PS3 RIP, PS4 optimization

Hello,

I have been playing DC from the very start and I still continue to rock its world. DC Universe Online has become a virtual homeworld not only for myself, but also for my brother, friends and even my wife has been playing it for several years. I like to read the forum casually and passively on a weekly routine, but this time around I thought I'd provide some basic feedback. Due to time constraints, I am unable to keep up with everything related to DCUO; forgive my lack of knowledge.

Feedback

• We have successfully completely migrated from PC to console (PS4). It's nice to see that cross-gaming is up and running, giving players the freedom and flexibility of choice.
• Our gratitude goes to the engineers of DCUO for supporting the PS3 version for so long. I didn't jump ships immediately, mostly due to financial limitations and outstanding backwards compatability issues, so it was nice to have the time to prepare for the next generation of hardware. Needless to say that the time is ripe to focus on more powerful hardware. NextGen has finally reached a worthy milestone: It offers a decent amount of impressive titles and pricing is no longer an issue due to cheaper hardware - there's literally no reason to hold back on PS4 anymore.
• Monthly updates are looking good, incredible work pace.

Questions

• PS3 vs. PS4: It's pretty clear that the PS3 was holding DCUO back in pretty much every way possible. Now that the minimum bar has been consideraly raised and due to the fact that you guys are going to dedicate your time and efforts on PS4 (and presumably XBO?), what can we expect from a optimzation point of view? Changes will definitely happen, but to what extent is the question.
• How difficult would it be to migrate from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4 for DCUO?
• I see DC is still lacking voice dubs in several languages: German, Spanish, French (just to name a few). Why? Why not enable the English dubs for all languages and support them locally via translated subtitles? Basically, leave it the way it is now and add the English vocalization on top to the localized text. It's better than nothing.

Wishlist - a lot of things look and feel outdated by modern/todays standards. Just a couple of ideas and things I'd like to see realised going forward after the demise of the PS3 era:

• Better graphics (models, faces, animation in general, world, vegetation, water, skybox etc.).
• Underwater worlds, thus improved swimming capabilities. I want Aquaman's world to become the dire, dire docks experience of Mario 64 or alternatively a true rival to Vashj'ir (WoW). Give me Atlantis!
• NextGen fish AI (lol).
• Enhanced sound quality (see questions).
• Enhanced gameplay and animations.
• Building bigger and better worlds: The game world needs more life, mini-games and things to interact with. This is not limited to Metropolis, Gotham and CC, but also instanced regions like New Genesis need a major facelift. New Genesis feels like a small ant hive compared to the bigger, wider and generally more open world nature of Smallville, Kahndaq and Hive Moonbase. I also want regions like NG to be filled with more nature, animals, LIFE in general - there's a lot of potential for impressive landscapes this time around. Cities could finally get a moving train and/or airplanes, helicopters and other things to make them feel alive. I literally want to get lost exploring beautiful zones instead of walking down a slim, recycled, pre-destined path from A to B and back to A (rinse and repeat).
• Bigger homes, more ways to customize it. A good example of how diverse and flexible housing is can be seen in Everquest 2 and SWG (RIP).
• Better PvP. Make it possible to literally smash your opponents through walls and into buildings (in instanced zones with advanced physics, for example).
• More story based CGI movies coupled with one or two big expansions per year while continuing to support the monthly game updates. Give us the best of both worlds.
• Basically: Take a look at what Rockstar is doing/adding to the world of GTA Online. That's the kind of progress/upgrade I expect.

Final words

That's it for now. What are you guys looking forward to?

Putting my money where my mouth is: In order to show my gratitude for your long support of the game on PS3, for continuous development and in order to support your plans to enhance the game on NextGen hardware, I have purchased 6 months of legendary subscription and I plan to buy another 6-12 months once we get some intel on what we can expect from DCUO after Feb 2018.

An example of another Unreal 3 powered game doing it right when it comes to graphical nature fidelity:

DCUO - NEW GENESIS



TERA - also powered by Unreal Engine 3







The difference is huge - and that's using the same game engine. Now imagine what either a worthy NextGen upgrade to DC utilizing the maximum potential of UE3 or alternatively an engine upgrade to UE4 would do to this game. Tera is available on PC right now but it's coming to PS4 in early 2018. I'd like to see DC step up to the challenge before the competition hits consoles.

Been a while since I tried Terra.....
So remind me....

Can you fly in Terra??? or move at Super Speed??

Hello there,

sure... you can fly in Tera: http://tera.enmasse.com/game-guide/gameplay/flying-mounts

But no, you can't move at super speed but there are other ways to boost your traveling speed.

Instanced zones in DC like NG or other areas (2-, 4- and 8 player zones) don't offer much space to move around anyway, so pushing the graphics in instanced/phasing zones shouldn't be that taxing on the x86 PS4 NextGen hardware.

I'd love to see more open environments for group play though.

Cheers,
Soniee

I have no idea why they aren't using the full power of unreal engine 3, but it could have something to do with the game's core, i hope it can be possibly changed.

I have been hoping for this for a very long time so I hope they make at least Some graphical overhaul.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Acrobats should be swimming when moving across water at full speed. Leave running across the surface to speedsters.

lmao

I like these. And you are not jumping to the conclusion that it would be easy to just switch from a customized UE3 to UE4.

The mute characters and cutscenes have been a thorn in DCUO's side for a long time now, that I lost all hope it will ever happen.
Instead the translation quality for the German version became worse (Can't say anything about French or Spanish). The peak is Amazon Fury II with errors all over the place...
It got much better in Earth 3, so there is still hope it won't continue as bad as it was.

1. Better models already started I believe. Did you take a closer look at Superman lately?
2. The last thing I want is: to fight while flying, which is what fighting while diving underwater is... I'm not against going underwater, but without any ground to fight on there'd be not much to do for us, right?
3. I am not sure what Fish AI would be good for. In general the AI of bosses is quite underwhelming - no surprises, no clever bosses that summon healing adds...
4. Give the English voice over to everyone already - and try not let the disaster of AF1 happen again
5. What is enhanced Gameplay and animations? That's so generic...maybe go into detail what you had in mind when you wrote that
6. I agree. The worlds should be filled with more plants and wildlife. Personally I am still hoping for a visit on Mogo's surface to fight through its jungle. Or the surface of Ranx - which is probably an extremely futuristic city!
7. I'd like to see some more content in our bases instead, which was the original idea behind the rigid layout. What I would love to see would be base items that cover entire walls, ceiling or floor areas and look like a different room or like a city/sky view. With that in mind... we could get a shark tank, right?
8. The way DCUO was build and considering how many games have such realistically collapsing enviroments...hmmm.... Can you name any game that has that without it being a scripted event?
9. The problem with big CGI movies is that they are expensive and don't add much to the game. Instead I hope for seeing more diverse cutscenes and more emotes will add more depth to the story than one short CGI cutscene.
10. I don't want expansions - the current quarterly Episode releases seem to work well and the devs have found ways to create larger enviroments to fill with multiple episodes. I'd prefer if they keep it that way.

Tera is also outdated though.

2 things I hope to see happen...
1. Is it too much to ask for a a sitting animation? Like to being able to sit in a chair or bench would be awesome for a game released in the last decade to have. The last boss of the Huntress solo mission, the Mob boss (I forget his name) is supposed to be sitting behind his desk when the cutscene starts but it is painfully obvious he is just kneeling and it is so bad looking.
2. See my sig. Surely we can get just a few buildings popped out of the bottles now. I know it is a lot of work but I would love to see that happen.

Hello everyone,

glad to see ppl joining the discussion. Thanks @everyone providing some intel!

• You're right; I just read a few articles and the information within the very first pages leads me to believe that a transition from UE3 to UE4 isn't feasible due to the huge amount of work needed (if possible at all). It looks like a nightmare to even attempt it. Here: https://www.google.de/search?q=unreal 3 to unreal 4&oq=unreal 3 to unreal 4 &aqs=chrome..69i57j0.5927j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
• This means the only viable way forward is to continue to push the UE3 engine to its limits. I'm confident that it can be done. If anyone can do it, it's the ppl working behind the scenes at Daybreak. These guys have already proven their capacity for greatness in games like EQ, EQ2 and SWG (<3). If Tera En Masse can do it, so can these guys.
• Graphically, when it comes to our characters, I like the approach they are taking with the new Superman model. Now take that and apply that level of quality to player models. What I'd also like to see enhanced are the faces of our characters.
• There was a survey? I'd love to see the results. Any idea where I can find it?
• EQ1/EQ2 has made huge jumps in several areas and I'd love to see DC get some love as well. I am willing to argue that DCUO is much more popular than all of the other Daybreak titles combined. It needs to get some love; this game deserves it.

True dat! I like the idea.

@mute characters and cutscenes: I agree 100%.

1. Superman looks gorgeous (no h omo), both artistically and graphically. I'd like to see this level of quality applied to our own characters.
2. I agree 100%. Fighting while flying sounds extremely nice from that perspective. In terms of underwater gameplay I would say they could take the same approach showcased in FF14 or WoW Vashj'ir with this. A huge underwater zone leading to Aquaman's realm or Atlantis would blow my socks off. There are many ways how the engineers could implement such a feature.
3. That was actually a joke referring to this: LINK ... but then I realised some pets and animals could actually use better animations. For example: The animals in the Gotham Zoo raid look more like animatronics from an old movie rather than "living" zoo creatures. The zoo itself is a great idea btw - very refreshing.
4. This 100%.
5. There are many examples, but the one that comes to mind immediately are the cutscene animations. Animations during cutscenes look like the PSX/PSOne era type of movement (arms, head, mouth, eyes, body motion). Watch this and compare that to most of the cutscenes and emotes we see in DC. Graphics aside, the actual animation looks like the type of movement we see in DCUO: Short, repeating, robotic movements with minimal to no facial animation whatsoever.
6. This 100% yet again.
7. I agree. I'd love to be able to actually "see" outside of my apartment window tbh. My character in GTA Online has its own apartment and I can literally see the action going on outside from the 30th floor in real time. Take a look.
8. GTA Online has real-time physics/destruction in certain areas and also the entire Battlefield series built on the Frostbite engine. Fighting games like DB: Xenoverse and even low-end mods, such as ESF, offer some or any form of destruction / world interaction when fighting.
9. Sadly, that makes complete sense. CGI is too expensive and I guess most ppl don't care, but I do like those high quality cutscenes driving the story forward. This intro alone was the sole reason I was able to get my family and friends to try DCUO in the first place. Pure epicness - it doesn't get better than that. I'd be willing to forget about fancy CGI cutscenes if your vision comes true one day; more diverse ingame cutscenes and more/better animation/emotes during said scenes.
10. I'd like both tbh.

Looking at some gifs I also remembered that I'd like to have yet another level of super speed that has to be earned one way or another. Something not everyone can access easily. I remember back in the old SWG days how awesome it was to finally lay my eyes upon a fully transcended Jedi player, capable of using the force to travel the lands via highspeed movement. For flying characters, it could look like this. Gamepad rumble gets more intense when slowly but steadily activating this mode, flashy/lightning effects are showcased during super speed x3 leaving a trial of effects/your aura behind the character.

Cheers,
Soniee

The problem lies with the game's core as you put it. Certain choices were made very early on in development, and that has locked them in certain ways. Changing the core is expensive and time intensive...so it's pretty much the same issue as porting over to Unreal 4....essentially making a new game. That means that changes are going to be made on a much smaller scale, and we have to scale our expectations to match.

Khalon, I've known you for years, have you ever known this community to have realistic expectations?

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as "upgrading from Unreal 3 to the Unreal 4 engine". At least not in terms of an update you can download or whatever. An upgrade to the Unreal 4 engine means starting a new project in the Unreal 4 editor and then loading in your existing assets and rebuilding DCUO from scratch. Although, technically not scratch because the models, textures, audio etc. would already exist. But the actual assembly would need to be redone completely. I believe this may have been done recently in the Batman: Return to Arkham release, but I haven't read a lot of literature about it, nor experienced the game for myself.

As you can probably tell, this would be a monumental undertaking at a ridiculous cost. Even if they somehow gave this update a green light and they successfully ported it to the Unreal 4 engine, the majority of the game's models would still be using the same models and textures built when the game was first created.

Whilst Unreal 4 would do an impressive job lighting these unimpressive models, they'd still look crap. So further expenses would be required to modernise all the low quality models. The only models which would really look any good are the more recent models, since about the Summer event's Fiddler Crab style on wards, as this is the first style I can recall using glossy maps to improve the style's texture by manipulating how shiny certain sections of the style are.

In regards to your wishlist:

• Better graphics (models, faces, animation in general, world, vegetation, water, skybox etc.)

Yep ^ although it's already been happening for a long time now. Per Degaton, Owlman, Alexander Luthor etc. are all examples of modern assets created using modern techniques that look vastly superior to the likes of John Stewart and Penguin.

• Underwater worlds, thus improved swimming capabilities. I want Aquaman's world to become the dire, dire docks experience of Mario 64 or alternatively a true rival to Vashj'ir (WoW). Give me Atlantis!

Might be possible, but it might not happen because of the fact it would change fundamental gameplay mechanics, such as movement.

• NextGen fish AI (lol).

Sure, why not.

• Enhanced sound quality (see questions).

Not sure how better the sound quality can get, but I agree that they should put English language in by default for all versions of the game, if there isn't a dedicated language.

• Enhanced gameplay and animations.

Yeah, I'd expect this. With the PS3's limited memory capabilities out of the equation, the pre-load can be filled with more animations and whatnot. So this is probably one of the areas where we'll notice a change first.

• Building bigger and better worlds: The game world needs more life, mini-games and things to interact with. This is not limited to Metropolis, Gotham and CC, but also instanced regions like New Genesis need a major facelift. New Genesis feels like a small ant hive compared to the bigger, wider and generally more open world nature of Smallville, Kahndaq and Hive Moonbase. I also want regions like NG to be filled with more nature, animals, LIFE in general - there's a lot of potential for impressive landscapes this time around. Cities could finally get a moving train and/or airplanes, helicopters and other things to make them feel alive. I literally want to get lost exploring beautiful zones instead of walking down a slim, recycled, pre-destined path from A to B and back to A (rinse and repeat).

To my knowledge, there's never been a limitation on the devs producing new zones up to the size of Metropolis. I don't think technical limitations prevented, for example, New Genesis being the size of Metropolis. I think it's more to do with costs. Because large environments require more assets to be made. The more assets that are made, the more you need to pay. So I think this still may be an issue going forward.

The little things like trains and such might be considered, but it'd depend on costs and whether or not there was a return on it. Otherwise the money spend developing such features might be better spent elsewhere, on something that would go over with the players.

• Bigger homes, more ways to customize it. A good example of how diverse and flexible housing is can be seen in Everquest 2 and SWG (RIP).

I'd like to see this too, but I think it comes back to being a cost issue, rather than a performance issue. There's no reason I can think of why a lair couldn't be the size of Kahndaq. Or even be Kahndaq's map with regions dedicated to your decorations. It's more the idea that an artist has to be set aside, and asked to build a new layout with new assets and textures etc. We know from previous posts on the issue by developers that the lair themes that already exist didn't do great, so they're probably not keen to produce more. But I do agree that this is becoming a missed opportunity, given the quality and volume of base items being put out.

• Better PvP. Make it possible to literally smash your opponents through walls and into buildings (in instanced zones with advanced physics, for example).

Probably not. They were quick to sweep Serums under the rug, after promising grapple tech. I can't see them doing stuff like this, tbh. Just doesn't really fit in with how DCUO is played.

• More story based CGI movies coupled with one or two big expansions per year while continuing to support the monthly game updates. Give us the best of both worlds.

Probably not. CGI movies are extremely expensive to create. I'm an amateur CGI artist and I can't even afford the time to produce a new intro video for my YouTube channel at the moment XD The costs involved in making something more substantial, as I feel you're expecting here, would simply outstrip any potential return. So it'd be a waste of money. Although, extremely cool. Who didn't love those CGI trailers?
That's my own personal take on what's being discussed in this thread. I'm not a professional or a developer, but I have a little bit of knowledge on many of the things discussed.

If I had to ask for possible things, it'd be re-enabled high texture settings, higher distance scaling settings so there is less pop in, and that updated UI.

The competition is weeks away even for a pc player dragon hunter and tera look like they will be smash hits on console - DCUO lost their opportunity years ago to become a formidable MMO. Hell, this game could of been the WOW on console but after 7 years its old news and missed potential....Move on

As far as sitting in chairs goes, from what I understand that's always been something of a challenge in general when it comes to MMOs. The only game I've played where sitting in chairs, on benches or even at the edge of a bed was possible was SWG, and they built that into the game from the start. Cantinas, spaceports and even player camps had seats in them that could be used by players, and that expanded to player housing and chairs/couches that could be placed in the houses.

It wasn't completely perfect, though. There was only the sitting option, so you couldn't stretch your character out on a bed to take a nap. Also, with many seats your character would end up kind of perched at the edge of the seat rather than sitting fully in the chair, so it could look a little off.

It was something of a point of pride for the game when other SOE games/players would try and talk smack about SWG. Seems like there was one time an EQ dev or player started poking a little fun at SWG, and the comeback was, "Well at least we can sit in our chairs." LOL

Anyhow, that little trip down memory lane aside, I'm not sure how viable it would be here. Player bases came pretty late and the furniture has never really been built for use in this game, more as decoration. It'd be a nice little quality of life improvement, but it may be something far from simple. Even without the possibility of having to recode all the furniture with a seat, you'd still be looking at changes like having to make new animations for sitting or reclining.

I shudder to think what kinds of headaches beds or couches would provide. LOL

I know...I know ...but I have to try.