Cr & Stat clamping

for me its not a matter of having to think. like today, i ran an omni duo, gotham hospital, had to do 10 bombs, i did all 9 by myself while the other player did nothing. went to find him before the 10th and there he was on top just standing still. so i parked right next to him because i COULD solo the boss myself but its going to take more time than i want to spend, so i took a break and got the kids lunch and ate lunch myself, occasionally looking at the game seeing the other player move around and what not, but he never once did the last bomb.

finally, lunch is over and i sit back down and the dude had left. i hit the f1 to reopen, another player came and we killed the boss in no time.

prior to the clamp, i woulda gladly finished this duo myself , helping this player out, because i coulda easily done so. now, since there is actually a chance i could die (was on an alt) and it taking forever, im not even gonna try it.

so yes, i too want to faceroll, but only so my own gameplay isnt hindered by my teammates.

THAT is the part i miss

Don't get it twisted, it was NEVER a "breeze", even before clamp. Most of the feats still require mechanics and/or running the instance many many times to complete. Plus, being on villain side on Xbox, the population issues also made it super hard to form groups to aquire said feats. Now, post-clamp, I really feel bad for anyone even attempting because the LFG is just even more cricket noises than before.

Yeah, I believe this is what is most asked for. Many people want the feats more than the loot. Pre-clamp, the quickest record I know of is a friend of mine hitting 600 sp in 9 months (but needed a lot of help from hero side since villain side has such low population). Post clamp? Damn that's a scary thought. May as well quit your job as this is going to take a while...

The surveys are linked from the Launcher every few months and your claim that "only a few dozen people" respond is absolute nonsense. You have zero data or evidence to back your claim up meaning that you're just making stuff up in order to support your argument.

That being the case, it's completely pointless trying to engage you in a dialogue.

Producer's Letter: State of the Stats Revamp!

8/8/17 11:00 AM




Hello again everyone!
The Stats Revamp is live, and we are incredibly thrilled with the response thus far. Change is never easy, however with it comes a new foundation for DCUO that puts it in a good place for the future. Recently, we also announced the upcoming launch of the Water Power Set, and our next two Episodes, Riddled with Crime and Earth 3, at San Diego Comic Con. And we hope to have more updates very, very soon on all these efforts and others! We cannot wait to show you everything we’ve been working on!
That said, and as expected, we are getting TONS of feedback now that we are live. We have been reviewing this feedback carefully. One thing that I stressed to the team, and that I did not want to make the mistake of doing, is reacting too quickly before fully understanding the feedback and how to address the core of the problems. Often, an issue may seem obvious and you fix that thing, just to realize later that the issue wasn’t really what you thought it was at all, and you now have a brand new set of problems.

Your Feedback

So about that feedback! Yep, you’ve been vocal. We are totally listening. For starters, it’s great to hear people note that they feel the power sets are well balanced, how varied loadouts and abilities are, and seeing stats and gameplay mechanics actually matter!
We still have some work to do however. We have noted some of the most constructive feedback is coming from players feeling content is too hard or takes too long, or from those feeling your characters are less powerful. This feedback manifests itself broadly in different ways, and the specifics vary from player to player.

• Veteran players feel it in the time it takes to complete end-game content.
• Most players feel it when returning to content that they have out-leveled. Previous content that may have been trivial for a player at a certain level is not trivial anymore, making it more difficult and making it take longer.
• Newer or more mid-game players feel it in on-level group content, noting generally that most things seem hard or too hard now.
• Players not participating in all of the new or revitalized progression systems – skill points, mods, generator mods, mainframes, etc. - are feeling all of the above a little bit more than everyone else.

SOME of this is good. Gameplay mechanics exist for a reason – they are a key part of the fun and the challenge of the game – and pre-revamp too many of them could be entirely ignored. Many of you are adjusting to and relearning these mechanics you never noticed or have forgotten, and that is good long term and especially in the most advanced end-game content.
SOME of this is not as good. We don’t want newer or mid-game players struggling through challenges, and we want everyone to feel that progress and character strength noticeably increase. So, onto our plans!

In The Short Term

So, having heard this key feedback, here are our immediate plans to address these areas of concern.

1. Our content design team is refocusing to live playtesting and making content adjustments across the game with a focus on the middle tiers.
2. We will adjust NPC stats lower in the earlier parts of the game lower, making more generous assumptions about how quickly and when players will fully be participating in ALL avenues of progression.
   • Both of the above should address concerns from players struggling when on-level AND from players struggling or taking too long when returning to out-leveled content.
3. We will adjust some of the roleless buffs in alerts to better enable 4-player groups of any combination to tackle content and to make the buffs more equal to each other.
4. We will update the vault to drop scaling gear.

In The Medium Term

Looking a little bit further out, your feedback has reminded us it’s time to finish updating the whole game’s gear and progression systems to modern content standards. We will (finally) rework the vendor currencies in the earlier parts of the game to match more closely our current end-game, in an effort to more holistically introduce all players to these new avenues of progression and alleviate lingering frustrations.

1. We will standardize early and mid-game vendor gear sets so that these sets are the best gear available in their content or tier (best-gear-on-vendor).
2. We will implement unique vendor currencies for tiers 1-7, and update gear costs.
3. We will add the vendor discount system to tiers 1-7, for obtaining additional gear sets or gear on alts (in conjunction with the feat unlock system).
4. We will drop some (older) gear mods directly in content to make baseline modding more accessible.
5. We will add a universal mod removal kit (both for marks and in the marketplace) that will make transferring mods much easier.

In The Long Term

So what about the long term? Bam, here’s more!
We’ve made stats matter and therefore Skill Points are in demand. Arguably, if you’ve not been chasing those points, you might not know the best way to go about earning more. Additionally, those that have a high Combat Rating but few skill points may feel like they are less powerful now, which is exacerbated by content also being more challenging.
We assumed, and many of you assumed, that content felt harder after the revamp because players didn’t have the skill points they needed. After careful review, this really isn’t the case. The core of the issue is the content and that’s why it comes first in the plan. (This is precisely what I meant by waiting to understand the core before addressing an issue.)
However, navigating our Feat system is a...feat...in and of itself. It is difficult at best to decipher what feats mean, or where to go and what to do to complete them. They're achievements, and fit in that perspective, but it can become frustrating when achieving those feats is part of your progression.
In the long term, we will be exploring ways to solve this problem, both in improving the clarity of feats and in eventually providing other avenues to gain skill points. MORE ON THAT LATER!
For now, let me sign off by saying again that we appreciate your participation and all of your patience as we work to make DCUO the best it can be.

Leah "Katnikov" Bowers
Lead Producer
DC Universe Online

There is nothing new here. This is what happened in 8/8/2017 and the response from the powers that be.

That's the thing, though, more than a few claimed the only reason they didn't run older content was because they weren't getting/feeling rewarded, even though the devs repeatedly said they weren't willing to give players those kinds of rewards for essentially face-rolling content runs. And while I can't be 100% sure about this (there has been a LOT of back and forth on this topic and way too many posts to remember LOL), I wouldn't be at all surprised if those who are asking for the clamp to be removed would balk at the rewards being removed as well.

Interesting how all the usual anti-clamp voices are no where to be found in this thread.

I wonder why that is. LOL

I’m definitely pro clamp, however, they do need to add incentives that get people to run older content, specifically helping with old feats. Give bonus source marks every time a feat is completed, or something along those lines could help

Love seeing all the people with 4-600sp who attained 90% of those sp stomping through content before stats clamp, now on their high horse about mechanics. Carry on.

clamp or loot locks should be removed from open world.

First off...I'm also anti-clamp. Have been since start, haven't changed my mind yet. However, I'm not against it for the 'skill' based feats you seem to be worried about. Those are still pretty easy (except MAYBE elite no deaths), even with the clamp as long as you have a decent group. Skill based feats have always been doable ONLY if you have a group of like minded players looking to either get...or help with the same feat. Don't pug for feats except count feats and RNG checklists.

Now, I will agree and have often asked for a way to go in solo...now that solo is NOT really doable in raids (it can be done, but not by all and doing a feat run solo would likely fail), I'd at least like a way to go in with 'less' people. That would help the most with old feats, maybe even more than removal of the clamp (which won't happen BTW) would...on its own. Having to only get 5, 6 or 7 people would help get you in without having to queue in randoms...which is the biggest reason feats fail.

Granted clamp removal, or never having been implemented AND then adding a way to go in solo/short, would have been the better answer for getting feats...but that ship has sailed.

Good luck though...I'll raise a toast to you if they suddenly remove it after this 1347th request to do so.

truthy i believe the stat clamping is a good thing inside the que systems. however, i believe open world or urgent warfronts zones should not have them on so returning players and even new players and grab bounty feats that are no longer being ran etc etc

That would be nice.

I agree with the OP to an extent. At this point there is so much content that isn't run regularly that its hard to even remember what the special mechanic they threw into a raid six years ago even was. I am rerunning content that I already have all the feats on, and to be hoenst I can't remember how we did it because it isn't something that gets run very often.

You can tell there is a little problem in one simple way -- when your Omnibus pops and see "that raid" pop and you cancel your que. Or maybe you don't do that and you watch everyone else cancel the que repeatedly. Then after 10 minutes, you get 8 people who will actually run it, only to see that they're probably eleven years old and don't know how to do anything, much less the content. Then you spend an hour in there and don't finish it. Then it dawns on you -- THIS IS WHY PEOPLE CANCELLED THE QUE A DOZEN TIMES when I was logging in here.

I've been back for almost five months and there is still some content I haven't seen, simply because people won't run it -- even with the Omnibus.

Yea, you dont just test the water once, you keep testing it periodically, to see if anything changes.

Most people who have high sp get those sp while content is relevant. Look at any single dlc at launch. Most people will try to get all the feats for the simple reason that there is a population in that content so it’s easiest to get it than. Most people with high sp do this.

Did some go back to get the random feat they couldn’t get? Yes. But let’s not pretend like people were getting to 600sp because they got them through steamrolling cause that would be a lie.

Best bet is to go into LFG chat and ask people if they wanna start a league for farming sp from older content. If there is none, you may find a group or a existing league that will help. The league I joined I ran a normal alert and was asked to tank an elite one. I told them I couldn't, but they insisted. We smoked that alert easily and they recruited me. They are ALWAYS offering to run old content with me to get sp. Heck, they even offer in game cash to buy collections!! Lol

Out the window with that vision... LOL

This is wonderful news! I knew if you kept searching you would find the right league. I'm glad you found a league where you belong, I'm very happy for you! This is very good news.

This is one change i started making ingame and that is getting those 50 world bosses in the open world knocked out so as not to ever need them once it goes into clamped and becomes a ghost town.

but last night before work, i tried to knock out 3 duos for omni quest on an alt.

the first one was JLD pub crawl, my teammate smashed the first orb the moment he picked it up, not harming shazam. the second time he picked it up he took it over and smashed it on shazam the right way. after that, he sat there doing nothing every orb after, leaving me to smash both every time. so you pro clampers need to stop claiming we hate or dont want to deal with mechanics. we are actually sick of having to do them for EVERYONE!!!

the next 2 duos i walked out, got min level partners both time and the first minute they were doing nothing. flash museum dude was just flying around looking in all the corners, i thought he was maybe doing the balloon feat but nope, that i coulda understood and woulda helped. asked him what he is searching for and he never responded, so out i went.

the next walk out was the league hall and dude just move to the first location and never moved. working ahead solo, i said great, another min level and walked out.

one last example, i joined an already started Star Labs Research Facility Alert the other day. they just finished up being locked in the room on the left with the green lanterns. i go over we kill the boss and this healer flies to the main room skipping all the mobs. i thought GREAT! this dude knows the raid, knows we dont have to right all these mobs, so i continue and notice he is staying in the middle room. i think okay, no worries, i open the door to start the yellow side, go in alone, no1 is coming, i do ALL the control panels myself and kill all the mobs and go into the next room to fight the 3 manhunters, and this healer yells in chat "KICK KIDKRETZ HE IS GOING TO GLITCH THE GAME" i told him i have run this a thousand times and it doesnt glitch and asked him why he would want to kick someone who is actually progressing the alert? obv this guy is a weirdo, prob why he didnt have a kick available and wants others to do it. we finish the alert and im left with this realization that i had to spend an extra 10-15 mins clearing out tough mobs myself whereas before i coulda breezed thru and now knowing that I STILL HAVE TO CARRY NOOBS IN DCUO, THE CLAMP DIDNT CHANGE THAT. All it did was make it take more time or simply make it harder for me.

but everytime we mention the game got harder, you claim that its because we dont know the game or dont want to do mechanics, but i have proven that not to be the case!!!!