Option to acquire in game feats with real money!

First off, let me say the following:

1. Unlike many (if not most) gamers who are typically anti-monitization, I am very much pro monitization in live service games as I understand business and would rather a game I like be a bit too expensive than get shut down and be non-existent due to a lack of profitability.

2. As an adult in his early 40’s, I’m sympathetic to adults who live busy lives and work hard to support themselves and/or their families but would like to spend the limited bit of “me time” they have enjoying this game and it’s highest and/or most challenging gameplay along with everything that goes with it ex. High level leagues, etc).

3. I’m a little less sympathetic but still understanding of those who took extended breaks and missed out on a lot of opportunities to get feats at a time when it was easier to find others to do them. They knew full well that a break would mean playing catch up upon return. Plus, if one forges solid connections and “game” friendships, they would most likely find those “friends” happy to see their return and willing to go out of their way to help with the catch up. So less sympathy, but still understand the crux.

4. I’m very sympathetic to those who lost their account and have to start over. But though quite unfortunate, that’s pretty rare and too much of an outlier to factor.

All that being said, I sternly vote NO WAY! Every other method of player progression is fully able to be purchased with real money. Even A LOT of SP is able to be purchased in ways that abide by TOS and even more yet by…ummm…more nefarious ways (I say don’t do it!). I’m pretty sure that purchasable amount along with the CR skip can give a player enough or close to enough SP to max out their crits , primary skill and if applicable, weapon trees. Suppirt roles require more to be at the same level, so maybe a bit of genuine grind is needed. But one can DPS with all the SP they need while they grind those out.

So there’s gotta be SOMETHING that rewards and represents dedication, perseverance, skill, networking, etc. Maybe I’d be more open to the idea if this game was more difficult in general (ex. Destiny 2) and required serious honing of game skills and networking/social circles over time to be able to successfully play most of the content. But, while there is some learning curve and you can’t just be elite ready in a day or a week, you could within a month or three. And that’s just too much of a “skip ahead” IMO. Plus, it would degrade the LFG process both by allowing players to fake capability and forcing those trying to avoid fakes to start actually interviewing prospective group members. That’s not good for ANYBODY. Sure, high sp doesn’t actually provide much statistical advantage. But as much as possible (speedhacking not withstanding) it shows you’ve been around the block a time or two and know your s*** to one degree or another. The game and the community need that element.

Already exists in the game. I recently came back and was astonished to how many skill points come from time capsules alone. They basically give you sp for buying time capsules.

1.Download DCUO
2.Drop 5 grand to have max skill point, arts, renown, everything
3. You win dcuo, delete game and move on.

We use to have that but it got significantly restricted. I know, I know... I'll shut up.

We have that now already Time capsules.

I never understood the mentality of not just playing the game. I used to play Ragnarok Online, and the number of people that would run bots to level up their characters for them was staggering. So, okay, you're going to bypass the entire game to get to the endgame content, why? So you can stand around in the starting area, picking fights with beginners? You've never actually played the game, so how do you expect to be any good in a raid, alongside people who have built up the skill to play well? Or maybe you'll just have your bot do that for you, too?

The same thing applies here. So you spent all that money to avoid actually learning how to play the game, what're you going to do in an elite+ raid? Go down the first time the boss does a one-shot because you don't have the reflexes to counter it, possibly causing your whole group to wipe? Or maybe you'll pull a Lex Luthor and pay the boss to take a dive.

Meanwhile, other players are actually playing the game, and are therefore learning HOW to play the game, and getting good at it (or in my case, somewhat less bad).

I feel like a better approach to this would be to look at some of the extremely tedious and seemingly impossible feats that take an excessive time investment or are impossible to queue. The PvP and PvE legends feats as well as lower content RnG feats. Some of those took me(without exaggerating) over 1,000 runs of a a single instance.

When those feats were designed and introduced there wasnt much else to do on this game. Now with all the content we have it wouldn't be a bad idea to allow the purchasing of SELECT feats for replay badges at a higher rate than if you already have it unlocked on an alt.

I don't feel this idea is completely outrageous. As for purchasing source marks and stabilizers to open caps, source marks(especially with loot locks removed) are extremely over priced. With how easy they are to come by now I really feel the price for 200 SM should be 1,000 MarketCash(900 for members) but that's for another conversation. Now, Time Capsules. Assuming one had zero collections collected and an infinite supply of caps it would cost close $5,000 USD to get all the feats from them. And please dont mention the broker since in game cash is extremely hard to come by for new/returning players unless they seek a method which would likely violate the ToS.

The last option would be to add a mechanic in the coding which would guarantee a new progressive feat tick to every RNG related feat based on the players who were placed in the instance by the On Duty menu as well as making the progress account wide. This would severely reduce the number of runs required to complete a large number of older content feats(most of which are only 10 feat point, some 25 points). Also increase the drop rate of content rare collections from instances. I don't mean break the drop rate either. But running Age of Justice, Earth 3, and other alerts with the increased drop rate feat unlocked hundreds of times each is not realistic with all the content we have in the game now.

Listen, I have 750+ SP and did everything the old fashioned way so I feel the pain of players who have negative emotions about new players getting it "Easy" but that's not really what it's all about. It's about an extremely low player count that doesn't go up due to many new and returning players realizing how steep the grind is and just saying "F it, ill play something else". MMOs are grindy by nature but allowing lower players to catch up to speed in a reasonable amount of time is healthy for the entire community, even players who are way ahead in the game.

Lastly, tier 1-4 content should have the clamp severely lowered in the name of saving time. Some of those instances take 45+ minutes or longer which is too long for the rewards they give. Stat clam was introduced to make everything take longer and force players to spend money as well as keep them on content longer. "Playing as it was designed or intended" has nothing to do with it, regardless of what anyone who works on this game says about it. But again, that's a topic for another thread.

Is it extremely hard? How so? Is it a USPC/PS phenomenon? I've completed all the capsule emblems and gear sets (the ones that give SP, anyway) within 7 months of returning to the game on a new account, without buying a single stabilizer, or violating ToS. The only thing, that's out of reach for me - for the time being anyway - are the rarest collection pieces and even that's largely because I got a bit bored with making money and bargain-hunting, the broker is broken and the population on EU server has been very low for the past few months. And If I really want those rewards for capsule collections - most of them I can buy for Quarks, if I just farm enough Source Marks.

Besides, Skill Points beyond certain point are barely useful and not at all necessary and there are enough of them available in-game to satisfy anyone, except for pathological completionists and people whose egos are bruised by their veteran leaguemates having more SP than they do.

Total SP: 765
SP from TC: 4

I can say that I am a new player, and it is really hard for me to get above some sort of paywall without real money. In reality this game gives you a lot of content for free, but you need to understand that is because people are ready to just donate, 10000 of dollars in to the game so developers can release new skins and be ready to release even more. I would never donate real money into a game, it would be much better for me to just buy a game for one time and spend a lot of hours in it.

From your total 765 skill points, only 4 are from Time Capsules? Is that what you are saying? Are you sure about that?

As someone who actually has 765 sp, this is nonsense. Even subtracting that 4, 761 sp is impossible without capsule items

Oh yes i know that. If that were the case, he potentially has like 875 skill ponts. Which would be an absolute record.
Was just asking for clarification ( didnt wanted to outright call him a liar)

I have several toons that are 'free' (just spent the $5 to unlock the +4 toons, more inventory and the ability to trade/mail items), most of these are farmer toons who collect stabilizers, run seasonals, some omnis and are used as fillers to get my mains into content that won't pop...so almost NO effort has gone into SP, save solo feats where I need to run a solo to finish a checklist or unlock an OW area (like Metal 1) or 'participation' type feats, and I'm not purposely going to fail feats...am I? That would just be silly. Almost every one of those toons has at least 250 SP, with almost no effort given, no seasonal feats from purchases (these are available for cash), or Style feats for styles you can buy with SM (also available for cash) and no TC feats save the counts for opening them (they DO get stabilizers granted after all, but these ARE also available for cash)...so dang near all are literally from just playing the game and running through stuff blindly.

Getting a workable amount of SP is not that hard.

And yes, technically they ARE selling SP in the TCs or by selling SM to get the feats done, or selling seasonal currency, but once you break the seal on outright selling them directly(like a 'feat bundle' or 'sp bundle'), it opens up a whole new level of potential for either impossible or unreasonable feats where 'buying' them would look way more attractive to most. Would most people have ground out 100 rotations of Wonderverse bounties if they could have just spent a few bucks in a few min? And for those that would still say 'I'd grind them' would you STILL say that if the counts were 200, or 500? It's a pandora's box we should not open any further than it already is.