I quit!(?) and my PoV :D

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Ok, first off, this isn’t a raging “I quit” thread for the sake of quitting, NO, you can’t have my stuff, (Unless you absolutely need a push, give me a pm ), I just lack the time to play atm and when I have time I do not feel the pull to the game, if you know me and how long I can stay without renaming my chars then you know this may very well change in 10 days or so , so no point in raging away.

This is more a bit of an analysis I did a while back and never finished, I had some time off and decided “Why the Hades not?”, so here it is.

Dev persons, don’t get all mad, not telling you what to do or don’t and I’m sure all this has been considered before, but I’m just offering my PoV as a 5 years player on the off chance that my experience may be in any way useful.

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For brevity’s sake (lol) I just compiled my main PoVs under the 6 human needs of Robbins and how I think it fails on them, it was a lengthier write at first but I shortened it because as it is, I will come across as pretentious (which I am, but today I’m a pretentious person pretending not to be pretentious while being pretentious), anyway, here it is:

• Certainty/Comfort: assurance you can avoid pain/gain pleasure

Most successful MMOS have one thing in common on this area, the certainty of reward, anyone who has played more than 2 MMOs can tell you that: if you were after “the sword of cool”, you usually need to assemble a carefully picked team, then head out into a quest that you know will be hard, you know you may fail and you know will bring pain, but IF you succeed, at the end of it you will be rewarded with a worthy something.

I think a big part why hard content in DCUO is hated is precisely due to the lack of certainty and reward; take yesterday’s DWF elite video, the team manages to beat the hardest thing in game to date…and got salad, so players shy from said content because they know that, even if they succeed through the frustrating wipes, there’s a random chance to get anything worthy, and that “worthy” thing is still disposable (more on this later)

• Uncertainty/Variety: the need for the unknown, change and new stimuli

This one is pretty obvious, back when we were on a quarterly format, you didn’t know what to expect next, missions were varied and new things were attempted, I personally enjoyed the “go out into the city” approach for Hand of Fate, we saw a bit of this “newness” return with LoLS and Throne, even if throne wasn’t an all time favorite, I believe due to the reasons above. Nowadays you pretty much know that next month will be the same with skins changed. (Not going deeper here because i honestly thing this is a hard one to pull off and i think DCUO has had a couple of really well done change of paces)

• Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed

We saw this fall with AM, support roles saw it a bit earlier, all characters became exactly the same, before AM, yes, there were “optimal” loadouts, but you could thinker and tamper with them, heck, you could carry your top powers and also make space for the odd power just for flashy and fun purposes.

Nowadays, doing that equals a slot that may very well leave you severely underperforming, try finding a quantum dps carrying “Quantum Tunneling”, worse, try finding a DPS using Heat vision and see how long it takes for him to get kicked.
I know powers are still a WIP, but I’d really love to see loadouts being customizable in the future while remaining useful, not just a recipe. (Some people claim that AMs are not obligatory, but try getting into a raid without using your AM and you may very well be kicked faster than the guy using heat vision)

• Love/Connection: a feeling of closeness with someone or something

I think, part of what makes a player love their character is “watching it grow” you see it from the moment it is “born” and you go hand in hand with it on his/her journey to become THE hero(or villain) but we don’t have this anymore, there really isn’t such thing as growth or progression anymore, there’s “get this month’s armor, next month is worthless”.

Feats and SP are pointless, not sure how will they be once the differential goes away but I have left people with 200+SP in my dust, and I’m barely 180, this should never happen, ever.
That’s time that those players have invested in their char, in the game, and I do think it ridiculous that it is worth for nothing.

Bottom-line, effort placed in a character should matter, a 200+ electricity guy should do better than a 130SP Ice person (I know this is being worked on, but it has been for ages, people pay for the stuff and to my knowledge, there’s no disclaimer when you buy a power saying “half of this power is really pointless, it will remain like this for months maybe years” )

• Growth: an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding.

This goes hand in hand with the previous point.

However, difference is, characters should grow and learn, which it honestly ends at lvl 30, after that, feats are pointless, and even if they were not, they are hardly feats,(we no longer have Epic Odyssey, now we get "play this X times as X chars lol" ) this could be greatly improved, think of how at lvl 10 (I think) you get your travel mode.

Chars should(could?) improve their repertoire of "can do" with feats and missions, become faster, gaining permanent HP boosts through feats, even gain extra inventory slots would go a long way. It is also quite preposterous that a guy playing 30 days can reach watch a guy playing 3+ years has (except for SP, but we already covered that).

We could even talk about gear here, epic gear is far from epic in that having it lasts for about a month (or 2) and then it becomes counter productive, but back to point 1, it is uncertain, you can’t fight for it, you can only pray that it comes, having real epic items that lasted more than that, or that were upgradeable, I think, as a player, would go a long way in making you feel all this hamsterball racing is taking my char somewhere other than the next month.

• Contribution: a sense of service and focus on helping, giving to and supporting others

Unless you severely mess up, there’s nothing new you can bring to your groups, you can have this or that other DPS guy and it will be the same OR a kick. Missions have pre established paths, fights, etc, even exploring the area is prevented by hitboxes.

We have an underused R&D system that has so so so very much potential, think of players ding consumable group buffs that stack with power buffs, or maybe even resurrecting “capsules” that could bring allies back to life, hard stuns grenades, etc. possibilities are everything but scarce AND it would also give a portion of the players something to do while not on missions, this is not the only game with R&D and as far as my gaming experience goes, there’s always “that” R&D crowd who enjoys collecting and crafting stuff.

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Anyway, that's my PoV on the stuff, sorry for the extra lenght and thanks if you took the time to read it.

I was gonna mention about Melissa Benoist and Mepps being behind it all but Mepps is quite okay and the other day i turned on TV and saw Melissa Benoist having super strenght and laser eyes which confirms my theory but also advices me not to enrage her.

Well said

I get you. See you in tens days, make it fourteen, at least take 2 weeks off.

Very well said, OP. I've been playing since beta and can relate with alot of your concerns/reason for quitting. I'm hoping things do change because I love the game and the DC Universe. However, my time playing is very limited due to work/life and most days I don't enjoy playing.

its sad OP that alot of the older players are leaving or have already left due to things they dislike about how the game is changing. Myself included.

Well done indeed. See you next month.

theyve given us the changes we asked for and this is the result

This is very true. A perfect example of be careful what you wish for. The community asked for pvp changes, ways to not have power hungry DPS modes, automatic loot, some sort of deterrent to having high level in lower level content, less grind, and so forth. In alot of ways we have ourselves to blame.

Welp i dont care

I made a huge post commenting on his reasons, but then again I thought it doesn't matter.

See you in one month.

I estimate 10 days and people say 1 month? D: you guys have more faith in me than i do!
jk, but if you have not deleted your reasons, pm them! D: i wanna read them!

I agree with everything, even up to a point in the SP part, I don't mind a player with higher SP being stronger, but a 200 can't be so much stronger than the 130 to the point that the 130 becomes useless.

Episode 25, because pretty much 90% of the I Quit players, always end up back for a week to get all the newest gear.

i know how you feel man , the new games coming out like TMNT , RE 2 remake , its kinda hard to go back to dc.. as you said theres no pull lol , im currently playing dying light and its EPIC , TMNT is another awesome game as well ..

I only play dc for 3 days when they release a new dlc , thats how much i need to get the gear >.>

Anyway , have a fun vacation lol , see you in not 10 days , i will say 4 lol

1. In before Dreadlok and Hraesvelg. Please tell them you already sent all your stuffz to Kroye.
B. Didn't you already quit?
III. I will read the entire post, but can't right now. Between ADD and caffeine (combined with the colors) I'm struggling to get 3 sentences into it, but I do care about your reasons for quitting and will circle back and read it tonight.

Too lazy to retype them with all the details:

1 - Reward should either be gear or material to craft the gear, making getting them something unavoidable upon doing the raids. At least it would justify spending replay badges on the content.

2 - ROTM (Raid of the month) should give a specific currency (Marks of Tryumph returning?) that could only be used in a specific vendor to get the rest of the gear, giving the players two means to get them.

3 - SP should give +1% bonus per SP gained depending on the role. +1% damage to DPSes, 1+% defense to tanks, +1% power heal and CC strenght to controllers, +1% healing magnitude to healers. That would not only make SP WAY more important but would also make an electric DPS with 226sp be more meaningful than a Gadget DPS with 50 SP.

4 - New content should NOT get, BY ANY MEANS, a preview, not even on test. The devs could only release experimental mechanics and then keep the players in the dark about what will happen, that would make every single release a surprise. Revealing too much is bad, even in RL situations.

5 - Feats should be replaced as means to gain SP for something different. We have repeatable missions, then why not make THEM give a specific exp to gain SP? That would make WANTED missions and daily stuff way more populated.

6 - AMs should be entirely replaced by other means to give powerback, not related to powers. I say that all the time. Make DPS gain power based on damage they deal from any power, rather than forcing players to equip the SAME loadout do be relevant to content. As it is we are not really different than Marvel MMORPG, we have the SAME toons with personal names and different visuals.

7 - Triple the amount of adds in a raid, greatly reduce their defense. Basically give us a clusterbuck of people, so each person can tackle an enemy squad alone to make them more relevant. Give them, I don't know, all stats buff per add nearby, so players would need to fight everyone at the same time so they'd reduce the overall buffs of everyone and don't need to skip mobs.

BONUS: Make the overall CR of enemies be an average of the CR of the participants, so difficulty would be based on the team's capability.

O.O I like your points a lot.
Only disagree on number 4, test server was (imo) a clever way to test things before release and cutting expense on testers, i can see the beauty of it, the blame on this i think falls on the players. While there are a lot of really good testers, a lot of test users do go there only for the preview this is why we can't have nice things.

EDIT: Also, thanks for re-writing them

You can never really leave I see you in the Magic Wing all the time

All very valid points and I am hopeful they will be seen by the right people. The unfortunate reality is that you are not alone and more and more people are struggling to find a reason to log in.