Work In Progress Development Update: Episode 27 Gear and Progression

Development Update: Episode 27 Gear and Progression

Episode 27 will bring significant changes to DCUO's core loot progression and to how players acquire gear. With these changes, we want to make the entire loot and gear system deeper and more rewarding. We want to extend the progression path for enthusiasts, encourage everyone to play more, reward players more frequently, and limit the frustrations of randomness. To keep it as short and simple as possible:

• The best gear in the episode will be unlocked with currency at a vendor. #BestGearOnVendor
• Dropped gear will provide continual upgrades while players work towards vendor gear.
• PLUS, we'll utilize the renown system for elite gear and make omnipotence items obtainable through special collections.

Keep reading for the juicy details!

Dropped Gear: Uncommon, Rare, Epic

• Completing content will continue to reward players individually with gear in the loot picker.
• This dropped gear will make up the least powerful gear sets in the episode, in the rarities you are used to: uncommon (green), rare (blue), and epic (purple).
• All of the content will drop all of these rarities of gear.
• Each drop will attune to your specific role and average item level, so that it will (usually) be an improvement for you personally, until you have obtained the best dropped gear available.
  • This is very much like how gear from time capsules works.
• Better quality (epic vs. rare vs. uncommon) items provide larger increases from your current average item level.
• Epic dropped gear will have a new style, inspired by the mythological gorgons.

Bottom line: This change to dropped gear focuses what randomness there is in the overall progression system to the least powerful gear sets and, because the gear levels to you, means an upgrade most of the time.

Best Gear On Vendor: Legendary

• Completing content will now also reward Ancient Coins, a new episode-specific currency.
• Ancient Coins will be spent at a vendor to purchase the strongest gear set in the episode.
• Note: Content will continue to reward Marks of Victory and everything else you are used to, and Marks will continue to be used for what they are now in prior content and for other non-gear related purposes.
• Legendary Vendor gear will have a new style, inspired by Superman: Godfall.

Bottom line: Best gear on a vendor (with Ancient Coins) requires players to participate in the new content to acquire the new content's rewards, prevents later or earlier releases from impacting the time-to-complete, and also removes randomness entirely from this core gear progression.

Best Gear On Vendor: Legendary-Elite

• Completing elite versions of content will reward Ancient Coins AND renown with factions specific to Episode 27.
• The Elite vendor will not offer gear to players until they have acquired enough renown; once they have, the gear will be available for Ancient Coins.
• Legendary-Elite vendor gear will have a enhanced version of the regular vendor gear's style plus set bonuses, just like elite gear does now.

Bottom line: This model for elite gear ensures players complete the episode's elite content to acquire elite rewards and removes randomness from this extended gear progression aimed at DCUO's enthusiasts.

Omnipotence Gear In Collections

• Once a player has obtained (and is wearing) a full set of either vendor gear sets (regular or elite), a new special set bonus is applied.
• When this set bonus is active, players have a chance to get new mystical (and tradeable) item drops from Episode 27 bosses.
• These mystical items are for several new collections, and two of these new collections will reward omnipotence gear when complete.

Bottom line: This change provides a direct and in-depth path to OP gear, in that players must complete the episode's gear set and then play *more* of the episode. It also further strengthens the player economy, since these special collections are tradeable. There is still randomness in finding the collection items, and we believe this is appropriate for this extended progression aimed at DCUO's most dedicated enthusiasts.

Gear Recap

In order from weakest to strongest:

• Uncommon/green (dropped) gear is the weakest set in the episode (smallest increase per piece).
• Rare/blue (dropped) gear is the weakest set in the episode (moderate increase per piece).
• Epic/purple (dropped) gear is the weakest set in the episode (largest increase per piece).
• Legendary/orange (vendor) gear is the second strongest set in the episode.
• Legendary-Elite/orange (vendor) gear is the strongest set in the episode (because of set bonuses).
• Omnipotence/gold (collections-plus) gear is even stronger (two items).

We know that's a lot to take in, so we are here to answer any questions and consider your feedback.

We also highly recommend you read about the rest of Episode 27 in this letter from DCUO's Creative Director SJ "NerdOfPrey" Mueller.