Sad State of Our Graphics

I'm grateful Square Enix made the re-investment, just look at the wonderful work they produced, the compelling stories, and the engaging content. Sins of Black Adam has a compelling story and the content is engaging, I personally wouldn't have minded if it took 2 DLCs to tell the whole story but it is good story none the less.

I loved the romance of how Black Adam went to such lengths for Isis, the woman he loved. And we got to briefly join them on their journey. I hope to see much more story telling like this one, stories that really move me like the stories in FF 14 does.

This entire thread is one huge L.

I never said the entire thing was made by one person...

It still shows it's ease of use. That's what I was pointing out.

I'm saying it would be beneficial to cut the losses. Start over on the new system. I wasn't implying copy/paste anywhere in that post.

If development time on the new is less than or equal to the amount of work they're already throwing at what we have now, then why would they not switch over?

Start from scratch. Build something better. They were already planning on doing this with the new Marvel game that was canned, so don't tell me they don't have the resources to accommodate this.

It's insane to try and keep this system on life support.

This is just me but I get the sense that the creators of this game, the coders and original developers, are long gone. And the replacements are people with framed certifications and diplomas but are actually clueless as to how to improve the game in any real way. And it is probably a skeleton crew doing just enough work to keep the cash cow producing an income. But that's just me.

What one person can do is irrelevant when we have genius brains like the one man who coded the ENTIRETY of Bright Memory Infinite. Not every game dev is born equal, sadly.

To give you some perspective on how difficult it would be to upgrade from UE 3 to UE4: the language difference alone should tell you. Kismet (UE3) is a pain in the *** to work with, Blueprints (UE4) is unbelievably different. What's worse is, assets built in UE3 don't just convert over to Blueprints, they need to be rewritten, in entirety.

Then comes the bigger problem, this game isn't just a simple implement of UE3, it's an incredibly heavily modified version of the engine. Why? Because UE3 is absolutely awful out-of-the-box for open world game design.

This is also another reason why staffing the dev team is difficult, you need people with good experience in UE3, which are harder to find now that UE5 is the standard.

It's those kinds of sentiments that probably brought about the creation and REALLY poor implementation of the NGE in SWG. And if there's one lesson that was ingrained in devs and game companies (both SOE and beyond) is that you don't pull the rug out from under the feet of your customers like that.

If they have a solid player base that's paying for and playing the game after the game has been around for more than a decade, they'd be foolish to rock the boat. And the backlash would be far more severe. The NGE took place only two years after the game launched, and there are still people upset at SOE (and any company associated with SOE) over what happened. After a decade of the game being live? It'd be ugly as sin.

And the fact that the Marvel game was canned probably doesn't help. Think about all that time, money and manpower that probably went into trying to get that off the ground. All wasted. No return on investment. Even if they're able to get something out of all that work that can be used for DCUO, the likelihood of getting more money to funnel into DCUO decreases because it could be looked at as throwing money away. The chance of it working out isn't going to be enough to convince any investors/the money people.

If the game is still bringing in money and players, it'd be insane for them to turn off that revenue stream.

I am not saying port/carry it over. I get that they're different languages.

What I'm saying directly relates to your last paragraph.

If this is THAT DIFFICULT to maintain and upkeep, let alone the SLIM chance that this will ever see any dev that could lead to actual NEW content being made and not RESKINNED old levels, then why bother with trying to maintain it?

If the system is so godawful, why are we still here?

Sequels happen all the time, and they could still have this game active while in development of the new one (similar to what they've done...). They could have this game active while the new one is released, and wait until players made the switch. They could provide bonuses to returning players based on playtime criteria for DCUO. There's a huge list of things they could be doing, but they're opting to do next to nothing except maintain life support for this relic.

My point is, there is a better system out there, once you lay the groundwork it is easier than what we have now to use/maintain/upkeep, correct? It would be better in almost every aspect, correct? It would be easier to hire and keep developers for, correct?

You're digging your own grave deeper and deeper the longer you hold on to this system. Refusal to grow or get any better will not get very far, and we're already at the limit now, right? The playerbase will just keep dwindling, and then they'll be left wondering why they never did this 5-6-7 years ago when they had the chance.

The point you actually made, was if one person can do that UE5 demo then why are we stuck with a really messy UE3-built game.

I don't disagree with you, the game is on very rocky ground in terms of bugs and breaks. The problem isn't so easily fixed though, which is what me & deity tried to iterate to you. A straight up re-write is what's needed, in UE4 or higher, not a port.

At it's heart, the problem isn't complexity, it's time and resources needed to do such a thing. There's inherent complexity because of how disparate the two languages are, but it's really all about man hours needed to do.

There's less time/resources/complexity when simply applying band-aids, which based on this thread, the community are happy with.

Personally, I don't care about graphics which isn't the same as saying that I'm happy with them, I want the engine upgrade to allow the game to expand things like powersets, pvp & gameplay.

That's my fault for not conveying what I meant properly then. I wasn't suggesting a port, and I believe a new game would be the best path forward.

I know the work would be extensive, but we're kind of at the edge of this game's capability and it's showing. I'm not happy with the band-aids, but that's just me I guess.

I never stated it would be easy to do so. I was just stating the fact that if any big upgrade were to come, ideally the game would have to be fully upgraded or remade in a different engine itself instead of just graphics or X thing they decide to change that could massively change performance.
I get things are not possible to do on this system, i understand that. however what people are saying what they would like is not only going to take a few years, but also alot of money and with the rate DCUO is going at the minute, there is almost a 90%+ Chance that there will not be an upgrade to anything of the sort and instead they will just milk it with what they have.
If they were to make a DCUO 2.0 then it would and should have to be remade entirely. Keep the progress of the players, retexture alot of things to be cleaner for higher resolutions and not blocky, better and more fluid animations, lighting in most instances, reworks to how some systems currently work etc. which again, as i have said before, is highly unlikely

sad but true, wouldn't have killed those reapers otherwise

This is why we all argue. We are passionate about the game and want it to be the best it can be or should be.
Sure we all have different ideas, no one is gonna agree but if you really want change, it takes a long time for it to come. Time and money and staff (Quite a big team, unsure how many DB has atm, I saw they were recruiting so not as many as they would like). Even if the game were to take a few months break and instead give us save the universe + Seasonals + Anniversary event all at once for X months straight while they work on the improved version of the game, i am sure we would like to have a newer game at the end rather than same old boring content

You're right... can't think of any game out there that even comes close to this experience when it first came out. I don't mean to sound bitter either, but it is a bit frustrating as a customer to realize that the game has been slowly dwindling out in quite a few areas.

I could be wrong. Might need to put away my "the end is near" sign...

I’m not responsible for how your perceive things. You also assumed I talked down to you because you were a girl in the past. I do not care who it is I’m talking to. Like it or not it doesn’t change facts. People keep ignoring the very basics about this request. It’s not as simple as “invest more” there are legitimate factors holding by an full graphics update.

What’s insane is assuming starting over from scratch is a viable option. People keep claiming that the game is dying and how there is no one left to fill ques. And you want them to start over from scratch? Will the players be willing to start over? Would everyone go to the new game to do so? Would they allow players to copy their toons over to the new servers? This isn’t something they can just do just because some want better graphics..

And before you try and twist things, I’m not opposed to change. They do however have to be thought out before doing such drastic changes.

Considering the game is dying from a root cause of outdated tech... yes.

If they made a better game in practically every aspect, you think that would not draw in a bigger crowd? This mindset is extremely bad, when you give up on a future there's nothing to look forward to, and that's pretty much where we're at with this game.

The things that cannot be done severely outweigh the things that can, pretty sure most of us know this to be true.