I wanted to post my thoughts since I'm not on the test server, and don't wish to have a second account banned for calling BS when I see it. 1) PVP in DCUO is not a seperate game. It is part of the entire game. As I read replies on synthetic mods, and that expert mods should also be purchasable as synthetic and expert consumable plans should also drop from PVP reward boxes I am aghast. Should one PVP match where you have a lucky drop equate to all of the trials and strategies over the past several months in Paradox waiting for that lucky Next plan drop? I don't think so. The rewards from one part of the game should benefit other aspects of the game... that's how you get people to play the entire game in the first place. That is the goal. 2) Synethetic mods should be an alternative to farming but not replace it (or be as good as it). Players have stated that even the best exobit farmers can only get about 120-150, at most, an hour. Are you trying to tell me that the amount of time players spend, have spent, and will spent, is now fruitless? Congratulations, you've just made your crafting update from 2012 obsolete. Synthetic mods are a great idea. They should not be better than expert mods nor should they be equivalent. They should be a lesser quality alternative if at all... remember, lest we forget... that's what beta mods are for. 3) Exobit farming should be overhauled. Don't get me wrong, exobit farming is a grind. I hate it and will rejoice when I hit 25k. You know what else is a grind... 500 CC bounties, 100 anomoly missions, 250 Earth duos, 500 challenges/duos/alerts, Paradox until you get full Traces, Hive Defender style, 19 primeval demons, Mbot/Obot, and pretty much everything else in every other MMO in existence. There is an option for players who do not want to earn those feats... Don't do them. The extra skill point is likely meaningless as once you max out your role they are of minimal benefit. (Another topic altogether) There are also hundreds of feats you can acheive (about 822 to be close to exact). If it is the farming itself that bothers you, buy and sell through the AH. Farm an acoustium casing, pvp until you earn a saught after base item... or sell some extra seasonal base items. The price of Exobits/bytes is dropping so rapidly where once a stack of 16 red bits cost 3 million, now you can purchase 16 red bytes for LESS then 3 million. 4) Weapon imbalances The 1H block breaker hits way too hard at times. instead of a massive overhaul of all weapons, why not just reduce the 1H back to a normal level? There is no reason it should hit for 3k-5k, but it should be consistently in the 1k-1,500k range with 1,300 precision. As a staff user in pvp, this greatly hurts the weapon as a whole because all of the staff's combos are radial aoe moves, meaning, if an opponent behind me is blocking I will be knocked down. If it is the mechanic itself and how players utilize it that is bothersome, players standing in the back doing hold triangle moves all day for example, and you want players to do more weapon combos instead... then I love DCUO so get rid of blue immunity (it was a horrible idea to begin with). 5) PVP gear out of PVE. This is not what players wanted, they wanted it the other way around. Admittedly, you could buy PVP gear at a fresh level 30 and compete, even chart top at times, in T3 and T4 content. While it did not raise your pve cr, it certainly had better stats than everything at the T1 and T2 levels. However, you now have players in the PVP open world that either struggle with ads on Strykers island, or are getting destroyed by opposing factions at the same place. 6) Catering to newer players, some thoughts. I love this game. I have enjoyed it since launch and hope to continue for time to come. I hope newer players enjoy it as much as I have. Players complain that those launch players like myself are elitists, that's fine. What I remember is how fun missions like T1 alerts were when if you had 400 precision in 2011 you were a god amongst DCUO players. When you make tiers cost less, cr requirements lessened, synthetic mods to skip over tiers, backwards moves like making previous T1 alerts into T3 alerts, and allow players to skip through content, you are moving backwards and creating an environment where the only thing that matters is fully expert modded Traces in Time gear and players are not enjoying the progression we have enjoyed over the past 3 years. Preserve the progression, make our game last.
you have good points but this is not one of them. lots of players wanted PVP gear [with it's no defense but ULTRA high stats otherwise] out of PVE. as a healer, i have zero desire to have to constantly overheal you [and thus increase the work of the troller who has to keep me powered more than necessary] just so you can be top DPS. you state that you don't want the game to cater to new players but allowing season 2 PVP cash gear in PVE does that in a big and unbalanced way. players weren't just wearing this gear to pass t1 content, they were wearing it in t2 and t3. i've even seen someone in gates wearing it. which means they explicitly equipped PVE gear to get the CR, keep that gear around but say 'eff you' to having defense in a T4 raid. absolutely unsatisfactory imo. all so they could get to that sweet tier 5 which soon may not be any higher than the season 2 PVP and the race starts again. the players who do PVE content on PVP phase and struggle with adds seems like the tiniest contingent of DCUO players. to cater to them and allow the flagrant disregard of tier progression and team-work [from the perspective of not making yourself a glass cannon] seems counter to the other points on your list. good list though. i don't mean to be overly critical here but stating no players wanted this isn't true. lots of us did and were happy to get it. the players who weren't were either knowingly gaming the system or didn't understand the minimum of game mechanics and were just lead by shiny green numbers. </humbleopinion>
I like the idea of synthetic mods because sometimes it is tough to get an exceptional kit. This will help me the most with PVP mods because of the different tiers. I agree synthetic mods should not be on par with regular mods you have to farm bits for. Players are already able to skip tons of content and get to the same level as someone who does the grind. While I'm not saying people should just do the grind, everything should not just be handed to people.
Dont get me wrong... I agree with you. Since the launch of this game players, specifically pvp players, have complained about pve gear in pvp... and continue to do so.
ohhhh YEAH. if you meant the reverse problem should have been fixed before this one [or at same time] i'm with you. i hate PVE gear in PVE even more. you can keep trying PVE content, you only got one shot to win PVP match.
1) I believe Expert Mod Plans should be a random drop in the PVP Reward Box if you win, probably not if you lose (the coding for it Im not really sure on how difficult that could be). There are many players who strictly do the PVP, they dont touch PVE and thats okay. A PVPer shouldnt be forced to do PVE if he/she dont want to, I have come to that understanding and respect it now. Im not saying it drops in the Boxes all the time but at least have a chance at it. Now it showing up in a Vendor, not at this moment and probably (for me) never should be. You are correct, PVP is part of the entire game but just like PVE players make up part of the community, so does the PVP. Its hard to cater to both but the steps we have seen from the Devs shows they acknowledge the PVP community and are working towards letting them have their playstyle and time not wasted. Like I said, a random Reward Box drop, sure; it being on a vendor, no thanks. 2) As of right now, these Mods (which are subject to change since it is on Test Server) are to players, old and new, to continue with progression as new higher tier content comes available. Modding is coincided with gear progression and apparently has become mandatory really so they are offering this choice for players to purchase these mods with the use of their Marks. Right now they are for Tier 3-5 Mods, single color only. If you still want the Combo colors like Purple and the others, you still have to farm and make those items. At the same time, this is only a first step in my eyes. Once the next Tier comes out with the new mods, we might not even see T6 Synthetic Mods or if they do come, they will in fact be lower in stats as others have suggested and want right now. Im speaking as someone who hates modding, I do it ONLY to raise my CR. I dont Mod to increase my stats for raiding or whatever. I dont have the time nor patience to farm, I did 5 years of that on multiple characters for multiple professions in WoW and I just cant do it again. These Synthetic Mods are perfect for me and especially F2P players to keep up with Progression. Its not skipping content when they still have to play through the content, collect the 125 Marks or 625 marks or even the 5 MoRs in order to purchase these Mods. Its still progression and will still take time. 3) Im not 100% on where you were going with this one because it didnt give an explanation on how the Exobit Farming could be overhauled. Rather you gave examples of other farming (which yeah, its an MMO standard for sure) and where you can just "dont do them". Same thing could be said about Exobit farming, dont do it and as you suggested just buy them on the Broker. Thats not really an overhaul persay, just suggesting a different route instead of farming. But also, the F2Players dont have access to the Broker and they have that Cash Limit. Sure people will call it catering but the F2Players are part of the community too and should have access to this as well. They can either farm or use their Marks to purchase the Syn Mods. Just like Replay badges, its a choice, not mandatory. 4) Cant really comment that much on this since I feel this was more or less to balance some PVP gameplay. I use One Handed on a few toons and I hardly ever care about my Charged Attack to see damage, just want to block break and move on. They were probably looking at One Handed and then noticed how the other Charged Attacks were and found this error in damage and decided to bring everything in line. Since its on Test, its a work in progess that the testers are doing a great job bringing info to the Devs. 5) Its a step towards PVE gear out of PVP, they have said they are still looking into how to approach it. The PVP gear in PVE was not suppose to be intended (Im not calling it an exploit, Im just saying it wasnt intended). You are in PVE so its only logical you'll be using PVE gear to fight in PVE instances. Now with the Open World stuff (meaning not zoning into a Secret Base or Alert etc.), I would have expected the PVP gear to still work b/c hey, its PVP Open World, anything could happen. I'll ask about this after the holidays. 6) This isnt catering, its MMO Progression. Back in 2011 the 400 Prec was in fact amazing but as new content and new tier gear come out that 400 Prec from 2011 wont hold nothing to whats now. The new players shouldnt have to progress like that because they want to play the new content thats out, the Devs want them to play it, their friends want them to play it. MMOs are a game of "Catch Up" unless you were there at Launch and you never stopped playing or took a break for a few months. If you did and you missed a few GUs and missed an entire DLC, you gotta catch up. So in order for this, the Devs lower Tier gear cost b/c you still have to meet that CR requirement and you need that Tier gear to do so. You need the Mods in order to help with getting that CR up so they introduce Synthetic Mods to help out. I really have to be in the minority b/c I look at the Synthetic Mods to help me increase my CR first and increasing my stats last. Overall nice post though, really enjoyed the read on a Friday morning
My problem with farming is not that it's a grind. It's that it is the wrong kind of grind. I have the 500 CC feat. I've got my challenges and duos. I like to PEW PEW. I don't like to fly around looking for glowy orbs. Keep in mind, it's not the bit farming feat that I'm bothered by. It's bit farming for mods. At least feats have a finish line. Modding feels Sisiphean to me with each new tier. I'd rather see bits drop from NPCs. Or another version of that, make mods cost less bits and more complex/simple. But as far as sythetics go, you can't salvage them and they come at a cost with marks. If you're trying to skip tiers, you still have to run that content to get the marks to get the mods. Those are marks you could be spending on the next piece of higher CR gear. It's kind of a wash there.
Synthetic mods...... <3 and getting rid of PvP gear out of PvE are my favorite things to happen in a while. Along with account sp this will be awesome for alts, since I can barely farm enough to keep my main decked out in top mods due to real life things. Also, for all the dps off role drops I get, I can finally mod these dps drops and do my solo content. Win win for me.
