DC Universe Online Early Impressions
January 14th, 2011 by Samodean
This past Tuesday, Sony Online Entertainment launched their newest MMO, DC Universe Online. Between friends in the Beta and videos online, I was convinced to pick it up, and I’m very happy with my purchase thus far.
This is my Hero, Simanti. When Braniac started abducting people, a group of monks in Metropolis’ Chinatown gathered in the basement of their temple to conduct a long-forgotten ritual. They gathered their chi, their life force, and collected it in a sacred gemstone. Once full, the gemstone physically manifested their chi as Simanti, the ancient protector of their sect. Simanti has sworn to fight alongside Wonder Woman to protect the innocents of Metropolis.
Simanti is a master of Martial Arts and Acrobatics, and can crate elaborate Illusions to sneak up on and debilitate his enemies.
I can’t be the only one nerdy enough to have come up with an origin story for my character, right?
Anyway, DCUO is a solid game thus far.
I would have liked to see a slightly more robust character creation system. While they don’t need as many options as a game like Aion I would have liked some scale options other than “Hero,” “Sidekick” or “Big McLargeHuge.” The costume options seem a bit limited, as well. Sure, you can unlock hundreds of additional costume pieces while playing, but 90% of the creation options are just “generic superhero.” When I created my Villain character (below), I wanted him to have a robotic suit. I couldn’t even come close, but made the best I could with what I had. SOE has stated they plan to continually add more options as the game grows, but I would have liked a LITTLE more variety from he start.
The powers, however offer many options. There are ten weapon types to choose from, both melee and ranged, and six power types, each with two branches. Combining this with the travel powers and your choice of mentor (origin), there’s a ton of possible (and, more importantly, viable) character options. Even better, at Level 10, you unlock a secondary role, determined by your choice of power type. Fire and Ice are Tanks, Nature and Sorcery are Healers and Mental and Gadgets are Control; all specs are capable in the Damage role. When you switch Roles, many of your abilities gain new effects, essentially granting you a Dual-Spec with a single talent tree.
Once in the game, the real fun begins. First of all, everything in the game is fully-voiced by some of the best voice actors in the business, many of them reprising their roles from the various DC animated series, immediately making the world more accessible. While many of the quests are “go here, kill this, bring me that,” the way they’re presented keeps them fresh. Of course, epicness abounds. Simanti fought alongside Zatanna to defeat Felix Faust, then had to defeat the Titans under the control of Raven before fighting alongside them to free Raven from the control of her father, the demon Trigon. All this happened before level 10.
The gameplay itself is unlike traditional MMOs. Similar to Guild Wars, you can only have 6 powers available at a time, forcing you to plan your loadouts. Each power consumes various amounts of energy and energy is regenerated by building your weapon combos, which grow increasingly complex (and awesome) as you level up. There’s definitely a ton of Action in this RPG; no clicking buttons.
Travel powers are universally great, and you have access to them at the very start of the game. The world is gigantic, and while there are warp options, the combination of travel powers and hidden goodies makes you want to experience every inch of it.
The game was amazingly stable at launch. While some players reported connection problems, I never had a single problem, and I played for hours, logging on and off several times. No lag, no disconnects, nothing. The servers were well-populated, but the capacity was high enough to avoid any significant queues. Variable respawn rates and solid quest structure meant I rarely encountered any bottlenecks while leveling. All in all, a very successful launch.
The only issue I encountered was, somewhere between Beta and Launch, SOE broke gamepads on the PC. Some weren’t being recognized at all, others just didn’t work right. While a simple workaround got mine functioning, SOE has yet to act on this officially. Yes, despite this being a PC game, the control scheme works much better with a controller, in my opinion.
I played Simanti to level 10 and had fun during every minute of it. While I now have access to PVP and beginner group content, I’ll be moving on to another character for now. While his Illusion powers are indeed awesome, and a great compliment to Martial Arts, I’m just not feeling it. The playstyle just isn’t for me, so I’m trying out something completely different.
Franklin Johns worked for Lexcorp’s Deep-Sea Excavation project. Always looking for new resources to exploit, Lexcorp uses the DSE to extract natural gas from volcanic vents at the floor of the ocean. Johns was a Suit Worker, operation outside the installation in the extreme heat and pressure. One day, an accident ruptured his suit, and Johns was as good as dead. However, while the vents are among the most hostile environments on earth, they are also home to thousands of unknown life forms. Colonies of bacteria flooded into Johns’ body, altering his metabolism to deal with the heat and hardening his skin to withstand the pressure. Unfortunately, the bacteria cannot survive in an oxygen-rich environment, meaning if Johns were to return to the surface, he would die. Lexcorp sent their best scientists to his DSE installation to seal the suit, giving him a closed environment and installing heat sinks to disperse the intense heat his body was now constantly emitting. Seeing the new potential in Johns, Lex Luthor hired him as a mercenary, operating under the name Mulciber.
His experience working in extreme circumstances allows Mulciber to effectively use One-Handed weapons despite the bulk of his armor. The intense heat his body generates makes him a walking fire-bomb, increasing his abilities, even allowing him limited Flight.
I’ve gone on record many times against the concept of this game. Those concerns are still true for me; in a DC licensed game, I’d rather play one of the known heroes than my own. That said, the sheer fun factor will keep me playing this game for some time to come, even if I’m not as connected to these characters as I am to my WoW toons. Yeah, this game is tons of fun and I can’t wait to see what else it has to offer. The concept of special content just for Duos is awesome enough to get me to the level cap, as well as seeing just how epic the story gets. Admittedly, the combat system and control scheme will turn off many players, but it may also draw in some new ones.
Bottom line: Based on the quality of the content alone, DCUO looks like it will be a successful game. In this saturated market, with several big titles due out this year, I think it’s good enough to last, be profitable and generate new content for years to come.
Tags: DC, DC Universe Online, DCUO, Games, MMO
I thoroughly enjoyed the beta. In fact, I really miss my character. I’d made several as well to test out which style of play I preferred, and ironically, my favorite was the first I’d created.
He was a fire based acrobat who had Bats as a mentor. I loved the quests, I loved working with Batman (which was awesome), and loved the playstyle of a fire tank. I could survive a ton of damage and come out alive.
I also preferred acrobat movement, especially once you unlock the glide function (which essentially makes him fly). Ironically, I wasn’t crazy about flying. But being able to scale buildings rapidly and then leap all over the place? Win.
My son had a villain that he loved too. A dual gunslingin’ miniature joker. He looked like someone who’d be in the Jokers crew in Batman Beyond. He gave him super speed for travel and he just LOVED it, especially once he unlocked it’s boost.
I really do want to play this, however I think that if I did, I would have to put my WoW membership on hold. There’s still a lot that I want to experience in Cataclysm, and I want to get my money’s worth from that Collector’s Edition that I picked up of it.
And then there’s the upcoming fucking WAVE of MMOs hitting us this year. TERA, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars The Old Republic.
Without a DOUBT, I’m picking up Guild Wars 2 and will be heavily invested in it. I loved Guild Wars, and am thoroughly enjoying Ghosts of Ascalon (novel).
I am also definitely picking up SWTOR. That leaves TERA and DCUO to fight it out for my affection. It’s seriously hard to decide which will win… and if I will even have time for either.
And those are just the fucking MMOs!
Dragon Age II
Mass Effect III
Assassin’s Creed III (and I’m working on finishing all the previous titles)
etc… etc…
I feel you on the overload of games, Rog. I guarantee I won’t be playing DCUO long-term, but I can have some fun with it until the next “big thing” comes out.
I totally agree on the movement powers, I find it funny that flight is the least fun of the three.
So far, the biggest gripe I have about DCUO is the wait time to participate in the PVP arenas. One on occasion (my first trip into the Australian Arena) I waited for over 30 minutes in queue before the instance finally became available. After joining, the four other villains and I proceeded to get our evil buttocks handed to us by a full team of eight heroes. The PVP combat system in DCUO is fantastic, and the combination of stuns, locks, knock-backs and heavy-hitters makes the game feel more like a 3D fighting game than an MMO. However, these lopsided team arrangements ruin it completely.
The dungeons (called ‘Alerts’) function more like instanced public quests than actual dungeons. This way of presenting cooperative content couples well with the fast-paced combat, but lacks depth. Every time I joined an alert, the other 3 villains and I just flew/fast-ran/jumped from place to place killing X number of baddies and holding ‘E’ on Y number of objects until we faced the final boss. Dodging the abilities of the boss proved to be the only challenge to be had, as the rest of the encounter only involved nuking as hard as you can until the boss dies.
Lastly, as far as I can tell, the ‘Legends PVP’ that I loved has been abandoned by the players on my server. The queue times are greater than one hour for any of the individual arenas and 30-40 minutes for the first available. I, the gamer, want to be in the action as soon as I log in. If I must wait, flying idly around Metropolis or Gotham until the server finally decides that it is my turn, I may as well not even bother.
My final verdict on DCUO? A fantastic game and well worth the $50 price of entry, but a likely failure as an MMO. The number of players playing is probably around its peak for the games entire lifespan. The content is heavily front-loaded and once people reach level 30 (for most of us, probably sometime next week) people will discover that there just is not very much to do. If my understanding is correct, SoE hopes to use a similar model of gear progression as Champions Online, which is to run a raid/duo/arena several dozen times in order to acquire tokens to purchase pieces of gear. This is a very bad system; one of the worst philosophies borrowed from World of Warcraft and will, at least for me, spoil the end-game.
Just like Champions, I don’t feel burned for buying this game at launch. Just like Champions, I (probably) won’t be playing past the 30-day trial.
It all depends on what you want out of a game. For someone like me who loves making new characters and trying out different things, DCUO has a lot to offer.
Sadly, PVP does seem to be a lost cause in this game, as it’s basically a stunlock-fest. Though, Legends may grow a bit in popularity if they add more characters in. Team Harley vs Team Robin isn’t terribly fun, and I think it would have been more popular if there were more character choices from the start.
Looking big-picture, the strength of the license alone will be enough to keep the game around for a while. The core game is very solid, with engaging gameplay and there’s plenty of room to grow. As long as SOE can deliver new content in a timely manner, there’s no reason this game shouldn’t be around for years to come.
I will be playing this game as soon as the dowload’s finished. Not sure what character I’d make yet.
One thing I thought was odd is that Catwoman is on the cover on the villains side, while the female mentor is Circe, as far as I’m aware.
It all comes down to marketing, Dan. Circe is the villain that makes the most sense for the story of the game. However, nobody knows who the hell that is, so Catwoman gets the spotlight.
That makes sense.
DCUO is so much more fun than I expected. Ignored the beta for no particular reason, tired of superhero MMO’s perhaps. Played TERA’s last test, and have missed that combat since. This is a good hold over until then. DCUO is more like a beat ‘em up than TERA, which I always explain as a FPS but with fireballs (although they added a targeting system now, sooo). Considering re-canceling my WoW subscription, this is way more fun.
Playing mainly a Nature (healing) villain with a bow and flying (okay well I have two Nature villains I am switching between, just different skills). Although I have tried almost every combination at least for a few levels.
I am on a pvp server, and while not a huge fan of world pvp in most games, this is fantastic. Seriously, I can not see myself being able to roll on a normal server now. While I have not done Legends yet, I have done more world pvp than actual questing (by personal choice). It is just so much fun, even if I died there was the sense of “oh shit I just did something awesome
Stuns are important, for sure, but that isn’t the end all be all. (It’s also easy to get out of a stun, unlike other MMOs, which I think is great. You just have to get into the habit. Also if you guard before a person does a stunning attack, it goes back to them.) There are so many skills that are important, none of the ones I have are useless. For me I have heals, something to guard me, a grapple, aoe, and normal pew attacks. Each one is used in a fight, and I usually win. :D
What I really love about world pvp is that it is effected more by the players skill – which people like to say about most games, but is not always true. A level seven can beat a level fourteen, if they know what they are doing. You could get attacked by two people, and still win. You can get attacked while questing and have a chance to beat down that person. I only wish you got something more for killing them. So the constant fear of getting ganked isn’t there.
So in short, if you are looking for some good pvp, join a pvp server!
In Alerts I’ve been healing role, which sort of makes WoW’s “healers are supposed to dps!” look hilarious. I’m always busy. For the questing part of the instance I have no problem with people doing their own thing, because it just gets the job done quickly. Then everyone comes together for the boss. It’s nice, people still get to do what they want, but the element of working together is always there. The only problem I have is with healing, and how close you have to get to a person (basically right on top of them, which, while everyone is flying or running around, can be very annoying).
You still won’t find me on a PVP server, but that’s good to hear.
HAHAHAHAHA @ BigMcLargeHuge…..Hack BlowFist! Pete SideIron! Gristle McThornebody! Thick McRunfast! Broth Beefneck! Rock Punchgroin! Slab Bulkhick! …..hilarious. oh yea, good article. Gives me a bit more insight on this MMO i’m debating on still…