Elite raids - should they release with an episode, or a week or two later?

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by TheLQ-DCUO, Jun 20, 2021.

  1. TheLQ-DCUO Loyal Player

    This is an interesting discussion that I will propose on here.

    In recent years a lot of the quality of raid content in episodes has somewhat diminished in my opinion. There have been some exceptions (like FGSe) but generally there have been various issues that have affected the quality of the raid content, and in turn the episode that has released. Any major bugs that release with the raid can take up to a month before they get addressed, perhaps longer.

    When Metal Part II released, Into The Dark Multiverse had to be turned off initially. There was the crash issue loading into Phoenix Cannon as well.

    When Wonderverse released, even though Fractured God Sphere (Elite) was a good raid, it had various bugs for a while that made last boss especially very long and unnecessary. It took several weeks to fix the issues with the Wonder Women and the frequency of mechanics/cage phase during the last phase of the Zeus fight.

    When Long Live the Legion released, Convergence of Unmaking last boss was and continues to be buggy.

    When World of Flashpoint released, Flash to the Future's difficulty levels were bugged, making the raid very short and trivial even at the start and even at harder difficulty levels. Flashtastic Voyage was turned off initially.

    The issue is in my opinion that these raids either get rushed to release too soon, or they aren't on test for long enough before live.

    Another issue is that players burn themselves out completing everything on their main toons for the episode in the first few weeks.

    So my suggestion is this (and this is for discussion on this thread) - Add the elite raids on test roughly a week later than the rest of the episode, allowing devs more time to tweak behind the scenes before they hit test. The episode launches when it does, but without the elite raids. The elite raids release one to two weeks after the episode, when they are ready to be released. They stay on test and have further tweaks and bug fixes and balancing.

    This would also be easier now that episodes are free with membership and no longer on the MP, so anyone buying the new episode wouldn't be buying less for a time while certain content wasn't live.

    With the elite raids releasing later than the rest of the episode, this would pace the community into playing the more casual content at the start of an episode release - perhaps getting some gear - before the elite raids and elite gear release 1-2 weeks after the main episode release and downtime. The elite raids would get more care and attention from both testers and the developers working on the finishing touches for them.

    Thoughts?
    • Like x 4
  2. Illumin411 Loyal Player

    They just need to be on test a week or two more prior to release.
    • Like x 6
  3. DeitySupreme Steadfast Player

    Exactly what’s said above. You can’t have only 1-2 weeks of testing and expect all the bugs to be found. Release an elite later and you’ll lead to more bugs that weren’t discovered
    • Like x 1
  4. Yass Queen Hyppolyta Dedicated Player

    Agreed that the real solution is a longer cycle of testing. Speaking of-- finding some way to open a test server to PS4/5 would go a long way to getting more testing. I know the logistics are tricky there but I'll bet it's not impossible.
    • Like x 5
  5. Proxystar #Perception

    I'd go a step further and delay the release of elite content about 4-5 weeks thus forcing players to gear up with normal gear, this will then lead players to progress more naturally and elite content can be released and balanced around an expectation that players have progressed rather than playing in last DLC's gear.

    You can then price the elite gear accordingly based on how much time is expected to be left in the DLC cycle.

    You could even stagger the release, week 2 release elite duo, week 3 release elite alert, week 4 release one elite raid, week 5 release the second elite raid, just my thoughts, I certainly don't think it's a bad idea if done correctly.
    • Like x 4
  6. Cerulean Osprey Well-Known Player

    In addition to allowing more time for testing, I think it's an organic way to stretch out the Episode. Give players the raid, give them a couple weeks to pick up some pieces of gear, get a feel for the Raid's mechanics and flow... and then give them a more challenging version to play with.
    • Like x 1
  7. zNot Loyal Player

    Well they can also design the raids or adjust/scale them higher so people actually need proper gear to complete it? This again takes more time to test the best thing to do imo is to simply have episodes be on test server for 4 weeks not just 2.
  8. TheLorax 15000 Post Club

    I would be interested to see episode content staggered out a little.
    • Like x 1
  9. TheLQ-DCUO Loyal Player

    Would you expect elite versions of content to be on test significantly longer in the process? You make some interesting points.

    Once upon a time episode content went on test for the best part of a month. Maybe this is partly why the quality of content has deteriorated somewhat in recent years (depending on the content, this is to a degree subjective).

    Elite raids being on test for a month would certainly be an interesting idea, it would give the smaller dev team more time to add in hot fixes where necessary, and more time for players to get on test and have enough people to play the content with. More time for fine tuning a product wouldn't be a bad thing provided that when the product releases it is working as intended.

    The other side of this is you would need the gear to be worth getting to get the players ready - the elite content would need to be challenging enough that players would need to have some gear - but there needs to be something else also. Maybe a return to something like the elite weapons we had during bounty episodes?
  10. Hraesvelg Always Right

    It wouldn't bother me if they did stagger out the Elite raids. I can't say that I do many of them any more, since getting together good enough players that don't have an outsized aggro ego is something I've retired from, LOL. Keep giving me Elite alerts and duos, though. Those I can manage.
    • Like x 1
  11. Shark Dental Devoted Player

    Do you think the difference in stats from gear would have any perceptible difference on the difficulty rating of the raid?

    Unless you're talking about significantly raising the amount of stats provided, but then the problem of power creep grows exponentially again.

    And if the normal raid is what "elite" players are going to be replaying while waiting for elite to be released, I can just hear the drama now.
  12. myandria Item Storage

    Hmm.. good points. I think players who like "Elite" raids would quickly get their feats from "Normal/Event" raids then complain that they are bored because there is nothing else for them to do. Players who like to finish content quickly will complain about the same thing. The result will be a drop-off in player activity until the "Elite" raids are available.

    I can see staggered raid launches possibly implemented in the summer, where people tend to do other things outside of the game and there is that gap between seasonal events/new content.
  13. Proxystar #Perception

    Apologies for the long-ish post, but assume you're genuinely after my thoughts. Short answer for the first sentence, no.

    but to explain further and this is where you can choose to read my reasoning, but, that's because I believe players within this game have a disproportionate and arguably unhealthy level of input in terms of testing and balancing content.

    This is because, despite any best attempt, it is impossible for a player to convert themselves into an independent tester capable of removing all emotional and/or impartial investment or biases they have towards obtaining a certain outcome and evident-ally, over the years, provide an outcome that may even perversely favor how they subjectively want the game structured or provide an advantage to their individual play style. A player is simply too invested in a particular outcome to be credibly impartial; that applies to all of us.

    At the risk of sounding disparaging towards the devs, but to stress that really isn't my intent, and I want to make that clear before continuing, but... I think the devs rely too much on a very small minority of testing players to undertake QA of DCUO where they should be doing more of that in house using professional video game QA staff, now I'm not saying QA isn't happening, but it certainly appears, to at times, be reliant heavily upon feedback received from players during the 2 week testing phase and any other private feedback they might be receiving.

    I know the counter argument to that is naturally, "but it's good for players to be heard" and to an extent I certainly don't disagree, but, players should never be relied to provide QA feedback outside of a cursory pass.

    It is for that reason I do not believe having the content tested by the players for longer than 2 weeks is particularly necessary - I appreciate you might have a differing view, but that is the reason why I am reluctant to extend it past 2 weeks, I personally think any feedback of more considerable value is in any case only ever received by players in the first weekend when they can truly be bothered putting in free time to signficantly test in any case and the only time where you're going to get a more balanced range of feedback from a greater number of players with differing views.

    In terms of any view I subjectively hold with regard to difficulty staggering the release of the content simply provides development with a mechanism under which they can 'force' a more natural progression model.

    At the moment the developers have a very sideways progression model, they release it all, including elite, in order for the players to be efficient they are going to move from previous elite gear to new elite gear, doing anything other than that, from the view of the optimal player, can only be perceived as a "waste of time and marks", the concept of buying regular gear first and then buying elite gear afterwards, for an increased cost in marks, is a mathematical absurdity from a player perspective that simply cannot be entertained under the current model.

    Staggering the release of content would force the issue, if players only have 'some content' to run but know more is coming and that the 'more coming' is likely to require them to have made progress, then they'll do it, in order to undertake the upcoming challenge.

    Elite content can then be balanced around an expectation of how much progress a player will have naturally made by the time the subsequent content is released. I think replay progress needs to be excluded, a player needs to take responsibility for the boredom that might eventuate from them undermining the natural window of progress.

    Personally if I had it my way and this is just my preference, I'd get rid of elite gear entirely and simply provide cosmetic rewards and feats for the completion of elite content, this is because of the prolific modern use of materials within the game, "special" aesthetic features to gear simply aren't appreciated by players, as much as they once were and the resources spent making these are possibly better spent elsewhere.

    This way the developers can just focus on a singular set of gear in terms of progression, the appropriate stats that rest with that and making content balanced around a singular statistical expectation of player progress, I think it would be more streamlined, you could possibly even release more gear sets independently of actual content itself, much like during Origin Crisis & Sons of Trigon, where there was an additional vendor set introduced to help players through Nexus/Dox where they might need it, but there was no new raid content introduced. Just putting some thoughts out there.
    • Like x 2
  14. Proxystar #Perception

    There is already a significant difference, statistically and performance wise between having a set of vendor gear from this DLC and the last DLC, that is demonstrably obvious simply through running content and experiencing improved performance between day 1 and now.

    My expectation wouldn't be that stats increase, it would simply be that staggered content could have its difficulty balanced around the progression you would expect a player to have undertaken in the time preceding its release.

    This should make it increasingly more difficult to simply be lazy, wait it out and complete elite content, as it is released, using regular or elite gear from a previous DLC and make progression feel at least a little more natural rather than simply moving from elite to elite, while obtaining nothing significant in between.

    As I alluded to my previous post as well, perhaps you do make it really difficult even with the vendor gear on offer and then 2 months in release a second set of gear then with slightly better stats to help struggling player, there doesn't need to be any elite gear, but it could be a new style for players to collect that might not otherwise need the stats to complete the content. (similar to Sons of Trigon DLC)

    While we're on the topic I would also remove avatar bombardier gear from the quark vendor, it horribly undermines progression and players simply use it every DLC to boost to one level under purple max on the very first day, then complain about how easy it was. - This gear is completely undermining the progression pathway and intended early difficulty as well.

    If you wanted a more natural progression pathway, such as what was experienced in say Origin Crisis then people should be gearing up with drops, not insta leveling with quarks.


    In terms of normal difficulty I personally and this again my preference would like to see the difficulty of "normal" increased, you can't expect players to remotely get better or even ready for harder elite content when the experience they're receiving in normal is only incrementally harder than the experience received within event mode, because honestly that's what its currently like and it's doing the player base absolutely no favors, whatsoever.
    • Like x 1
  15. Qwantum Abyss Loyal Player

    My biggest thought is that live is test.
    Test is only PC not console so keeping it out of our hands longer wont solve the bug issues you hope to address. What solves that is getting it in our hands so we can play it an find the bugs then pray they get addressed.
    • Like x 1
  16. Qwantum Abyss Loyal Player

    I dont think it’d play out that way tho. Stat dif is not enough i dont think to make or break the ability to clear an elite raid. That means the first few weeks i just sit an collect marks an drop gear and wait.
    Why would anyone waste marks on reg gear if they are going for elite gear? Now if they can somehow tune it up so that its unbeatable w/out full current reg gear on all 8 players yet somehow beatable once you hit that threshold even tho the stat dif is minimal then sure, im game for whatever
    • Like x 1
  17. TheLQ-DCUO Loyal Player

  18. KHALONofOGUN 10000 Post Club

    This particular horse has been beat so long it's already glue. They can't have a Playstation test server because cost to benefit ratio is not in their favor. How so, you may ask?

    They can push out changes as they need to on the PC test server, which could be once a week or 5-6 times in the same week (depending the nature of the changes and all that). The Playstation (as well as the other console platforms) require them to go through an approval process with an advanced/projected release date as well as a publishing fee. Even if they were only pushing a new build once a week, they'd have to pay for each release AND wait on the approval process. That would put the Playstation Test server builds behind the most current PC build...basically negating any benefit trying catch and fix bugs and errors before release. So yes, you're right...it's not impossible...but it's kind of self-defeating and a waste of resources.

    Another way to look at it is...the first two weeks of release are the final test server phase for consoles, things are caught and then they work on fixes. They don't always succeed, but that is the nature of things.

    ________________________________________________________________________________________
    As for the OP's idea...I see no downsides to the idea. It's not like it'll significantly slow down the replay badge junkies.
  19. KHALONofOGUN 10000 Post Club

    I like where your thoughts are in general with the delaying of release for Elite content. However, extending the time on Test Server won't do much to incentivize more players to get on test and help out. There has been a steady decline in testers for years. If they're not getting on now, a week or two more won't change much.
  20. Proxystar #Perception

    Just thought I'd let you know I'd reply later :) - busy day