Things that keeps you engaged and stuff that ticks you off

First I will say, that even my membership expired a few months back, after being subbed for over six years, I am still playing a little bit, here and there to keep seasonal event checked. Some things for me still keeps me around, some other things that I loved are gone, some things that happened made me angry, and some other things I am glad got implemented recently.

Engaged first.

The lore, the universe itself, for me is very appealing. Is great to be in gotham or metro and other iconic places. doesn't seems to get old.
Some of the few members remaining in our league, even though we hardly catch up much lately, a lot of the vets are gone, and few "friends" remain active.
Level of customization, we can make so many cool looking characters, and some unique loadouts even if they are not the optimal, still can make it work.
The amount of content to play with, even if it has gone old, part of the game still have some of its original charm.

Loved but gone.
The pvp side of the game, I know still there, but it is a mess, there is nothing to resemblance the progression we used to have, it was brutal frustrating at times, but also keept me motivated, engaged, and I fondly remember the first wins over there. BUT THEN all it mattered was the power you were, it dint matter your cr the natural progression was erased or felt like it.
The league mates, most are gone, in mine at least, I have tried and joined other leagues with some of my alts, I even joined a very active one in the villains side, but unless you spammed replay badges like crazy in the latest content you got the boot immediately, a lot of SP required and latest modes and gear to remain there. in other words you needed cash.
The combat itself in PVE, it was fast, the content some times felt brutal, but at the same time it kept you in your toes, to perform well and beat the content. The grind had a porpoise (remember those raids with five bosses, great mechanics, communication used to be a must to beat some content at level).
The roles needed in alerts and raids, some times more than one of each.
Base items inventory list

Made me angry.
The currency sell in the market place, I would´ve be ok if only that currency were available for people to catch up, but not for people, to skip the gameplay and still get the latest feats out of thin air without running the content itself, this could ve been solved, just by adding a special currency to buy old stuff if a player chooses to go this way to catch up.
Time capsules, I know beating a dead horse, but still, those SP in there, oh man!!!!!!! : at least make the drop rates equal for everything in there, get rid of the skill points, or get rid of the horrible drop rate, so the players can get a chance to actually finish in time those feats.
The difficulty level we are getting in the latest content, come on, I know a lot of people will disagree, but is to easy, and make the whole process of gearing up, modding, unnecessary, and with it, the grind is meaningless, the gameplay gets old really fast, if we beat all day one, then what is left for the months to come without new content.
Elite content, this was suppose to appeal the hard core players, but instead, it was appealing only for the big spenders, that spammed regular difficulty to then jump into elite. oh man you had to spend cash to get into those, while in relevancy. it had little to do with skill or tactics. Those one strike and the second you are out, is false difficulty and more luck most of the times.
Due to the grind, my alts are gone, please make the gear account bound, this could help a lot

Glad got implemented
Revamp. a step in the right direction even though I thing there still a lot to do in that department since not all the gameplay styles are viable in serious content.
Scoreboard. good call
Artifacts, good but not great, to much monetization behind the idea.
Ability to stock pile some items.
Skill points allocation, and revamp of the skill trees.
some other small qualities of life improvement i might be missing.

These are some of my personal thoughts of the game state, for me the bad outweighs the good, specially the content difficulty, I remembered to do the normal raids on earth three half sleep, i am not kidding even my group members hear me snoring lol. The elite unlocked content for me comes a little to late, few friends or league mates remain to try those out. I like difficulty when everyone is doing their parts, not difficulty simply because no one listens or play as they like without any regard for the mechanics at all. So what do you think? what is that keeps you engaged or what is ticking you off? Please don't say remove your gear i f you want difficulty, that idea is silly.
Please Devs, think about it, the easier the content, the less need for a grind, and less need for communication, which is an important social aspect of the game, the fastest the people will burn out, etc. Make content for everyone and not just super casual players please. and fix PVP add the real progression to it.

A few things that keep me engaged:
I still really enjoy the feeling of flight in this game.
It has some cool staff martial arts animations, which you don't see much of in games. It's always swords and knives.
They let you use original and classic comic books covers as forms of in-game interior decoration. Not sure where else you can currently do that in gaming.

The things that keep me engaged outweigh the things that tick me off.

So if the progress points being removed didn’t encourage your friends to return, do you honestly think making everything harder for those of us left, will? I’m really trying not to comment every time someone brings up difficulty, but I’m legitimately curious about your logic here.

I'll answer your question with a question:

Why do you think you are entitled to be able to complete elite content if you lack the gear, skill or experience to do so?

I never said I was. I don’t touch elite content. OP said the progress point removal wasn’t enough to entice his friends to come back, and then implied that making normal content hard would bring them back. I don’t think that’ll work if letting people play elite every week now didn’t. I’m not against making elite content even more difficult than it is, now.

To be fair to the OP, he did not single out normal or elite. He said content is beaten day 1 and that includes elite. Making elite actually elite again might just be the motivation to bring his friends back.

Back on topic...

Enraged: everything I'm asked to pay for in-game that costs over and above my subscription.

Engaged: nothing. Haven't logged in for more than 10 mins at a time in weeks. I keep forgetting to cancel or I wouldn't even be on that much.

Perhaps I misinterpreted what he said, then. If people want the rally limit removed and for elite content to totally crush anyone still wearing the last episode’s gear, I don’t think that’s unreasonable. But yes, you’re right, I risk derailing the thread so that will be my final comment on that here.

Making content harder isn’t going to solve anything because the progression curve is now so flat. You can chase the gear, but you won’t feel a difference on the current content. So if it’s too hard to play, it stays too hard to play for a long time. Back during all the revamp testing, I remember Mepps chiming in and saying that the current progression curve would take two years of chasing gear before you felt a really noticeable difference on content.

So content released in 2017? Keeping chasing until 2019. If the content is too hard to play, are you going to wait that long to be picked up from your knock out?

People have explained the logic behind bringing more to the watered down content we call "normal" today, people have explained it time and time again yet you're still here fencing people off, asking about the logic. You've heard about it a hundred times, you just won't accept it, so what's even the point in running in head first in any thread that happen to mention difficulty?

You will still desperately cling to the easymode we have today, because it personally suits YOU and you don't seem to care about what would actually be good for the rest of the population if it's not directly good for YOU.


And to actually add to the OP and not go full derail-mode over the same subject any way I see fit, i'll add to the "tick off"-list:
Watered down content that barely give you the feel of actually overcoming or achieving something. This in turn make progression and rewards feel pointless, because why bother keeping up with a tedious grind when the content doesn't offer any challenge what so ever from the moment it's released as "end-game" content?

The only things really keeping me engaged and interesed these days are base-building and styles. I might aswell download SIMS.

The single thing that pisses me off the most about this game is the constant interrupts. Seriously, immunity is completely broken in this game. It hasn't worked correctly in months which has made tanking quite tedious. DPS is also annoying if you have a a power that is able to be interrupted. Even from max range, you just constantly get dropped and the power goes on cool down. Just so happens, the power is not protected under the channeling mod, so essentially in the last month, it has become useless even in alerts.

PVE interrupts need to be toned down. Amazonian deflection doesn't even work anymore because every single NPC just knocks you out of it.

I only tank right now, and have zero issues. I rotate my group breakout with my breakout trinket if the content calls for it. Usually my group breakout is enough.

I agree as a dps, the juggles are real. Pretty sure they were put there so we would be encouraged to run with roles, or tanks, and content. When I run alerts as 1 tank and 3 dps. It is so much smoother than running 1 heal and 3 dps.

I also think running with a healer in alerts makes people lazy. They either don't care if don't understand how the group buffs work, and that blocking is involved.

The one thing that always brings me back to this game is my progression. I've played for 7 years. I just can't bring myself to grind like this in another game.

The social aspect also keeps me going. Although, the last couple years it's just been 3 or 4 buddies. The hope and nostalgia of the old days still brings me back, night after night and day after day.

While I agree that Earth 3’s normal content maybe pulled it’s punches just a little too much, I still have yet to be convinced that having the difficulty people on the forums require in something other than elite content would achieve anything other than just alienate people, myself included.

You'll never have to worry about normal. It will never be anything more than a replay badge farm for Daybreak.

Engaged: Hard content with fun mechanics, like ToD, SM, UM; Lore that isn't rushed like E3 and the ending of WOL; Badass bosses like Darkseid, Nekron, Zeus and the anti-monitor; Cool seasonals like winter and halloween; New maps; Good updates that doesn't makes every1 i know leave the game;

What ticks me off: Easy content like Pan/Zoo/Escape and almost all raids they launched after DWF; Elite content with artificial difficult (bosses with a lot of health and random one shotting/2 deaths limit); Time Capsule feats; All feats in the dlcs being the same thing (mod, get the OP collection, equip the gear, collect base items); kill 300+ adds or kill a iconic in every single dlc; Open world content with the same reused missions just to feel like we have it.

What people on the forums have asked for is content for everyone, something other than the same old ROFL-Stomp formula every episode for years on end to the point where even casuals grow bored. it's not gamebreaking at all. You're not convinced because anything that means you may end up with one instance less catering to your liking is no good, then you throw a hissyfit when you're told that your reasoning seem selfish.

What I don’t understand is why we can’t dedicate elite content to that purpose? Is it because of the rally limit thing? Then what about if that’s removed? I don’t understand and it upsets me

You've got this answered dozens of times by several people in many constructive posts already, you know the answer. It's getting tiresome having to repeat things everytime you come in head first with the same rants everytime you find a thread merely mentioning this subject. I'm going to switch this around and ask you this: What good has keeping things super EZ-mode every episode for years on end got us? How has it affected our population for the better?

You know, all your rant threads around here about wiping in normal alerts and stuff, where you complain about getting paired in bad groups and what not. That's all thanks to content staying the same, watered down mess that you desperately try to keep.

Right now its mostly working on my characters looks and lairs. If I had gone my usual route i would have had close to most everything done gear wise (a full set of elite and vendor gear, both op pieces), my primary alt would be close behind and both of my healers would respectably have full sets of vendor gear. As i don't like how combat has turned out since the revamp I find I can't play long enough to achieve that. At 4/8 elite and a full set of vendor gear I'm officially done with earth 3. My top two alts have full sets of vendor gear. For a while I was working on a couple of weaker toons but the repetitive grind has run its course. I'm like 75 skill points ahead of the curve. grinding feats out means little now especially when most of the newest ones can be bought. My current grind takes me about an hour to finish.

Easy and hard is subjective. Everyones a super beast and never makes any mistakes. Content needs to be more fun. We need more random inserted into the game to keep us on our toes.

I want more engaging solo and smaller group content. Raids are fun and all but can get exhausting with three and seven other egos to play with. I want some content where i can take my time and explore around.

The population isn’t any worse than it was in Tier 6. The good is that people can actually finish things on a regular basis regardless. As much as the shambolic half-hour run I just had in IS was, it’s got nothing on the 3-hour-then-disband runs I used to suffer with in HOP1, back in the day.