A plea to the devs: We don't want dramatic changes to the game mechanics

As someone who played a bit of FFXIV just this afternoon, I can tell you that DCUO continues to be worlds faster than it.

As far as the OP's concerns, he doesn't speak for me. I actually enjoy change for the most part and I like adapting to the regular large shifts.

What I really want is balance. And that takes constant adjustments.

The devs may not respond but I can answer your question.

You make some very good points in your original post. Fundamentally changing the nature of a game is not something that should be done lightly and SOE more than anyone *cough* NGE *cough* should know this. But every game suffers attrition and to counter that it needs to draw in new players. Changes are sometimes necessary to do that.

DCUO is an odd bird, mostly IMO in good ways. Its combat system is unique. I tried it a few times and didn't love it. It took three tries over a period of years (plus some new powersets), and giving it a solid three weeks this last time, for me to decide it was worth playing. I'm just now trying to convince a friend to give it a go. She's having the same initial experience I did. The combat is so different from other MMOs that it's just not clicking for her. So we're probably going to end up playing another game instead. But that's another story... Thing is, DCUO can be a difficult game to fall in love with.

And some of DCUO's oddities are just plain odd. Clipping is one of them. I've been MMO'ing for a long time. I played CoH at launch. Just reading about clipping in DCUO made me go cross-eyed. Using certain powers to stop the animations of some powers while still getting their effect... WTF?! Seriously? Or better yet, jumping to do the same. Not that I roleplay but on reading that I had to imagine a superhero character who seemingly without any good reason would jump occasionally to make one of their powers work better.

LOLZAPALOOZA.

My main character is Light. It does need significant changes. Its melee-centric design is potentially interesting and may work perfectly well in some contexts (solo and PvP) but particularly in raids it just doesn't. We have one ability which generates power over time for the group. For other controller powers that same ability also provides damage and crowd control. Theirs is ranged and ours is melee. Getting into melee range with many raid mobs is suicide, plain and simple.

So my 'superhero' periodically punches the ground with a cool-looking giant green claw attack.

*snicker*

Other melee-oriented powers are also problematic (i.e. essentially unusable) in raids. The power set would originally have been balanced (particularly for PvP I imagine) around it being melee-centric. They can't attempt to fix these problems without re-assessing the entire set and making other changes.

DCUO is much faster than FFXIV, however I do agree with you on content wise. FFXIV hasnt been out a whole year and yet has 5x the amount of group, large group, and single player content than DCUO.

My weapons and powers are quicker than they once were. Faster and smoother. Not seeing the complaint.

that and cause he's faster

look its like this. I don't play dps cause it's the easiest role to find but if I did I would put those clip rotations on a macro so fast it'd make your head spin.

I can do it manually. It's not hard. I've done lots harder button inputs like say TEKKEN on-the-fly 10-hits and that whole combo system. The combo/clipping system in DCUO is friggin romper-room compared to TEKKEN, or Virtua or any decent action/arcade game. The idea that clipping in DCUO was some pinnacle of arcane gaming skill is beyond laughable.

I would put them on macros because im not interested in putting my hands through that for 4 hours of a raid. That is not fun to me and I don't find the slightest accomplishment in being able to hit buttons real fast in a "rotation" like a trained monkey.

Then the big accomplishment is "endurance" ? Lolz what? Because my hands didn't cramp as I did this kindergarten button sequence "as (lolz) fast as humanly possible"? GTFOOH. No one cares. It's not leet gaming is a friggin build-a-mini-me MMO. It's friggin gamer carebear land.

"Clipping was bigtime skills"? Give that garbage a rest. Bring some game at TEKKEN, SoulCalibur, Virtua FIghter or MADDEN and we'll talk about skills. Meanwhile, let's all just stop talking about the leet skillz it requires to clip-dps in MMO PvE (seriously? pvE?) before we embarrass ourselves any further.

No they are not, please watch the video of pre origin crisis gadgets dps posted on page 2. Compare it to the post gu36, or really to anything that you do now. I am sure the damage really isn't all that different if you consider the huge gap in gear, however there is one thing that sticks, and that is the speed in which you now are forced to play.

I'm a fire DPS shield user. And just about everything about how I play has sped up quite noticeably.

There's always going to be someone whose... content... is bigger.

CoH's population basically sat at around 130k for years until CO and DCUO came along. Even factoring in the PS, DCUO's potential customer base was never going to be enormous. FFXIV (at least the relaunched version) had mainstream written all over it. I don't know what they actually managed but their potential was in the millions.

It's therefore logical and reasonable for FFXIV to have much more content.

I have an awesome game for you :


seriously , this game seems geared exactly for the type of player that gets a big charge out of seeing how fast they can hit buttons. It was honestly a very popular game in it's day. It was 2 player vs. so there was good bragging rights.

More seriously, no one in the gaming world really considers "hit simple sequence of buttons real fast" to be an interesting game mechanic. DCUO has attracted the people who do like this but this is not a healthy paradigm on which to base the pinnacle of play in DCUO. For DCUO to be a cool game it has to be about more than "hit buttons fast".

DCUO IS a cool game! I can fly and Superman is here! He ain't in those other games!

You do no speak for me nor anyone I know personally.

There are changes I don't agree with that you love and there are changes I love that you hate. Deal with it. The game changes for the better or for the worst. OC was a bad change that broke up friendships, leagues, and hurt the consumer. Recent changes has brought people back. I heard from one of my founding leaguemates for the first time in over a year last night. He said he will be coming back to play.

Sorry, stop saying you talk for everyone, when you just talk for yourself and maybe your circle.

This is the experience of many people who come to DCUO from playing the MMORPG genre exclusively.
More powers, more toolbars slots, they think. Weapons as primary damage, manual targeting and button combos are foreign to these sort of players.

If you come from a background of action games, all this stuff, including clipping is common.

As for the "be like a superhero" aspect of your comments, its all about immersion sacrifices to create playability. The vast majority of comic-book Superheros don't wear armor or use weapons. Once you make that departure, the rest just follows. Some things had to be done to make a playable MMO game out of this.

I'm not doubting you. I'm genuinely curious. Can you point me to some other games that use clipping? I'd thought it unique to DCUO.

Personally I'm not a fan of WOW style combat (i.e. the MMO norm) and prefer DCUO's, even having never played these games you speak of. My point was DCUO does label itself an MMO and MMO players are a significant potential source of revenue for the game. I think it's therefore natural and healthy for the developers to consider changes which make it more appealing for them.

It is a very fine line though.

You're not really trying to claim that DCUO would be unplayable without clipping are you?

And on the weapon front, DCUO does have the hand blasters option, including setting their appearance to none. So it doesn't force players to use weapons. If they want to play a comic-book superhero who shoots fire out of their hands that is an option. Just saying.

Well first, go find a list of games made on the UnReal3 engine. All UnReal3 games can incorporate clipping. I use clipping a bunchin the Fable games.

StreetFighter, MortalKombat and pretty much all tourney fighting games have clipping. SFII Alpha was pretty much built with clipping as a major mechanic. The X'Men tourney-fighting games use the Namco SF engine.

I don't think DCUO does itself any favors by trying to copy WoW/RPG-type standard combat with auto-targeting, big toolbars, rotations, cooldowns etc ... sure people want all their WOW skills to translate to DCUO and every other game, but DCUO is an action game, not an RPG.

In the entire history of the development of DCUO at each choice between allocating resources to action-game systems or role-play supporting stuff (character customization, story, a whole litany) DCUO devs have opted to build DCUO as an action game foremost with some trappings of role-playing game.

DCUO intends to attract a wider group of games than rpg-only players. Therefore it does this game no good to make the combat, and play mechanics to suit mmorpg players. The development direction and choices that have been made show that this is true.

ps : yes DCUO is unplayable with no clipping at all. We tried it in beta. It sucked bad. Moreover it's almost impossible to force the UnReal3 engine to disallow any clipping. Its how the engine works, combat math and graphics are rendered independently of one another. So it's inherent to the engine. The only way to stop it was to basically root a character in place for the duration of every animation. It was terribad.

No questions about that, but we should realise one thing: it's "easier" to come up with content that remains fairly inside the Final Fantasy realm than the DC universe. If nothing else, we have been told how hard it is sometimes to get clearances from WB and DC.

I'm not even implying DC has less of a history, just remembering a debate on this other thread about who should be included in the next DLC on the New Gods side, there were references dating from before I was even born. The thing is you can make a pretty decent raid revolving around a random monster/dragon/giant/demon designed by Square ages ago and be done with it.

I agree one hundred percent on you with hardlight: Running some arenas finally made me see what the class has become.. Crap damage on powers, stacking dots and power interactions; The once care free ok damage on powers play it how you want is gone. Now it's a flat across the board, you have to play it this way or you are going to suck. It's sickening, It was never even a OP class, If they wanted to push players off fan then they should have just nerfed fan and left the class in the game.

Yes however I find it hard to believe it is hard to get clearance from WB and DC to create Hard mode versions of raids, alerts and old storyline missions.

And that their Dev staff is like 5x as big as DCUO and they have over 2million subscribers to support the game.

I don't even know who you are let alone you feel you can speak for long time players such as myself. I seriously thought this thread was a joke to be honest.

Devs, keep the changes coming as every and any MMO is going to evolve and players like you need to deal with it. If you don't like it then keep complaining right on out the door to another game. Some players like you have this notion that DCUO is meant for you and nobody else and the reality is, IT'S NOT!!! I like the changes and direction DCUO is going and I look forward to the future of this MMO. Sorry you don't think so but without progress, there is no success and I want DCUO to succeed.

Changes are always going to come. #DEALWITHIT

Well, agreed, but was that what was being said? Weren't we discussing the amount of content between FFXIV and DCUO?