Was it always this bad?

Was the End game population always this bad during summer?

An important way i follow is to look at the past to understand the present and the future.

I dont know at the present that the many league members and players i know will or will not return after summers over,i know 2 high end members have stopped playing of dissatisfaction and have left for Eso, My memory of dcuo in previous summers is vague,however i feel last summer was more active despite having a alert for the main attraction during AF part 1, does any remember if the activity levels on dcuo were this bad in previous summers or is this something that will fix itself at September?

I don't think it is as bad as you say..

Even with the changes that GU 47 did to the game, at least the Devs/Mepps have went back and made some modifications.

I got TWO or THREE MOVs from T5 Nexus last weekend. That alone showed me that they DO read the forums to an extent.

They've added Prestige drops, Exo drops, Token drops.....

As for the population - Some were going to leave for ESO regardless, or other games. I even loaded another game onto my computer, but due to the graphics of this MMO I didn't go back.

I took a week or so off to beat Star Craft 2 (again).

But I'm back to DCUO.

Looking forward to the next year for this game - especially with the DC movies coming out. Plenty of potential for some tie-ins if they utilize it.

The population usually drops during the summer months, but this year is worse than the previous ones because of all of the updates since GU36. GU47 hit the community harder than any other update since GU3, which is actually saying something. People were generally more upset with GU47 than they were with GU36 or GU41. GU47 came at a terrible time because it released in the same time frame as ESO and Arkham Knight, so we got hit three times in a very short period. Many of my friends and even my wife quit because of GU47. (However, I am still playing this until either the servers shut down or something upsets me bad enough to drive me away)

GU47 ran off a good amount and haven't been back to check out GU50 changes. And while two of those DCUO killers (Destiny and ESO) didn't kill the game they put a good hurting on the game. And doesn't matter if you like or hate those games you probably know someone who those games took away.

"with the changes that GU 47 did to the game, at least the Devs/Mepps have went back and made some modifications."

Soooo even they know that it was a disaster decision that they made, per why their deleting truthful posts right away all the time and now their back tracking!! And with that being said, its not only game update 47 that has drove us away!

How about ALL the ridiculous catering! I see the new t4 duos? Hey cool, uuuum nope just more recycled mentor missions turn into duo`s!

Ok whats wrong with, well its just not that! Players have worked hard to get these feats by taking time and finding ppl with mentors to run it and didn't have recycled product handed to us!!

Which leads me into all theses years of earning feats such as spending countless reply badges, Time and grinding for literally 100`s of thousands of marks of triumph to get Prideful, t5 t4 and t3 gear! AND what do they do? Here you go 100 marks(Maybe 3 days of content) or like in the past the just cut the price by 80% and sooooo its so sad to bad! Lets not even talk about how the have spit on us in pvp grinding in the past!

Hey I get it, they need money to keep the game going! but, there is far better ways to do it then to continue to disrespect and money grab us! Yes ppl attack them on the forums but when I have seen actual constructive ideas from ppl, but they still crap on them! Unless your in their inner butt kissing circle!!!

*sigh* i remember the summer of 2013 it was the best time ever. I was involved in a lot of fun ****, there was action, drama and of course romance.

I think I'm one of the few who has no problem with GU36! Even like WM! The only thing that made me sad was that they destroyed the encricling throw!
The GU47 I do not like, but I learned to live after the changes ...
But the GU41 is simply unacceptable! She made me always to leave the PVP!

LOL.

"Inner Butt-kissing circle?"

Nah. Not even.

In my Navy days, I learned to compromise for the sake of the mission. With that compromising, I learned to see BOTH sides of the coin.

I'm also probably older than most of you, so I also remember the days of Atari, Colecovision, Dreamcast, Intellivision.....the stuff that's out here now? We have a LOT to be thankful for.

Most of you are living in the greatest age of Technology and you don't even know it or care.

Yes - I'm thankful for DCUO. It's a great game, still.

I'm not a big fan of GU 47, either...nor am I a fan of the latest "Make the Dps's less power-reliant" move. I've railed against both.

But I won't ever fall to the "Doom and Gloom" threads around here, either.

Follow my posts. I dare you, Bearsforlife. If you do, you won't even consider me a "butt-kisser".

This should give a slight idea. Don't look at the numbers because steam is a very small sample size, look at the trends. Look at which months tend to have more or less people, i think all servers behave similarly. Summer is indeed a bad time since people explore the outside world a bit more joyously

http://steamcharts.com/app/24200#All

I wouldn't really call it backtracking, but more revisiting the content to make it more appealing to endgame players. Speaking just for myself I know that the chance at 5 different loot items instead of just the gear reward has definitely made me revisit some of the older content on a regular basis. People are constantly saying the devs don't listen blah blah blah but nothing could be further from the truth. They read the backlash from removing mark rewards from lower content, came up with a compromise and implemented it.

Once more, this is something that was requested by the community. Many people had concerns that there was a big gap in the T4 content so they addressed the issue. Alongside this, I had see many people suggest in the past to have the final mentor missions re-used so that people could stop relying on having to ask people with different mentors to let them into the content to earn the feats associated with them. I don't see a problem with what they did. It is free content for all players, it's not tied to any kind of DLC or Episode. You cannot expect a business to make 3 entirely new duos and hand them out for free, just as you would not expect them to make three entirely new duos for a tier that is many years old and then charge for them.

I fail to see any kind of issue with this. Surely you grinded for them at the time they were relevant, yes? You grinded for them when you had to do content related to them, so it was time well spent. (although since you are talking about Marks of Triumph instead of Marks of Krypton, Marks of War and Marks of Reality I would say you didn't have the true grind at all. They were far easier to obtain when they were switched over to Marks of Triumph than they were when they were their own separate Mark). Then why begrudge making it a little easier to obtain these styles that are very old? I grinded for these styles too, and I have no problem with them being easier to obtain now.

Before you label me as one of the people in their "inner butt kissing circle" - nothing could be further from the truth. I simply look at the facts presented to me objectively and logically instead of jumping to conclusions. Too many people on here just blurt out the first thing that pops into their head instead of actually sitting back and taking the time to think about the logic behind it.

Dont know PS but PC is very bad. Around 10k chars with CR>115 on all Pc-servers together speaks for itself. Low pop is/will soon be another factor driving people away even more. Low lvl content is deserted new players suffer. If it was just for Pc I guess DCUO would rather sooner than later become wasteful but as long as PS is bankable PC will exist alongside.
Immediate actions to bring in/back new/old players should be taken. Open up more content for f2p. Push out requested powers ASAP and make at least one of them f2p. A new sub/payment-modell is also needed to stay competitive. I myself know at least 2 players who quit bc of no GTCs/alternative payment methods. As DBG runs multible games at least advertise there and at social media/YT/Twitch. Create ingame achievements on all DBG games for also playing other DBG games (like Blizz does for example).

36 and 47 killed it. The end lol.

I don't remember it being bad at all last summer, which is why I laugh at those that say the population is low due to the time of year. GU 47 is what happened. It happened at a critical time (new MMOs released) with critical changes (content relevancy, unified mark system, etc). The Devs have done well to try to alleviate the outcome with some recent good changes, however it will take a bit of time before we may see large and active population again (cough, cough......cross play). I think a lot of players became bored, unmotivated, and uninterested with the direction that the game seems to be taking, which is facilitating the game more by the update and catering more around the casual player. It seems as if the game is steering away from what an MMO is to feel like. It seems as it is more of a single player game with many others like you, in the way. Also, everyone wants everything NOW. Forget the grind or working long and hard for something as in most MMOs. Everyone wants to be max CR from day one. Everyone wants to be the best DPS without working for SP or taking the time to craft their mods. Players seem more spoiled nowadays demanding that things be handed down because they "don't have time". Why even pick up an MMO if they don't have time? Or patience? It just seems that these are the players that the attention or the direction of this game seems to geared towards. Unfortunately many are investing their game time into other games that are newer, fresher, and simply offer more than what DC does for their money. ESO is a perfect example, which is why many have headed there. I will remain optimistic as I do enjoy this game very much still. I admit that I do not play it as often as I did months ago, but I still enjoy the game enough to log in at least a couple of times a week and catch up with some of those league mates that may still be playing regularly.

It hasn't ever been this dead. Summer is usually where the last surge of people are before school starts and people have less free time. There should be MORE on during summer. The dive bomb the population took is crazy. Easy to see why though. Boring content, over emphasis on DPS, zero support role mechanics in content, horrid combat system, poor balance, bad mark change, etc. if they totally undid the combat changes and GU 47, we wouldn't be having this conversation

Definitely worse, there are countless un needed updates one after the other(instead of complaining on the forums players are just leaving) , and if players are looking for a skilled based diverse game as of now Dcuo is just not for them.

I hear ya bud....I actually have a buddy the sang "DCUO is dead bruh....bruh...bruh....bruh...DCUO is dead bruh...ESO bruh....everyone's going to ESO bruh....bruh....bruh.....ESO bruh.....

He's back on DCUO btw.....

Coincidentallly, I experienced the IDENTICAL conversation when Destiny was first released....

"DCUO is dead bruh...bruh...bruh...Destiny bruh...."

Has it been this bad no I think for me the clostest was last year thats when you could tell the population dropping a bit. I think this updates have drove many to play other games like Destiny,DBX,FF14, ESO, Dragon Age III, MH4U, ect.

Some might comeback and not like the changes others have stated that they want to wait and see if DCUO do something. Others have been playing for years and just want something more, while a bunch have stop paying Subs because this isn't the game they paid for. I saw online a while ago the during July that is the month most families go on vacation.

So around May is when GU47 dropped right? So it wasn't really summer vacation and the population still seems about the same and school have started in my area. So was it summer vacation for me it was a no and not an viable excuse.

The population seemed low on a contestant basis since March from what my sister have been saying and she have yet to take a break she logs on daily even if its jut for an hour or 2. This year isn't DCUO plan and simple and it will just get worst from here on out so the DCUO staff needs to step up their game, plan and simple.

I think the more significant concern here is that they were clearly oblivious/ignorant of what the impact would be in the first place...there were many options in terms of game rewards and yet the one selected was so bewilderingly destructive as to beggar belief....the delay in putting some paper over the cracks has undoubtedly driven a significant number of players away. I hope they will return, I'm sure some will, but the timing could not have been worse.

As a general note given all the games in Daybreaks portfolio why, oh why, does each one have to reinvent a rewards mechanism, surely one of them does it well...and surely all are far better than the excremental one that DCUO is now saddled with.

As to the more general complaint that the devs don't listen....I'd actually suggest the opposite, in many cases the game is suffering because of constant direction changes or that changes are not being followed through to their conclusion.....stat flattening amid a partially completed balancing of the powers is really a case of making life difficult for yourself, equally appeasing players by ring-fencing absurdly high stats at the maximum tier is really going to put pressure on future content, the catch 22 is always about striking the right balance and that is where GU47 got it most wrong imo.

See, the problem is that some posts just come off as ranting and non constructive. As a simple example, I'll use your post. You may have some valid points, but what I see is contradiction which in turn muddles up the entire post. You speak of ridiculous catering and at the same time they crap on constructive ideas.
It also seems you are suggesting the devs develop brand new content for lower tiers with the T4 duo comments. I doubt new lower tier content will go over well with the people in these forums, probably you included.
So on the one hand, the devs do ridiculous catering and on the other they crap on constructive posts. I see a no win/satisfactory or constructive solution here.

well no one will admit it be the populaton for a few ears was declining because of many factors but it was GU47 that drew people away...Yeah there is ESO and some came back to this game but have only played way less that they did before some like me is wanting for Everquest Next (Daybreak) which looks so amazing and is a console game and I think it will be f2p too. So its competition and lack of fire power (ironically in a game about powers). DCUO lacks a wow factor and yes its the best comic book game but in the MMO catergory its dropping and on consoles its like top 5 (which isn't saying much since there is like 5). I want otsee how this play out will DCUO bounce back or will it be another titanic in a sea of MMO's hitting that iceberg of doom....?