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DCU - Good, Bad, and the Ugly
Cyrosphere
Member Posts: 105
First off, I will remind people that this is my take on the game and is not a gospel. I know I'm in a minority on some issues as I actively hate some predominant MMORPG trends at the moment. Also, I do not believe in numerical scores. TLDR at the bottom.
The Good
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Character creation is fun, though it had better be with the current superhero competiton.
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There are some fun challenge missions which let you test your character in unorthodox ways, such as acrobatics parkour challenges which you must complete within a time limit. Some unlock achievements and give you points.
The Bad
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This is the first game I've ever played where you need to hold down the Esc key for several seconds to skip cutscenes (even after the first time) rather than just hit it once. Not a deal breaker but definitely weird and annoying.
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The game doesn't set you set graphics options before entering the game so I had fun lagging to hell and back through character creation and the first part of the tutorial.
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The combat system is pretty much identical to Champions Online; mash left and right mouse buttons for your melee and ranged attacks ad nauseam, occassionally poke the number buttons for some other powers you pick up here and there, and tape the Ctrl key down to auto-pick up items from the ground, not sure why it's not just automatically dumped into your inventory like City of Heroes, because right now it's just a pointless nuisance. Unsurprisingly, ranged attacks own everything, so get fly, and nothing in the game will pose a challenge because you can rain hell from the sky. A few baddies have attacks that drag you to the ground, but by that time they'll probably be dead.
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Another note on the combat, you can technically block, but you'll never end up doing so since blocking doesn't allow counterattacks or make the enemy recoil or anything for that matter, like a proper action game should, so it's better to just blast away.
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Physics; again an added gimmick you'll seldom or never use. You CAN pick up barrels and crap from the ground and throw it, but with the animation time and respective damage only make it useful to start off an alpha chain below level 5, thereafter you'll forget it ever existed once you start to trick out your actual powers.
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First instanced battle had some added exposition and cutscenes, the fight itself was rather challenging, but as I suspected there's a fundamental canon problem in how it plays out. You rescue/assist a signature hero (in my hero's case this was Flash, villain case was Catwoman), and get ambushed by the villain/hero respectively. You basically run around trying to avoid their attacks and your "ally" does all the asskicking as you peck in the odd attack here and there. You are delegated to super sidekick. I suppose DC fans might enjoy this as part of immersion, for me it was just “Oh, you're awesome, that's great, when can I be that way?” The hero battle was rather tough, the villain fight was insurmountably difficult and I had to eventually give up.
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For whatever reason your equipment degrades unlike in the other superhero games. As of this writing I never got around to finding out what happens when your equipment breaks as I've uninstalled the beta. Repair costs aren't that expensive but it's an extra hassle.
The Ugly
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The quests. It's almost entirely standard MMO fare; go here, kill X of Y, and/or collect Z while you're at it. Enemies respawn stupidly quickly to offset the fact that everyone will be camping these areas since it's all open world, I guess people just enjoy this sort of thing, I would prefer some instancing. I get no satisfaction out of seeing an objective spawn back in a few seconds later and see someone else do the exact same thing, or worse get KS problems.
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Voice acting is average at best, terrible at worst, and there are many characters you converse with since most quests so far are FULLY VOICE ACTED (which also explains the 15GB download, they say to leave 30GB open for retail launch). I hope TOR does this better.
Tech Issues they had better fix
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The UI is barebones (some buttons have letters and no graphics), this better get polished as they're shooting for a Q1 2011 release.
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The complete lack of body sliders (asides from small, medium or tall) leaves me wanting in customization. I tried to tone down the ridiculous breast size on the women to no avail, so there's basically only variations of cheesecake proportions.
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No quickbar, really?
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The color sliders during costume creation cannot be clicked, you need to drag them around manually (anyone used to paint or photoshop is going to be surprised).
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The game launcher uses Flash, and takes a stupidly long time to load sometimes. I suggested a while ago to add a minimalist mode but never got a response back.
===TLDR===
-it's fun, but the novelty will wear off very quickly.
-if you've played Champions Online, you've played this game, it's that simple
-SoE, nuff said
Remember, it has to be fun to be a game. Grinding is a bedroom activity, and the point is definitely not to do my wife as fast as possible.
Comments
The voice acting will get better.. the game is still in beta thus not all the voice acting is put in.. Also the esc thing may be fixed in full version as well. From my understanding I thought this game was going to be action based as in real time combat similar to DDO, champions online on the other hand has same type of combat as WoW or other MMOs..
Dustin
I'm sorry but I disagree that the combat system is even remotely close to champions online. The combo system is completely different, and you can't constantly spam an AOE and single damage attacks. The melee to ranged disparity is extremely different then what you state. Flying characters don't have a tremendous advantage over melee characters, if any advantage at all, and if you aren't blocking you'll die in PvP every time as well as .. well.. most Alerts or higher level missions. Don't even get me started on world bosses. If you can't block, dodge or roll you will die, everytime guaranteed.
Yes many voices are placeholders right now. For example, much of batwomans voice work is done by a guy. Martian Manhunter has one of the devs talking more than half the time. Many female civilians, other various NPCs and even some of the larger named villains and heroes don't have all of their voice work in.
The combat is nothing like Champions online .. AT ALL. I don't know where the OP is pulling that from.
I don't think the combat in this is like CO at all not even remotly the same Co is all hotbar no swinging weapons with the mouse buttons.
But he does bring up a lot of good points the combat is fun but i always find myself getting bored with in an hour of gameplay there is absolutly nothing to do but fight no crafting not even sure if there is an AH or not but don't know why you would even use one if there is. It isjust grab quest to kill the 15 guy's colledt the 10 items from those guy's complete quest start next one. The early instances are very sporadic some are supper easy and a few are very hard. Was able to complete em all but some are way way harder than the others.
I found playing as a villian is much more challengeing there is this one quest line that deals with the science police which had me ko'd a lot as a villian did that quest on the hero side and it was supper easy not nearly the same amount of mobs constantly respawning to deal with.
I dunno i still got my pre order in but i have a feeling i'm going to cancel it don't think the game has enough to keep me interested.
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Real as Reality Television!!!
This game is so not like Champions Online. Thats a good thing imo.
Twice in one reply? When your counter to his review is what you wrote above, your opinion loses all value to me.
Good review OP!
To the OP, your arguments are valid, I'll give you that. However, if you want any change then my suggestion is to report your feedback to the development team rather than on MMORPG.com. No one here can do anything about and since I still haven't gotten my d*mn beta code I can't complain about my issues either.
My complaints have to do with the customizations. Fortunately now that the NDA has lifted I can voice my opinions on all the things I saw from videos that were leaked while the NDA was in place. I pretty much saw all the customizations DCUO has to offer and as cool as a lot of the things are, it's not enough. Like travel abilities? Hello, teleportation? It's not the most eventful form of travel, but one I'd probably like to use at one point. And all the combat powers? Wow so we have every melee weapon type, but to me it just seems like the variety of combat powers is too generalized.
I'm sure I'll find more things to complain about once I get into the beta, but for now this is it. And of course I can always complain about the fact that I uploaded my preorder receipt back on Oct. 7th and have yet to get a beta code of any sort.
My problem with your review is that you downplayed just how rediculously fun the action-ness of the combat is.
I rolled on a PVP server and O-M-G that was just EPIC for me and I was very very anti-dcuo when I started.
Its not a buttonmasher at all! There are knockups, downs, air combos like MvsC2, etc. Heck you even have a friggin super-meter for super moves.
Yes the quests are standard MMO- stuff but I found a lot of them to be quite nice. I wasnt even thinking about the quests I was thinking about kicking butt
And you have to admit that the game IS quite balanced in pvp. I fought and lost some then I won some...Then I owned a max level char with a level 8 and a level 10 char.
The Alerts (cant believe you didnt talk about this) were hard at first when I was on my control char. Then I rolled a healer and it was so much more fun because everyone was being kept alive! People tend to downplay thins because theres usually a very high level char in it that makes a very VERY big difference but when you run it at same level, it is friggin hard.
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**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
What do pvp servers entail in DCUO? Like an open pvp ruleset, or villians against heros? There are instanced pvp matches as well, right?
Its hero against villain. There are instanced PvP matches too.
"The hero battle was rather tough, the villain fight was insurmountably difficult and I had to eventually give up."
By your own admission, you're doing it wrong. Not using block? Just randomly mashing buttons? No wonder you had to give up. You lost me completely on this. I've been playing for a week now. And while I agree on what several people have said concerning problems with the UI and replayability, the combat is absolutely not Champions Online at all.
Why would I care if someone like you values my opinion? Who are you to me? Nobody. I made plenty of valid points as I have played the game for weeks. He made a lot of bullshit claims and complained that his computer couldn't hold game files... how is that a valid review point? Quit having such a shitty computer man and then complaining about performances issues..
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Real as Reality Television!!!
lol... so basically what your saying is... you haven't played DCUO.
Having played both CO, CoX and DCUO I can say the only thing each game has in common is that it has a Comic Book theme.
"Quests" come in a variety and no it's a bit better than your standard MMO quests. First of all I have to say the fight against Giganta was pretty sweet simply for the fact that killing her lost the mission, you had to keep her distracted and nothing more, which isn't a common MMO quest.
I also enjoyed having to pick up objects and dropping them off in certain areas. This was neat as well. CO tried to do something like this but failed at it.
The combat system and how interactive the environments are plus the fact that it's faction based open world PvP add to the whole quest structure in ways that has made it a truly unique experience.
Yes, DCUO does do some things that CO tried to do. The difference is that DCUO actually does them fairly well and then expands upon it and makes CO look like an early Alpha for DCUO.
And as far as the combat goes... well your description of it shows pretty clearly on it's own that you haven't played lol. The combo system sets this game apart from CO by miles. There isn't any click spam, if your simply trying to click spam... well your doing it wrong and not only are you simply not living up to your potential damage wise but you are putting some un-needed wear and tear on your mouse
learn the combo's and the combat changes a lot.
And no... ranged attacks aren't the end all be all. Your melee is a lot more effective and tends to pour on the damage a lot faster. You need to use the right roles and powers/stats to be able to go toe to toe though.
The game has depth on top of having a more action oriented combat system. It requires a bit of strategy as well.
If you go in and think you can just click spam and win like in CO then you haven't played DCUO.
But... I digress... each person is entitled to there own opinion, just figured I'd correct you on a few things.
BTW, i play with a saitek controller. Mouse and keyboard for some stuff like inventory and maps, but combat is all controller. WAAAAY funner that way.
SoulPlane 2: The Blackjacking is a American Movie Classic!
The gameplay is nothing like CO. DCUO is a console game which has been adapted to PC. Anybody who cant't/doesn't want to execute console style combos(MK,DOA, etc) will have issues with this game. I have always said that the weapon/power idea is pretty cool, but I think they took it a bit far, weapons has more exposure than powers which is fine for fighting game but strange for a superhero game. If SOE had inverted the approach giving the combo to powers, I would find it awesome.
How is APB doing anyway with their important character creation? Look it is one of those games where you will either like it or hate it.
"You think this "A" stands for France?" Captain America
I will break one of my own cardinal rules and get involved in the mud slinging here as there are some decent replies this time around interestingly.
Remember, it has to be fun to be a game. Grinding is a bedroom activity, and the point is definitely not to do my wife as fast as possible.
If possible I'd like to see you give it another shot. I'd be more than happy to meet up with you in game and see if I can't show you the... lighter side, I suppose.
Some people complained that huntress was too tough, but I didn't find it so, and if that happened to be the case you could have just grouped with someone. I've gotten on at different hours in the day and I've never had a problem finding someone that I can help. Personally I've never needed any help with any quests, even going so far as being able to solo alert bosses by myself.
Let me know if you're interested.
The beginning instances are designed to make you feel like you are the new kid on the block. You are there as a "sidekick". You are there helping someone else out. Story-wise you end up saving the day and earning your stripes.
It's interesting that the Huntress fight has come up here because it brings up a good point about the Boss fights. So far, the vast majority of the Boss fights I've been in have had a mechanic in place to prevent a simple out-dps-the-other-guy fight. In the Huntress fight, the game even gives you clues as to what to do: stay close to Catwoman so she can break Huntress's stealth. If you don't, Huntress will mop the floor with you.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
None of the boss fights were anywhere near "insurmountable". I've done them all, some of them multiple times. Most of them do require some strategy though, but the game gives you indications of what the strategy is.
It doesn't play anything like CO. Which really makes me question how much that you actually played either of them. The only thing they have in common is the genre. DCUO has specific combos, not mindless button mashing.. You can play the game with mindless button mashing, but you would do much better using the combos. You complained that despite combos, you were seeing the same animations. If you were seeing the same animations, you were not completing the combos. As for the physics, I throw things all the time. I find they do significant damage, especially if they explode and damage muliple enemies.
I'll admit, I don't use block either. Not that it doesn't work. I've just always prefered dodging to blocking and never could get use to it.
Your equipment degrades if you get defeated a lot. It sounds like you had a lot of trouble with bosses and things respawning to quickly for you. That would explain your equipment degrading. Yes, there can be some quick respawns, that's why you need to move and not stand in the middle of them. Clearly your comments suggest that you prefer instanced games over open world games. However, to many people, there isn't much point to having thousands of people on a server, if you spend all your time locked in instances by yourself. This game does a good job of combining both open world and Instanced gameplay.
Most everyone outside of beta already knows that the majority of the voices in the game were place holders. How is it that you did not? It seems like you deliberatley are looking to find fault, especially when you complain about holding the ESC to skip cutscenes, as if that's a big deal.
I had no problem with the graphics lagging my Computer. I didn't have to do any adjustments other than turn up the Gamma a tad. I'm not going to tell you that your computer sucks, but take some responsibility for your problem. I also find it odd that you complain about the launcher taking a long time to load, because I had been thinking that it seems to load much faster than most MMO's, and switching characters is very quick.
I agree that the UI could use some upgrading, and sliders for body parts would be nice. Unfortunately all your remarks seem to be very surface stuff.