Dcuo early game, The 1-30 experience

I loved them, plus also once you saw them for the first time next times you did it with an alt or whatever you were able to skip it.

Love the level 1 to 30 part.

Played that part of the game more then any sane man ever should.
Here is my latest attempt.


DCUO is many games rolled into one.

The level 1 to level 30 part is a nice single player game and story.
The story after level 30 is... confusing at best.
If not for the videos explaining what he story is supposed to be....
I don t think many people get what the story is from the game alone.

I do miss the Comic Book Cinematics that we used to get..... but I get how those are costly to produce.... so I was not surprised that those Cinematics were the first thing removed in an attempt to cut down on cost wayyyy back when.

So... why the game so good from level 1 to level 30??
It os a nice single player game with a more focused storyline.

From what I remember Spytle and Deadmeat said, these were very restrictive to the design of the game and they had to build the whole DLC around them. They were neat, but I don't mind that they left with Last Laugh. On the other hand, I miss the Studio Blur videos. Those were advertisements and really enjoyed the cinematics of them.

With the drudgery of artifacts, it doesn't really motivate us to make new characters anymore, in my opinion, now the game does everything it takes to spoil the fun of alts.

DCUO the beginning is interesting but the longer you stay in this phase of the game and the more you look forward to reaching the max lvl ^^, that said, DCUO has the advantage of not taking very long to reach the max level compared to some game that requires reaching a level 60 or 80 to start reaching the endgame.

Not long ago, I redid a character and barely started I already didn't have the courage to type all his leveling phase stuff x).

After what should not be removed from this phase of the game (1 to 30) it is this nice side of finding more classic stuff from the DC universe than what the DLC offers us and on the other hand on this point, it is greatly lacking in the DLCs, unlike where a good part of the DLCs are the most shunned content of DC comics.

Yeah, I do find it fun going back and revisiting it with each of my characters (though there are particular missions or parts of missions that are the bane of my existence every time I reach them >.>) but sadly for me, I'm running out of characters to do it with. I have the max amount of characters and only two under-level-30 characters are left rn.

I carry your exact sentiment, just being in the open world, being immersed in a sand boxed form of content, and having other players who could jump in whenever they wanted , just offered you a different type of freedom that instanced content doesn’t. And “the hand of fate” is my favorite dlc because of that sole reason, having dlc content maneuver through the open world was gold, imo.

Oh gosh, I remember getting to 30 on my first toon (looking at feat dates, looks like that was ... 2016? I know I started when powers still had trees more like weapons still do, but i don't recall if I got to 30 before or after stats revamp). I'd been blithely clicking whatever the next objective was, and then all of a sudden I had no earthly idea what to do next. I thought at the time that I had to already have a group the size of a mission to do it, so I just wandered around a bit, then dropped off for one of my (many) longer lulls away from the game.

fun fact..one of my later toons took on the challenge of reaching 30 without playing any solo missions post getting off the ship. He succeeded..but that was with bounty tagging / alerts that aren't accessible any longer etc.

That reminds me of when one of my toons got enough XP over time I accidentally wound up with her reaching level 30 several missions before the final mentor mission and it felt so weird. I had a moment of "wait.... that's not supposed to happen"
Really threw me off for a moment when it happened. Also definitely felt a bit strange doing those last mentor missions with a 30 on my little info thing and a visible CR lmao.

Thing is, it's actually pretty easy to pull that off. With all the XP you can get from races, side missions, investigations/briefings and just fighting/running missions it's not really a problem, plus you don't have to do any extra purchases from the Marketplace.

I found that saving the free XP booster you get during the leveling process for a busy area worked wonders. Chinatown or Midtown in Metro are packed full of all sorts of races and investigations/briefings and taking time to run those down in between missions while the XP booster is active can really move things along in terms of your levels. Plus I'd take time after a mission series to run all the available Booster Gold exploration missions from the nightclub/police station.

More often than not I could get a character to 30 by the time I reached the Batwoman/Crime Bible mission series or during those missions.

The difference between the 1-30 and the post-30 games is that the 1-30 game was YOU (or rather your character) being central to fulfillment of the missions. You could solicit help from other players if you needed it, but otherwise the story depended on your character to get through it because your character mattered. Also, these were multi-part story arcs and thus unlimited by the constraint of fitting within a DLC, with the big payoff being at the end of the mission.

The post-30 game, however, is mostly about your character just being another face in the crowd and then running the same content over and over and over and over ad nauseum until the next DLC comes out. You robotically do the same handful of open world solo missions every day (or maybe an Alert or Duo) with the big payoff being coming primarily from running the weekly raids where you're dependent on a group of others to help you out. In other words, the focus of the game shifted from your character mattering, to your character being one just taking up a slot in a group. On top of that, the DLC format is so limited (content-wise) that telling good, detailed stories takes at least a year.

Since the game began, this has been a chief critique of mine. For a solid contrast in what a game which continued the 1-30 format throughout the game and went with the expansion format over the DLC one, check out City of Heroes. The graphics are dated and the gameplay is a little slower, but the stories are far longer and more detailed.

Well, this is only my opinion but the 1-30 experience, with the comicbook panels cutscene videos, the briefings and investigations rewarding actual styles and the inmersive storyline are above current and more recent content.
We keep losing all those things over the years and now its all kinda repetitive.
The original storylines were better, the missions were cooler.
I don't know it lost the magic. Maybe it's just me beign nostalgic about a better moment in DCUO when it actually mattered leveling up, playing and doing content and the content itself had quality.

#BringBackJack

#AllowUsToPlayGroupContentWithAIs.

Really. It would be awesome if we could just get the Justice League and play missions on our own.

I'd be shocked if we didn't get a JSA DLC that wrapped that up to do cross promotion with the movie. Even more so now that it was delayed.

You are (not) wrong!

DEVS!! could we get new leveling content? 30-60, maybe. I think it would be cool to revisit this type of content again

Oh God...the Penguin solo(Old Gotham Subway). Pengbot Maximus was the bane of my existence.

Age of Conan max level is 80 but in reality the game becomes a boring grind after level 60. However, they have many different areas to level up once you leave Tortage starting with whatever race you chose(Stygian/Cimmerian/Aqualonian) as you start in your homeland. But if you grind it out, the end of the storyline is pretty cool as long as you can win the final batter.

Now you've got me nostalgic lol.

Like most games I played, getting the first character through was a challenge compared to every alt afterwards as you became more familiar with mechanics, play style, etc. But it was incredibly awesome to find yourself inside the DC world alive with other players.

It's true I still enjoy that leveling process and - on occasion when I'm bored - will create and level a temp alt to 30. There are still things that annoy me, like cut-scenes in the middle of a fight (Bruno Manheim for example), inappropriate gear rewards, and needing to completely ignore chat in Metropolis , but overall it's still highly enjoyable and downright fun. I also liked the last set of updates to the initial Braniac escape.

There's still a part of me that would love to do a complete overhaul - not so much in regards to any shortcomings, but with respect to storyline. Since this game's inception, the public has become more familiar with the DC roster of heroes and villains. I could easily see expanding the mentors (leaving most of the quests, just changing some mentor voice-overs) with characters like Green Arrow, Flash, Harley Quinn, etc. But we can leave that for DCUO2