Is greed over shadowing hardwork by devs

I think then a fair question might be how much player expectations are factoring into things along with player perceptions, and whether or not some of those expectations are entirely reasonable.

Mind you, I'm not saying we shouldn't hold the devs accountable at all, but there are some who read or hear a statement from the devs and project a whole lot more onto that statement than they should. That's always going to be a recipe for unrealistic expectations to take place.

Just to be clear I agree with you. I remember predicting that the game was leading more to micro transaction a year ago. You were one of the few that agreed with me, and I thank u 4 that

Eh, I gave up on EA when their idea of competing with other companies turned out to be "get the exclusive license." Kinda tough to prove you make the better product when others don't get the chance to show what they can do. LOL

Here's the video that I was referring to earlier

I think the expectation of many subscribers is that they expect the entire game, micro-transactions included, to be 100% free/included as part of their membership fee. The way some subscribers talk, they make it clear that they want a significant advantage over those who don't pay a monthly fee, too. Even if those players support the game in other ways, such as purchasing DLC or other micro-transactions. Which is exceptionally funny when those same people get upset about additional products that could be perceived as Pay to Win.

To a degree, I'm on their side. Membership should include everything. That would be like Amazon selling Prime to people, then limiting large items, fulfilled by them, from the free next day delivery service. Or Netflix selling a membership, then charging extras for all current year films and all Netflix original shows.

On the other hand, I emphasise with the developers. Micro-transactions are the clear breadwinner in DCUO and indeed the wider gaming industry. With the subscription being optional and limited in the amount of revenue it can generate, they can't depend on subscription money to keep the game running and actively develop it. So they need micro-transactions to stay afloat and that includes extra cash from people already paying a subscription.

Then again, this is what the developers wanted and they've refused to adjust it ever since, so my empathy only goes so far.

Basically, there's a conflict of interest in the business model. Invasive subscriptions and microtransactions are incompatible. Players expect everything for their membership fee, but the membership revenue won't be enough to achieve the goals that the higher-ups set.

So get rid of it, carry on down the micro-transactions path and use the newly created freedoms (access to all content, no petty restrictions to things like cash) to entice a new generation of players and make it easier to encourage older players to come back and become invested in the game once more.

I started out reading every post and after a while I just had to stop and respond.... There is absolutely no doubt the game has fallen into a scramble for cash and trust me as a former 7 year Veteran from City of Heroes that means the game has gotten to the point where they are desperately trying anything they can to boost incoming cash and avoid being shut down completely.

Now some people will say this all started with Replays . but I honestly think Replays were designed to allow players to PLAY the game ...... There are players, had them on COH, that run in each time new content arrives and rush like mad to get everything possible out of that new episode and then are off to the other games they play to do the exact same thing. By using those replays they can do the raids more than once a week and everything else more than one time in a day.... But the HUGE difference is they actually still have to PLAY the missions to accomplish anything.

ON the OTHER hand... Let's start with Time Capsules because I get so tired of hearing that old stale line.... "You don't HAVE to but stabilizers just run the duo" Right I have lost tract of how many TCs we have been issued at this point but I am one of those Play the duo and craft stabilizer people and I have NEVER gotten every single feat or piece of armor that drops in any capsule ... The only way anyone is getting all that stuff is by paying for it with a credit card. And that became very clear when the Amazon Fury version arrived and in one day we had players running around at near maximum CR.... So you had just hundreds of stabilizers saved up and got totally luck and every capsule you opened had a different piece of gear in it? RIGHT I am not buying it.. are any of you?

Then we got the whole pay your way to CR 100 fiasco. Not admittedly this "idea" had it start right here on the forums as players that like making alts asked for some way to avoid the tutorial over and over again .. Which by the way ends at level 30 NOT CR 100. It was a money making idea and a way to supposedly let those alt makers get closer to end game faster.. Oh YEAH and make money .. don't forget they make money from that. Then the problem arose.. They did nothing to code the thing so only experienced players could use the option and what we wound up with was bunch of brand new players roaming around at CR 100 with 60 Sp and no clue how to even FIND the telepads in the safe houses let alone use them to get to HQ or the other city. And why did this happen? MONEY of course.. make thing available to anyone and you will get those new players that will shell out a pile of it.. Hey why start a game at level 1 when you can start at level 100 (And please god don't even go there I have played for 6 years i KNOW levels stop at 30 and CR takes over but get realistic.. all CR really is .. another way of saying LEVEL).

Then we added in the HOLIDAY cash buy which is now over one year old. Another way to earn money to keep the game running BUT at the same time another way to allow players to just BUY their way to rewards and never actually PLAY the game.

Hey even the new artifact we can all work toward making our characters better.. Sure you can run the duos, alerts and raids and earn all those catalysts over time.. But you can also go straight to the market and buy a Catalyst bundle that will give any alt you own what you need to get it to the next milestone. Now I actually find the prices on those reasonable and during the Black Friday sale I purchased a number of them for my alts. But basically it is another way to earn money for the game. I'd love to see just how many players are actually still running Sub Construct when they can go BUY those same catalysts at the market.

Now on to the remarks about doing away with membership altogether.... No just NO... And i say that for the most selfish of reasons imaginable. I have been a subscriber for 6 years now. When I first started I was paying $15 a mionth and then went to Quarterly to get that down to $12 a month. DO the math... even at $12 a month that means without any pother purchases at all I have given DCUO $144 a year .. $180 for those years when i was paying monthly not quarterly. That means even at the $12 a month rate I have handed $864 to Daybreak for access to their game. NOW I happen to own two accounts to this game .. One legendary and one Premium. I bought the Power bundle pack, the Utility Pack and a DLC pack that enables me to play ALL content up to DLC 26 and didn't have to pay out anywhere near $144 let alone almost $900.
So what? Using your idea we just discontinue memberships and I am NOW supposed to pay for all those powers, and DLC AGAIN? Do you have any idea how many players would just flat out quit at that point? Because trust me I'd be one of them.

let's keep in mind that in those 6 years the money I have handed Daybreak didn't stop at membership.. I have 26 alts.. So YES I purchased addition slot for characters. I purchased addition slots for my inventory and bank. I purchased replay badges when they started letting us use them to buy skill points for alts. HEY I OWN 26 alts I am not about to stand in Central City blasting away at 5000 Paradox Reapers when I can buy the feats. I have purchased Total Recall kit so I could spend more time PLAYING the game and less time hunting little humming rainbows (exobits in case anyone didn't get that). DEEDS? I have 26 alts and most have at least 2 lairs. Armories? Well get real.. they give us 1 freebie. Now unless you buy at LEAST one more what good is the freebie aside from another piece of furniture in your lair. Oh yeah that brings us to furniture an styles... I OWN every single one they ever put on sale. See what I am trying to make clear here is while i do NOT blindly play the slot machine that is Time Capsules I have given Daybreak a pretty fair amount of cash over the years over and above my membership fee and i know dang well I am not the only one.


The ONLY way I could see them shutting down memberships would be to 1) grant every single member access to all DLCS available to them when the legendary status ends.... If I have alts high enough to play DLC 30.. I have FULL access to DLC 30 and don't need to start purchasing new content till DLC 31. 2) The stupid cash caps are gone for ALL players not just former legends.. If not I can just about promise you just lost every single player out there selling things like auras for hundreds of millions of in game cash. 3) the restrictions on the Vault, the stabilizer solo and lock boxes .. gone heck I don't even really care that much about the stabilizers or lock boxes but since the Vault is now handing out free armor and nth metal limiting how many times a week we can get it will tick people off as well. As for time capsules.. trust me you could let every single player out there run that duo daily and it won't affect credit card sales a bit. Lock boxes... have become kind of a joke... OHHH I get 1 mark and MAYBE a style I need or want. Considering at CR 211 how many marks I NEED a month ... ?? what good are they?

I seriously doubt they will ever take and use your idea to begin with.. God forbid they do away with anything that gets players to hand them money every month. And THAT is the huge selling point.... Look at lest year.. we had around an 8 month span with no new DLCs while they revamped the game completely. Now in those 8 months I was paying them $12 each moth.. or $96 before you add in any other purchases... Now aside for recall kits, deeds etc... the same stuff I could have been buying WITH my membership.. How much cash did they take in selling DLCs to premiums? We finally got WATER as a new power this year..... Prior to that the last NEW power was Atomic back on November 4th , 2015. That is 1 new power set they gave us in over 2 years. HOW much cash did they make selling the old ones to Premiums in that 2 year wait between Atomic and Water?

Yes and its ruining the gaming industry. It's the people at the very top of the company that are to blame. They are the ones benefiting from all this greed, not the devs.

Wholeheartedly disagree, membership needs to just be improved upon not scrapped.

This should had happen, 5 years ago, the currently problem now is that there is no premium population enough to support this system, plus if this went to be real, daybreak would lose alot of money at the start, possible causing bankrupt even before starting to profit again. However this action would finaly be player freindly. Not to be bad but DCUO dig their own grave whit the current susbcription system. If the "scraping" of menbership has plans of becoming reality, my recomendation would be, to do it slow.

Even thougth most legendarys say: escrow, trade, broker are perk of menbership, thats just bull****. Thats just like a scam.

In order for membership to improve, the devs will need to stop looking at it from a cost PoV and start looking at it from usefulness. They just see each benefit as a numerical value and say "oh they're definitely getting their moneys worth" instead of "well how many people actually see this as a useful benefit anymore?"

When they do that then we'll see membership improve.

It has been improved and you haven't noticed.

There simply isn't enough volume to achieve your Utopia of a game where everything is included for your membership fee.

I dont think they will ever improve it to the level we want in terms of value.

problem is: devs are raising costs outside of membership through RB's and keys.
as long as they sell, they might be thinking that ppl love those and add more stuff like in seasonals to sell curency.
well, it is not that they are going to get as much as they can get and as long as they get through with it...
it is only that the feats, wich are an important factor to progress, make it allmost mandatory to buy in.
and the more we buy in, the more will they put up to sell... its a neverending circle of raising costs.
of course you can say that we don't have to pay if we wouldn't want to.
if you choose to ignore TC's you will miss an ever increasing amount of feats and therefore fall back with your SP's.
after a certain amount of them, you will not notice much difference between, say, 300 and 400 for example.
it is just sad that you can just pull out your credit card and basicly buy feats wich should be earned through playing.
because i think that the most feats are fun to do and they were once called that way for a reason.
now, half of them should be called "stat points you payed for and won in the lottery".
about replay badges: well, the best rewards comes from raids wich are get locked for a week.
thats why ppl spend money for replays in the first place. thats why devs raise the need for replaying.
thats why ppl spend even more money for replays. thats why the devs never change it.
well, when i started, i thought of DCUO as an action progress game with loot depending on luck.
it just developed into something like a trading card game where you pay for better cards.
sure you can play those with a starter pack, but you will have a disatvantage for staying and if you don't pay extra.
i am just at the point were i ask myself if i realy want to go on with such a game.
i would never have started if i knew how it turns out and to continue only because i have gotten so far...
that sounds like an investment into something you know will fail,
but you go on because you would loose everything you ivested so far. one day you will anyways...

if i could change the game, i would do away the cash cap and let trading be possible to everyone.
no premium, no legendary memberships: a new DLC would be only accessible if payed for.
loot locks only for the rest of a day in raids and everything else that is weekly now.
collections would all have equal chances to drop, aswell as gear: same chance for every piece to drop.
one key for the stabilizer event, no shared loot locks between your characters.

if i would change the game, i would focus on keeping players happy, get back the defected and gain new ones.
granted: i may go bankrupt in short time aswell...

Yea 1996 was the year when they got greedy due to gameday out selling them. EA make it seem like the never made 1996 madden due to being sore losers, but they did. It was the best commentary I ever heard in a football game with Pat Summeral and John madden. After that year by year EA got lazy with commentary.

Just to make sure they would never lose again to a game like GameDay, they bought the NFL licsense

Glad you see the light my fellow Tenno

if i would change the game, i would focus on keeping players happy, get back the defected and gain new ones.
granted: i may go bankrupt in short time aswell... in charge of a game i like to play myself or not at all.
because i would only do what i would like the game to be from a players perspective and not as someone,
like a real CEO does, with the burden of responsability towards your employees and theyr happiness.
we don't know how the game did before or after jackster happened.

without knowing, i guess the only thing left to hope for, is for the devs to allways ask themselves:
"how is the perception of our players from theyr point of view" and compair in relation to theyrs.
because i think it is not enough to look at the numbers to know your customers and how they feel.
especially if you sell a succes$, the question should get even more important...
if you compair with feedback in the forum, there appears to be a huge discrepancy IMHO

I

I say every one has full member access without the subscription. Everything bought by premium and members get to keep.

Greed is overshadowing the DEVS hard work. Every improvement the DEVS have made has a price tag. It get old real fast. I understand greed in a business, but DC is taken it to a whole nother level. The changes to elite was an improvement to the old system, but the DEVS raised the price of the gear and made a 20 min elite raid to spam. It's just crazy

I don't expect to recieve everything for free, that expectation is unreasonable; I do however expect to get more for free than premium players.

Also Tori let's be honest here, the only reason you want membership scrapped is because you want the cash cap gone because you are under what I consider to be an absolute delusion that premium players are sitting on this treasure trove of goodies that will fix the economy and capsule rarities.

You have and have always had zero data to back it up but somehow want to take this wild assumption and use it as justification to scrap membership.

I've seen your posts about this in the past.

Also please tell me
... you scrap membership now what do you tell all the loyal members and lifetime members about dlc.

They've never bought any but suddenly tell them to cough up and buy powers, features and content they previously got with their sub.

I'm sorry but this whole advocating to scrap membership is short sighted, horribly flawed and well quite frankly fatuous.