by Jin Lovelace, HSM team writer & filmmaker

I’ve been taking a very long break from DC Universe Online, in order to clear my head on a lot of things that are taking place within that community right now. I lost perspective on what the game really means to me, and whether it’s of any value anymore.

DCUO is a great MMO, no doubt. It revolutionized the genre on a console system and is a F2P platform for users to jump in on the action and tailor the game to their liking with constant and consistent DLC content and community events. It’s not League of Legends, but it’s the next best thing if you own a PlayStation console.

Of course, the only kick is, as mentioned in past articles, the community itself. There are simply too many bad apples running around, spewing negative energy. I understand things like this can’t be helped at times, but when it boils down to unwritten rules that affect the community altogether, it can definitely ruin the experience for some.

This video here was one of my four main reasons why I went on a long hiatus from the MMO.

Supposedly, there is a rule written somewhere in the ToS or on the SOE Forums regarding dueling and how you face your opponents. I can understand to keep certain balances in the game play; the community would create certain guidelines on how to be an efficient duelist, healer, whichever to suite one’s skill. The thing for me is that these are, after all, unwritten rules! In the video, you’ll find SmileB4DEATH dueling against a player who would uses cheap tactics, such as healing himself with colas and supply drops.

Granted, Smile held his own against AKULEI, to which both are Ice Tanks and sustained a lot of damage dealt from one another. However, my dilemma here lies on the supply drops and colas used. I’ve seen the complaints many times when I witness duels over in Metropolis Little Bohemia area, where players duel and use healing items to stay in the fight.

Seriously, what the heck is the matter with this?

Does it showcase lack of skill? You tell me, because what I don’t understand is how someone manages to have a cola, loses their life, then decides to use it to sustain their health so they can hammer on their opponents even more. I’m not downing Smile here at all; he has a solid reason why this video was created. This was to show that there’s a difference between survival tactics and cheap, outright annoying antics.

My belief is this: if you have a problem with anyone using healing items during a duel, then simply adapt to it and work around it. If a person is a cheap player, figure out why instead of downing them. Until the rules of the game are changed in such a way to prevent such exploitation, there will always be those players who look for any advantage, no matter how “cheap” it may appear, and exploit it.

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