For those who think the sky is falling

Just an FYI, the hair color and style was from the Nu52 Suicide Squad comic book. The whole "Daddy's Little Monster" is sort of a take on that version, but the movie DID influence the current washed out pink and blue (as opposed to all red and black) look we have today. Which leads to a whole conversation on how comic industry is devolving and letting the movie fandom ruin the comic lore. Which is kind of the theme we are going here with this thread. People are influenced by the movies and want it to sway the DCUO lore.

This.

Speculation is one thing. Pronouncements about what "we all know" are a different sort of thing entirely.

opinion I guess as to whether it's ruining comic lore lol, but sure I understand your point.

Hmm...

I agree with these sentiments, as I still play traditional MMORPG's as well as ones like DCUO. The sky is not falling, but there are less players than in years past across the board and I think it is partly due to the lack of players wanting to sit at a computer/console to play. I don't have hard numbers, but I do notice that raids and dungeons that were easy to get a group for are lacking in player participation (sound familiar?).

Today's MMO players are not as patient and want to do less grinding for all levels of loot, gear, rewards, leveling up, ect. The new content trend for some of the top MMO is revisiting and revamping older content while expanding on old stories lines that were left without a resolution. Perhaps a future DLC from this game would include some revamped/expanded older content; I can only hope.

All games go through a downward trend or two (or more!). A downward trend is an opportunity to implement something new or refresh something old, or both. As Proxy pointed out, we don't know what is going on within Daybreak; however, DCUO has Everquest to look to for guidance as to how to ride out the rough times.

There will always be a few Chicken Little's that will claim the sky is falling...

I don't think you can, though. The Steam numbers tell us about Steam players, nothing else. We don't know the actual portion of players among the PC userbase that uses Steam to play DCUO, so it's another situation where it becomes guesswork.

We can talk all we want about the popularity of a game among the Steam userbase or how many Steam users play DCUO. But trying to apply those numbers to a platform as a whole when we don't know how representative they actually are for the PC platform? That's won't work. We need more info to work with, and since we don't know those numbers...*shrug*

And to be honest, it's not surprising to see the numbers trend downwards. Very few games keep the same numbers and/or momentum going nine years after being launched. Chances are decent you'd see similar numbers with any game (MMO or otherwise) that launched or released at the same time as DCUO.

PC player and I have never used Steam.

While the numbers on Steam are going down since 2014, the game has been added to XBox and Nintendo Switch. While the population on those may not be gigantic, there are people playing on those. Do we have evidence that the numbers lost on Steam aren't made up by the additional accessibility? We can guess, sure. But do we know?

Players who did not previously play the game are now playing on XBox. Players who did not previously play the game are now playing on Nintendo Switch. That means..more players that weren't playing before.

There are quite a few people that either took a break from the game to come back on XB/Switch or for whatever reason left PS/PC to pursue XB/Switch. Not everyone that started on XBox and Switch were brand new to DCUO.

I never claimed that everyone was. I said that there were players that were new and began playing on those systems. Unfortunately you and I do not have access to the numbers.

True.

Thanks for sharing.

I personally love THIS Chicken Little:



Positive little fellow....as well as a realist.

Little dude wins out in the end....and the sky didn't fall either.

I find it somewhat ironic the number of people who want to complain that the film has too much influence on the comic book. Specifically when the character of Harley Quinn had her first appearance occur in the Batman Animated Series, not the comic book. She is an example of a character that was introduced for the small screen, and was popular enough in animation that they later transitioned her over to being a part of the comics as well. Literally the only reason that she is in the comics at all is because the comics were influenced by the cartoon; otherwise she would not exist in comics.

Chloe Sullivan was first introduced in the Smallville television show, but was popular enough they later wrote her into the Superman comics.

Jimmy Olsen and Perry White were first introduced in the old Superman radio show, but were popular enough they later wrote them into the Superman comics.

Terry McGinnis (Batman Beyond) was created as an entirely original character for the pilot of the Batman Beyond tv show, but was popular enough that they later wrote him into the Batman/Superman comics, Countdown miniseries, and eventually started their own Batman Beyond comic book connected to the mainstream DC continuity.

General Zod's back-up, Non and Ursa, they were both introduced in the Superman Movie, and it wasn't until 2007 that they were made canon in the comics, like 30 years later.

Heck, here's one to blow your mind. Kryptonite, that space rock that saps Superman of his powers, was originally created for the Superman radio show to explain the Superman voice actor taking a vacation and missing a few programs because Superman was depowered and hurt. That was in 1943. Since that time, Kryptonite has become one of the single most recognizable parts of the Superman canon. The term "Kryptonite" is synonymous for "something that causes weakness" even outside of comic book fans; it's influenced the entire world. But it didn't get it's origins in the comics.

Or, if you prefer, in the original comics Superman could not fly. He could "leap tall buildings in a single bound", having a super-jumping, kind of like the Hulk. But by the time he was reaching film, they realized that super-jumping was harder to film than flight, so his powers changed and he permanently gained the ability to fly. The only reason Superman can fly is because of the movies. Talk about changing characters based on the films. But we don't hear anybody complaining today "Oh, gee, Superman shouldn't be able to fly anymore because that only came from the movies."

Yes, the comics will be influenced by things from the outside. And that is totally fine. Comics, films, television, radio, novels, you name it; any content that gets released has a writer. And if a talented writer is permitted to use the character and does something that is generally thought of as a good idea by the people who own the character, then it would be foolish not to implement it across the board as new canon.

you can't redo the corporate speak? Judge not a company by its words but by its actions. Can you see daybreak has been doing just enough to not make this game look over aged.but it is far more concerned about cranking out loot boxes so you guys can buy like a hundred at that time, DLCs isn't how they butter their bread. The time capsules are minimum effort maximum return

does that allows the wiggle room for plausible and deniability... Dco has grown in players or revenue I can't specify but it's one of the two and because you don't have any figures and I do, I'm not lying to you I'm just not giving you the whole truth

It’s revenue. Anyone can tell you that if they were around four years ago and came back today, doesn't take a genius to figure that out. The population four years ago feels absolutely massive to what they got now and the cash grabs were less.

Someone above said no one wants to sit at a pc or console all day playing one game and that is why Mmos are trending downward. I agree. Dc is not alt friendly one bit with artifacts, augments, just turning too grindy. Add that with insanely boring, easy raids that are long for the sake of being long (high *** hp pools for weak attacking bosses) and it’s boring. Roll back AM and or get rid of this stat flattening/clamping nonsense and let us do damage again. Or let bosses melt like they used to somehow so we can run alts. Nobody has time for this game all day and moved on. Heck, WoW raids used to be all nighters, they fixed it and made it casual after their numbers dropped.

I'll just say this:

Back in my day (end of 2011) with just 10 (TEN) dollars, you could buy a full DLC that would give you:

1 New Super Power;
1 or 2 Solo Instances;
2 Duo Instances;
2 Alert Instances;
2 Raid Instances.
Some Legend Characters to be unlocked with in-game Marks of Legends.

What can 10 dollars buy you in this game now that had the same value as the previous DLC? Some bullcrap Episode Number 684916 with nothing but some bland instances for you to do it over and over and over till the next Episode is out?

We really came a long way in this game.

What episodes were that? Fight for the Light introduced Hard Light, had 1 duo and 3 alerts. Lightning Strikes introduced Electric powerset, Central City daily missions and 1 duo. Or are you referring to Battle for Earth (March 2012)? That introduced the Earth powerset, some open world missions in South Gotham, 3 duos, 1 alert and 2 raids.

I'll gladly tell you what purpose it serves. You see many of those players you speak about are those who really used to like DCUO, but then got annoyed from either crappy updates, imbalances, or they dislike the business model.

Now I will say this, it will depend on the type of player you come across: you have people like Brother Allen and Proxystar; who can see some of the good stuff they come up with, but when they implement really crappy changes to the game; they make a dedicated post/thread and explain in detail what is wrong and what needs to be changed.

^This right here is the ideal example of what Negative feedback should look-like.


There are people who will crap on just about everything the developers do, but I'd argue most of the negative feedback has a lot of justification to it. In the end, people just want a better game experience for themselves and to see the game grow beyond where it's currently at. That's what it boils down to, you can tell me players are happy with the game; sure... But is there anybody who'll happily play HOT GARBAGE PVP right now?

No. Nobody would find enjoyment in PVP's current state. As a matter of fact, the PVP community has been fairly passionate and there's been multiple discussions on how it should get revamped/fixed; and the developers have done nothing to the mode in response to all of the request to fix PVP.

That's simply unacceptable, bar-none.

Another case of Justified Negative Feedback also comes in the form of Artifacts. The developers consistently boast about Artifacts being a way to enhance the DPS playstyles in the game, which is fine, but.... Why then... do they allow for Artifacts to have a chance to fail?
That means you gotta buy all those catalyst again.
That means you gotta buy another preservation seal.

And in the end, it's a dumb-founding setback that hurts groups and playstyles rather than help them. in my view, this is also another case of something being unacceptable with the game.


I could go on, but people just want a better game like I've said. It'd be nice for the developers to implement something the way people ask for it, instead of always trying to add some sort of gimmicky twist to it. Time Capsules for instance... can be RNG, that's fine; but they should not in any form have any feats or ties to progression.




Hope my reply clears the air for you on your question.