Imagine the day DCUO looked and felt like Fortnite!

Several UI additions/upgrades, a 4-man SM, the stat revamp was 5 years ago, r&d overhaul, graphic upgrades, etc etc etc

No need to be pedantic then. It's not constructive. This isn't Jeopardy where the person has to phrase their answer in the exact correct way for them to be considered correct. Are you literally correct that something other than stories were released? Yes. We're all aware TCs are a thing. But to address the substance of their point; that more complex content (that would heavily involve engineering etc) hasn't come out in years is, in fact, correct.

There's examples like bounty counters and the new PhaseUI where engineering was involved, but these are comparatively small jobs that didn't occupy their dept for the last 5 years. That said, who knows, maybe the new feature coming soon will be a massive undertaking that took the last 5 years to accomplish; but unless they release something like that, he's correct.

You should really check your attitude and your firewall settings.

None of that has anything to do with animations and new additions to gameplay for our characters , and what graphics update are you taking about? 4 man sm is story content…. I guess we did get a valentines day emote, but cmon are we really counting that

There have been a few polishes here and there on top of iconic NPC redos, but I'm sure you'll categorize NPCs as "story" content.

If you're going to categorize Survival Mode as "story" I have nothing more to say to you. I have more engaging things to do than chase your personal goal posts.

I guess i just fail to see how polishing npcs has anything to do with our characters, and also how survival mode, which is a mission , adds anything to our characters

My attitude? Firewall settings? Not sure what that's all supposed to mean. *shrug*

We had no problems getting along (for literally years) until a few weeks back when I pointed out you were wrong on that topic and you melted down. Now here we are weeks later in another conversation and you're still salty about that old convo. If you want to hold onto that, can't stop you; you do you boo. It's not necessary though. Pointing out you were wrong about something wasn't a personal attack.

They're's correct. And considering they're one of the people I align with the least here, maybe take a step back.

To set up some context. People on the forums have some funny ideas of what's going on at DI. DI isn't struggling with money. They aren't struggling with staffing either. They haven't replaced several people who moved on because they're choosing not to for their own reasons.

Next. Different development needs engage different depts in a game development company. The smaller the studio the more hats people wear but the larger it is the more distinct people's roles and depts/teams are. Engineering builds new tech. There's a design team building all the new "story/narrative/missions" content. There's also a team that builds new game objects and systems (origin augment system, powersets, movement modes etc, ...probably artifacts are handled by them too). There's a live team also maintaining the game once it's pushed to the servers -- they do the bug squashes and so on once the game is live so that the rest of the team can get back to creating new content. Obv there's a few more groups too, but I'm explaining the ones relevant to this discussion. And "team" can be a single person or a dept of several people depending on the studio and its size.

When we're talking about an engine update we're talking about building new tech so it's going to be handled by engineering or a team adjacent to it depending on their setup and staffing. The content we get every quarter isn't heavy on engineering. It's mostly story/script, character art (NPCs, styles, VFX), audio, environments and scripted missions etc. That's it. So, these groups building DLC content aren't going to be needed to do an engine update. If DI pursued an engine update it would run on an isolated internal server while they work on marrying the engine to rest of the game and can get it stable -- they would tap people in related teams (like systems for example) if something wasn't working and they needed some insight but under normal circumstances no one from other depts would get pulled away for long. This work would all happen concurrently while the other teams are creating content for the live game would continue completely uninterrupted.

Hope that gives you some insight into the topic.

With the NPC refreshes came that first batch of HD skins for our characters.

honestly, i think there is a kitchen sink hammer/ brick breaker or something lol, i could be wrong

so you get in a disagreement with someone and they talk to you different , welcome to the world, everything can't be rainbows and unicorns all the time, trying to please everyone and get along with everyone is impossible, and posting a reply like this just shows "no offense" but shows your insecurities on hoping you can please everyone and not say anything to piss them off. shed that, if you disagree with someone , don't feel bad or point out stuff like this, #$##Em you can't expect everyone to view everything the same way as you, stand your ground in what you believe in or people will see right through you. wanting to smooth things over , all over a forum post. so and so stands his/her ground and doesn't pander to anyone , we have disagreed alot , about 4 others who stand there ground with there beliefs and what they like and don't like about the game. discussion forums are suppose to be disagreements and arguing it is what makes them fun and engaging.

again this is not meant to be an attack post, i just am explaining how people look at things if they aren't worried about making everyone like them.

There's a lot to unpack here but this is a bad take. Not sure how you conflated [politely] calling out someone's unnecessary drama or pettiness with somehow being overly concerned with being liked. Someone willing to call out bad behaviour in others is definitely not concerned with making friends.

Maybe sit this one out.

As explained above, NPC refreshes have nothing to do with an engine update. The character art team isn't involved in work like this.

Maybe take your own advice. Maybe go make some friends instead of being passive aggressive to strangers on the internet.

But how are skins not gear ( or styles) .. why do i keep clearly typing that we haven’t gotten anything added to our characters gameplay, new animations, and you keep saying random nonsense which have absolutely nothing to do with character gameplay animations… is it because we haven’t gotten any in 5 years?

Let's do better; let's focus on the discussion, debunking incorrect info and promoting the correct information instead of petty personal attacks instead.

Just to clarify NPC refreshes aren't just simple reskins. They're entirely new character models and textures. There's a lot more work to them than a simple reskin, but that work isn't related to a graphic engine update at all. Sometimes character models can need a new export to be fully compatible with the new engine, but this isn't extensive work usually. Character animations are a lot of work but also don't involve a graphic engine update.

Because that's not what you originally asked. I know you clarified your original statement since but again I'm not interested in chasing imaginary goal posts.

Yes we haven't had any new animations in the past 5 years unless you count the hand animations in the Water powerset.

No one is really against a new engine upgrade. What people are saying is that people seem to think that an engine upgrade on a live game would have no to little impact on content release, or that it could be done in relatively short time, and that's just not realistic. Look at the how much time passed between Episode 39 and 40. People were already complaining about the long wait before we had even hit the three month mark. When you look at how long it took to release this episode and realize it was just a Duo, Alert, 2 Raids plus open world stuff and then compare the more monumental task of taking this entire 10+ year old game and then recreate it on a new engine....that's not an inconsequential task.

They haven't confirmed anything in regards to this idea, but what if doing this "upgrade" meant no new content for way longer than 6 months? Can this game survive such a long pause in content? Would players stick around during such a drought? Does anyone remember the mass exodus when the Devs announced no new content for a long period as they worked on the Stats Matter Revamp (they even released AFIII to stem the loss of players)???[/quote]

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From my understanding, When he said “ characters look as polished “ he was taking ab the engine not the art style.

Look, i log in once a week now, run my 2 raids and 2 outdoors on Wednesdays or Thursday and dont get on again till reset. Ive switched and switched and switched powers, then i switched roles.. grinded out those artifacts to 120, switched and switched powers.. the story content is boring no matter how good the story is when the point of playing the game is for gameplay. We been running through hallways with these same animations for years.. im sure im not the only one that only logs on once a week because they’re bored with the gameplay.

No a new engine wouldn’t fix my boredom, but the game needs something,,, anything that involves some innovation and breathes some new energy. Next month they’re gonna reveal walk in instances and act like its the greatest thing on earth.. i again, will be here saying that this is another addition to the game that changes our gameplay not even the slightest bit.

This is incorrect. Something like an engine update would be worked on, on an isolated internal server until the build is stable, preventing it from having any impact on the live server or the workflow of teams creating content for the live game. This is standard practice in the industry and they've even communicated to the community that this is their workflow over many livestreams when discussing the test server.

The timeline for the work involved is entirely dependent on how smooth the port would go. There's no way to tell for sure outside of speculation based on past similar experiences [an experienced dev makes this call]. It could take a few weeks or a few months or it might not be possible at all if they have some proprietary tech with an incompatibility or something (this is pretty rare these days though). They wouldn't know until they tasked someone to explore the option.

Mission content we get in DLCs isn't related to an engine update. Different type of work and different teams involved.

You're implying that 10 years of content would need to be built from scratch but this is not true. Most of it would be ported over after the build is stable and they would do some bug passes to address anything that didn't port over perfectly. Anything not smoothly ported would be disabled until ready.

This idea that "everything has to be rebuilt from scratch and would take years and years to do", is false and came from some random person in the forums years ago and took on a life of its own and became commonly accepted as fact when it is not.

Why would it it pause anything? This idea is rooted in the misconception that there's only 5 people who work at DI (there's more) and that they're understaffed (when they're not) and that the people who make monthly story content are the same people and skillset of the team that would work on an engine update -- they're not. None of this is true. The stats revamp is an exceptional example because the new content they release every month relies on this content; they'd be working on something that was out of date or "bugged" the moment it was released or the moment the revamp went to the live servers. It's an apples vs oranges false equivalence. On the other hand, if they don't do the work involved the game will slowly lose players to attrition resulting in shutdown.

Is there work involved in updating? Yes, of course. Is it remotely close to remaking the entire game from scratch? No, of course not.

You are aware of what a dev (not a random player lol) recently explained to us about porting from UE3 to UE4? Or do you wish to continue to pull answers out of the ether because you "work in the industry"? The truth is you don't work at Dimensional Ink and all of your responses thus far have been subjective opinions and educated guesses that you're trying to pass off as facts. I don't think anyone here is particularly impressed?

a polished turd is still a turd.