DUST Search - Journey through the land of the noobs

Michael Arck wrote:

Komodo Jones wrote:

There's a difference between a game that's hard and a game that's punishing, I've played dark souls and the difference between dust and and anything in the souls series is that it's rewarding to overcome certain challenges, challenges that gradually become more difficult as you go on, if this were put in a souls setting it would be like introducing you to the four kings boss in the first 5 minutes.

This is exactly why things aren't changing, because people can comfortably sit back and say "well you'll just have to tough it out", and if someone quits it's because they weren't tough enough or didn't know to seek out dust uni or something, I have alot of friends who are hardcore gamers and I wouldn't even want to get them into the game because it would just be torturous and they would move on to play other things. It's just not fun to get your face shoved into the dirt by vets.

I'd rather think that if someone quits out of that kind of frustration then we (players and devs) could be doing a better job to make the game more enjoyable without sacrificing the kind of difficulty that helps people learn.

Well isn't that what we do with life itself? Tough it out? We do what is necessary to succeed. We are quick to tell someone to go out and make that push, but we cannot do that here? A freshmen in college from a poor background who works hard to pay for the education is more respected and have more fortitude than the freshmen who is guaranteed an all expense paid college education.

Demon's Souls and Dust 514 are both the same. You're punished for your mistakes. You will die alot until you learn what you're doing wrong. Some information needed to be gathered (as far as level progression in Demon's Souls, it matches SP progression) from the internet to make sure you're not off to a bad start. Both pretty much lack in game information (to be honest, Dust 514 has more info about what to do than DS). There are certain enemies you just have to run from (Prototype for the milita = Red eye demons for the rookies). Gear and so forth.

Let's be honest here, the New Eden universe is a critique on society and also a social experiment. To build, you must gather with other people. Find like minded folks who will motivate you. Folks that will remind you there's a sun behind those dark cloudy days. This further pushes the social experiment aspect.

In society we have folks who just sit around and cry about life is not fair. Then you have the ones who persevere, even in the face of defeat.

And seriously though (not being negative, just being blunt), if you're friends were true hardcore players, they would beat the game instead of allowing the game to beat them.

Again, I do agree the protostomps should stop but at the same time I see the other side of the coin and it's what made me a better player. I don't look at the uphill battle as a loss. I look at as a progression of wisdom to be gathered on how to master oneself on the battlefield.

It's all about perspectives and fortitude.

And if you truly want to help these young players, then maybe we the community, should band together and provide some New Eden education to these guys. We can do that with concentrated efforts.

"Why do we fall, Bruce?"


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Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 220	Posted - 2013.11.25 04:52:00 - [1] - Quote Started playing on a couple of new characters and i'll continue to use them a bit into 1.7, I'm skilling them up to eventually use the rail and combat rifle and try them out effectively, will pretty much put all of my skill points into those guns. Something that I've noticed so far...being a new guy is f***in hard. Now to alot of you this isn't news, but lemme tell ya it doesn't really matter how good of a shot you are (which most people out of academy are not), unless you get the jump on someone or they forget how to aim for some reason you're probably not going to get the kill. I also noticed the skill of the people in academy, there was none, these were people who didn't know they had to hit the inertial dampeners and were being turned into merc pancakes on the way down from the MCC, we're pitting these people against proto stomping vets? I'm going to continue torturing myself over the next couple of weeks to try to get this SP up and I'll come back with the results, I'll put up my analysis on the matches from the new guy's side of it (or at least as close as I can get to that), the usefulness of the guns (measured of course being used on suits with no defense or other capabilities and a player who will probably be using guerilla tactics), probably be varying playing solo and with squads, sometimes with randoms and some with people I know, hey I might even learn something :) Already I can tell something needs to be done to keep the new guys away from anything prototype if they're going to make any progress and not just get frustrated. Several ideas come to mind including PVE (please put this project back on the table CCP...). "difficulty settings", for example a basic domination would restrict any advanced or prototype suits from coming on the field but give less of a payout than a prototype domination where any suits could be used. Perhaps raising the limit for war points in academy to VERY high levels like 200k (but still giving the option to select modes outside of academy). And definitely just being able to make matches where stats aren't affected and money isn't lost (I highly recommend that CCP look into the lobby mechanics and settings of metal gear online at it's later part in life). Let me know if you support any ideas to help out the little guy or disagree with mine and why, more importantly lets try to make SOMETHING happen to attempt to solve this, we're getting some new content so I think we can hold off on getting the rest to push the devs to make the game more welcoming. I'll keep posting any new developments.
Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 220	Posted - 2013.11.25 05:25:00 - [2] - Quote Trial by fire works for people who have calloused feet or the mind of a zen master, I'd suspect that alot of new players have neither. The game is tough, I came in at a decent time, i got to experience some protostomping but not to the level where people are saying they've run out of stuff to skill into. These guys are coming into a game where people have 35+ million skill points and tons of cash, do you really think telling them "oh it will get better a few months down the road" will convince more than a handful of them to stick around? EVE looks really interesting but I wouldn't want to get involved for the simple fact that I'm already 10 years behind, at least in that game you don't have to go into nullsec if you don't want to, hell you don't even have to fight if you don't want to. I realize it will take time for this game to flesh out to that point too but still I feel like this has been put off long enough. I do like the mentoring idea but it would have to be volunteer only, there would have to be players willing to join a designated corp that all new players came into where the volunteers could help acclimate them. Still, going back to the metal gear online reference, I feel like this game would do better if the players had a little control over their matches, if they could make their own rooms with their own rules and number of clones or objectives or join anyone else's and stay in as long as they wanted, none of this getting kicked out to join an entirely new group of people. There was also a designated training section where players who were experience enough could share knowledge or just screw around with anyone who wanted to come in, in a room where stats weren't affected.
Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 221	Posted - 2013.11.25 06:02:00 - [3] - Quote There's a difference between a game that's hard and a game that's punishing, I've played dark souls and the difference between dust and and anything in the souls series is that it's rewarding to overcome certain challenges, challenges that gradually become more difficult as you go on, if this were put in a souls setting it would be like introducing you to the four kings boss in the first 5 minutes. This is exactly why things aren't changing, because people can comfortably sit back and say "well you'll just have to tough it out", and if someone quits it's because they weren't tough enough or didn't know to seek out dust uni or something, I have alot of friends who are hardcore gamers and I wouldn't even want to get them into the game because it would just be torturous and they would move on to play other things. It's just not fun to get your face shoved into the dirt by vets. I'd rather think that if someone quits out of that kind of frustration then we (players and devs) could be doing a better job to make the game more enjoyable without sacrificing the kind of difficulty that helps people learn.
Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 221	Posted - 2013.11.25 06:14:00 - [4] - Quote Eris Ernaga wrote: These post have been made over and over again, it's up to CCP to implement these systems these threads are just repost that have been here since before 1.4. I have no doubt there are lol, but I feel like alot of the things we put up go unnoticed, and even if these know about these ideas I'd like to get more of the community agreeing on some plan to put in. We all know that if enough people complain about something then CCP will change it, the assault dropship coming back is proof of this, I'm hoping we can use that to put something good in the game... not that ADS coming back is a bad thing, I plan on getting into it after 1.7 :)
Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 221	Posted - 2013.11.25 06:26:00 - [5] - Quote Honestly, to take something out of the last of us or mass effect online, it would be great to just not advertise stats like that, I mean they had to include something just so that you saw some form of progression so you could tell yourself you're getting better, but players are being reminded by others that their abysmal lifetime KDR is something to be shunned when some would rather not pay any mind to it and just have fun. That constant kind of atmosphere isn't productive, it's evident by how it affects us in real life. For some people it drives them to improve themselves but it's probably just out of spite or the idea that it's normal to care about that kind of "success", but for many it just holds them back to be told about how their past makes them not good enough.
Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 232	Posted - 2013.11.25 19:55:00 - [6] - Quote Michael Arck wrote: Komodo Jones wrote: There's a difference between a game that's hard and a game that's punishing, I've played dark souls and the difference between dust and and anything in the souls series is that it's rewarding to overcome certain challenges, challenges that gradually become more difficult as you go on, if this were put in a souls setting it would be like introducing you to the four kings boss in the first 5 minutes. This is exactly why things aren't changing, because people can comfortably sit back and say "well you'll just have to tough it out", and if someone quits it's because they weren't tough enough or didn't know to seek out dust uni or something, I have alot of friends who are hardcore gamers and I wouldn't even want to get them into the game because it would just be torturous and they would move on to play other things. It's just not fun to get your face shoved into the dirt by vets. I'd rather think that if someone quits out of that kind of frustration then we (players and devs) could be doing a better job to make the game more enjoyable without sacrificing the kind of difficulty that helps people learn. Well isn't that what we do with life itself? Tough it out? We do what is necessary to succeed. We are quick to tell someone to go out and make that push, but we cannot do that here? A freshmen in college from a poor background who works hard to pay for the education is more respected and have more fortitude than the freshmen who is guaranteed an all expense paid college education. Demon's Souls and Dust 514 are both the same. You're punished for your mistakes. You will die alot until you learn what you're doing wrong. Some information needed to be gathered (as far as level progression in Demon's Souls, it matches SP progression) from the internet to make sure you're not off to a bad start. Both pretty much lack in game information (to be honest, Dust 514 has more info about what to do than DS). There are certain enemies you just have to run from (Prototype for the milita = Red eye demons for the rookies). Gear and so forth. Let's be honest here, the New Eden universe is a critique on society and also a social experiment. To build, you must gather with other people. Find like minded folks who will motivate you. Folks that will remind you there's a sun behind those dark cloudy days. This further pushes the social experiment aspect. In society we have folks who just sit around and cry about life is not fair. Then you have the ones who persevere, even in the face of defeat. And seriously though (not being negative, just being blunt), if you're friends were true hardcore players, they would beat the game instead of allowing the game to beat them. Again, I do agree the protostomps should stop but at the same time I see the other side of the coin and it's what made me a better player. I don't look at the uphill battle as a loss. I look at as a progression of wisdom to be gathered on how to master oneself on the battlefield. It's all about perspectives and fortitude. And if you truly want to help these young players, then maybe we the community, should band together and provide some New Eden education to these guys. We can do that with concentrated efforts. "Why do we fall, Bruce?" The point that im trying to make in the difference between souls and dust is that in this game it seems not to matter if you know how to play the game or how it works, it helps but in the end there's a heavy emphasis on gear and skill points that give other players a huge rather than slight advantage. Now maybe I have just gotten soft and am used to running proto suits and casually walking through the battlefield and maybe I need to relearn some stuff but from the first part of this test I noticed alot of difficulty, and the punishing part about this game is that there's no way around it, you have to suffer months of beatdown until you're even qualified to play effectively. Say what you want about what we went through as beta testers or vets but the fact is we didn't have it as bad as they do now, because there's more people on the field with more knowledge more gear and more skill points than there were before, the difference is now we're one of them.
Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 232	Posted - 2013.11.25 23:54:00 - [7] - Quote Her Nibs wrote: Komodo Jones wrote: Started playing on a couple of new characters and i'll continue to use them a bit into 1.7, I'm skilling them up to eventually use the rail and combat rifle and try them out effectively, will pretty much put all of my skill points into those guns. Something that I've noticed so far...being a new guy is f***in hard. Now to alot of you this isn't news, but lemme tell ya it doesn't really matter how good of a shot you are (which most people out of academy are not), unless you get the jump on someone or they forget how to aim for some reason you're probably not going to get the kill. I also noticed the skill of the people in academy, there was none, these were people who didn't know they had to hit the inertial dampeners and were being turned into merc pancakes on the way down from the MCC, we're pitting these people against proto stomping vets? I'm going to continue torturing myself over the next couple of weeks to try to get this SP up and I'll come back with the results, I'll put up my analysis on the matches from the new guy's side of it (or at least as close as I can get to that), the usefulness of the guns (measured of course being used on suits with no defense or other capabilities and a player who will probably be using guerilla tactics), probably be varying playing solo and with squads, sometimes with randoms and some with people I know, hey I might even learn something :) Already I can tell something needs to be done to keep the new guys away from anything prototype if they're going to make any progress and not just get frustrated. Several ideas come to mind including PVE (please put this project back on the table CCP...). "difficulty settings", for example a basic domination would restrict any advanced or prototype suits from coming on the field but give less of a payout than a prototype domination where any suits could be used. Perhaps raising the limit for war points in academy to VERY high levels like 200k (but still giving the option to select modes outside of academy). And definitely just being able to make matches where stats aren't affected and money isn't lost (I highly recommend that CCP look into the lobby mechanics and settings of metal gear online at it's later part in life). Let me know if you support any ideas to help out the little guy or disagree with mine and why, more importantly lets try to make SOMETHING happen to attempt to solve this, we're getting some new content so I think we can hold off on getting the rest to push the devs to make the game more welcoming. I'll keep posting any new developments. I have over 13m sp. I get proto stomped every day with officer weapons and proto gear. I refuse to use my Proto in Pubs (only for PC) My KDR sucks, but I am AV. It was the role I chose, so while everyone is talking KDR 21 and 2, I get excited over 7 kills in a match. The battles are uneven yes, but it is the prot ostompers and spawn campers that need to realize that they are destroying the game for those who just want an even match. NOT 73 to 0 in an OMS in 3mins. Hang it. It takes a long time, but you will eventually catch up and get your revenge. Quite a sacrifice you've made, good that you can decide that you're not going to be a part of the proto stomping. Alot of people do consider the stomping to be a motivation or just a challenge to be overcome, a way to improve yourself. Here's the problem and what I think is going on, I don't think it has anything to do with the fortitude of the new players and honestly I think it's just insulting and a cop out to say that that's the cause. I think the difference between the players that "tough it out" and the ones that get fed up with this crap and quit early on, is that the ones who stick with it already decided before they started playing that they wanted to invest into this game, that they wanted to put their time into it and improve over time and become really good at the game, that they had already made the commitment to keep playing before they even started or realized what they were getting into. The people who stopped playing probably just wanted to try it out, they thought "oh it's free so why not" and then they get their ass handed to them and don't even bother to try again, no harm done just leave it behind and move on. That doesn't make them weak it just means that this isn't something they even want to consider playing and there's a reason for it.
Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 234	Posted - 2013.11.27 17:58:00 - [8] - Quote Ghermard-ol Dizeriois wrote: If DUST was the only FPS around here, more people would think twice before quitting when they get "protostomped", but as someone pointed out, there are Battlefield, CoD and other similar games, so I think CCP should do more to prevent an early mass quitting. PVE alone won't change the situation, because in that case there would be players who would NEVER EVER see what's outside there: we would have nominally +10k players (for example) but only for the PVE part, with a +0 players for the PVP. I gotta disagree, maybe initially alot of people will flood into pve for a breath of fresh air but eventually people want to do competitive stuff too, some people may do pve only but how is that different from people doing pvp only? Pretty sure 13ear wouldn't play pve if none of the drones counted for kills on the leaderboard. Either way it's just adding more to the game and that's never a bad thing, gives people something else to do, something else that those other FPS games don't have.
Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 234	Posted - 2013.11.27 18:28:00 - [9] - Quote Been alot of interesting gameplay following these starter fit tests, I've been playing with a totally different mindset, I'm not trying to be super influential on the battlefield I'm just trying to survive and make good calls. I stick with my team, run the hell away when I'm faced with a big opposition, maintain awareness on the battlefield. I peaked yesterday at 25-3 and 1825 WP and these were not crappy players I was just hyper-involved and aware, and that was with a minmatar starter fit. However again I'm noticing that there's a huge and not slight advantage to having better gear and more skill points, I don't hope to take on a prototype suit alone, I need other people with me it takes at least 3 people with basic gear to take down a proto who got too cocky and decided to be a lone wolf. Now there were some teams with tactical sense, games where the team was moving together in waves of like 5-7 people, even if you're just with 1 other person it will help to just switch out and have him cover you while you recover, but the problem still remains of what happens when protos start getting a sense for teamwork? Nearly impossible to beat, even if you're a good shot you can barely scratch these suits with that kind of gear, these suits are built to take down other suits that are damage/defense tanked and people in started fits get gunned down if they get too close to the crossfire. This does inspire me to keep playing and improve, this is because I know I'm going to get something out of this but more because I have something to go back to, I can call this practice or just a challenge or test and I know in the long run it won't affect me poorly, I'm making alot of money and I don't care about my ratio, learning alot about playing the game in a different way and eventually this will all support my main character but what if you don't have something to go back to? What if you're not supporting anything and how you do in these kinds of matches IS actually important to you? That's the kind of thing that's demoralizing and discouraging and makes people want to quit, the feeling that they're really useless in these fights.
Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 234	Posted - 2013.11.27 18:30:00 - [10] - Quote Ok, getting back to the "fixing the problem" part, I do like the mentoring Idea but how would it work? Because we can't just pick people with a certain amount of SP and just tell them "hey you have a new responsibility now, you're buddying with this guy and showing him how to play, k bye!" I think if we had a community based and dev supported starter corp, a corp with no tax where new players automatically go to that is monitored by devs or some representatives where volunteers join and help out new players get acclimated, something like that might be effective. I am well aware that dust uni exists but new guys aren't and dust uni can make a profit off of them. Think of it this way, yes we have a private university to attend, we have alot of them, but where are the public schools? The day cares? This is what new players need at first.

Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 236	Posted - 2013.11.28 04:28:00 - [11] - Quote A'Real Fury wrote: I suspect many of the people who have posted on this thread have been here for several months or more and been through the "trial by fire" stomp either from the time when there was no academy or soon after it appeared. We can go on about how it has toughened us up and made us learn but unfortunately none of this matters. Why? because player numbers have remained, at best, static or have declined since "leaving" beta. I suspect almost all of the player base remaining has been here for a minimum of 6 Months with less than 10% being here less than that. I think pretty much anybody who enjoys fighting there way through FPS adversity is already here so if we want significantly more people to play Dust then the game needs to change, if CCP wants this game to grow and make money. Couldn't have said it better, 5 stars. People all talk about how there's only between 3 and 4 thousand people on at peak hours or how low the average is, but have you looked up how many players are in the NPC corps? It must easily reach 200k for basically the number of characters that have been created and then just left behind (not deleted), thousands of people who just do not want to play. We have no problem getting new players, KEEPING them is the issue. And honestly who cares if there's an easy mode thrown in the game? Something like PVE where you can set the difficulty? Doesn't mean we all have to play it or that you won't get more out of playing higher difficulty stuff or just PVP.
Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 236	Posted - 2013.11.28 04:33:00 - [12] - Quote I want to come up with a list of the best ideas we can use to fix the issue of keeping players and helping new ones to get accustomed, PVE is definitely on the list, mentoring is a good idea but we gotta work out some details, personally I think a damage reduction to all guns across the board is in order but idk how you guys feel about that. What else we got?
Komodo Jones Chaotik Serenity 270	Posted - 2013.12.07 05:57:00 - [13] - Quote Got back into using my new characters as 1.7 comes out in a few days, I'm still pretty convinced that there should be some kind of segregation between vets and noobs. In any game you have the gap between new players and vets and new players will be crushed quite a bit but at least it's a fair chance, in this game though...this game makes you feel worthless, like no matter what you do you're never going to be able to do anything important or tide turning in a match, how many of you have tried to fight a prototype vet with a new character who has barely any skill points? It's up to luck at that point but you lose 99/100 times. Sure you can argue "what if they are working with others" and sure 2 or 3 people may be able to take on a proto, what about 2 or 3 protos? My point is you just can't do enough damage to take anything but their shields unless you get really lucky, or you're playing unconventionally. inexperienced players should not be exposed to proto stomping, vets I don't care if they're easy kills you know how damaging it is and if you don't play on your own with a completely new character and just use starter fits, I predict that eventually you'll get very very frustrated. This is a signature. You're now reading it. You may now reply to my post.