Here's to hoping that every player finds the power of will to conquer what seems to be insurmountable odds.

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.

As much as I would like protos to be excluded from pub matches, I wholeheartedly believe CCP won't change that. New Eden is built upon the idea of being brutal and ruthless.

I think the only way to solve this is by the community assisting the new player with learning the aspects of the game.

I do agree that the recruits should stay in Academy much longer. Not too long, but at least a three days worth to build up a momentum. But as I think about it as I type, I don't think nothing can fully prepare the recruit for the massacre that waits. The rite of passage must be done.

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?"

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.

How am I supposed to defeat someone who can blast me away in a blink of eye?
Please don't say anything about coworking, because I have yet to see a game with a worse cooperation: in COD people play together far more than here.

The ACADEMY didn't help me at all, because there were 30 people with absolutely no experience of any FPS game and what I think was a second account, since he was using a grenade launcher all the time. It was called EXO-5 IIRC...

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 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.

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.

Remember though that in a video game "brutal and ruthless" means "no one gives two f*cks" and "we will just move on to another game".

Not everybody measures their c*cks by a video game.

This is NOT EVE where you just set off into the world and do whatever freely. This game is a specific thing in a specific context. It must have parameters and arbitrary limits in order to function as what it is supposed to be.

Right now the protostomping just makes everyone else give up and make a mockery of the game. There's so much f*cking around by those who know how to read a roster that it really isn't a combat war game. It's a frat party.

All the tryhards might like to prove their manhood in this video game but CCP as a company can't afford to cater to them. DUST is already the butt of jokes even on its own forums.