The first of a promised series of game updates for DC Universe Online was deployed recently. The new patch brings lots of new content to the game. MMORPG.com Lead Writer and Columnist Drew Wood have a few thoughts to share about the February Update. See what they think and then add your thoughts about the update in the comments below.

With DC Universe’s first content update launching on Tuesday, we decided it was probably a good idea to jump in feet first and see if the promised content and fixes lived up to their potential. There’s no denying that a large part of DCUO’s appeal is in its promised monthly updates, and this first one has a lot riding on it (especially since it missed its intended Holiday by a week). There’s also a very annoying set of bugs that had players exploiting animation cancelling to dominate PvP and this patch was supposed to address that. But aside from bugs potentially squashed, the update brings with it a slew of new missions and content. Drew and I both spent some time with the game Tuesday and I’ll let Drew go first with his early impressions.

Read more of Bill Murphy's and Drew Wood's DCUO: February Update Impressions.

Ive tried and tried to get into a pvp arena or legends game with no luck

Its as if the servers are Low population and no one is bothering with the pvp games at all

Good informative write up. Though I'm sure I would enjoy the game as is, I'm giving it a year to mature before I spend any money on it. That will mean that the game itself will be cheaper to buy, the green lantern expansion will be out, and there will be a year's worth of content updates to serve as a buffer so that I probably wont run out of things to do.

I havent done the bane duo yet, thats very disappointing that i have to fight Nightwing and Huntress yet again. Cant we get some new people to fight? Nightwing is already in 2 other instances besides this one to fight against.

Anyways i still love the game, its very fun. I actually really really enjoyed the valentine day daily missions, theyre pretty fun and quite different than all the other missions.

If i understand it right Catwoman doesnt intend to be taken over by the different cat spirits or whatever, shes trying to steal something and they end up taking control of her dont they? Thats what i thought anyways.

Originally posted by Edward_K

Good informative write up. Though I'm sure I would enjoy the game as is, I'm giving it a year to mature before I spend any money on it. That will mean that the game itself will be cheaper to buy, the green lantern expansion will be out, and there will be a year's worth of content updates to serve as a buffer so that I probably wont run out of things to do.

 pretty much what im waiting for too, aspecially the GL xpac/addition.

Why would they have a Green Lantern expansion? They already have a massive quest line dedicated to the fight between the Green Lanterns and Sinestro.

Sorry fellas, but I don't know where you're playing your PvP,  but the exploits are as bad as ever.  Theres a list growing of exploits that haven't been fixed,  the ice bash one is just one of them,  but their fix for cancelling doesn't seem to be working on all sets.  For example,  MA can still queue up shuriken attacks throwing roughly double.  Rifle mortar attacks can be queued up and result in crits of over 1K.   Legends has become incredibley imbalanced with the addition of catwoman and "rebalancing" of others powers.  Harleys bomb is now more powerful than Banes Rock throw, and can be thrown almost immediately.  Don't even get me started on Robin or Catwoman.

Couple that with other exploits,  like the invisible bug that works pretty well,  and the invulnerability bug which happens from time to time...  the crazy reflect issues.. (not to mention it appears they nerfed mentals reflect to where it reflects almost no damage whereas Ice has been shot to all hell and single players are putting down entire teams)  the nerfing of many build making powers....  as usual they release these huge patches and I don't think they even tried to test or balance them beforehand.  

I should have known when I read over the patch notes and I read that they fixed various exploits with a side note of "you know which ones " should have hit home for me.  I DO know which ones I'm talking about.  SOE just isn't ACKNOWLEDGING the ones I'm talking about enough to tell me whether or not they'll be fixed by this patch.   If they can't take the time to name the specific ones they are fixing, then its likely they aren't going to fix them.

This bandaid has really turned me off from playing the game entirely,  and its really a shame that they can't even acknowledge what problems exist or give us some kind of known bugs list so we know that they know where the problems are and what they should be fixing. 

Ohhhh both at the same time, ok thats better i can take that.

And yeah theres still quite a bit of exploiting going on, apparently plenty got fixed but it wasnt enough.

Originally posted by evilastro

Why would they have a Green Lantern expansion? They already have a massive quest line dedicated to the fight between the Green Lanterns and Sinestro.

 

Because you cant actually play as a Lantern or have hard light powers at the moment. There is supposed to be an expansion around the time the movie comes out that will add these things to the game.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/350/feature/4665

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/scifimediazone/news/?a=27780

Originally posted by evilastro

Why would they have a Green Lantern expansion? They already have a massive quest line dedicated to the fight between the Green Lanterns and Sinestro.

 

because there is a major movie coming out about the Green Lantern.  

The Lanterns are a major part of the DC universe on the same scale of say the X-men.

  Plus a lot of people love the green lantern and are hoping for Green Lantern powers.

Originally posted by BillMurphy
Wowsa. I haven't seen any of that yet, Weasel. I'll make a new blog post about it next week, if I can get the same results. very troubling, indeed.

It sounds like you guys played a lot of the PvE yesterday,  I spent my time in the arenas mostly.  

Hopefully you don't encounter as many of the issues I noticed last night,  but chances are, you will.  I hope they didn't hit your builds too bad Bill 

To me, it sounds like SOE hasn't really changed at all in recent years. You can't see a game with so many bugs and issues and say it was ready for launch. You'd also expect that if a title was promising solid monthly content updates, they wouldn't launch until they already have a few month's worth of updates in the can, rather than being in a situation where the very first update is late and buggy.

I've been watching the title with interest. I hope things get ironed out as I might one day want to give it a spin. However, I still have much earned animosity towards SOE and it just looks to me like they haven't changed their ways any where near enough.

Originally posted by BillMurphy
Wowsa. I haven't seen any of that yet, Weasel. I'll make a new blog post about it next week, if I can get the same results. very troubling, indeed.

 

Really? Bill, maskedweasel has been DCUO's biggest fan (aside from yourself) and he's been reporting these for WEEKS! If you play as much as you claim to in your frequent DCUO columns, how could you not have witnessed these things?

How?

@TUX

It's honestly 2 different group perceptions here.  If you read the article, they clearly posted they tested out the PvE. While some of the nerfs and balancing would impact PvE the MAJORITY of the remaining issues are PvP related.  Unless you are on a PvP server you won't even notice it (minus arenas/legends).  On THOSE servers, the game is broken.  Otherwise PvP in Arenas/Legends is B-R-O-K-E.  But again, only a select group would play these.

Frankly, after the Bane OP fiasco I stopped.  I was hoping for a fix, and apparently they nerfed the heck out of Bane.  Now you have an OP Catwoman and Robin is still a beastly little pedo-pop in tights. :-P  I hate Robin.  They should kill him off again.

An AH with ridiculous prices?  Thats hard to believe.  I'm shocked. 

I guess I'll be staying away from this one too like all the other AHs in other mmorpgs that are full of overblown prices.

Just a note, but "Animation Cancelling" itself is not an exploit. It is an intended feature of the game, as outlined by Chris Cao in a recent PC Gamer interview. The exploits were of a particular nature, affecting certain weapon and power combinations, and thus harder to track down--hence the delay in the patch. The exploit fix patch was supposed to come Valentines week, but it was merged into the content patch.

The exploits popping up now are of a different nature altogether apparently, but thankfully not entirely gamebreaking.

@Stealth: It's also an issue unique to the PC and macro-ing.  Eliminate the latter = problem solved?  The PS3 doesn't have these sorts of issues at all... shame really.

@TUX: I'm well aware of the other exploits but the balance changes are new as of this patch, and I only dipped my toes into the PvP last night.  The super-glitch fest that it was prior to the patch seems to have lessened.  But I've not seen the stuff Weasel talks about in his DCUO forum post.  Rest-assured I'm keeping an eye out... as long as they're not gouged out by exploiting players.  In other words: chill.

They broke the walking animations.

I know, nobody cares.