How do we help?

Genuine question. How do we help the new players or the ones struggling with clamped content? I don't mean to sound disrespectful but I and my imaginary friends split up this weekend to run pugs and my lord. My lord. 1, we all still out damaged by a ton so don't need the "clamp is showing people they aren't that good" argument creeping in. Honestly, let's try just keeping all feelings out of this one way or the other. For the sake of this post, let's just all pretend that this is 100% here to stay as is right now. And again, thank you devs for returning source to end game. My friends runs didnt go well. At all.

So, story time. I omni'd into lockdown. They had already started barda. Tank, 2 heals, troll. So I was sitting outside for 14mins till they wiped. I left at the wipe because while I was outside, I inspected everyone of them. Tank had all dps gear, and 1 healer artifact and 2 dps ones. Bottom augs were might and vit. Healers, both mixed dps gear and 1 was quislet/ grim/ pied piper's, other was circes, starheart, and omegeheddadron (yup, bad spelling lol). Troll, all dps gear again and artis were at least 2 troll ones and a purple healing ray. Rainbow bottom augs. Now dps's.... 2 had full healer gear. Rainbow augs again and some strange choices of artis. 1 had dps gear and then resto/vit/2 might augs.

Tl:dr: new players do not understand how to build a toon. And now they really need to know or they will hate their in game experience.

What could I have done? Like really? Tell them all that their builds are terrible? I've tried on multiple occasions and am usually met with no response. I've written emails to players after they've been kicked and then reinspected weeks later and nothing changed. A few weeks ago, we could carry them. Now we can't. So we have to help. They have to want help. Or we have to force help.

My ideas:
A role pack. Either give it out with the skip or put it on mp or just offer it at lvl 30. Basically, it gives you the ability to say "I want to heal" and it gives you proper augs and food to fill it. It gives you choices of healer artis, and only healer artis, listed from best to least used. They cost like nothing to give out. Help them. Any role can be done this way and for dps, just have them either prec or might packs.

Tutorials. Links at least somewhere? Like we get emails from the game, send some links. Maybe make an opening message from Oracle telling them that it's a great idea to go find a tutorial. Or make a video they can watch/ listen to that once they do, they get 25 source marks. They're being passed out a lot anyway so what's it matter now.

Forced league internships. Any toon made is put into a general league. Filled with other new players. Offer incentives for the vets to join and mentor. Help them learn the benefits. Keep it moderated very strictly and let everyone know it will be. They'll all leave the league eventually but at least they get some knowledge maybe?

Any other ideas?? We don't need to toss insults or opinions about how we feel in here. Let's stay on topic!

I agree with you that players need help, and your approach seems fine. I respect what you are trying to do because I try to do the same in game. I would add one thing we can do to help: if you see players being treated poorly for not knowing their roles, step in and help that player both by stopping the toxic behavior and by offering guidance that is actually helpful. I will give an example:

I was in a Brainiac Sub-Construct run this weekend. A damage player kept saying, "X, YOU'RE A CONTROLLER - PROVIDE POWER!! ... I'M OUT OF POWER, X. PROVIDE POWER ... X, CONTROLLER, GIVE POWER!!!" No response from X. I chimed in, "X probably doesn't know about power over time because the game didn't really teach him." "THE GAME HAS TOOLTIPS. ROLES ARE EASY TO LEARN." X stayed completely silent throughout this conversation.

After the yelling player left the instance, I talked to X. He had a Batman character with a name that was meant to convey that he was Batman, so I said respectfully, "BATMAN, you have power over time abilities that allow you to give power to the group in these settings. I would recommend adding one to your loadout." He responded, "Thank you. I will look into these."

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, as the saying goes.

Good on you. And you got a response so that's good. If it was 1 player, I would have said something. This was an entire group and I had just come in. There was no great way of telling everyone they're improperly built. I pugged fvr and we had a tank that was only using hand blasters and standing behind the group. Multiple people commented but no response. Were also dealing with explaining to a player that claimed to be able to troll in dps role that they literally can't. But they just kept saying they can do both. While everyone was out of power. Thankfully someone switched to a real troll. But by then, tank left on 3rd grodd wipe. Went smooth after he left with a battle tank player. But yeah, that tank didn't understand the role AT ALL. Neither did that troll. Neither wanted to hear it

I haven't played controller in several years now, so forgive me if I'm asking what may now seem like obvious questions. The game has changed quite a bit in that time. Does power over time no longer work in damage role, or was it more an issue with stats being too low while in damage role?

It no longer works.

League hall Lockdown? That's pretty high up of a raid not to know about what gear to wear in which role.

It's possible that the group you came into tried to switch roles in order to fill them when they saw which ones they are missing; this could account for the terrible gear. Unfortunately, what they don't understand was that by doing so, they removed whatever roleless buffs they could have had and doubly made their situation worse by being poor replacements.

The "get good" argument is being thrown around so much it's become more of an insult and a detriment.

I think it's better to say and admit that we need to know what to do when entering these Clamped situations.

First thing to know is that we are now Clamped. Can't go in these content thinking, "We got this." No, you don't. Not if you are unprepared.
Two - Do you know what your role is? If you're a Dps, you should have Dps gear at the least; if your Tank, have tank gear. Follows the Stats, then your peripherals such as augments, base mods or artifacts. More importantly, Invest in a second armory, please.

After these two, everything else just follows. Learn the mechanics, communicate respectfully, be patient.

i'm gonna leave it at that. I think anything further I say will just go downhill.

Goodluck.

I've almost never trolled. That player could have just hit up on dpad and been in troll role. That would have helped a lot. But yeah, you can't be in dps role anymore. But a battle troll build is basically (very basic but still) just a dps build in troll role. Now that you said that tho, maybe that person was a returning player and thinking it was still an option. They never said that tho

Also, one of the changes in Trolls is that when in that role, literally, any power from your powerset puts out PoT. There is no longer a specific PoT move.

Ahh, would this be at all similar to an electric dps using galvanize in happiness home?

Firstly, I thank you for not only voicing your concerns and experience, but you gave ACTUAL solutions to help with the problem. That is a rare sight to see.

Now as far as what you, I, or anyone else could or would have done?

Before I name my list, my Biggest and only problem I have with the stat clamp system is that dcuo does not have other systems around that supports the Stat clamping system. The issue going on and even anti-clampers problem with this is not the system itself, but it is the player base. The game has molded itself to be very anti-social and selfish with the gameplay over the years, which is cool... but obviously this is not what the devs intended and are trying to rectify their mistake. So i'll give kudos to them acknowledging and taking accountability. Now onwards its what they do to back themselves up.

1.) Communications = At the end of the day this is a MMO, the second M stands for multiplayer. In some shape or form, you will NEED a group to get something done. I know some people like to joke around and memeing "LOL i hAVe tO tALk tO PEoplE. LAWL?"..... Well of course yes that is gonna be needed. What you did Hellstroke was exactly correct. Besides it being the ENITRE group, you told them they are having a toon building crisis. Which brings me up to my next point -

2.) Streamline chat tabs = This is probably the next biggest QoL I would like for them to do. As a new player everything is so convoluted in one(of three) tab and very disorganizing. Years from playing the game and organizing my tabs, I forget that newer players probably can't even see PMs or Group chats because everything is all in one. I even see some of these "Dcuo DPS showcase youtubers" and their chat tabs still looks like as if they came off the Brainiac ship. Not all mmos have tutorials on how to organize your tabs, but being able to seperate public tab from, pms, group, league LFG( WHY IS LFG NOT Stream Lines YET?) is a big deal.

3.) An actual tutorial = ..... Enough said. This has been a problem since day 1. Im not even going to waste my time being constructive. Dcuo tutorials are straight trash.

4.) Mentorship system = *ANYONE WHO KNOWS OF THIS SYSTEM PLESE CHIME IN* I'm not sure about other recent modern mmos nowadays besides FFXIV, but final fantasy 14 has a mentor system. Basically, newer players off the bat are put into, once again, a force chat full of newcomers and Mentoring of Older Veteran players. I don't know if its hand picked, or if endgame players have to go out of their way to become a mentor - but newer players have a go to source to ask for help from people that will actually help. This is an observation I realize in game, 1 guy was asking for help in shout chat WT and of course met with the dc teenagers. They replied back, "Im asking for help and you guys insulting me?" DO NOT BE FOOLED, there are new players out there asking questions about the game, but because they are met with the non-helping player base this creates that anxiety of not saying anything once in group content because they feel they will be chewed out. This is a personal project Im actually working on and that I will go out of my way to create .

THATS ALL IMA POST. I want others to share what they think. This is a good thread to lay out some ideas. Im confident that the dev team knows that just adding stat clamping and hoping for the best is not gonna fix their problem. In order to have this house built, we need to set some foundations to support us and now is the opportunity.

I absolutely love the idea of a role pack (free for players right before they hit Constantine mission and pick arts) with a role based tutorial mission, that maybe gives a special reward or feat for more incentive.

I love inspecting players and should keep a journal of what I see and post it here so the devs can see how horribly the players understand their game. It makes sense to me that rainbow augs (lmao, I like it) are the new way to go. I think we need to go back to the good’ol days of meeting somewhere for inspection. But that wouldn’t work for omnibus queues. Bummer.

Short answer....you can't teach someone who does not want to learn and people who want to learn will ask, or find the info(in forums, youtube or just in game).

While there are exceptions to this, and you might find a guy who is new enough that he doesn't know what to ask, I'd guess many of those players had been in content where people were doing the jobs needed effectively, and just don't care to do them correctly themselves. Add to that, that the 'vet' community can't really 100% agree on what 'doing the job' correctly entails as some would define it as doing things like battle tanking, buff trolling, using arti-switching or other meta build to be a 'proper' role toon(none of which are required to do a role), you'd likely have conflicting info coming at these players. Add to that the possible monetary issue looking at a full set of role artis needed to do the job, and...well, good luck with that conversation with someone who, till now, just wanted pew-pew-pew.

For me, if presented with a group where I know we were going to fail with bad roles...and where I didn't feel like offering to switch or couldn't switch because I was already doing one of the other roles...I normally would ask "does anyone really want to finish this raid?". 90% of the time I'd be greeted with crickets or maybe 1 guy saying something like 'just start it' or other productive conversation. If a few respond 'yes' I'd go through the steps of suggestions...if not I'll bid them good luck and take off. I've probably walked out of more ToTD than I've ever finished due to this very situation as that has an unpassable mechanic if you do it wrong.

You can't teach people that do not want to be taught. Ask any 1st grade teacher that and they will confirm it. The only proven method for teaching someone in this game is taking them under your wing, or into a league that won't mind teaching them . Mid-raid teaching sessions that work out are few and far between...they happen, just not that often.

While a 'role pack' might get them the right equipment, I'm not going to back an idea that puts a price tag (and there will be a pricetag) on something that ought to be free, to further lazify the game. HAVING a set of gear and artis does not guarantee anyone would be able to do the job.

A tutorial would be good, and maybe could be required at level 30 before you could play a role. A mission with a NPC partner who needs certain assistance. You and Batman go into into a duo where he's getting hammered by Joker adds, you need to tank the adds away to pass the mission, then you meet up with a beefed up Joker who (for some reason) can beat up Batman...you need to single taunt him so Batman can set up some gizmo to knock out Joker. You and WW are up against Circe but Circe is draining WW's power and has a healing spell on her. You need to provide power to WW and remove the healing spell via debuff. You and Supes are up against Lex and he's employing Kryptonite...Supes will keep going down unless you heal him and throw up a shield... Will this make 'great' players? No. But it would make them look at their power lists and see what these powers actually do....maybe for the first time? Yes. From there, it would be up to the user, but at least they'd have to have done it once...and maybe once is all it would take to get someone interested in doing the job better. As of now the only thing someone needs to do a role is the ability to press left and down on Dpad and then 'switch role'. The big thing with any tutorial would be the requirement that you do certain 'role' things and that the player should need to look at the powers to figure what does what. NOT like the ship tutorial we used to have where it told you 'press triangle now' and people would do that not really knowing why they were doing it. Maybe the reward for finishing the tutorial is a role arti you can pick from the appropriate 5-6 artis to choose from with a better description of how they work.

Far my personal story. Yesterday, I solo pug omibus raid, and got q'ed into Paradox Wave (first time). I don't know about you guys, but the concept of paradox wave was quite simple back then, just our stats were babies at the time. So looking at hindsight.. Paradox Wave is actually easy and simple.

Now I joined a group that was about 12mins in I believe. Of course people were probably leaving, and they were missing a healer. Hoping to dps, I switched to healer and just played it by ear. Let me see what this group is about. Once all ready, Instantly they lunged at Reaper for Odessy feat run. Thankfully some did mechanics for trapped mechanic but nobody was rolling out the way for jumper, I viewed a few had "melee loadouts" and were the cause of getting them killed. We wiped.

Afterwards, someone in the group chat said "What are we doing wrong?" then I posted in chat my observations (I'll paraphrase it short for forum reading purposes)

"Hey guys, you gotta move away from jumper (spider boss was the only one out at the time). I notice a few of you just standing there. Also, I understand a few of you have melee "YOUTUBERS" loadouts and I understand it probably does the most damage, but just be conscious it will get you killed if you are not careful. I don't heal selfish playstyles and I will let you die *smile*".. It was probably a little mean, but yall be aiight.

Another player suggested lets do tunnels instead, so I gave my last statement

"Paradox wave is actually a pretty easy raid. We can either fight the boss all at once or we can go thru the tunnels and fight them one by one. I highly recommend lets do tunnels and I can get yall outta here soon for dinner".

We do tunnels, trail and error here and there, but never completely wiped as a group. Might took the group longer going through tunnel by tunnel, but we finished the group was very immersed in the fights and everyone picking each other up. We finished the raid successfully on last boss. I was met with a lot of friend request yesterday.

The morale of the story is : (to be continued. Im tired of typing)

Slackers will never learn. They can't be bothered to read. The ability descriptions or the Yellow Text Saying An Attack Is Imminent in chat or in the middle of the screen. Bonus, they will not search for online guides to a game that requires being online to play it. We're teamed up with console couch monkeys pressing a controller against their faces. Seriously.

SideNote the badly worded DCUO guide on their own youtuve playlist named Tutorial. It was not created by SOE or Daybreak, it was a user/fan in 2014 and they put it on their official page.

at the end... "but when fighting against healers, their healing will be reduced" 0o I would have written the script to say, in the controller role you have an ability that will debuff enemy's heal, an ability that will debuff the enemy's defense, and an ability that will debuff their damage output. I Highly recommend saying in all tutorials and guides, READ THE ABILITY DESCRIPTIONS. Certain Abilities do Particular stuff because of the active role you are using. They've got a lot of super/too short tutorial videos on their official youtube site.

Or the overly short and lacking description from their main page.a
https://www.dcuniverseonline.com/guides/guide-character-basics-choose-your-power-dcuo

Tank Roles

Defense is the best offense.

Controller

Immobilize your enemies and regenerate your allies.

Healer

Team-player: healing others and shielding attacks.

I pug all the time. Seen a character in controller role in a raid at end game, no debuffs or POT happening... another person in the group send me a tell "inspect the controller" I did... OMG! dps gear, healer augments. /facepalm. It's also common, most of them do not have a utility belt equipped.

I LOVE THIS!!

This is something I learned over time growing up(especially dealing with kids) but sometimes you do have to do the one knee kneel, lower your tone, masculine your voice (im a male) and hit em with the "You ok bud". LOL

But no really. A LOT of people version of "Im teaching these newer players" is by them yelling in all caps, calling them names and scrubs then wonder why noone responded back to them in chat. Now sometimes, you will get ignored here and there but like you said.

You'll be VERY surprised response you'll get back from people when you respectfully tell them "heres thes problem, and heres the solution".

I would like to see the "healer starter pack" be a free addition and added if skips come around again. I get why players choose rainbow augs, it seems like we should. Just increasing their stats and giving them less options of artifact choices could go a long way. Yeah, we all want to build out battle roles or whatever but just getting players to understand the basic principles should be a huge win.

My biggest issue with telling anyone is if I have to type. It takes wayyyy too long if using a controller. So voice chat is the obvious answer there. But getting everyone to listen in can be another issue. And a lot of times, I'm chatting with friends and enjoying myself. Which is why I think a mentor league could help. Just type a question in to league chat vs the ever intimidating lfg or shout. Plus may cut down on toxicity?

Lots of good ideas and funny stories so far. This has to be something that players and devs alike join in. Yeah, some don't want to be helped. Let them fail then. It works just as well as teaching sometimes. Tough love basically

The first big issue comes from the game itself. From when they start up until they get to 30 it’s a dps contest. The game doesn’t do anything to teach players the role they chose. IE you are a sorcery toon so here’s some basic info on healing and dpsing. Most games, be it MMO or single player, show you what things do when you get them. You gain access to healing at level 10 and the game does a tutorial for healing. You gain access to augments and the game teaches you what they do. Dcuo having 5 different augment types means that it gets more confusing on what you need. Look at the leveling processes. Players barely have any power so it seems alike you need to use both weapons and abilities so players think they need might and Prec augments. Players are relying on themselves so they gravitate towards adding a resto mod to help heal themselves. And vit sounds like it helps you restor power so you will see players have a blue one too.

The leveling process doesn’t show players how to build their loadout or augments properly. Put that together with players getting carried in a none stats clamped environment and they beat content with bad builds. Justifying their builds as being ok. Same goes for artifacts. Yes there are some that say recommended for but nothing saying “these are optimal for you”.


Now as for how to help. First of all the game needs to actually put better tutorials in the game. I’ve made a suggestion about a tutorial idea for the brainiac ship but it didn’t really gain any traction. If anyone has ever tried Blessed Unleashed, I think their opening mission/tutorial is amazing. Not sure if something like that would be possible but it would teach players a lot.

When it comes to augments there should be a tutorial going over the different primary stats and who it benefits more.

As for artifacts. If anyone is familiar with smite they have a “popular items” when building. It’d be a good way for players to see what are popular artifacts. And then new players can see which are better for them or if they want to go of meta. So for example the game or something could keep track of what artifacts players are using when in a role. Then new players have a list shown by Constantine that shows the top 5 most used artifacts for the role. The dps side would be harder since there are might and Prec dps. But for roles it would help new players.

And finally, what we do as players. The only we can do it show people mechanics. Just the other day I was doing FoSe and you could tell they were new to it. I was there with a league mate and the rest were LFG randoms. The first boss was rough. But we explained mechanics showed people where to be and what they should be doing. After a few wipe and more explaining (the same things) the group stayed alive long enough to get to the last few inches of boss health. Half the group died including the healer. So I switched and little by little those that were left beat it. At the end it was only me a league mate and one dps left. The bridge was another obstacle. The burn was low and players didn’t understand the stay ranged portion. After a few attempts we did it. Unfortunately we were not able to do the second boss. Since I had to stay healer and my league mate being tank the remaining dps didn’t have any burn. Plus them getting it by debris wasn’t helping. So it ended as a dead run.

These things happen. Some times you get into groups that don’t listen. Other times you get into groups that genuinely want to get better. The point is that all we can do as players is give advice. It’s up to them to take the advice or just ignore and hope someone is able to carry them. I’ve had some players listen and even ask more questions. I’m always happy to do so.

So it seems like we all agree that tutorials are step 1. So that means it has to be created and I would think a few need to be for every role. Seems like it would be complicated to have in game so what's the best option? Oracle suggesting a 5min break and telling the player to check out a link? Would the devs allow a player to create said videos and link them on the main page? Obviously it would have to be done by someone knowledgeable and without snarky attitude.

It's just become very apparent that any new player that comes in does not know what to do in almost every aspect of the game.

Edit: hit the wrong button, I wasn't done yet lol. It's overwhelming I'm sure and there is a lot to know in this game. I've seen 1st hand that once a player levels up the wrong augs, they tend to not want to switch to the right ones. I've even seen that with artifacts. And I've seen players spend on the wrong stuff plenty of times. Something as simple as letting them feed lower augs into other ones could solve a lot of problems. I still think every toon needs to be given 2 armories but I get that they make sales. 1 is just pretty pointless tho. I have a toon with 1. I don't save to it tho because I don't switch to anything. Imprinting while only having 1 actually makes everything more confusing.

I don’t think it has to be to extensive. Tutorials are there to be entry level mini guides. It’s player’s responsibility to keep improving. The issue with a lot of YouTube videos is that they show players the end results. IE how to heal or tank end game. With all the new features added to the game over time there is no structure for early game. The devs need to remember that this is some people’s first MMO. If you take a née player interested in MMOs but no knowledge of what to pick there is plenty of influence to join dcuo because these are iconic characters that even none comic book fans know about. Now it’s the game job to explain things.

As for YouTube influence. I’m surprised there isn’t more interaction between YouTube and the game. YouTube is a big way games promote their games. Look at apex legends, they send youtubers challenges IE only use x weapon or something else. Yes different genres but there could be more interaction. A big part of why I see that not being the case is that a lot of youtubers have strong opinions which makes the dev team/company not want to extend an invitation. A lot of other youtubers are filled with language that the game can’t promote or even doing something as simple as playing copyrighted music as background music.

That doesnt mean a partnership can’t be achieved.