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Rush to Cap mentality not working for new players
maskedweasel
Member LegendaryPosts: 12,195
I've been playing quite a bit since the game launched, and yes, believe it or not there are some players who are max level (30) already on the Public Enemies PvP server.
It would appear these players rushed to cap thinking they would have a major advantage, but unfortunately rushing to cap doesn't give you any more skill in how you play your character.
I watched as a level 30 attacked two low level characters, one level 10 the other level 12, and was sorely outmatched. I didn't even bother getting involved.
Those rushing to cap are bypassing all of the little things they will now have to go back and do, like work on feats, and practice game play and learn their powers and roles and how effective they can be rather then what will just get them through to the end in the shortest amount of time.
Comments
This is good news.
I'm having fun learning how to play and enjoying my characters.
Yeah we have a few level 30s on our server too and besides having more options skill wise, if you dont know the block, dodge and intterupt system your going to get broken.
But a lot of the heroes on our server havent had to learn how to fight, since we are grosly outnumbered by the heroes.
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
Are you villain side? What server are you on? PvE? Villains outnumber us on Public Enemies, I'm hero side.
The "skill" required to play DCUO is consistently overblown. Is this game tuned a little differently, with a different combat system? I think so. But, is it the magnitude of difference that some people are trying to make others believe? No, I don't think it is.
Besides, PvP isn't everything. Once people have a little more experience with it, given the differences in combat systems, they'll likely be on par.
I also think we've seen bad PvP'ers in every game. Hunting achievements and finding exclamation points on the tops of buildings isn't going to help them.
What's disturbing is that this game already has people embarking on the endgame only one day after release. Most casual players will be hitting level cap in less than 2 weeks playing time. Leveling quickly in DCUO almost cannot be avoided - the only way to avoid it is not to play, which defeats the purpose.
The pacing of DCUO, in my opinion, is absurd with regard to long-term playability as a themepark game, unless there is a massive amount of diverse and deep activities at endgame. What remains to be seen is how deep that endgame experience actually is out of the gate, because people have already started it, and the rest won't be far behind.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Probably the Eurpean PvP server. I've heard heroes badly outnumber over there.
Implies some interesting psychological questions, but not ones I'm going to dig deep for.
I think the people who think there isn't much of a system haven't really played the PvP very much. Sure there are good players and bad players, but in games where reaction time and counterattacks don't make a substantial difference, even a bad player can be in the ballpark of a good player. I don't know many MMOs out today where a player can be beaten by someone half his level if he were actually trying.
Hunting achievements and finding exclamation points WILL help players with their builds, because you get skill points from feats which are given through acquiring these things.
At level 16 (which I am right now) I have 15 skill points. Thats the same amount a level 30 will have if they didn't complete enough feats to achieve a skill point. That does give me a slight advantage over other players that don't have those skill points, even if its only a small advantage. The thing is though, a small advantage to an already good player makes a big difference when you add them all up.
Hopefully players will get better as time progresses, but for the guy rushing through and getting beat down by people half his level or less, he has a long road, as those players will only get stronger, while he either has to learn to get better, or hope he can get enough feats accomplished to get some of his stats up.
It does.
Actually, I would love to read up on this and I've always wondered why people choose their factions intially. If anyone knows any good reading on this, please let me know.
(I've always been drawn to the "bad buys" because I dislike the smugness of the self-righteous. It must be a kind of lingering teenage rebellion. I've been irresistably drawn to the Horde, Chaos, or Villians, even though I consciously decided to roll a Hero before character selection. I always feel like it is the bad guys being judged and that's why they became bad guys. I always hated paladins.)
Yep, to me that's the 862,000 pound Gorrilla in the room. While they've surely been probably playing nonstop since launch, compare that to STO. STO is content-lite at 80 hours, here we have... 20-ish???
Before any of ya try to claim that they zerged to the top and surely didn't stop to smell the roses, tell me what the roses are? Feats, as the OP suggested? What is the content that grants you those?
Feats are prevalent in all of the content, starting from your very first mission, to all of the missions you don't have access to (other mentors missions) to alerts, to raids, to PvP both in and out of the arena, to exploration.. to world bosses , to costume pieces, to personal achievements. Everything revolves around achievements, even how strong your character *can* be.
While some people will get to max level and not even realize what they missed, for those of us who are striving for character progression and making our characters all they can be, we follow these feats and try to accomplish as many of them as possible, and if you can do that the first time, then I believe you're better off.
It gives you a reason to go back through content you have and haven't seen, or forces you to strive to be a better player to receive feats that are exceptionally hard, and the points you receive for those compliment that. It adds a lot of replayability to the game.
Thanks for the detailed answer! Kinda reminds me of Deeds in LotRO. I remember seeing the !'s in beta, but I played 2-3 weeks ago when the UI was murky and didn't really see what they did.
So you can play the other mentor missions once you've completed the first?
When you choose a mentor you automatically get missions geared towards that mentors villains or heros. For example, I'm a batman mentor, so I get the scarecrow mission to start with and a Joker mission later etc, whereas a Superman mentor gets Grod to start, and Lex Luthor later and so on.
I cannot get those missions, eventhough I do get some missions from Superman, those are superman mentor specific so in order for me to play them and get the feats associated with them I need to group with someone who has those missions.
It also gives you renown with that mentors .. faction .. I guess you could say, like Wayne Tech and Star Labs, so you get a more varied set of items available to you.
I think the biggest downfall for SOEs longevity will be, so many players just don't know about the feats and where to go to look at what you have accomplished and what you still need to accomplish and it leaves people wondering, "what else?"
Whereas they may get through a very tough alert like Oolong by sheer nerve, going back and trying to do it in under 20 minutes might be a very big challenge that requires a strong, coordinated group, and it took me multiple times in beta to do even the lower level ones, much less doing it again on hard mode.
#2- it isn't like there is a ton of content in this game at release. There's less content in DCUO probably than most betas have period. Combine this with #1 and it makes for super fast leveling.
#3- It's only smart to rush to level 30 on the PvP server. If you don't you are going to get ganked constantly, and won't be able to finish your toon's leveling. If you are taking your time and 'seeing the sights', you are going to run into a pack of 30s who only want to PvP endgame and roll through town crushing people. They want those iconic suits before you get yours; this is only natural.
If they stink at 30, imagine how bad they'd stink if they were taking their time and still at level 15, lol.
It's better to stink at max because now you have ALL your skills you're going to use at endgame as opposed to some of them halfway there.
"TO MICHAEL!"
This is probably the most positive comment I've heard about the game.
I despise the "skip the content, power level FTW!" mentality and any game that penalizes it gets at least a few points from me.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my ?'s, MW. Hopefully they'll hear your concerns loud and clear. But I'll be definitely on the waiting team, like I was with LotRO. I wasn't impressed with my beta runthrough, but then, I wasn't into LotRO til early last year, after several trials. I love the DC universe, and hopefully it will make the improvements it needs to bring me on board. Either way, enjoy your time!
No doubt you can go out and trounce the best of the best right now then? There were a couple cats in beta that were pretty solid, surely you'll have no trouble smacking them around in duels. Somehow I doubt it though.
But yes, the pacing does seem pretty far off. I haven't started doing the end-game content, but I can't imagine there will be enough of it to keep me from getting absurdly bored in a short amount of time.
I doubt they'll listen to someone like me, so many people don't know enough about the system in place to convey a clear idea of what should be done. I brought it up on the beta forums a number of times, mostly I got "lol wut? feat points?"
People don't understand feat points tie directly into skill points. When I told people, suddenly I was running feat groups, and then those people turned around and ran a few of their own feat groups. Then they started with the combat balancing and everyone had a new set of problems to deal with and just forgot about it.
Anyways, hopefully the price will go down, or they'll have a trial in a few months so you can give it another try. If its not for you though, its not for you, and I hope whatever you end up playing fits you.
Yes, the game is content-lite, but not in the same way STO was at launch. In STO, to hit cap you would have seen every storyline mission in the game. In DCUO, once you hit cap there are still a bunch of missions that you won't have completed or maybe even had access to. Not to mention another faction with different content to level through.
In beta, I tried to make it a point to reach cap without leaving my starting city and it is possible (admittedly, it does take some work). That leaves one whole city to level through with that faction.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
So, I have only played since launch. I didnt play in the beta. To me, at least at this point I'm not seeing the huge lack of content. Perhaps because I'm one of those people that like feats and exploration. I do the Booster Gold missions because I like the comic backstory. Some people probably find those lame and just skip those. I have a level 12 villian on a pve servera and a lvl 8 Hero on the new pvp server. I listen to all the voice-overs. I don't just accept them and move on. I guess if you have already heard them all before in beta then you don't care. For someone playing for the first time there seems plenty. I do the race agility quests, reminds me of Crackdown. I go orb hunting.
I've played plenty of games at launch (daoc, shadowbane, cox, wow, eq2, lorto, aion...and plenty more) The game people love to compare everything to...didn't have BGs or even one raid at lauch. That first raid was added later in a patch, along with world bosses, and bgs. Some classes..ahem, hunters/warlocks, didn't even have finished talent trees. If 3 months pass without SoE added content then I'll start making a decision to leave. Until then I have hope, and I'm having fun playing. If the game gives you negative feelings, don't play..move on.
Back to topic, I killed several people around my level last night while doing the Booster Gold exploration stuff. They lead you right into enemy territory. So why not do some fighting while you are there. Then had a lower level beat me up multiple times. I never used consumables, that might have helped. He just had his combos down better than me. It was frustrating, but he played well. I give him that. I had fun trying to beat him. That's what it is all about.