by Jin Lovelace, HSM team writer & filmmaker

This needs to be said right here, right now: the DC Universe community needs to step it up and get their acts together.

The past few months have seen some of the most confusing sessions in DCUO I’ve ever logged into. Months — not days, weeks, or minutes. Since the War of the Light Part 1 DLC’s release, things have been a downward spiral for this game in terms of community laziness. I’ve poured time into this game to at least attempt the inspiration to write guides and create and produce videos, only to view lackluster efforts from the said community.

I’ll elaborate.

When I log on, I barely play with my friends mostly due to them having their own Leagues they play with, so I’m forced to PuG (Pick-up Groups) my way to leveling and gearing my characters up. Even if I were to meet a few fellow players along the way, they naturally don’t abide with me very well, as they are either looking for an easy street ride without gaining any knowledge on how to properly play this game, or they wish to go from one League to another ala “League Hop”, which I’ve seen plenty of times.

The funniest thing is that whenever I watch SOE’s “Friday Night Legends”, I’ve found nothing but great great players and some of the nicest people — on the USPC and the EU servers of both PC and PS.

Here on the USPS server, it’s laughable on how the community truly is. Call it an insult, or argue about how your League is the best on the servers, but all I see is a joke.

Lets acknowledge the amount of good players I’ve run into in this game. I’m happily satisfied with the upcoming Amazon Fury Part 1 DLC, which will feature more armor, a new skill set, and more challenges to keep my brain ticking. Yes, I understand all of that.

But when I queue for an Alert mission on with random players, I tend to be queued with three Damage Per-Second players (DPS) and Healers, or a DPS and two Tanks. Or three tanks, with me being the only Healer in the group. If it’s a Raid, I’m queued with a mixture of the two roles above, with another Healer thrown into the clutter.

But have you noticed a missing element from all of that?

Mental Troller in Training

If you’re thinking what I’m thinking and you did so without this picture, then you’re one of the many that also sees this issue in the community: the lacking number of Controllers in DCUO.

At first, it started with the great “Healer drought” era that was around 2012. Parts of the community would complain how others would play their roles, only to see a heavy amount of backlash and vitriol from these so-called “elitist” players.

This sort of issue had caused Healers to forego the harsh criticism from the party and just go straight into DPS, sacrificing their experience in turn of just bettering themselves in their roles.

In turn, the ‘troller drought here is slightly different. When requesting for the role via “Looking For Group” channel (LFG for short), no one would step up to the plate to fill-in as the appropriate role. I’ve literally compiled a Nexus of Reality of six players in under a minute, just to wait for the next 45 minutes searching for two Trollers to complete the team. It was then that others grew impatient, barring themselves from the group.

When I do finally find myself with a player wielding Controller powers, all they seem to care about is dishing out damage on the same scale as the DPS and excluding what’s most important to the team: supplying power! With some of the best powers available in the game, and players omit the learning curve to output the best numbers and power efficiency in place to just “swing ‘n hit.”

You’ve seen them before in the game: they just like to hit things and forget about utilizing the Mods available, or take advantage of the Armories (to this day, many still don’t use the item that opens a lot of strategies to your gameplay).

It’s time to wake up, DCUO.

While there is no sure fire way to prevent from being berated by players that knows more about how to play with different power types in the game, giving up and not expanding your knowledge on the powers you’ve chosen simply implies laziness. This drought has been, quite possibly, the worst I’ve ever seen in an MMO game to date. Sure, if you wish to challenge yourself in beating Tier-5 missions like Trigon’s Prison and Brothers in Arms without a Troller (which I’ve done a few times, with the latter not being fun at all) then knock yourself out, but last I’ve checked this game rewards those for contributing to team effort.

It’s bad enough that I hear on the mic most of the time, “We really don’t need a Tank for this mission,” when the role was specifically created to nullify damage from the haughty aggro. I kid you not: one player uttered these words — “We don’t even need a Healer on this part of the mission.” 

This was said in regards to a Tier-5 Assault & Battery Raid. To expound any further on that would be a waste of space.

Some advice that I can at least share here:

Solo Healing Nexus of Reality T5 Raid as my Celestial Healer, Sarai Lamia.

Though I don’t think this article alone will create a major turnaround, I do hope that it inspires someone — anyone — in the community to give the Troller role a chance. We need you as much we need a Healer, a Tank, and a DPS; it’s time to put in some effort.

Share