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My Review for people interested in this game
Granrey
Member Posts: 53
Hi,
If you want to have probably the best MMO experience that last you couple weeks. This is the game. If you want to go beyond that, I suggest to wait at least 4 months until they add meaningful content:
The good:
-Probably the best gameplay system on any current MMO and any other close to be released this year and even next year. Mouse click skill combos, Fast action, nice graphics and so on.
-No grinding, No ksing, good rewards, good exps from quests,
-No WOW clone at all.
The Bad
-You max cap your toon in a week by playing casually. After that, you have the same daily misions to do everyday. Which eventually gets boring.
-You will hate most other MMO as they look very slow and bad compared to this one.
The Ugly:
-They are planning to add more of the same missions. The reality is, that those missions are fun while you do them the first time. The second time is just old and boring. They have to come up with a better endgame system that does not rely on these daily missions if they want to keep a good player base.
-Players are leaving the game, empty severs, many treads on their forums about server merging and so on.
-Any available data shows the game is losing players very quickly (even for new game standards): RAPTR, XFIRE, Steam, ect.
Some other comments:
-Ignore complaints about UI, bugs, exploits, ect. These are normal in any MMO and they will be fixed.
-Official Forums. Most people posting there are the ones still playing, most of them in denial of the situation. The people that left the game are not posting in the forums, as you cant post if your account is not renewed.
-Some controlling issues on the PC, I dont mind about this since they had to make it work for the PS as Sony owns the game. Therefore, developers had few options.
Comments
i maxed out a controller toon, did lots of pvp and some raiding.
basically i agree with everything except one point. the game is actually a huge grind, much worse than WoW. you cant pvp without the T1 set and it takes weeks if not months of repeating the same missions for tokens so you can afford the set. in WoW, it was at least manageable. the endgame gear gap in DCUO essentially makes pvp inaccessible. the entire endgame is a grindfest, worse than WoW's.
you also didnt mention anything about game-breaking exploits, especially in pvp, which still have not been resolved. on top of that, there are horrible imbalances across the power sets pvp-wise.
at first i thought that SOE might come through, but nope. it's the same BS as usual. cocky devs, next to no interaction on the forums. broken product full of exploits. short-term thinking. and we totally fell for it. the box sales were probably amazing.
"the best mmo experience"? "best gameplay system"? Your balance, stating the bad and the ugly, are appreciated, but I advise you to avoid superlatives in any review and also be very clear on what specifically your describe. "MMO experience" and "gameplay system" meaning very different things to different people. For example, given the chat and grouping system was all screwed up at launch and you could solo most of the content, it didn't even feel like an mmo experience to me -- just a glorified single player game with a very intrusive anti-piracy system that required you to be online (much like Assassin's Creed) and an ongoing payment system. Not the best mmo expereince to me.
Just some advice if you're going to share reviews...
I did mention exploits, I just did not go in detail. and they are working on fixing them (at least, thats what they say)
BTW, there is no point in getting T1 set, you dont need it for PVE (only for the weekly raids you need it) and the T1 is not good for pvp as you will have a hard time dealing with players with PVP gear.
I had to laugh really really hard when I read your post. The best mmo experience around loosing players allover the place with talks of server merges. I find that statement of the best mmo experience around to be hyperbole. You cant have the best mmo experience and be loosing that many players to where they have dead servers and everybody is leaving because they were able to reach level cap in under 4 days.
ROFL good one.
I understand exactly with the OP means. The "gameplay" - the actual act of playing the content provided - of the game can indeed be very enjoyable. The combat is definitely different when compared to the vast majority of MMOs currently available - it is fast-paced, and uses a system that allows real blocking, rolling, dodging, along with a tactical "rock, paper, scissors" with block breakers, etc. It can be frenzied and fun (though currently marred by exploits).
A lot of the missions are pretty well written and implemented, with some interesting dynamics in an instance that caps many of the mission arcs. Boss fights, in both solo and group instances, have a very different feel from most games, and more of the environment is usable than what you'll find in most other MMOs.
What DCUO does not have, however, is a worthwhile virtual world, or diverse gameplay elements, that make an MMO worth subbing to long term. Level cap comes far too soon. At endgame, virtually every worthwhile character development mechanism is found in an instance you have to queue for, making it more like a lobby game than anything else.
In PvE, the similarity in action and pacing make it feel like you're doing the same thing over and over. Fans of the game have gone to great lengths to make the gameplay sound really diverse. When they list challenges, duos, alerts, and raids, they attempt to make it sound like they are all very different things.
Of course, they aren't. What they are is: solo PvE instances, two-player PvE instances, four-player PvE instances, and eight-player PvE instances, respectively. Many of these instances are recycled lower level content that a player likely did while leveling. Of course, they vary in difficulty, but it is largely the same "difficulty" found in most other games - which is to say, it's gear based.
Like many other games, DCUO becomes a gear grinder at endgame, whether that's for PvE or PvP. As previously stated, this is mostly done via instances that are queued for and teleported to, a la a lobby game. The open world is meaningless. There is very little else that characters can do other than run instances. Thus, I believe that while the moment to moment gameplay may be fun, the avenues for long term enjoyment are very narrow, in that the game has very little diversity. Given this, I don't think it's surprising to find that many people might like the gameplay in the short term, but not in the long term.
In short, DCUO is a lot like playing a single-player or co-op RPG. Some of the individual gameplay elements are better than the counterparts you'll find in other MMOs, but if you play it long term, you'll essentially be playing the same missions over and over and over, because the game world isn't designed to provide anything else.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
X-men, JLA, the Avengers, the League of Extraodinary Gentlement, etc, would disagree on the whole "a hero is not meant to be grouping to do anything" viewpoint. If you're going to present a review with those types of viewpoints/assumptions/expectations/biases, just state them up front is all -- you'll get much more respect and less flak from people if they understand where you're coming from. ( ' :
I dont bother with DCUO's official forums, theyre a mess and seriously disgust me for being an official game companies forum.
Theres thousands of fan based communities that are so much better than DCUO's piece of crap forums.
Anyways nice post Rohn.
Jeremiah 8:21 I weep for the hurt of my people; I stand amazed, silent, dumb with grief.
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It has the potential to be a great game because of the way it does action but until the UA is fixed it's like an RPG. CO is at least an MMO. Level Cap does come awfully fast but that's true of all new MMOs. I like what there is in it and am willing to see if they can improve it.
the combat system is absolutely incredible, hands down. the best thats out right now. as a pve game, dcuo is quite good. it's the other half of the game thats broken.
By that definition DC Universe shouldn't really be listed in this site.
I am sure that the game is fun, but there are tons of games which are not classified as MMORPGs that are more fun than DCU.
But as long is clear to everyone that this game has the same longevity of a single player game, I am not not against promoting it.
I just wish that not every game that can be played massively was considered a MMORPG, I believe that a longevity factor should be an important factor,
The chat system works fine its just a really bad interface. The interface is still the same.
Jeremiah 8:21 I weep for the hurt of my people; I stand amazed, silent, dumb with grief.
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People are different. The people that defend the game at all cost, dont care about having to do the same pointless missions everyday. At the same time they only have couple weeks doing them, I cant hardly believe they will last couple months on that.
DC is a great game, hands down. But the level cap is just to friggen retarded. lv 30? at that, I played very casually and reached it in 1.5 weeks, that wasn't to smart. At first I was like, meh ok. But after fiddling around for 2 days between max level and an alt I already felt like I was doing the same stuff. First time getting to 30 was friggen amazing thow and Alt was fun but I was just affraid of getting her to level 30
There are also some graphic's issues some people(I am one of them) are having that make the game unplayable.
Appeared after the 2/22/11 patch, since then I have not been able to complete any quest/mission without getting knocked out several times.
For me it shows up as a graphical delay of 3-5 seconds between me initiating an action and seeing the results on screen, leads to ending up surrounded by mobs you didnt even realize were there, going from full health to knocked out in less than one second, hugely frustrating!
For two weeks before that the game was working fine, I am subbed for 3 months, I hope they undo whatever they did.
But that isn't really the level cap at all, the feats and items actually take an age to earn....what they have done is get you to a level that is functional in every element of the game but then left the incremental improvements for you to do at your leisure.
I think this is actually a very positive and progressive change in how you approach an mmo, and it places the onus on the player to pace and motivate themselves - too many mmos offer an endless chase forward, that literally fails to make you genuinely functional till that very last moment, a point in time when there is nothing left and nowhere to go, and the journey you have been forced down isn't at any time imo a fraction of the fun DCUO offers.
We are actually seeing the first signs here of mmo's trying to encourage the player forward by means of entertainment and empowerment rather than the usual ploy of exploiting laziness and boredom whereby players lock themselves on autopilot excluding all around them enduring an unavoidable, labourious and literally painful grind, without ever really going anywhere.
This is a review? Looks more like a short list of things you like about the game.
My gaming blog
every patch was supposed to fix more exploits, only none got fixed, they are back to square 1.Pistol glitching is back with a vengence.Not to mention the mega-death-kill exploits that never left.
I havent released any of the 'good exploits' but I know a ton of them.And yes they work and are easy to execute.I dont know anyone who will stick around after this patch and the servers are pretty much all low population anyway, so theres not even nobody to play with for anyone who would ignore all the cry's for fixes.Wanna win at pvp? just spec gadgeteer and go around tossing bombs at people, if you dont crash you'll crash everyone else and end up with 50 easy points.Grab batmans gloves from vault, run around hitting double jump while rolling with a rifle, you'll rack up 200+ combos in seconds and thats not even the good stuff I know.
Balance is out the window, pve gear trumps pvp gear any day.Go get a 97 dps weapon and start facerolling holding the right mouse button and never letting go.
Link
just to clarify this point. T1 is not the proper set for PVP. T1 is a pve set.
If you go to pvp matches with T1, you can only beat noobs.
Pretty much pvp people have PVP gear, which is a different set all toguether or at least T2 pve gear. You get marks for PVP gear by doing the dailies that have an "star"on your quest menu plus raids. Still its a big grind to get it.
T1 and T2 gear, in reality have no purpose in game as the only good places to use this gear are the same place where you farmed (it does not make sense) or to use it for the weekly raids. I mean, you get this gear to play once per week.
In the case of people having Batman as mentor.
T1 is sold by Steel
T2 is sold by Batgirl
PVP gear is sold by Robin.
Anyway, all these gear is a big grind, there are not league vs league matches or tournaments of any kind. Neither dinamic pve content to make the grind worth.
In other words, as soon as you get to level 30, the meaningfull content ends there. This only takes a week.
Well, I'm not a pro on this LOL
However, I'm mentioning what people needs to know about this game prior buying it.
Most people find the gameplay is great and might even buy the lifetime sub but what they dont know is that the meaningfull content ends in a week or two of casual play.
I'd consider a month or two sub based on your comments if Sony would drop the purchase price down from 50 USD. Any word on a free trial or if content patches are really in the pipe?
You get a free month with the purshase. You will most likely not need more than that.
They are adding new instances later this month* (they will add more content montly), you can find info on the forums for sure.
Prior making your character find the most populated servers. In PC are ZERO HOUR and DEATH AND GLORY but visit forums for this too.
*These instances are not good enough for me to return to the game but they will make the game better for new players.