Read me

Hello heroes and villains, my name is Devastating Anger and I have created this thread to bring some awareness to some issues I can no longer ignore. The first issue I have with the game is that the prices set in the broker are outrageous. The average player regardless if you play legit or not has purchased in-game cash from a website to keep up with the inflation on PC & PS servers. Is this a bannable offense? Indeed it is as I lost my first account from buying in-game cash because it’s NOT easy to make in-game cash. Just to buy all the emblem skill points I can find, that’s already well over 2 billion in game cash. This is not including aura and material feats. Think about how much $ has to be invested in order to have every aura, material, emblem, and style? Think about how much skill points players who are free to play or premium won’t be able to receive because of this pay-to-win mechanic. How can daybreak games feel so comfortable stealing from players and banning them for things that don’t destroy the game or make it unplayable for others?

My second issue is Time Capsules. I personally believe that it was the worst addition to the game and the largest money grab tactic Daybreak could have implemented. I’m sure people spend more $$$ on time capsules than they do replay badges. Back to the point I raised above, these are almost unobtainable skill points for those living on the less fortunate side of life. I personally believe that promethium lockboxes should have never been removed and instead put ALL time capsule loot into lockboxes while providing members with unlimited unlock benefits. Premium members would get the opportunity to open 5 capsules a day and a free to play member should be able to open 1-2 lockboxes a day. That way, this allows the membership to be provided with a genuine incentive as the membership is practically pointless. To avoid people abusing opening lockboxes, make them untradable so individuals cannot mail or trade them to their legendary friends.

My third issue is the membership benefits. I would have to say in the 10+ years I have played this game, the membership benefits are the absolute worst. There truly is no incentive to being legendary aside from more stabilizers, additional inventory and bank slots, the ability to trade $ (ways around this) and that’s it. What exactly are you paying all that $ for a pointless membership? Daybreak doesn’t care about you and never will. Look at how they run their other games and you’ll see how much of a $$$ grab company they are. Their worst game? Planetside 2. Don’t even get me started on providing constructive criticism for that game. Make the membership mean something or just gives all the same benefits to everyone.

My fourth collective issue with DC is Walk-ins, Omnibus & Clamps. Daybreak basically spit in the face of all of the OG players who took the time to grind out their skill points just to hit like a 60 CR DPS/40 skill points in old content. Why would we want to spend more time in a raid that should take less than 10 minutes to complete with my genuine stats? They didn’t put any thought into how everyone would feel because daybreak was too busy sucking up to newer players. If you want to bring more people into the game, do some marketing & advertising. I haven’t seen a single DC Universe Online ad since 2011, i’m sure a huge majority of DC fans don’t even know this game exists. I believe with the new House of Legends addition, The WatchTower and Hall of Doom should get remodeled to have access to more Alert & Raid walk-ins that you can choose to do with your league if you don’t want to wait a millennium for Omnibus or a random to que. Also running raids clamped should be optional and if you decide to run unclamped, you will still get loot and whatever the episode currency is. Cause the truth is, Omnibus and clamp didn’t make people run old content more, in fact, it just ticked people off.

My FINAL complaint is league prestige. I personally believe it’s stupid to place a limit on how much prestige a league or league member can earn. If I am putting 6+ hours a day into a game running with my league, I want the credit for my actions. Remove the prestige cap in general and allow players to build as much prestige as they like without limiting them. Why are you limiting leagues from getting buffs & bank slots! I know most of these issues I addressed will be completely ignored by Daybreak and all the haters will come swimming by to back up DayBreak/Development teams cash grab of a game.

I have all time capsule feats and I do not pay to open time capsules. I agree it isn’t easy to make money, but it can be done. I don’t know how realistic it would be to expect a situation where it’s easy to make money and buy everything. If it was easy to make money then prices would be even higher because even fewer people would buy stabilizers and there would be fewer TC items on the secondary market. As it stands you either pony up for stabiiizers OR work hard to make money.

I completely agree about time capsules being the scum of the game though. I’d be embarrassed to work for a gaming company that puts player progress in loot boxes, no wonder the staff turnover is so high. They are unethical.

With regards member benefits, the key element missed in your assessment is the free seals. I used to have to buy these and now I don’t.

I think everyone would agree with you about walk-ins, even the devs. There are technical reasons why this hasn’t happened yet, I think.

I understand your disillusionment with the stat clamp, many people feel this way, it has been a very divisive change. I’m not that sympathetic towards the “OG” players you describe though; unless they’ve played consistently for 11 years, they aren’t special or entitled to do anything other than go back and grind the old content just like everyone else.

I agree with your summary that the stat clamp threw endgame players under the bus. I agree that it’s pathetic that the game has no marketing budget and whenever they need more money, the only buttons they push involve trying to find new ways to extract more money out of existing players.

I don’t really have strong feelings either way about the situation with league prestige, other than to point out that the system was clearly designed with active leagues with more than a handful of players in mind. If your league doesn’t meet that description, this would explain your frustration.

So wait, are you implying that everyone buys cash? Because they don't.

So… hacking or buying hacks is against the TOS for very obvious reasons and you’re surprised and mad you got banned for it? I mean, hacks like that can literally be illegal. A ban is the least of your worries. And if your problem is with inflation… well doing this is just gonna create even more inflation by pumping more money into circulation. That’s why the government doesn’t just go nuts and print a bunch more money. That’s how economics work. And while those feats and skill points being out of reach can be frustrating, there’s not exactly a shortage of feats to get and you can very easily get on just fine without buying some hundred billion dollar aura from some player on the broker. You don’t really get to be mad at an online multiplayer game for banning you for buying literal hacks and cheating. Do you expect a game, especially an MMO, to just be fine with people literally hacking and exploiting the game for personal gain?! Like… if a car is way overpriced and I feel like I’m being scammed, that doesn’t just mean I’m completely ok to commit grand theft auto and the police are just gonna let me have the car because I wanted it and felt I deserved it and felt entitled to it simply because I want it and it’s nice. While inflation is definitely a problem in this game, you aren’t just entitled to whatever you want and even in a more stable in-game economy there’d always be things you don’t get, just like in life. They don’t owe you these specific items or feats. As frustrating as it can be to miss out, ya just gotta do feats you actually can, of which there are many. I mean, right now you can buy any two animal ear styles from the Spring event vendor and get a feat. You get feats just for visiting every safe house and district in both Metropolis and Gotham. In the newest episode you get a feat and a title just for doing Jimmy Olsen’s daily mission 15 times. You have plenty of options and aren’t entitled to every single one being available to you. Your ban is your own fault, just like I can’t blame my arrest on the car dealership after I steal a car from them. Yes, the inflation is a problem and we’d all welcome it being fixed, but that doesn’t make literal hacks or the purchase of them ok or your ban unjustified in the slightest. And again, you aren’t exactly helping the inflation problem by doing this. You’re just gonna make it worse.

Imma just address the money aspect and how its pretty easy to make money on this game without buying gold. i have 5 end game toons i regularly run content on all maxed head augs due to the doubles week. check this out , in 2 weeks i was able to get about 72 death metal picks saved up since then. The broker says they're about 6 million each right now and probably will be for the rest of the week. 72 picks being sold for 6 million a pop is 432 million. just for 2 weeks of passive grinding. Dont wanna sell your op back fodder? okay i get it , but theres a seasonal going on right now , not just any seasonal but the spring seasonal , items from this seasonal goes for big bucks later in the year , large patches of grass selling for damn near 10 mil a patch by December along with puddled water. Buy a few of those and save them, same with the rain clouds accessory . By September those rain clouds will go for 100 mil just because they're tied to a feat people cant get at the moment.

Use the money you acquire form this and buy yourself the time capsule styles because right now because of the resurgence caps being dumped right now, those styles are cheap cheap and plentiful . if you need quarks for the quarks vendor then save your stabilizers and open up cursed Gotham caps or dark metal caps (the one with the la-mort card) those give about 30 quarks as a option choice with the extra quarks you get from the end. Slowly build that stash up on those quarks and before you know it you'll have enough to get a 5k style. You can very much play this game spending nothing other than $15 and since the membership changes you dont even need to do that either.

it's not hard to make money in this game. anyone who says it is, is just too lazy to put in the extra legwork. sell everything you can. doesn't matter for how little. it all adds up.

as for this: " The average player regardless if you play legit or not has purchased in-game cash from a website to keep up with the inflation on PC & PS servers." GTF. I have never, not once, ever, gone to a scammer. ever. I don't do it. because I don't cheat. if you choose to do so, that's on you, but you don't get to tar the rest of us with the same brush.

time capsules? you don't have to open them. there's more than enough SP available throughout the entirety of this game to not need to give a toss about capsule feats. I open whatever I need to open to get the "open x" feats with my free stablizers, & buy anything else I need off the broker.

don't like the membership benefits? don't be a member, then. problem solved. you don't need to be now, anyway. me, I pay my tenner a month not because I need any of the stuff they give me, but because I want to support the game. &, honestly, for all the countless hours of play & fun I get out of this game, I conside a tenner a month an effing bargain.

walk-ins, yeah. I'm with you on that. I'd rather adjustable queue sizes, meself, so you can go in with a reduced group, or solo, but, yeah, we've been asking for that for yarons. &, yeah, totally with you on the prestige thing, too.

Clearly you lack basic reading comprehension skills. I said “Most”, I did not say “everyone” . Do all Americans have a tough time speaking and understanding their own language?

Who mentioned anything about hacking? I was talking about people who purchase in-game cash from real players in trade chat or one of the REAL websites to get in-game cash. It’s not scamming or hacking, so just like the other American, how can you not use the right words in the proper context. You can’t explain to me how economics works because their are no rules and foundations to it. We haven’t tried to find solutions because people like you think if we raise wages that everything else will increase dramatically. Everything is already increasing in price except wages in REAL life. Same case with DCUO. Everything is going up in price using the whole supply and demand deal to hit people with the highest price they can. A prime example of this is comparing the PC & PS server broker to say Xbox or nThe Switch. Even resets are triple the amount you would pay on any other console. Yet here we have a great display of open ignorance on someone claiming to know “economics”. Pathetic. You obviously lack basic reading comprehension skills cause I didn’t hack, cheat, or scam to get banned. I purchased in-game cash. Also clearly you’re ignorant enough to claim “feats” so what about players who reached the max without purchasing time capsules that sre missing those feats. I don’t think you actually understand how many skill points come from Time Capsules and that’s whete your ignorance shows. Continue being a bootlicker for day break

So the solution to the problem is just to make more toons which requires more time invested and $ invested depending on how you choose to play? Seasonal items will always be worth a pretty penny after seasonal is gone so I thought holding items until it’s over is common sense. I don’t have my death metal guitar maxed out so I unfortunately cannot expend to sell those on the broker. You’re acting as if we get a ton of stabilizers and you’re also not adding the factor that an individual may need to collect said style/collection/item from time capsules which if you’re going the Free to play or Premium route, good luck. You WILL be spending $. Let’s not even talk about how you only get 25 quarks for 100 source marks. Everything is to make you play longer and spend more $. That’s the true concept of daybreak games.

The same thing I told the other two Americans. Where in my statement did I state I got banned for hacking or scamming? I literally said I got banned for buying in-game cash from a real player in trade chat. Was it against the TOS? Sure, but definitely wasn’t worth getting a $2K+ dcuo account terminated. No person deserves that unless you’re scamming or using third party software. You guys clearly lack basic reading comprehension skills and cherry picked my post/twisted my words. Glad you didn’t have to go to a website or player to get in-game cash but there are 1,000’s of players doing it because it’s not easy to make in-game cash unless you have rare mats/auras, materials for op items and artifacts, and seasonal items. Other than what I listed, how else are you making in-game cash without spending real $? You all sound brainwashed honestly. Then everyone’s excuse for not wanting some positive change to this game is “I already have the feats, styles, etc”. “The game is great even though it’s recycling content and providing us with trash styles”. It truly is pathetic to see how much wasted potential is in this game because of players being okay with how the game currently is.

I disagree with most but not all of what you've said in your first post.

I came back to the game in October last year after a bit of a break and had about $1,500,000 on my account. By playing the auction house I'm now up to around $750,000,000. This is just dabbling when I fancy spending some time playing on it. If I'd made a concerted effort, I'd have made a lot more than that. Single collection pieces from the April Fools collection are selling for around $50,000,000 a piece. I've sold three and still have 1 more I'm sitting on. I find it pretty easy to make money in game once you know what sells well.

I personally really enjoy the Legendary Membership benefits. When you look at the amount of stuff you get over the month and how much it would cost you if you were to purchase said items from the marketplace, I think it's really good value for money. One of the benefits from this is monthly stabilisers. I personally don't open the normal time capsules, I wait for the Resurgence Mega capsules and have enough stabilisers from my membership to open as many as I feel the need to. In general though, I really dislike the whole lootbox vibe of them and don't agree with skill points being shut behind a paywall. When compared to membership of other MMO's I've played such as Dungeons and Dragons Online or Elder Scrolls Online, DCUO has a much better deal going on. DDO still makes you pay for expansion packs and mini DLC's even if you're subscribed... and they're really not cheap!!!

The clamp has been divisive across the community and everyone has their own opinion on it. Personally, I much prefer it as I can play any content and get rewarded for it. I can rinse and repeat as often as I want. With the changes that have been made, we still hit extremely hard. It's solved a lot of issues such as mechanics breaking and ruining a raid/alert because the boss was one hit and I've seen a lot of players returning since the clamp. Conversely, a lot of players who hated it also left but you can't please all of the people all of the time. You say that the clamp hasn't made people play old content more, just ticked them off. While that's undoubtedly true for some people, the converse is also true. A lot of players, myself included, are playing a lot more older content than we ever used to which is helping us avoid that dreaded MMO burnout factor. I'm having a lot more fun than when I'd just repeat the same old end game content repeatedly.

League prestige; I'm right with you on that one though. I'd love to see Leagues and League halls get a lot more love. Other MMO's for instance get benefits for having a smaller guild such as earning more prestige (or whatever their equivalent is).

Overall, while I understand your frustrations, I can't say that I share many of them. When I look at the amount of changes that have been made since I first started playing in 2011, I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the direction the game is going.

Now where's that graphics overhaul???

still massively assumptive.

i'm not even american

not American.

& if, as you claim, thousands of other players are doing it then they're cheats, as well. how'm I making money? I repeat, SELL EVERYTHING. collections, plans, exos, styles, auras, base items, henchmen, orbitals, materials, seasonal items, when they add new things on the event vendor snap a couple up & flog them off, anything you don't want or need you sell. it doesn't matter if you can't list every item as 60-kagillion a pop. sell 10 things at 1000 a pop, that's 10,000. do that 10 times, that's 100,000. do that 10 times, you got a million. & on it goes. it all adds up. that's how you make money. unfortunately, it does require you to put in a wee bit of effort. but it's a perfectly legit & perfectly reliable guaranteed way of making money.

As far as making money goes, it's really not hard, you just have to put in some effort to do it. There's a lot of different ways:

1: playing the broker -not for everyone and requires a lot of time, but once you have an idea what stuff is selling for, then buy low, sell high isn't hard to do.
2: spamming seasonals - buy a bunch of stuff, sell it in a couple months when people can't buy it anymore. Best things are tied to feats, or something that people will use a lot of, or uniquely cool items that it's obvious that people will want.
3: run all your Omnibus quests - this one is by far the easiest, and likely something you'll be doing anyway, but there are some high value collections that can drop out of the Omni boxes. If you do it on multiple characters, you increase your chances of getting something good.
4: money runs - There are a bunch of raids and alerts that drop high value items and people are almost always willing to run them. There's an element of luck there, but if you run them enough, you're bound to get good stuff eventually.
5: buy stuff for source that are tied to feats and sell on the broker. There are a ton of auras, materials, and accessories from old DLCs that you can buy with source marks. Most of those sell for very good money on the broker b/c a lot of people don't want to spend source on them. Grind source, buy stuff, sell on broker, profit.

There are others, but the thing they all have in common is you have to work at it. There's no need to ever buy fake money with real cash. Yes the prices are insane, but it's super easy to make money, because you're selling everything at crazy prices too.

I want to make sure I word this correctly....so I don't get scolded by you.

While some or many might buy from gold sites (obviously somebody does), to say 'the average player' or 'most' or even 'many' means you have done a solid sampling of all the users and come up with a solid number on how many do this. I'd wager you did not, so your statement is flawed. 'Some' would be your best way of putting it, which is why you are getting the responses you are.

I personally have never purchased gold, from a site or from another player....which the 2nd is only against terms if done with direct RL cash or payment....you CAN purchase gold via trade, like "selling resets for 40 mil"...you are basically buying their gold with your replays, which cost real money. I also only know 1 or 2 people who've actually used one of those sites....which, admittedly, the others could be lying....but it would seem to be less than the 'average' player from that small sampling. As far as spending money on the emblems, auras and styles, I'm going to let you in on a secret. You DON'T need every one. You DON'T need every aura in game or every style offered. If you choose to have these, it's on you fighting an uphill battle to 'catch them all'. Personally I used to have every aura in game when auras were a bit rarer. Once they started dumping them out by multiple dozens per episode, BB, TC or mega...I stopped caring. Worry about the good ones like cosmic, nebula, smoke or whatever. Let the rest slide (unless feat related).

As far as the TCs go, yep....they are crap, BUT you can get every feat related item out of every one if you are a savvy trader and save for megas...and are patient. I have every feat from every TC and have MAYBE spent $100 bucks on stabilizers, and that was early on when the drop rates were not as abysmal and it seemed like spending a few bucks was a good bet....it's not...so I have not spent a dime on them since maybe the Qwardian one. And from opening megas I've got about 1000 unlocked ones I just don't have time to open which I'd guess will garner me more money if I ever open them.

Membership benefits, I can't disagree with you. I dropped my sub months ago and have no regrets. Yes, we do get items of value to offset the $15 (or $10 if you sub for a year) a month, but they only have value if you NEED them. 100% optional choice.

I'm not getting into an Omni+Clamp discussion...I've voiced my opinion on it plenty. It's here to stay, like it or not. Learn how to use it to your advantage and it will make life more bearable. Dump out of crap omni runs(you KNOW when you are in one pretty quick), or build groups that have a few of the roles before going in and it's pretty straight forward. Run omni and clamp blind and you get what you deserve. Walk-ins are different...we will NEVER get walk-ins, so give that up. They present technical problems and with the HOL, you can see they already dropped the ones we had (there aren't even an vacant spots for them like HOD/WT had)...don't expect them to add more in after they purged the other ones. Get onboard with Adjustable Queue Size or 'AQS'....the ability to queue in via on-duty (not walk-ins) with any size group. Same result, less technical issues with busted portals and would actually allow for inviting people from opposite factions...You can't invite a vil/hero from an opposite walk-in point....they need to be invited to the GROUP, not instance...and we can't do that either, so more technical issues to deal with there.

Prestige? Yeah, the weekly cap should be raised some (or removed). It is 100% built assuming a larger, active league roster. Smaller leagues who have bursts of activity a few times a month vs a steady stream would benefit from this as during active weeks you could bank a bit more than the 80K or so you can now...then during a lean week, you would have a buffer. Or prestige tokens should drop from things like bounties, where we spend a lot of our time now...earning NO prestige.

If you've been playing this game for 10 years as you say, and you're not a multi-billionaire, then you're doing something wrong. Broker prices went down quite a bit when the Devs deleted a whole bunch of cash from the game. Broker prices got inflated a bit again when non-members got access to all their cash. Cash in the game increases; prices will rise. Some things in the game are rare and a pain to come by. Are we supposed to give them away?

I'm thinking this makes a lot of money for the game. I personally like opening time capsules and wind up spending my free daybreak cash on stabilizers more often than not, but that's neither here nor there. Regardless of what either of us type here I don't think they're going away anytime soon.

Stop complaining and stop subscribing then. If the benefits are not worth it then just don't pay for them. The Devs have made it so that you can enjoy every aspect of the game for free now. Why in the name of sanity would you pay for something that you don't have to pay for when you don't find it valuable???

First, you don't hit the same, because you do in fact keep a significant portion of your skill point stats. Second, it does typically take me about 10 minutes to finish an Omni raid. There's a whole bunch that can be done in significantly less time than that. Doomsday takes 4 with 2 league mates and a bunch of pugs. The older, clamped content is really trivial as long as your group isn't too dense and pays any attention to the mechanics at all. Surely you're not actually finding that content difficult. Third, I'll just point out that when new players get totally carried through old content without ever knowing about the existence of mechanics, it produces some really bad end-game players.

You probably have a point with this. Obviously the devs intended for leagues to build prestige over time but it's not entirely clear to me how much that benefits the game as a whole.

Here's where I'm supposed to apologize for liking the game or something? Not likely. Also, it's a little hypocritical to call anyone else a "hater" when you started a thread that basically hates on the game.

Exactly this, and it ONLY takes a dozen of alts to keep up while living in the game everyday. Totally reasonable, I see no problem here.

You "literally" said....
"The average player regardless if you play legit or not has purchased in-game cash from a website to keep up with the inflation on PC & PS servers. Is this a bannable offense? Indeed it is as I lost my first account from buying in-game cash because it’s NOT easy to make in-game cash."
....Not sure where you see 'from a real player in trade chat' in there....but I do see 'from a website'. While some of us are Americans...not all Americans are mind readers or can decipher what you MEANT out of what you SAID unless the actual words are included. If you want to call that 'cherry picking' please cherry pick the spot you said 'from another player' for us...in your original post. (psssst....it's not in there)

Nope....just went back and checked again. The only time you even say 'trade' is here:
" To avoid people abusing opening lockboxes, make them untradable so individuals cannot mail or trade them to their legendary friends."
Where you actually request making TC's WORSE (if that's even possible)...

And here:
"the ability to trade $ (ways around this) and that’s it"
Where you mention trading cash as a member 'benefit', so on it's face....not bannable....but a benefit.

YOU did something to break TOS....and like they say, 'ya pays your money ya takes your chances.' Which is why MANY of us wouldn't buy gold....cause we wouldn't risk our accounts that have LOTS of money spent on them. BTW.... I find it hard to believe you caught a perma ban on a 1st offense. It must have been an egregious example to get that.

And nobody said anything about not changing or 'fixing' TCs. I think everyone agrees they suck, but we aren't expecting DBG to change them just so we can get stuff out of them....there is a FIX for that, and it's called 'hustle'. Sell stuff to get money (not buy it) and buy what you need when you can.....or let those few things slide if need be. The only 'fix' TCs really need is an improvement in drop rates. Free and members get a decent amount of stabilizers, but the drop rates would require 1000's of them to even have a shot at the best stuff. Make it so we have a 10% or so better chance and you'd actually MAYBE get something from opening one, and if you don't the prices would be down from those that do get them.

Now please....PLEASE....blame it on the translator you used. That would just complete the 'you Americans....' rant checklist.

It's not "hard" to make cash and get most of the feats cash can buy. It just takes time and sacrifice.

For example... you see that shiny new guitar you really want? You don't need it, you can't afford it, and its going to be worthless in 2 DLCs ANYWAY. I must have made upwards of 2 billion selling the picks in a month because this community has no self control.

That's probably the best kind of way to make money, but if you do your research and find your own farming instances that have collections with a feat associated... you'll be rich on no time as well so you can just buy most of the time capsule feats.

Don't forget about PANE, ZOOE, and all the pets that sell for a huge chunks of cash too.

well there is def ppl buying the cash. 2 ways the tell, the cash seller is still in the game, hence it wouldnt be all these years if ppl werent buying it AND ppl have admitted to doing so in obsidianchills latest speed hacking video he posted in the comment section.

now HOW MANY? no idea.