Test Discussion Episode 41: Early End Game

Hi everyone and welcome to the Early End Game feedback thread.

Lots of news ideas coming to DC Universe Online in the latest episode. This thread is for for feedback on the changes related to the "Early End Game" which is being defined as all post-leveling content that isn't part of the three newest episodes. At this time, the three newest episodes are Episodes 38: Wonderverse, Episode 39: Long Live the Legion, and Episode 40: World of Flashpoint.

Below are details about many of these changes:

• End-Game Tiers have been reconfigured. There are now 6 Tiers, and all On Duty-accessed content has been organized into those Tiers. In order to access content within these Tiers, players need to have a Combat Rating (Gear Score) of:
  • Tier 1: CR 30
  • Tier 2: CR 60
  • Tier 3: CR 100
  • Tier 4: CR 150
  • Tier 5: CR 210
  • Tier 6: Episodes 38, 39, and 40 content maintains existing CR requirements for the time being

• Early End-Game content in the On Duty and in Open Worlds is now set up to scale players who are outside the range of the content.
  • Players below the Combat Rating of the content are scaled up to a "floor"
  • Players that are at the Combat Rating of the content are not scaled.
  • Players that are above the Combat Rating of the content are scaled down, to a "ceiling"
  • League Buffs, Skillpoints, Artifacts, Allies, etc. do improve you beyond scaled stat values and have a proportional return so that you still receive a worthy benefit from those
  • Remember: this scaling does not occur in the 3 newest episodes which at the moment are: Wonderverse, Long Live the Legion, and World of Flashpoint

• Players receive a passive buff when in Normal Mode Early End-Game Instanced content (but in not Elite Modes).
  • Players scaled up to the floor of the content receive the biggest buff, players that are at-level receive a lesser buff, and players that are scaled to the ceiling of the content receive the smallest buff
  • Unbalanced groups in Alerts/4-Player Operations no longer receive the “Roleless Buff” in Early End-Game Instanced content
  • The “Roleless Buff” is still applied in the latest three episodes 4-Player content and also now in Open Worlds for those three episodes

• Missions in the Mission Journal have had their Combat Ratings/Levels updated to correspond to the new Tiers

• Missions that point players to different episodes’ instances and open worlds are now granted by new Missions
  • Currently Disabled - therefore, currently, players won’t receive these ‘pointer’ missions for Early End-Game content at this time

• Changed Open World Bosses to be more in line with scaled stat values. Raid and Group bosses have been set down to a lower rank where applicable which is intended to make them easier to defeat with fewer people

• There are no longer Alerts available to players who are below level 30.
  • The two Alerts which didn’t have a “Hard Mode” (Level 30+) version are now set up as Early End-Game alerts
  • There are no longer “Novice” Raids
  • Existing feats and collections which were accessible in the sub-level 30 instances should still be accessible in these Early End-Game instances

• Certain Alerts have been streamlined, whereby the objective counts within them have been reduced, so they don’t take as long
  • These include “Bludhaven,” “Gorilla Island,” and “Area 51”

• Early End-Game content that spawns in Metropolis and Gotham has been adjusted so that it’s complete-able by players as soon as players are able to get the missions which lead to them
  • This includes missions entitled “Threat in South Gotham,” “Deconstruction,” “South Gotham Agenda,” “Uncivil Engineering,” which are all now playable by CR 30+ players, and “Virtues and Vices,” which is now playable by CR 60+ players
  • Similarly, Episode 6 (aka Home Turf) open world content that goes to Arkham Asylum, Stryker’s Pentitentary, Steelworks, and Ace Chemicals, has been adjusted to be complete-able by CR 60+ players

• Existing Teleporters in the Watchtower and Hall of Doom, which allow access to locations associated with Early End-Game content, now have CR requirements corresponding to the Tier updates
  • Urgent Warfront Mods similarly have been updated

• Mechanical Gear Vendor has been removed from all Safehouses, the Watchtower, and the Hall of Doom
  • Instead, players will be able to get what they need to advance through the Early End-Game from Tempus Fuginaut in the House of Legends

• Loot Locks have been removed from the Early End-Game instanced content (content accessed via the On Duty menu that isn’t part of the latest three episodes)

• Current “Event Mode” and Seasonal content is now granted and accessible to players when they’re either level 20 (instead of level 14), or when they finish "Reap What You Sow" (Hero), or "Faustian Response" (Villain)

• All Early End-Game On Duty and Open World content will reward Source Marks (regardless of CR), and offer choice loot including Scaling Gear that will help players progress from CR 30 all the way the CR needed to access the latest Episode

Please let us know your feedback in this thread. How does the early end-game content feel, difficulty-wise? Have you located any bugs/issues? Did we overlook something that you feel needs attention? Thank you for helping test these content changes! Your thoughts on this are of immense value and very important to us.

- Quixotic

1) I just got rolled by the Brainiac Swarm Master adds in gates, the initial adds barely do damage, then the boss destroys you.
2) Show the player CR when clamped instead of the clamped CR, a LOT of people will get mad on this, as the displayed CR is a way to show you progressed.
3) FOS walk-ins are disabled, but gates, prime and nexus are not, is this for any specific reason?

Do make sure you include your feedback on stat scaling whether you were being scaled up, at level, or scaled down. Report how many skill points, if you have artifacts, etc. too. Reports of things being too easy or too hard are not easily processed if the context is not given. If below, state your CR and what you were scaled to, likewise, do the same with being scaled down.

Thanks!

Another note - with the roleless buffs in the End Game:

• Roleless buffs are slightly less forgiving in the most latest content. This is in keeping in mind that latest content has most players and the use of phase shifting now.
• Roleless buffs in content that has aged by one episode are more forgiving, more akin to how they are now in current Live game.
• Roleless buffs in content that is about to enter Omnibus/Early End Game land are friendlier still! Here you have NO DPS debuff and only receive generous increases to defensive buffs and healing.

Example: Flashpoint has the slightly less forgiving buff, Legion has the buff you see now on Live, Wonderverse will have a better buff that has no DPS debuff associated if you have a mostly DPS centric team. This is to compensate for the decrease in traffic over time before the content goes into Source Mark conversion. At that point the buffs are replaced with Early End Game buffs that don't require a party at all, everyone gets them - and still, no more DPS debuff - just things to help you survive more.

Alerts stay the same throughout End Game and convert over to Early End Game buffs when they convert to Source Mark loot.

Please test the various OW bounties and bosses, keeping in mind to include CR (scaled up or scaled down), skill points, artifacts, etc to help us have context in the reports. Thanks!

Regarding the different Ep 41 instance versions:
In the Events tab there are two versions; Regular & Elite. Both of these say Minimum CR 327. Is there also supposed to be an Event version for level 20 & up? I see that the 1 Player tab version of Science Spire also rewards Grains of Time (the Episode currency). If that's the Event version, then only toons at CR 100+ would be able to play it. Same for the 4 Player tab version of Phantom Zone. 8 Player tab version of Power Core has a minimum CR of 30 and also awards Grains. But that still means that players below CR 30 would not be able to earn Episode currency.

My toon was scaled down, from cr 339 to 75. 3 level 200 artifacts and 389 skill points on dps and 3 maxed out allies (1 rare, 2 legendary). I also tried on tank role by just pressing T, with the dps specs.

On gates I couldn't survive the Brainiac Swarm Master and it's adds for more than a few seconds, but I managed to solo the first boss of nexus just fine (took me like 5 minutes, without battle tank specs), so there is some inconsistency (now I don't know if it's intended to NOT be able to solo a cr 75 raid at cr 339 or if it's intended).
I just tried prime as well and the adds aren't very forgiving, it looks like every instance with multiple adds is going to be harder than the expected, but I need to dig in a little bit more to be sure.

Are the extra missions into past content, that you could get in Hand of Fate still a thing? if so, are they scaled to the content they are in?

Tested at 329cr with 344sp spent. 200 Trans and Strat, 179 Solar. Unknown generator mods, likely well out of date.

Ran the Spark of Ion solo, the Lexcorp Tower solo, and the Starro duo.

While I never felt like I couldn't complete the instance, I was left rather unsatisfied with how severe the downclamp was. I was placed a CR point or two below the NPC level in those instances and it often felt like I was much closer to at level rather than "powerful". Certainly not impressed if this is an indication of how all other instances will play out.

I sat in some old alert and raid queues but had no luck getting them to pop.

Also tried the Age of Justice open world. Again clamped to below NPC CR. As with any open world, challenge was minimal. But it felt much closer to something like the BoP open world on live.

I expected the clamp to be rather heavy handed, but this just feels like it's a bit much. Maybe my lack of a fully fleshed out character was skewing the impression a bit, but shouldn't we at least be higher CR than any NPC we encounter. If for no other reason than a psychological win, because right now the shock factor of I'm below the NPCs is hard to get past.

To be clear, this isn't me saying the content is too hard. It's just very unsatisying from a progression standpoint to be so heavily clamped. There was no feeling powerful. Just shock and dissatisfaction at the state of the game.

I haven’t tried test, but when you told me that you walked into Nexus and was clamped to 104? I mean, on live server right now the relevancy range of Nexus is 85-104. So you were clamped to the relevancy range ceiling?

To put that in perspective, the current relevancy range on Fractured God Sphere is 299 - 331. So if you run it now with 342 (before it falls into old content), you’ll have higher cr than you would after it falls into old content with the clamp?

Testers look at this. If the pattern holds, then when an episode falls into old content, you’ll in effect be clamped 1 episode back from when it was current? Legion’s Convergence of Unmaking would be clamped at 342, to give another example.

This feeling of not being powerful is exactly what was intended by this update. Every instance in the game is now supposed to feel like playing at or very near end game instances. Don't know why they felt this was a good idea, but that is exactly the concept.

Kind of the opposite of Stats Matter, negating the concept behind Stats Revamp.

But Mepps has repeatedly said we would feel over-powered in old content (random example - running FoS 1 with max Flashpoint gear). This doesn’t sound like that at all. This sounds like practically running it at level.

if this is what you are banking on to rejuvinate the game, color me unimpressed. i was playing old content prior to update 41 and now i don't want to run old content. I really don't get what you are trying to do,on one hand you are making it easier for new low levels to get gear and on the other hand you are severlly handicapping older veterans. I think I will be letting my sub run out.

He said we would feel more powerful than a toon in the Relevancy Window, not that we would feel OP. And yes, our stats are clamped higher than a toon in the RW, but very little more than that.

(yes, there's no RW anymore, but there must be a range of stats for each instance. And slightly above that range is where the clamp max is at)

Report your findings on actual testing please. Bugs and feedback on TESTING. Nothing is final in terms of the tweaks we'll do. If it's deemed not where we want it, we'll be changing things. We have time to review testing results and react accordingly. Keep the thread focused on that. Thanks.

Okay. Well, if that’s the case - not seeing much point to the grind. Get your purple gear drops; buy a couple of vendor pieces with the marks you got along the way; and take a vacation until the next episode. :/

If you’re playing practically at level - well, that’s the only range worth your time playing in. Can’t do it there, then oh well.

Edit - and I was typing this as Charon was posting. Did not see his post until I posted mine. Don’t worry - you won’t hear more from me. I think I’ve seen enough.

CR 399, 200 arts, 339 skill points, generator mods, I walked in the teleporter to Fortress of Solitude. It brought my cr to I think 75 lol I was able as a battle tank survive against the early waves before Nom comes in. Guess this means we won't be able to solo these types of walk ins. I mean possibly but it's going to take lots and lots of time and patience. I haven't tried open world solo bosses yet but I can only imagine

Where do we go to report obvious flaws that don’t need to be tested? Wonderverse is not early endgame, so I’m 341 in there right now. Episode 42 comes out and I’m then clamped to 315 cr? So it suddenly becomes harder than it was before episode 42? No testing is required to see that that is completely illogical.

I was actually in favour of stat clamping but this is utterly absurd. We should never, EVER be forced backwards within an episode like that. And that’s putting aside the fact that such a controversial change needs a light touch. I know GU47 and it’s resulting fallout was a long time ago, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still lessons to be learnt from it.

Any thoughts on making it easier for players to rebuild Head Augments?

Question

Should players be running in groups for testing the group content or should they be trying to solo the group content?
I find it rather odd that players are trying solo clamped group content and then coming back with complaints about difficulty.

Hi Charon.

These kinds of testing are going to hard to actually test without involving “feels like” kind of statements. I understand needing as much information as possible to test these. I’ll be able to test things more thoroughly tomorrow but right off the bat I would say that I can understand clamping gear stats to cr ceiling. However artifacts stats should not be clamped with them. A person can mac them out day one by paying for them. Or they can rank them up through years. With this in mind clamping artifacts stats in general doesn’t make sense IMO. Same goes for league buffs. Skill points im on the fence. It’s obvious that players want skill points to matter and having SP being the defining stats in stats clamp could be a big score for promoting people to get as a many feats as possible. Thou I understand wanting to clamp these too.

In general the overall feel of clamps does seem a bit much. Cr 339, 400+ so (I’ll have to check when I get on tomorrow, and 3 200 artifacts. I will be more thorough tomorrow