Replaying Collections Should Reward Alts – Let’s Talk About Bats Are Crazy!

Hey everyone,

I wanted to start a conversation about something that's been bothering me — and I know I’m not alone. The way the Bats Are Crazy! collection handles iconic ability rewards, along with the broader direction regarding alternate characters, feels like a step backward.

Right now, if you replay the collection on an alt, you don't receive the iconic ability again. While this might seem logical at first — to prevent duplicate rewards — the end result is frustrating for those of us who enjoy leveling alts and putting real time into building them up.

One of the biggest joys in games like this is experimenting with different characters, trying new builds, and extending our playtime through variety. But when significant rewards like iconic abilities are tied to a single completion and locked out for alts, it kills that sense of progression. It sends a message that alt play isn’t valued and that’s incredibly demotivating.

Rather than promoting replayability, this approach actually limits it. If meaningful content doesn’t offer meaningful rewards on our other characters, what's the point in continuing to play them?

I truly believe this design choice discourages engagement and harms long-term player investment. I'd love to hear how others feel about this. Has it affected your desire to play alts? What changes would you like to see?
Let’s keep this discussion constructive and visible. Alt-friendly systems don’t just benefit a niche group — they give everyone more reasons to stay invested in the game.

With the confirmation that we will not be receiving the ability on our alt characters, I have felt demotivated to play on them. I have also lost interest in completing the initial collection itself on my main. I do not really have a purpose to acquire it there, as it is not my main DPS character anyway. Now I have to choose between having a complete character on my main, or actually using the ability on my DPS character - and I am probably going to choose neither and just not complete the collection.

Hello,
As a big Batman fan I wanted to share my disappointment with this announcement. I genuinely thought that after investing so much—having to choose between feeding my family or opening hundreds of capsules —I’d be able to unlock the bat swarm ability for all 16 of my Bat-Family theme’d characters .

Finding out that each alt has to do the collection individually feels disheartening , especially considering how low the drop rates are.
I cannot imagine myself playing Bat Alts without my brand new Bat-ability . I don’t think that’s a smart or fair design choice, and I hope the team reconsiders this approach.

From one Bat to another,
Gotham’s Protector

As a person who has played DCUO for the most part of the last 10 years through all the ups and downs this is by far one of the worst if not the worst decision this developer team has ever made. Its is bad enough that the new abilities locked behind the Event tab are not obtainable anymore since they expired at the beginning of this DLC, we’re locking them behind time capsule collections now?? Having to do it once for the new ability is bad enough but now I have to do it 3 times since I have 3 toons. It’s outrageous. Replaying the feat should absolutely reward the ability through the mail like they have done in the past with allies (which shouldn’t have been in time capsules either in my opinion). This just shows the money hunger/greed of whoever is the brains behind this decision. As a loyal player I hope they reconsider their decision to not allow us to replay the feat to obtain the ability.

Time capsule rewards should be tied to the feats. You unlock the feat on any char, you get the item that's untradeable. force people to complete the collection instead of just buying the item from the broker for the same price as the most expensive collection piece. Its so dumb

One of the best aspects of games like this is the freedom to experiment with different characters, test new builds, and extend playtime through variety. But when meaningful rewards—like iconic abilities—are locked behind one-time completions, it undermines the appeal of playing alternate characters. It sends the message that alts aren't valued, which can be incredibly demotivating. Now, people with multiple characters have to spend even more money to unlock the ability on their alternate characters. This decision discourages players from creating new characters.Rather than encouraging replayability, this system actually discourages it. I genuinely believe this design choice discourages long-term engagement and hurts player investment.

Tying a power to a time capsule collection and making you need to get it on every character is a step too far.
Alts are hard enough as is.

The duality of the decisions made by DB is insane.

"Hey look, make a new character, get free rewards when you make one and level it up!"
"You will not have much alt support because we make money from selling you this stuff "

DCUO needs to transfer everyone to a family type of system. All your characters should share SP as it should tie to your account. Everything but artifacts and gear should be transferable via shared bank. It would make DCUO so much better in terms of handling alts, playing the game and experiencing all it has to offer.

The feat is setup to trigger when you collect the ability,
having it also drop the ability as well, would be a little unusual; but I definitely understand the frustration.

Perhaps they should make it so that we could actually buy the collection pieces other characters on the account have have using replays?
(then we would have the broker be flooded with collection rewards,
unless we make the rewards account bound, or account bound when triggered via replays)

I just here to sign it

So you want them to create a problem no one asked for or liked... then sell the solution to us in the form of replay badges.... No. No thank you indeed

I also urge the dev team to please reconsider the decision to not allow the new iconic ability to be rewarded when replaying The Bats Are Crazy! collection feat. In general, I believe that having an iconic ability locked behind a paywall with low rng drop rates to be extremely predatory behavior and a new low for this company. This sets a precedent for the removal of quality-of-life features and has a negative impact on your most loyal players, that have invested their time and money in this game for over a decade. Most of us who continue to be avid supporters, all have multiple characters that we actively play and would not even consider an alt, but another main character. By changing longstanding features such as replaying feats for rewards across your account, you are not only discouraging willingness to invest in the time capsule and making a clear statement about the devaluation of alt characters, but these decisions also make your most loyal players question if we should continue supporting a company that has now proven to prioritize shortsighted and overall predatory monetization tactics, without even considering feedback from the community.

in games i have played outside of this one, i know when they try to...lets say, implement something that is not very player friendly but hugely financially beneficial to the devs, once enough rage happens, they tend to cave and make more friendlier changes.

lets see how much rage this creates and see what happens, i can totally see a dev team changing it and allowing it to be purchased on alts. time will tell.

Look on the bright side. The devs finally did something that the majority of players agree about lol. Sure most of us hate it. But still very rare for the community as a general whole to agree on something. So props to the devs for uniting the community XD

All it would take is a little transparency to make us happy in all honesty.

"Hey, we are releasing these elite henchmen. They have unique abilities and will be a test for future possible additions to the game. With this in mind. These elite henchmen will receive adjustments in the near future on [x Specific thing to do with the henchmen] to compensate for any additional Elite henchmen trinket releases"

That is all it would have taken to make the community know. We would have understood they were a test, they would be nerfed/changed to make way for any other possible iterations of them.

"Hey, We are releasing a new time capsule with the iconic ability inside. This will be a simple test or experiment to see the community reaction to said practice and to hopefully bring new content in various different ways in the future."

Again, all it took

That's insane. It doesn't make any sense. Wow. Just wow.

Unfortunately, this will never work with our proliferation of whales, but this is a spot where a good ol boycott would send a message. Don't buy any stabilizers...don't open any of these TCs if you have stabilizers saved. Let the whole thing slide. They see the numbers...they'd know our feelings on the matter.

But nah, they'll make a ton on this move and we'll just see another iconic next TC and in future TCs. Then complain how it's not what we wanted.

Just like the people who have max gear day 1 then scream 'nothing to do' or run around with everything OP then complain 'too easy', people will open these TC and be running around with their iconic power complaining about how they obtained it.

Unfortunately the whales decide what gets pushed. And it’s obviously working. They are likely trying to test the waters to see how far they can push things without breaking.

'Not breaking'? What game are you playing? The game is broken and has been for some time....I think you were trying to say how far they can break things without shutting down....and maybe we'll know that soon enough.

There are so many economy crashing glitches at the moment, not only that, i suspect there is some kind of duplication glitch going on with some things like stabilizers or any form of rewards from capsules. As soon as EU came back up after the downtime and had the new capsules, there were a full page of the rare iconic ability collection pieces all listed for the exact same price within 5-10mins. all for 800m