Tell Devs Why you think DCUO is DPS Universe Online

Just like the title says. Why do you think many people and gamer blogs call DCUO DPS Universe Online?

I know most of the gamepley revolves around dps. As well as all the recent changes favor DPS. But does that really make DCUO a DPS universe?

There is no doubt that 70%+ of the population are dps, but can you blame them? With AM and what not, who wouldnt?

Why do you think people call DCUO DPS Universe Online?

scoreboard chasing.

players refusing to run as a support role.

support roles have had little attention payed to them.

phasing support roles out of certain content (no healer/no troll/no tank runs).

players seem to only respect damage numbers. how well someone may play tends to get lost. how detrimental to a smooth run good support roles are are never brought up during success, always blamed when failing...

- No tutorial in game teaching new players about their role.
- All the updates lately have been dps centric
- Support roles are terribly unbalanced
- Raid mechanics are dull which puts more focus on dps stacking
- Misleading Scoreboard
- Support roles are boring compared to damage
- No incentive / extra awards to be a support role like other games have to balance it out.
- Misleading Scoreboard
- Dps'ing has been so dumbed down anyone can be good at it. *Cough* Quantum *Cough*
- Community always blame the support roles for every wipe in a a raid discouraging someone who could've been real good at the role.
- No blame whatsoever for dps for when things go wrong.
- Did I mentioned Misleading Scoreboard?

To me it comes down to having fun. I have more fun when I dps than I do playing support. I play heal troll and dps. Never been interested in tanking. As a healer, it is avoid this attack, then heal, rinse and repeat. As a troll, it is pop power, recharge power, debuff when needed and stun sometimes. Not that much fun with either of those roles. At least with a troll you get to contribute to the damage being done, healers on the other hand do not. I would like to see some damage added to the healer class, so when you cast a heal it also damages.

I would say more like 80%..... but that alone..... isn't that enough to call it DPS online???

Heck I used to play role almost exclusively...... but now more and more I play as DPS.

Essentially almost everythng I do solo is as DPS.... and PVP.
Only group missions I play as a Troll.... and even then sometimes I switch to DPS when we have another Troll.

But sadly..... a lot of players simply cannot play other then DPS.

When you play DPS... you can have tunnel vision and only care about your toon.

But if you have tunnel vision as a Toll or as a Healer...... people die.

You need to keep track of people health bar/power bar....... or where people are positioned so that they are in range....... etc.
Essentially you need to keep track of a lot of things.... especially as a Troll.

Sadly many just cannot seem to be able to do all that. So better they stick to being a DPS then.

We see it with the ammount of bad Trolls and Healers... how many times have you seen a Troll that gives NO power??? or a Healer that give no heal and that burns his power bar tro DPS???

Not everyone can play a role........ better for them to stick to DPS if they cannot do it.

'cause design...

I think what irritates alot of players is Dps not willing to do there support role when it's needed. Like a Quantum Dps that won't troll, or earth dps that won't tank. There nothing more frustrating when ur in a raid and there no tanks but yet you see a earth dps, and when you ask him to tank you'll get no response.

Me as a mental player, I have high expectations for mental players. If I see a Mental Dps and some one need another troll I hope and expect him to switch to troll and be good at it, since for a very long time, trolling is the only thing mental was good at.
I know this is an unfair expectation but I can't help to feel this way

Like Unida said it's just the overall design of the game that's the issue here. The lack of depths in the mechanic allows people to perform their role without really having to move. Support roles don't really have any variety for healing/giving power since the powers basically do the same thing. Even playing as a support role you still do damage but it's really low so without it just kinda sucks since your support role is boring and easy and the damage you do is very low. DPS is also the "easiest" role to perform since there aren't any direct consequences to having low damage out.

Support roles aren't properly introduced to players in game, all we really get is a mail with a support role ring if I remember correctly. There isn't any need to play as a support role during the leveling phase of the game and all playing as one does is really just slow you down.

5-1-1-1 nuff said?

resto has been sky high shrinking the need of 2 healers since nexus.
high resto especially mixed with nature healing and suddenly only one troll will due most of the time.

fix the outta scale resto and maybe two healers will be NEEDED and as a result a second troll.

now that we have a dps parser i can add because there is no minamum damage per second per instance. if it required 5k/sec burn but i cant get higher than 4700 i can see i am one of the many pretenders. you know all the dps role guys who cant burn a paper bag doused in gasoline. calm down with a few powers i am that guy and never with any power (except of course quantum) will i ever top a score board vs real dps.

5-1-1-1 to me is admitting you have some booty cakes dps.

Take the sparing target for example. What can you really practice on that? Damage loadout / rotation mainly.

Can you effectively test out how well your new tanking loadout is at holding aggro with the numerous sparing targets? NO.
- how about have a mini room were one can pull aggro against overzealous NPC team mates to see how well you are at keeping aggro with your new loadout.
- how about a mini room for practice were one can test their health / damage mitigation abilities against a hard hitting sparring target

Can you effectively test out how your new healing loadout rotation is at keeping your team mates alive? NO
- how about a mini room with npc teammates around your CR that a taking damage to see how well you can keep them alive

Can you effectively test out your power / pot abilities with your new troll loadout? NO
- how about a mini room were you are put with overzealous power dumping npcs to see how well you can keep em up against a damage timer etc

Now lets move on to Advanced Mechanics thats all the rage lately

Does one really need to explain which class of players this serves? No

What mmo don't have mostly dp? I played ffxi and groups were filled with dps. What improvements can the devs do that won't make it easier to stack dps in groups? The support roles need to be nerfed, not buffed.

Am help trolls more than dps, trolls can cc trash mobs more now, even with 1 in raids

I see your point to some extent, but look at this way. My explanation on the sparring targets was meant to point out one of the major flaws with DCUO ( and a number of MMOs for that matter ) in that there isnt really any sufficient tools to make one test out support roles outside of a raid / alert. Especially when one has rolled a new power and they just want to test things out before jumping into the deep end. But with dps its so easy to find rotations / load-outs then go ham on the sparring target till they are assured of the winning combination. Can you have that same level of assured comfort with support roles, other than just closing your eyes and queuing up? Then have elitist DPS curse when you make the slightest simeple mistake. This makes it way easier / simpler / friendlier for players to pick up DPS roles than it is to pick and practice support roles. Your solution for nerfing support roles is a band aid and not a long term fix in my opinion.

The damage output difference between support and DPS has continued to grow wider, I'm not sure how GU47 changed this but certainly before with each tier you progressed through, playing as a support became gradually more tedious to progress. The huge difference in might/precision on dps gear, coupled with all the bonuses they get for being in dps role just leaves no incentive for balanced or moderate setups.

As much as I like AMs, they made the issue worse.

No real diversity between support roles (trolls especially).

Scoreboards are a curse. DPS should be the ones free to click stuff, rez people, while support hold the raid/group together, yet ****** wins out way too often and wipes happen because dps are too busy trying to make sure their wang is bigger than someone else's.

As others also said, way too much content is just tank and spank, healers and trolls don't stack that well together so if you can survive with one, why wouldn't you. and unless content requires a second tank, they would be a hinderance in most content, so why would anyone want two of them fighting over agro like two kids fighting for a parent's attention. It's not like EQ2 where a second tank can buff the MT and help mitigate big hits, ensure adds are picked up quickly etc.

Game is just too simple and more dots solves most problems way better than any other method.

Every point there holds true. Every support role could be doing their job well but if the burn is that bad the adds will just keep piling up and overwhelm the group.

Thing is it's always "TANK PULL ADDS" or "More Power" or "Why you no heal!!!!!". Never mind the fact that the dps aren't burning the adds, spamming powers because they have no clue about power management or standing right next to the Tank/boss so keeps getting hit for large amounts of damage. There are bad support roles and if they are doing badly they need to improve, that being said it's always the easy option to blame support roles first instead of actually improving themselves.

When I still played EQ2 had 24 classes and 24 raid spots.

Most raids would have 4 bards, 4 chanters, 6 healers, 2 tanks, 8 dps (usually 4 mages 4 scouts). The primary incentive was making the most out of buffs, it wasn't perfect but I still prefer that over this.

There is also little incentive for middle ground here, still being a healer but geared/built primarily for dps while being able to output enough healing to keep the group alive was standard practice in EQ2 for DPS groups. Here the mechanics of the game alone are enough to discourage even trying that, you'd just be terrible at both jobs due to how gear is designed and the passive buffs.

Think i'd best leave this thread, doesn't make me want to log into DCUO despite it being Sunday and not having anything better to do.

Solo healing EO.

Get ported, tell group i'm trapped.

DPS ignore trapped people, make no effort to aid in their own survival, eventually die.

OMG HEALS!?!?!?!

...

DPS Online.

It is worse now than it has ever been. Every raid group now wants a 5-1-1-1 setup. This is just killing the game for me. I'm solo healing lab, or I'm one of the five dps, and I'm the ONLY ONE running water barrels and stones. The dps mentality of "get ax much as I can in" worked (barely) when you had 2 trolls to do the mechanics. Now trolls aren't even doing the mechanics because there are 5 dps.

Don't even get me started on the Last boss fight, and that is just one example.

Hopefully this changes soon...

In my opinion, this game is DPS centered because the roles don't have mechanics to be on pair with the DPSs. For example, a DPS can clear a specific content within a few minutes, but the Tanks, Healers and Controllers don't have the game mechanics to clear that same content within the same amount of time.

Can a Tank, Healer and Controller clear the same content that a DPS can? Yes.
Can they do it within the same amount of time? No <- and here's the big issue.
Why? Lack of mechanics to put then at the same speed as the DPSs.

As stated before, non-DPSs can complete content, but it takes forever, it takes more skills and that makes it boring. And boring = will be ignored, it's no fun, will not be used by most players.

Solution, give the roles the mechanics to complete content within the same time a DPS can and give fun back to the game. I don't mean buff their damage, but if a Healer got a Debuff within his powers, he should be able to Debuff+Damage the content and finish it within the same amount of time DPS will Damage the content and finish it.

When the roles begin to be fun again by being competitive in time efficiency mechanics, then DCUO will stop being DPS Universe Online.

My 2 cents.

I do think gu47 has done a slight nerf to support role damage. Thus making it even more a factor to run 5-1-1-1. The thing is, you arent always going to find 3 CR115 dps. To compensate for that now you have to add on dps so you have 5-1-1-1. Since damage you do to enemies is now CR based. It is more important to have the highest dps, but not all groups have fully modded dps, so you have to settle for adding in a few lower level dps to create 5-1-1-1.

IMO GU47 has completely made doing any solo or duo as a support role painful to do. Not to mention a huge lack of incentive for playing such roles.

I do believe that Daybreak may have a plan for support roles in the future, but by then it may be far too late.

There is not a single instance in the game that requires more than 3 dps to complete.....not a single one