Joker
I have made something of a reputation for myself as a journalist who will playing dying live service games somewhat excessively until they breathe their last, but at this point, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has broken me.
As of last night, Suicide Squad is now peaking under 350 players on Steam, which means I am quite literally one of the last players on that platform at this point. The Joker season caused a micro-resurgence that melted away as soon as everyone realized they couldn’t just log in and play as Joker, but needed to grind 2-3 hours first or pay to skip that process. Now, there are just dozens of us. Dozens of us!
In all seriousness though, I just can’t go on. I am done until the game adds something specific:
Actual. New. Content.
This seems like extremely basic stuff. One of the biggest complaints about the base game was that there was not enough variety in activities, as side missions, main missions and endgame missions were all the same blend of rooftop hopping and the same objectives.
That has not changed at all in the Joker season. And in fact, I feel actively misled about that. The promised “new strongholds” Rocksteady talked about were revealed to be nothing but the old, one-off missions from after the story campaign that are now back with Joker paint on them. And while there are “new” endgame Incursions, they are the old incursions but with objectives like “kill 150 enemies” which no, I am not going to consider that new content.
Joker HQ
Nor will I consider new content the barely modified Braniac boss fight where he’s now aping the Green Lantern campaign fight. It’s the final barrier to unlock Joker, and it’s horrifically balanced at higher mayhem levels so there’s no point even running it more than once. And in the second “episode” of the season, there is a reprised Superman Braniac fight coming. No new real missions, however, it seems.
There are essentially three things to do on login in Suicide Squad right now:
- Kill 20 or so flying drones in the city to make sure you get 500 battle pass XP a day (this counter is bugged and often resets)
- Complete 3 bounties for 1050 battle pass XP a day which can take about five minutes.
- Run an infinite amount of Mayhem level Incursions to possibly get minor upgrades to your build but mostly fill your inventory with junk you will need to clean out every few runs. These were supposed to give 200 battle pass XP each after the last update, but they only give 100, so progress is interminable there.
That’s…it. And again, none of this is new content. It’s just old content you’re now doing with Joker, or a new build on your old characters. And the second episode of this season also does not promise any new content in terms of mission types. Storyboard animated cutscenes are not going to cut it.
I have seen leaks. I know that there are significant story developments on the way. But if these things do not launch with actual new activities to play, there will never, ever be a reason to return to this game, even for those of us who are looking for a reason to do so. Because right now, there’s simply nothing. It’s one of the biggest live service voids I’ve ever seen.
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