What kind of MMO consciously kills its open world?

I've played a lot of MMOs in my years and I don't get the open world fascination. In the vast majority of MMOs once you get at or near end game, open world is nothing more than faction reputation grinding or farming and relevant content is almost always inside instances. So is what you're really asking here for some kind of daily grind added to the game like more factions to grind rep for or something?

Otherwise, what content do you actually *want* for open world? You can't, for obvious reasons, have instance bosses running around Metropolis and Gotham so what are you after? DC isn't like other MMOs in that the level cap gets raised all the time, CR replaces levels at 30 so you can't really have leveling quests added with each DLC and I'm not jumping into the raise level cap debate here. Even if the cap did raise, just like other MMOs, most people would blow through that content to get to the end game stuff. Even the open world stuff that's been added, Gotham Under Siege for example, it's just another grind for feats and gear. I don't see the need for faction rep in this game. Open world content is usually repetitious and boring.

They've added open world areas with Gotham Wastelands, Metropolis Battlezone, etc. and each has some grind to them but that's still just feat and mark grinding. I'm all for content that enriches and enhances any game I play but if you're gonna complain there is no content of a certain type, at least be specific as to what content you want.

Most MMOs have stories that don't work like comics. Your character in most MMOs is a functionary of iconic leaders and you're their lacky. Albeit sometimes a powerful one but still a lakcy. The story and feel of a comic universe lends itself more to the format of DCUO where instances sort of represent issues or arcs in a comic series IMO and the format works best to stay as true to the source inspiration as you can in a different media. In DCUO your character might be mentored by an iconic but you're still the hero or villain of your own comic book series. You're the one making the headlines. Open world doesn't really work in that feel from my point of view.

To answer your initial question: one that discovered that instanced content does just fine for a majority of gamers. Also valid answer: one that attracted a "community" so toxic that players prefer spending time on meddling with new players' contents rather than developing their own toon further (which is a common problem in open world MMOs). Another valid answer: one that has too few devs to actually develop further open world content. And finally: one that was forced by the "I don't have anything to do"-replay-burning-crowd into a release schedule so tight it has no room for open world expansions.

Next question?

That is true, but helping someone and changing your own gameplay sounds a bit to much don't you think, sometimes things just don't work out like not knowing about support roles, which is why you dps all your life, it's dumb yeah, but doesn't make the player a bad person if he or she does not know or specc of they role.lmao and we do know that some players may think they are helping especially with the remaining glitch/bugs in low cr content, so they figure they rush through avoiding those problems.

Not in areas where the noobs have to run their content, agreed - but you could have in other areas. Point is, especially in open world, DCUO is not making the most of the whole Braniac Invasion scenario, and on top, isn't finishing the scenario either (in both Gotham under siege and Lantern war Metropolis the bottles are still up, presenting so to say invasions on existing invasions) which tops on giving the open world a somewhat being out of touch with content appearance.

So imagine an additional city - National City, Opal City, Midway City, Fawcett City; DC really has a ton of cities to offer - that during "normal" times has been overlooked by Brainiac and randomly spawns an invasion force of Brainiac or Red Lanterns or Darkseid's henchmen including a pretty strong open world raid style boss, and using the system message to alert all players of the invasion - so to say the things Mepps does in the HQs or Metro or Gotham from time to time, just this time with specially designed game systems for loot/reward, content presentation and mission goals - and feats ("fast response" for the first 100 players to be there and to prevent campers from farming that feat: you can just gain it if you were in a different zone when the alert was raised; etc.).

It's a matter of variety in scenarios, reward and presentation to make content like that a success. If they do it the Central City way, it will fail of course - two variations of open world "boss" fights with standard rewards and factions excluded aren't too much of fun, really. Huge number of scenarios able to play with added presentation effects - watching a building getting bottled because YOU failed to defend it; or destroyed by a giant red hammer light construct; think you get the idea - and fitting aftermath missions depending on the outcome can make stuff like that very successful; they could even turn it to PVP events depending on the scenario (Brainiac invading -> heroes and villains stand united; Toyman or Black Adam or Circe or Lex invading -> villains support the invasion forces while heroes have to fight them all back etc.) if they wanted.

Actually, it's pretty much the same, no matter if grinding for XP or CR -> you still grind, and the new missions are technically level-up missions. Just with the "drops" people expect to have a lucky short cut from time to time while chasing gear; a short cut you don't usually combine with XP grinding. Have the bosses randomly drop XP tokens in an XP grind, and you have the lucky short cut and that way exactly the same system. Running instances is as repetitious and boring, and once the "new" FX wears off, you run it again for feats and gear Point is: MMO content generally is designed to be repetitious, no matter if in instanced content or open world. Just the instanced comes with a fixed group size allowing to exclude certain players effectively you don't want to deal with, while in open world other players can become obstacles you don't get rid off by adding them to ignore.

But given the possibilities, both types of content can be designed to be less repetitious and boring, and that is what players who get/got bored with the game should demand; and that's not a matter of that content being open world or instanced in the first place.

Can't agree here. Your character is still a lackey since you get send to "do this, do that" via your mission journal. Actually, running through open world picking your fights out of a mess of random situations gives more of the feeling to NOT be a lackey As I said - the point is that content in MMO, no matter if open world or instance, is always a grind, for XP, gear or feats. Instances can make the grind feel shorter due to teleporting right to where you want to be and always providing the very same scenario - but once you run that scenario for the x-th time simply waiting for that last one style or furniture drop, it's as boring as scanning a certain area for a certain bounty to respawn

The only advantages instance offer is allowing to be selective about the players that join; given the way this community devolved, I'm however not sure if this is an advantage or the reason the community devolved in the first place, since you don't to apply any basic social competence to get along with [fill insult here] since you can effectively avoid them. Another reason to favor instanced content is loot locking/replay badges, but that's from the companies POV. And of course - the server load; you don't need to be superstrong servers if you don't expect a couple of hundred players fighting in the very same zone.

Also, an excessive open world invasion scenario would just work as a "free for all content" expansion and not when access is limited to the top gear chasers; one of the reason why the open world stuff in DCUO's expansions feels so tedious is: you usually don't find players to team up with if you do it at level, part of it is designed to discourage teaming up (most of the dailies), and it's mainly waiting for/finding the spawn when doing it later. Better implementation could get rid of these factors.

I get where you're coming from but sloppy design work in leaving the bottles up in the Metro Warzone shouldn't be construed as Braniac Invasion still ongoing. That's just sloppy devs reusing maps without updating them. Technically Braniac is still active as we see from Gotham Invasion and some other raids up to T7's BBS so a new, higher level version of a Braniac Invasion wouldn't be a bad thing. He's one of the major bad guys of the game and hell, pretty much everything up to tier 4 and a lot since then has revolved around him. It would be great. Taking down Braniac back in the day when Prime Battleground was end game was awesome and something recapturing that feel would be nice because final encounters in later raids don't have the same flare. They're just short cut scene and get your loot.

Interesting idea but if that were the case, I'd rather see something more like an opening event. If you ever played WoW and had the rare opportunity to do the opening of AQ back in the vanilla days, that was great and something similar would be fantastic. Super nasty challenge threatens Earth and the initial invasion takes a city, heroes and villains alike begrudgingly work together because whether we want to rule it or save it, it's our planet. So you have some event to break down the defenses to get you inside before instances, raids, quests, etc. were even available. Most major players in comics have either armies or tech or both that would allow them to fortress up a small city pretty quickly like bottling for example or some kind of massive force field that has to be broken down. Think about an entire zone that's inside a bottle and you're getting past the defenses and knocking a hole in it to get a foothold and then going from there.

Here I think we have an agree to disagree position. I think once you finish your mentor stuff to 30, your character is no longer a functionary. Yes, sometimes specific people might give you a specific challenge but in many of the instances or events, you're not doing it because hero/villain mentor said to. You're doing it because you want to. This might or might not be sloppy writing as many of the solo/duo/alerts simply don't seem to have any good story to them. They're just queue/smash/loot/leave.

Here I agree 100%.

Intersting and rare case on the forums - we start at opposite points but seem to agree largely. Since you mention opening events, there seems to be open world content you even enjoyed. So, with....

....being able to agree on further that sloppy writing is a major bummer, especially in an MMO evolving around comic book story arcs, we seem to agree that the queue/smash/loot/leave content is not what we would consider good content, giving the devs something to think about. Key problem to me remains: better content, especially when it comes to large areas with new maps or well evolving story lines including placing those within the existing content, cannot be done with the monthly release schedule. The key to new content is making it more accessible to all players, placing or rooting it in existing story lines and getting rid of the tedious, repetitive, grindy aura it develops after running it for the third time tops.

In my opinion, anyone who is going to write content for an MMO, especially an iconic one with a well established genre outside of the game, the writers should take some time and play through the character quest storyline for each class in SW:ToR. The game itself has some flaws but the storyline for the main character quest is second to none in any game I've played, MMO wise, and that's a lot. Bioware does and always has done phenomenal story development and their first foray into an MMO was no exception. The quest lineis mostly linear as an MMO has to be and it is still a fantastic story even within the limitations of linear writing. That's how MMO quest lines are done developers/writers. The overall game bored me, Bioware is better with single player content but I did play through every class and every quest in the game because of that writing. Daybreak could learn a lot about story development from them. Hell for that matter, Bioware's catalog should be mandatory playing for any aspiring game writer.

In terms of mechanics, the toughest one for players would probably be going off-damage to help. I know if I tried to Tank for someone on my Rage character I'd be pretty useless, even with a large CR difference between my character and the NPCs.

The other stuff, though, wouldn't take that much of a change beyond showing a little restraint or consideration, maybe observing the situation first. But I am aware of how difficult it can be to change a mindset, especially if it's just easier to shoot first and not even bother asking questions.

At the end of the day, I honestly feel showing a little restraint and consideration for others could do a world of good for the community as a whole, especially in fighting some of the toxic atmosphere that exists. It'd be far from a cure-all for what ails the game, but every little bit helps.

Yeah and sometimes you have those low cr players that just don't want to learn, but to rather get it done asap, some may feel it's waste of time, but people should in general be more considerate, but to me and you that is just wishful thinking.

I know what you mean I like to solo myself most of the time. There is so much higher level content that requires you to team up that its nice to be out doing something on your own. "Hey I AM a super hero with powers why do I need 3 to 7 others every time I battle a villain?" But I do think you shouldn't feel like your character doesn't BELONG at Stryker's... You have a mission you still need there. It's not your fault that the Contact has failed to give it to you. Now like you I think there is a certain amount of etiquette that sadly a lot of the community of this game ignore completely. Any where I am doing whatever mission I have to do I always try to make sure I am not screwing up something another player is doing. I have seen way too many times where a player will let me take out an entire mob around some objective I need to click and then they swoop in an click it. one good example is the cages with the Eagles in Gotham Under Siege. Yeah I KNOW you can land on top and click the cage without ever attacking anything but I happen to enjoy beating up the bad guys. I take out both guards and then some guy rushes in and clicks the cage. I still get credit but you can't help thinking to yourself after they do that a couple times in a row. "Would you like me take out the COCKATRICE for you too after WE get done here?" sadly there is nothing we can do about that.. The ratio of jerks in this game is HIGH.


But I see that CR requirement a different way than I think YOU do. Let's use Gotham Under Siege as an example again. If I am CR 99 I can not enter because the zone requires everyone to be CR 100 OR ABOVE to enter. Now realistically if I am CR 99 is there a really good chance I have just as much luck completing missions in that zone as a CR 100? SURE that 1 combat rating point doesn't make THAT much of a difference. Heck at CR 65 or 66 (I cant recall now) I decided to see how I'd fair with an ALT taking on mobs at Ace Chemical a long time ago. One on one I had no problem at all defeating a lieutenant. BUT the CR requirement is there to MAKE me work a bit longer and get to 100 before I can enter. There is NO limit on the other end.. nothing that says after CR 117 you are no longer allowed in this zone. How could they knowing their almost no one can complete every necessary feat that zone has to offer before their CR exceeds relativity? I still have missions and feats I need/want to complete in every zone from Ace/Stryker's to New Genesis and with then stating they plan to make skill points count again how could they possibly deny a huge portion of the player base access to a zone where those feats are located because.. "your CR is too high" They take away the ability to earn marks and offer only that alternate reward box but they couldn't possibly lock the door.. The zone is free to use by anyone that has a reason to be there.

I'm not sure I see a need to defend wanting "open world" content. With only a few exceptions in all the threads that have asked for this, people are not asking for anything to be taken out in its place. For people who don't see the value of open world content, the game will be the same for them with it or without it.

The only potentially valid argument against it (that I can see) is that it will need additional dev resources. However, it's more likely that it is low hanging fruit for the developers. You're already using existing environments. The content can be structured like some seasonals where accessing content requires being on a mission, with the difference that you need to be above a CR level to get the mission. Existing mob NPCs can be used, so no new models, textures, animations, AI, etc. for that. The reward is a mark, so nothing new there either.

The only driver we need to look at is how many players want it. It seems like there are a fair number by the forums, but I am first to admit that you can't go by that. Either way, I can only see the point in counting 'yes' votes and not the point in counting 'no' votes if all other content remains unaffected.

Man, I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets frustrated with players like that. Those kind of players are the ones that usually bring out the salty language, so it's probably for the best that I don't have a mic plugged in and that I keep my fingers away from the enter key so that I don't start ranting like a madman in chat. Only thing more frustrating is the players who come along and "help" with solo mission boss battles (that you have fully under control) by doing a one-shot attack that takes down the boss. Usually without asking if you need or want help.

I wish there was a better term I could use for how I view it, but saying a particular character of mine doesn't really belong in certain areas is really the best way I can put it. It's not an attempt to try and regulate who can be in what area or anything like that, it's more of an acknowledgement that I've outgrown that tier/section of the game. Outside of maybe getting swarmed by some mobs (why is it that those freaking Skullcracker gang members hit so hard no matter what your CR is?!) there really isn't anything that's a threat to the majority of my characters at the Stryker's Island Home Turf missions, and the missions don't really offer any challenge. That part of the game isn't really meant for me anymore, even if I still feats or missions left there.

Even though I can still play there, it's not my playground anymore. I have other playgrounds to play in that are meant for me. But if I do happen play in those old playgrounds, I either stay out of the way of the other kids or voluntarily play at their level. Otherwise I'm just the jerk who keeps kicking the ball too hard in kickball and ruining the game for the other kids.

Wow... lots of stuff to read in this thread.

Remember many winters ago how we dreamed of getting other Cities in DUO???

We were waiting to get Central City.
We hoped we would get a REAL version of Coast City.

We though..... once a year maybe??? they could add a new City to DCUO.
Star City.... Central City..... Coast City.....
once a year a new City with new content could be added to DCUO.

And then we did get Central City..... and one thing was quite clear.

We would never see another city like Gotham or Metropolis.

In LotRO.... they would add a new BIG area with each new Expansions.

They added Moria (damm got lost quite a few times in there ).

Then they added Mirkwood.

They added Rohan.

They added Isengard.

They added Helm's Deep.

So being a foolish fool....... I expected more DC cities to be added to the game.

But now we know better.
We know that at best we might see reskinned versions of Gotham and Metropolis.

The thing to keep in mind is that building Metropolis and Gotham took more than just a year. If I remember right it was a significant portion of the development time when first making the game, and I can't see the player base waiting that long for new cities when there are still plenty of people ready to grab the pitchforks and light the torches when a piece of monthly content gets delayed a bit.

Oh I know that now.

But when we first started..... I had no idea of any of this.
Or how small the Dev team was.

So I saw Gotham and Metro as only the first step..... and that other Cities would be added as time went by.

Heck they did not need to add a city all at once.

They could add a small part like with Central City.... then add another part to CC later on.... then another part...... and then after a while..... SHAZAM!!!!..... we would have a 3rd city with Central City.

Somewhat like they did with Metropolis Battlezone.
Yes it is only a reaskinned Metro.
They started with a bunch of missions.... and added more missions...... and more Lanterns as time went by.

The bottles not being removed is a design flaw. Something that cant be fixed easily

Yeah... I wish we could have had a version without the Bottle...... but the way the maps were made apparently it would be a Herculean to remove them bottles.

Oh well.

If only GUS and metro battle zone were bottle free remakes

Yeah.... we asked about that at the time.

That is when we were pretty much told that removing the bottles was not really an option because of the way the models were made.

It probably can be done...... but it probably would mean a truckload of work and would require remaking a big chunk of the map.

So odds are..... too much more work then the Devs are willing to put into it.

I dont like operations. But i mean open world content like riots in city streets, or robbers infront of banks or tons of new bounties & have then have gangs.. All of these could replace the dated trigon open world stuff