gbghg
L.O.T.I.S.
3317
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Posted - 2013.08.28 20:45:00 -
[1] - Quote
Proto has a huge stat advantage right now, it's quite Simply the case that a proto medium will outclass everything else in the field barring another proto, regardless of frame type.
And your right, by running militia gear you can blueball the enemy, you might even take down a couple of proto suits and win the ISK war, however that is not fun, the point of a game is to enjoy yourself, casuals and many others play games because they want to have fun, dying repeatedly is not very fun. The prospect of having no choice but to die repeatedly over a long time period to get on a level playing field is not one conductive to player retention, I'll admit the current NPE is not very conductive to player retention with the lack of tutorials and all, but the fact remains a significant amount of people will look at the time required to reach that level and will just put the game down.
Having time = statistical advantage works well in an MMO, because you can structure the game so your always progressing into balanced enemies, you have low level starter areas and high level endgame areas. They're very different because they're designed for 2 different groups, one an experienced group, another a new inexperienced one. Neither group mixes well in the others area for obvious reasons.
In dust we're effectively throwing both groups into the same arena and tell them to fight each other, it's very poor design. The standard MMO setup just doesn't work in an FPS, FPS's rely on players being on a level playing field, where aiming, accuracy, cover, and weapon choice are the defining factor, right now we see too much emphasis on one side and not enough on the other.
Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not advocating that dust becomes a COD or a battlefield clone, far from it, dust is a different game, and needs to be distinctly different. It's just that you don't see people complaining about the basic infantry gameplay, about some people who can just take more damage and deal more damage due to game design, both of those games are successful, dust is not.
And your right, we can't just eliminate tiers without replacing them, myself and several others (who have made much better proposals than me) have offered systems where tiers are replaced by a system more focused on role bonus's than on simply having a suit being better in every respect. They're not perfect, nothing ever is, but they make much more sense than our current system.
And as Zdub pointed out in another thread, when you think about tiers are very much a P2W system, by forking out more ISK you are gaining a large advantage over other players, our entire gear system right now is a P2W system. |