DUST Search - The 'fix uplinks' movement!

Spkr4theDead wrote:

Prius Vecht wrote:

Read this piece recently and agreed. http://dustmercs.blogspot.com/2013/10/sandbox-514-making-dust-matter.html#more

Uplinks in Dust are some of the most poorly designed items ever seen in a shooter. They are just too powerful and encourage spam rather than tactical gameplay.

I dont think they should show up unless I actually see one or its scanned, but 1) one uplink should be the max we can put down 2) they have to have a much higher CPU/PG drain. 3) preventing them from being too close to each other is a great idea. if I put one down within 50m of another the existing field should prevent it. 4) lower the amount of spawns 3 milita, 5 standard, 10 advanced and 15 proto.

hopefully they will really balance the cloak before adding it but it scares me looking how OP uplinks still are, so what else can be done to make uplinks better?

The people on here have obviously never participated in PC.

The only thing that needs to be fixed about uplinks is we need at least one variant per meta level that is squad only.


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John Demonsbane Unorganized Ninja Infantry Tactics League of Infamy 213	Posted - 2013.10.20 15:10:00 - [1] - Quote The problem with the OP's narrow interpretation of the article (i..e, we need to nerf uplinks right now) is a lot of of other things need to be fixed before you change uplinks so dramatically. As it stands now it takes forever to get across these huge new maps. One orbital takes out your entire forward squad and you're done, nobody can get back to the front lines in time. You would need to massively buff dropships before you ever considered this: it's the only other way you could realistically move people quickly, but as they stand now its just too risky to move large groups that way. One assault forge can take out your whole squad in seconds. I'm all for making them more specialized, there's no need for anyone but scouts or logi's to equip them and be throwing them around willy nilly, but a hard limit like 1 per person is crazy without a number of other fundamental changes. All that will do is penalize specialization and incentivize everyone to carry them. The logistics class would be crippled unless another way to gain WP is substituted. While they are definitely a crutch and can be abused, what I don't understand entirely is how they can be "unbalanced" by most definitions of the term. Can everyone not use them? (OK, other than heavies). It's not like a weapon where there are dozens of types intended for different uses and when weapon x is not only the best at it's own role, but also better than weapon y is at it's role, then you have imbalance since weapon x prevails over y in every situation. Uplinks fill a singular role in terms of player equipment, there is nothing to really balance them against. It's not quite like saying playing in an organized squad is unbalanced, but similar in that the mechanic is available to anyone without much in the way of sacrificing something else. Anyway, a much more sensible change that could be done now is simply to make them not work within a certain distance of an installation (CRU, objective, supply depot) or eachother. That would reduce spam, reward placing them in strategic locations, and not prohibitively restrict mobility in the absence of other changes (i.e., dropships) that will clearly not be ready in 2013.
John Demonsbane Unorganized Ninja Infantry Tactics League of Infamy 213	Posted - 2013.10.20 16:06:00 - [2] - Quote Skihids wrote: Uplinks keep the intensity of the battle up by spawning at the front. Pull them without providing alternative transport and you will get a lot more redline matches. Dropships are the obvious replacement, but they won't be viable for months as vehicles are rebalanced. Exactly. Be careful what you ask for.
John Demonsbane Unorganized Ninja Infantry Tactics League of Infamy 214	Posted - 2013.10.20 17:05:00 - [3] - Quote Spkr4theDead wrote: Prius Vecht wrote: Read this piece recently and agreed. http://dustmercs.blogspot.com/2013/10/sandbox-514-making-dust-matter.html#more Uplinks in Dust are some of the most poorly designed items ever seen in a shooter. They are just too powerful and encourage spam rather than tactical gameplay. I dont think they should show up unless I actually see one or its scanned, but 1) one uplink should be the max we can put down 2) they have to have a much higher CPU/PG drain. 3) preventing them from being too close to each other is a great idea. if I put one down within 50m of another the existing field should prevent it. 4) lower the amount of spawns 3 milita, 5 standard, 10 advanced and 15 proto. hopefully they will really balance the cloak before adding it but it scares me looking how OP uplinks still are, so what else can be done to make uplinks better? The people on here have obviously never participated in PC. The only thing that needs to be fixed about uplinks is we need at least one variant per meta level that is squad only. That makes a lot of sense. It could be the specialist variant with lower fitting costs. If they ever get around to giving Logis bonuses for equipment (like a reduction to fitting costs) you could always increase the costs of the others and keep the squad ones where they are now for use by assaults.
John Demonsbane Unorganized Ninja Infantry Tactics League of Infamy 218	Posted - 2013.10.20 18:37:00 - [4] - Quote Takahiro Kashuken wrote: Uplinks are fine for infantry What about vehicle pilots? I can use a Logi DS with an inbuilt MCRU and have 20ppl spawn in it, do i get any WP? no So how about infantry stop crying which obv works very well for them That's lame and should be fixed. No reason for that to be different than other spawns.
John Demonsbane Unorganized Ninja Infantry Tactics League of Infamy 220	Posted - 2013.10.20 18:46:00 - [5] - Quote Tolen Rosas wrote: ur alliance leader says different. Mavado Noriega has even admitted how bad uplink spam is. if u like it because it helps u win or get most of your points from it, fine. but right now ur the guy saying uprising flaylocks are balanced. That's a specious argument at best. I mentioned this in my post. Weapons are a completely different thing, when one weapon does the job of multiple others, and better, that's unbalanced. When people stop using primary weapons and dual wield sidearms there's an obvious problem. When there's only the one kind of spawn mechanic that everyone can use equally, what exactly is it unbalanced against? Only spawning from the MCC? Good quality competitive squads use more than just assault class players. Should be we get rid of logis and heavies too? Just because winning teams use something doesn't make it inherently unfair. That's an idiotic defense of your point, it proves nothing.
John Demonsbane Unorganized Ninja Infantry Tactics League of Infamy 221	Posted - 2013.10.20 19:23:00 - [6] - Quote Prius Vecht wrote: ur talking about flawed logic? please check what u wrote..any class except heavies can use uplinks too. the same way anyone could use flaylocks. logic fail trying to correct others. I did read it. Read it twice when I edited it to make sure it was accurate. I'm still waiting to hear what uplinks are unbalanced against. Flaylocks were unbalanced against mass drivers, for example. Reading comprehension fail. Again, attacking the argument of others without offering alternatives is not actually an argument. I'm done with this thread unless one of you trolls can come up with a coherent argument. This is an abject waste of my time.
John Demonsbane Unorganized Ninja Infantry Tactics League of Infamy 225	Posted - 2013.10.21 11:43:00 - [7] - Quote DustMercsBlog wrote: might suggest you look at our recent retweets from our twitter account. we polled relevant players from the game that are veterans and have been major players in PC among other things. https://twitter.com/NewEdenGNN not one suggested uplink spam was not a problem, NOT ONE. moreso many of the suggestions were the same Prius made in the OP. All I saw was one thing from Nova Knife and 3 people agreeing. Well the one person suggested misspawns, which my god the ragequittjng would be ridiculous. The argument that they "destroy tactics" is an interesting one. If you mean zerging, I'm not sure that's a better alternative. It all depends on your definition of tactics, you see. I would consider placing an out of the way but not too out of the way uplink near our rear objectives ( close enough to be useful but not to be seen by flankers coming to get the objective) an excellent tactic to prevent being outflanked. Same thing with a more forward objective so that you are not taken completely out of it by a Zerg rush, you respawn off to the side and try to outflank them. I'd like to also point out that I too am not suggesting that spam is not a problem. What I ma saying is that some of the poorly thought out (and even more poorly presented/defended) "solutions" made here are just another massive nerf to,logis, penalize specialization, and slow the battles down significantly. There are other ways to do it besides arbitrary caps and nerfing WP. Beyond what I've listed here there are some other ideas I put in an earlier thread, I'll have to dig them up. Basically it was an equipment proficiency skill which dictated how many pieces of equipment you could have active at one time. That rewards specialization and keeps any random from throwing 3 uplinks at the supply depot and another 2 inside the same objective housing all within 20m of each other.
John Demonsbane Unorganized Ninja Infantry Tactics League of Infamy 227	Posted - 2013.10.22 11:46:00 - [8] - Quote Found it. Cut/paste from another thread: An intelligent way to impose caps on equipment drops that reward people for specializing in support roles: - Make it it's own skill, like the weapon proficiency skills, but you should unlock it at level 3, not 5 like weapons. If you did it that way then you perhaps could reduce the SP cost of the links themselves to offset the new requirement. Lets set it at everyone can drop 1 uplink to start. You get to ADV links and that opens up the proficiency skill. You go up to 2 links at level 1, and one more link for each level, with a bonus at ADV and PRO levels. So, uplink proficiency level 2 gets you 3 links, level 3 gets an additional 1+1 for 5 total, and so on until you get to level 5, you can drop 8 links at a time. Even as an admitted drop uplink WP wh0re, I see no legit reason to need to drop more than that at once. - Base it on the existing skill, using more or less the same numbers. This is a simpler method but might not reduce the spam as much. This solution can potentially reduce spam by limiting less specialized players to 1 or 2 uplinks out at a time, but avoids nerfing logis and scouts b/c they can simply skill into it and continue their support role more or less the same.