Work In Progress Mid-Year Development Update: Announcing Large Content Releases, Open Episodes, and Summer Plans

Goodbye legendary. I'm going premium for the first time in 3 years.

I would be really disappointed if they delayed it without changing anything on the game.
But we are finally going to see some changes, because #statsmatter and #newprogressionsystem are coming with amazon fury 3, we'll finally have a balanced episode again, and with 4-6 months to make it, i doubt it'll be a bad episode, at least amazon fury 2 level, if not better.
Also, they are finally giving the pvp players a new map and new gear after years, weapon balance is coming really soon...

It doesnt matter. Part of the reason and terms of buying legendary when I did included access to everything. That is part of what I paid for along with many others. Therefore we should get that month back. I am aware it won't last forever... I still pay for it.

Am I reading that right? They're getting rid of monthly content (guess it was too much) and switching to larger/big content drops. They're doing one last monthly content release and then the next one is the end of this year or early next year. So about 6 months.

Also no style or gear unlocking this year.
Water powers are now a maybe for this year. Read: end of year at the earliest.

This is some horrible news for this game.

Style and Gear Unlocking
We still want players to be able to keep up alternate characters more easily, and expand the systems introduced with feat unlocking. However, while work continues, both style and gear unlocking are no longer expected to launch this year.

This is VERY disappointing imho. This was what I was most excited for. Overall it sounds like a promising update(for the good of the game), but this seemed to be a pretty simple thing to implement and now seems to just be put on the back burner for an unknown amount of time if we ever get it at all.

Curious about this. What is Water's development history?

Not even three months in to a one year sub and I find out that I get no new content for six of the twelve months I paid for.

But it gets even better. Water powers, alternate progression, style and gear unlocking and even #statsmatter are nothing more than hollow "plans for the future" for much of those six months (or longer) as well.

Many may not see it but the path towards pay to win continues with the level 25 auto boost. I doubt it will be long before we see skill point catch up packs and gear boxes in the marketplace too.

But all of that is okay because we get large content sometime in the future... and PvP.

At least now I know why you're giving content away this summer, nobody in their right mind would spend a cent with the way this ship is sailing.

WHOO! Finally, more League goodies. So, when League Halls first came out, that's where most of us stayed. It was large, roomy, comfortable to look at, and had some useful items such as mailboxes. However, we started to get annoyed by the fact that there were A LOT of locked doors that we had no way of opening. Yea there's locked doors on the Watch Tower, but we don't own that so we can't go around opening their crap. We do own the League Halls those, colouring, filling up, and naming them ourselves. So ya know, this is a basic please open up the rest of the league hall so that we can make what we want out of them. Also, as a bonus note, I'm down with giving new styles/types of L.Hs so we can feel the variety out of them. I miss Earth, and the Moon ain't doing it for us.

For Adding league tools, HMM? League Missions, maybe more League Proficiencies. Which does add the question, would it be possible to add Pres tokens that grant higher amounts? I'm not talking thousands, but maybe the highest it could go would be 730? To fill more than 13 Profs take 325,000 Pres, and to add more would mean a change to the Pres Cap as well.

Other than that, I can't think of anything else. League Hall styles and doors, League Missions, New League Mods, and Prestige.

Add how to put mods in your gear for level 25+ because too many people in the game have no mods in their gear and don't understand their importance.

You still have acess to everything... And your acess is a lot better than their acess, they gave the old players 1 month of free membership back in 2013 or 2014 (can't remember), we got a comeback of many players in the game.
If it was a month or two ago, i would be completelly agains't giving new players the episode for free, because they could skip gear really quick, but now i see the good side of it, ofc many guys will skip content like crazy, but they will have 4-6 months to adapt to it, and if they want to keep playing, they will have to pay a sub just like you do.

i just feel bad for the people who live and breath DCUO if your in a large league that doesn't communicate outside of the game also, that long of a break can be a group killer for leagues. so I advise everyone to make some friends on PSN or phone chats or anything of that nature to keep the friendships going because when the content is scarce so will be the long term players that are real gamers and not just on this MMO. so good luck to you all I hope everyone weathers the storm. Winter is coming to steal a line from GoT lol

Glad to hear about all this guys! A lot of changes here, and many for the better. A few prices too.

My questions:

1. Will there be a change to content structure from EP27 onwards? Less raids, more alerts? Less elite content? Less OP items?

2. Will EP28 onwards have a variety of storylines?

3. In the Episode 24/25/26 livestream SJ said that we'd only see a part of Kandor in the EP26 Bottled City of Kandor raid. Are we likely to return to Kandor to continue the Kryptonian storyline?

4. Will there be any new feats for the new PVP season coming in August?

5. Will we see a return to open world content/bounties with large content releases?

6. Will Tier 8 be a shorter tier than previous tiers? Usually new tiers start in May of each year, and as EP27 will be out late this year, EP28 early spring next year (?), thats 18 pieces of content for T8, less than T7.

7. How will content relevancy work with large content releases? Will content from EP21-26 have their relevancy affected/altered by large content releases - as large content releases will all be on a level?

8. On that note, will large content releases all be released on the same difficulty level, all content available at same CR, and for example all vendor gear at same item level? (In monthly theres +3 item levels for each monthly release, or +4 after a cycle has passed)

9. With the return of large content releases, will we see a return to journal missions, something absent from monthly content (aside from Oa solo)?

10. With the 4-5 month gap between EP26 and EP27, will there be alternate PVE content in the meantime? Like Oan SM, maybe a new SM, other?

That's all I can think of for now

In case the back and forth in the post is a bit confusing, I made this Timeline to try and give it a visual concept of the post. It only contains that which have dates or roundabout dates:

Thank you so much devs this monthly content was starting to realy burn me out ive taken like 3 breaks since it was implemented and didn't know how long I could keep playing this game the only things keeping me here were my friends my league and no valid completion for another superhero mmo but with this I can start enjioying this game again no more rushing to get things done I finaly have time to exo farm for to collect to get my sp higher than 244 it is now time to relax and actualy enjoy the game making the game fun again instead of fealing like a job thank you so much this is the best news ive heard on this game in a long time

Without the need for even drops per month does this mean the Rings and Face will drop at the rare level moving forwards? or will we still be forced to craft these items for achieve highest CR/Stats?

mad skills trex you made that thing fast.

You're missing the point of why people are upset Jareth. People don't want to wait 4 to 5 months before PvE gets any new content. That is devaluing legendary subs so much

#statsmatter is still planned to come with or before episode 27.
Auto Boost is something the players have been asking for a long time, but it should be for alts only. Well, at least not many new guys are going to buy a auto boost... I hope so.
YES IT IS, anything for larger content, really, i was definetelly tired of monthly content, i don't know how the future will be, but i definetelly think they could change it for better with larger content, and make a awesome come back with amazon fury 3 being a huge episode just like AF2, i really want to see the alternative progression system...

What would be nice is if you gave us say 1 small piece of content say a duo, solo, daily, bounty, etc...each month. It doesn't have to be anything big. Just something to keep us busy, maybe tie in some really complicated or time consuming feats.

If it is a daily, you get a 50 point feat if you complete the daily 50 times. This way, players still have something new to run, even if it is only a 5-10 minute item. Also, it would only be available to Legendary members, this would encourage more of us to pay if you want those extra feats, etc...

Just throwing something out there to keep players engaged between episode 26 and 27.

This is great news. I can not pay or play for MONTHS, and literally buy one sub every 3-4 months for a month, finish everything, then leave again. They had me paying for stuff every month with monthly content but that is all over now! Frees my wallett up to pay for other games. Thanks, Mepps and co!