Declining Interest

I'm sure I'll get flamed but... Is it just me or is there a declining interest overall in this game?

I have played for a good part of three years now, almost daily. This was followed by constant posting about the game on the forums while I had to "work" and was away from the game... in essence I was DCUO every day, all day, and even dreamed DCUO... But something happened, my interest waned, and now I am having difficulty even logging into DCUO.

I don't appear to be alone. I have noticed my league mates are also not playing near as much. I've tried to step away for a little bit to fight off that nasty don't play DCUO bug... Usually a day or two away is enough to make me really want to play again... This time, however, after a couple of days off, I just wanted a couple more days of not playing...

So I didn't play again for a few more days, and it still didn't help.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Several factors have led to this problems, IMO, here are a few:

Lack of content - When its routinely beaten, over and over again, the content gets stale. There is only so many times an instance can be gutted before it's old hat. Replaying content as a tank. troll, healer, and dps only compounds this problem, those alts need love too, but they don't really add any joy to playing the same thing over and over again...

I even jumped on the villain side, something I haven't done in a very long time, to see if it would spark my interest, to no avail...

Weapon Mastery/DPS LOVE FEST - A super hero game should focus on super hero powers, not armor and weapons, IMO. What would anyone prefer to get a new snazzy set of hand blasters that do 10 more damage than your current version, or a brand new super power being unlocked for use? My guess is the new super power would be preferred by the community...

This love fest with the DPS side of things certainly fails to help. I stared out as a tank in this game, follwed by trolling... DPS was far off on my desire list, yet that is what is constanly shoved down our throats. Little or no love for support roles, makes me not want to play tank, troll, heal, or even DPS.

Diminishing Community - I've seen it in my own league. About 1/3 of the player base is presently playing in my league that played while we worked on getting our league hall... The LFG channel, is moving slower and slower, and seems to indicate that this just isn't my leagues problem, but an entire game problem.

One could say this is a temporary problem caused by the release of DESTINY, but I think there are some serious issues that need to be looked at here.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

So, we have overplayed content, that fails to offer any variety or substance, compounded with diminished roles and ridiculous health of mobs that cater to DPS side, followed up with a lot less of my friends and acquaintances playing.... a pretty strong recipe to try and overcome if I am to make it to year four in this game.

I agree with all points.

Content - Too easy, too stale. I get it, our population is casual, but at the same time we shouldn't be steamrolling raids this fast. Hell, people have already beaten some of them with 8 DPS. That's absolutely outrageous while we're still in the tier and just a month from release. It's also really boring. Because there is no mechanics and nothing for support roles to really key on, it's just a snoozefest. No focus firing, no pulling, pushing or stunning things, no group heals necessary, nothing. It's boring.

Support roles/DPS - Yup. Using powers is fun, using weapons is boring. Unfortunately the only way to use our powers is to use an advanced mechanic that nets less DPS than using WM. Even with advanced mechanics people use weapon mastery. If you try to use just advanced mechanics with no WM, you wind up burning too much power because you have to cast powers in a set order to get power returns. And support roles have very little use in high end content.

Diminishing community - Everyones playing destiny, but they also arent playing DCUO. People are actively looking for a game to take them away. Boring content, and a refusal to offer anything of substance for support roles are directly responsible.

I feel like my league is back to being as active as it was during Dox.

Perhaps LFG moves slower because League Halls pushed players to join leagues and now they are running within their league?

That's just looking at the bright side.

I don't feel like the game is a DPS lovefest at all. In fact, the changes to PvP and allowing tanks and healers to suffer no damage penalty support this. They are making it so damage is possible from all fronts, so grabbing the best and highest dps isn't required. Who cares about the dps if all the tanks, trolls, and healers do at least 1/3 the lowest dps's damage a piece?

They have also removed enrage timers which is a huge step away from pushing dps.

Every time a new game comes out we get these "diminishing community" threads. People try other things. People have lives, school, work. People are not just playing Destiny or whatever new game may come out. Some have gone back to school and have to do homework and study. Sometimes you just need a break.

DCUO is like a black hole. For most of us, we may leave for a time, but it always sucks us back in.

Destiny. Most of my league have met up there and a lot of us don't see a reason to return. I'll likely be done all together when my sub runs out shortly.

Fall is busy... I'd play more if I could.

While I agree that with the points you brought up it is hard to say how much of the decline is temporary. My league is basically dead right now. Many players left DCUO to go play other games. They will come back when they are done with the other games. Some great games have come out recently and many people want to play them right away. Some of these games have limited replay value so they are good games to play in between new content.

Not everyone enjoys PVP, and while the changes there might be less DPS centric, fewer will see them than PVE. I also think that's wishful thinking on the LFG chat window, everyone didn't suddenly start running content with their league and abandon LFG...

And to answer your question, support role care. We desire to be needed, not just exist as a second choice dps...

Yes we do get these threads, and I hesitated to write this one due to that fact, despite this, that constant tug from DCUO, or gravitational pull if you will... I'm not feeling it at all and I'm not playing Destiny (yet)...

I have a friend who stopped playing for four months. The other day I signed on and there he was. I have another friend who was gone for over a year. He's come back as well. Sometimes you just gotta take a break.

I am a little bored myself right now, honestly. But I am CR 107 and am running the low level stuff for gear and other feats I've missed out on. Those types of things don't really take much thinking or effort at this point and the drops are few and far between. On the other hand they go by a lot quicker than they used to.

As much as people want to bring up how content has gotten stale and how DPS-centric this game has become, all games suffer from this eventually, especially some people's rush to get the new gear and whatnot and then complain about said stale content and how DPS-centric this game is when people can actually bring in more of the other roles to combat that.

Keep doing the same thing over and over again, and it will get to you eventually. That's life in general. It's not limited to DCUO. Nothing wrong with going to other games to enjoy.

If this thinking was more widespread, this game would be in a better place.

Yeah, I understand that some of us want the Devs to implement more strategic instances that is not perceived to be DPS-centric to complete, and I'm all good with that, but some of it is on us to look at more options to tackle the content we have.

I could go into a whole 2 page rant about it, if I wasn't motivated enough to go game. Lol.

I play healer, troll, and once in a great while I dps. I am also getting into tanking now. When I pug and see "support" roles pushing 1/10 the lowest dps, I feel like they're not really pulling their weight regardless. They're either not running the right gear, role-playing, or not trying hard enough.

Here's an example: players constantly complain about high health pools and runs taking too long. Rather than "support" roles re-evaluating their contributions, they complain it's dps-centric. A healer doesn't need 8000+ restoration or restoration trinkets when all the top tier raids can be run with 5000 resto. Why not take more precision and support the team in that way?

When it comes to running group content, all roles are support roles. I see roles more as "I am a player, my own unique superhero, who specializes in healing." This doesn't mean healing is all I do, but it's what I do best. Because I am a superhero, I will do whatever it takes to get the job done even if I have to learn a new trick or change my normal routine.

DPSing in PVE has never been more at the forefront, especially because now we have bosses with 3-4 million health and the ability to stack 5 DPS if a group wants because of low power usage.

Enrage timers are no different then bosses with crazy high HP. Nobody wants to have too few/too weak DPS for either.

The whole point is the efficiency of the DPS is moot when the burn is there. Everyone in the party contributes to the damage, not just the DPS.

If I had a cookie factory to give you...

(Side note: 8000 Resto?! Is that with mods that don't take advantage of the Crits in the gear?! Um, that's a bit much. Lol.)

The breaks for me, don't appear to be helping...and lower content can offer only so much, I have around 171 SP personally, with a lot of feats accomplished, except for the heavy grinding ones, that offer very little incentive to actually do them. True its nice to be able to beat everything faster, especially some of the areas that used to cause problems, but repeatedly beating the content, doesn't add anything new to it...

I think the devs could address this, by giving some alternate endings to events. For example, instead of always having the same boss fight, you could have multiple paths that lead to alternate endings of raids. Run the raid one way, you get this boss, run it another, and you have not only a different path, but also maybe an alternate boss at the end...

Un-attuned gear doesn't help replaying either. while not popular, attuned gear actually makes you work a little more for the items you need.

Besides, I'd really like to see more development on the power side of things, and less toward gear. Unlocking additional abilities and attributes to powers, seems more rewarding than getting gear a CR or two higher than what you presently have... we all have the same basic abilities as when we hit level 30. For some, like me, that was 3 years ago... I may have '"better" gear, but I am not increasing in my powers, abilities, or scope of capabilities in an instance. I can pew pew better is all, and to me that is a big downfall in the path the DEVs elected to take...

I didn't read all of it, but the reason this is occuring is because as you stated you've played three years. There are a lot of people who are on the same boat. The loss of interest is likely from just simply being burnt out of this game, not the game itself. Another thing to consider is we are now in Next-Gen and this is a Current-Gen game. This means there are newer, flashier titles being released pulling people to other games.Now your reasons I don't agree with either, but correct me if I'm wrong on the above statements.

Referring only to content and weapon mastery (though I agree with most of what OP is saying, if not all), I really hope WM damage will be "adjusted" when all the AMs come out to make it less mandatory for DPS. And not just the damage, while I understand the benefit of having a power reduction on support role, truth is it makes the Controller life just so easy...

There are times when, during those mind numbing boss fights, I just forget to throw pot (I know how bad of a troller this makes me sound, but I purposely don't spec for straight Vit because I prefer to be support troller, so...) and then notice everyone is powered. It's just so... easy, even when you screw it up.

As for content... I seriously hope the devs are reading these posts/threads. It's not just a minority that is reporting the dullness in these raids. It's not just the "l33t" players wanting to push the "casuals" under the bus. There is so little to do other than killing the boss... It's a tendency that started with Amazon Fury and that quickly-stale alert. If this is the direction of the game towards the rest of the tier and the next one, the game is going to keep suffering. IMO, of course.

But DPS contribute more. Much more infact, and as a result, I'm far more likely to stack my groups with DPS than healers or controllers, especially when boss fights take as long as they do.

Until support roles have more to do, or hell, even an actual role beyond healing the solo tank, or giving power DPS stacking will always occur. The point isnt that they're emphasizing DPS, its that they are forcing them to the forefront by not giving support roles anything to do. Controlling a raid with 2 controllers is about as fun as smashing your head against a keyboard, because 1 controller is more than capable of handling everything on their own, same goes with healing and tanking.

Sure, I don't need to DPS stack, but if boss fights are going to take 5-6+ minutes otherwise, then you bet I'm going to load up on as much as possible if I don't need 2 of each role. The DPS being pushed into the spotlight is a side effect of them not emphasizing the support roles.

I'm guilty of not trying to dps on some runs. Often I dont see the point... To be honest, when you have a group consisting of 5 dps already, I don't see my little contribution in damage as much help... True I could put up better numbers, reduce my resto, vit, or dom on my support role toons in favor of more burn, but then again, I could just put on my DPS gear and put up even better numbers than I ever will as a support role...

We could add a second heal, a third troll, another tank... and sometimes we do. When we do this, the instances still are completed, and it does little to help make beating content feel more rewarding.