Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine DC Universe Online

I've finally, after much coaching from a more controller savvy player, got through the tutorial with one of my characters.

I'm liking some aspects of the creator, even if it lacks the versatility at launch of Champions Online or City of Heroes/Villains.

Six powersets, at launch, which is amazingly few, for a superhero game (or an online game in general, which often have like a dozen classes, with three different 'specs' each, to as many as forty-five classes for a mature MMO like Dark Ages of Camelot).

Nature and Sorcery are 'healing' sets, Gadgets and Mental are 'control' sets and Fire and Ice are 'defense' sets. All six sets have a damage-dealing option, or a secondary option (focused on healing, control or defense, respectively), which is nice for solo vs. group play. (Playing a healer or controller can be tedious in solo play, as it's difficult to heal criminals into submission...)

Each set also has two sub-options. For Nature, it's Shapeshifting (various preset animal forms and abilities) and Plant Control (tangly vines and toxic pollen clouds and the like).

Unlike City of Heroes and Champions, no matter what your power is, you choose an attack form from a different menu entirely, so your plant controller might use energy blasts from his hands, dual pistols, martial arts, a rifle, a melee weapon, etc. I picked hand blasts at first, but didn't like the visual for a plant controller and remade him using a quarterstaff (since I didn't love the bow either).

Since the first plant control power is a vine that shoots out from your hand, snags a distant enemy and drags them to you, it synergized well with the close range limitations of taking a staff (over a gun or bow or energy blasts).

Snag, drag, and beatdown with a wooden stick. A decent in-theme attack style for a plant controller.

It's inconveniently simple, for my tastes. It's been observed by friends that I can play Star Fleet Battles, with a 300 page rulebook, but can't keep the rules of chess straight. Similarly, I can play a high-pressure role like raid healer in EverQuest 2, where I've got 40 or so spell icons on my screen and have to be able to find my instant heals and wards in a tenth of a second, and yet having to remember to hit Q and Tab to target and lock something in this game is freaking killing me.

Oddly enough, you can't play the PC version with a PS3 Controller (odd because Sony made the game as well as the PS3), but supposedly you can play it using an Xbox Controller. I don't have one of those, but I'll probably pick one up.

Seymour, since there aren't a lot of powers I don't think it will be TOO hard to pick up. I am not a great Console player by any means but I manage to squeak by on Easy.

I'm enjoying the game, and i'm enjoying the current choices that are available to me. I've not got to play as much as i'd like due to other commitments, however, so I haven't gotten very far. (I did help Flash beat up Grodd!!!!)

That being said, the camera control drives me nuts. Why do I have to move the camera and my toon? Why can't I move the toon and the camera follow like in CoH?

So far I've toyed around with (on Virtue & Vice);

Meanstreak - speedster with guns and gadgets (gained super-speed, a super-fast and powerful mind and a crystalline body from the exobytes, and uses them to assemble traps and tricks, otherwise runs around at flash-like speeds and shoots people a lot, totally betrays my obsession with dual-pistol-using speedsters like Killjoy, Serge and Mercury Mercenary). Mentor - Batman.

Woodwose - teen hero whose body has converted to become part plant, and is currently able to cause vines to shoot out and drag people to him, or to erupt from the ground all around him, hurling everyone back. Uses acrobatic movement and a quarterstaff. Mentor - Superman.

Orichalum - a diver who was exposed to exobyte-triggered metamorphosis while attempting to explore an undersea ruin (that was, unknown to her, Atlantean in origin). her skin bonded with the obsidian of the lava flow that destroyed the outpost, and the magical orichalum metal of the mystical artifact she was trying to unearth from the obsidian, making her into a magical golem in the shape of the woman she once was, with flight and sorcery powers. Now, like a certain Zoe, she hungers for more magical artifacts, hoping to gain the ability to reclaim her human form, burned away and transformed. Mentor - Circe.

I'll link some screenshots of what you can do with the character creator, if I can ever get the ****ing thing to take a screenshot and save it to a folder, which is apparently 31st century Gil'Dishpan technology to the idiots at Sony, since they didn't bother to use the pre-existing folder made explicitly for that purpose, that even their *other* games use.

Grr.

If you find out how to do screenshots let me know.

F9, instead of PrntScrn was my problem.

They use F9 for Screenshots. The screenshots get saved into a folder which should default to C://Users/yourusername/My Documents/My Games/DC Universe Online/DC Game/Screenshots

On Virtue & Vice I currently have Chameleon Kid!

Did you go for the Nature / Shapeshifting theme?

I meant to try it, but got sidetracked playing with Sorcery / Summoning, Nature / Plant and Gadgets / Tricks.

My latest character is silly, a Martian Manhunter inspired character called Venusian Girlhunter, a flying bow-using flame character. (She's a girl. She thought that 'manhunter' meant 'man, who hunts,' and since she was a girl, who hunts, 'girlhunter' seemed like the obvious choice. Silly alien teenagers!) Plus, the game wouldn't let me name her Venusian Manhunter. Nor Venusian Vampire Vixen, oddly. Perhaps Bill Watterson copyrighted that...

I was considering a whole planet-manhunter theme, with a fire speedster called Mercury Manhunter and a telepathic flying Saturnine Manhunter and a Plutonian Manhunter with ice powers, but that seemed too silly, even for me.

I did go with Nature/Shapeshifting with Chameleon Kid. His first form is a Pteradactyl, but I'm not sure if I like it's attack powers. It is nice to be able to fly, in that form, and do acrobatics in his main form.

Now.. I want to add you guys as friends on Virtue & Vice.. but i'm not sure how. Anyone know?

Just picked up and started playing the game yesterday.

My PC doesn't have any hope of running it though, so I'm playing the PS3 version

I wish I could join in the fun with y'all but my PC hasn't a chance of running it & I've yet to be able to afford a PS3.

I finally got my review copy and, after hours of downloading, have a game installed on my PS3.

What server are you on, dedman? And who else is on PS3?

Seymour I am on PS3 as well as PC. Wish I could get my ps3 sub to change to yearly.

And I am on Crisis on PS3.

I'll hop on to Crisis then, if I ever get a chance to play -- maybe next weekend.

I guess I'm just too old, but I can't see spending 50 bucks for a game I have to pay 15 bucks more a month to keep playing. Thats $230 for just one year. Guess I'm just not much of a gamer. I still haven't figured out facebook now that lash threatened to beat me with a 2x4 if i didn't join.

I have no idea why, but when my character entered the Metropolis police station to complete a mission, floating near one of the vendors was the Emerald Eye of Ekron.

It didn't have any name and wasn't targettable, but it was a basketball sized floating big eyeball with a green iris, and a corona of green energy around it.

I was kinda surprised to see that!

Random review of the game;

So I've made three heroes and three villains, just to play around with the beginning storyarcs for each of the six mentor types.

So far, working for Batman, my speedster / super-intelligent gadgeteer, Meanstreak, teamed up with Batwoman, against the Scarecrow, and Nightwing against Bane.

The Scarecrow fight was very funky, as he kept sending waves of manifested fears against us, which the game created as monsters that we had to fight, or dangers we had to avoid (literally 'fighting our fears') until we could fight them off and then return to kicking his butt. (An earlier mission, where the character destroyed a reserve of fear gas he had squirreled away, turned out to be relevant, as he menaced about unleashing a new fear on us, and then muttered 'What? How can I be out of gas already?')

The Bane fight had some environmental stuff, as Bane would destroy support pillars and make the building start collapsing in certain areas (so you had to run to another part of the room, and attack from a distance, to avoid getting munched by falling debris near him), and warned that he could dig his way free, but we'd be crushed when he collapsed the final pillar, so Nightwing and my character had to take him down before he got to that pillar. It was a close one!

For Lex Luthor, my shapeshifter character fought Power Girl, with the Parasite and dozens of parasite-infected students, and she kicked my butt a half-dozen times. I gave up on that one and I was so pissed off I deleted that character. Power Girl is hardcore. My new Lex Luthor character is a hammer-wielding flying wind and lightning-throwing dude named Sturmhrafn, who is in no way a shameless Thor-ripoff. See, he's got *black hair,* so, totally different!

For Circe, my flying sorceress-golem, Orichalum, invaded Dr. Fate's 'sanctum of magic' and shut down a spell he was using to interfere with an evil agenda to bring some of Trigon's power into the world, so that she could tap it, and faced Dr. Fate with Brother Blood at my side. He also kicked my evil butt the first time, and I left the mission, ran around for a bit doing other missions until I was a few levels higher, and then came back and, with Bloods help, banished Fate's spell, and kicked his butt.

For Superman, my plant-controlling staff-wielding acrobat, Woodwose, helped free the Flash from a trap of Gorilla Grodd's, and then we fought him together. (Another Superman mission had me fighting through waves of Queen Bee's drones, to finally get to her, and discover that she was working for Brainiac.)

For the Joker, my fireball-throwing martial artist speedster, Feurkraft, went into a mission to free some Falcone hoods from a Gotham City PD raid, only to find out at the last moment that the Huntress had shown up to help. Fortunately for team evil, Catwoman showed up as well, and had a personal grudge to settle with the Huntress, so although she was no big help freeing the Falcone's, she was there for the big fight with the Huntress, who was pretty tough.

I haven't gotten far enough with the Wonder Woman-mentored character (flying telekinetic in a formal fancy dress party sort of dress, who carries a couple of pistols. La Femme Nikita, if she was also a telekinetic...) to have one of these 'team-up' missions, but it looks like rescuing Zatanna from Felix Faust is on the menu.

Both Circe and Lex Luthor are big on infecting / possessing people with stuff, Lex having them turned into Parasites and Circe having them possessed by fire demons from Trigon's realm. Even as a veteran of playing evil classes in EverQuest, Horde in Warcraft and villains in City of Villains, I was a bit taken aback by missions to run around knocking civilians unconscious and then having them possessed and transformed into fire demons, to send after the cops... Yikes!

Circe also had a followup mission to stop Raven from resisting Trigon's efforts to enter this plane. To do that, my character had to fight through various police officers in the precinct where she was meditating, and in the first area, fight Wonder Girl, in the next, Starfire, then Cyborg, and finally, Nightwing. After beating them all, my evil sorceress had to fight Raven herself, who kept sending soul-selves to defend herself (this fight occured in her mind!), and they were more hardcore than any of the Titans that I had to face on the way in!

Hearing Circe rant about how cool it was going to be now that we'd broken down the barriers keeping Trigon out of this plane made me think that her and Blood are a few sandwiches short of a picnic, if they think that letting Trigon into this plane is a good idea... Bad villains! Plan ahead!

I still pretty much loathe the interface, but I've got three more days before my 1 month subscription runs out, and since I've decided not to renew (at least until I get a new job!), I wanted to give each of the powersets, and each of the mentors, a run, just to see what was what.

There are exactly two things I really like about the game;

1) the ability to use acrobatics or super-speed to run up walls, which, in CoH or Champions Online, are pretty much impassible barriers to anyone who didn't take Flight.

2) the presence of all these familiar faces. Running around the Legion of Doom headquarters (deep under the ocean) or the Justice League Watchtower (in orbit), you run into tons of super-heroes, like the Flash or Hawkman, or villains like the Riddler or Black Adam. Being able to run missions with them assisting you, or against other 'named' supervillains (or heroes) is kinda neat. City of Heroes and Champions Online may be *vastly* better, mechanically, and have so many more options that it's ridiculous (CoH *started* with 45 powersets, and has dozens more now, while DCO has between 6 and 12, depending on how generous you feel), but being able to fight alongside Nightwing, as a hero, or get your butt kicked by Power Girl, as a villain, is a totally cool experience.

Booster Gold gets a fair amount of play as well, narrating tours of the city (in a self-promoting and boastful fashion), and being seen on the occasional billboard, and Ambush Bug shares the dubious distinction of being the only character to appear in both the Hall of Doom *and* the Watchtower, since he's apparently not very clear about which side he's on...

It looks like, in the Arena combats, you'll be able to play *as* certain unlockable DC characters, and Harley Quinn is the first villain that everyone gets as an option, and, IIRC, Robin is the first hero. I haven't played any Arena games, and I don't much care for PVP, so I have no idea how fun it would be to play *as* these particular characters (neither of which, frankly, blows up my skirt, and while there are ways to get access to other options, my disinterest in PVP has stopped me from exploring those options).

^ Thanks for that summary Set. I've been on the fence about this game for a little while now. The reviews haven't exactly been filled with praise... but the thought of playing in the DCU alongside all my favourite characters (well, some of my favourite characters until they get the 70s Titans and the Legion in there) is a real draw.

Not that I've ever played CoH but the fact that it has so much more choice of powers (and I've heard DCU Online does not have much of a selection of costumes/'looks' either) is a bit disappointing. You'd think a new game would have taken what an old game did and improved upon it.

I think I'll wait a while to see if it improves and just follow the reviews. Don't really have the time or money to spend on something that's less than 100% fun at the moment.

If I didn't already have so much experience with MMOs that weren't designed to be compatible with a six-button playstation controller, and allowed me to make use of my entire keyboard *and* my mouse, I'd probably love it. But it's just so painfully small and limited, compared to what I've played already.

Right now there's a special offer to get 90 days for 29.95 ish, and I'm considering whether or not that's worth it. (Normally MMOs are 19.95 per month, ish.) I've got free lifetime access to Star Trek online, Champions online and Lord of the Rings online, as well as a few characters on a friends World of Warcraft accounts (he's got six accounts!), so I'm not lacking for stuff to play, even without spending money...

I got my Joker-allied character up to the next teamup mission, which is the exact same beat-up-Bane mission, only, as a villain, I'm teamed up with Killer Croc instead of Nightwing. I failed the first couple of times (Killer Croc is no Nightwing, that's for sure!), and will have to do the old 'go outside and get a few levels and try again' tactic.

It looks like they recycle a few missions, like the fight with Bane. On the one hand, that's a little cheap, on the other hand, it might be fun to play the Parasite vs. Power Girl fight or Dr. Fate vs. Brother Blood fight on the side of the good guys!

And I've run into the Emerald Eye of Ekron again, this time outside of the Gotham Botanical Gardens.

I have no idea what's up with this!

I saw the Emerald Eye also Set. It was near one of the Metropolis Police Stations. The one in Little Bohemia.

I gotta get back into playing this.
Just been so busy lately I haven't had a chance.

I've now seen one following someone, so it must be some sort of pre-order bonus 'pet' with no special abilities or something. They are common in other MMOs, and I didn't pre-order, so I didn't get any such toys.

If I'd known the Emerald Eye was a pre-order toy, I probably would have made a character with that theme and pre-ordered.

Edit: On second thought, looking at the pre-order bonuses, that isn't one of them, so it must be a quest reward or something you can get otherwise, perhaps by running the Joker's Vault a lot. (I've gotten a Lobo hoodie, a Hawkman hoodiie, a Joker hoodie, a Shazam t-shirt and a bouncy kryptonian ball so far. Will keep trying for that Emerald Eye!)