Its time for a more realistic way to farm ally exp and Nth.

Now think about the persepective of a new/returning player needing to catch up and essentially gain access to 10-15 lvl 200 arts if that person wants to play both roles even semi-seriously, this member is a paying monthly subscriber that hasnt had the gradual exp gain over the last 4 years and been able to level most up as they go along with 2x exp too add, since the artifact implementation, its not just about yours or my circumstances its about the bigger pucture and the health of the game.

Unfortunately, players in that situation will abandon the game 99% of the time, and the 1% that stay are individuals with lots of disposable income.

It's cool to dream, I guess, but nothing is going to change. Every decision they've made over the last few years has made the game more unfriendly to new/returning players.

Daybreak has no faith in their ability to attract new players or grow their population in any way, so their entire strategy is to increase the cost of playing the game in order to earn more revenue per player from the core of loyal players / whales who stick around unconditionally. The problem is that even that core dwindles with every negative change they make to the game, prompting them to keep looking for ways to increase revenue. It's a vicious circle.

The closest thing to an Nth metal farm in the game is to either farm Doomsday in Flashpoint Gotham with Nth Metal detectors or to farm the bosses in the Anniversary open world. Ally favor is really just when Save the Universe happens and running that content on as many alts as you can.

I'm actually surprised that Flashpoint Doomsday farms aren't more common since you get Nth metal every kill and there is a bounty count on him as well.

The other Nth metal option is to make new toons, lvl them to 20 and pass the purple metal you get to a main but that takes about an hour or so to hit that lvl. Also worth using every CR skip you can since they come with a cache of account bound Nth metal. Even if you have to make and delete toons to use the CR skip, it's worth it. Realistically neither of these options is really good compared to just playing the game or farming bosses that drop Nth metal.

I know they removed trading on Nth metal caches and Nth metal detectors to hurt speed hackers but, it really hurt the normal player as well because caches were an easy source of in game money and you could convert DC cash into artifacts if you were able to work the broker and it could cover not being able to play as much other players.

Popping Nth metal detectors during lpve week is quite good and popping them during bounty runs or boss spams is a pretty good way to maximize the detector, as well.

Your name really suites your outlook on life! Have some hope jeez!

Strange... I don't think my outlook on life is something I've ever shared on the forums

When it comes to the game though, I'm not even being pessimistic, just straight up realistic. Trust me, I've had plenty of hope, but that supply is finite. When the devs have shown us time and again how they plan to operate this game, it's far more rational to believe them than to expect a magical 180 transformation.

If you give up, never share your ideas and stop pushing for change as you seem to have done, then yes its too late and NOTHING will change.

You shouldnt downplay or brush off others hope just because YOU have given up, perhaps thats where our outlooks differ, when your down, you want to accept it and stay down, a somewhat "miserable" outlook.

Me, im gonna get up, think of solutions, try and help and keep moving.

Its not normal behaviour to join a conversation and say "everything is rubbish, i hate it, oh and btw your idea wont work, just because...everything is rubbish". And then not contribute any of your own ideas or potential changes. Its a little rude really, if it were an IRL convo you would get called out for being a "miserable" so n so.

Its fine if you wanna stay "miserable", downbeat and defeated, just dont come in here putting a downer on the communitys hope, its just selfish, I for one dont want to hear the negative moaning.

If realism and facts get you this upset, the ignore feature is right there. Your urge to censor me is not cool. You're free to live in your delusion. Speak your mind, and I'll speak mine.

Im just calling out your poor social behaviour, nothing wrong with that.

I think my behavior's fine. You just seem really out of touch.

I'm surprised they haven't put an Ally Favour / Nth Metal XP Booster in the marketplace yet, to be honest.

Final Fantasy XIV has a way of bringing players up to near End Game, just one DLC below, and it is a item they sell on their Market Place (Mog Station) called One ________’s Journey. The BLANK is the job of your character. It’s a little more completer than what we have here in DCUO with the CR Skip. I believe that if they CR Skip was padded with more SP & EXP than it currently is, then it would be more beneficial to these players. Of course CR Skip is a double bladed sword that will cut both ways. We have the high probability of getting paired with a CR Skip player who knows nothing about their role of how to play DCUO. On the other hand if helps returning player catch up faster.

We are getting to or maybe we have already past the point, where there is too much for a new / returning player to do but they are faced with overly long queue times and lack of desire by other players to participate in certain Omni content. This leads to frustration and they most likely will abandon playing DCUO for something else.

There are no easy solutions unfortunately, and all current solutions have their negatives about them.

This kind of highlights the issue, for me CR skip is pointless, CR is easy to get as a new player, SP is hard due to lack of population, but these are not the things that are important now.

Its the artifacts and allies that are making the the biggest impact on builds now and yet they are impossibly difficult to attain at a reasonable rate.

I could get full CR in 1/2 days if i really tried, SP would take some farming but even if I farmed a couple hundered in a month, i would still be 2/3 years of having even 3 full artifacts and 3 legendary allies unless i spent stupid money. This is why new/returning players find it pointless to stick with the game.

I feel like there's a really productive discussion to be had here. What else to other games give along with their skip-to-endgame tokens that DC might emulate?

What's a minimum, really, for Allies and Artifacts in terms of end-game level?

Should you get 3x ally crates? How much ally favor? What's a usable level for an ally?

I've long felt that you should get 3x artifacts at 120 or 160 with the CR skip. Is that unreasonable?

What else is a CR skip lacking?

I think this is a great suggestion, they should without doubt be including 3x 160 arts and 3 allies to rank 6 minimum.

The current system along with the majority of the games overall all systems are outdated, the cr skip was a thing when artifacts and allies didnt exist, now that they are arguably the most important thing in the game in terms of build and perfromance, there needs to be a shift in design and mentality going forward.

120sp and maybe newer players can be decent for omnibus?
Oops, omnibus just came out.
I mean 120sp cr skip is decent for newer players and for their alts.
And if the price for it can be 4000 and not 5000MC
If not, then you just gonna have to help me with feats, all of them.

DCUO is the way it is because Daybreak has built up DCUO to follow in the form of Jack Emmert's Cryptic Studios online MMOs, starting with City of Heroes/Villains, Champions Online, Star Trek Online and Neverwinter - with Neverwinter being their most successful title that saw the most carry over injections into DCUO after Jack joined Daybreak.

Wolfpack was a start, but the game is still lacking several account-wide unlock item carry overs that Neverwinter features. We don't have anything for augments, for example, while Neverwinter does (called 'enchantments' there, being color coded gems you equip and can be redeemed on all alts on an account when fully maxed out).

Been playing a dusted off alt this month. No artifacts. Starter augments. Playing through the leveling process with just the basics and about 100 something SP. While doable, it definitely takes longer and feels rough. The Nth and Augment grinds, let alone ally grinds are very slow going. The time gating on some of these systems are just too extreme to push players into the paywall. You're definitely being judged/inspected by other players, too. Have had several players leave when they inspect the basic alt and don't see any powered artifacts in tow, even for simple content like duos. Feels like there should be something there to purchase materials for such using source marks. Problem with that is a leveling character is going to need source marks for gear already, let alone the steep costs of unlocking 3 of the 4 mainframe options.

Exos at least are tradeable and are obtained by breaking down gear, which can come from anywhere. Only time gating there is how fast you can pummel bosses and advance through tiers to get to more powerful bosses > more powerful gear > more powerful exos. No equivalent for ally favor & nth. They simply don't have an equivalent system. Can't trade Nth, and ally favor is heavily time gated. Harder paywalls for both to just buy materials directly. Just the slog.

Alternative could be allowing you to break down gear into either exos, ally favor, nth metal, or even source marks, instead of just exos. Same effect where more powerful gear could yield bigger rewards.

Other alternative would be to allow nth metal and ally favor to be tradeable on the broker instead of account bound. That's how exos work.

Jack Emmert certainly ruined this game, and once the damage was done he bailed out and poached away a lot of the talent from here. Yes, his love for video games and those who play them is evident.

The only system that’s alt friendly is exobytes and that’s Origin not episode exobytes. With those I can take my main toon after they’ve maxed out Might or Precision or Dominance or whatever and I can give them to my other alts to level them up quicker in their Origin exobytes too. If it’s your main you’ll probably have the higher endgame exos to give them. You can also buy, trade and sell on broker or to other players or leave them in league banks. No breakthroughs or catalysts to get. Only downsides is you need exp-materials to R&D stronger ones if you didn’t get straight Pristine ones. Also once you spec in a certain stat you can never put the experience anywhere else. You specced into Vitality but don’t want to be a Power Troll or changed powers? Too bad. I’m surprised they never monetized Orign Augments too but it needs an overall like all the other systems too. I suppose they could do both with your Neverwinter Enchantment example but meh to that.

See another thread where somebody's complaining about the ally system, and how you can't consume an ally equip to power up another one like you can with artifacts (which still rip you off on the exp penalty, anyhow).

Reason allies exist is because they exist in Neverwinter, and in Neverwinter there's like a hundred of thems Pokemon. Thing is, they didn't copy the ally system 1:1 by a long shot. In Neverwinter, companions are always present. They aren't 10 second summons (or less), they are always there. Their stats aren't powerful so they will never do more than 5% of what a player does, but every player in the party can bring one along, and they also help with solo content more readily than the DCUO variant, so in Neverwinter, while it can take a few weeks/months (depending on playtime) to level a companion, their presence is so much more robust that the whole 'catch 'em all grind makes a lot more sense there compared to DCUO.

Not to heap praise on to Neverwinter, either. Between Star Trek Online and Neverwinter, Cryptic's methodology of design pits you against a grind that will roughly take between 7-9 months of dedicated daily play to get to the end game with everything maxed out, and not just the basic armor/weapons.

They also have somewhat of a catch up system that, of course, is what DCUO also uses with events. Every new DLC (they call them 'modules' because they like to be different in Boston), there is an 'event' level entry that allows players to jump into the content and get stat scaled up the the bare minimum so you can run the DLC grind and get the actual DLC top end gear to raise your item level. That's where that came from with DCUO's events allowing you to basically do the same. The peripheral gear and items are where the rest of the grind kicks in that takes several months and rough farming.

More of yalls may want to actually check out Neverwinter if you play DCUO to get a better understanding of where several ideas came from and can then better understand the DCUO translations shortcomings, then wonder why certain things just didn't translate well despite, you know, Jack having been present. Try it out for a month or so. DCUO definitely has better gameplay as far as basic combat goes, but NW does some stuff that you'll wish was done in DCUO, and vice versa.

For example: DCUO's healing and tanking is bar none the best of any console F2P MMORPG. Healing automatically targets allies and the way aggro draw works in DCUO makes tanking a hell of a lot more approachable and role dedicated. In Neverwinter healers can struggle with having to manually aim (OTS) at the player that needs health to target them, which can be hectic in a crowded skirmish.

Neverwinter also smartly force-locks necessary roles for content, like other smart MMOs do, but that also means longer queue times where the usual morons that spoof their roles in DCUO can wait less, and then get away with abusing the idiotic roleless buffs. NW also doesn't paywall the players ability to play both role stances, like smart MMOs (damage/support), where as DCUO does. Have to cough up cash for that 2nd armory. No other way around it.

Anyhow... I got my long shelved munitions alt to CR380 something. No arts, 100 something SP, augs around 200ish for dps/170ish for trollin'. Absolutely massive difference without a single artifact. Compared to another alt with 3 unlocked at 80, it's more than double the damage output in comparison, so yeah - arts is basically selling power. It's why they allow art swapping, to promote more sales and shortcuts. It's kind of funny how the rival F2P title, The First Descendant has their director commenting on how gear swapping of that nature is getting patched out because, for game balance, they do not want that to be a thing.