DUST Search - Keystones - A few thoughts on Dust's deeper issues

Leither Yiltron wrote:

Here IGÇÖve put a bit of a focus on how difficult it is to train new Dust players, but the presented issues reach farther than that. The map design is very bad for the entire concept of the light frame, for instance, and lends itself to the scoutGÇÖs GÇ£underpoweredGÇ¥ status. The suit tiers exacerbate balance issues. Low in-match player counts limit the impact of Planetary Conquest. The list goes on.

Most critically though on these keystones rest an unavoidable feeling I get after two years of working with Dust:

I feel like the game is constantly fighting against players getting together into a cohesive community. Its design favors veterans with high SP pools, but turns away fresh blood before they can become veterans. It rewards boring, lifeless play over tactics, strategy, and coordination. And these issues often go unnoticed or ignored, or at best simply arenGÇÖt part of CCPGÇÖs dialogue. While the people who want to recruit, train, and start new players on a journey of playing Dust gnash their teeth more priority is given to making the next new gun than tackling these hard core problems. Meanwhile hours and hours of hard work are poured into developing what community infrastructure we can. Many of those hours are wasted. The unfortunate part is that the only fix requires CCP to embrace their own vision of Dust as a community-centric FPSMMO, not just another lobby shooter.


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m twiggz Pawns and Kings The Superpowers 31	Posted - 2013.09.07 01:21:00 - [1] - Quote Leither Yiltron wrote: Here IGÇÖve put a bit of a focus on how difficult it is to train new Dust players, but the presented issues reach farther than that. The map design is very bad for the entire concept of the light frame, for instance, and lends itself to the scoutGÇÖs GÇ£underpoweredGÇ¥ status. The suit tiers exacerbate balance issues. Low in-match player counts limit the impact of Planetary Conquest. The list goes on. Most critically though on these keystones rest an unavoidable feeling I get after two years of working with Dust: I feel like the game is constantly fighting against players getting together into a cohesive community. Its design favors veterans with high SP pools, but turns away fresh blood before they can become veterans. It rewards boring, lifeless play over tactics, strategy, and coordination. And these issues often go unnoticed or ignored, or at best simply arenGÇÖt part of CCPGÇÖs dialogue. While the people who want to recruit, train, and start new players on a journey of playing Dust gnash their teeth more priority is given to making the next new gun than tackling these hard core problems. Meanwhile hours and hours of hard work are poured into developing what community infrastructure we can. Many of those hours are wasted. The unfortunate part is that the only fix requires CCP to embrace their own vision of Dust as a community-centric FPSMMO, not just another lobby shooter. I quoted the smallest post just for the sake of saving space, if I could i would have quoted all of it. I agree with some aspects you bring to the table. I've been playing Dust for a mere month now and find it much more interesting than most FPS game I have ever played. I understand what you're posting is just an opinion, as is mine. As for the game favoring high SP players, this is only a half truth. Like I said earlier I've only been playing for just over a month now and have accumulated 3.5 million SP. just enough to get all of my important skills to advanced levels. I have absolutely no problem taking on players with 5, 10, even 15 million SP in a straight up fight. Perhaps it's because of my vast experience of FPS games, but never the less, new players are becoming more welcome to the game with additions of boosters, daily SP and the new aim assist which was added in this week. In my opinion no FPS has a long shelf life. People get bored of gearing up, shooting people, capturing objectives and staring at the same ol' loading screens. Which is why companies like DICE, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch come out with new additions of their top sellers annually. I played Counter-Strike for nearly 10 years before dropping the game completely. From 1999-2009. Not much was changed within that game throughout those 10 years, but games will always have loyal fans and that's what makes them successful. I believe Dust has great potential to be one of the more competitive FPS games on the market today. With CCPs vast empire within Eve, options of integrating the games together are near endless. I do however deeply disagree with you when you say it isn't much different than games on the market today. This is the first "MMOFPS" I have ever heard of and played. Most FPS games require you to unlock guns by getting kills with certain weapons and attachments. Dust requires you to gain points, throughout various tasks within a match, to unlock skills, different tiers of skills, to unlock different gear to improve your character all while gaining an in game currency to be able to afford the best gear available. New tiers, weapons, vehicles, etc. can always be added to further the games integrity and playability. The fact that you have to play longer to gain more SP to unlock better gear also sucks people in, at least competitive people like myself. It's basically mixing RPG and FPS all in one, the two most played game types on the market today. Yes of course CCP could drop the ball and ruin the game completely, but it's basically still in beta. Most great games go through years and years of beta before they're fully released. It's our decision to take part in their game, at no cost to ourselves I might add, to help them develop the game further. I thoroughly enjoy Dust. I have not played as long as you granted, but my usual interest in games only last a few weeks. This game has grabbed my attention and is holding on. There is great future potential for this game, and I hope to continue playing it to see all of the additions as I hope you do as well.