When did this much grind become acceptable?

Am I the only one who remembers the backlash from OC or am I trippin hard?

I would agree, too. I said before the numbers were revealed that 6 weeks of playing daily should be the point at which you've achieved a full set of gear. But I also said that under the impression that DLC cycles would be 12 weeks. Which doesn't appear to be the case anymore. Either way, 50% of the time grinding, 50% of the time enjoying your spoils. I just hope that the 11 odd weeks it's going to take to get this set isn't the half way point between today and the next episode D:

I disagree with the notion that the grind is a second job. At best, there's 60 minutes worth of content for you to play daily for Coins and then 2 raids which take an hour (less if it's a really good group) to beat twice a week. If you can't afford an hour a day on DCUO and consider that on par with "a job" then I don't really know what to say. Especially because it's not like you have to spend an hour a day farming nodes in the Open World or some other monotonous task. It's an hour running content. Which is pretty much one of the only things you can do in DCUO anyway. Doesn't really qualify as a job.

I think that a grind is a good way to keep people entertained and engaged. It's also a realistic way to achieve it in a game like this where resources are limited. I think your approach is definitely a good way to keep people entertained and engaged, too, but it's not something that's realistically going to happen.

The community they've been cultivating for the past 3 years simply isn't that way inclined. We all saw what happened when DWF came out and that wasn't even an ultra difficult raid. It's also well established now that the developers like to make money by replaying content. Difficulty content isn't attractive to replay as easy content, so I doubt the replay badge usage is as high as when the raid is ridiculously easy like KCT. If you've got a community that isn't crying out for difficult content and difficult content affects the usage of one of your key products, then it's basically a lost cause to expect the developers to build DLC packs in this way.

The issue isn't the grind, is that there's barely content to do for the grind, 6 things don't equal 6 months of content, specially when were coming by out of a constant 6 piece of content quarterly (this includes every release window). If this is the system from now on I really don't see how the game can survive, when lack of content was always an issue, and extreme grinding without content isn't an solution, even if at one point mods and gear is better, the grind is still too much with too little.

I took a two week break. I got bored being stuck at 124 sp. It really is hard to catch up with so many feats to get. 159cr/124sp. No one really wants to help lower cr people. i started making a new character because the original content is actually more fun than the new stuff.

In another year when my cr finally hits 175, I'll be glad to skip over the amazon fury three stuff. It will be much easier for everyone actually to go back and do once we're all much higher cr.

What is oc and what kind of backlash?

Here's a problem with this game, one of my biggest problems and some of you have noted it in the past.

There is no challenge to DCUO. What happens in DCUO is that Quality is replaced by Quantity.

Having been around for 5+ years, there have been very few raids that have been really enjoyable and I'm sure everyone has their preferences. Some of my favourites:

FOS
DOX
UM/E

These are just the first few that come to mind. These raids had mechanics that you couldn't just ignore, they required people to communicate and you were in there for a good little while, when you came out of them, you felt like you accomplished something.

With other MMO's you have to do many small tasks, slowly build yourself up to where you can tackle the dungeon, the big bosses. In DC on the day that new content drops, everyone and their fourth cousin is in the highest raid beating it.

When you make content so easy that everyone can breeze through the solos, duos and alerts and then manage to get past the raid then what's the point? KCT came out and we did it the first day in 15 minutes. Why even bother making it when it takes less time than an alert? It now takes 7 minutes and I'm sure even less with these days to come. 7 minute raid? I've spent more time inside duos.

If you make the raids harder, and I mean really make them a fun challenge, not just buff their healths up but include mechanics that HAVE to be followed, people will play the lower content eagerly to grow stronger.

The problem is we've dug this hole where content is only a challenge day one and every day after that it becomes a daily chore. Give us content that is hard so that the other tasks don't seem meaningless, give us content that we feel accomplished doing rather than 'completing our weeklies'.

/rant

I know we're on the far opposite sides of the Spectrum, but don't you TEMPT me!!

I'll hop over there and give you a....BIG OL' HUG!!!

You're probably talking about players who are 175cr/275sp or higher. i don't know what the max cr actually is or skill points. Like phantom zone. I'm not bothering with that again until I have at least 175cr/200sp. Or anything in that bracket for that matter. At the current moment I am still working on feats for Battle of the Earth, Lightening Strikes, and sons of Trigon.

No. It's so that it is not possible to simply demand Skill Points. That requires both skill *and* dedication. A bit of grind. It's not fun grinding Arkham for a Base Amenity that you can buy on the Marketplace. It's not fun grinding for Oan Disablers in the Tomorrow District. The obvious answer to that is that you can just buy them on the broker... but that means *somebody* has to be either grinding (or lucky) for you to do that. Some of the grind requirements in earlier content are bizarre (99 Battle For Earth Duos? And 250 of each Duo objective? 1000 Paradox Reapers? 50 Tiatns bounties?), but unless you think grinding = "do it all now, in 10 hours", then they are easily achievable. Grinding does not require a belt sander - just fine-grade sandpaper applied slowly over time. Do a bit at a time, when you have the opportunity. Patience is a great thing to have. If you don't have it, acquire it. You know - like Skill Points.

No man, I'm talking about everyone. Plus as the game stands right now it's all built on CR and SP don't matter much anyway. You can do anything with 50 SP probably if you know your role.

Mini-rant: DC does not promote playing support roles nor does it teach you how to play, at level 10 you are told you can change roles and that's where you're left off. This is why so many players have no idea what their powers even do and they just follow the first loadout they find on Youtube.

I get told in all the stuff relevant to my cr I don't have enough sp, which is why I've gotten frustrated and given up. It's why I'm working solo on the older episodes one at a time.

What's your power?

I'm a lantern which I love! Once I got to 159 cr I love doing the Jacob solo.

I'm assuming you mean Hard Light and not Rage. Are you able to troll? Learn to play support role, invest in a second armoury if you haven't and start building troll gear. People will want to play with you a lot more if you can play both roles and being a good troll will get earn you many favours.

Yeah I play green/yellow lantern. I tried controlling once and it was like healing. They ran my nerves up. It's why I only like the dps role.

Remember, this is the last DLC that was designed with CR Differential in mind, which limits what you can do with combat mechanics. That limits what you can do with non-combat mechanics.

I'm not one of the people that thinks that stats mattering is going to be a panacea, but it opens up a lot of design space for future DLC.

Basically, you all got stuck with the Windows 98 version of AF3.

Expect better, soon.

Then practice and get better, build patience for it. You're much more valuable with two skills than one and you're more likely to be taken as a troll than a DPS.

I won't comment on Statsmatter until it's on live and I play it with average people on an average day, I will say though that the quality of content and its intended difficulty is based on the mindset of the developers. I hope that mindset changes.

Bud i ended up playing 11 hours today. That was getting 4 toons through all the daily stuff and 2 toons through both raids. Yea that is a very long time to play. But i did it on purpose. Wanted to see how long it would take if i wanted to keep playing most of my toons. And i didnt do any sitting around either. I was constantly running something. Finally stopped and took a break about 30 mins ago. This is just beyond ridiculous. Idk how people can agree this is a good system compared to others we have had. I think some people are blinded by 1 change that helps them or the defend every decision players too. But people have different opinions and if some people like it then great, im happy u like it. I just strongly disagree.

I dont feel like my time invested is worth it. Not when on day 1 we are beating both raids in 20-25mins with the entire group at 175. Grind 3 months to finish 3-5mins faster? No not worth it, not at all. I do not think some people are being objective when looking at the episode and how it works. Because some people wanted best gear on a vendor and it seems to be all they care about and turn a blind eye to the problems the episode has. How many times now has the system been change? 4 times in 4 years. And the root of all the problems is replay badges. Its always the same. It wont ever change until something is done in that area.

And lastly we get limited coins per day with the grind but then a few of the missions dont even work right the 1st day so we lose out on coins? I have 2 daily mission i cannot complete. Extremely disappointed with the entire episode. If ya have 3 daily missions that all end game players need to do for the grind then common sense says there could be hundreds of players out there at the same time. So having giving enemies a long spawn rate just doesnt make sense. I guess that is bug tho. Really hope its fixed soon.