andre lewis
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
0
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Posted - 2014.01.01 16:13:00 -
[1] - Quote
This is a continuation of Arramakaian Eka's topic where he says, "CCP's stated objective for Dust is to be a AAA shooter. I believe most of us agree that we are not there, yet - but many of us feel we can get there, me included. This thread is a community-driven effort to prioritize Dust development from the players' perspective to elevate Dust to AAA-titlehood.
There has been lots of progress since August when I joined the closed beta, but some of that progress has not been in the areas which I feel is critical or crucial to the success of Dust as an FPS and an MMO. Therefore I feel it is necessary for us to put everything in one place for easy reference for the Devs, and for the community to edit.
Dust must stand on its own as an FPS to be successful. That's what this thread is about. To outline the game design objectives and game mechanics needed for an AAA title.
In following posts my list - it is not meant to be exhaustive. I will review the comments, and add any that I have missed, and even ones I disagree with but which get enough Likes.
This is not a laundry list of all issues and suggestions: please only post high-level CRITICAL or CRUCIAL items, EVERYTHING ELSE belongs in other threads. Don't post your pet projects which don't impact the entire game or have to do with just a subset of players; I'd love to talk at length about how Scouts need TLC, but that belongs in EVERYTHING ELSE or as part of item balancing, balancing, balancing below.
Please don't post balancing issues unless they are gamebreaking or close to it. Balacing is too specific for this thread, and is an on-going effort.
Please post links to constructive threads discussing your suggestions, or on items listed below, so that I can add them.
CRITICAL - these need to be fixed now
Framerate - rock steady and high fps is critical for an FPS. Many experience huge framerate drops especially in close quarter combat. High framerate must be balanced with eye-candy, and former must take precedence over latter.
Lag - there are videos of rubberbanding and numerous reports of other really bad lag issues.
New player experience - you can't throw window after window of graphs, UI elements and pages of text at a new player. There needs to be a proper tutorial for the UI and especially gameplay, which doesn't tell or show you what to do, but lets you do it yourself at your own pace.
Matchmaking - a newbie MM queue was introduced which was needed, but people are thrown in with the protostompers too early. And non-newbie MM needs more tiers or to allow more time to match similarly skilled and geared players together, and pre-made squads and teams must be put against similarly arranged enemies - not randoms.
Getting stuck in terrain, corners and other map elements
Communication - CCP needs to improve communication with players. Forum posts are not enough. More on this topic in a post below.
Aiming - multiple people report aiming issues. As the issues and especially fixes are currently only vaguely defined, Please post in comments with your suggestions to improve aiming. Post your findings in thread 1, 2 (Dev input), 3 (Dev input).
Exploits need to be acknowledged and addressed more aggressively - Current hot topics are Tactical ARs which have too high a ROF with modded controllers, and AWOXing. Care must be used so that valid tactics are not disabled by such changes, and that only true exploits are fixed. New Eden is a ruthless universe.
CRUCIAL - need to be prioritized over everything else
More game modes - we currently have two game modes (the other two are minor variants), and neither of them are unique. Team Deathmatch (Ambush) is a necessary FPS trope which is good to have, and Skirmish with its waypoint-holding mechanic fits the world perfectly. We need more for longevity of the game.
More maps - we haven't seen new maps in months, there need to be more for variability and to keep people interested. Introduce a new map every month or two, for example, and commit to that. Don't be afraid to try something new, eg. bring maps which favor certain roles (Heavies, Snipers, vehicles) (credit Jathniel).
Balancing, balancing, balancing - this will never end, and it needs to be done constantly. You must re-balance clearly imbalanced items swiftly (TAR), while tweaking more complex interactions iteratively (HAV vs AV, Logis being better scouts thand Scouts).
Keyboard and Mouse - I don't use KBM myself in Dust, but it sounds like it needs attention from numerous forum posts. I think it's a mistake to include KBM due to the difficult if not impossible task of balancing it with a Controller, but since you have it, you need to balance it.
AFK farming needs to be stopped - it makes matches unbalanced, and makes a mockery of the SP system and Devs.
Skill Points - you can't do enough with starter SP, and there's not enough meaningful variety with characters. Higher starter
SP, or a pool of free starter skills based on race and role would fix this.
Ensuring Pay-to-Win doesn't creep in, and that CCP sticks to their end of the deal - given precedent set by Omega boosters and the Merc pack debacle, I'm afraid we will get more and more aggressive marketing of unbalancing boosters and AUR gear, and that CCP will feel free to adjust terms as they see fit. This needs to be kept in check, and the community needs to be vigilant about P2W creep."
I Belive CCP should take pages out of the simple shooter prototype that instead of having so many variations have gun customization. doing this will allow for them to create more guns with minor variations such as normal variant, burst variant, semi-auto varient.
I would like other opinions to add to this. thank you |