Thoughts on Clamp and other random things.

Older content has fewer players that still need to run it. As people have no need of the marks, already finish the feats, etc. eventually there is no need to return. Over time the pool of players who are going to run it will always grow smaller.

In gear-progression games, over time players progress and become more powerful, so it takes fewer players to run old content. Even though older content has fewer players interested, it would also have fewer players needed.

Courtesy of the Clamp, we are able to ensure that we always require the original numbers. Players can never become more powerful to make up the difference for the lack of a full group.

So the clamp is an excellent way of making sure that older content gets run less, not more.

Players get more powerful within a smaller range than before. The clamp still leaves a max player feeling powerful IMO but doesn't trivialise content.

Getting people to run content that is older or less desirable in general isn't really a struggle if you have a supportive league.

Recently we have been queued into omni as 6 or 7 and pugging strangers. If we have players in group missing feats, we immediately write in text to say what were doing and what is happening. Most of the time people queued in with us need it too.

Not when it's the best place to farm source marks, all players need, combat pets cost 700 source marks, allies cost source marks, alliance costs source marks, artifacts cost source marks, artifact catalysts cost source marks, account bound styles cost source marks, older extra vendor cosmetics cost source marks, a bunch of this stuff is tradeable and people wonder why they remain poor in game, they don't play.

So actually yes, please keep that attitude, more source marks for me, more money for me, more allies for me, more artifacts for me.

The clamp is actually the perfect way to give me more than I had before, but I mean I guess we can always go back to stomping content and only getting 2 source marks each time, it was so sweet right.

I call BS on this statement; I was doing regular open-world content grinding in older content for all of those sweet sweet Bounty Feats (almost entirely solo) before the Clamp occurred, and SINCE the clamp occurred? I've seen people in content that I never would have - by which I mean flatly never did - see them in before.

NO ONE was running Earth-3 before the Clamp. NO ONE was in Chaos Gotham on the reg. Now, it's harder to run things completely solo - mostly because there's always someone else there trying to get in on your action. It took me three weeks to get a solo Calculator vid - it took me a day to learn the fight, but it took me another 20 to get a clear phase to run it solo in.

As for "can it still be done?" - check the sig. The short answer is "yes".

Dealing with?

This is something funny I see people complain about. They deserve to one shot everything because the had to deal with the grind. Last I checked this was a game. If you are playing to get rewards and just “deal” with the content than why play? If playing the game is something you have to put up with than maybe it’s not the game for you.

Oh, it's a bounty, but yeah....not really a 'group' bounty....never has been. And yeah, I almost never go to that area...I pretty much hate all those missions.

Prior to the clamp, my queue times or anything outside the current content was upward of 30 minutes, and i didnt want to play because i spend more time waiting to get into content then running content. The clamp really helped bring the queue times down and made all content relevant to run because it all rewards something useful to me. Be in gear/styles/aesthetics/marks.

Dealing with is not content only. We are talking downtime, the trash in the chat, the hackers, all this garbage. This game has gotten outta control, SD you can say what you want. I played before the bases and all this stat clamping junk. I didn't see any hacking, no chat spam, downtime was VERY minimal. Now, smh. Vets are punished pretty bad for hanging in my opinion, but that's my thought on it. And thanks SD, I wouldn't have considered myself a vet lol. I may have a little knowledge on the game, but with all this newer content etc, I'm just as much of a noob as the next guy.

Not sure how long you were away but the stats clamp is relatively new. And the hacking and spamming has been a thing for a long time now. People get banned people make new accounts people continue to do what they were banned for. Those things are not a result of stats clamp. You may notice it more because you aren’t killing things as fast as they do now but it’s always been there.

As for being punished. I just never understood that argument. With all the changes to stats clamp it’s gotten to the point where things get melted again. I can’t one shot bosses anymore but they still melt. Look at the doomsday raid. People are beating it in about 3 minutes while bad groups beat it in 10. That’s because the clamp doesn’t actually clamp what matters.

And even thou it does take longer to kill people complain about having to play the game which again doesn’t make sense. Are people playing to get rewards or to enjoy the game?

It was that bad before the clamp too.... Been that way since OC

The complaint isn't that we have to play the content, it's that without sp and arts they CAN be a MF for some new players. I busted my rear to do solos and early content and it was TOO hard! I used the omnibus and rode shirt tails just to get enough gear to struggle through some starting content. Again, the new content is also clamped on your sp and arts. New people don't have these, so they are extremely hard and make us hate early content. I haven't even come close to doing ANY t1 content because it urked me so bad, it was NEVER that hard b4 that clamp trash. What I'm saying is that the game was much more reasonable back when I played the first time. My toon is much better with my 230sp and 140 arts for this content, but some are just one hitters no matter how I slice it. So I don't even try anymore, I'm missing so many sp because of this clamp, but that's Myt experience with it. No need for bashing, I said opinion, I'm working on the game and it will change.

Rough... I didn't know how long it had been going honestly, still don't. I just remember this trash wasn't a problem back in the day. Sounds like Daybreak killed the game, enabling all the crap that's happening. Beats me...

Content being hard for new players isn’t a result of players being clamped down but instead a problem of players being clamped up.

Take a solo for example. You should not have access to join a new dlcs solo unless you had the minimum cr with the minimum stats. At which point you would’ve gotten some feats from older content while getting gear to move up. So you end up at a decent (not good but decent) place to do them. However with the stats clamp players can play higher content as long as they fit into the bracket. A player would be scaled up to the bare minimum. This means that a solo mag actually feel more difficult until said player can get a little more gear. To where they would’ve been pre clamp.

However on the opposite side of the spectrum players who are bein scaled down are getting their base stats scaled with piercing to allow for extra stats. This means that content will be easier than it was at lvl. So a player being scaled down won’t have as hard if a time as someone being scaled up. Players shouldn’t be scaled up since they are out in an instance where they weren’t really ready for.

Also, the clamp doesn’t clamp down stats from sp and arts anymore. EEG now has full stats piercing so stats from so and arts bleed through fully now. This goes hand in hand with what I said earlier. New players don’t have this and are scaled up so content is harder for them.

If anything the game as become overall better for new players to catch up. The system is there to help you so you should take advantage of it. Here are some tips thou:

Spam the shady night club duo.
- This gives 5 pieces of gear which can be completed in 4-7 minutes depending on your skill and that if your partner.
- Pick the gear option that gives you the highest cr boost (largest green number by cr) regardless of role of gear. EEG will clamp gear anyways so even if it’s for the wrong role you’ll still get buffed. So go for CR over role at the start.
- In addition ti getting gear and a few SM you will also get random feats. If no gear option gives you a green cr boost pick the gear that gives you a new style.

Save all the SM you get from Shady duo.
- Use the SM to buy iconic vendor styles. Don’t think these drop from the random styles. So use your SMs ti complete those styles first.
- After getting the random styles and iconic styles look and see which random styles are close to being completed. Use the SM to complete those styles will you continue to do Shady for random styles

Open up Open Worlds
- T5 bounties are a common place people farm SM each week. Opening up all T5 zones means you can join SM farms
- Some (most) open worlds have open world feats that are easy to do. And don’t mean blunt feats. Take Thanagar for example. You have a feat ti take down banners. No fighting required.
- Opening up a better SM farm means you can buy vendor feats. Most newer DLC have vendor feats like buying a material/aura or a random style. Buying those will get a good amount of SP
- You can also buy artifacts from newer DLC. Some dlcs have a feat to buy each of the artifacts and taking one of that dlcs artifact to r20. Easy feats.


All of those can be done relatively easily. Which gets you more SP which bypasses the clamp. From there you go back and do all the solo feats and duo feats. You can then decide if you want to do the alert and raid feats if you don’t have a league to help you with.

I never looked at it being clamped up. I can see this REALLY smoking new players. The piercing you mentioned, no flipping clue. I don't spam the bounties honestly, I do DC and Flashpoint bounties that's it. I skipped most content by using the omnibus to gear up and hit the end game. I haven't even run the intos on t1-t5. I'm sure by now I could go back and catch some sp from this content, but when I need alerts and raids, my time on the game doesn't allow for am hour or so q time, so it's still gonna hurt.

Yeah, this part I don't understand at all. Can somebody please explain why they removed the level 10-30 versions of Area 51, Bludhaven etc?

There are a lot more than two of them, and they only drop their collection item while the mission's active, but they were always meant to be soloable. It's people like Steppenwolf, Doctor Light and the four in War-torn Village that can be problematic.

But, outside of event content that's the way it does work. You unlock each tier one at a time. Maybe the exact cr-requirement for unlocking each tier needs looking at but at least Omnibus won't let a CR 46 person queue for e.g. Batscape. (I admit I forgot to try custom queue, and I've no idea if a low-cr character could be invited.)

Lol you serious hun?

Very... Vets one hitting enemies is no hair off my butt... Back in the day, I spent my fair share of money to build my toon. If I would've been playing when that clamp hit, I'm sure I would have flipped out and probably quit. Spend money to make my toon good enough to blow through content only to have it taken away. Not an experience I would have taken lightly.

You’re not forced to use your money to enjoy playing the game. That’s your own choice and if you end up using your money you’re only supporting the game. You can literally just be premium and play through all content without spending a dime. Anyways what you said only speaks for yourself and the devs have to think about everyone and find a balance point. Both good and bad about the stats clamp has been worked on.

You should read on all the stats clamp threads to get a better idea why what you said is really wrong.

People's opinions are not a thing that can be wrong. It's theirs, Noone else's. I agree that money is not is not mandatory also, but my "real" life is when that game is off. I don't play every day for hours on end. I have other important things that need tending to. So spending is the extra hours I can't put in. As for the reading on the clamping, I will get there sometime, kinda busy learning the artifact stuff and new mechanics. And just so you know, I mean you NO disrespect on this post.

No disrespect taken