Dev Diary: Wonderverse's Open World Episode 38: Wonderverse is due to launch this August, and today we would like to share what we have been working on for the open world. Beyond being enormous, this episode's open world Themyscira will have more content, more rewards, and a new approach. Read on! TL;DR New approach to the open world, with emphasis on having the option to play more and for longer. More content including raid-like world bosses. More rewards not gated by a loot lock, including a new secondary currency. SOMETHING DIFFERENT Starting with the story and characters, this episode just demands to be massive. Multiverses are colliding, the Source Wall is cracked, not one but five Wonder Women are on the job. The gods are desperate. Massive is what MMOs are all about, so we took this opportunity to deliver just that with a new approach to the open world (and the episode overall). As NerdOfPrey (DCUO Creative Director) puts it: "Persistent worlds in MMOs make some of the most memorable experiences. The action is social, more chaotic, and emergent. You never know who you will run across, who you can help, or who might help you." Our goal with Themyscira is to bring out that persistent MMO vibe. We hope it will become more than just a place to run your daily missions (alone), and instead a meeting place like your local coffee shop or pub or comic book store. And unlike the Watchtower or Hall of Doom, our goal is for you to always have something more to do while you're there. RAID-LIKE WORLD BOSSES More to do means more content. In open world Themyscira, we have created new and complex raid-like boss fights. Like but also very unlike bounties or previous bonus bosses, these boss fights will feature even more interesting mechanics, crucial additions to the episode's story, and their own rewards. "We wanted to reintroduce some of that old-school MMO experience, tough battles and scary bosses you can walk up to," says JackFrost (DCUO Content Designer). "Unlike much of our On Duty content, you won't have to queue or find your group before getting started. All you will have to do is go to Themyscira and join in." "These are big raid-like fights for players to tackle together in the open world, not locked away in an instance," Charon (DCUO Content Designer) adds. "And before anyone asks, these bosses will scale to some degree based on the number of players available to keep things interesting." "These are big raid-like fights for players to tackle together in the open world." One important note is that you can also fail a world boss fight, and individual contribution beyond raw damage will matter when it comes to rewards. You probably won't want to dive in recklessly, but also you definitely won't want to hang back and let others save the day. That said, even if everyone fails to defeat the boss, you may still get lesser rewards based on your contribution. WORLD BOSS REWARDS More content means more rewards, with one fundamental difference: no loot locks. These world bosses will (have a chance to) drop certain items directly, including styles, base items, and more. Additionally, they will drop a secondary episode currency that can be spent at a new vendor. "The new Empyrean Aether currency and vendor are what I am most excited about," says RedFive (DCUO Systems Designer). "You can run these world bosses endlessly, keep getting rewarded, and then use your pile of Aether to purchase red-hot new items. If you want to be the best most awesome, look for the Elite-quality weapons and jewelry, and look for the Legendary-quality generator mods." "No loot locks. You can run these world bosses endlessly." Adding these rewards without loot locks was very important to our new approach to the open world. With much of the game eventually running up against waiting on loot locks to reset, we wanted to make sure you could still always have more to do if that's what you want. Jack Emmert (Dimensional Ink CEO) puts it best: "When the team came to me with this idea, I was all for it. I personally LOVED the Metahuman Experiment and Calculator Bot runs in Birds of Prey. They were so fun and brought me back to earlier days of MMOs, waiting for spawns to pop and gathering with friends and strangers in anticipation. I never wanted to log out." After what seemed like hours of Jack recounting stories of his exploits in Birds of Prey and classic MMOs, he continued. "You know Wonder Woman has always been associated with Greek mythology – and what’s more in tune with that than a number of heroes grouping together to bring down rogue gods and monsters?" What indeed? Especially when the rewards never run out. FEEDBACK WANTED So just who are these bosses and what do the fights entail? Check back soon as we reveal more about the episode in these weeks leading up to launch, and make sure to join us on the test server when the time comes. We will be looking forward to your thoughts and feedback. And for those of you already asking, yes, the episode will still have a solo, an alert, an over the top raid, and all of the the daily and weekly missions in the open world you are accustomed to when the episode launches this August. Questions or comments? Join the discussion below.
I love the idea of this sort of hub of activity. The main concern though is that they turn into ghost towns when the content fall out of relevancy so that newer players can't get anything done. With that in mind I'm hoping the secondary currency mentioned might provide an ongoing means to keep heading to the zone, not unlike Doomsday Metro which still sees some traffic, albeit not as much as when it came out.
sounds really cool. just to be sure, they're going to scale in difficulty depending on the size of the attacking group? did I read that right. so, it's not going to be like the CC bounties, say, where you can just come back a whole lot of CR later & one-shot them? these guys will always be a challenge? & so, you will always receive rewards for them?
OMG I love it! This will keep things fresh and make you want to log in. Gonna tell my league about it!
Wow! I can't believe it. This will be great. Nothing is perfect and l'm sure alot of people will find a reason to complain, but this is a big step back in the right direction for DCUO. I've been playing since before there even were dlc expansions on ps3 , and this is the first one in longer than I can remember that actually has me excited.
Hmmm good question, it's usually 2 weeks before the episode launches in the main servers. However, it won't be for at least over a week since Wonderverse is launching in August, so ask again around then.
Just wanna take a moment make sure everyone knows this. The content itself will still be lock looted. Daily's, Solo,Duo's,Alerts,Raids those will all still be Lock looted once you've done it. Now however this Open world boss you can do it as many times as you want no lock loot, Which in my eyes that's freaking amazing. i'm looking forward to this.
It can be more active if the drops were good and drops are more often. I hope the worth if the grind of the open world bosses can be worth the x kills Even bigger feats to make up for the over 100 kills to balance out the worth if the rewards.
The kind of immersion that this letter is speaking of is the kind of thing this game has been needing for the longest time. If you're to truly deliver on that this time around, I hope you guys are able find ways to expand upon that idea for the worlds that we already have existing. Especially, the very first open world atmospheres we were given in Metropolis and Gotham. The two which are in most dire need of such a revisit. Therefore, if such a concept is to be introduced through this upcoming DLC, it should be consistent throughout the rest of the game, and whatever else comes moving forward.
I’m torn. It sounds fun and all, but I do hope I can still have a life outside this game. And scaling to the group size, kind of goes against the spirit of the concept, no? There’s no point asking for help because the boss will just get harder to compensate. We don’t have much information here yet so I guess I’m just thinking aloud here.
Have a few questions. By the sounds of the rewards described, this will include styles, accessories gear (rings neck, face), weapons, and even generator mods. So it is safe to assume that there will be another currency which will be used to buy actual gear? The raid and daily currency will be used to buy the elite sets and regular gear while the secondary currency will be used to by the other stuff. Am I correct in assuming that? Also, these “legendary generator mods”, does this mean that there will be 2 generator mods? One that drops like it does now and one special one you have to farm for? Also, are there going to be special consumables and buff consumables that can be bought from this new vendor? I ask because with how this community is (no offense to anyone), there are a lot of players who will purposely spam these day one endlessly until they get everything they need than never touch them ever again. So newer players will have a harder time doing these new boss fights since they won’t be able to get a group. And in turn won’t be able to get much from the new vendor. However if new consumable buffs were added to the purchase options than people will have a reason to run these for the whole dlc or even past this dlc and into future dlcs. I could see leagues even have a day where they spend just farming these to get consumables for the rest of the week. If this isn’t planned, than is it something that can be considered? Tank consumable that adds 3-5% damage mitigation Dps consumable that adds 3-5% damage out increase Healer consumable that adds 3-5% healing out increase Troll consumable that adds 3-5% power out increase These numbers are low so that they aren’t a full requirement for those who can’t do these bosses
Wait one second here. Did I just read the bosses will scale to the groups cr strength? Is this a new system u guys are doing to get the game ready for gear ranking? And a full revamp of old content. If i didn't know any better, I would say this is work in progress for something bigger down the road. Maybe I'm going crazy but this could mean something big guys. they finally understand what we mean by playing one ep for 3 months is boring after 2 weeks in, lets hope.
