We need npcs to fill roles in lower instances.

I think she means this instance of the clamp, but in it's original 'harder' form. It was adjusted down a few times including how much artifacts and SP 'pierce' through.

However there WAS a previous attempt at the clamp years ago (GU 46 or 47?) that was terrible. WAY worse than what we have today. Really made content unplayable on low level toons.

Yea that be the CR Scaling.

The minimum to improve the game's quality of life was total cross faction group and lfg.

I think folks are putting WAY too much faith in the reliability of NPC AI. Whether it's opposing NPCs or allied NPCs like Supergirl in the Doomed Metro solo instance, watching those NPCs fling themselves across the map trying to connect with one attack is ridiculous.

I don't trust NPC AI in any game as far as I could throw a piece of cheesecake while submerged in a swimming pool. In an online game where lag and latency can take place, that trust drops even more.

Lex had trouble walking up the hill in FoS, causing disbands…can’t get worse than that.

You now have your time for single player games, PSN down.

Happened to my group earlier this year. To avoid disbanding, we formed a wall behind him, nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, and walked him up. When he tried to go back and detected a player in the way, he'd turn around and take a step or two toward his proper destination, and the players inched forward to close the gap. We didn't even have to do it the entire way, took an extra 2-3 min tops before he behaved properly.

Eh, I'm ok with it as an option for duos that aren't popping after a set amount of time but it should be something one opts into (like queuing into in progress instances) and not available in EG or elite. The NPCs are improving, imo. In Kahndaq and Cursed Gotham, I kept Black Adam and Wonder Girl between me and the bosses and adds which mitigated some of the damage- though it could be a bit of a dance at times. Batman in the CHoM alert is a bit of a punching bag and stays wailing on his target (not that he does much damage). Red Tool has been surprisingly good at aggro'ing adds. Just let him be everyone's +1 if they want to solo a duo

Maybe the primary function of an NPC as Player 2 is support- they grab a share of the aggro, occasionally lunge, pick the player up a limited number of times, and help turn dual cogs? I once saw Superman pick up a downed player in a FoS raid (iirc) and was stunned, like, "Wait, that's a thing?! That's so cool!" It's kind of a bummer it's the only time I saw it happen, but at least the code for these behaviors seem to exist already, maybe they could frankencode an NPC partner out of them.

Turning this into a clamp discussion is a joke. Pre-clamp I waited 2.5 hours for content to pop on a lowbie toon..so don't tell me..oh if only there were no clamp..BS

Clamp / No clamp..this game is heavily built around the latest and greatest content..at the expense of everything else..the.end.

It’s weird how the AI NPCs fluctuate between content? Like this episode even you can see Red Tool working hard for the money jumping in to agro adds n bosses. No complaints there since he helps if you’re running the Elite solo. Now compare a few episodes Shocked. We had Static Shock in the Duo, Alert and Raid and I can’t imagine a single time he ever put himself in the way of adds or bosses? I think he was all just show just there to say his lines no NPC benefits whatsoever. I could be wrong there but I suppose he also didn’t glitch the instances by not being able to get to point A to point B so there’s that. But yeah NPC AI is all over the map in this game and not all NPCs are equal that’s for sure. You got helpful NPCs, squishy NPCs, purposely not helping NPCs, NPCs that glitch the instance and finally useless NPCs.

The original post was about clamped content and the lack of players participating...

EEG/Clamped content are synonymous at this point, they both mean exactly the same thing.

If you were waiting that long for a single instance back then, that was a "you" problem. Did you bother asking in LFG? Have any friends/leaguemates that were a higher CR over the content? Most lower tier content back then could be played with 2-3 people depending on how overgeared certain players were, and anything up to Tier 4 was a walk in. If you were strictly gearing up an alt, no idea why you wouldn't go this avenue, especially if you already had an established main with connections to higher CR players. Had there been an Omnibus-style queue system back then, you likely wouldn't have had to wait so long, anyway.

Your last statement is true, which is why these potential solutions have been brought up so much.

I strongly disagree i play a game that has this system and it's fantastic for leveling in low level content. Face the fact clamp content made it where a large portion of players now stick to end game. But then again I don't belive this game has long left. All the bad decisions they have made killed the game like clamp without away to unclamp

I'd just like to point out that you start out by reminding everyone that DCUO is multiplayer, not single-player. Then you acknowledge that there aren't enough players. That second point is why people are asking to be able to queue with fewer players, or with bots.

Simply advertising the game and doing giveaways isn't going to bring the population up. Most people look at the graphics and say the game is too old. Any new players they do manage to attract won't be around for long when they see there's no way to run the majority of the content because no one is willing to run the content.

What's needed to revitalize this game is something EG7 will never do: Update the game to a modern engine and re-balance all the existing content. But that requires spending money on DCUO, and EG7 is clearly just having the devs do the bare minimum to keep the Marketplace up and running until the DC license expires.

well, since they tried to sell the stat clamp/omni as a way to populate old content, they kinda go hand in hand.

this idea has def been suggested before, and i am all for it. recommended it myself several times, as i enjoyed playing the game doing walkins solo.

sadly, they didnt listen then, when they had the staffing, i doubt it will get implemented now with current staffing.

but hey, here's hoping!

At the time there was more people playing so Omni was good. I don’t care about stat clamp never had a problem. I’m only proposing having bots in the instance until a real player joins in. I realize there’s issues to this such as mechanics which is why I am not speaking about certain instances. Walk in solos have been discussed and given a response and that’s having portals causes problems. I agree with someone that said that DCUO is only available or something like that for End Game players and of course those who are able to do the event. Tier 1-6 needs bots to populate the instance. This is a tremendous issues DCUO has. I’m sure they have the numbers of amount of actual new players, returning players and those who make new toons from scratch. If there are only players doing end game content then everything else before it is ignored. No new dlc after 6 months is going to solve it. This needs to be addressed and taken care of. Again I’m not talking about stat clamp I just need bots in tier 1 and so on because I like making new toons. I want to experience the villain side again but there’s issues with that as well.

Let me just ask...since you mention 'until a real person joins in'...so if you are in the last 10% of a boss fight, and you are using your NPC St Walker as your healer, then someone joins as heal...will your St Walker despawn, maybe biffing the fight? If that person then realizes it's the end of the run and wanted 1st boss....does St Walker respawn, but outside the room?

While I don't believe that bots would ever work as they'd likely have poor AI...or be overpowered where you could pull in 7 of them and just let them run the run and collect loot....I think if you WERE going to run bots...you run the bots to the end, not try and pick up random people along the way...further muddying the run.

Now...if your buddy logs in and wants to join, I think you could 'dismiss' a bot, then invite the other person to fill the spot. That seems doable.

Don't get me wrong....I'm fine with them figuring out how to get bots in. I just don't think they can, at least any faster than they could make it so we can go in with say 2, 4, 5 or 7 people in an 'as is' group.

This would be too difficult to do now, I think. I don't imagine they have the resources for AI scripting, nor the time to go back through each and every bit of content to ensure they have the behaviors needed to ensure certain elements work as intended, such as hitting multiple switches at the same time, or at all, or various puzzles. What they would be better off doing is creating new, generic content designed around it, and treat it like an event mission where you get scaled to whatever rating, and the entirety of content would then be designed around the role-less buffs, with everything being a straightforward kill fest/hallway simulator.

Head to A, kill all mobs, > repeat at B > repeat at C > boss, repeat 2 or 3 times until instance over.

Then this could be monetized by opening up NPC options via unlocking legends characters, unless they want to do something with the allies system that makes them more permanent fixtures, similar to how 'companions' work in several other MMOs, like how NEVERWINTER, Elder Scrolls Online and The Old Republic make use of them. (With ToR giving them role options for dps/tank/heals)

Yet still, I think the time for something like that would have been when the studio was better off, several years ago. At this point I don't see it happening.

As it is right now, it's bad enough that allies don't always work properly. They have long cooldowns, and they can pop in to do their attack and then do absolutely nothing, just standing there, even if their path to the target is unobstructed. :/

as touching these 3 points, i would love it to auto fill when someone leaves an instance as well, so we are not sitting around waiting forever trying to finish a raid. def recommended that in the past.

as for no problems with the stat clamp, i can guarantee you, despite mechanics needing 2-4 ppl, you could easily solo all that tier 1 stuff back in the day prior to the clamp and it was very fun/satisfying doing so

the villain side, my advice there is join a league. the villains are very tribal, you will find very few in lfg trying to get stuff done. it seems like it is league or bust when it comes to villains.

goodluck and yes i hope you get your desires!

I have been saying this for a while already: we should have Justice Leaguers/Hall of doomers to fill in, so players could play group and raid contents with AIs.

Final fantasy has a system call trusted q. It where you run the instance with the side characters of your story. They are the sions of the seventh dawn and its actually the best way to learn the mechanics in the game because all you have to do is follow them and u never get hit. They cover all the roles of the group so u can be the dps or tank or heal. When its hard to get into content this is a great way to get around not having the people to run it. I will add that running the trust make content slower to complete because the npc don't keep damage up while they avoid damage. This is why alot still try to run with people first because it's is a slower run

I’m going to use ESO as comparison to your first sentence. In ESO of course you gotta wait till there are 4 players for a dungeon instance. One player leaves for whatever reason so someone’s companion will fill in that spot. A real player will always be better than a bot. However, in this case the bot serves only as a body, when a player joins in that bot disappears. While the thought of using legends as bots to fill in empty spots is cool, I haven’t given much thought into how it would work because why should I? lol my title in this thread is wrong. I didn’t mean to say “roles” but just empty spots in an instance which defaults to DPS. Before we continue I need to point out i am not favoring difficult raids that require mechanics im excluding those. The party leader could choose which legend they want to use. Saint Walker wouldn’t spawn outside if a player decides to leave. He’ll just spawn with the group. Ehhh I might be biased in speaking about this because I main battle tanks so to me any bot will do but speaking in a general sense I guess a legends tank like Atrocitus might work for those who only play as a dps.