Besides the basics of moving around and attacking with whatever you use for your control device, either the keyboard and mouse or GamePad - the next basic thing to know is your character stats and how to improve them.
The stats for your character can be read in your Inventory menu section (press I on your keyboard for the quickest way to get there) then going to the Stats Tab subsection which is the middle tab after the initial Inventory screen that opens up. The Stats and what they represent are as follows:
Health - Amount of damage points needed to knock out your character
Power - These points get deducted from every time you use one of your character Powers from your Power Bar
Defense - These points add up to a damage reduction percentage from NPC's in the game, that is all non-player enemies such as the ones you fight within missions.
Might - This number is used to calculate how much damage and the strength of effects caused by your Powers. Tanks who are the characters who draw fire to themselves and inflict heavy damage while their teammates either do the same, heal the others, or do control effects such as stuns on crowds of enemies; need a good combination of Defense, Might, Power, Restoration (for self-healing), and Dominance.
Restoration - This number is used to calculate how much and quickly you recover Health points when either healing or outside of combat within the game. If your character is a healer it determines how much your healing Powers heal.
Vitalization - This is like Restoration only that it determines how many points of Power you recover when outside of combat or have a Power recovery effect on your character. Controller characters have two main functions in the game, one is to restore Power points to their team mates quicker than usual. For this having a higher Vitalization than other characters is important. The other function for Controllers is to stun crowds of enemies and for this they need a high Dominance as well.
Precision - This number is used to calculate how much additional damage your weapon strikes do. This Stat is important for someone in a DPS role, which all characters have. So all characters are either Controllers, Healers, or Tanks plus DPS - which means damage per second or a character that attacks and does a high amount of damage per attack.
Toughness - This is like Defense only it applies to Players instead of NPC's, so this stat will help reduce damage you take from players in a PvP situation while Defense would reduce damage you take from enemies that are not Players, such as the enemies in your missions. This is very important and the first part of understanding PvP (Player versus Player) in contrast to PvE (Player versus Environment) combat. A high Defense does your character no good in PvP and a high Toughness does your character no good when fighting game generated enemies like inside alerts and missions. This is why you must keep at least two sets of armor that enhance your stats, one for PvP and another for PvE. This is a very fundamental part of the game and part of the "Why didn't anyone ever tell me this" part of what makes DCUO difficult and not fun to play if you don't know these hidden things. Again this is the reason for this website, and why it is such a rude and obnoxious thing for players who know these things to be yelling at the players who don't in the game.
Dominance - This stat is used to calculate how long your character's Stun effects last on enemies that they Stun in Combat as well as Encase or Trap with powers. The higher this number is the longer your target stays stunned or encased by you and you and your team mates can keep hitting them causing damage to them as they are helpless. Once that total damage adds up to a number higher than your Dominance allows then that stun or encasement effect is broken automatically. Higher Dominance also causes NPC enemies to attack you rather than any team mates you might have that have a lower Dominance stat. I also think that Dominance has a factor in things done by the Tank role which I'm not very familiar with at the moment.
This gives rise to one strategy in the game which is to stun lots of enemies at once then focus your attacks on the ones who are not stunned leaving the stunned ones alone. This way gang ups from enemies are reduced as you can fight one on one with the ones not restrained while their combat mates are unable to help them and gang up on you. Another way of approaching this is to keep attacking stunned enemies as they are helpless and take extra damage from your character as they are stunned. Thus you can eliminate them quicker than normal and get rid of them all together reducing your enemy's numbers as a whole for the combat session. This is the type of strategic thinking that is involved in DCUO and one aspect of it that makes it good fun.
The exact mathematical formulas used to make the calculations used to determine all this I think have changed over time with updates but this guide will give you an idea of what those numbers are - link
You can improve your Stats by choosing Skills in your Skill selection process that give you Innate abilities, which is permanent increases to a given Stat as described fro that Skill. You start off with one Weapon Skill set and one Movement Skill Set. You can purchase individual Weapon Skills within your Skill set tree as you level at first, you start doing the same with your Movement Skills at level 9. You can also after level 10 I believe start purchasing from other Weapon Skill sets other than the one you started with. Each Weapon set has different Innate bonuses for Stats and some are the same so purchasing them would stack those bonuses on that particular Stat. You get Skill points to spend on purchasing Skills by increasing your level and completing varies Feats in the game. Besides Innate Ability Bonuses the other part of the Weapon Skill set are access to Attack combos which effect your combat targets according to how you press the attack buttons in combinations.
See I told you it was complicated and involved, but it again really fun once you get the hang of it. That's why we are all here to learn then have fun. It's hard for normal people to think about, but people get yelled at by jerk players for not knowing this stuff in the game already; having no real official place to learn it or even be aware these things exist. Like I said in the Read this First post, that player dynamic outside of the game mechanics is what is the real hang up of this game. But knowing all of this can mitigate that.
Lastly, you can improve your Stats by equipping your character with gear. Each character has these placeholders for placing gear in:
Head, Face, Back, Shoulders, Chest, Waist (belt), Legs, Feet, Hands (gloves), Neck, you also have two Ring slots, another slot for a Trinket, another for Consumables, and a Weapon slot. All of these slots except Consumables can be equipped with gear that has it's own inherent number for a given stat. So let's say you equip a Ring that has 20 Power 7 Health and 10 Might by doing so you add 20 to your characters total Power, 7 to their Health, and 10 to their Might. You can purchase gear from Vendors as well as find them in missions or get them as rewards for completing missions. As the variety and types of gear various quite a bit, as you go over your gear in your inventory you see a tool tip display of it's numbers and how they compare to your currently equipped item for that slot. Stats that are lowered by switching the gear are shown in red while stats that are increased are shown in green. For example, you might have a cape type gear in your Back slot and then find a back plate gear in your last mission. When you scroll over your back plate item in your Inventory menu you'll see stats listed in a tool tip on the left hand side o your screen. The numbers listed in green will increase your stats by that much if you decide to switch gear items, the numbers in red will be decreased by that amount from the switch.
You can decide which stats are important to you depending on how you want to play. One example would be a character that does high damage with their weapon attacks so increasing that characters Precision stat would be important in that case. Another example would be having very powerful effects from your characters powers, so then Might would be what you want to increase. Each gear item has a give and take of giving bonuses to one set of Stats while taking away from another. That's why one of the focuses of a character after they max out on leveling at level 30 is to get Marks to purchase Iconic Gear or Armor from various vendors mostly in the headquarters for their respective groups, either Heroes or Villains. The heroes have the Watchtower while the Villains have the Hall of Doom.
As involved as all that is, that is the basic gist of the game and main purpose. If you understand what was just written you understand the basic fundamentals of the DCUO game.
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