New Stats Clamp

From all the information given I just wanted to discuss this (civil discussion please) about it.

I’ve seen a lot of people are very concerned about it and feel they are getting taken for a ride. From what it sounds it actually sounds nothing but good. Let me explain. Yes you know have to farm for source marks and yes we are being lowered to a point we can’t just one shot everything in the older content. But from the information given it seems like we are not going to be clamped down to that dlcs gear set stats. It seems like we will instead be clamped to be 3 dlcs ahead. I say this (as an assumption) because if you use the wonderverse for example, when that dlc gets turned to sour marks the difficulty of that raid would jump because we are getting brought back down. So doing it the day before the dlc ends and doing it the day after the dlc it will feel different. However if they make it to be 3 dlcs after than the transition will be smoother.

But assuming we are even just 2 dlcs ahead or even 1, we would still feel stronger compared to how it was when we were if that level. So it’s not as if everything is just becoming difficult again.

As for source marks. This is actually a good thing. Just like everything in this and every single game there will be a “Go To” spot to farm things. I suspect FoS3 since all the bosses are in one room. There will always be a Go To spot to farm source because it will be the meta spot. The fastest/easiest spot. In fact it will be easier to get source marks because there will be no loot locks.

Missing catalyst? Hit up the source farm spot and get all the catalyst you want. This will make getting the earlier lvl artifacts (120) faster and easier. Especially with the bonus nth from having membership.

The way I see this is that things got better. But I do want to listen to others points of views and see what they think.

I'm hoping that eventually we will be given the option to run stat-clamped for full source marks or not stat clamped as it is now. For me personally, if I had to choose one its would be the new stat clamping system but I'd still like to have the option of both.

I think it's much healthier for the game and should have been done years ago, now old players have a reason to play and new players can level characters the proper way without cr300 walking them through it. Much of the old content is better than new stuff so I'm looking forward to being able to play it properly.
I dunno why they stopped caring about people having lots of source marks

Honestly, I'm happy that they're doing it and support it.

The heart of this Episode is that they're opening up the game, and I think it's going to attract a lot of new Free to Play players. With stat clamping, people are going to enter raids and not have CR 345 people melting things instantly. Raids will be played the way they were meant to be experienced. And I think the overall "player skill" of the community will raise... players are not going to be carried like they were in the past. I think this is the healthy decision. And ultimately, I have more opportunity to grind Source Marks. Currently, I actually DID hit a point where I wanted to run stuff, but there were only so much relevant content to me, without resetting with replay badges.

That said, the pushback I see from long-time players is that all the hard work put into leveling their gear will feel meaningless since they're being clamped. There are some players that admitted that some of the more difficult feats in the game, they probably can't get unless they were over-geared.

I gave the suggestion in the Dev thread to allow parties to have the option to turn off clamping and receiving Loot-only, no marks.... but only if it's an entire party. That way, they can still feel uber-powerful, they can still re-run older feats.

I agree with you! I feel some people won't like the changes at first, but some instances will settle into some really popular spots. FOS3 like you mentioned.

I feel like I'm in the minority whenever I say this, but I personally love running FOS1 and FOS2. As a controller, I like CC'ing some of the adds and having that time to shine. If I were to run those raids now, (1) I don't get any marks, and (2) raid groups just burn through each in like 15 minutes.

With the changes, I'll be able to run those raids to my heart's content and not have to worry about trying to find people to run that with. If they do do a modest stat clamp, like clamping people to Tier 5 for the FOS raids... that seems fair. We're still gonna burn through it pretty quickly, but still get to enjoy the raid as they drew it up.

I heard about DCUO updating their infrastructure of the game and it entice me to come back to the forums and maybe redownload the game. (Left a bit after Stats Revamp for those for data research purposes)

As far as the topic of the thread, this has been something I been a part of many debates for the LONGEST when I participated in the forums. Having a system for all content to be played is a very common modern MMO practice that most mmos do, that I did not know why dcuo didn't implement it during my time.

Not only just for more wider source to earn marks, but new players to experience older content (non endgame content ), creates a nice ecosystem, AND BEST OF ALL help relieve the feeling of repetition for a genre about repetition. The main arguments that those against it always had a problem with was it would reduced the fantasy of feeling strong, which game-wise/logic-wise I never understood it.

For the sake of anti-clampers, I would like for the devs to put a option to turn it off for them - just don't give them rewards or if you made a pre-made group you can power it through all you like. This is a great decision for the longevity of the game.

I can completely see that side of things. I still think overall for farming purposes it will be better. But I can understand also having the option to choose to be clamped. I’m personally all for it regardless. I’ll definitely be running some of my favorite raids like fos2, khandaq, and even nexus. Prime battleground is also calling my name lol.

This is one thing I actually do think will benefit. Maybe not a lot since there will be meta spots. But overall the newer players will actually still learn mechanics when queing up. So I do see this as a positive.

That's not the ideal, there are many old instances that people still queue to farm OP collections and styles. Making it mandatory to be clamped to get your reward during those "money alerts" will be a huge detriment and time waster. Also, there are many old feats that are a pain in the *** to complete with pugs and I'm sure many new ones will be introduced in the future if we keep the feat=stat points system, it will only be worse with a stat clamp.

To the people that like the stat clamp, please just take off your gear and artifacts and ta-da, you have your stat clamp without even needing an update. Just keep the game the way it is.

They aren’t making it so that you are at cr with the dlc. You will still be at a higher cr state than the dlc. No one is making you actually try hard to do them

We don't know how much of a clamp it will be. But even if we get what the people seem to be speculating the most (2 episodes ahead stats), it's still not ideal for all the stuff I mentioned.

But isn’t that what you’re doing? Speculating?

Yes it won’t be as easy. But not everything has to be easy

I am and remain heavily opposed to stat clamping, but it is what it is.

I always said that if it was brought in it would be mandatory and not optional and that's why I never supported it. I'd like to resist saying "I told you so" but here we are and well "I told you so"

I think 3 DLC's would be a minimum.

I do however, have genuine concerns, that if they get the balance wrong this might not help queues in the way new players hope.

More experienced players depending on where that stat cap hits may very well just isolate themselves even more within their leagues and subsets of friends who they know and trust the competency levels of and the end result will be that perhaps the newer players will get a more "at level experience" without the max CR players one shotting everything, but they'll also be in there longer and their experience will be that much more difficult.

I hope for their sake actually that on this point I'm wrong

This isn’t the first time they tried “stat clamping”. The first time was a disaster and was changed quickly. I wa here for that and the original Origin Crisis, which almost killed the game. In both instances things were changed and returned to normal. There should be an option. If you believe this is going to help the newer players, I disagree. Be prepared for spamming Fos3 for marks, 340+. Lower levels will be excluded. I spent hours in raids that were new at the time and don’t wish to do so again for source marks only. I know there is much excitement for this and I feel it will end the same way it always has. Source marks is not enough incentive to spend time in old raids. Good luck getting groups for UM, BP, DWF, when we are clamped. People who have the feats will move on. I have played as Legendary for 10 years and this is the first time I have ever considered unsubbing. Being “elite” isn’t my thing, so XP is not much of a reward. I am waiting to see how this plays out, but stat clamping has been here before. I am afraid it won’t be the renaissance those in favor of it are portraying it. However, I do hope I am wrong.

Apollo Starr

That is blind to happen regardless. Even if they make it 5 dlcs gap I see players just going to the same instances to farm source marks which will be farmable after this.

New players are still not going to be running every single dlcs worth of content. The reason has nothing to do with the stats clamp being on or off. It’s just human nature. The mmo community always wants to get to the end ASAP. There’s nothing that can be done about this. If it can be done it will be done. Thats why you see so many players running YouTube loadouts without testing. Same with artifacts. You see players spending money and then complaining that they spent money. That’s the whole reason I made that artifact “guide”. Even I refuse to call it a full guide call all the information was already there lol. People gravitate to the fastest route.

And as for the “I told you so”…….. bye……

I'm not sure whether any of your post here was in response to anything I said because it seems to be talking about something else?

Also don't stress the "I told you so" comment, I was just gently teasing in general and sorry this wasn't specific to you, so no offense intended.

As for your post though I absolutely agree that people want to rush to the most relevant content, however under this new system people are going to have to farm at least, some, old content for source marks, with that being the case there are going to be "favourite pieces of content" that people might PUG because it's easy enough that any clamping won't cause great difficulty.

The trouble though is that elite end game players tend to also be creatures of efficiency, if the stat clamping system is too extreme or even if it's not, even if its moderate, there's at least a reasonable chance those more experienced players will even more so gravitate towards only running even old content within their leagues and friend groups, because they trust them to get it done quicker and without struggle stemming from inexperience. I mean even now you see requests in LFG for "exp groups" within a day of content release. I fear this might increase and spread right through to all content, you might even find kicking function ramping up, none of this being particularly helpful to those players that pug more often or newer players who pug more often before developing any networks.

Again I'm not trying to scaremonger it's just a genuine concern based 10 years experience within this community and I genuinely hope these fears or concerns never eventuate.

I understand why the developers are doing what they're doing, what they're trying at least to achieve, I'm just a little more pessimistic in the potential outcome I truly do hope it ends well for the game. I'm not leaving though, so don't worry

Lmfaooo no problem I was playing around too lol.

and I definitely understand where you are coming from. I’m also curious with what your concerns are about. It’s always just speculation anyways until we get it on test anyways lol. But that’s the point of this thread lol. See what people think. Even with people you don’t agree views on lol

What I read here is farming styles, collections, gaining feats.... nothing about just doing the bare minimum as far as completing the instance to get marks. The main point at least I see is to just get people to run the older content for something as simple as marks. Anything else is under your jurisdiction on how you obtain that. This is healthy.

In the wise words of panderus: Point. Blank. Period. Paragraph. Mic drop.

Its always end of the world with you guys and never 'Hey, lets at least help out and give solutions to solve both ideals' .

I will keep myself short. Have there been implementation of this before in dcuo. Yes and it failed. Now what benefit you to continue bringing back their past failures instead of encouraging them. We reach a pretty good point in the time period of modern MMOs standards and how things can be properly implemented. Maybe Dcuo learned from their previous mistakes and studied other MMOs and how they did it why they're successful *cough cough a game with the number 14 *cough* *cough*.

This update also included MANY other great quality features..... but this alone gonna break your streak huh

I’m personally happy that they are updating some features other MMOs have had for a while. Like login rewards. It’s a pretty much a staple in the mmo genre. Being able to play more than 1-3 raids a week is also a common thing in MMOs. Farming is a common thing in MMOs. Pets and pet building (allies) is a common thing in MMOs.

I do have a few concerns of these changes but they are nothing major. Nth for alt (we used to be able to get the 3k and other vault/stabilizer none tradable nth for alts) since daily log ins will be for one toon. And allies being to impactful being a second. Most MMOs have pets but the pet aren’t game breaking. I like the idea of allies. I just don’t want them to be so impactful that them make roles *cough*troll*cough* even more useless lol

Actually no, this isn’t going to break my streak, but thanks for your insightful response. I stated I would wait to see what happens, but I have seen this before. Stat clamping along with the lack of benefit for legendary will end it. When there is no incentive to keep paying I won’t. This doesn’t mean I will stop playing. But to not go into this without hesitation, considering the past would be foolish. I do think the “everything will be great approach” is unrealistic. I have carried my fair share of CR skippers in end game content, I don’t wish to do the same in older content for source marks, but I guess that means I am not as magnanimous as you.

Issue with the current system is that you can only play the 3 most recent dlc and feel somewhat of a challenge. Games been going for 10 years and were so limited