Has anyone stop to think.....

So alot of thought has been going through my head and deep discussion talks with my friends about dcuo atm.

So 1 we talked about is gearing. So first off how there was the whole "gearing up is gonna take FOREVER to get" threads right.... My friend just informed me that people already making it to cr 190. At first I thought he mis-said it because I've never heard of 190 being the top cr, 189 was usually the word. But after looking up that census it is true. Now it doesn't matter if the devs did say 190 was the latest cr or not, but the fact it hasn't even been a week since the dlc been out that people are reaching top gear. Which brings to my next comment.

First time people have the options of a p2w. I don't care what definition you people use, but paying to reduce your time of getting gear is a p2w definition. Dcuo isn't the only mmo doing this but its a first here, I also like to say IN MY OPINION- Not all p2w options are bad for the game. Devs to make money based off there business models- my opinion. So people have the first time option to pay to reduce their time of getting gear, as temptation is the devil when it comes to 1st time things, so people went for it. Now we have toons that are at endgame when the dlc is suppose to last for how long they said this was suppose to go? Which brings to my last post.

This dlc is NOT HARD. Both raids are fairly easy, and so far I seen and heard people beating Oly Elite no sweat (no word on GOM elite). Im not a business man, but if theres no estimated time on the dlc then the best thing to do is to make the dlc prolonged till then right? With dlc being easy, and gear being easy to reach max?? You can't have both things being easy, that right there kills the longevity your trying to make the dlc is.

THE ONLY THING, that can justify or I can think of that they're probably thinking of doing, is they're going to release the stats update and everything that comes with it, to drop next month or AF3 being the latest content, and that way we can come back to us trying out the new things in AF3.... But I ain't s***.

Just putting my head out there if people been thinking tii, or you can just ask for the thread to get shutdown. Both is fine with me till the 29th

I personally dont think the progression inside the DLC is broken it is the added gear overload from the time capsules that made the system WAY faster then it was "meant" to be. The elites might be more difficult for longer if everyone was not wearing 6 164 Shim'Tar pieces just a thought.

The people who are using the P2W model to get to 189 are the same ones who are complaining they are bored next week, This DLC is a grind DLC, and If that is a good thing or a bad thing is up for debate.

I'm kinda happy this DLC is not that hard just because of the cost of vendor gear and how we now get gear. I would of been pissed if the content was as hard as DWF since gearing up now takes longer if you don't P2W.

That gear should of been just a style, That being said I have a full set and some and now I'm hold on to it waiting to see If i get more so I can fill in the gaps for my toons that don't get luck of the purple drops after they hit 184.

I personally enjoy the system of best gear coming from drops. But thats just from me playing other mmos and how it works. Knowing dcuo system and replay badges I knew if vendor was best gear then the time to get max gear would be as faster as best gear being from drop. Much I was willing to give best gear in vendor a chance, I just don't like the reason behind it was included in the game, but as always im just a single person. Either way, the longevity of this dlc is being killed because of currently.

With them changing the way gearing works, I can understand the need of looking at difficulty. As much as I dislike the difficulty of the raids currently(speaking from someone who favorite dlc was Origin Crisis), I can accept the fact that players enjoy the raids and are able to complete it. But if thats the case im hoping they will slowly train casuals to where they could at least try out raids such as elites, or dwf type of content.

AF3 content difficulty is not cutting it for something that should hold us awhile till next update or dlc. The mindsets of how players look at things back then to now is EXTREMELY visible. Im ok with adjusting to your playerbase, but they need to hold ground on what is best for the players, or we will get spoiled, then next thing we know when they make a raid that requires people to stop what they're doing and pay attention to mechanics its suddenly the hardest raid in the world. Like now sadly

Nail on coffin too. That should not equal to purple gear.

I was about to flame you for the 190 comment but there really is someone with 190 cr.


Anyone care to tell me how that's possible? Lol

the op items from the collections r 174, top gear is 164..so ya no money no honey

You sound just like me about an hour ago. Except there was flaming involve and disbelief. All it took was a census check thus made me want to make this post even more.

Why not? It's gear from the current time capsule. It should match highest drop gear. It would be highly illogical to have shim gear be lower then purple.

Replays are only ruining the game for those who abuse them. Why do we have to be max CR in the first week when we have >12 weeks to get there? I hope that the next DLC this progression system will work better now that the gear CR is a level field, gone having a max-out chest and then having a weapon 6 cr higher. I was a shame when I got my first green weapon box and opened it to get a weaker one yet the chest was 4 cr higher.

It should of just been a style

The 190 guy can hit 191 with the 3rd op item.

I don't understand this extra cr (it worked in the past without it but apparently it doesnt now?) considering next SM is still cr scaled means a group with at least a 190 tank will have an advantage over a group with a normal geared 189. Money overtaking skill there. Well planned Episode right here.

Thanks for thinking (no kidding, look at other posts around) and trying to put the discussion into some objective perspective. Sadly - when it comes to MMOs, there is no objective perspective since MMOs address a huge number of players with very different expectations, game approaches and "game ethics". I'll try to point that out step by step along your post.

This is in some way very rigged. First of all, if the first people have max gear it doesn't mean that all players have had good shots at max gear already. As you point out in your next post, putting extra money into the game is a huge factor here to get to best gear this early already. While you do point your finger at the time crapsules in your next point, let's not forget about replay badges. What you face here is to some extent still the same approach some people "always" applied to content: maxing gear in the first week since the longer some content is out, the slower the Qs start to pop. But remember: we are talking about always the same group of self proclaimed "top dogs", "elite" or "hardcore" players; this group of players is and always was a problem to any MMO. I do expect more players to reach max gear within the next two weeks, but for game development these players are a minority, a nuisance developers need to learn to ignore in games that are designed to be mass compatible.

An indicator for this approach is that no matter if they got the gear via replay badges or via time crapsules, they paid extra - or better, the devs made them pay extra for that. So from a business point of view, it doesn't really matter for Daybreak if their players have a couple of "burst" weeks during which a group of players pays a larger amount of money and then leaves the game again for a couple of weeks/til next content or if a player logs in regulary, does not pay money for faster progression but instead has a slight chance to buy something "nifty" from the marketplace via micro transaction (extra armory, pay-style that looks surprisingly well with the new material applied etc.) - Daybreak makes projected money from their players either way, just in different months.

As for the "gearing will take forever"-part: someone who just logs in for to run relevant instances with "natural" lockouts, without paying extra for time crapsule gear or replay badges will need a significant amount of time to reach max gear (not necessarily in played time but in the absolute date of finishing the grind). This is wanted, since a "I have to run the same instances dauly until January to get geared" insight will make players, especially of the instant gratification generation, more willing to pay for the progression instead. That said: a key problem of DCUO has always been the focus on the mindless, repetitive grind for just gear; this type of game structure is to some extent a waste to the rich, deep amd varying lore the DC license comes with. The players coming in with a more imaginative approach will always be ticked of easily by game designs depicting the "working on an assembly line"-job in a video game - one of the reasons why it is so hard to get an "objective" stance when judging the quality of a game, especially since there have been and still are MMOs around that offer more creative approaches including mission editors for user created contents (including sharing these and including a micro transaction system that makes players pay for extra options in user created contents).

Actually the worst part of the update. When Daybreak was SOE, they made some very bad experience with changing the main game approach/game experience midway through a running MMO (look up SWG NGE) that in the end created a massive player loss and sinking another blockbuster licensed product (namely Star Wars). So this time they tried the step-by-step approach: add time crapsules first, and add relevant gear with the next version of time crapsules. Still people pointed out before that this will be a change in the direction of the game - and were told to shut up - and now the change in the direction is more obvious. The more intelligent players already left the game over the first addition of time crapsules, and another wave wave is leaving now while realizing that change in direction. Luckily for Daybreak, a ton of players who went "No new content? Well I'm gone" before time crapsules now come back for the new content; still, they will be gone again once they are done with the new content.

The bad part about it is to some extent in the different game approaches - there are players who take pride and expect respect for their "achievements" in video games, comparable to the DIY "I made this"-kind of pride in RL; these players lose their ground to base their ePride on when the game changes direction in a way that allows to counter with an "Well, I bought this"-attitude. It is different to other games on the market that start with a "Buy or grind it, we offer both options"-system (like STO) since players then know from the start what the game is up to. Again, different game approaches here make it hard to find an objective stance on the topic.

"Not hard" is always a personal POV. Some nerd will tell you that quantum physics are easy; in DCUO devs though it was a good idea to nerf the tutorial because a seemingly impressive number of players found it TOO HARD to activate movement mode in the tutorial despite being told on screen which button/stick to push. So, think about a number of players unable to activate movement mode and try to re-evaluate if the new content is "hard" or not

This is essentially where "the community" becomes a factor. DCUO has "established" a toxic community with a wide-spread attitude of "devs, ignore all the losers who do not play the same way I do" and if a certain group of those players manages to form a very vocal minority, ALL players get slapped with an update that is not well thought and focusing on a single game approach (or a very limited number of game approaches) - like adding AMs, like monthly content, like time crapsules etc. I do not say in any way that it is good to make a game as easy as possible, nor do I say that it is good to focus on hardcore-level content only; just pointing out that with every difficulty level set to content, Daybreak decides to NOT cater to a certain group, and players still interested in DCUO should hope that Daybreak starts doing so based on actual numbers from their servers and not on forum feedback since the latter is in no way representative.

I agree on the stats update may make this content harder; now if we all keep in mind that a huge number of players in MMOs are "minimaxers" (minimal effort, maximal gain as their preferred way of gaming) this stats update may actually be an additional incentive for players to put extra money into the game, trying to get their gear done before it gets harder. And this could also be a reason for Daybreak to release the content before the stats update is done - it's some extra money for them basically up for grabs.

Well to be fair your example excludes1 main factor the only way to buy vendor gear before in all your examples was raids, daily content was a zero factor in T1-T4 it did not get added till after that gear was no longer the best. I agree the prices are to high but they would naturally be higher then before because you have daily content to run to aquire marks at a much faster rate then before.

OP items are 174cr
there is rings and neck, dont know whats the third, head?

"First time"? I'm sorry but this definitely not the first time that players have been able to pay to reduce the time of getting gear.

For years now, the developers have utilised a little thing called "Replay Badges" and have distributed the best gear from behind an RNG system, inside an instance which usually offers 3 opportunities at the best gear, once per week. Every time you unlocked a raid, you gained a 1 week advantage over those who didn't.

Whether it meets the definition of pay to win is a matter of opinion. But either way, nobody can act like the new progression system is shrouded in unknown or unseen evils that are brand new to DCUO, because they've been doing the same thing for years. In fact, if anything, it's less pay to win now, because you're actually guaranteed a reward whether you pay or not.

Under the RNG system there were NO guarantees. If someone who was successfully able to complete a set of RNG gear set by spamming replays, It's not guaranteed that every single person who payed the same amount or ran the content the equivalent amount of times for free would be guaranteed a reward.

For example: Now, if someone wants to spam the Olympus raid 10 times in 1 day, they're not going to gain an advantage that I can't achieve by running all content daily for 9 days and the Raids/410 kills mission once each for free. Where as if someone spammed DWF 10 times and left with 3 pieces of gear and the Omnipotence drop, there is no guarantee at all that I'll have the same drops in 10 weeks time when I've caught up. The only guarantee was that after 10 weeks, I've had the same amount of opportunities as the person spamming replays on the instance.

So it's definitely not "the first time".

I think you're being nitpicky. For most of the community RBs where there when they started playing. It wasn't a strange new concept, it was there and it was usable everytime you wanted to raid/alert more often than the resets allow. It's the "first time" in a different sense, and it's buying the gear directly without even playing the content or even relying on badges. Whist it didn't seem like a problem with the previous capsules now it's more apearent that it's terribe planning and terrible design at fault here.

Nitpicky? Nah. To me, what you said just seems more like an excuse to ensure that the whole "the new system is pay to win" narrative still has strength.

Whether someone was here when the system already existed or not is irrelevant. That doesn't change the fact that this is definitely not the first time players have ever been able to pay their way to the best gear. We've been doing it for years. Definitely not a new phenomenon. The only difference now is that players are guaranteed the exact same rewards whether they spam 5,000 replay badges or take the time and earn all the marks as intended. Which, unfortunately, could never be guaranteed under the RNG system.

I do agree that the Shim'Tar gear thing is unnecessary. I wouldn't call it pay to win, though.