Episode frequency - time for a change? (Discussion)

I've played both too. Not very similar

Also, like I said, it's important to consider just WHO plays both games and what their expectations are. Again, there's a bit of crossover but these are fundamentally different audiences.

I know you believe that but you're not though. You're asking for less content thinking it will resolve bugs; it will still have bugs and complaints about the quality of content, no matter what.

Like I said, they aren't understaffed and overworked and this is not the cause of bugs. This idea comes entirely from people on the forums and in the community whining about stuff they don't like and coming up with conspiracy theories and explanations for why the stuff they're upset about isn't getting changed/fixed. It's not true. Bugs and "quality" of content (subjective in this case) are a result of a variety of technical issues and logistics and creative choices that are not related to how frequent content is released.

Instead they should hire on more staff needed to support a consistently quarterly workload and guarantee 4 DLCs per year, Creating more work / jobs is a good thing for the product and the larger economy, and more content will be preferred by the community over less. Win:win.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

Even with better communication and transparency a change like that isn't going to go over unnoticed or without comment. It'd be a disruption to the routine we've seen in content releases, and those have a higher likelihood of getting more vocal objections than other changes to the game.

Again let's agree to disagree.

Well said.

Agreement / disagreement is reserved for issues of opinion; like your favourite colour or flavour of icecream. Agreement is not for issues that are factually verifiable or not.

I'm not sharing an opinion with you. I'm letting you know how it works in their studio (and any typical studio).

For example; movement mode bug. There's been several DLCs released since this bug was noticed. It's not delaying DLC releases though. This is because a separate team (person?) is looking at that issue. It's not solved yet because it's a complex issue. PVP is another example. They aren't *not* working on PVP due to a lack of staffing; it's a logistics choice in which the heads of the studio have decided not to put resources (time/money/labour) into it because it won't make back the money spent fixing it. Most studios create the content (spend the money creating it) and put it live, and then it's done and they won't revisit it unless an issue is gamebreaking. Maybe they'll come back at a later time when there's more issues in that content and do a pass on all the issues then but they typically won't tinker with already released stuff. This is how DI is operating. It's not a lack of staffing or time as your OP suggests.

Making posts that imply the game is bugged because the dev team is understaffed and overworked is willfully spreading misinformation. Your question is framed by a presumed fact that isn't a fact. On top of that, you're polling the community for their consent to reduce the amount of content other people (we) receive. It's honestly pretty outrageous and I'm not sure why more people aren't replying upset about it.

You're welcome to believe what you want, and no one can stop you, but it's wrong. And please stop trying to take things away from me and other players. Thanks.

1. This thread was to encourage discussion regarding episode frequency and whether it was time for a change. Maybe my mistake on this thread was leaning a little too much towards one side than the other, but my reasoning in appreciating quality of content remains intact. A discussion will often involve differing opinions, not so much of a win/lose situation. Win/lose conversations just end up derailing a discussion. Hence me saying let's agree to disagree and respect the other person has a different opinion and can understand their side of the story, while still having your own values. Win/lose conversations never end well.

2. We can at least agree that the game is long overdue bug fixes that shouldn't take weeks, months or possibly years to implement.

3. Bugs for newly released content shouldn't take weeks or months to fix. Cue last boss still has bugs that still haven't been fixed. Live server testing should never exist.

4. I'm not polling the community on anything. This was a discussion and always was a discussion reviewing the current episode frequency. It can be good to have an idea of where the community is at and how they feel regarding the current state of the game.

5. What am I personally taking away from you or other players? I don't work for Dimensional Ink or for the dev team. I don't have an actual say behind the scenes on these changes. I am a player like you and others and I am free to have opinions or generate discussions about the game like you and others whom also have that freedom. Clearly you disagree with me and you have the right to disagree with what I think. But we have opinions and discussion (rather than having a win/lose mentality towards anyone with a different opinion to you) can be a good thing going forward. For all we know we may get more/less frequent content going forward, those decisions lie with the dev team and DI. We both care about the game and we want it to be successful, perhaps more so, than currently.

6. Encouraging more people to disagree with someone who has an opinion you don't agree with isn't constructive for the game or the community.

Elite content ruined this game, i don’t remember what dlc the first elite raid/ alert came in, but that was it. Thats what killed the quality

2 more months to release content won't make it suddenly have no bugs or more quality. The community will demand more content in the episodes (with reason) to compensate for the delay, which means the devs will have to work on more pieces of content at the same time, which just opens up the window for more bugs at launch.

MMOs that don't release content in a monthly to quarterly window have big teams to work on expansions, that have much more content and replayability than our episodes ever had and some even have million dollars cinematics to add up to the story like WoW. This game doesn't even have a decent PvP to fill the gap between one launch and another.

IMHO the reason our instanced content is cluncky is because we have multiple versions of every piece of content and they spend a lot of time on open world every episode, unless they drop some of it we won't get better Episodes.

Perfectly said, unfortunately you're arguing with people that are opposed to change, MMO players are creatures of habit and when you mess with any habitually formed patterns you'll get kickback, even if what you suggest has merit.

For what it's worth, I entirely agree with you and we discussed it as well in that other thread, but I'm not at all surprised with the response here from some, I'd like to say I'm also surprised by the slightly non constructive way some are just refusing to even engage in discussion without just simply putting their fingers in there ears and saying "no, no, I can't hear you" but im sadly not.

For actually a long time I've thought this game should do proper, meaningful expansions that last at least 6 months but unfortunately there's people in this community that simply won't tolerate it because they're stuck in a rat race.

Sadly I think the developers significantly undermine there own ability to expand the game in this manner like those other titles because the one thing this game has that those others don't are replay badges.

The developers are actually creating the very monster they in turn have to fight against, they want content to last but then also hand the players the means to entirely smash it out in weeks instead of months and sadly the players are doing just that.

You'll know full well demonstrably in game no doubt the way players do this upon release or even spam counter feats day 1 for feats despite the fact there's no rush as it'll happen naturally anyway, no one in this games community though seems to want to do bounty counters for example over the course of weeks, they farm it en masse day 1, just for 1 statpoint, it's nothing short of crazy, to make it worse we all seem to then get whipped up in the frenzy because we know if everyone does that leaving it makes it harder later so it cascades on itself.

I do wonder whether the better way to do it would be to restrict replay badge use, possibly make some things unresettable and expand the relevancy window to give people more stuff to play each day to keep them logging in.

In fact, the game in this regards was far healthier before we could share/sell replay badges, I genuinely think it's time to remove that feature, if people had financial accountability for their own resets then they'd be more frugal with them and also play more naturally.

You watch them pile on me for that suggestion though lol

There may be something to this sentiment.

But it's not just elite, it's Event also. From the point of view of mechanics, tuning, and bugs, we have 6 raids, 3 alerts, and 3 duos in the current episode. Ignoring maps and voice acting, it's literally 3x the work it used to be for the dev team to release a dlc. And the worst thing is that 1\3 of that work just gets thrown away when the next episode is released.

I'd suggest getting rid of Event mode. There would have to be way higher CR requirements of star boosted players would be allowed to a the regular content, but I think that would just encourage people to run older content more.

Reducing the workload on the DEVs would likely lead to higher quality while still keeping 3 releases a year.

I tend to stick to feat/style unlocking for my Replay Badge use and rarely use them for content resets, so I'll just leave that part alone.

But the day one "gotta do it all right NAOW" shifting to "I've got nothing to do I'm bored" in no time flat isn't just here. Even in my time with SWG, release days for new expansions had the exact same behavior taking place. New content that took months to make was devoured in no time flat. It's a constant fight that devs can't ever win.

I'm something of an odd duck (go ahead, I've heard worse jokes LOL) in how I play in that I am taking my time and going slow. Between that and my time in SWG's sandbox environment (which pushed players into finding things to keep them busy on their own) I'm fairly confident I could survive a shift to longer periods of time between content releases. I've got plenty to keep me busy and can find things to keep me busy if I run out of things to do.

But for the better part of a decade the playerbase of this game has grown accustomed to having new content delivered every 3 months or so. I just don't see the playerbase at large taking well to a longer wait between releases, even if changes were made to how Replay Badges could be used. At the very least, that's a huge ask of the community.

You control the progress through loot lockouts, if there are no replay badges, there are no ways, period, to circumvent the mathematical designated natural progression path.

If you need say, 500 marks to get non tradeable gear then it takes you the exact number of weeks required to obtain those 500 marks, with no way around it. This forces the players to play DCUO every day or they fall behind; This is a pretty common concept in numerous MMO's. There's also the prospect of just making the best game in the gear crafted from drops obtained throughout the entire game, people are then rewarded through actual play time throughout the entire game, even if you removed replay badges or made it so you couldn't reset content and only used replay badges for style and feat transfers.

TBH, I think DCUO players are spoiled, they don't know what a real true MMO grind is, whether they're prepared to accept one who knows. I do know though from experience though that there was certainly a different attitude towards spamming content when you had to buy your own replay badges. The fact people can now buy replay badges effectively with pretend money means people just buy their way to completion without any sense of personal financial accountability, hesitation or restriction.

A situation made even worse too at times by the presence of gold sellers where there appears to be very little consequences around using them. If they weren't selling that cash to someone, they wouldn't be still advertising. The truth is the developers could be doing a whole heap more to stamp that behavior out as well, but I don't want to digress.

1) This thread is to encourage people to see the issue how you framed it.

2) no, I trust them do manage their own time. I won't Karen their the staff management.

3) see #2

4/5/6) I know you're generally good on the forums and your posts are helpful, so you probably didn't realize the ramifications of what you're suggesting here... but you basically made a "nerf the content" thread and you're justifying it with a discussion about how you don't think the devs are working hard enough to get what you care about done. That's what this is. The end result, if you got your way, would be taking content away from players.

Considering your nerf thread here, you're not in a position to accuse other people of not being constructive. It's pretty constructive to break this down for people who might not see it for what it is.

If you were upset that bugs weren't being handled fast enough, you should have just made a thread that expresses that instead of dressing it up like this.

Event mode would be interesting not being there, but I can understand why the devs would keep it with open episodes and allowing more players access to the latest episode content.

Event mode open world should stay in any case, more players running daily missions and bounties is only a good thing where applicable.

The thought of that did cross my mind as well, but the reason I didn't forward it as an idea is because it risks taking something away from low level players in the game, the event modes are appealing to even new entrant players and provide a reasonable experience for them I'm talking even levels 10+ and those that aren't actually at CR that will still get to participate in the most recent DLC.

That's why I thought the better idea would be to keep event but instead "merge" elite and normal into a single raid with a slider on each one.

Effectively normal becomes the first level on the slider and it becomes elite and then critical as you move up with scaled bosses, mechanics etc.

Event versions being removed likely wouldn't impact endgame players too much, unless you got to a Wednesday before reset and hadn't done a raid and needed the episode currency. But yes it would impact newer players or players with lower CR or even early game. That's why I said open world should stay event-friendly regardless.

I don't know if that would make any impact, besides having no elite version on On Duty. Please could you maybe explain this better for us so we can see where you are coming from?

Ideally we want to keep elite versions of content around to please those players who prefer to run elite content.

Well at the moment we have three different versions of the raid event, normal and elite, on top of elite now we have the slider which provides further additional levels of difficulty, I don't know exactly how much effort goes in to development of this in terms of time, I'm not going to pretend to know, because I'm not a Dimensional Ink employee, and nor is any other player here, but;

I would propose keeping event raids around and then just ditching normal raids entirely in favor of what is now the elite raid with the slider for all raids, normal difficulty would therefore be what "default" entry level elite is right now.

I know what you're thinking, the casual players are going to rage LOL, because I've basically just forced them to run elite haha with this idea.

But no I mean if it was a massive issue you just basically create an additional tier on the slider with a lower scale from where it currently starts to account for normal, which awards no renown. I mean I'd assume streamlining a raid in that manner would surely be more time efficient but then again, I'm not a dev

edit; effectively it'd be like Paradox was in a round about way.

You have "normal" - closing tunnels
"somewhat elite" - keep 1 boss out
"more elite" - keep 2 bosses out
"even more elite" keep 3 bosses out
"epic oddyssey" - keep all bosses out.

It's effectively just a similar scenario where the players simply choose how they're interacting with the raid, but there's no set designation if that makes sense.

I guess there's two issues.

Would the normal content be easy enough to cater to casuals/cosplayers?

Would the elite content be difficult enough to cater to veteran/elite players?

It's a difficult one and leads into the discussion we had in another thread.

There's also the artefact system to consider. This again relates to our other discussion and distinguishing between raids with mechanics you have to do to pass the raid and not wipe regardless of your gear/SP/artifacts, and raids with mechanics you can bypass if you have the DPS burn and heals and can finish the raid in a fast time because of levelled artifacts.

Hopefully soon we will know more about the membership update and hopefully artifacts will be involved. Then maybe we can discuss further on this.

The other factor with this is with a difficulty slider situation it's the same or more than what we are used to, with FFe even though it is one boss fight there are 7 versions of that boss fight, and basically 7 boss fights/raids. That would be significantly more work for the devs than having event/normal/elite.

I still stand by my belief that difficulty slider shouldn't come with a new content release (or at least not every content release), but rather become an update for older content for players to do during quiet periods of an episode. I know you feel differently and I can understand your reasoning.

No it didnt. If anything easy content ruined the game current episode proofs this