Awesome day of PvP and fun in DCUO

Having convinced some friends to play from our impressions of the game, today’s activities in DCUO are worthy of report.  We made the switch to Super Heroes yesterday.  Keenzarro (a little Leprechaun with pistols and a love of Plants) and Graevzarro (a mostly naked manchild in pink underoos and cape) the dynamic duo of the Power Pals League were joined by Blackyce and Bartlebe to form one mighty unstoppable force.  We spent the day questing around Metropolis stopping evil monkeys and insect cults from taking over the world.  It sounds funny, but that’s Superman’s universe.  We had nothing short of a blast completing missions and taking down known Super Villains.

The best part of it all was how fun the game was with four people.  We found an awesome synergy with our heals, tanking, control, and dps spread.  Taking down bosses and missions was a breeze, yet challenging and long enough that it felt like we accomplished something after clearing them.  The cutscenes and stories of the missions serve as a little incentive for me.

Even better than the missions was the PvP.  I haven’t had this much fun PvPing in a loooong time.  PvP is absolutely everywhere and it’s all fair game.  We spent the greater portion of our evening fighting outside of the Metropolis hospital.  The place was a hot spot for PvP and we had Super Villains swarming from every direction.  With our teamwork we decimated just about everything thrown at us including level 28 players.  We would have groups of level 12’s try to take us out and we would root them down or stun them and use our abilities to try and immobilize them so that they couldn’t run when they discovered we were a coordinated group.  They would fly up and Graevzarro would turn them into an animal and they would fall out of the sky where I would be waiting to entangle them in vines.   Meanwhile Lex Luthor’s forces would be attacking us and we would be fighting a battle on multiple fronts.   It was really hectic since the action was non-stop but we all agreed as we logged off for the night that it played into the memorability.

I’m really, really glad that I gave the game a chance.  I judged it really unfairly early on based upon being burned by previous Super Hero games and regret that now.  I almost missed out on a great game.  It’s been a different kind of enjoyment… one that doesn’t normally come with MMO’s.  Whatever it is, it’s a good feeling.

  • Damn it, now I’m getting an itch to go ahead and buy this one. I’m really interested to see what the PvP is going to be like at end game though.

  • Yes, I agree…this is making me more and more curious. I dont know if I can squeeze a game in before Rift! Damnit!

  • A key factor here is how well DCUO will retain customers after the first month or two. It is a fun game at first – and launch is the best time to PvP when min / max knowledge is at its weakest – but I see it struggling to convince players that it is worth $15 a month (or US$20 a month if you live in Australia).

    How fast SOE can release content is going to be a big factor in keeping the DCUO servers active.

  • Sounds awesome! I may pick it up after next weeks Rift beta, as im in that ickky WoW stupor again and can barely bring myself to play outside of leveling alts or running arenas with friends.

  • I too am enjoying DCUO since a few days back. I picked it up with a friend and went into DCUO hoping it would be a fun action packed timesink for at least a month.

    I can safely say that going in with a mindset like that you will definitely get some quality fun out of this title, even if its just for a month or two (which btw – is rare nowadays imho).

    Oh and make sure to bring along a friend if ur thinking about picking this up, as im not sure if id have half as much as fun on my own.

  • If you do pick up the game, I recomend actually buying a box copy of it and not getting it electroniclly from say Steam. This is because the normal box copy and CE have Buddy keys. The regular version has 1 buddy key and I believe the CE version has multiple.

    10 day free trial with the buddy key.

  • Just don’t be delusioned into thinking that having fun now means you will be having fun later.

    99% of games are fun in the early going. Enjoy the game right now for every ounce it is worth, just be careful about judging the game as a whole for being fun now.

  • @Damage: According to SOE, only the collector’s edition has a buddy key. I actually opened a ticket to get a buddy key for a friend because I have an e-copy. I was declined and informed that it has to be the CE to get a key.

    “I’m really, really glad that I gave the game a chance. ”

    I feel the same way and I’m on a PvE server. I’m not much of a pvp’er and I assumed that this would be all PvP due to the original content. There are nights where I find myself exploring Metropolis or Gotham just to find those green or blue story points (!) or collectibles.

    But the action is so fast, even pve/missions, I have a hard time getting bored.

  • Yea, PvP is definitely fun, for an MMO-type of game. I feel more control of my character than any other MMO. Despite all the stuns,roots and all, i never felt “stunlocked”. Most things seems to be “momentarily” [no 5 second fear nonsense where you can’t do anything ] and you can get out of every stun manually with a good timed block.

    I must say they did somehow get the “time to kill” vs “damage done” vs “level of player” down so well. As a lvl 5 you can actually give a lvl 30 [max level] player PLENTY of grief. Yes a lvl 30 will eventually beat a lvl 5 down , but even when i was getting ganked by 2 lvl 20s [me being lvl 8] i could damage them both AND survive pretty long and even get away (although the getting away depended on running into allies to help, since there are no real “safe spots” in the city, only allied players…)

  • @Caleb: I have no delusions about the future. The memories I’m making right now though are the kind you look back on three or more years in the future and say, “Man, that was fun. Why doesn’t anyone do that again?”

    The box price has already been justified for me which is all I need at this point. Now I get to evaluate it on a month to month basis.

    If you go in with the mindset that you’ll have 1-2 months of enjoyment in an action game then you’ll really get a lot more out of it than had you gone in thinking you would find the next Everquest.

  • @Bariwyn – I purchased the regular edition and I had a Buddy key card in my box. Don’t know if it was by accident or not but it was there. Also really odd that SOE doesn’t give out more as it would be a great way of getting people into the game.

    @Silvertemplar – The best thing about pvp is you just have to press the shift key to break out of most CC.

  • Graev got the CE which is absolutely supposed to come with a buddy key but it did not. He opened a ticket and they responded telling him that they do not give out buddy keys.

  • Yeah hospital is fun place, lower level players do missions, higher level groups come for bizzaro, whatever the case always some itching going on. The fact it takes ~10 s to respawn and 5 – 10 s to get back im not very woried about dieng as well, just go all out.

  • They need to add some features to support open world PvP. Some repeatable missions, heroes vs villains. Most of the Missions already are made to make sure heroes and villain clash. But some at upper levels would be very nice.

  • It’s the first MMO where I’ve decided to play primarily on a PvP server. The PvP is just so natural to the setting, essential really, that playign on a PvE server seems peculiar.

    I am going to have to re-roll, though, I think. The flying, magic-using summoner I have is really feeble compared to either of the characters with different power-sets that I played in beta. Even so, and despite my execrable PvP skills, he’s still beaten several heroes above his level.

  • My non-collector’s edition came with a buddy key, so I think I know where the missing keys went…

    According to their forum posts they will reimburse missing buddy keys, but apparently they don’t really have any sort of consistent customer service training.

  • “Taking down bosses and missions was a breeze, yet challenging and long enough that it felt like we accomplished something after clearing them.”

    How does this jive? Did they reach the Holy Grail of game development? The perfect balance of risk/reward?

  • DCUO isn’t the first game to have dungeons (in this case I’m referring to MISSIONS) that are both fun to do, rewarding, and at times a little difficult. I wouldn’t call it the holy grail.

  • Dont suppose anyone that has a spare buddy key would be willing to give me a shot at it 🙂 If not thats fine but I honestly would love to test it out before I tried it TBH, especially since Christmas bills are still coming in. 😛

  • Well damn, now I have to try a PvP server, which one are you guys on? I saw the character names, but not the server name. Unless of course you don’t want roadies to join you guys.

  • It’s an interesting question: Does an MMO need to last 5 years to be worth your while?

    If you’re having fun 100% of the time for a year, is that like having fun 20% of the time for 5 years?

    How about if you only play one (work)day a week? If you have fun 100% of the time for 5 years, but you only play 20% as much as you would if you played daily, is that like having fun 20% of the time for a 5 years playing full time? Or more like having fun 100% of the time for 1 year?

    We carry around a lot of baggage with MMOs, don’t we? What’s really wrong with a game you know you’ll play for 2 or 3 months? Well, clearly with a game like WoW, you might know such a short play window would barely get you to level cap and into initial raids of whatever expansion you were in. It’s a game designed to only really make sense and be rewarding over the long term, in many ways. But is that the only way MMORPGs can be designed?

    Sorry, I don’t usually concern myself with the grand concepts in this way, but JT’s post was so broad in its assumptions that I couldn’t help myself.

  • EDIT: Of course my above post doesn’t even touch on potential business concerns. I wonder, could a developer design an MMO with the intention of it only running for a year or a few months? Obviously they’d have to scale way back on the initial investment, but it’s an interesting mental exercise to try to imagine how they could do so in a way that still created a high-value product, and wasn’t just cutting corners.

    Fun to think about, anyway…

  • That’s where my thoughts went Sisy: I think several of them do this now – keep the costs down so they can make the money back on box sales and a few months’ subs and then only worry about the lifespan/more content if the figures show it’s worth it. SOE for example seem to have a large array of games that quietly went into “tickover” mode.
    MMOs then are almost being scattergunned at us and there must be enough people out there who try most of them to make it viable.

  • This game is so much fun with a group of people.

    Did some of the Gotham content last night with a few other HFGs. What a great time.

  • Does DCUO require that a group use the trinity setup, healer -tank – dps? Or is this another game that each toon can do it all? Personally I prefer having fairly defined roles.

  • From what little I’ve played, it looks like the 3 big roles are Tank, Healer, and Control (CC), with each type of character also being able to change modes and/or spec to a DPS role. So while you may be a healer “class”, if the group already has healers, you can play the DPS role (for example).

  • Everyone has two different stances they can switch into, based off which power you chose. One them is always Damage. The other changes based off your power.

    Ice can go between damage and tank. Sorcery can go between damage and healer. Mental can go between damage and control.

    You can do a lot of the quests and easy instances with any group setup but things go much, much smoother if you have a balanced group setup. The hard mode instances and raids will require a balanced group.

    Definitely a strong point of the game. You can just jump into instances and groups with any setup and have fun with your friends beating up all the famous Villians/Heroes. If you want things to go smoothly and get serious in the harder instances, you’ll need balance.

  • You can probably throw yourself at any encounter from 1-20 and have any setup you want. I’m starting to feel the need for more defined roles, though. I play as heals and I feel extremely useful in PvP and moderately useful in PvE.