The State of Elite Plus (and the game in general)

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by AutumnXIV, Aug 29, 2024.

  1. AutumnXIV New Player

    Hey everyone,

    I wanted to start a discussion about the current state of Elite Plus content in DC Universe Online and what it really entails. After spending a lot of time on DC these last dlcs and after playing with all of type of players, I’ve noticed a few things that need to be addressed:

    1. Elite Plus Content Lacks Purpose and Rewards

    Right now, there’s hardly any reason for players to engage with Elite Plus content. It's not rewarding, and it feels like a missed opportunity to incentivize players. The difficulty is not as challenging as it should be, and on top of that, the rewards don’t justify the effort. There should be a real motivation to push through this content, but currently, there isn’t. Elite Plus feels like an empty grind, and that’s not what we want from high-end game content and is surely not as challenging as what we used to have back then, I'm thinking of raids such as Fractured God Sphere, Source Wall E+, Clocktower, Sixth Dimension and so on.

    2. DPS Meta Stagnation

    The DPS meta hasn’t seen any significant changes in a long time.
    Yes, we've had Ebon which is a real game changer for might players but... nothing really changed. Gadgets power remains the top choice, whether you’re going precision or might. Flurry Shots and Brawling are now the way to go since what.. 5 years now? This lack of variety makes gameplay stale and predictable. It’s about time
    we see some adjustments to balance things out and make other powers viable options for DPS.

    3. The Frustration of Playing as a Troll

    The controller role has become extremely frustrating, especially for new players. To be an effective troll, you need a total of 8 artifacts. That’s a huge barrier for entry and makes the role far from beginner-friendly. The role shouldn’t feel like an endless grind just to be competent. It needs to be more accessible and enjoyable for players of all skill levels.

    4. Tanking Gameplay Needs an Update

    Since the revamp, tank gameplay hasn’t really evolved. It’s essentially the same, and it’s starting to feel outdated. Tanks are a crucial part of the game, and they deserve more engaging and dynamic gameplay mechanics. An update to how tanking works would go a long way in keeping things fresh.

    5. Involving Endgame Players in Early Testing

    One suggestion I have is to include more endgame players or even top leagues in the early testing phases of new content, especially for Elite Plus. Having these players involved would give the devs a solid foundation to work from and create more challenging and rewarding experiences.

    6. Need for a PvE Challenge Mode


    Then, we need a new PvE challenge to keep players engaged between DLC releases. As suggested by ObsidianChill in his latest video. This kind of content would provide a consistent challenge and a way for players to test their limits. An endless PvE challenge mode would give us something meaningful to strive for, rather than the current cycle of waiting for new content.

    Final Thoughts

    I understand that not everyone can clear Elite Plus content, and that’s fine. We need content for all types of players. But the current state of Elite Plus doesn’t serve anyone well. It’s not engaging enough for endgame players and not accessible for those looking to step up. We need a balance that provides a challenging yet rewarding experience for everyone involved.

    What are your thoughts on the current state of the game? What changes would you like to see?
    Looking forward to hearing your opinions!
    Cheers!
    • Like x 13
  2. ObsidianChill Community "Trusted"

    Merci mon ami pour ton retour.
  3. BUDOKAI101 Dedicated Player

    Elite plus is like talking to a wall or rather punching a wall for hours on end. I don't see the purpose it is strictly a means for feat farmers with a great league or even friends you trust to try and be the person with the most skill points in the game. There's really no other explanation but that for elite Plus. Yeah it is a missed opportunity to add Elite plus gear to the game. But hey maybe they have no idea how to pull it off. Other than that a very well done post I like all the points posted
    • Like x 1
  4. Ghostknight Well-Known Player

    Not an elite plus player, just don't have the time and money to develop my skills to level needed. But I am admirer of the dedicated and cordial elite players, and this post is excellent!

    Peace and DCUO Forever
    • Like x 1
  5. Domana Well-Known Player

    I rarely run elite+ because it's not fun or "challenging" (usually it's the same mechanics but with extra health and extra damage). I honestly wouldn't go into elite+ at all if there weren't feats in there, and it can be hard to find 7 other players these days who want to tackle that nonsense. I think elite+ and stat clamped content should both be optional game modes for those who want a "hard mode," and everyone else (myself included) can actually feel like we're progressing in the game instead of levelling up endlessly without being able to go back and curb stomp older content. Put in fun titles or something else that doesn't matter as the reward for elite+, and leave feats out of it.
    • Like x 4
  6. zNot Loyal Player

    I heavily agree with your 2. 3. and 4. point and these three points are correlated to one and another

    Regarding the Tanking for top end content, it used to be heavily centered around tanks and more challenging surrounding them but nowadays its just a playground for the unbalanced DPS meta,buff trolling,art swapping feasting show,the amount of controll/influence a tank has is comical compared to what it used to be.

    Who wouldve thought that challenging content requieres balance changes? DCUO desperatly needs balance changes and better content design.
    • Like x 2
  7. Miserable Dedicated Player

    I agree with a lot of what you said.

    A somewhat related problem is that regular content is too easy. It has been dumbed down so much that all mechanics are 100% ignorable. It might as well be called event plus. It completely kills any motivation to learn mechanics, improve at your role, or just up your game in any capacity.

    I feel that the early raids, before elite was a thing, were fairly balanced. You didn't have to be especially good to beat them, but you also couldn't blindly button mash through them. You had to take the time to learn the instance, as well as your role/powerset - at least the very basics.

    Adding elite was necessary because reg was not simply enough for a lot of endgame players. But reg, which is supposed to be the baseline - the standard difficulty - should never have been turned into what it is. I think it's one of the reasons the game is in its current state.

    Edit: While there have been some challenging elite raids, I would say that most elite raids, if you remove the death limit, are what regular should be.
    • Like x 4
  8. Kestral Committed Player

    1. Elite Plus Content Lacks Purpose and Rewards
    I would tack on to this that it is near impossible to get in to Elite Plus content at all. Blind que will never pop and LFG is near dead on groups forming. Unless you know enough people that can be talked into trying (only for feats) most people will never even get the chance to try the content.

    3. The Frustration of Playing as a Troll
    My troll alt is the most difficult to keep viable at end game content. All other roles can be lacking some level of Episode Augments, Origin Augments, non lv200 Artificats and still carry groups if you know what your doing. Trolls struggle to keep up with providing power to a group of players that all have the supercharged skill if they don't have every last bit of stat points available at that point in the game. This is besides the point that Trolls supposedly should be focused on debuffs now but the loadout options make it seem like that's a side effect of being a poor dps as apposed to a needed role.

    Honestly I would love to see the vit stat changed into true self power regen stat to completely remove this from troll responsibility and instead trolls would put points into dom to make moves designed for controlling the targets movements and ability's viable. This would mean adding loadout options to not just stun and debuffs, but maybe buffs to your own group members to increase, defense, healing, attack, or reduce their status on the boss hate tree. We could also have more movement options to push targets away, tether them to a limited area out of the way. We seem to have more then a few feats that involve taking out the boss without damaging adds but there's a lot of passive AOE effects now a days so it would be nice to have a way to move adds to a corner without them dying to a tanks shield.

    Ultimately the Troll role needs to be solidified as valuable to the group, but in it's current state it's hard to convince a group that they wouldn't be better off with another DPS instead.

    Adding on Elite suggestions
    Since the creation of Omnibus it has become difficult to blind que Elite content when before people ran at least the older content regularly without a thought. It would be beneficial if a Elite Omibus could be created for this same purpose of improving que times. Though I admit making the rewards worthwhile would be a challenge. The obvious option is to make the rare drops more likely as rewards, but I think it would be neat to add a new set of high climbing feats to the game as well such as 1) Assist # group members gain a feat in Omibus content. 2) Assist # group members gain a feat in Elite Omibus content. This would be a long term goal that as a side benefit would encourage players to teach others the content mechanics or communicate for common goals.
  9. Aiden_Warren Committed Player

    I'll do elite plus if there's a lot of source marks to it. And when the episode gets rotated out, it's reduced down to 10.
    • Like x 1
  10. lllStrichcodelll ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Think of it like this: You're one of the best Tennis players in the world and trained for years to max out your strength, just to end up only being allowed to play table tennis.
    Being under-challenged leads to boredom and eventually disengagement.
    • Like x 1
  11. lllStrichcodelll ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    I never understood the reasoning behind that other than not giving speedhackers an increase in income, while punishing anyone who enjoys that content at the same time.
    • Like x 1
  12. Aiden_Warren Committed Player

    You mean like the idea of speed hackers can do walk-in on fos 3 and speed Jack solo for lots of source marks as to increase of income?
    That's quite the idea, tho speed hacking elite plus without the proper gear and doing damage of 100s and still get wiped in 1 in hit, and still get banned with the dcuo cheat detection.

    In which I wonder why players have a rough time with the dead que system. Where I have been able to solo tank fos 3 walk in, it's rough but it works.
    And have done it with 1 healer, 1 troll and 2 dogs several times. 4 friends for the walk in.
  13. Raven Nocturnal Devoted Player

    I don't personally believe that elite+ ever needed purpose other than a fun challenge for whomever wishes to engage in such. The incentive is the challenge. The way it is now, many players feel like it's a part of regular normalized rotation that they are pretty much gatekept from by the elitist community. There should be rewards, but they should be strictly clout things for the best of the best to flaunt like they always do (as least on Xbox). NOT a part of normal progression system. Just a bonus.
    • Like x 3
  14. appocolyps Committed Player

    I agree with most of your points here, I personally feel like the the dev team stopped really "balancing" the game just after stats revamp, the gameplay and meta is still the same, prec gadg is god because of its unique additional utility.

    We have had a few small changes along the way, smokebomb nerf, 2h spin nerf a couple of slight tweaks with powers etc but nothing dramatic that will shuffle the pack. This has brought a stagnated predictable and somewhat boring repetitiveness to the way we play.

    I hate to beat a dead horse but artifacts are the killer here, the devs use them as a tool for financial gain understandably but the mistake they have made is they rely on artifacts (and allies) to balance the game now!

    We dont really play a power now, we play an artifact rotation and depending on how well said artifacts sync with our powerset and the group setup, i.e green spams group buffs etc depends on how well that powerset performs.

    Its lazy development, its horrible gameplay to both play and watch (more important than some would think with streaming/twitch/youtube being such an important factor to gaming these days).

    Elite + has imo become irrelevant and too easy for the top players including yourself who i put in the top 1% because the top players have evolved their gamplay far beyond that of the devs imagination.

    The game gas become a playground for players with 5+ year exp and a supreme level of artifact swpping execution. (Im not saying remove arti swapping here btw) Its too late for that now but something needs to be done to lower the ceiling that even the devs cant comprehend.

    Until some form of control is in place, or until the devs realise how good the top players actually are elite + will continue to be nothing more than childs play, because other than increase boss HP and damage to un-managable levels (swe+ initlal release) the devs i feel are left without any answers.
    • Like x 4
  15. Illumin411 Devoted Player

    While I personally would very much enjoy more and/or better rewards as would many others I play with, the reality is the more rewarding it is, the more whining and complaining...err, I mean....negative feedback there will be about the gatekeeping of those rewards. Though I do think having one tradable rare drop in E+ per episode wouldn't trigger too much backlash.

    As for difficulty, I give the devs a pass for this DLC since it's a newer dev team and this DLC was already very much in production during the transition. And you could argue that outside of the 30-some add feat in 2nd boss, TTe could and should have been more challenging. But the rest have hit the mark IMO. I'm giving the new dev team a couple full DLC development cycles before handing down my judgement, lol. But that doesn't mean that constructive criticism given in the meantime isn't beneficial.[/quote]


    I do just fine in E & E+ content with 4-5. But it is still a much higher barrier to entry than the other three roles, that's for sure.

    Even though I tank with atomic which already has some extra challenges the other powers don't have to deal with, I do agree. Although much like the troll role has a higher barrier to entry as far as time and money investment, the tank role has the highest as far as skill and when you consider people are already hesitant to play tank do to this and the extra scrutiny tanks get from other players, it may not be wise to make tanking more difficult. That being said, you were talking more about tanking evolving, being broader, dynamic and engaging vs more difficult which I am all for as long as it doesn't scare players off from the role more than they already are.

    I agree here although it takes a certain kind of perspective to be able to constructively contribute to content development and testing. Simply being good enough at the game to play the toughest content isn't nearly enough on the resume to be a valuable contributor. Way back when I was invited to the private test server it was explained why I was chosen and I agreed with those selection parameters. Unfortunately, in my experience both here on the forums and in game (mostly with E/E+ players) there doesn't seem to be a lot of players with the right kind of mindset. Having a goldfish memory regarding being told "we can't" multiple times in response to the same ask doesn't help either.

    I really seems like they stopped teaching constructive criticism in schools. I dunno, I'm old.

    I do agree that the dev team and players would both benefit greatly from an expanded private test system that includes a more player feedback as long as it was done correctly and included more of the right kind of people. It would be great to see them put some effort in to expanding it.
    • Like x 1
  16. Illumin411 Devoted Player

    Yet another player has come along and eloquently explained how "challenge" has never and will never be enough. And nobody wants clout items, at least not "new" clout items. To have any clout it's gotta be at least a decade old like the "ovals moving from left to right" aura.
  17. Gulrick TheWanderer Committed Player

    I made a thread recently about having better weapons and accessories to drop from plus. Still think that would be great for the players that actually run plus. But the notion plus is just to be enjoyable with no incentives is stupid. Challenge Mode sounds cool. Could literally just be plus raid with arts and allies disabled. That way everyone can play it and get those better rewards.
    • Like x 1
  18. CantLoginWithPS Active Player

    More rewards mean more normies wanting to run E+ for said rewards, and more normies running it means more people asking for the content to be nerfed so they can complete it (when they shouldn't even be running said content in the first place).

    The rare drops that TSW and CT got should be the standard (don't know why the Brainiac raids didn't get one).
    • Like x 1
  19. Raven Nocturnal Devoted Player

    Then so be it. But if challenge isn't enough, why bother asking for it at all then? Can't enjoy the game?
  20. Raven Nocturnal Devoted Player

    Great, just have no feat points attached.