Openworld clamp removal

I don’t run clamped content because I hate how weak it made me. Trying to fight the EEG Open world bosses with only 1 other person is still a frustrating endeavor. I hate constantly getting KO’d by the boss, and then having to rush back to that boss before his health restores is also a frustrating pain that makes me want to throw my controller at the wall! It is my experience so far with the Clock Tower boss a minimum of 4 players are required to take him down while keeping the group as alive as possible. Finding 3 other people who are willing to go back to an old EEG open world and take time away from them to spam a boss with me is difficult at best.

I can’t blame anyone not wanting to go back with me to spam these bosses over & over & over & over & over again, especially when they don’t need the feat. So I just don’t try anymore and I am moving forward instead.

If you arnt going back for EEG, whats the concern? Why are there issues for content you wont touch anyway?

I just explained it. If these conditions weren’t problematic then I would go back to EEG content but as such as it is I have no desire to subject myself to the frustration.

Its not problematic, its when being met with a degree of resistance, the community wants it to be removed, and that runs counter to the design

Respectfully, you're being way too fatalistic about it, Tiffany. Easy enough to think that way when you feel fed up, but when that happens, start quoting facts In this case...

Facts:
*DCUO is an mmo with a forum used to pass info between players and its devs.
*The op shared info and staff will review it if they haven't already.
*The company cares about DCUO's health on the op's server and there's recent proof.
*Two separate player-driven changes were made to the Stabilizer run in the past month.

A measured, unbiased expectation is this- the team will use what resources it can spare to try to reproduce the driving complaint (it takes ages to form a group for past bounties on EUPS/PC from Fri-Wed) consistently over a set time period, and proceed based on the resulting info. I'd suggest equipping a full set of your OP and Elite patience and flexibility gear. Patience because any potential response won't be instant and flexibility because it seems unlikely the response will be a simple rollback. In the meantime, don't lose your feline fire, mkay?

Edit: I started following the thread early, and it seems unfortunate the poster hasn't been able to share vids of the tedious group-building process. Definitive supporting info always helps.

So you’re saying they weren’t designed to be solo’d with skill and a strong tailored build. In that case, they REEEAAALLLY weren’t design to be solo’d with little to no effort. They were meant to be done with groups. I get that that isn’t an option in most cases. But options still exist. Even if soloing them is too tough, too much effort, too time consuming, etc, a group of only three makes very quick work of them. If you can’t find two other players who are in the same boat as you then I dunno what to tell ya. This is an MMO afterall. Most of the game is instended to be played with others. Sure there are solo players and some solo content for those players, but that’s the exception, not the rule.

Going back to, as you said, how the bounties were designed, they fall in the social/group category of content, not solo content. Now like I said, one CAN cross that divide and solo said group content. The devs have given us that option should we choose to take it. But it is by no means the intention of the content so it’s not logical to expect it to be made so. That one dude on here Death Mike, his whole thing is soloing raids. It’s what he likes to do, it’s what he likes to show others etc. but he’s not asking for raids to be scaled down to be like solo’s. Despite soloing them being his thing, he knows raids are content designed for 8 people and expects them to play thus even when soloing.

I get the feeling DeathMike does it because it's intended to be done by 8 people, and he loves the challenge.

This thread isn't about someone who is not an average player soloing a raid one time for a challenge, it's about average players/new players being able to go back/into old, EMPTY open worlds to do bounties 100 times and do it when they actually have time to play, which may not be reset day. Which may be once a month..or you're on Xbox or Switch..etc

If there was no clamp, how long would it be until an average player would be able to go back and be able to take down the newest bounties with the 'very little effort' that people in this thread like to talk about? How many DLCs would have to come and go before they could do that? Considering we get two a year now, how many years? You will have had these feats for years before anyone can get them that way.

Speaking of effort, how much effort does it take to spam a bounty with a server full of people when it's new? Which is how pretty much all of you are getting the feats..yeah, not much at all

C'mon, what are we talking about here?..These are years old, empty open worlds..that are loot locked by the way..All of you are so great that you get your feats when they're "relevant" anyways..it takes so much 'skill' not 'skill points' to be good at this game right?..anybody who is this far behind will never catch up to you so what are you even worried about?

Raids are one thing but fighting to keep the clamp in old open worlds just reeks of gatekeeping

The polarization around certain topics is awful, so I hear you. If there are reasons some players can't record, upload and share video I understand, but can't someone ? I've watched at least 3 streamers playing outside USPS/PC and session-logging is really common these days; is no one willing to shine a light on the issue? Sorry, I don't mean to appear to point at you, the poster I'm replying to as much as piggy-backing on the information that you and others have shared in order to hopefully help my fellow DCUO players get a response.

It may be a sacrifice for someone with the means to post vids about the issue, but well worth it if showing clear evidence assists and motivates the team to craft some sort of response, right? What if multiple people split up the share schedule...?

The "issue" relates to one piece of content that exists in open world areas. One. And the suggested remedy for that "issue" would likely result in the removal of Mark rewards for running the open world content. And speaking personally, I like having a variety of areas and content to work with to earn Marks. Getting shut back to two to three episodes to work with would, in a word, suck.

If someone is going to suggest rearranging open world content just so they can solo a certain kind of content in that area, I think having an argument stronger than "but it's tough making groups" is kind of key.

I'm on board. My suggestion wasn't to make my DCUO experience better. You seem quite reasonable, and these sorts of topics need more of that imho. The developers will read your perspective just the same as the op's, and I'm willing to give the benefit of doubt they will choose a measured response if it comes to that. Or at least I hope they do.

Most likely they're not going to respond at all. As far as I can tell, they've been consistently staying out of any discussions about the stat clamp, which presumably is meant to send a message, that they're not willing to entertain the possibility of removing it - either entirely, or partially - or making it optional. The only adjustments they indicated as potentially possible are in cases of "outliers" - instances where the stat reduction makes the content impossible to complete, although I don't know of any such adjustments having been made so far. Open world bosses are in no way broken, or impossible, so I doubt the fact, that some players find it difficult to farm all the associated feats as quickly and easily as they would like, will be considered as enough of a justification for changing current game design. Especially, that many players are happy to complete those bounty missions weekly, thanks to relatively generous rewards for the time and effort they require.

I'm sure that the decision to finally address rampant power creep wasn't taken lightly, after a decade of players getting used to the idea of god-mode and content outside endgame being disposable. The devs knew many would be unhappy with the stat clamp, but they took the risk of alienating a portion of the player base in order to create a more consistent experience for all players, across the entire game. Those who started playing in the last couple of years don't even know what the game was like before, so most don't have a problem accepting its current state and difficulty curve. Players, who consistently played for most of the game's existence may or may not like it, but they're also not too bothered by it, because they played EEG content when it was relevant and more difficult than it is now. People who are most upset with the changes are those in the middle, who got a taste of god-mode, but didn't manage to get all the rewards from older content, before face-rolling it became impossible.

Clearly, the devs don't want to set new precedents for this kind of gameplay, or even give the impression, that reversing any part of the stat clamp is debatable. Existing players will accept it at some point, or leave, while new generation of players will take it as a given, that they can't just wait for the content to become trivial before completing it, and that perhaps they don't need to have all the feats in order to enjoy the game, or even excel at it. Because for the vast majority of players high SP count is only useful as something to brag about - a pi**ing contest with their league-mates. With the number of feats in the game being in thousands, nobody's being "gatekept" from any content by not having them all, if they don't feel like some are worth the time and effort.

I play as a villain on EUPC/PS, which is much less populated than USPC/PS, yet I've managed to complete all those clamped bounty count feats - and I had a lot of fun doing it, which I would not have had, if it was just a matter of standing around for a few hours swatting bosses as soon as they respawn. On the other hand - 8v8, or 4v4 PvP feats are practically impossible to even attempt without cheating (trading wins) and even that is extremely hard. If finding 3-4 players to run bounties with is too much to ask in the larger faction on the most populated server, how about finding 16 players to queue 8v8 PvP maps, as a villain on a smaller server? I guess I should be throwing tantrums and demanding those feats to be made easy to complete solo, since they're even older than any clamped bounty ones. But I don't. I just do without them - at least until I have absolutely nothing better to do.

All reasonable. To be clear, while I've enjoyed my short time participating in the forums, I'm very new to this stuff. Naturally, others will be more familiar with specific patterns in the oversight strategies of the design team. You may well be one of those people, so thanks for the share; none of the good parts of my life would be possible without my love of learning, man. So yeah, tbh from a selfish perspective, no changes here would be great news as far as my personal gameplay goes. Saying why that is might give the false impression I'm out of touch with what I see as the core issue of the complaint in this thread. These portions got my attention...

While you adapted and overcame, it seems not everyone has, and I'm happy to let them tell their own stories why that is if they wanna do that. The reason I chimed in most recently is I'd really like to see the complaint stay heavily evidence-based like the original post suggests is an option. None of the Your Feelings and Experiences vs My Feelings and Experiences between players seems particularly useful to anyone once every argument goes on repeat. I love the passion though.

I take the specific recommendation/thread title lightly, but I see a larger concern: a significant degree of path determination being lost for those who face severe (and possibly unintended) difficulty making progress on bounty feats cleanup. In the op's case, as a part-time player, it's easy to imagine that your path, LowFlyingMoon (for instance), might be slightly less viable for them. Hard to blame a person for voicing a concern on a platform set up for potential concerns to be shared, right? What DB does with it is literally their business, but if I were asked, several other responses would be more helpful than reverting the open world cr clamp. (My opinion as it stands at this moment.)

But yeah, bud, respect for rolling with this stuff. I'm generally not much of a complainer either. My yearly average on DCUO (and all other games combined) is 0.3 support tickets, and any gripe or brilliant idea™ I bring up on the forums is 100% conversational. Sharing is a central function of any community, after all. For the record, if you decide to get deep into your feelings about arenas and kick off a forum campaign to tackle the issues you as a returning player have completing PvP feats long after their heyday, the game staff should pay attention and take notes if you offer anything compelling. If I were asked, several other responses would be more feasible than allowing players to split into 16 pieces and fight half of themselves. (My opinion as it stands at this moment.)

100%

Again, the issue at the core of this is having content that requires a group but not being able to get a group together for said content.

Best thing to do would be to add an instancing mechanic for these. Some script work could string together the weekly (group oriented) objectives into a mission chain similar to how operations work, but would be episode specific and could be included as omnibus content under a new category. I imagine that would be enough to bolster activity for these, and going forward future episode content with new open worlds would have those elements built in.

Future proofing content in this manner is far more important than removing clamping that itself was an intended balancing mechanism so you didn't have people solo beasting anything that was supposed to require a group. It's bad enough that speed hacking is a thing, but if anything got as out of hand as the CR escalation issues, you'd have ten times more bot advertisements because they would certainly exploit that vulnerability in system architecture to their advantage.

Same reasoning I couldn't justify them allowing solo walk-ins for alerts and raid content. At the end of the day, it's an MMO. You're supposed to be playing alongside other people, not off by yourself. The aging out process is a primary culprit to why so much of the older content areas are ghost towns, so addressing that head on is the best move.

ESO just added a group finder as a “new feature.” Maybe DC could consider this in the next few years.

I wish stat adjusted content in this game felt as good to me as stat adjusted content in Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn does.
I really enjoy how they've implemented theirs and the skill level gating involved.

Also somewhat weird as I know a good amount of DCUO staff play that game.

Yes, in FF XIV, (I'm level 90, Dancer, CR 635), ALL stats both ours and the enemies were "squashed".
FOR EXAMPLE: so that instead of a Boss having 1,000,000,000 in stats it got reduced to 100,000,000 and our stats went from 100,000,000 to 10,000,000, in other words, all stats were adjusted proportionally unlike what DCUO did to use by making us just a measly +15 CR (Reg) above content (+20 CR Elite).

I am still insulted by DCUO having made my progress in vain which is why I stopped trying hard to get the max stats in any current piece of content as fast as possible as I use to do. I would easily spend $100 or more on replay badges before the stat clamp to get to the best gear possible the fastest. I enjoyed playing like that and I really enjoyed going back into old content and wiping the floor with bosses who gave be trouble in the past. All any of our are going to ever be is +15CR above, anything else is a waste of effort because it is going to be taken away from you.

That is in the past, 27 months ago. Nothing further is going to change, it is what it is.

As far as EEG open world boss fights are concerned, maybe NPC "helpers" could be implemented in that when 1 person is alone trying to fight a boss, these NPC helpers would automatically intervene to assist the player in the boss fight. Maybe even have some metric if 3 or more players are detected the NPCs will go away. Surely the pro clampers would find nothing objectionable about this possible solution. The clamp in all of its current state remains in place, and the lone or duo players get the assistance they need in taking on a boss in lonely EEG open worlds.

Amen to all of what you said. I'm right there with ya (well I never chased high CR, but everything else ) .

I don't chase high CR anymore either, well at not in DCUO, I do in FF XIV lol