Catering to Casual Crowd Hurting the Game

Waht I am saying is that the first two SM's hard a much higher difficulty to the concept, and while Trigon was the first SM to get progress points introduced, it didn't get introduced until the end period of that SM. In both SM's after that, plenty of groups has been able to beat r10, a bunch of other groups have gotten past r10 into later rounds, a few groups beat the entire 20 rounds at FOS SM. Progress points made things easier, but the difficulty itself seems decreased these past two SM's compared to the first two.

So what I am saying is simply this: Keep a high difficulty at higher rounds in SM since Progress Points is now included to SM's, and keep a high difficulty in Elite-instances that really makes it differ from the regular instance and maybe then people wanting a challenge gets a feeling of actually getting that. TOTD Elite was the only Elite-instance that slightly gave me that feeling, even though the first boss was mostly all about having enough tanks to cover up most of the danger.

WOW u nailed dis %1,000,000 good job

No, it wasn't that. I'm big on word use at times and trying to use the most accurate word to get across a point, and more than anything else I was offering a different viewpoint of some behaviors with a word I though fit better. That's all.

The devs panic and cave quite a lot. I'm sure they saw how few groups were beating this raids, lack of replays and a decline in sales and said.. nope this isn't going to work. Since then all content has been very vanilla and easy yet numbers are dropping with each dlc/content. Other instances of devs caving are: wm/am, eliminating importance of power out to trolls, mods not effecting CR. These are all moves to "help" players but they dont.. they just dumb the game down even more. So in closing content is getting easier and shorter, AM'S are allowing dps to unload at godly levels with little power use and healers have more resto wolverine. This has lead to any semblance of challenge disappearing and quality players bailing

I think we're actually in agreement, but I was just saying that SM rounds had to be reduced in difficulty, because they were doubled in number. Unless, you're saying that no one should be able to complete every round. I think FOS was the only one with any teams getting to 20, and it was recognized as the easiest from even a mechanics standpoint.

i think its called "critical mass" or something like that.
obviously DBC ( and sony ) have determined that not enough people play this game. so what have they done about it ?.
legends pve was introduced to give players another option. play as your favorite comic book hero/villan. not sure if this attracts more casuals vs hardcores, but it is something different.
survival mode and elite raids intrduced for the hardcores. you can argue semantics about casual/regular player and their (non) use of these additions, but they ARE for the HARDCORE players.
solo/open world content seems to be the domain of casual players. go at your own pace, earn some marks then logoff or maybe join a raid and hope not to be grieved by some jerk.
this is a mmo, which means at least PART of the reason people play is the interaction with other players. that means its up to all of us to ensure people ARE having fun. you can only control you, and guess what . if you are a jerk/spsnob/cr snob/ show no patience with those that surround you, then its YOU, not the game that is the problem.
hopefully this group of devs figure out the magical formula to force that kind of player to quit.
not sure if they are there yet, but i have noticed a deop in the "*******" population. that is a good thing.

Actually, when a new xpack for WoW gets released you have a massive load of content. Usually a new enormous landscape to explore & quest for days (weeks even for casual playing after work/weekend warriors; excluding blind rushing to max players) which is totally soloable by the non-hardcore crowd filled with a few dungeons & raids of selectable difficulty (5 men dungeons in normal or heroic difficulty; Raids selectable between 10 & 25 ppl also in either normal or heroic) & this PvP stuff some are so crazy about.

Would Blizz release stuff for WoW like stuff gets released for DCU the latest xpack would haven been 1/10 of the landscape of a single region (at best) with one dungeon & a raid. While WoW has their ups & downs in members (much more downs lately IIRC) I can guarantee you it would be dead in the water if they had only released half a fistful hardcore raids/dungeons without their usually big amount of solo content.

Which for DCU makes me really really sad since with all the TV shows/movies going on (or about to start) this game is a gold mine; it has never and probably will be never anymore a better time to go all out with big massive expansions to the game in playable size, content and additional playstyles.

Look at it from another perspective then:

DCUO ceases development on all Episodes today. Every single one is cancelled. The last one they do is Episode 16 which is basically ready to go.

Work begins on Monday on a brand new expansion. It'll be ready in a year's time. Maybe longer. Between now and then, all we will see is Game Updates, a monthly Legends PVE map and the occasional Survival Mode.

Do you stay?

I know I wouldn't.

An expansion is the biggest red herring concept fans of DCUO suggest. They suggest an expansion because other games do it. This game can't afford to do it. The money simply isn't there and neither is the team. It also doesn't fit their business model and any changes to their business model would result in an increase in costs to us.

Games like WOW can do expansions because they have millions of active subscriptions. I believe in January they had 10 million active subscriptions at the time. Lets assume, best case scenario, everyone is on the £9.99 a month plan. 10,000,000 x £9.99 = £99,900,000 per month in revenue. I doubt Daybreak Games turns over that much across it's entire portfolio in a single month. Certainly not in DCUO.

With money, comes a large development team. Our development team isn't large. The same people building your episodic content are the same people squashing bugs and that list of people is very small.

So whilst draining the funds of DBG, starving the player base of content for over a year and effectively killing their business model of monetising re-playability, you've done what? Given us a new city or two that'll be massive but underwhelming in terms of things to do and feel like a ghost city for the most part? (think of all the development time that was put into the current Gotham and Metropolis prior to launch and realise how empty/dead it is). Increase the level cap? Give us a few new arcs and instances? Maybe a new power or two? All to be tacked on to the end of T7, as I assume you'd expect it to be challenging and not something you can do from Level 30/T1.

If it was tacked onto the end of T7, you'd be required to have a CR of at least 124 which means you're developing a product for only 42,000+ characters as that's all the characters in game at the moment which are at CR124 or above.

Compare that to WOW building an expansion for around 10m active players, all paying to play. Hopefully now you'll see why expansions do not work in DCUO.

The problems DCUO experiences can all be resolved relatively simply and wouldn't require drastic measures like producing an expansion pack. It starts with giving us content that actually challenges us. Rather than 5-1-1-1, mechanic heavy snooze fests that last a week, at best before they're boring and rewards which actually take time to get.

nex gen relaunch.

Well, technically, SM isn't really supposed to be beaten. It's a Survival Mode. I just think the the original plan for it, the intended purpose meant much more in the first two SM's and the latest two SM's feels incredibly dumbed down in comparrison to fit, well, the average player. It's not supposed to fit the average player, that's not what they introduced SM for.

What I guess I am saying is that the 1-10 rounds and the platinum shirts hardly mean anything in terms of accomplishment anymore, just look at how many people running around with a platinum FOS-shirt. I have NEVER seen so many people wearing a platinum shirt before.
With progress points in the picture I just feel that they should be able to crank up the difficulty for the rounds, the higher you go.

Since SM's are supposed to be catering to that supposedly small majority of hardcore player wanting a real challenge, I don't feel like I am asking for much here, because that's not what the recent SM's have been delivering.

Apparently at one of the SOE live events spytle( think it was him? ) talked openly with a few players and was very forthright with the fact OC hurt them.

OC was direct contrary to this thread in that SOE was catering to the elite. An idea that some people seem to think is still a good idea to do so. IMHO I don't think them catering to anyone is hurting the game at its current state. There are just more gaming options out there for people now and the truth is folks are tired of chasing carrot, so they go elsewhere.

I already stopped staying some weeks ago. I occasional log in, maybe fly a round but mostly fiddle around with something in my chars apartment. Love to play around with having a regular housing with hidden (not smashing needed) area for the Superherostuff... but I'm drifting.

Thing is I'm aware that this is a money issue. But that does not change the problem. If the new higher-ups DBG want bigger long term turnover, which as said now is the very best time for a game with connection to certain multimillion dollar franchises to be released in cinemas & massive TV show presence with multiple shows, they have to invest. And if they are not ready to invest they should have never get their hands on such a big devhouse. Or is that all just a cleanup to sell to the next bidder? Its not like the buyers had much in common with gaming to begin with.

Edit
PS: Hey, you started the WoW comparison!

The situation really wasn't different when SOE was in the picture. More than anything I think it comes down to the number of games that Daybreak has under their umbrella. Most MMO companies have a couple games that they're working on/supporting, maybe three.

Daybreak has eight, including DCUO, plus who knows how many more they're working on that haven't been announced. There aren't a whole lot of MMO companies that run that many, and the few that do probably run into the same problem as SOE did and Daybreak does: there's only so much budget to go around and some games in the lineup don't get as much.

No matter how much we may wish it, the number of games alone means DCUO isn't going to be the focus of the company.

This kills me. Show me where spytle says the difficulty hurt the game because id garuntee without seeing it he did not. I pressed another player who attempted the same line only to be answered difficulty was NOT the issue.

For the sake of not having to read a response ill explain. 87 and 88 gear was beyond rare especially if u did not glitch. The chest was not even available for some duration. Both issues that did actually hurt dcuo.

Difficulty is a jokebecause we all had the a boss in eitjer raid down to a sliver b4 everything crumbled. Man one more hit or darn he had ni health. The stat difference in the 86 and 88 gear was significant enough that not havjng the gear was the reason teams failed. ABSOLUTLY NOT THE DIFFICULTY.

If the dox boss ran u over and killed u well u cant blame the devs. Simply put get a mirror and the issue presents itself. Keep in mind I am nit talking about u. In general though dcuos one shots are very telegraphed.

Loot lottery, missing gear, doubling our stats to promote replaying the alerts and then the raids after was all parts of the Oc that directly hurt dcuo. Invisible one shots also in tne tunnel made ps3 players head hurts.

Extremly difficult content was in game at launch or yr one an on. Penbot back then was a laugh. New guys would chat in league chat and when ud hear someone was about to do this mission. Id make a voice chat just to have extra laughs. Khans first room at tier was a nightmare especialy considering how many people were clueless to thier roles. Myself back then was one of thise guys. Forget what batcave it was but o e was a nightmare. We knkw fos 2 was the worst but man fos 3 wouod absolutely wreck teams. Even easy fos 1 u better pull crabs off the edge to limit the ads.

Prime was a team wrecker even to fully geared groups. Actually if ur grouls skillpoi ts were low or u were not paying attention fos 2 could wipe a group of full t4 players. Now we got bombshells where an alert grouo drops it and 8 players run through it faster than the normal (OLD NORMAL) alert.

Yes there are indeed otjer factors not being difficulty but we had the hardest content from oc and b4 and the population was healthy. After well again other factors apply but without the challanges we are acustom to the vets are getting restless or other games.

This.. People keep bringing up difficulty of OC.. Inner, Fos2 were just as hard.. difference is we were still gearing up and learning.. by the time OC dropped people were already replay badging away.. the fact they couldn't beat it or run with teams who could hurt their feelings.. not day 1 players but the casual re players of course

Even if you could beat it.... you were still excluded.

I could beat Wave. Did so on my first try.

But still would get excluded.

Why???

No expert mods.

Correct but this has npt one thing to do with catering to the casuals. Catering to the casuals is terms of challange yet people keep using OC as an example of hard content hurting the game. The difficulty atop of the new machanic shield system was about the only things not wrong with the OC. The shame of it was both alerts and raids were aces yet it goes in the books as a black eye.

And to be clear I had taken time off to work to tackle the OC dlc. A few of us did as u do and finished the alerts and then spent hours inside each raid. Trying and trying until we decided to replay away the alerts. It was non stop until we felt we sttod a chance and then back to the raids. At cr 94 as fire I was strong enough to tank the entire raid. Highest cr in da group was cr 95.

I tell u after we got wins we kept replaying and yes absolutly excluded players we did not know. Thing is we not only were completing both raids as fast as anyone but we also poured replay after replay. 2 months in I had 2 purple pieces of useable gear. By the time AnB came out if u added the dps and tank gear I had a total of 3 useable peices of gear. Only 3.

Any tank will tell j tanking in blue gear vs purple was night and day. I unfortunately experienced each angle of the Oc and the direct result has been a refusal to replay anything at all. Actually u take the money I spent on the OC and it might mat h what I spent on all of dcuo since.

The bad taste is still there.

That's because everyone is max cr.. how do u pick? Pugs tend to go with the guy that LOOKS the most capable.. by not having experts on, others LOOKED better then u. It is not a fault in the game, it's the problem that occurs when everybody is instantly max level.. u can't tell the real from the fakes. Replay badges make pugging impossible

It was the first time in a while people had to gear up before they could beat the raids.. they went in, got whacked and said nope, way too hard.. while others were beating it daily.. I will admit, the loot drops were horrible

Still..... it is not just people who thought the game was too difficult who left the game with OC.

Even people who could beat the content left the game thanks to being excluded.