Idea for Low-Tier Content

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by Lugo, Jun 12, 2020.

  1. Lugo Well-Known Player

    I haven't played DC in a long time so I don't know if things have changed or if this has been done.

    The last time I played on some low CR alts, I kept running into 2 problems. First problem, low-tier content queue took forever. Second, high CR players would just blow everything away and I didn't get to do anything.

    How are new players supposed to learn their roles and loadouts if they can't play the low-tier content? DC already does enough to throw new players into higher CR content and skipping most of the game.

    My idea is about giving higher CR players more incentive to do low-tier content and without being OP, so all the players actually have to play through and work for whatever rewards they want.

    Now, I absolutely hate loot boxes to hell and back no matter what game they're in. They're predatory garbage devs throw in to exploit their players and take their money without adding content to the game.

    However..

    What if there was a chance for an unlocked TC to drop and also higher rate drops for nth metal if you ran content that was lower CR than yours. And then also the bigger the gap in CR, the higher the chance for an unlocked TC and the higher the rate drops for nth metal. But the requirement would be that you'd have to choose to be debuffed down to at least the CR level of the content and so does everyone else in the group.

    But again, I don't know if this is still a problem for anyone or not or if anyone cares. It's just something I thought of the other day.

    But I think since the rewards are relevant to higher CR players, it would get more people doing low-tier content without ruining the experience for new players. Everyone wins!

    And maybe there could be a chance for auras or materials to drop, too.

    I hate loot boxes A LOT. But this way, at least players have a chance to play for rewards instead of pay for rewards. And this makes TCs at least a little relevant to the game and content.

    Anyway, feel free to tell me to **** in the replies below. :cool:

    AND NO MEPPS ALLOWED! NO MORE MEPPS IN THREADS! MEPPS IS BANNED!
    • Like x 1
  2. willflynne 10000 Post Club

    Mepps is in ALL threads. :eek:

    ...

    Couldn't resist. :D

    As for the idea? Too much resistance to stat clamping. Doesn't matter what you call it, the very idea of clamping tends to bring out the pitchforks and torches with certain parts of the player base.

    Personally I have no problem with the idea with clamping. I am, however, growing weary of folks requesting/insisting/demanding (it's covered all those bases in other threads, not singling the OP out in particular) higher CR players get some sort of extra reward for running old/lower tier content. But that's just me.
  3. Wallachia Devoted Player

    Repeating for the 92318231983th time:

    Allow us to play with AI versions of our alts.

    This ends:
    1. Queue waiting times
    2. Roflstompers who don`t wait for the team
    3. Bad players
    4. Lags

    I see no reason not to. If you want to meet new friends go to facebook. Or tinder.
    • Like x 1
  4. Lugo Well-Known Player

    AI would probably suck plus if they're getting drops too then you'd be gearing up like 4 characters at a time. Doesn't seem right.
    And there's nothing wrong with wanting to meet friends on an MMO. That's part of the whole reason they exist (even though I don't like talking to people on MMOs or making friends, but I still get it).
  5. Lugo Well-Known Player

    Why do people have an issue with stat clamping? My idea would be optional so people can still crush low-tier content for feats if they want. Plus it would just be players playing the game the way it was intended to be played anyway, something they do in CR relevant content. The resistance doesn't seem reasonable lol idk.

    And higher CR players wouldn't get extra rewards, they would get a reward. If the content isn't relevant, and especially if the content is super old, you probably aren't getting anything at all unless you're going back for feats or styles. So higher CR players aren't getting something extra, it's just swapping the gear rewards (and feats if you have them) you'd need to level up for a different type of reward. And you'd still have to work for it since you'd be spooky, scary stat clamped!?!?!?!?!

    And it helps keep old content relevant and keeps it accessible to new players.
    • Like x 2
  6. willflynne 10000 Post Club


    Not being someone who objects to stat clamping, I can't answer that 100% accurately but more often than not the sentiment seems to be that, for some, it takes away their progression (or sense of progression) in the game or nullifies all the time and effort they spent getting their characters built up. I'm sure there are a few other reasons, but those seem to come up the most. More definitive answers would have to come from someone who objects to stat clamping.

    And if a higher CR player gets an unlocked TC or anything else that they wouldn't get if they were at the relevant CR for the content, they ARE getting an extra reward. To be honest, I'm of the school of thought that those who go back to old content to play it are getting exactly the rewards they earn due to the amount of effort they put in. A player at the CR/tier of the content will put in more effort in a certain piece of content than someone who's long since passed that mission.

    Take the Ace Chemicals instance. That one has a walk-in entrance, and I can take any of my active characters (all at or around AF3 content) and use the walk-in portal and solo the mission. Meanwhile if I took a character who is at the CR for that mission and tried to solo it using the walk-in portal, I probably wouldn't make it past the first few hallways. There's no way I can see any sort of justification for getting either the full mission rewards (Marks along with loot, which some players still ask for) OR any extra rewards when I don't even break a sweat running that mission on my active characters.

    And I'll stop there before I REALLY start ranting on that subject. LOL
  7. Tenacious New Player

    I love this idea. I always rave about how much fun this game is to my friends and they finally made account. But my praise of the game just falls flat since they just get placed in instances with people that destroy everything.
    • Like x 2
  8. Lugo Well-Known Player

    Yeah I'd need to hear it from those players. Your stats would be clamped in the instance for like 20 minutes? Lol doesn't make sense to me. Not a permanent setback or a setback at all.

    This is why they'd have to opt into being stat clamped down to the relevant CR. Suggested CR for Ace is 30, so you'd be clamped down to 30. No 30 CR is soloing Ace Chemicals lol. It would be the same amount of effort as any other 30 CR players, or 43 CR player for Oan, or 105 CR for Return to Nexus.

    This is what the stat clamp is for, so the high CR players have to play and be part of the team like it was CR relevant content. And they wouldn't blow through everything and ruin the game for newer/weaker players because they'd be as weak as them. So the rewards aren't extra, they're an incentive to get more people into low-tier content and replace the gear/feats they would've gotten if they were those new players. That's the win/win.
  9. Miserable Dedicated Player

    I would love optional stat clamping for lower tier content.

    It would have to apply to the instance and not to players individually, which might make it even harder to get a queue since I don't think the clamped mode would be popular.
    • Like x 1
  10. Lugo Well-Known Player

    I started thinking about that after I made the thread lol. Now I'm not so sure if this would help low-tier content or make it worse. But the TC items are super popular and expensive with the chromas and auras and all that crap. And everyone needs to get their artifacts up.

    I guess it's all based on the assumption the TCs and nth rate drops are incentive enough. And I really believe they could be if the drop rates are good enough.
  11. Scarlet Mysty Loyal Player

    Currently I don’t think having optional clamping in content is a particularly good idea, this coming from someone who was very much in favour of stat clamping in the past.

    What really needs to be addressed is the fact that the player base is spread across an ever widening chasm of content. The game does its best to rush everyone to end game. This exacerbates the problem as not everyone is missing the same gear/feats/content meaning everyone is queing and prioritising different feats from different content.

    The best option imo is to funnel everyone into specific older content via an on going event.

    Clamping is a good idea in theory that runs into many real world problems when applied to reality.
    • Like x 3
  12. Brit Loyal Player



    I am 100% with you. Mysty, you are one smart cookie.

    Personally, I remain unconvinced that stat-clamping would increase low-level participation at all. If I don't have enough of a reason to go back and run it as an overgeared, 10 minute, failure-proof run, then I don't see why I would go back to run it clamped down so that it takes 30 minutes instead, to still get random old styles that I already have and work on feats I've already done. Players care about rewards first and foremost.

    I thought the Raid The Universe event was a spectacular approach towards this. They gave relevant rewards people cared about (current episode marks and Nth metal), for running a specific funnel of old content, so everybody migrated to the same thing. As result, those raids were popping all week long.

    They could do this in the regular Event rotations, or they could even handle it sort of like the Legends PvE maps where it rotates weekly and there is just one specific old Raid and/or Alert that grants a special bonus for completing it.

    But funnelling the players into the same content is what it is going to take to make things pop. If we're just chasing the feats, then we're spread all over the place.
    • Like x 2
  13. Lugo Well-Known Player

    If we're funneling everyone into specific older content with some type of daily, weekly, monthly or whatever event, I think that doesn't fully address dead queues for low-tier content, which is my main issue. We'd have everyone in T2 content, no one in T1 or 3. We'd be deciding which tier of new players gets to get into queues and have their experienced ruined by people blowing through everything for them.

    And by having all the older content giving relevant rewards, we can redistribute these players throughout content a little more evenly than having them all focused on the weekly, monthly, daily whatever low-tier content is chosen. Idk, I'd want it to be fair for everyone.

    But what are the real-world problems of stat-clamping?

    Well that's why I said the increased nth metal drops and unlocked TC drops would be the incentive, not just the same old trash we all already have. It wouldn't be stat-clamped for no reason at all lol. But dropping the relevant marks are also a good idea, adding that to mine!
    • Like x 1
  14. Scarlet Mysty Loyal Player

    What you are suggesting may slightly increase the overall amount of people queuing for old content, but with the population being stretched over all that content it's really not going to help queues all that much. Presuming the additional reward is the same across all old content, then at best you get a select few raids and alerts having slightly faster queues, while the majority of content still remains abandoned.

    If you don't need feats from FoS1, and the reward is the same as FoS3, why would you ever run FoS1? At best with stat-clamping you will have the easiest and quickest content to run through becoming popular and everything that requires some effort & time will stay abandoned. All Stat-clamping does is stop people blowing through content, it doesn't change what feats people need or how they interact with the content.

    To add to that, two people who start playing at the same time will have entirely different missing feats by the time they get to end game. Those two people, instead of queuing for the same old content, are now queuing for entirely different old content to complete their feats, and none of their queues are popping. This is the problem that funnelling tries to solve.

    Not everyone is going to need feats from the content they are being funnelled into, but eventually, if it's on a rota like has been suggested, eventually the content you or whoever else requires will come up on that rota and you should be guaranteed there will be lots of other players to play that content with, that is the advantage of funnelling everyone into the same content.

    The real world issues with Stat-clamping come down to implementation and how people perceive stat-clamping. Clamping means different things to different people, to me it means being clamped down to max two or three tiers above the content you are in, for some that will be too lenient, for others, not clamped down enough. Secondly, even though I think most people overstate the negatives, the general perception on the forums is that it's bad, that is the biggest hurdle, unless you are able to convince people otherwise it will always be negatively received, no matter how fair it's implementation.
  15. Lugo Well-Known Player

    Well the devs know which raids take more effort to do than others. This is where we can manipulate drop rates for the content. Who says the rates have to be the same across all the older content? We can increase rates based on effort, difficulty and length of the content. So how the Arkham alert is long as heck, we can increase rates throughout the content and then maybe final boss drop rates are better than smaller alerts.

    These things can be managed and made fair, I'm sure. We just have to be open and creative.

    I'm just personally not in favor of neglecting other content and funneling everyone into a few things.

    If we have the player base, if we have the relevant rewards, if we make the drop rates fair, I don't see why we should assume that the queues would still be bad. Of course, I'm assuming they wouldn't be by making the content relevant. But we at least know players want TCs, nth metals and relevant currencies.

    And if all players can get a chance at these rewards by running through as much old content as they can everyday, how can we assume this wouldn't affect the queues of the old content? Just because people need different types of feats? But we all need currencies and nth metals and we all want TCs for styles, feats, SPs and whatnot.

    All this funneling would do is continue to neglect old content and continue to ruin the experience for new players when 8000 CR vets come in and explode everything.

    People are being unreasonable. The clamping is temporary and your progress in the game is entirely unaffected. In fact, with my idea, you are continuing to progress through the game while clamped because you're getting rewards to make you stronger. Not to mention that you'd be playing the content the way it was intended and not ruining the game for other players.

    This stat-clamping issue doesn't make any sense.
  16. travelingtheory Well-Known Player



    Wasnt this game supposed to launch with a Sidekick system that let a high lvl player CLAMP down theirs stats a bit so as not to destroy the game when playing with friends and to help them lvl? Optional of course. I thought it did anyway. Basically same premise. You que for what is it frag stabilzer? And your clamped. People do that just fine. The only people whod really complain are raiders and if so get out of my area 51 im trying to lvl a quantum
  17. Scarlet Mysty Loyal Player

    I think what you are missing regardless of what else I said is the amount of content vs the population of the game. 100 players with only 2 pieces of content will have much faster queues that 100 players with 10 pieces of content, that's ultimately what it comes down to.

    If you put those 10 pieces of content on a rota with only 2 of them available at any one time, you can pretty much guarantee queues will pop just as fast as when you only had 2 pieces of content.

    Even before the revamp when the population was decent and we still got rewards from old content, there were still certain raids & alerts that were difficult to get into because no-one queued them, and that was with less content than we have now.

    Funnelling is not neglecting unless you think it's a one time thing, but the idea is that it's a rota. Nothing gets neglected, everything gets its time to shine at some point. We had it in PvP for years and as I said in my last comment I think it's a much better system than the total availability we have now. I have absolutely no desire to queue Arkham Asylum (PvP), however if it was on rota I'd probably run it just for kicks, because queue would pop, unlike now when it never does.
  18. Lugo Well-Known Player

    But we aren't down to 100 players with 2 pieces of content, there's a lot of content and a lot of players. All we need to do is be able to come up with ways to address everyone's needs. And why are you settling for funneling players into certain rotated content when we can and we should find ways to boost all content? Why do we have to settle for less as a starting point? It isn't impossible to take on big tasks.

    We can find incentives and rewards to bring all older content back to life if we're open-minded and creative enough.

    I can't speak for PVP because I barely PVP anymore. But the obvious solution to certain modes of PVP not being queued is to restructure how these maps are set up. So instead of queueing for specific maps, we queue for the game mode and the map is randomly selected. So something like 5v5 > Deathmatch > random map selected. We can fix these issues if we can be open and think of new ways to do things instead of settling for what we've got or asking for minor adjustments that don't address the core of the issue.

    So if we're only willing to go as far as "which content will all the 300 CRs ruin for new players this week," how is that addressing the core issues of the new player experience and making the huge variety of older content relevant and playable again? Why shouldn't we first shoot for lifting all of the content?

    With PC/PS merged and with heroes and villains running together, I believe we can find ways to reallocate the player base in a way where older content, if not completely, is largely or mostly revived from how it is now. What good is a game that ignores most of itself and focuses all its players either into end game content or into what's being rotated at the moment?

    The players should be allowed to enjoy all of the game and should have it be accessible. We shouldn't settle for a choice between dead content/content ruined by 300 CRs vs. selecting which content gets ruined by 300 CRs. We can do better.
  19. I3eleth Well-Known Player

    Just make lower content drop source marks for all players outside of relevant cr once a month that'd be a big start. That way there is some sort of meaning to running older content outside or a random drop or feat you may have missed.
  20. Lugo Well-Known Player

    But this doesn't go far enough to address dead queues in general. People would only do the content once a month and still ruin the experience for new players. Plus they could grind through all the content and end up with so many marks they wouldn't even have to do CR relevant content.