The "GET GUD AT THE GAME" Crowd:

I for one appreciate your posts, your logic, and your willingness to seek change. Especially change that gives back things taken back from those that paid and worked for them. The devs have acknowledged people are rightfully upset and they have already taken some immediate steps to try to appease for the people for the moment and the they are trying to be more cautious about the stat clamp because they invested a lot into their experiment and want to be sure its failed as spectacularly as many of us are already fully aware it has.

I always appreciate your posts.


.

For context, despite your quotes having been a direct and somewhat charged response to Proxy, these responses are not intended to take or oppose either side. I thought about it but decided a total removal of the "Proxystar response" context would have chopped your statements to incoherent bits, lol.

To be fair, the vast majority of people's posts on here are mostly if not purely from a narrow individual perspective. When it comes to the DCUO forum world, metaphorically speaking, you couldn't throw a rock in the air without it coming down and hitting an "I think" or "I want" statement. Anecdotal evidence carries little to no value in when it comes to actual effective impact and trend analysis. Even in cases where an anecdotal feedback response happens to mirror a significant enough number of other responses to be considered a valid trend, there are much more efficient ways to identify and analyze said trend that don't include inundating the process by paying direct attention to X amount of individual statements. Though, apparently anecdotes worth their weight in vibranium when it comes to emotionally supercharging the polarization of political climates. But I digress...

You are correct that at the bottom line, it's the economic metrics along with consumer engagement metrics (which both have mutual causal crossover) that will provide the most meaningful feedback. Typically, you'll only see a large concentrated data scrape for individual feedback responses if there are impactful response metrics that deviate way off course from any predicted potential response trends. In short, the votes that count are the votes we cast with our wallets and login/playtime behavioral patterns.

Ah, I truly love seeing real world application of the world's single greatest philosophical device, the serenity prayer! Where I think the disconnect lies in many debates of this nature is in the part that you probably intended to imply but didn't mention...utilizing wisdom to identify the difference. That is, the difference between what can and cannot be fixed or identifying which amongst the potential options for fixes are in the realm of possibility and which are not. An example I feel is fairly apt; a river can be dammed, deepened, widened, split, diverted, etc at any single point to avoid potential problems like flood hazards or to solve existing problems like drought, agro-business resources, etc. But a river cannot have it's flow reversed. That option is off the table, periodt.

Typically when a businesses make decisions to implement changes as big and impactful to the user experience as this one is, those decisions come with large scale investments of time, resources, capital, ownership interest, etc. Additionally, even in the most optimistic predictions of plausible reaction impact scenarios, it's typical for analysts to expect some degree of consumer pushback as human nature doesn't process sudden changes of any kind very well. That pushback is also considered a part of the total investment since it's an expected pre-net loss. And then there are the ripple effect losses from the reduction or absence of what the time and resources that were invested would have otherwise gone towards producing.

Consider this scale of total investment and then combine it with the degree of confidence and uniformity of vision required amongst the top level brass to green-light such a directionally changing project of this magnitude and see through to implementation. With the stakes as high as they are, the resulting momentum behind the new direction's launch phase is a powerful enough driving force that it ain't stopping for anything that falls short of an immovable object, or in other words, the business version of a clear and immediately impending ELE ("recall the pods!!! Kids are eating the damn pods!!!!")

Circling back to recognizing what changes are and are not in the real of possibility, a total or major reversal is simply not gonna be on the table at this point absent the aforementioned clear and impending ELE. The train has left the station, we have lift off, etc, etc.

Ok, so even if you don't agree with my above explanation for why a "reversal option" is off the table, for the sake of argument, lets take it off. So then, which amongst the proposed valid, logical and plausible changes are the current frontrunners?

so what i'm reading is I can now skip all old content, only run the most recent dlc, continue to progress, never run 90% of the game and still get to enjoy all the aspects of amazing progress without putting in any true effort, what an MMO!

What amazes me are how some of the most virulent people posting on here can do so constantly for twelve to sixteen hours straight. You look at mine and most people and its a tight amount of time because we have work and lives. From 3:48am to 6:48pm (over 14 hours!) just today one person who seems to adore every decision DCUO makes has been going after nearly every post critiquing the game on nearly every thread.

Are they being paid? Do they work for them? Why in the world would you spend that amount of time insulting ,gaslighting, and going after anyone critiquing the game? I actually legit feel sorry for these people if they do this for free, I pity them if this is how the seek attention.

It’s a hot topic.

Let’s avoid characterizing people or how they value their own time. Does this post add anything to the discussion? Who could possibly know what people have endured this past year? Better to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Sounds like you need to better your time management to allow for more time to do the things you like, no need to be salty at those people who have unlocked this achievement,

Just think, if you had more time up your sleeve you could practice the clamped content and eventually beat it

It's fair to understand the context of the other person you're engaging with. It's not necessarily judgement and can also lead to being compassionate towards them.

get gud at purchasing.... NSFW language...

But its not even a struggle have people even played this update I Swear these points are invalid. Artifacts & SP goes a long way

Certain attacks right now are a bit weird that need to be adjusted that's about it

Mechanics need to be done as they should

Some people think this game revolves around them. I'm here to tell you NOPE its for everyone as an MMO and this is best solution for everyone with everything considered

You guys would be playing alone in a few years if this update was not released, because the game was not retaining any new players

Being good at DCUO is not an accomplishment.

I'll amend that to being good at any MMO is not an accomplishment; because they're supposed to be entertaining and fun, not badges of honor to lord over others. If a mechanic of a fight is not fun, is not rewarding in overcoming it, then it is a bad mechanic and bad design, and unfortunately with an action-RPG like DCUO you have to balance it with the reality that, ahem, MMOs are successful because people are guaranteed a reward for putting in their time. Click the goblin long enough, the goblin dies, get the gold; sit down and rest your hp, rest it long enough, you get your hp back, rinse and repeat - does that sound boring? Sure, I can't understand it might, then MMOs are not for you. I'll go a step further though and point out that what you want and the example I gave are not much different, it is the different between a rat pushing a button to get a pellet and you solving the same Rubik's Cube pattern to get a cheese burger - yes, you might have used more of your brain, more of your memory, and the process may have been more complex, but at the end of the day you are still carrying out the same learned and memorized pattern: you haven't changed the formula, you've just made it longer, more complex, and driven more people away.

You are not accomplishing anything by making it more of a chore for you to push the button than for the rest of us.

Different time zones, different sleep schedules, different jobs that allow for varying levels of access to the internet and free time to allow them to participate in the forums, different levels of personal engagement in the conversations/discussions/arguments.

Personally I'd be a little careful on trying to call out behaviors of others. Doing so could easily open yourself up to being called out on why you appear to be so closely following the actions of a particular forum-goer, or looking like you're engaging in the semi-conspiratorial (and likely baseless) "they must be paid by the devs to say this stuff" line of thinking that tends to pop up in the more heated discussions on game forums.

I’m a vet of dcuo, I don’t find this game breaking, and I actually love the option to be able to run old content, be rewarded for it, and just genuinely have things to do, because only having dailies, an alert, and a solo or duo to do was stale, and completely tasteless, it had gotten dull along time ago. This is a good update, not perfect, but definitely decent

Another like me!!!!! Holy smokes!!!!!
Hats off to you sir!!!!!
Even my loadout (both of em) are intentionally non meta and tested an made up exclusivly by yours truly.
Never EVER have i done anything special or tricky short of a jump cancel or block cancel and even thats usually for survivability purposes lol
And its pretty rare that i get out damaged. So i can assure everyone, you do NOT need any cheese to clear elites. I been back playin on a fresh a lc t for about a year or so now and have been full elite since BoP content (i made an acct part way through that being endgame)

theres a few things that i dont like about the clamp, 1) theres no option to opt out of the clamp, 2) i dont like the fact sp got hit with the clamp, 3) open worlds are clamped, this one just really doesnt make as much sense as say clamping instances(at least not to me).

the clamp really isnt that bad tho, at least not for me.

Its not about you. Its about the overall health of the game going forward. Have you made a new alt recently? There is nobody joining this game. Its being floated by vets. Eventually attrition will hit and it will die. This move isn't designed to screw you, or make it harder for you...its to improve new user experience.

And if that's your analysis, is the solution killing off the only people who play it? Or attracting new players to the game?

Seems like attracting new players would be a better solution, yeah? No one is leaving the game because it's too easy.

I'm confused as to how you think catering to the wants and needs of the existing base of players will also attract new players who have never played the game before. Making the game more easily understandable and more easy to navigate and participate is what will attract new players and keep them interested. Just my thoughts anyway. They just paid mega millions for this game and I highly doubt they are winding it down, rather just the opposite.

It's not about the game being too easy. Its about it not being a game to new players experiencing it. "No one is leaving because..." is an indefensible logical fallacy. It doesn't matter how many new players you attract if they get excited, they see Zoom with a group of friends, and some end game person comes in and one shots zoom, laughs at them while they have to wait for him to respawn. You are categorically denying there is a problem...when this isn't new. This has been the same problem that has existed here for 7+ years.

I left, even getting one of my toons to endgame, even while in a league with a main toon, not because the game was too easy, but because if I wanted to play something other than endgame...it wasn't even a game. It was merely blind button mashing hoping to be able to keep up with the douchebags who didn't give a crap about my experience. I can't run the same raid/alert/duo for 3 months straight. I like to go back to older content and play it. I did that, by doing alts. It became pointless...so I stopped subscribing. After about a week of playing without a sub I left entirely, because the game truly was pointless without a sub for me.

What are your suggestions for dealing with that problem? What are your suggestions for attracting, and retaining, new players?

This was why I quit as well. I ran Area 51 last night for the first time since the the first Obama administration. You know, it was fun! I'm assuming all of us were 300+ plus but the voice chat of us trying to remember the mechanics was hilarious. When I look know, there is literally hours of content a night I can run. Gearing my toon for the end game stuff is still happening, tweaking my skills is still a thing. I understand why some people don't like these changes, it's a massive disruption to the game's culture. Like any change, it will take some getting used to, and some will leave. But I also think you're going to see some familiar faces also return.