Where do you draw the line?

Yes. And the reason people were subbing monthly instead of 6 - 12 months was assumed to be that people had short attention spans - not that they couldn't afford or didn't want a half-to-yearly sub.

Oddly enough, the lack of engaging content was "solved" by - a lack of engaging content.

Possibly monthly subs are either up, or recognised as the bread-and-butter, rather than niche cases.

Prior to Premium not having access to 99% of DLC, that may have been the case.

Well, there are many games out there that don't have a replay badge/loot lock system like this game and they have far more players than this one.....so. I don't know you tell me. Because replays badges actively encourage your players to not play the game beyond a few weeks and thus you have to introduce new feats half way though the DLC to bring those replay badge wallet warriors back to the game.

Every system is here for players to pay. Someone prefers to pay for a stable but artificial duration (sub) someone for progress control (rb). F2p and RB make the system more flexible. You just need to play with like-minded people and you can play how you want.

And about success, don't pretend, we all know here that you understand that the success of the game depends on many factors and not just one.
For example, a very large part of WOW success is based on the fact that it came out at a very prosperous time and won a niche in the absence of competition (if it came out at the same time as DCUO, SWTOR, in the form that it came out originally ... then it I would die faster than a mouse in an empty refrigerator).

OC wasnt just developed better,it had the best pieces of raid content we ever got in any episode imo (and the succes shows this too) even though it had RNG BiS gear drops from the content it was still the best episode holding all time records for so many years or undefeated in some untill pandemic (doesnt really count as fair comparison though)does speak for itself.

Interestingly enough DCUO also thrives because of the absence of competition.

The point I was actually making also is that, if you want people to actually play the game and repeatedly then it's best not to give them a way to actually stop playing it; replay badges do that.

You say get together with "like-minded people", sure that's cool until those like-minded people stop playing the game because they've done everything and become bored, I mean great, you milked them for money, cool, but guess what else happens when they leave and play less.

The players that decided not to replay have less people to interact with, because more people have abandoned the content, this disenfranchises players and they either play less themselves or worse, leave and never come back because they think the game is "dead".

Where do you think all the complaints come from about the "game being dead" at times, it's because it literally does become a wasteland and it happens sooner than it otherwise would if players weren't given an avenue in which to avoid logging in because they're waiting on a weekly or daily reset.

There's a reason other games don't offer loot resets and stick to schedules. I appreciate you clearly like the replay badges and I'm not telling you not too and in fact, even I myself accept that there are benefits to them that allow a player to "catch up when they've fallen behind" and that sort of thing.

But it's the epitome of denial to think they don't also come with a raft of general cons for players.

I do weirdly agree with the OP, a line should definitely exist.

I believe that line to be: 'episodic currency should never be bought from marketplace, nor should renown'

With seasonal stuff, I don't think anyone should care as to whether currency can be bought. For the most part, items are cosmetic and if you have been playing long-term and a completionist, each new seasonal brings less than a sp. The amount earned over the course of a seasonal is usually enough to get whatever you need anyway.

With source marks, that's a different story. When they moved to HoL update, and then the source mark reward was updated, at that point they should have been removed from marketplace. You can earn 100s of source marks a day with ease. The developers could have easily doubled down on this precedent of run content = get source marks to your heart's content.

Episodic currency & renown. Ugh, this should never have been a marketplace suggestion, ever. Renown is an earned resource. You get it for being able to beat difficult content. The episodic currency is equally earned. You get it for participating in an episode during that episode's lifespan. You are perfectly free to wait until that content becomes source marks to run it as much as you want.

Replay badges, well I honestly don't know how I feel about them. Do I want to get max level and have fantastic stats quicker? Yes, do I justify the cost, no, but I still pay it.
They are a necessity to the revenue stream, I get that, I don't like it, but I accept it, because I do want those stats and I do want to support this game & it's longevity.

Just taking Steam stats and assuming they at least loosely correlate across other platforms (which in the absense of other data is a reasonable assumption).

Origin Crisis launched in May 2013.

In virtually every month following the release of that DLC the population decreased by 10%, until it somewhat stabilized but still methodically continued to still bleed half its players before more methodically stabilizing around 500-700 daily average players.

That DLC caused players to leave the game, you can call it the "Best DLC" all you like and it's voted that way often, because the number of people that remain to this day, remained during that DLC, they often view it through the distorted lenses of nostalgia.

However. to suggest it was a "success is somewhat debatable, because any DLC that causes your population to bleed, month after month, is probably on most metrics anything, but.

On August 2013, Sons of Trigon released and in August and September the population continued to decrease by 10% per month

Between November 2013 and January 2014 the population recovered 10% per month, for 3 months.

In the middle of October 2013 there was a Hot fix, finally fixing the RNG loot issues in Origin Crisis where certain pieces of gear weren't dropping at all, so some players came back to check it out.

source - https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/server-hotfix-october-11-2013.174835/

Generally speaking, ever since that DLC, despite there being a few spikes here and there, usually for reasons such as the name reclaim and server merges, the population has never recovered from the bleed caused by Origin Crisis, in fact it's just progressively continued to decrease.

Even during the pandemic, where they said they were doing well, the Steam metrics would seem to tell a different story, prior to Origin Crisis there were around 1,418 daily average players, When the pandemic hit in December 2019~ the average daily number was 415.

The average daily number today is 577, that number has been relatively static in the Steam stats since it leveled out following the Origin Crisis player bleed.

In fact, in my opinion it would tend to indicate the players still here today are the players that stuck around during Origin Crisis, broadly speaking, with probably some rotation between departing players and fresh ones, there is however virtually zero population growth and hasn't been any significant growth, certainly not on the Steam platform since the decline began.

Origin Crisis using those metrics wasn't a success in fact arguably speaking, it was probably the beginning of everything that went wrong with this game, if you're going off the sheer basis of watching players leave as being a measurement of success.

The moment they crossed the loot-box line, there was nothing they couldn't get away with.

Once made the lootbox contents tradable, DCUO became borderline RMT.

Sounds familiar (I was a big fan of the Expansion)


Content difficulty
Rendering Issues
Players moving their focus to maximizing DPS roles and minimizing any none DPS role
PvP was at the beginning of the end (WM was BS)
IMO is what i noticed on the PS3.

I mean Origin Crisis's instances they should've give another look, i think their is potential in it still, had the game not been hamstrung by outright difficulty, and hardware no longer able to keep up.

My competition was to get to max CR gear level before anyone else in my league prior to GU116. Even though I did get all gold level gear, I have never stopped playing the game after reaching my CR goal with the exception of 2 times. The first was when stats revamp happened and how horrible that was initially. The second was when Ep 41 dropped as I refused to partake of it. When Save the Universe comes back around I will also avoid again just as much as I did the first time. I love being stronger and being the best I can be playing the content compared to how I was before I got the better gear. It is satisfying to me. I guess it's not for others.

I seem to remember that the population started declining immediately after stats revamp and then after whatever happened to pvp. I think pvp is the primary reason for population loss.

Haha, I didn't mean personal "competition", I meant the game doesn't have any real competition within the super hero MMO genre that actually makes it strive to be better.

It stands alone in the genre based on the strength of its IP. If there was another MMO such as a marvel game running along side this game then I think it would be vastly different.

The reason this game gets away with the amount of recycling of content, all sort of things is because it doesn't have that meaningful competition.

Besides from that IP, it also has a slightly more unique combat system compared to other MMO's where DCUO errs more towards being an "action" type game rather than a more stereotypical 'turn based' MMO.

Yes I have the combat system in Final Fantasy XIV. This one far more better.

That should be I hate the combat system in Final Fantasy XIV. It’s awful.

I like the hotkey based system for a more traditional MMO experience, but the action based system works well in DCUO IMO.

I don’t have hot keys on PS4

You do lol. Its the cross action hotbar (which DCUO needs to use for armories)

One of the mistakes a lot of games make is deviating from their road map, and listen to a vocal group demanding something. Having a road map, and sticking to it watching the metrics change as features and content are added, rather than watching the Twitter feed or the forums.

As anyone in customer service knows, the customer is not always right.

Whether DCUO did this or not, I'll leave up to you.

Other than the stat clamping i am quite happy with the game.

Great debate. Proxystar, you have developed your thoughts and eloquently stated them. Good read. Well done. To express my opinion, I'd say:

(1) PVP was once a major factor, many left once it took a dive, and the community still has not recovered.

(2) RNG is terrible for capsules. If they went the route they offer with 'open so many get this' approach, it wouldn't be such a gamble. Time capsules should be a tiered system wherein if they have thirty to forty items (so many pieces of gear, two or three collections) in it, you are guaranteed with each one you open to receive that collection, that gear piece, style, etc. I'd likely spend a few bucks a month outside of my subscription if there were a guarantee. Now I just save stabilizers for three to four months and go for the feats, whatever I get, it is what it is. I have thousands of capsules saved back from the OG Time Capsule to the current batch.

(3) As far as replay badges go, always thought it was dumb. I don't "replay" anything until the loot unlocks, unless of course I'm striving for a few of the 'harder/repeat me' feats. I mostly use replays to unlock styles and feats on my varied and many characters. Now that we can flat out farm source marks it has reduced even further my need for replays, outside of the aforementioned uses.

I've got my quibbles, but 11 years later and I'm still here so apparently they're doing something right.