I don't believe this. I think OP is misleading us to believe that Dust is in the process of big and positive changes that might make it turn the corner and become the game we all want it to be. But I am choosing to trust my own experiences when it comes to CCP: big hollow promises that take you down the Rabbit Hole that never ends.

None of these stat changes were made at our specific suggestion, and this is one of the first things I want them to reconsider, actually. :-P We already have a pending meeting request for a serious postmortem on the TTK issue with CCP Remnant, and now we have that much more to discuss now that we've seen these.

When I talk of CPM input, I'm referring to the general direction of the various suit bonuses* (Sentinels being made to tank, Commandos made to kill, and Logistics meant to specialize in various racial equipment-based roles), and the general idea of Assaults dedicated to damage dealing. I think a damage bonus in spirit makes sense for an Assault suit (if our TTK was much more reasonable), but in the current context just slapping on a flat damage boost is crazy bad for the game. I certainly hope that there are other changes planned that would allow for the assault bonus to be changed to one that specializes in damage without further breaking things, but I'm also not going to leave it up to chance. We'll be on them about this as soon as our meeting gets scheduled.

*And not surprisingly, most of the community feedback has consistently praised the general direction indicated by the SiSi data, if not some of the individual details.

remove damage mods and players might use other types of modules - in high and low. And it would make balancing of weapons easier.

Yes, other modules like tank.

I noticed someone mentioned they did not think player numbers were shrinking, the point is they are not growing.

At the moment Dust514 is pulling in less than $50,000 a month and has a staff cost of probably twice that.

The model is not sustainable and DUST 514 is currently living off hand outs from EVE after a year.

Thrive or perish.

I've been playing DUST 514 since June 2013 and it's only gotten so much more difficult and complex. I can't even imagine what it must be like for totally new players. I've recommended the game to a few guys who tried it out and quit because they said their shots at opponents had absolutely no effect on them and they couldn't get any kills (etc. etc.). They just don't understand the game and they can get into Battlefield or COD far quicker. The learning curve in DUST 514 is pretty steep and getting steeper. I once joined a corp with about 350 members, but was subsequently informed that about 335 of them had quit the game because of the usual thing, nerfs of their weapons, etc.

There's a lot of video-game competition for DUST 514 out there and more coming all the time. I absolutely love this game and the community on this forum. I can't get enough of it, well, the game anyway. I can't help but think that the most important thing for CCP to work on is to help new players work their way into the game, perhaps with a PVE sort of like Borderlands 1 and 2 or RAGE (xbox 360), something adapted to the EVE universe - not as post-apocalyptic as that. Halo and Destiny spring to mind as well.

And CCP clearly has to fix Scotty's match-making without making the game so much harder for the veterans. My gear is getting better, but the game is also getting harder. How does that work?!? I understand the purpose behind it, but it feels like a con. It's no wonder people are quitting the game. Half the time they rage-quit because they feel cheated, and the other half because they can't be bothered to spec into a new weapon because theirs has been nerffed all to hell. Every nerf should be accompanied by a respec. Why do tankers get them but not the rest of us? That ain't right!

Besides these points, I think they absolutely must address the next gen console issue; I think that they have to upgrade and migrate the whole platform to PS4, which has sold 4.2 million units to date, and let us transfer our accounts (for 10 euros perhaps? That's the going rate in other videogames). A few months ago CCP said that the PS3 had 80 million units sold so that they weren't at the time considering developing for the PS4. I hope they reconsider in time. It won't be easy to get them to come back once they lose them.

respec please

Honest question: do you think the playerbase would have learned about the status of 1.8 not having its features set or scope set yet if not for this little Sisi ruckus?

Here is a question for you Hans;

How much effect did CPM's input have on the vehicle rebalance?

Obviously since it has been a MONUMENTAL failure, as demonstrated by the non-stop QQ on the forums since december 10th, I think the community at large would like to have either more or less CPM input based on your response.

By this I mean, if the CPM were very in favor of the vehicle changes, and even helped with the balancing efforts, then stay the hell away from the rest of game design please.

The only thing I have to say is dont go overboard on the TTK issue.

Totally agree. As far as I'm concerned, the TTK only seriously became an issue when they fixed hit detection. The amount that TTK needs to be adjusted is close to the amount it was lowered by the recent changes, I don't want this turned into some stand-and-spray duel over who has the more EHP before someone keels over. Nor do I want bunny hopping to return either. The adjustment needed here isn't drastic, just enough to mitigate the lowered player satisfaction that came from the recent hit detection improvements.

What's a "Misma" grenade supposed to do? (or what was it intended for?)

FYI for everyone peering into their crystal balls (or just looking at what's on SiSi) - CCP has assured the CPM multiple times throughout the holiday season that 1.8 is still being planned out, and that no decisions have been made regarding even a feature list or approximate scope.

Yes, one could easily infer that 1.8 is going to be all about dropsuit bonus changes, or that it'll include new items, etc. etc.....but I cannot and will not guarantee that this is the case. CCP is undergoing a much larger planning process under the supervision of the new EP, CCP Rouge, who will speak about the larger direction of the game and where they want to take it once CCP has finished going through that process. This will take time, its not going to be next week, it may not even be this month......and all things considered the silence you're hearing from them about the future is completely appropriate given how deeply they're examining their own internal processes for building Dust.

This larger planning effort underway will have a big impact on what 1.8 looks like, whether its even called 1.8, when it releases, and what it'll have in it. The CPM does not have answers for any of this because its status is still "in planning" according to CCP. This isn't a situation where the CPM knows 1.8 contents and they're just NDA.....to our knowledge, 1.8 hasn't even finished being planned yet.

Yes, that's a hugely ambiguous and open-ended "status report", but its also because we have seen zero evidence that final decisions have actually been made regarding what will go in the next release. I'm not saying this to alarm people - like I said, the larger planning effort being overseen by CCP Rouge is VERY healthy and necessary, and their discretion until they've finished that process is completely appropriate. I'm not saying CCP is dropping the ball by not talking about the next release yet, its understandable given the context.

All that to say......feel free to respectfully provide feedback on the stuff you see on the test server, but at this time I have no reason personally to get fired up over these given what we know about where CCP is at with their planning. Yes, there was the ferroscale debacle before - but I really doubt this is an analogous situation. At the time Ferroscale plates leaked, CCP would have known exactly what was coming and been working on the next patch with purpose. This time around, I think its much more likely (until they tell us otherwise) that this is a case of designers needing to continue their work on projects with or without a 1.8 scoping, and dropsuit bonus problems being towards the top of their list.

The CPM discussed dropsuit bonuses extensively last summer, and many of our own suggestions are reflected in the general -direction- of these leaked bonus changes, so CCP is not working in a vacuum here. We may or may not agree on the specific details, but the broad strokes were already agreed upon internally for the most part, so I will give CCP some credit here for listening to our feedback and setting up a much more logical approach to suit bonus design.

I look forward to seeing how these evolve in the coming weeks/months, hopefully we'll still have plenty of time to fine tune details before they hit Tranquility.

o7

Personally I'm in favour of removing damage modifiers altogether and using those free slots for increased shield mods or some sort of ECM mods.

I'd REALLY love the damage mods being changed to damage output type instead.

Getting proficiency up to 5 with its 15% DPS increase then slapping a couple of damage modifiers to increase the DPS of a Duvalle to nearly 34% is a bit much.

Posted this on reddit and sharing here too:

I can't stress enough just how volatile the test server data is sometimes. It can be less than 24 hours after some developer has a crazy idea or is just playing around with something before it ends up on Chaos or SiSi and a data dump is taken. We author items on a big shared content server which gets regularly copied around in various states of completeness, if you dig deep enough you can find all manner of garbage for EVE that has never seen the light of day. The Ion Cannon is my personal favourite:

http://eve.battleclinic.com/item/i3522-Ion-Cannon-details.html

Posted this on reddit and sharing here too:

I can't stress enough just how volatile the test server data is sometimes. It can be less than 24 hours after some developer has a crazy idea or is just playing around with something before it ends up on Chaos or SiSi and a data dump is taken. We author items on a big shared content server which gets regularly copied around in various states of completeness, if you dig deep enough you can find all manner of garbage for EVE that has never seen the light of day. The Ion Cannon is my personal favourite:

http://eve.battleclinic.com/item/i3522-Ion-Cannon-details.html

FYI for everyone peering into their crystal balls (or just looking at what's on SiSi) - CCP has assured the CPM multiple times throughout the holiday season that 1.8 is still being planned out, and that no decisions have been made regarding even a feature list or approximate scope.

Yes, one could easily infer that 1.8 is going to be all about dropsuit bonus changes, or that it'll include new items, etc. etc.....but I cannot and will not guarantee that this is the case. CCP is undergoing a much larger planning process under the supervision of the new EP, CCP Rouge, who will speak about the larger direction of the game and where they want to take it once CCP has finished going through that process. This will take time, its not going to be next week, it may not even be this month......and all things considered the silence you're hearing from them about the future is completely appropriate given how deeply they're examining their own internal processes for building Dust.

This larger planning effort underway will have a big impact on what 1.8 looks like, whether its even called 1.8, when it releases, and what it'll have in it. The CPM does not have answers for any of this because its status is still "in planning" according to CCP. This isn't a situation where the CPM knows 1.8 contents and they're just NDA.....to our knowledge, 1.8 hasn't even finished being planned yet.

Yes, that's a hugely ambiguous and open-ended "status report", but its also because we have seen zero evidence that final decisions have actually been made regarding what will go in the next release. I'm not saying this to alarm people - like I said, the larger planning effort being overseen by CCP Rouge is VERY healthy and necessary, and their discretion until they've finished that process is completely appropriate. I'm not saying CCP is dropping the ball by not talking about the next release yet, its understandable given the context.

All that to say......feel free to respectfully provide feedback on the stuff you see on the test server, but at this time I have no reason personally to get fired up over these given what we know about where CCP is at with their planning. Yes, there was the ferroscale debacle before - but I really doubt this is an analogous situation. At the time Ferroscale plates leaked, CCP would have known exactly what was coming and been working on the next patch with purpose. This time around, I think its much more likely (until they tell us otherwise) that this is a case of designers needing to continue their work on projects with or without a 1.8 scoping, and dropsuit bonus problems being towards the top of their list.

The CPM discussed dropsuit bonuses extensively last summer, and many of our own suggestions are reflected in the general -direction- of these leaked bonus changes, so CCP is not working in a vacuum here. We may or may not agree on the specific details, but the broad strokes were already agreed upon internally for the most part, so I will give CCP some credit here for listening to our feedback and setting up a much more logical approach to suit bonus design.

I look forward to seeing how these evolve in the coming weeks/months, hopefully we'll still have plenty of time to fine tune details before they hit Tranquility.

o7

Posted this on reddit and sharing here too:

I can't stress enough just how volatile the test server data is sometimes. It can be less than 24 hours after some developer has a crazy idea or is just playing around with something before it ends up on Chaos or SiSi and a data dump is taken. We author items on a big shared content server which gets regularly copied around in various states of completeness, if you dig deep enough you can find all manner of garbage for EVE that has never seen the light of day. The Ion Cannon is my personal favourite:

http://eve.battleclinic.com/item/i3522-Ion-Cannon-details.html

Area denial... dmg over time type grenade thing

Posted this on reddit and sharing here too:

I can't stress enough just how volatile the test server data is sometimes. It can be less than 24 hours after some developer has a crazy idea or is just playing around with something before it ends up on Chaos or SiSi and a data dump is taken. We author items on a big shared content server which gets regularly copied around in various states of completeness, if you dig deep enough you can find all manner of garbage for EVE that has never seen the light of day. The Ion Cannon is my personal favourite:

http://eve.battleclinic.com/item/i3522-Ion-Cannon-details.html

Posted this on reddit and sharing here too:

I can't stress enough just how volatile the test server data is sometimes. It can be less than 24 hours after some developer has a crazy idea or is just playing around with something before it ends up on Chaos or SiSi and a data dump is taken. We author items on a big shared content server which gets regularly copied around in various states of completeness, if you dig deep enough you can find all manner of garbage for EVE that has never seen the light of day. The Ion Cannon is my personal favourite:

http://eve.battleclinic.com/item/i3522-Ion-Cannon-details.html

Posted this on reddit and sharing here too:

I can't stress enough just how volatile the test server data is sometimes. It can be less than 24 hours after some developer has a crazy idea or is just playing around with something before it ends up on Chaos or SiSi and a data dump is taken. We author items on a big shared content server which gets regularly copied around in various states of completeness, if you dig deep enough you can find all manner of garbage for EVE that has never seen the light of day. The Ion Cannon is my personal favourite:

http://eve.battleclinic.com/item/i3522-Ion-Cannon-details.html