In your opinion: What was the Golden Age of DCUO?

The trilogies were a fun time. Not to many agree, but when the part 1s dropped i was having a blast

I don't care what anyone says about him, but when Spytle left the golden age ended. The game has got progressively worse ever since.

Once this person became CEO and brought in this stuff, this is exactly right, membership became less valued than your ability to sustain a gambling habit.

It was realistically when the game became much more pay2win, whether or not you're concerned with pay2win or otherwise, that's the guy that brought it in.

As a wonderful lady once said....."These are the good old days"

and as we often say "it was better before"

"The Golden Age of science fiction is 12."

Generally people's "golden age" of something, when not rooted otherwise, is when they first encountered it and it was fresh to them.

Whenever this comes up I make a slight correction.

The first one had an adequate enough drop rate on the rare items. So much so, even casual players were getting everything out of them in less than three months. And everyone loved the new Batman style.

It was the second time capsule with the infamous "Flaming Phoenix Feather" which started the terrible RNG.

Day 2 player here (stupid PS3 download times) , probably the years were 1-5. Even in that first year, the game took so many hits, first, glitches galore, I remember we used to have to make sure everyone in the group was added to everyone else's friend list, because in any given raid, you would D/C 3 or 4 times, so after every boss or room, we would pause and do a head count. Then, the hack, and the game was taken down for a month only weeks after launch. I think it was 2 months after. Then that summer was the summer of MMO's abandoning subscriptions.

There was this feeling of rooting for the underdog, I still sort of feel that way. Even in the years I didn't play, I always kept an eye on the game, kind of like an estranged relative.

5-6 years in, farming in the game took hold. And I found I had to spend hours a week, not being able to do instances, but having to farm. After awhile, the games started feeling like work.

For all of the farming I do now, it's nothing compared to those days.

Daybreak was recently bought by a mobile game company so that monetization is bound to increase.

Source?

The golden age of DCUO was when I was younger and didn't know any better...

There's always been a mix of good and bad every step of the way since day one.

Changing the look of Superman and then other characters was a bad move. When the game went live the New 52 was making a huge mess out of continuity and the DCU. One of the things that made this game so precious to me is we got to play with the classic, original versions. I wish we could go back to everyones classic looks again. I think everyone looks awful.

I almost added those who had very polar views of post revamp and pre-revamp DCUO as another exception. There's a good chunk of people who felt it was much more than another change one should "roll with the punches" in regards to it.

And yeah, the longer this game exists/existed there was always gonna be A LOT more distance between a FOB player and experienced endgamers. That's just the nature of the beast with MMO's who achieve significant longevity, which is a good thing! And while I personally would love an SP revamp to make higher amounts of SP more significant, it's definitely better for the game and community as a whole that it remains the way it is and I think the devs realize(d) that.

Despite supporting that which shall not be named, I did always think it shouldn't apply to open world. IMO instances should and probably need to remain somewhat close to the original experience. Beyond the mechanics just utterly breaking when too overheard, it also obliterates any need for even the slightest bit of teamwork as well as skill above button mashing. But open world bounties? Hell yeah we should be able to get crazy powerful and go back and solo them! Beyond any debate of how the game "should" be, it creates an entirely new experience players didn't have at the time it was current, including but not limited to, having to pay attention to mechanics whereas when current you could just pew pew with 30 others on reset day. I still battle tank solo about 40%-50% of them on my tank toon (some health pools are just way too high to be worth the time) and about 25%-30% on my main in DPS role. That's actually pretty fun and can be challenging in DPS role which h is why I wish more people could enjoy and and more bounties could offer that experience.

That's exactly the problem. People explore, play with and then go back unless the new power is overtuned. It's a CRAP LOAD of work to make a new power and they would most likely not see a positive return on the investment of time and resources. And that creates another dilemma, they'd need to sell respec tokens at their current price (higher really, but they wouldn't) in order to cover at least some of the costs to make the power. But then people, already sour that the development of said new power created multi-month delays in the development of a new DLC, would cry "CASH GRAB!" and "but you gave free respec tokens last time!", etc etc. So it'd be a choice between a hit to community goodwill or a major hit to their profitability which, of course, becomes a major hit to their budget as they keep moving forward. It's a lose/lose. But yeah, always nice to dream!

For me it was everything up to AF3. That was the last dlc that felt like full effort. Green, blue, & purple gear were all new styles back then for one. Ill give a pass for the once again reuse of gotham, but I enjoyed all on duty content from that dlc. Nowadays for me the joy isnt there, once a dlc is over I avoid its content from then on if i can minus the weeklies. I do think the main things for me that soured the experience are putting sp into gamble boxes, making op gear no longer special (before it made u want to keep running hoping to see that drop, prime etc), now its just a gimmick piece everyone can get & then throw away in a few dlcs. Artifacts are kinda meh, but not enough to annoy. Allies are a ridiculous amount of resources for not being account shared accomplishments. & i despise the failure chance on temporary dlc head augments. So generally I prefer the game as it was before these things

I would like to add to my prior comment that I think the end of the Golden Age can be marked when we no longer received new wallpapers for our character selection screen. I use to enjoy seeing what the new wallpaper would be when the new DLC dropped. It's little things like this which shows how far we have come from DCUO's Golden Age. I still have hopes better days lay ahead.

Yes, we always say that.

That doesn't make it necessarily true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declinism

Absolutely, this as well. The longer this game goes the more it could be overwhelming to a newer player. Does it become too much that they just give up at all? This situation is so weirdly unique, I can't think of a good solution but only compromises for both new and veteran players.

I think the big change was artifacts. I used to maintain three characters at max level for each DLC, and I really enjoyed it. Now, there's this huge slog that penalizes people for alts and almost requires real money. I stopped playing around that time, and only came back recently.

This game peaked with AF2, that was single handedly the best DLC they every put out. Everything else that followed was an absolute crime against players. That's when the decline started, because management and stock owners chose greed over success.

The game absolutely has sucked since 2014/5

LMAO, ALMOST REQUIRES REAL MONEY???????

The best was when Shock to the System came out in March 2023. They hired a whole new developer team and inherited all the money from that Marvel MMO. They had so many extra resources and man power that they surprised us by ninja fixing PvP. Three raids, four alerts, and 5 duos all in one DLC.

Man, those were the days.