This may not be the game for you then.

If you actually knew how to read, you'd notice that I'm talking primarily about noobs. I have 15 million SP with my cores flushed out, I'm in a stable position, it's just boring.

This may not be the game for you then.

If i remember correctly at one point i was being proto stomped by all of IMPS and SI and Betamax...

Eventually i worked my way up in skill points... slowly trying to catch everyone (which will never happen)... And now finally im up towards the top with extra SP and skill and i have learned the format of the game and how to achieve my max potential (or somewhat near it)... And now you wanna give the new guys the easy road between all of that?

This does not make for a competitive game... honestly it would be easier in this game if u gave all the new guys 20m Sp... they would spend it in all sorts of ******** places and just ***** that they needed 20m more...

Guess what... we all went through the degree of hard knocks and we all took our ass whoopings... the ones who are still here are the ones who actually learned how to play this game... its not for the weak of heart or the casual once a week or once every couple weeks gamer... they can play CoD or BF3

I love this game for that exact reason...

its not the skill system thats boring. it is the lack of things to skill into.

I think Dust's point about the slog and grind isn't quite valid. I run around in a Laser/SMG/AV nade/scanner Assault suit for ***** n' giggles now, and while I don't murder the same as if I'm going Boundless HMG, I can still get reasonable kills and WP during a match. It cost me a total of 100,000ish SP to fit what I wanted over what I already had for Heavy.

I think PC is the only part of DUST that demands min/maxing to post a good match. You can go broad and still have fun (especially with the low TTK now). It's the people trying to top each other on the leaderboards and shedding blood over plots of land that are wearing themselves out.

Getting core skills up in the first place though... that stuff's a grind.

And, as I said in the OP, having a slow skill reallocation system would go a long way towards helping noobs take some strain off of incorrect or no longer enjoyable decisions, without completely invalidating the weight of your decisions.

Gotcha man. And I'll confess, I did always like the idea of a slow respec system. Having a rolling bank of 1 skill level to undo per week would be pretty neat, without encouraging FOTM hopping after every patch.

This may not be the game for you then.

Not to say there isn't a place for skills with large SP sinks but the general rule should be BREADTH of content, not LENGTH.

If I think I'd like to skill into Caldari Heavy suits, what should I do in the mean time?

It's boring because you went heavy suit with an AR

SO MUCH QQ.

I STRONGLY support this. There is no fun to be gained from being forced to stick with skills they no longer want. Its pointless commitment for the sake of being "hardcore" at the cost of actual fun (the reason why people play games to begin with).
Most players never really get to make an informed decision on what to skill into, especially because of lack of militia tier means you can't test weapons without skilling into them; there is NO MEANING in decisions made without proper information.

especially because of lack of militia tier

This is the real problem.

Having to stick with the skills you trained is a good decision for DUST. It's at the core of how the game works.

But we need to making INFORMED decisions based on EXPERIENCE with what we're skilling into, or it negates that value of that "hardcore" decision/consequence element.

I still think we should let people spend a chunk of ISK, or some AUR, to be able to reskill.

There were threads where we talked about a cool-down so it couldn't be done that often -- and it wouldn't have to be an all or nothing action. You could limit it to one end-point on the skill tree (if not too expensive) or to one branch (if it is expensive).

How about you can respec as much as you want for AUR but you have to give up 25-33% of your lifetime SP?

Respec with every new montly patch.

We are still in beta.

Respec with every new montly patch.

We are still in beta.

What the skill system right now encourages you to do, if you're playing to not get stomped, is to focus on one weapon, one suit, one specialized playstyle.

A lot of the vets forget this, they forget / never even experienced what it's like to claw your way up this slow, boring skill tree in the face of insurmountable odds (proto squad red line ring a bell?) So, if the noobs are playing 'right' they're saving their SP, buying only gear that matches their skills, and only spending SP when unlocking the next level. For months, and months, and months (particularly free players). There is no deviation, minus that which you can attain through gimping yourself (remember, the noobs don't have skills to fall back on, and they might even be working on core skills, making this even worse).

So you've got new players, not allowed to experiment with new skills, buying the same boring gear game after game, stockpiling gear as it becomes available..playing match after match for that tiny boost in stats. No cool new looking gun, no actual change in game performance wise, save the statistical boost. At best you get a new color scheme. So all your gear is boring; static. All your skills are fairly boring (many don't even provide any boosts, and many more provide trivial boosts that are laughable at best, some of which don't even remotely match the suits or their supposed roles)

So at the end of the day, you've got the vets on one hand, rolling in cash (most anyways), with oodles of gear stockpiled, and the noobs, praying to god that their skill selection is actually worth a damn; that the gear they're dreaming about actually plays exactly as expected after months of going to that point.




There is no deviation. This is DUSTs problem. Your skills are static. The second you as a player evolve, the second YOU decide that a given playstyle no longer interests or appeals to you, too damn bad. You're forced to keep it. There needs to be a way to slowly reallocate skill points, to gradually pull them from one place and back into your SP pool. It's so damn boring, and offers no leeway for new and old players alike.

A non-instant system would also be preferable as it still drives home the consequences of choosing poorly but not so permanently.

This also severely reduces the pay to win factor to which is already a stigma that the boosters currently suffer from as obnoxiously rich players cannot buy their way to the best fits and by the time they unsped all the no longer FOTM SP and train it into the new one that may get nerfed again thus starting the whole cycle over again.

A non-instant system would also be preferable as it still drives home the consequences of choosing poorly but not so permanently.

This also severely reduces the pay to win factor to which is already a stigma that the boosters currently suffer from as obnoxiously rich players cannot buy their way to the best fits and by the time they unsped all the no longer FOTM SP and train it into the new one that may get nerfed again thus starting the whole cycle over again.

How about a De-Booster? it could work similarly to the passive/active boosters; You tag skills to "de-boost" and instead of gaining an extra .5 SP per SP earned, 1 SP is removed from the skill you have tagged per 1 SP you earn. This way, it's a bit faster than a regular booster, but you aren't actually gaining SP, instead you're slowly rearranging it.

I still agree with this