TYCHUS MAXWELL
Ghosts of Dawn
General Tso's Alliance
0
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Posted - 2014.02.05 03:36:00 -
[1] - Quote
This Guide is written in regards to the current update of its issuance, 1.7
Introduction:
So you graduated the battle academy, queued up for a match, and were mercilessly stomped by beta players with their shiny toys?
You may ask yourself, how can I hope to win in this game surrounded by vets who will constantly crush me?
The sad news is, you are not going to simply turn things around as a one man team and crush the opponent, but with some ingenuity, and luck, you can make them pay for a victory.
One thing to understand about Dust514 is that diminishing returns is primarily the name of the game for a new player. Fancy toys are expensive, gear is lost upon termination, playing on equal terms with veteran players with bankrolls that would feed the entire population of the world ten times over is a losing battle.
But here is the catch, contrary to CCP's "advice" and often the advice of beta players who got a reset after earning millions of sp, "Specialization" is a terrible idea for a new player.
I will explain why through two examples to illustrate the point:
So you enjoyed sniping in the battle academy, fantastic! You skill into sniper rifles so that you can get the charged sniper rifle ASAP so that you can drop other standard suits in a single shot!
But hold on, you queue up for a match and you get paired with 4 other players with charged sniper rifles. Although your team has so many sniper rifles pinging any redberry (Enemy Player) that ventures into the open. The enemy team adapts to this fact and sticks to poor visibility locales and caps objectives. The rest of your team attempts to do the same however the force of 12 cannot overcome the force of 16.
You queue up again and this time the team rolls a tank brigade with 2 rail gun turrets locking down your teams vehicles and 2 blaster turrets. The one blueberry (Team Player) who skilled into prototype breach forge guns, gets demolished every time he spawns, and the rest of your team, is left helpless anytime they try to approach an objective. You spend the rest of the match charge sniping as usual in a hopeless situation.
You then quit the game, and play any other fps that simply lets you specialize at will.
Analysis of Example:
Any specialization can be hard countered, or even defeated by random team composition.
In RTS games, a specialized role is called "Cheese" or "All in", meaning when your strategy is unhelpful, you fold.
In card games these are called "Gimmick Decks", where you rely on a single combo of cards that you may never draw into and likewise fold.
A second example of a possible scenario:
You graduate the battle academy and quickly realize Rail Rifles, Combat Rifles, and Tanks are the dominant strategy. They have the least amount of hard counters, increasing the odds that you will be invaluable to your team in whatever role you seek. So you start pouring all of your Sp into these weapons or vehicles, because lets face it, you want to be on the winning team.
But then the next update comes out, CCP says oops yeah those aren't working as intended, and they face the nerf hammer (stats become diminished to a sub optimal state).
You take to the forums and say, I didn't know it would get nerfed, can I have my Sp back so I can reasses want I want?
A resounding "HTFU (Harden the F@#% up) FOTM (Flaver of the Month) chaser" rings from all corners of the forums and you have to decide whether the game is worth the months of grinding again or just quit and play any number of fps games that yet again let you specialize into anything at will.
Conclusion:
Due to the nature of skill progression and unlocking of premium gear taking months of time, the average player doesn't have the patience to "HTFU" and simply quits the game. The rest more than often listen to CCP and the "vets" and spend months to become good at a specific role which translates to "Useless blueberries" roaming the fields who get hard countered by a well rounded enemy team and become ineffective for the majority of their matches.
Now with introductions out of the way I hope to present to new players a method to if nothing else "Pull their weight" at the worst of times and "MVP" at the best of times with minimal need for skill points.
You see in my personal experience, you don't need fancy toys and suits to be effective.
For the purpose of this guide I will assume you have 500,000 sp and are wet behind the ears either still inside the battle academy or just out the door.
That said, you can always simply tack these skills on an older build, because why not? As of right now many players run alts, however you gain only one passive sp actively per account and players with 30+ million sp get paired with players with 500k sp meaning there is never any reason to start over unless you make multiple accounts and reach their active cap every week.
The Beginner's Guide to success part 1, The Gear:
There is a lot of gear in this game, some are vastly more useful then others. For the most part the only gear that is a decent step up to go ahead and skill to rank 1 are as follows:
Rifles:
Combat Rifle
Rail Rifle
Assault Rifle
Scrambler Rifle
Laser Rifle
Pick 1 or all, they all have situational uses that are addressed from the very first rank. None of them have an incredibly useful rank 2 at the moment so ranking above 1 is not worth the sp when you are starting out, also as of 1.7, you can do without the laser rifle. The laser rifle has a kill range that's in the same kill range as a rail rifle but it can't be fired point blank like the rail rifle making it suboptimal.
(To be continued)
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TYCHUS MAXWELL
Ghosts of Dawn
General Tso's Alliance
9
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Posted - 2014.02.07 04:35:00 -
[5] - Quote
Finno Finno wrote:Good tips, thanks.
I now have a 650 ISK suit and a 1.5K ISK suit as my two most used ones. At least getting killed by proto weapons all the time doesn't cost me much.
It's also the best way to annoy the hell out of the "pros". You kill their suit once or twice and you have impacted their wallet far more than they can your own, that said many of them have hundreds of millions or even billions of isk to throw away thanks to Corporation districts but not everyone has those.
Most guides are written to encourage K/DR (or how can you help me the author?) while discouraging isk conservation. However, as a new player your K/DR is going to be bad as long as you are helping your team, most of the meta of vets to new players is centered around, how can they spend as much isk as possible so as to benefit me? Number one thing I hear coming from vet players is them talking new players into logi speccing proto rep tools.
I myself just balance my wallet and spend excessive amounts finding wild and crazy builds. I've never taken isk from anyone and all my isk has been earned on contracts and I have to try to lose isk. That said I don't give handouts as I know that no one needs handouts in this game. If you are running out of money you are using too expensive of gear simple as that. Doing what everyone wants you to do is a good way to suck all the fun out of the game. That's why step 4 on my guide is literally do whatever, because although plasma cannons are garbage, I and others might find it fun to trick shot a red berry sniper off a cliff.
In my own opinion, this game has too many bugs/balance issues to take competitive play seriously. Just try your best, and remember if a guy has a better K/DR then you, there's no way they can't prove it wasn't earned red line sniping or boosting.
All the pro corps tend to district lock anyways so even the endgame meta is completely garbage at the moment.
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ALPHA DECRIPTER
Dragon-Empire
712
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Posted - 2014.02.07 05:56:00 -
[6] - Quote
Yea, fun is the most important aspect of any game. When in a decent squad I'm usually able to enjoy myself a fair amount even while getting stomped.
One of the easiest way to amp up the fun is use anything that is considered "hard mode". This would include Plasma Cannons, Nova Knives, scout/light suits, etc. Once you got hard mode on you proceed to do things that will most likely get you killed. If you survive then you will get mad bragging rights as well as an adrenaline rush! Fail and it's like "aww... oh well, maybe next time" as you ARE intentionally gimping yourself.
Personally I have specced entirely into scouts but not because it's recommended by CCP but because that is who I am. When getting stomped I switch to a dirt cheap light frame so as to maintain my general scout-y play style.
@guide: you forgot to mention "patience". It requires no SP but most players refuse to spec into it.
Scout Tactician
Dance puppets, DANCE!
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