Please add new Difficulty Level: Easy

WTF are you talking about?

Never in the history of video games have they rolled out without a bug. Never in the history of DCUO has an Episode/DLC dropped without some bugs.

So effing what? There are never game-breaking bugs that don't get fixed rapidly, so who cares?

There are always people every week proclaiming nobody is playing the game and it's about to die.

They've done that every week for ten years now. Despite the game going stronger than ever, with visibly hundreds and hundreds of players playing at any given time.

Keep predicting the end of the game. You'll be right someday, no matter how many thousands of times people are wrong.

I had the opposite experience. I found the Iceberg Lounge to be even more of a challenge than the Science Spire. I still haven't defeated the Penguin on elite settings. I did notice an absence of a healing barrel in both the Pen-bot and Penguin areas. Most frustrating.

One thing that would help some is NOT TURNING YOUR SOUND OFF, since the game is packed with audio-cues.

Such people must never look for exos, and must die a lot until they've memorized the spots with sound cues in instances.

All you have to do is keep moving when against either boss. That simple.

And have a good burn, of course. To be sure, I cheat a bit by running as a dps with my primary heal on my rotation, which I jab rapidly if my health gets too low.

Honestly, it never even occurred to me in either instance to look for a barrel, because I never found it necessary. Not to brag; just saying.

I wouldn't mind an easy mode to be honest, if I'm short on time, at least there will be content, I can fly through to get my marks for the day.

Which instances would you like it implemented upon?

It is no secret that this game doesn't do nearly enough to educate players on any of the group dynamics or role tactics of playing alerts and raids. No ftp game, especially a licensed property game should expect everyone coming into the game to understand these things already.

The game or even worse the player base expecting every inexperienced player to spend hours and hours on YouTube trying to learn these things for themselves is laughable. Everyone doesn't have the time for such things even if they had the desire to learn that way. This game's population, really any online muliplayer game, needs casuals just looking for a fun few hours a week just like it needs the everyday diehards.

It won't be easy for everyone to find a helpful league, i have been playing for years and have never been in one. It won't be easy for everyone to make friends in the game, again i've been playing for years and have very few. And for everyone saying to ask questions and get help from other players, it is just as likely that those queries will be met with insults or silence in game as actual assistance.

I really don't think that having an event level for every duo/alert/raid is any weirder request than having an elite version of those same missions.

I´m not talking about every little bug. I´m talking about bugs like the batman vanish in inner sanctum, which i´ve personally reported with a friend to get that fixed before it hits live. Now using replay badges, and seeing that the fix didnt hit live is offending and disrespecting and also telling me that testing this game is waste of time. People dont even get their replay badges back, which looks like its even intended to not work.

Also if you wanna talk about history, there never been a game which became low skill to fit beginners. If there is, its probably not alive. A game is about a challenge, your personal "skill". If its soccer, tennis, golf or any console/pc game...super mario, racing games, shooter like csgo etc. It´s like creating skill based matchmaking in an mmo against NPC´s. I mean sure game won´t be gone, but will loss massive amount of players. I mean, im talking about the main aspect of a game, a challenge. Thats what games are, life is about who has the most skill and whos the best, same is for games. I´m not saying that i like it, but thats how it is and you wont be able to change that aspect by just changing it in your game.

I mean you´re right, the first days there been hundreds of players, but that rapidly dropped. And sure maybe a few hundreds will keep playing it doesnt change the fact of the amount of players you keeping away by that, which are thousands. Therefore its nonsense!

Btw i dont wanna start a discussion, its not like these statements are false. Many people seem to not understand at which point something is a fact. Read it, accept it or forget it.

If you go into all the open worlds at any given moment, and count the number of phases, you will see upwards of a thousand players on US PC/PS servers at any given moment.

Fact. The game is thriving.

At early-mid game to late mid game probably yes not at endgame though

Um... Hmm... I think both of you are talking about the same thing only not connecting it.

To the devs, all the population numbers matter. To each of you, you get a different idea.

I remember when Sore's Census page was up, as it had a great telling of where most players were. Only about 1-2% had the max CR out of the whole entire population. (Of course, his site has been defunct for at least 4 years now.) I'm curious to know what's going on now, too bad no one has recreated Sore's Census page that gives numbers like this and I'm too busy to figure out how to make my own.

You can go into the House of Legends and see a ton of people in a number of phases.
You can go into Flashpoint area and see maybe 2-3 phases with about 15-20 players each at a peak time.

Both are correct, but we don't see the whole picture.

I understand wanting to rp your character and only use very specific powers and skills. However that makes it harder for new players to beat content unless they get carried.

Good things is that now it is possible to be valuable part of group and still roleplay.

That´s not what you could call "alive" specially not for a company like daybreak with a big investor (EG7) behind it. Also im looking more at the full timeline of DCUO not just this update. Sure the game became old and many people gone to play other games but a big aspect of why so many players left is that there is no "skill" or challenge. The only thing left in the game is button spam and idiotic skillpoints farm which also has alot of skillpoints locked behind a paywall (auras etc.) In past it obviously wasnt that big of an issue when max skillpoints been around 170. But no one is going to grind/farm those skillpoints now, and will be punished for not doing it. They wanted to make the game newcomer friendly...skillpoints is your first way to go, you would have to leave your job to have time for farming all that "boring" nonsense. Also the stupidity of having different mod types, where newcomers would need a book guide to get them all. And specificly having artefacts in a huge difference in stats. You level them to level 60 of 200 and you´ve not really stats increased, which tells newcomers that they´re wont be important. Then you have Home Turf mods you have no information about, then the 2 different augments types while 1 type would be enough, even removing them and back to the old system where you been able to buy them at specific levels, that option was even visible and easy to understand for beginners. Everything in that area of the game became more "advanced" and requires full knowledge of the game to have the right stuff to not fall behind. I can understand that all the nonsense got added due to a business move, while i´ve even written Mepps years ago, that they should just go and sell styles and other visuals, since their only business been with movement mode, power type etc. changes. Look how good it works out, the game would stay alive by only having visuals and it would make good money...having gameplay related parts, simple and easy to get and alot would change, specificly for beginners by still keeping the content hard. (Thats basicly how it been in past, and thats how it has to be again to gain a good amount of players).

Edit:
EG7-Investor-Presentation-Dec-2020-Acquires-Daybreak-Games.pdf (enadglobal7.com)
p.19

I think dcuo needs to be much better at retaining its endgame population are they really fine losing players that spend money to other mmos just for basic reasons such as Low difficulty on Elite raids? Im sure other mmos enjoy it.. a friend of mine is playing black desert online others FF that ive also seen here a few others do and pretty muche everyone of them that i know wont return to dc due to the above stated reason.

i hope we can see some significant changes in the next episode and beyond specificly when it comes to the design of Elite raids. And i hope all the threads were read regarding this topic even if we did not get a reply from a dev.

I agree with this post I'm not a skill player either

The last official dev statement on population was the pandemic era was the best it's ever been outside of year one. Doesn't sound like massive population loss due to any dev decisions. Sound like a thriving, healthy, active and engaged community.

Individual perspective is not fact, just opinion. Your individual bubble of players that you run stuff with, account for a small, small portion of the game. Thousands are leaving over difficulty? Over the years, perhaps. But just like people leave because things are too easy, they leave if things are too hard. Or because "x" is pay to win. Or "y" is too grindy. Or "z" is too... you get the point. And circles that run together are likely to have similar viewpoints. So if XYZ effects your group, the game will very much feel like it's dying. But it's not.

We already know there will be scaling elite again. A more polished version with lessons learned from FF(e). Hopefully without the exploits allowing players to cheat the system into a much easier instance. The harder content is already in the works. But unless it ends up a huge success, expect things to change. If thousands are gone soley because of "easy", they better return when "hard" arrives and show the devs that it's the only way.

10 years of experience tends to have me believe that hard isn't the only way though. Balance is. You can't build versions of content for everyone since everyone has individual skill levels and skill ceilings. We've seen calls for an easy setting. What if that's not enough? Should there be super duper beginner mode? I mean, from someone's perspective, "everyone" might be quitting because things are too hard. And based off their bubble, that would appear to be true.

Instances can only be so complex and can only be so long, if they have to be developed with numerous versions in mind. As long as development time is given to creating 3 (now more) versions of a raid, raid quality will suffer. We've seen that. The release cycle we follow only allows for so much. Maybe they should concentrate on two elite raids per year. Separate from all DLCs. Have them be long, complex, multi layered battles of skill and attrition that you'll need to work towards throughout the year. No day one pew pew. Try, fail, gear up some, try, fail and finally after months you start to make progress.

Or we can keep churning out content en masse and cry that nothing is changing while complaining that nothing can change.

a) Nice job of trying to move the goalposts. What RTX wrote:

And: “I mean you´re right, the first days there been hundreds of players, but that rapidly dropped. And sure maybe a few hundreds will keep playing it doesnt change the fact of the amount of players you keeping away by that, which are thousands. Therefore its nonsense!”

I see multiple phases in of the three most recent Open Worlds.

At this very moment I see:

87 people in five phases in Flashpoint Gotham.
65 people in two phases in 31st Century Earth.
60 people in four phases in Patchwork Themyscira.
~600 people in six phases in the House of Legends.

Would you like screen shots?

That's (that "thousands" of players are "keeping away" by insufficient bug-fixing) a "fact," eh?

You don't appear to understand what a "fact" is. A "fact" can be proven or supported by authoritative sources (in this case, from an official Daybreak/Dimensional Ink/DCUO employee).

I'd ask you to cite your authoritative source for this "fact" tthat "thousands" of players have been driven away specifically by bugs in the HoL, but you're not going to have one. "Facts" are not "what I think without proof." Facts do not become facts because you feel really strongly about your claims.

RTX cites:

So, let's see what's there?

DCUO:

Daybreak Year To Date Sales:

Jan-September
Profit-before-tax: $178 million
Total Assets: $2,970 billion dollars

Player retention:

TOTALLY DYING!

You might want to actually read what you cite.

Please cite your source that proves that DCUO is losing a substantial proportion of its users just for "basic reasons such as Low difficulty on Elite raids."

Thanks, and best of luck with that!

Anyone can just make up claims.

I guarantee you that they aren't losing a substantial number, because the game in the past 6-8 months (tho it seems to be growing again) has been in a stagnate growth scenario based on slight attrition and apparent trouble in retaining new users month to month. (someone on the forum showed a site that had convincing numbers). It did grow a lot in 2020, which isn't surprising, nearly every online game did.

If the apparent infusion I'm seeing right now does get retained, we could start seeing growth again even at this point...it would be a great sign for going forward in the game.

Nobody is leaving DCUO because of difficulty, people come and go in DCUO because when they release new content the heavy elite players in particular come here, spam the living **** out of it with replay badges then go back to the other games they play.

That isn't leaving because of difficulty that's disappearing momentarily after reducing their own grind through their own actions.

This pattern of behavior has been present in the game for years regardless of the contents difficulty.