alerts needed to get the mats.

I have a couple other characters who each have a pair of rank 160 artifacts. I didn't spend any money on them or the 2nd artifact my XB1 main uses. It just took time to grind the marks needed to buy mats from Constantine. Glad they changed it from "run specific alerts/raids" to "buy mats with marks". Yeah, those two characters are kind of overpowered for their CR due to the artifacts (one is CR 49, the other is CR 58). But as CR goes up, that's going to change due to the stat boosts on the rest of my gear going up.

I still feel the way I've described. And I've never used a single Seal other then the Seal of Preservation you get from Constantine when you first unlock his store via the Event.

Think it's more appropriate and accurate to say that they can have a greater potential for performance. Having maxed out gear and stats gives a player a huge pool to work with for their performance, but they actually have to perform.

That's one thing that always seems to slip by folks or gets forgotten, individual player ability and performance factors into things far more in this game than any other MMO I've played.

I think this is the only game where there is an expectation that you are supposed to have some kind of accumulated power and advantage to lord over everyone the longer you play. Most every MMO, allows newcomers to catch up and join in the ever expanding endgame.

But here we have people that want to lord SP over others for eternity. There is a huge problem with the SP system, a lot of the SP rewards for content no longer being run needs to be more easily accessible. Over the course of the nine years you got to play the game. That is the reward. Apparently you found it enjoyable because you did it.

However this game will die a slow death when every new player sees just how ridiculous the SP system is. The SP system was designed to be complimentary to running the same content repeatedly as it was released. Now this is no longer the case and people rarely if ever run it. The entire feat system reads like a poorly written encyclopedia with half the valuable information like where completely omitted.

Yet we have people screaming for SP to mean even more and to lord it over everyone in game. Hindsight being what it is I would have never started playing this game and I don't recommend my friends start as they will always be disadvantaged and if the OP gets his way severely so.

You should know by now that nobody wants to admit that player skill might have an impact on performance. Hell, in Guild Wars 1 player skill is pretty much the only deciding factor. Everyone's gear is equally crap. Everyone has abilities which are equally effective (or ineffective if used badly). Thus only your skill at playing your character determines how effective you are.

And yet when I was playing it, people would whine and complain about how overpowered someone is because they can handle a situation fairly easily (while the complainer can't) or because they lost in a PvP arena duel. Never mind that the person being complained about has an identical skill/power loadout and is using identical gear (because everyone basically uses identical gear at the cap of 20).

That's why I like to throw that friendly reminder out there every once in a while. Although I did restrain myself a bit, usually I'll include a Qui-Gon Jinn "There's always a bigger fish" gif in for good measure.

welcome to being apart of one of the mmo communities that are around for along time, seeing changes. i have been here since 2012. i also was in daybreak aka SOE formerly , Star wars galaxies. "amazing mmo", lots of stuff happens, and doesn't happen, when you choose to be apart of communities like this, long term game play online. it either pays off with fun and makes it worth your time or you can look at it like you have nothing to show for it... which.. i don't know i agree with you a big part, ive made tons of requests. the lantern stuff came true. still waiting for them to add power styles. and speed force movement styles "negative speedforce" AND all the other stuff. as well as with the power style. blue lantern and the others. with all the changes it seem like it would be easier then ever. for them to do the requested style types, easily, unless a memory in the server is stopping them. Cheers

Really, the OP's base premesis is heavily flawed. This is the concept of "I've been a paid subscriber for nine years, have capped my skill points, but because someone can in theory just buy their way to having a maxed out set of artifacts I have nothing tangible to show for my time and effort". This is patently wrong. You have capped skill points, that's what you have to show your time and effort. Sure, they provide less of an overall power boost then artifacts. But skill points have always come in second fiddle to your equipped gear.

Is it the fact Random Person A spent their earnings on quickly ranking up their artifact while you chose to do so via playing the game? Then consider, you're going to catch up to them. And it may be faster then you think it'll be. At which point you will have more power then them, assuming you both are using identical artifact selections. And that's because you've got 500 skill points, while the other person might have 60-80 skill points. Sure, they could in theory get just as many skill points. But my experience has long been that people who use money as a way to avoid having to play the game to do a task... often are unwilling to do anything that might require work. They take the path of least resistance, thus are unlikely to ever get most of the feats. Earlier today I ran a Duo with someone who bragged that he paid someone else to level his character to 30, then used the power of his wallet to buy Source Marks in order to get his Item Level 78 Iconic gear. And once his next paycheck comes in, he was going to buy enough SM to get tier 7C gear. The only feats he had were for damage dealt, damage taken, and achieving certain levels. Whoever he paid to level his character apparently did so entirely by street sweeping. He had enough skill points to get his weapon combos, and a bit into his travel power tree, I think.

Guess what, despite my artifacts being less leveled and my using weaker gear (half my gear is still tier 3 equivalent) I was out preforming him because I knew what I was doing.

What i will say, is you can build artifacts using minimal money and patience, that's what it comes down to, by patience as well i mean slowly buying seals on occasion, waiting for free seals and using your stipend, that does however still mean making some payment.

The people most affected by the peer pressure, if we're calling it that and cost of artifacts are those chasing the absolute maximum meta available at any given moment and just must have those shiny new artifacts at 200 the day they're launched

That's on those players, not the devs. If they kick you because you've been identified as the weak link causing them to wipe then that's just them wanting to clear content and not wanting to carry. If you're not the weak link and they're kicking you instead of the problem player just because you have lower artifacts do you really want to run with a doomed group anyway?

Exactly the issue. Exactly none of the content in DCUO requires you to have maxed out gear, to my knowledge. I remember when the game launched getting booted from Smallville and T1 Area 51 alerts because I didn't have a full set of T1 gear. Same with the T1 duos Let's ignore the fact that you had to run solo T1 challenge instances, duos, and T1 alerts to get the currency needed to buy your T1 suit. My not having a full set of T1 gear wasn't why we were struggling in either case. It was because everyone would run off on their own rather then stick together and support each other.

Hell, I once got blacklisted by an entire guild because the person from that guild who joined me for a Hive Metrodome duo didn't understand the mechanics of the boss fight so kept dying. Which would in turn lead to me dying. The blame was laid on me, even though I was the one holding out the longest, because the person I was teamed with had a full set of T2 iconic armor, and I only had 3 pieces of T1 iconic armor and the level 30 gear sold by a vendor at the time.

To be honest, getting blacklisted by that guild didn't bother me. They were apparently not the sort of people I want to team with anyway.