You may have read that Playstation 4 and PC players will soon play together on the same mega server, or you may have read that DCUO is coming to Xbox One in the Spring. But that’s not all the folks at Daybreak have planned for their super heroic title in 2016. Read on for the studio’s full suite of plans, including new powers, new stories, and new ways to progress your characters.
For the past five years, DCUO has been capturing the hearts and minds of comic book and DC Comics fans across the PC and Playstation consoles, and soon those two platforms’ player-bases will join each other in one glorious biff-bam-pow-a-thon – the week of January 25th to be exact.
But that’s not the only big platform news coming out of Daybreak today. Today the team also announced that an Xbox One version is officially in the works and coming this Spring to the Microsoft console.
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But, aside from the business-y side of things, what else is coming to DC Universe Online in 2016? I’m glad you asked, because the chat I had with SJ Mueller (Creative Director) about as much left me with a notepad overflowing with details.
First, you’ll all be glad to hear that DCUO is finally adding its fourth color palette for the costume designer! No longer will the Batmen of the world be forced to forego their yellow utility belts! Additionally, the team is planning on making much of the game’s costume items account-wide, in an effort to make creating and maintaining an army of alts more viable. Most importantly on that note, the Daybreak folks are also creating a way for you to take items you’ve earned on your main and bequeath them to your alts somehow. They don’t want you to always have to grind-grind-grind to gear an alt, and as such in 2016 you won’t have to. As for the how and what of this system, they’ll be sharing more details in coming months.
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The Daybreak team is also looking very hard at how to let players progress their characters without it always being about gear and earning new items. How so? Well, given Daybreak’s other titles, I’d say they have a few ideas but SJ said we’ll just have to wait a bit to find out. League recruitment tools are another quality of life feature being worked on in 2016, with a way to look for and recruit the players you need for the game’s content being a big goal.
But what about actual content? There’s plenty of that too! Superman and his whole damn super family are a big part of 2016, with a fight with Darkseid about to take center stage. Additionally, if you’re a fan of DC Comics’ TV show, you might be aware that The Legends of Tomorrow is due to premiere on the WB later this month. DCUO will be pulling off some content inspired by the new show, featuring missions with Hawkgirl and Hawkman, Captain Cold, and even finally introducing The ATOM to DCUO. Like all of DCUO’s issues, these will be on a monthly cadence, and Harley Quinn and Wonder Woman both have their own updates coming too. Diana’s story will finish up the Amazon Fury tales to coincide with WW’s own 75th anniversary.
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What about new powers, you ask? We can finally confirm that Water is the next power set headed to DCUO in the first half of 2016. Taking on the Healing/DPS role, Tidecalling will focus on moving bodies of water similar to Mara. Meanwhile the Hydrokinetic tree will focus more on Aqualad’s sort of water-based constructs as an extension of the player’s body (kind of how the Lantern’s use hard light to make weapons and solve problems).
And finally, SJ wanted to make sure to mention that some big sweeping balance passes have been made on the PC test server for PVP, and that players have been very receptive of the changes so far (which were largely guided by the players anyway). One-shots are reduced, Time-to-Kill is bumped up, and the overall fun factor of PVP on the test server is much improved. Look for these changes to hit the live servers in the coming weeks.
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And so, we wish a Happy 5th Anniversary to DC Universe Online! A big year of updates stretches ahead, and it’s clear to see that SJ and her team won’t be getting much rest as they push forward through their plans. Will you be playing DCUO this year?
