Eberk Baldek
Tech Guard
RISE of LEGION
7
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Posted - 2014.01.11 19:02:00 -
[1] - Quote
With 1.7 basically, CCP has upped the ante on everyone. If you've ever played penny-ante poker and someone throws down a twenty dollar bill (a twenty pound note?) on every hand, that's basically what's happening a lot more often in battles. The occasional single proto tankers and dropship players can be a bit of a headache if your side has no one who's properly equipped, but it's often a total disaster when you spawn in at the beginning of the game and find your blue side is made up of lower-level players and you're already up against 5 or more of their red tanks, especially if they're already on top of you.
So, if you had just planned to spawn into a few games with blueprint or militia gear in order to mine some ISK so you can run proto gear in your Corp battles, well, that sort of thing has been getting quite a bit harder to do. You spend the whole battle running away or dying, what fun! You've got full tank squads (maybe with a dropship or two) running around in "Tankbush" half the time slaughtering absolutely everyone. A kill-death ratio like 30-0 is the usual sort of thing in those protostomps.
Can't handle all the deaths and find it harder to make ISK nowadays? Don't worry, CCP has a quick solution for you: AURUM. Buy it and spend it on proto gear instead of ISK. Otherwise, go and get slaughtered with your now all-but-useless BPO and militia gear. Is CCP actually hacking us by making the battlefield all the more deadlier? I'm not so sure. . . the game's actually funner (to me) with a few tanks and dropships, especially the proto ones, but only when the battles are more evenly matched. But, it's certainly gotten much more expensive to play the game.
I actually like the fact that CCP is constantly evolving DUST 514 and I'm fed up with the "it's still in Beta" comments. The average player is a lot better now, which basically means (to me) that CCP is both having a problem attracting fresh meat or cannon fodder (otherwise known as "new players") and getting us to spend our money in the store. In a free-to-play game, if you're satisfied with the gear you've skilled up in, why spend any more money? And, by the way, this game is currently nearly impossible for newbies to get into and if CCP can't expand the player base, they otherwise have got to keep upping the ante to the experienced players (and maybe even nerf their current gear . . . or maybe not, who knows?).
(Back to tankbushes) Apart from the occasional tank-and-dropship-swarm that you have to contend with (you're often probably better off just dropping out of the game altogether), I suppose high-level (meaning expensive) teamplay is the best solution for Proto Dropships and Tankers. There are multiple ways to take them out. But it often takes more than one of whatever to do it. Oh, I don't know, for instance, it might take your Swarm Launcher to hold a proto-tankers attention, while your squaddies stealthily drop some AV gear on it from behind. Of course, an opposing tank or dropship would help too.
I've got a Proto Wyirkomi Swarm Launcher with all L4 skills with a +10% damage modifier and even Proto Dropships usually have to at least pay a bit more attention to me and a bit less attention to the other guys. If I'm nearby (more difficult on a larger map ever since CCP, in their infinite wisdom, nerfed its range), I can often quickly clear smaller maps of noob-tankers and LAVs before long. (by "noobs" I'm talking about their gear and skills, not the people, who may be highly skilled in their other gear/fits.) But, I cannot kill either a Proto Dropship or Tank by myself with my Swarm Launcher. I shouldn't be able to do so either. It should take a team to take out one of those, whatever the means they use. They're damned expensive and my gear is quite cheap by comparison. However, we should definitely get more war points for taking out one of you guys.
So, yes, single Proto Dropships and Tanks can feel invincible to the rest of us, but usually there is a solution: teamwork. Like I pointed out earlier, if you spawn into a battle with 5 red proto tanks and dropships already on top of you, you're probably screwed no matter who you are. However, that's a problem with CCP's inadequate programming skills, not necessarily with the skills of the blue team who may never even have gotten the chance to set up a proper counter. CCP has been working on this type of problem for a long time and they have yet to solve it. (I'd like to suggest that CCP's "big data" match-making problem is probably every big MMO videogame company's problem.) There's nothing for it but to wait till they're up to the task. Maybe they've got to do a better job of identifying some of the super proto players and matching them up against each other more often, and less often against 16 hapless guys who can do nothing against them but die. I don't mind it from time to time, but lately sheesh!!!
Also, they've got to make that "intelligent" re-spawning system actually "intelligent." For Pete's sake, stop dropping me right in the middle of a group of red tankers! (etc.) That should never ever happen. It's like getting the firing squad.
By the way, have you noticed that you've been getting spawned into the middle of a pubstomp more and more often lately? 'Cause I have, and it's irritating the crap out of me. CCP please stop spawning me (at game start) into the middle of a pubstomp because I'm just dropping out all the time now and judging by how often it happens, I'm not the only one. It's just annoying! I want to start at the beginning!
So, to conclude, I think what's up is that CCP upgraded tanks and dropships, but not Scotty the matchmaker. And now the rest of us have to up our game or line up to get slaughtered. Your proto dropship is probably just fine.
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