Why treat your players this way?

You give us Artifacts which inspires us to run old content again...great. So many of us work for weeks and months to get them up to level 100 rerunning content each week and then when you are finally ready to break through to 100.....FAILED!!!! All your catalysts lost! Yes, I know, they gave us one preservation piece to help with this but my question is why even create these things to fail in the first place?! Just to piss people off? All of that content ran for literally nothing! A lousy way to treat long time players in my opinion.

From what I've read from others, this is fairly common in MMOs. I haven't played any other MMOs that have a system like this, so I can't say I've seen it myself so what I'm saying above is purely anecdotal. It's also a way to monetise the system, without completely milking people for money since a pack of four seals costs 200 DBC/MC (180 if you're a member).

To play devil's advocate here, just cause other MMOs do something doesn't mean dcuo needs to. Or at least not copy and paste it.

Yea but as a member we should NOT have little side fees for game play items. This is the same as tacking a real life fee to say base aminaties or league halls.

I have no idea about other MMOs but bad business is bad business. Customers want fun time and deals. Thrive and to enjoy the experience.

Agreed, they don't have to, but at the same time this is a new gameplay addition to the game. Haven't all new gameplay additions to the game in the past (such as the base system) had monetisation attached? At least with this one it's optional and relatively inexpensive. Obviously buying Seals is the optimal way to get the most out of the system since it saves any Catalysts you might otherwise lose if a breakthrough fails, I'm not blind to that.

Then again there is, as Lukelucky said, the thing about members not having to pay extra. That's down to each individual I guess.

One of my toons failed the level 40 breakthrough! Still saving my free seals until 100.

It took me 6 attempts to breakthrough to level 100. I didn't complain, it's a 50 point feat and nice stat boosts.

The outrage in the original post irritates me.

Every 2-3 days some entitled forum member comes on here and starts a thread along these lines:

'There's a really cool and rare thing out there. I want it right now! How dare you make me work for it? I have played for X number of years/I am a member/I should only have to put the amount of effort in that I happen to think is fair and get everything I want.'

In some games you don't even have the luxury of a Seal of Preservation.

(Yes, I'm having FFXI flashbacks. Don't worry, the twitching will stop soon )

With all the RNG this game has had and still has, i'm not sure why people are shocked and upset that there would be RNG involved with this new system, same goes for the monetization aspect. At the very least the monetizing here is not so heavy handed, and there are ways around it that doesn't involve months or years.

Despite the fact that they give us some things for free (effortless feats, free gifts), they can't give it all away. Outside of the weekly lockouts for the catalysts in the content, there's very little challenge or obstacle to obtaining said catalysts. It's so easy, you can practically sleep while going through the older content to get them. Just like getting feats, loot and marks, there has to be some sort of struggle for you to earn your reward (styles for feats, gear for cr bumps, catalysts to boost artifacts)...hence the artificial difficulty known as breakthrough failure. The alternative could have been that they could've done away with breakthrough failure, but forced people to play Elite or Survival Mode style content to earn guaranteed catalysts...which would have taken the feature away from the majority of players.

Last but not least...where is all this late outrage coming from??? It was said upfront in the livestream AND in the announcement page that there would be a chance for failure...it even says it there just before you choose the option of breaking through. So why all this shock and anger NOW??? There are seals in the broker...I don't know who is putting them up or where they're getting them from...but you have the option of buying them with in-game cash. If for some reason you can't pony up the in-game cash to buy a seal from the broker, you still have the option of using your loyalty points to buy a few seals from the loyalty vendor. Conversely, you can take your chances with another set of catalysts and pray to RNGesus.

You can buy 4 seals for about $1.

If you lost your catalysts its either because you neglected to read or you didn't want to pay for a few seals.

You knew the risks.

You pays your money you takes your chances.

To the OP... you were told right up front during the tutorial there WAS a chance of failure and that the risk gets higher the higher level you are trying to break through to.... You were given that seal of Protection to prevent it.

Want more of them? I have no idea what system you use but I am on a PC and I can buy 4 seals for 180 Daybreak Cash (DC for short) .. Now I can BUY 2000 DC for $20 at the market which works out to $1 buying you 100 Daybreak cash. So it costs a whole $1.80 to buy 4 seals. Is Daybreak making money selling those seals and Catalysts in the market? Heck yes it was one of the reasons the things were introduced to begin with. Now compared to the prices they are charging for things like a STABILZER which doesn't guarantee you a thing when you use it to open a time capsule guess what you if BUY 4 seals you get FOUR SEALS or if you buy a Catalyst packs from the Market and you get.. enough catalysts to break through to THAT next level. Some how I find that much less of a gamble than the whole TC system.

I now have 4 alts above CR 80 working toward 100 and 5 more with an artifact above 60 working on 80 and I have had exactly ONE failed break through and had to use one of the 20 SEALS I bought on sale during the Black Friday sale. Next attempt I hit 80 level with my 4th alt and am now above level 90.

When you come right down to it... level 80 is the BIG one.. where you not only add to your own stats but grab that bonus that will provide your whole team with a buff during game play. Frankly I am more interested in getting all 9 alts above 80 that I am getting anyone to level 100.

Go buy some seals and better luck next time... keep one small thing in mind. Its a GAME. You complaining because there isn't a 100% chance of a breakthrough? Is there a 100% chance the team your on will complete a raid? With the stipulation that we are talking being on a team comprised of players with a combat rating that makes that raid relevant content. hey even HIGHER CD is no guarantee ... Dis the League of Assassins alert the first week artifacts hit.. One Cr 200 raced ahead of everyone and defeated Ras too fast during the final battle. He rezzed but no one could target him. We also could not get him to attack and defeat us to try to reset it THAT way.. We wound up disbanding... oh and not sure about the other 2 guys but that IDIOT wound up on my ignore list.

THE only reason you lost those Catalysts is because you didn't spend a couple dollars to buy more seals. THAT is your right.. BUT at that point you were WARNED by Constantine there was a chance for failure. If you chose to take it you really have no one to blame

This is the exact copyjob of Neverwinter’s artifact system. They also had a thing called wards i think. Ive also seen this type of system in Cabal Online. Its indeed very common. But at the moment here in DCUO those luck chances are pretty high lol. In Cabal Online at a certain point u only had about 2% succes chance. And it took alot of grinding aswell to get the mats, and that just to lose them if u didnt use those kits.
my first Artifact was a succes. I always did put a seal in it, but it never got used. Now my second one, 20 to 40 made me fail 2 times. So its really rng based. Now what i can tell u to do is, buy those se preservation one from the broker if u dont want to buy them from the marketplace. They go for about a mil on the EU. Also when u try to upgrade. Make sure u always have a seal in. Not really a fan of the system either but thats how i tackle it. Hope it helps a little.

It is clearly indicated that you have a chance to fail Breaking Through.

What did you think would happen if you failed??

Any reason why you did not use a Seal??

Will leave this here just in case.

SWG's weapon/armor repair kit flashbacks for me, personally. Nothing like failing a repair with a kit that's supposed to have something like a 99.9999997% chance of success and losing all the stats on the item you're trying to repair, with nothing in-game that can be used to prevent a failure.

Yeah...... it reminds me the good ol' days of Baldur's Gate.

You had 90% to scribe a spell in your spellbook.... and would fail.

No biggie... it happens.

Then you would fail writting 4 out of 5 spells in you spellbook.

And then... that is when the paranoia would kick in and you would be convinced that the dice were loaded.

So after that.... you would always drink a potion of Intelligence to increase you chances to 100% to make sure you would not fail to write the spell in your spellbook.

I bought around 50 seals on the broker for roughly 500k-750k each. Am I winning yet?

I'm super glad I took advantage of the seal sale earlier. Approaching 100!

we're still in the formative stages of working on our artifacts. right now theyre easy and cheap to level up.

key words: right now.

I wonder how long it will be before that is addressed. Right now, the content containing catalysts has become a snoozefest with raids and alerts taking 5-10 minutes maximum due to all the 210+ players ruining ... ahem ... running them. There are bound to be some stat clamp requests somewhere down the line due to this trend.

When league-mates need marks or gear, I tell them to run the catalyst content and set their auto-loot setting to on.

And yet those queues can still take a while to pop. I haven't made it into Sub-construct in weeks.