Great fun for casual players

I didn't care for it at first.

I got a lot of COH pals who really enjoy it so I stuck it out and now I'm kind of fond of my shape shifting dual wielder.

Coming from a few other games with more choices it's kind of painful to deal with at first, but no one explained to me how the system worked and it's a little more flexable when you get inside.

The PVP is kind of fun. I still have no idea what any of the goals are on the maps so I often lose, but I can kill more people than I die.

I like being a healer that can get in on the combat, but I do miss being able to focus on a team member and save them with a big heal. All AOEs isn't as great of a system as I had figured. (Kind of made me worried about the pacing of Guild Wars 2 honestly.)

Targeting and the camera response is my biggest problem. The action is nice and fast, but being able to see and accurately hit anyone in a room full of barrels or a bunch of trash mobs I tend to just mow through and let auto target eventually get me to the "big bad" just because that's only slightly less annoying than tapping q or tab to try and find the right target.

My girl hated it outright until I plugged in the XBox controller and I think she's enjoying it more than I am with a more ranged style of Sorcery healer.

It just feels kind of small, but it's fun. Should've launched F2P. There's no way I'd have paid a monthly fee for this game.

I was not impressed.

Combat felt very clunky. Targeting did not work no matter what I tried, and manuvering in battle is impossible. I was playing on a gampad on my PC, I can't imagine what it's like playing this game on mouse and keyboard.

Customization felt very limited, but it may be unfair to say that considering my main MMO is City of Heroes.

I found the F2P limitations to be very restrictive. I managed to get 1/3 of the way to the money cap by level 6.

While I will admit the Voice acting for the main heroes and Vilians is pretty good, the rest is god-awful, and NPC's and mobs repeat the same poorly acted lines over and over and over and over and over...

The initial loading screen took 3 minutes on my pbrand new gaming rig. Not cool.

The worst part for me were the bugs, and not just the minot stuff like graphical problems, or major issues like the audio for quests overlapping each other when I get more than one at a time, or cutcenes with no audio at all. The one that got to me  the most was that thecooldown for my first ability was not consistent. It actually took longer for my first sorcerry ability to recharge indoors than it did outdoors.

According to steam, I quit after 29 minutes of running the program.

The game has potential, but right now  I would not reccomend playing it. F2p is a joke, the combat system needs work, and there are just soooo many bugs that need to be taken care of. 

Originally posted by Fly666monkey

 

I found the F2P limitations to be very restrictive. I managed to get 1/3 of the way to the money cap by level 6.

 

You can cap in the game, do vaults, and all the raids without paying a dime. What do you see yourself spending cash on?

Or is this hyperbole?

Originally posted by PukeBucket

Originally posted by Fly666monkey

 

I found the F2P limitations to be very restrictive. I managed to get 1/3 of the way to the money cap by level 6.

 

You can cap in the game, do vaults, and all the raids without paying a dime. What do you see yourself spending cash on?

Or is this hyperbole?

I was referring to in-game cash, not RL currency.

In-game your character as a F2P can only have a total of $1500, and I had roughly 500 by level six. Considering I could not buy much equipment with that when I checked the shops, this did not bode well for later on.

Originally posted by PukeBucket

Originally posted by Fly666monkey

 

I found the F2P limitations to be very restrictive. I managed to get 1/3 of the way to the money cap by level 6.

 

You can cap in the game, do vaults, and all the raids without paying a dime. What do you see yourself spending cash on?

Or is this hyperbole?

Think he was talking about the in-game currency caps.  Free 1500, Premium 2000, and Legendary Unlimited.

He's basically saying that at level 6, he's already at around 500...

I didn't find there to be enough of a difference between this and City of Heroes and CoH has more overall content than DCUO being the older game.  The combat was neat at first but lost it's luster with me really fast.

Also, I find that gear really didn't have much place in a super hero game unless your character has some sort of technology background and was used as more of a treadmill in DCUO.  Dunno if that changed later.

Originally posted by Fly666monkey

Originally posted by PukeBucket

Originally posted by Fly666monkey

 

I found the F2P limitations to be very restrictive. I managed to get 1/3 of the way to the money cap by level 6.

 

You can cap in the game, do vaults, and all the raids without paying a dime. What do you see yourself spending cash on?

Or is this hyperbole?

I was referring to in-game cash, not RL currency.

In-game your character as a F2P can only have a total of $1500, and I had roughly 500 by level six. Considering I could not buy much equipment with that when I checked the shops, this did not bode well for later on.

Most gear is from missions or drops. Just spend cash on keeping 4 or 5 stacks of soda. Really since most gear at end game is token grinding (which I'll never do) cash seems a bit of an afterthought save for buying health / power regen stuff. 

Unless you like to hawk the auction house where people have level 6 gear for a few hundred thousand grand.

I'm at level 11 and have over 25 styles (some badge) and not had that problem. Then again since gear is tier based anyway  I don't think it's that big of a deal. Plus isn't upping that cap one of the cheaper market buys? That's typically not the case in F2P. 

For people who like the game that's a pretty easy purchase to move up into the premium tier anyway if you planned on sticking around.

I've decided I won't do such a thing until I find out just how annoying token grinding for gear is going to be. Once a day for marks or what not.. That seems to be the truly painful part of this game. Such a stupid time sink mechanic.

I really wanted to like this game and I tried to but alas it just didn't happen. No wonder this game went F2P in such a short amount of time. The game as a whole wasn't fun and the missions were as dull as dishwater and the character creation was the dullest and most uninspiring part of a so called superhero game.

Thankfully I waited till it went F2P before trying it out as I nearly bought it upon it's release but held back long enough to read the masses of negative reviews and saved myself a few quid. I don't know what will save DC Universe though as I doubt F2P will.

Maybe one day a decent superhero MMO will come out but I won't hold my breath. Luckily, SWTOR is released next month so i'll keep my fingers crossed that it will live up to the hype and I can play a decent MMO once again.

I haven't even gotten to play the game yet, and unfortunately not sure I will even bother anymore.  I downloaded it on Tuesday through Steam.  Fired it up yesterday and the first thing I noticed is that took quite a while to install.  I've got a great computer, but for some odd reason it sat there at one of the five steps installing, timestamps.exe or something.  After ten minutes of that the launcher finally popped up.  I've got a station account already, so I log in.  Ok not bad, looks pretty cool.  I spend maybe 20 minutes making a character which was fun, not as detailed as Champion Online's but cool nonetheless.  After that, I attempt to log in to a server, BAM.  1700 queue.  Great, that's just what you want your first impression to be.  Just love waiting to log into a damn game.  Whatever, I just alt tab and wait it out.  15 minutes goes by, I'll go check on my place in line.  Game crashes.  Apparently the game does not like alt-tabbing on my computer in fullscreen mode. 

So...I quickly log back in, BAM, 1750 in queue.  Eh eff this, not worth my time.  Time to go free up 17 gb of HDD space.  I know the game just went F2P and everyone in their mother is trying to log in, but stuff like that, when it's my first impression of  a game, is not good.  I tried alt-tabbing again, apparently the game does not like that, crashes every time for me.  I have hundreds of other games to play :D  I really don't want to play a failed p2p game that bad heh.   Good luck everyone else!

Originally posted by eddieg50

Great fun for casual players

 i think this nails is right on the head.

i wasn't even gonna try this game but a friend conivinced me to try it. it's more fun then i thought it would be, but it's not an mmo you'll ever take seriously or stick to for long. it's just way too easy and dumb especially the combat. it is fun to just mess arround for an hour every once in a wile or for some hilarious, no consequence pvp. it really feels a lot more like an arcade game then an mmo. it's definately good for F2P.

I actually think it feels a lot like CO (with less customization) and feels soulless just like CO does.

Originally posted by uohaloran

I didn't find there to be enough of a difference between this and City of Heroes and CoH has more overall content than DCUO being the older game.  The combat was neat at first but lost it's luster with me really fast.

Also, I find that gear really didn't have much place in a super hero game unless your character has some sort of technology background and was used as more of a treadmill in DCUO.  Dunno if that changed later.

       the combat in dcuo is much better than coh, more responsive

I like DCUO. I havent tried it yet till yesterday.

I got great potential but too bad it does not have a crafting abilities...i needs more then just pvp, pve. So i hope they will create that or something. The worst part is still the Lag... it really super bad. They should create selectable servers not just 1 server where you sometimes need to wait for 10-20 minutes to get in...and then only to experience death by lag.

I think ill go back to Lord of the rings online till SWTOR comes out. They are going to give beta weekend keys so i better go for that then DCUO. Its 1 week free to play and it still has server lag...that makes me uninstall just much more faster.

Tried it.  Don't really like it.  It has some nice ideas, but there are small quirks here and there that you certainly can feel game was designed with consoles in mind. 

Controlling your character with mouse & keyboard and doing all kind of movements & combat in this game feel..odd.

Guess it is better with console pad, but I don't have one and don't plan to buy one.

I don't like playing single player games that have their primary version made for console and just a port for PC and while I know that might not be the case with DCUO it just feel like game like that.

Also certainly game feel unpolished in some places and bit light on content.

So not gonna play it further. Uninstalled.

btw. really not a game for P2P. It just does not justify for subscription.

Imho it should be b2p without cash shop like games like BF3 or CoD.

Originally posted by uohaloran

I didn't find there to be enough of a difference between this and City of Heroes and CoH has more overall content than DCUO being the older game.  The combat was neat at first but lost it's luster with me really fast.

Also, I find that gear really didn't have much place in a super hero game unless your character has some sort of technology background and was used as more of a treadmill in DCUO.  Dunno if that changed later.

I played before F2P, so I'm going to chime in and say that no--- it doesn't change.

SOE took a cute little fight-game style combat engine, then tossed it into the same-ol/same-ol themepark questing and endgame gear grind MMO design.

Even at a very casual pace, the longest it took me to get to level cap was 12 days. From that point forward, it was run the same instances over and over again for gear marks (average of 1-3 marks per instance, depending upon solo, duo, or alert; with 400 needed for a complete teir set).

There are like 8 Solo Challenges (all but 2 of them are just level 30 versions of boss-fight missions you did while leveling), 7 Duos (1 of which is just a two-person version of a solo challange, and several others are just 2 person versions of leveling boss-fights), and 6 or so Alerts (not counting ones that require the full T1 set before doing-- like R'as or the new Lantern Alerts).

So you are running them a lot.  And many of them are just increased difficulty for stuff you did while leveling. Not even new or original engame content (literally).

All MMOs have endgame, run-the-same-content-grind. However, a casual will never reach that point in less than 2 weeks like in DCUO.  Also, very, very few MMOs just reuse leveling instances, up the difficulty to level-cap, and toss it out claiming "new content" like SOE does in DCUO.

To new F2P'ers that want to keep playing, I would suggest buying the Green Lantern DLC for $10 and bumping to Premium, then just riding the game for free unless something shiny catches your eye in the cash shop.

Originally posted by Talthanyst.

I do wish the items I find in the world could be set to the style I originally made for this character. First piece of gear I received altered me chest piece. It retained the colors, but not the style. I suppose the point is to track down different styles of gear and have a huge wardrobe taking up your inventory/vault space.

All in all, had lots of fun, looking forward to playing more tonight.

Talthanyst, you can use the same style you started with or any style you happen to pick up. Go to your Styles tab, select the chest drop down box and select any style you've picked up so far. It will retain the stats of your currently equiped chest and just change the look of it. In the same area you can also change your color schemes.

Honestly, they did a great job with character customization. The difference between DCUO and other superhero games is you have to collect more styles through doing missions. You don't make your character exactly how it's going to stay from the start.. unless you like your starter gear. 

Think of LoTR. You have your best armor equiped on the character, but it also has a styles window. (forget what it's called) You're decked out in full plate, but you make it look like your wearing just a robe.

Alot of people think it sucks in customization and not being able to making your charater look exactly like you wanted is because people don't know they can do that in the styles tab like Talthanyst above. And no, you don't hold onto all those styles you find. Equip it and re-equip your stronger item, then switch the look of the item in the styles tab.

I've been playing on and off since the freemium launch.  I've gotten one character to 21 another to 10 and fooled around with a few more.  I find myself enjoying DCUO more than I thought I might.  It seems like it will tap out pretty quickly (as I don't go in for the repeatable content / raiding dynamic) but I think it will be worth running through at least once on each side (hero and villian) and maybe fooling around with later.  I definately can't see paying a subscription long-term though.

Good stuff:

- the world is well visualized and I really like the open world concept (i.e. few invisible walls).  It's keen that they put in random acts of violence / stopping random criminals on the street unconnected to a quest line.  It's also neat that you can run into the iconic DC characters out in the world - I stopped on a rooftop to check my map and Batman punted me around a bit before disappearing.

- the open world races.  I actually enjoy the checkpoint races as something to do.  I really like the implementation of acrobatics though, I'm not as big a fan of flight or superspeed so this might not hold true for the rest.

- voice acting.  Great to hear Mark Hamill and the other voices from the animated universe.  This is also the first voice acted MMO I've played, and it is better than reading a solid block of text.

- the styles and equipment.  Glad that I can keep my own style and reset it on demand, and once I got the hang of the pallette system I can see the use of having it, giving players more indvidual freedom with colouring (or not having a syncronized colour system) leads to these riots of colour that are just hard to take looking at long term.

- the controls.  I actually don't mind the PC controls, and I do use a keyboard and mouse.  I'm used to gaming and can adapt to virtually any control scheme though, and this one while a little difficult to use from time to time does manage to provide a fresh and interesting control scheme beyond the press 1 - 3 and take a nap style.

Bad stuff:

- documentation.  DCUO is the absolute worst MMO I've played for telling the player anything of use.  Half the power descriptions are inaccurate or missing information, there's no real information in the character creation screen at all, and I feel I'm still trying to figure things out that should be more apparent.

- general community.  The FTP probably doesn't help, but in general I can't see a strong community vibe forming with a game that's so easy to solo through.  Perhaps sub-communities are fine (the RP community seems pretty decent from the little I've seen) but the general mass of people are more iffy.

That's about all I can think of off the top of my head.  Seems like a decent start to an MMO (and I can see where this is how Smedley wanted his iconic treatments done - i.e. this is what Star Wars Galaxies would be if he could have a do-over) but it does seem like it will shallow out very rapidly.

I'm a CoX and CO fan, and I should preface this by saying I'm glad there's now 3 superhero MMOs around.  I love the genre as a whole.

DCUO is bags of fun while you're levelling - the PvE is often surprisingly good, and wouldn't disgrace a single player game, the missions are varied and nearly every mission has some cute angle.  The open world PvP is also a lot of fun, at least in the early levels.  But as many have said, once you get to 30, you have to ask yourself whether you're going to be dedicated to perfecting your main, either as a PvP or PvE toon (or if you're really mad, both), or whether you can be bothered with that grind (which is quite extensive - to perfect your main, not only do you have the grind of the Tiered and ever-harder missions, and tougher arena fights against more experienced opponents, but you also have a bunch of "Feats" to do that, in sufficient quantity, give skill point bonuses and important stat increases - things like exploration, races, collecting styles.  They're varied and fun, but there are a lot of them to do if you want to hang with the big boys).  In that sense, it's quite deep and you could play it for a long time - but on the PvE side, it's a bit of a typical hamster wheel (get gear to do harder missions to get better gear to do harder missions), while on the PvP side, you also have to grind a lot, and unless you're really dedicated to the PvP and really good at it, you won't bother.

That said, if they keep adding content for the levelling, and if they keep adding fresh high end stuff, then I can see myself staying with the game for a long time, as a casual player.  There's a huge grind, yes, but in a way, you don't necessarily feel pressure about it, and the game is set up in such a way that you can dip into it every now and then, and get a small sense of achievement every time you play.

At the end of the day, if you're into comics, there's something to be said for the lore - it simply is the DC universe, and from that point of view, it's very well done.  The missions, the iconic heroes and villains, and the stories, are fairly authentic to the comics.

So yeah, a deep game if you want it, but you're unlikely to hunger for it, and more likely to just want to dip into it now and then, and for that, it's great, and all the better for being free.

Personally, for a game that the trash talkers all said was the "escape from WoW", Im *awed* by how horrific the grind is.

I dont think its good to downplay it.  Ive played a massive amount of MMOs over the years and *none* have a grind as jarring and horrible as DCUO.

I was an original beta tester and am even a lifetime subscriber (such a bad move), and I dont even have it installed anymore.

I got a dozen characters to 30 in much less time than it normally takes me to get to max level on a *single* character in *any* other MMO.

yes, the combat is fun.  The combat in Saints Row is fun too.  For that matter the combat in *any* coop action game is fun.

This is supposed to be an MMO though.  You're given a great leveling experience... and it lasts TOPS a couple of weeks.  Next time through its QUICKER.

After that, the "min/max" is *much* worse than what is being described here.  its ALL of the same content over and over (content you ALREADY DID) just harder and grouped.  Then it is "feats" which are basically all in the SAME environments where you just leveled.

If you are the type to feel that leveling is a speedbump on your way to grinding content to get the best gear to "be a pimp" in PVP, then DCUO is the *ultimate game*. "Depth", however, is a term that does not *remotely* apply to DCUO.  AT ALL.  Anyone who thinks it does has a VERY unique and odd definition of "depth".  You spend the entire game, essentially, at max level fighting OVER and OVER (either a handful of PVE content or PVP endlessly).  To ME, in an MMO, "depth" means lots of content that, while not "critical path" for a min/maxer, is still fun to check out (like alternate leveling areas that you can go back to - something like WoW or EQ2, even just in terms fo combat content, has MORE than you need to level), or depth might be crafting, or housing, or "fluff" type quests and events.  NONE of that exists in DCUO. It is PURELY *rapid ascent* to "max level" which is then where the game *begins* (and the devs even said this in beta)

Problem is that this "beginning" is just the beginning of watching the same set of content 50x a week forever.  Bad.

Its just kind of ironic that that is exactly what people say they hate the most about WoW, yet DCUO is FAR worse and the fans somehow feel DCUO *isnt* a grind.