It's time for an honest conversation Devs - What are you doing?

I'm ok with it. it's not awesomely super smashing, sure, but I wasn't really expecting it to be. it's ok. mildly annoyed by them not putting the weekly counter missions in the memorial, but I know where they are now, so not the end of the world. I can see a lot of fresh-ish players missing out on them, though. I think my one complaint is that the raid shoulda been much bigger, more expansive. other than that, I'm not particularly disappointed in the episode. just not particularly impressed, either. it's ok.

also, no BatRex. straight up, if BatRex ain't the extra bounty they add down the line, then I'm gonna be very very disappointed.

I’m already disappointed with the DLC and it hasn’t even hit live for Switch yet…Still a hard pill to swallow knowing that every future episode from now on will be delayed. That’s a different topic.

The OP makes some good points and I hope we’re all taking notes, as players and as Developers. I don’t speak for everyone, but us players have grown to “nitpick” the smallest details here and there as of late — content/assets being recycled is a big one, factors of the game not getting attention (for example selling R&D materials and even gear shows the Source Mark value of it as well; super small detail that makes you think “why isn’t this being fixed?”). Like come on, is this really the image that you Devs want for your beloved DCUO? It’s not polished, guys. And the standards of quality have been getting lower and lower, and so have my expectations (when it comes to the most recent episodes and future ones). God only knows how much lagging this Raid will give the Switch. Let’s see how it compares to the lag fest that is Sixth Dimension Raid from last episode. And don’t worry, there are a plethora of other content that is full of lag. A fix? Who knows if it’ll get fixed, but I stay a fan of DCUO. I stay a customer. Even through the hiccups, Devs. And so with that, I say you’re welcome!

The recycling is obvious, as is the lack of new base items. Is this due to a lack of inspiration or a lack of talent? Also, did the devs really think we wouldn't notice?

Also technically Save The Universe was a Dark Knights episode too that Proxystar passed over but yeah Legion of Doom was a continuation of Birds of Prey which is yay or nay depending if you're a Metal fan or not

LOL, none of which is making this any better

You mean House of Legends? Save the Universe was an event. Oh speaking of events, Anniversary Event directly ties Flashpoint to Metal storyline.

Sorry Proxy I made it worse.

Oh right, it's confusing that it's both an episode AND event

Agreed.

Let's just go with nothing but Death Metal since September 2019 then

Death Metal was an episode I suggested on here a couple years back, for a few reasons:

1. An opportunity to finally go to the Source Wall.
2. Good styles inspired by DM versions of iconics like Wonder Woman and Batman. I know for the cosplayers some of these styles would have been popular ahead of time.
3. To conclude the Metal story arc.

I think if we had a bigger dev team I would have preferred this episode and the last one as one whole episode. You would have the hallway raid with Sixth Dimension and the one room raid with Source Wall.

Regarding the episode itself:

Open world is basically the same as last episode again. It's alright. Also where's B-Rex?

Duo needed more......something. There's no elite duo feats either.

Alert, I'm not sure why we go back to Earth 3? The Devastator fight is fine but the rest is copy paste from the E3 episode. We could have visited Castle Bat or met the Watchmen. There's a backstory as to how Batman Who Laughs becomes One Who Laughs and Dr Manhattan is involved.

The raid is solid, the devs done a good job here. Needs a few tweaks here and there, but probably one of my favourite raids in a while, from art design to content design. There's mechanics to the boss fights (OWL to a lesser degree).

The raid carries the whole episode imo. (Which is good for endgame players who like raids) The open world is kinda OK, but the duo and especially the alert seem like an afterthought.

Agree with the raid part i think thats also why i rated this episode so high probably cause the elite raid is just soo good (the first boss fight is my favorite and the second bossfight is good too) mechanic wise and difficulty wise the devs really did fantastic here i hope they will continue with such direction for elite raids i also think the elite alert is the second best one they released best one was the demons plan elite alert imo.

Yeah it’s gotten kinda stale. Probably one of the reasons why I haven’t been playing much these past few months lol. I love DCUO but like I just can’t sit here and play recycled content over and over. It gets annoying. Batman who laughs is a cool villain and all, but they’re definitely overdoing it.

Also love that PVP is included in this discussion. PVP is an important aspect in all gsmes regardless of monetization status. It keeps people from just dropping out if the PVE side gets stale. I would always run pvp when I wanted to test my combat skills or just to have competitive fun. There’s no point in that because PVP is just broken. I get nobody knows how to fix it but the complete neglect is crazy.

I wonder how many people would come back to the game if pvp were fixed. Plus they seemingly hate it, will it even be a thing in their Marvel MMO?

Absolutely, it kept you playing when you weren't enjoying PVE for whatever reason and with the state of it being such a train wreck, there's not even PVP to keep you in game. a Healthy PVP scene compliments the game, but I fear sometimes people think PVP can be dropped at the expense of PVE at it really can't.

I really hope for the sake of those who love PVP Daybreak will revitalize it in the near future. Perhaps this is the New System referenced in the Q3 2022 objectives?

Personally, I don't like PVP, I don't want to participate in PVP, I want nothing to do with it, but others do. I believe PVP has been neglected for far too long. I just don't want it forced on me.

I think this game has always done a decent job of not thrusting PVP upon people, there's some minimal feats in there, but it's a pretty small number, you really don't even need them, but I know some players look at them with angst, wanting them at times.

That's why I think allowing feats through scrimmages kills two birds with one stone, it potentially exposes people to some PVP and they might become interested more long term in the game mode and it gives people easier access to the feats, while still actually undertaking the task, even if it is with a friend.

I know there's the risk that people will just "farm out the feats through win exchanges" but people are doing that anyway, so what's really the point in attempting to prevent something that only serves to annoy players rather than enthuse them.

You can also get people interested in PVP through bonus weeks through increased marks or even increased marks on one map at a time to encourage people to queue them, also helping with feats and could even slap a few new maps together, that's where you could really utilize that good ol' recycling of assets and environments.

The re-using of art assets doesn't bother me. Every video game as far back as I can remember does it. Super Mario Brothers on the old NES used the same render for the clouds as it did for the bushes. Pick up brand new games on the PS5 and you'll still notice that everyone in the world has the exact same bookshelf, or the same brand of table, or had their chairs apparently made by the same carpenter. Re-using art assets saves huge amounts of time.

In the context of DCUO, if no art assets were being reused, and we had to wait for everything to be done from scratch, we'd be getting far, far, far less content each year. And ultimately, even if a room looks really awesome, "new" becomes "old" over the course of playing it, and we can exhaust content faster than they can make it. No matter how great the art is, if we dialed back to just one expansion per year to do it, most of us are going to finish our gear and then quit long before the wait is up.

Where I want to say I agree is with fight mechanics. I'd like to say that I want original fight mechanics, and I don't want every boss to feel mostly the same.

Not just with DCUO, but with other MMOs as well, for close to 20 years, we could sum up over 98% of new boss fights with the very simple directions "don't stand in the bad spot." That's almost every boss in almost every game. Batman-Doomsday is making spikes? Don't stand in the bad spot. Anti-Monitor is draining your power? Don't stand in the bad spot. Avatar of Tech is flying into the air to do a big blast that will kill anyone under him? Don't stand in the bad spot.

So much of MMOs feels the same in the way of boss fights that I want to say how desperate I am for something different, and how fun it would be to break the mold and try something new.

But then I remember that they just did that with Mr Myxizixixxxlxplxxxxqurlxxxxxxxxxx. And it was pretty awful.

And they did that in the Metal II raid with the card game. And it was pretty awful.

And pretty much every time they deviate too drastically from the traditional format, it seems to feel worse, not better.

So as much as I want to wave the banner for new and innovative fights, I'm going to look at the evidence and the history and I'm going to be a bit more of a realist.

"Give me fights that contain a combination of 3-4 basic fight mechanics out of your list of 10ish basic fight mechanics, in a slightly different combination than what the bosses used in the last 2-3 expansions."

I am totally cool with "He does a charge like Boss X, and he puts circles on the map like Boss Y. Then at 50% life, he switches over and does a cone attack like Boss Z." I don't need them to reinvent the wheel. The further they break the mold, the worse it seems to end up. Just stick with what works.

If they are going to invest resources into new art assets, then my preferred place to start would be with styles.

Make sure the membership perk style is something new, not some recycled style we already have. Even if you add a glowy spot on it, that's still undesirable. The membership perk is people literally paying you money. Do not take their money and then give them a duplicate of something they already have.

I swear, after the slap in the face that was the Batman Helmet last month, if this Reporter style this month is just the exact same "Business" style that is available from the creation vendors, but with a clip on press badge on the chest, I'm going to be seriously disappointed. Especially when Lois Lane's HAIR has been highly requested, and instead we're getting her shirt and pants, which the Lois model in the game seems to use as a 99% recycled style.

Thanks for your thoughts. I chuckled about your Lois Lane comment, because I have fears on your behalf lol.

On just one other note, I wonder if another option also, is if they're going to re use assets, which despite personally not preferring and understanding entirely the time savings involved, perhaps they could give them different moves at least.

If you're going to use Lashina for example, does it always have to be the same Lashina, I don't know how difficult it would be to develop a few new moves for her each time, but part of the disappointment is that they're always clones as well.

Oh look it's "Lashina's reflect" what prey tell shall I do here, "eh ignore it, pew pew pew"

I think your examples of their breaking the mold horror stories are spot on. I too hated both of those needless additions to the raid. For me, I think an excellent example of a really great raid is Atlantis: The Throne, where we have to battle Corum Rath, I think that is how to spell his name, lol,

It offered a variety of attacks, the need for interaction by the team to complete a task that allows the next progression of the battle, and provided a variety of boss attacks not just from Corum but also from the sea monster where he pops up at the most inopportune time.