YMMV / DC Universe Online

• Broken Base:
  • The idea of increasing perks for Premium players (Increased Cash Cap, etc.). Some state that Premium's current perks are only slightly better than F2P's despite paying for additional content while others believe that they should just stop whining and "become Legendary."
  • Whether Skill Points should have a greater influence in the game is also a huge one. While they don't necessarily affect progression, there are players who believe that they should play a major part in character progression as they are shown as proof of a player's skills and dedication while others believe that it only promotes elitism.
• Complete Monster (Legends): Brainiac is as narcissistic and destructive as always. Having already conquered and destroyed the Earth in the future timeline, alongside thousands of other planets, the present Brainiac introduces himself by destroying the Watchtower and intending for the debris to crash into Metropolis, almost killing one million people. While helping Lex Luthor with his vendetta against Superman, he ultimately forces Superman to murder his own wife Lois before trying to dissect him, attempting to create an army of Supermen. Briefly held back by the Justice League, Brainiac massacres the Sinestro Corps and steals their central power battery to recharge himself; unleashes his army of enslaved aliens onto Earth to wipe out humanity; forces Lex to attack and kill the heroes with his own armor just to torment his former ally; and massacres his own allies when he believes he has the upper hand.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Do you remember Nora Fries, Mr. Freeze's cryogenic wife whose illness turned him into the Tragic Villain he is today? Well now she has her own Ice Cream restaurant chain!◊
• Demonic Spiders: The Paradox Reapers. They could appear in virtually anywhere in the open world, and could kill new players before you could blink.
  • The Joker androids. They have a powerful explosion attack that reduces their health and explode when they die. Even if they died due to the explosion. Both, combined, can take away 90% or more of a hero's HP.
  • The Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps members in Metropolis. They swarm, often have shields you have to break before doing normal damage, and can send you flying backwards (or pull you towards them, so you can't easily escape) with ease. The Green Lantern-centric duo is even worse in some parts.
  • The craziest examples have to be the creatures that comes with the tier 4 (highest level) missions. These can kill moderately experienced max level players out in two to three hits.
• Fan Nickname: Some have called the game (specifically, if you play as a superhero) "The best Superman Game Ever Made"
• Foe Yay Shipping: Maybe just a little bit between Oracle and Calculator.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In the trailer, Superman beats, if not kills Black Adam by using his Heat Vision to blast into Adam's head. In Injustice: Gods Among Us, Superman kills Billy Batson/Shazam by doing the exact same thing.
• Magnificent Bastard: (Legends): Lex Luthor, after abandoning his xenophobic ways, proves to be just as an effective hero as a villain without losing his ruthless edge. After joining the Justice League yet being framed by Brainiac, Lex recruits his former villainous allies to his cause, realizing the heroes will refuse to cross that line. After helping Future Batman defeat his present self, Lex then coordinates with his own future self to defeat Brainiac, intending to cause a time paradox to stop him. Leading the Justice League as well as the new heroes and villains, Lex not only convinces Clark to work with him, but tricks Brainiac into massacring his own allies to give them an edge, even proving worthy of Hal's ring in the process. With Brainiac's allies gone, Lex and his future self work together to successfully reset the timeline to before Brainiac's invasion, even when he knows that he must return to a life he's now ashamed of for the sake of the universe.
• Narm:
  • A lot in the Enemy Chatter. Here's some of them.
  • Villains could punch citizens off roofs, and they give a long, drawn-out "Ahhhhhhhh!".
• Porting Disaster:
  • The game has one egregious issue on Windows: If you're planning to play the game with a gamepad, you'd better have an Xbox 360 controller. Have anything else (like one of those cheap USB DualShock 2-controller look-alikes or even a PlayStation 2-to-USB controller adapter?) You may find that the camera is stuck looking up, because the right nub is handled differently from Xbox 360 controllers on these controllers. No thanks to the fact that the game does not provide a way to remap controller buttons and axes.
  • You can still work around that problem with a 360 controller emulator, although since this is an online game it might be seen as a cheating tool. But then you consider the fact that the only other platform the game came out for is the PlayStation 3, whose controller is similar to the DualShock 2 save for the L2 and R2 buttons being pressure-sensitive triggers. Also, if they see gamepads as a cheating tool, wouldn't it be a better idea to not allow gamepads at all (and while at it, force the players of the PS3 version of the game to use a USB mouse and keyboard too?)
  • A later version of the game attempted to fix this issue. The good news is, these controllers are treated like the DualShock controllers they are and the screen no longer sticks to the floor looking up anymore. The bad news is, it has a minor glitch that fails to read the right nub correctly— the camera now pans in a spiral motion due to being still reliant on XInput and thus not able to see the axis properly. This is fine if your character doesn't have the power of flight. Otherwise, you'll find yourself returning to the mouse and keyboard pretty often.
  • And this was also the case with numerous other games, too, as they now make use of the XInput API. Especially the ones released alongside the Xbox 360 versions.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Fans of Red vs. Blue and RWBY may recognize Gray Haddock (Locus and Roman Torchwick, respectively) as Green Lantern.
  • From the same series, we have Shannon McCormick (Agent Washington and Ozpin) as the Riddler and Jen Brown (Agent Carolina and Pyrrha) as Harley Quinn.
• Spiritual Licensee: This is (kind of) the best Superman game ever (kind of is because Superman is part of the DCU).
• That One Boss:
  • Whisper A'Daire hits really, really hard. If you lack powers or items that restore health and/or prevent damage, you're doomed.
  • Bruno Mannheim. Not only are you completely outnumbered, but Bruno has a beam attack that grounds you, is impossible to dodge, and shaves off so much health.
  • Black Adam. Aside from his Word of Power being enough to shave off half of your health, absorbing Zatanna's and (to a greater degree) Giganta's powers is considered him being at his most dangerous. ^*Precisely Zatanna!Adam's lightning attacks and Giganta!Adam's leap attack can reduce your health very quickly.
  • Red Lantern Guy, freaking, Gardner. In addition to being tanky even for a Red Lantern, he unleashes a powerful area of effect attack that fills up a large portion of the room you'd be fighting him in AND can eat up health almost as quickly as The Flash eats chocolate cake.
• That One Level:
  • The mission to rescue Supergirl from the metahuman hospital has its first encounter with Doctor Psycho early on, but it is a 'game of hide and seek' where you have to roam around the room until you are close enough to see him only to be able to hit him a few times before he vanishes again. There's no threat to you, but it takes time and you really don't do any damage to him either. And it's one of the challenge modes at 30, later on. It's one of the most difficult ones due to the encounter after that little game of hide-and-seek.
  • Batcave: Inner Sanctum. If you queue up to this raid, you'll get a group that is stuck at the Armored Robotic Custodian about 90% of the time.
    • It's so insanely difficult that SOE eventually have to nerf it.
  • Fortress of Solitude 2: Power Core. There's a portion of the mission where your team will have to split into two groups to proceed which includes taking on two Brainwashed and Crazy Kryptonians (one for each group). Good news: You only have to take off around half of their health. Bad news: If the other team goes down before you can cause them to retreat, one of the aforementioned Kryptonians will enrage and curbstomp your team quickly.^*One group will take on one of the Kryptonians while the other takes on a group of adds on the other side.
    • Higher level teams could make this easier by having everyone on the Kryptonian and beat them before Lex Luthor or Superman and General Zod is defeated on the other side. Unfortunately, SOE caught on and closed THAT loophole so back to splitting the team.
  • Prime Battleground. Remember the Avatars from the Batcave, Fortress of Solitude, and Themyscira raids? They're back and upgraded to "Prime" Avatars and you have to defeat all of them in succession with various enemy spawns getting in your way. And this is before facing Brainiac himself.
  • Blackest Day. New levels of frustration abound in the Elite Version of this raid and the final boss fight with Black Hand. You have adds whose bodies remain on the field after you kill them and can corrupt players with a nasty DoT that can eventually kill well-geared tanks and leave the party open to be KOed by Black Hand's AoE. If you are stunned your very act of breaking the stun can damage any party members nearby and kill them if they have been corrupted. As a grand finale to the frustration, when you get Black Hand down to, say 25% health, he bubbles himself up and new adds spawn. If you take too long to kill the adds he can regain almost full health! Oh, and you are only allowed to die ONCE in an Elite raid, die again and you are out for the remainder of the fight.
  • The "Shattered Gotham" raid due to, if not solely, the Genre Shift in making the raid into a Platform Game where missing your jump results in your death. Did we mention that all movement modes are disabled?
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Harley Quinn's voice change hasn't been viewed favorably by a strong portion of the player base.
  • The Flash's voice change was disliked as well. Though, after fans have gotten used to (if not accepted) the change, there was another voice change. Arguably worse than the previous.
  • Now it's Booster Gold's turn and the reaction is about the same.
  • ProSabienSat.7's ownership of SOE's licenses and how completely difficult it has become for a former European player to regain access to their account when the company that now owns it will only give websites in German.
  • The stat clamp that came with Episode 41 has pissed off plenty of players. The upset players claim that doing this "devalues" their strength progression and makes the missions way too hard. Others counter that these players are upset not because their progression has been "devalued", but they can't just brute force their way through progression anymore and they need to learn the mechanics.
  • The Noob Cave introduction level aboard the Brainiac Harvester Ship was originally a solo tutorial where your character is all on his own with nothing but either Oracle or Calculator in their ear guiding them through objectives. It was later revamped so the player character is now merely playing tagalong to either Superman or Lex Luthor who are present for the entire level, along with a few other heroes or villains at certain parts.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Arguably the biggest example of this is Batgirl, whose only use has been as a Vendor for post-game gear and a voice cameo on a briefing. The fact that this version of Batgirl is Fan Favorite Cassandra Cain makes this very jarring.
  • The Green Arrow of Corrupted Metropolis. He was built up as the leader of the resistance against Lex Luthor's dictatorship. But all we get is a screen report of him being captured and the resistance members (after being freed) mentioning going to rescue him. Though from the briefings found, it's implied to be pointless.
• Unexpected Character: Or rather “Unexpected Outfit Piece”. The Knight of Vengeance has a collection set that, if completed, nets you Grifter's mask, making him the first representation from the Wildstorm Universe in DCUO.
• Villain Decay: The villain side in general as many episodes consist of them working more with the heroes instead of against them. Something that Villain players have made well aware. Lampshaded In-Universe in the Doomed Metropolis story line as Supergirl asking the villains for help is the last straw for Calculator, declaring that Lex Luthor has gone soft, as he decides to take matters into his own hands.
• Win Back the Crowd: By the end of "Deluge", quite a few players were sick of Starro, and both the "Sea of Love" Valentine's event and the "Tides of War" summer event also added to the Atlantis fatigue. This led to players being skeptical of the "Atlantis" episode, with some seeing it as a cash-grab tie-in with Aquaman (2018). However, not only did it have nothing to do with the film (adapting from Aquaman: Rebirth instead) and minimal Starro presence, it's an epic Wham Episode that is generally well-received and considered the best since the conclusion of "Amazon Fury".
• WTH, Costuming Department?: The Tier 3 Kryptonian armor sets had among other terrible design choices, crystals sprouting out of the back and sometimes looked like that included from the butt. Thank God the game allows you to set your displayed styles independent of what you actually have equipped.