I miss enjoying max cr

It wouldn't be a Ghost Town if we could earn marks from all instances or at least the recent 3 Tiers. Giving Us more to do in CR range unless badges are spent.

It wouldn't be a Ghost Town if SP mean't more over CR flattering causing more people to focus on Feat Grinding.

It wouldn't be a Ghost Town If they fix PVP so we had something else to do instead of PVE/LPVE & decorating are Base al day.

There's many reasons the game is more so a Ghost Town then it was recently. Them adding Mark Relevancy & having best gear only dropping from one Instance.. is just the icing on the cake.

There's a combination of things going on right now that's defining the state of what this game has become.

At this point, at least on our server, I'd say people aren't mainly leaving because of 36, 47, or monthly content, by now they are leaving because everyone else left. On villains it is next to impossible to even setup alert groups, let alone raids or elite raids. I always argued against the whole "game is dying stuff" because even EUPC villains survived PvP seasons, Origin Crisis, 36, WM and years of bad content fairly well, but for the last few months it has been different. Suicide Squad PvE helps but it doesn't get us into top tier content since that is mostly ops. EUPC is done for if the devs don't pull off some deus ex machina to get the masses back.
The monthly release schedule may not be what pushes players away, but at the very least it doesn't draw them back either. Now that's just EUPC for now, maybe the other servers will follow or maybe they still have enough players that they can retain or even grow again. My money is on PS servers going on like they used to with ups and downs, good updates and bad ones. Saying that our server dies doesn't help but I don't see what would.

I remember rolling a villain well over a year ago. This was on USPC, and it was already dead. I couldn't get any content to pop, so my toon just stalled. I deleted her and re-rolled hero side. That's not new, though it's likely worse now.

No revelation to the way population is and 61 villains with 144+ on EUPC are 2 very different things.

I don't have all the data either.. but from what I do have I see that we miss 160 thousand active toons on endgame.

The problem as I see it is that the devs slacked off for 2 years based on the "trapped" population of PS servers. Noone is making games for PS3 and there are none that rival this one.. and PS4 doesn't have any worthwhile MMO yet.. that soon will change. Everyone likes to be employed but not everyone posesses work ethics.
Of course every game eventually dies, the effort is in trying to make it last as long as possible. WoW took a hit, sure. Go on WoW's site.. You will not see 4 year old information.

I don't know if it's only the devs or upper management as well but they have a complete lack of vision.. everything is short term. What can we do to have population for the next month.. and if we make it then see what happens next. I don't accept that as a valid policy from anyone that wants to be employed. It's like being 99 years old and at the end of each day you say: "Made it!! Lets see tomorrow!"

Even their sale was short term.. "We will sell replays anyway so why put them on sale." Regardless of the fact that it would keep customers happy in the long run.. People still remember that x3 station cash sale.. or the 50% thing last year.

I said it in my post to you before.. on the 3 month dlc we had 1 month fun, 1 grind,1 boredom/SM ( after SM was implimented before it was just boredom ). Now we have 1 week fun, 1 week grind, 2 weeks boredom every month.. adding it up it's 3 weeks fun ( less than a month, 3 weeks grind ( less than a month ), 6 weeks boredom ( more than a month ). You might say that it does not apply to everyone and yet somehow it does.

Are you certain they don't want it to fail?? Because I know that a product does not leave it's test phase unless it's perfect... not gonna go far.. Grass patch fiasco.

They alienated thousands of players with the horrible GU36 only to discard it a few months later.. they gave the final blow GU47. They make changes without thinking of the concequences they will have.. I'm fairly certain that they will do a stat clamp on every instance in game before they add portals for everything. Just like they tried to do with removing immunities from PvP before fixing the actual issues.
Ever since Spytle was humiliated regarding his HL gameplay, HL has been suffering as a dps.. Food for though.
This kind of condact is the one that turns people off.

Did they do good things for the game.. certainly but they don't even mention them. They made a graphic update that does look cool and better than before and there were no notes. ( Just a recent one. ) Root of the problems is neglect and short term thinking.

I don't know what will bring people back.. but stopping people from leaving is easy. WoW is not the king of MMOs because it brings 2 pieces of content every month that last only for a month... Long-term thinking.

THIS!

Saw this quoted, so wanted to clarify. Before the recent changes, your CR increased with modding, but the best gear was still going to be the highest item level with the best mod (i.e., the one that gave you the highest CR). That hasn't changed. The only thing that has changed is the CR isn't determined by the mod. The mods are still important, though, if you want to maximize your potential (you can see my thread on the subject).

I don't miss barren servers because players power levelled through the content and rewards within 7-28 days and are no longer interested in sticking around for the remaining 2 months before the next batch of content is released. This game and games like it only survive if people play it. There isn't much of a solo experience to be had. So having a game where players are leaving due to boredom for 2 months at a time is not healthy.

Thankfully, we have a game now where players have a reason to log in each month and with R&D gear, have a reason to log in daily, too.

I agree with you, more frequent content release is not a bad thing as long as it's done with a certain quality and yes PS3 should have been dropped long ago.. but well Sony

Something along the lines of GU 36 and 47 could have been useful.. but unfortunatelly those 2 have been anything but useful. ( Discarded as in rendered useless short while after. )
Resources is a matter of perspective. A day has 24 hours, if a project has a deadline then it needs to be perfect before that deadline. There are no weekends, there are no breaks.. at least that is the case for serious businesses.

Perhaps my perspective is a bit too cruel when it comes to working but I remember getting less than 3 hours of sleep per day for months until a project ( hospital ) I was involved in designing was ready. Because it had to be ready and perfect. Now one might say apples and oranges but the idea is the same.. it's a project, a product if you want to be good at your job then you make it perfect no matter what.

By the way, long-term does not mean something released over time.. but something that lasts. With the current way of things.. we get content that is made to be done and mastered within a month. That leads to nowhere.
The masses should not be able to finish elite BD until episode 21 hits. Even the first boss should be practically impossible if you don't have a perfect group.
Every piece of content we get is made to increase replay sales.. That is not how you ensure the game will last.. that is making a quick buck before all hell breaks loose.

When you monetize the replayability of content you create 3 conditions:
1. Content needs to be doable by all. ( So you maximize the amount of people that will replay it. ) That means content becomes easy.
2. Content needs to be completed fast. ( So that you have time to replay it more than once. ) This makes content simple.
3. Content needs to not drop loot often. ( So that you have a reason to replay it many times. ) This makes loot extremelly rare.

While these 3 conditions allow for a excess of money to be earned.. it also drops the quality of content. It essentially makes the game a casual-fest. You come, you "get", you go. Casual players are the ones that will jump ship the moment something better comes along and this game is filled with casuals. Hence population problems!

As long as content is monetized with the making a quick buck policy this game will never become better and will always look for short term answers.

I wouldnt be so sure to your statement on PS4 doesnt have any worthwhile MMOs, since FFXIV was reported sold out this past black friday for its gamestop sale and ESO being the #1 selling MMO for PS4 3 months in a row. However everything else you stated was spot on.

However in DCUO case, the game simply doesnt have enough support to bring itself back from the depths it crawled into. USPS LFG is almost dead at peak hours. The game let go of the developers working on pvp fixes, and has turned to LPVE as their primary source of alternate style content, while at the same time refusing to offer what other MMOs are giving which is open world content relevant to endgame.

Plus while all this is happening you have the youtube epidemic of the bad mouthing of the game and then devs only made it worse. So much to the point where adding new powers doesnt help the game in a significant way like it used to.

I noticed last night, Saturday evening, that EUPS Villains was an absolute ghost town in LFG/Trade. Very few shouts going out in LFG.

Not a measure of how active the servers are, but it's noticeably more quiet now than it was at this time last year.

That reason is not sound enough though. Even with R&D gear players might just now skip the first month of each cycle to wait for the 2nd where there is a greater reason to log in due to the alert. In the past we have had 2 alerts per 3 month cycle with the DLC setup. If you look at AF2, it has more enjoyable content than what we have been seeing due to the 2 alert style setup and 3 raids.

Like others have stated the duos are nice but 1 of them could have easily been changed to a 4 man alert. But ultimately there needs to be another brainblast idea for content outside the gear chase like how LPVE was designed. The problem with why most people find LPVE boring is because it is not new content, it is the same old content just playing as a legends character.

For the game to come back, new ideas need to be added. The type of content monthly needs to slightly change and DBG needs to support DCUO better rather than cut developers like they have been doing.

Well you are right, although both those game are kind of new.. so they didn't have a great effect yet.

When you tell me that USPS has LFG problems.. I mean seriously there are only 900 people with 144+ cr on my server and almost 6k on yours.. ( villains and heroes ). I doubt you trully know the meaning of dead.. trust me I can have private conversations of EUPC villain LFG chat. ( That why I became a hero! )

If you ask me this youtube thing was bound to happen at some point. I'm not angry like those people.. but it is such a shame to see a game with this potential being chronically neglected by the very people that made it.
The powers are nice additions but they are not the reason to play the game anymore.. before GU36 and the AMs.. yes then the powers were a great reason to play because everything was unique, animations, timing, effects, gameplay.. now everything is the same. New powers are no longer good for the game.. it's time for a maintenance period. Fix everything and then maybe move on.

With the new monthly content, I am sure their maintenance periods or time has decreased. Since monthly content I am pretty sure their time to fix problems has decreased. I hope the rumors are not true and that DBG is just milking DCUO to work on another project while cutting developers for DCUO.

That's actually not true. They are actively looking to grow the DCUO staff. Folks also need to understand that the Dev team aren't all plug-and-play. There are folks who work on systems, folks who work on art, folks who work on story, etc. As to time, there are still 6 instances in 3 months, like before. The same number of man hours is involved. If anything is taking away time, it's DPS balancing. I suspect we would have seen Atomic and Water and PvP fixes sooner, if not for that. Those are all related aspects of the game.

Exactly. There have been several major changes, made on purpose, that were obviously not well thought out on how they would affect other aspects of the game.

It's a jumbled mess.

That is true, but if we didnt have WM or AM, power balance would have been done a long time ago. Plus when they do hire new devs it takes a couple of weeks for them to get into the swing of things and make so real effort for changes.

There are still 6 instances like before, however how those instances are made seems to be the problem. I know much of the community is mad that there is only 4 alerts per year compared to what we have seen in the past. Same can also be said for solo and open world content.

True, but parceled content every month as a fix was too much imo, if they did it as two months of content in month one, and the third month for filler gear (rings, face, ect) would've been an easier transition. How it is Now, there's no time to stop and smell the rose's and alts are getting left in the dust, for normal players anyhow. Spammers will be spammers, blame the RB's for people complaining "theres nuttin to doo.", not how often they rolled content, i liked it the way it was, save for a small tweak or two.