DC Universe Online

Beta is just about done with the release scheduled for next week. I got into the pre-purchase Beta and generally liked the game. The world is big, lots of things to see and do, and the action mostly works well. You can tell the roots are still in D&D and there are still bugs to be worked out such as a chat system that needs work and some balance issues, but I think people are going to enjoy it.

Felt too much like a brawler with an online multiplayer component than an MMO to me.  I got three or four characters up near level 20 and never had the need to group with anyone.

Haven't an idea why (well, I like comic books so I guess that's why) but I purchased this.  Should be delivered tomorrow.  Can't imagine paying for a game and then paying again every month to keep playing it.  Well, guess I'll see if I can get into it at all, and return/resell if not.

Got this from a friend at Sony.  Played with it off and on for the past two days.  So far it's very simplistic.  As a launch goes it's pretty stable, it works without issue.  Weird, I've played MMO's, but while playing them I'd rather not be subjected to the occasional random whims of others.  At least what I've noticed so far is a lack of etiquette when you're working on some missions that require destroying object x, while you're dealing with a mob all too often unscrupulous ass faces come up and destroy/hack/interact whatever object you were working to clear out.  Probably more of a fault of playing on the console where I'm guessing this is some people's first mmo experience.  Never had that problem on WoW or LOTRO - people were pleasant enough to wait in line for whatever random node was needing to be farmed.

Not exactly a compelling experience so far, aside from the epic opening cutscene.  But at least they give you the freedom to explore some of the main zones and hq Watchtower (which looks great).

Well the last role playing superhero game I played was Freedom Force.  Hopefully this game is better than that, though at least that one had an excuse why I couldn't be Superman or Batman.

Freedom Force was pretty fucking awesome.  Irrational can't do wrong.  Think I'll start my playthrough of Third Reich this weekend (after nabbing it from the Steam sale).

I played this in beta, chose the Controller role, which I never did completely figure out.  (Am I stupid?  How do I switch from Controller-mode to DPS mode?  Am I in DPS mode if I'm attacking?  This was very poorly explained...)  I only made it to level 17.  I was supposed to take down Giganta, couldn't do it by myself, and couldn't find anyone to help me...  After a few times logging in and asking, I went back to LOTRO. 

I found the mouse-button combo system pretty annoying, but I got used to that fairly quickly.  I was actually doing a lot more damage with my laser powers than with my number key attacks.

The loot system was pretty annoying.  I guess there was some hidden /roll thing going on where rare loot would automatically be assigned randomly, but it LOOKED like whoever looted got everything.  And that alone was disheartening.  (Maybe just because I never won anything cool.)

I'll give the game this...  It was cool running into the DC superheroes.  I got more of a kick out of flying around the Watchtower and seeing Martian Manhunter and Wonder Girl than I thought I would.  But I just got bored with it.  I had the same issues with people taking nodes I was working on clearing out.  And eventually I became one of them, because it seemed the only way to progress through some of the missions.  I think my experience would have been very different with the game had I known someone and been able to partner up.  I've been spoiled on Lotro, because I've always had my wife and RL friends to play with.

Well, played it a good deal today.  Until the world shut down...

It's fun I guess, though really frustrating.  Perhaps I'll like it more if I join a group or something.  After getting killed by Queen Bee for the billionth time I quit that mission and went on to play some others, including fighting with and against the Titans.  I was at level 10 when they shut the game off for the night.

If you see Sol Brother flying around, that's my guy.

I'm in a queue to talk to Sony about getting my money back as we speak.

Copy-pasta from my customer service post:

I purchased DC Universe Online as a digital download through Amazon.  I'm blocked from installing the game, as the DC Universe Online launcher tells me that my Activation Code is invalid.  

I'm also blocked from the mandatory subscription set-up, as the Sony Station Account page tells me that it was unable to process my debit payment, without giving me further details.  The funds in the account attached to the debit card are more than adequate to secure a $15/month subscription once my thirty days of complementary game time have expired.

I have no way of evaluating whether the game is worth playing or not, but the barriers to entry encountered so far are enough to sour me on my purchase.  I've paid $47.54 for a launcher that launches nothing but a broken pay site.  As Amazon.com's terms of service stipulate that they do not offer refunds for software applications, I'm forced to ask you, Sony Online Entertainment, for a refund.

The customer service forums are wallpapered with posts similar to mine.  Customers who downloaded through Steam and Direct-2-Drive are experiencing the same difficulties, so it's not just an amazon thing.  The feedback I've heard from other players so far is that it's a pretty decent game, if you can get in, but as a product launch, this looks like a clusterfuck.

ETA:  I've found the problem, and it was a data entry error on my own part.  It's downloading now.  I'll leave this post here as a record of my own short temper.

...and uninstalling.  My curiosity was satisfied the instant I saw that different powers are activated by combos.  That's fine if you've got a platform console controller, but the game doesn't play like it was intended for mouse and keyboard.  On a PC, you're trying to do with two mouse buttons what a Playstation owner can do with a dozen.  There's no point-and-click UI at all; it's all keystrokes and mouse combos.

And now Sony's uninstaller is having problems.  I'm going to just have to delete the folder and run a registry repair tool.

Reasor, be careful removing the game.  As of the end of beta, if you use the Windows uninstall from Control Panel, it will try to delete your System32 folder (which is a BAD THING.)  I don't know if the release patch for the game fixed this.  I used a program called Revo Uninstaller to get rid of the game. 

I'm playing on the PS3 by the way and on the JUSTICE server.

I'm enjoying it a bit more, but have been disconnected (or the game has just froze completely) now countless times.  What really annoys me is you can't just push a button to reconnect it seems.  I've had to quit the game and relaunch to play again.

Well, was playing last night, had just beat Harley Quinn and was doing some other missions.  Lost connection once again so quit for the night.  Went to go play today, and all the servers are down and it wont download some required files.

Awesome.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ccubed 

Reasor, be careful removing the game.  As of the end of beta, if you use the Windows uninstall from Control Panel, it will try to delete your System32 folder (which is a BAD THING.)  I don't know if the release patch for the game fixed this.  I used a program called Revo Uninstaller to get rid of the game. 

Oh, man am I so glad this didn't happen when I uninstalled my game.  Maybe it was because I hadn't updated the game client near the end.  I actually uninstalled a few weeks before the end of the beta.  (I was also on a Windows 7 computer...  Don't know if that makes a difference.)  Thankfully, the game seemed to uninstall correctly on my rig, without any data loss. 

I feel like I just dodged a bullet.

I don't get the Legends and Arena things and all that.  I go to the menu.  It says the wait for one of them is 3 minutes or what have you.  I click on it and it says I'm in a queue.  Then I never hear from it again.  Maybe its because the game freezes by the time the thing is ready, but I've not been able to even start any of those.

Picked this up last night and managed to get about an hour in after all the downloads and installs.  I made a magic-based flying villain named Tableau who sort of looks like the Silver Surfer but with pants and a cape.  I'm essentially a novice at MMOs, so I spent much of that first hour trying to figure some things out.  I'm looking forward to playing around with this a little more tonight, but early impressions were solid.  It is a nice looking game and it controls fairly tightly.  The camera feels a bit wonky, but not a deal breaker.  I was more of a marvel kid, so I don't know all these characters, but the concept is neat and the first quest I attempted was entertaining. 

I hadn't played since Monday as I was at my girlfriend's place.  Turned it on last night to play for a bit, and it crashed literally a minute into playing it.

This game is a ripoff, $50 with a month included but no offline component? Then $15 per month after that, WTF?!?!

That's your standard MMO deal. I'm not sure there is an MMO with offline content. It sorta defeats the name of "massively multiplayer online" to have offline content.

Problems aside, is there much of an RPG component at all? Or is it pretty much combat?

I'm sure there's a movement afoot on the forums to try to make one of the servers a roleplaying server.  Typically, though, when a game designer uses the term "RPG," they simply mean that the player's character can develop over time, sometimes with a customizable build.  By that definition, RPG elements have been creeping into everything, including FPS and RTS games, for years.

I wasn't in the Beta or anything, but I followed the development of DCUO on Massively.com and the game's official site as closely as Sony's limited press releases would allow.  If there's anything more here than a fighting NPCs and other players, I haven't seen any sign of it.  There's crafting, but you're just crafting better fighting gear.

Which is a lost opportunity, in my opinion.  I'd cope with the worst user interface men can design to get to play an RPG where Grant Morrison wrote the quests.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElCapitanAmerica 

This game is a ripoff, $50 with a month included but no offline component? Then $15 per month after that, WTF?!?!

As Snaieke said, that's the deal.  The game is designed to have a shared world on a server, and your subscription pays for the cost of hosting and maintaining the servers, keeping an IT staff, ongoing design for new content to be patched in as it's finished, etc.  Even the character builds reflect the idea that you're eventually going to be playing in groups, with the different super powers reflecting different roles within a functioning team.

There do exist a lot of MMOs that don't charge a subscription but they use other models to pay for the ongoing cost of supporting the game, like item shops where you can buy in-game items with your credit card.

Following up on the RPG elements of the game, there's some customization options available, as far as choosing skill trees you want to pursue.  It seems you have a limited number of skill points to spend (I made it to level 17 during the beta, and it definitely seemed like I wasn't going to have enough points to unlock everything by level cap.) and you can use those to either unlock super powers, or to further movement skills.  You also unlock combat combos, though I think that's on a different point system.

At any rate, there's some room for customization there. 

As far as branching storylines and involvement in the story through conversations, etc., there was none whatsoever, as far as I saw.

I played for about 3 hours last night (PS3) and only ran into one freezing issue which required a hard restart of the system, so stability might be improving since that's been the only issue I've had to this point.

The quests don't seem to have much variation yet, consisting mostly of "fly here, beat up this, destroy that."  I like the way the combat handles for the most part and there is a definite thrill to flying around the city from point to point.  Playing a villain, I worked my way through Dr. Fate's lair and fought him, which was challenging and took a few tries.

The game gets a lot of mileage out of the license and no question that is a huge part of the draw.  Where it goes from here remains to be seen.  I've read that the developers are promising monthly content updates, the size and quality of which will determine if I go monthly on this thing.  I'm new to MMOs, so I have little frame of reference as to what I should expect, so I could see myself going on and off with a subscription.

Holy fuck.  No exaggerating, the game has crashed at least twenty times while I've been playing it today.  Usually while navigating the menus.  Fucking joke this game is.

I've been lucky in that I haven't had a crash in at least a week.  The menus are bugged to hell, though.  The lag when switching menus is pretty bad.

I've been enjoying the game for what it is and I appreciate that it allows for more of a drop-in and drop-out style of play than most MMOs (from what I hear).  You can pick this up for 30 minutes and still accomplish a few things (when it isn't crashing, apparently).  

I feel like I haven't taken advantage of a lot of what the game has to offer since I haven't done any PvP playing yet, so I'm still leaning on one more month with it.  I can still see myself taking breaks from it and reactivating the sub every once in a while.