LEHON Xeon
Ahrendee Mercenaries
EoN.
181
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Posted - 2014.02.07 06:14:00 -
[1] - Quote
What the OP wrote I found to be excellent. Having played video games for so many years and so many different genres I'll add in what I think for what it's worth.
There's one word which I think could improve this game massively on multiple levels and that term simply is "Integration". An integration on a player based level with a player/secondary market for items. At least somewhat of an integration with Eve. Make the battles actually have a pull in Eve in terms of what corporations or alliances control planets. If a system or section of space erupts in a war, while the space battle goes on, there should be battles on foot going on in space stations, large ships, or on planets themselves. For those who can remember back far enough, Star Wars Battlefront 2 had this element. In Galactic Conquest, there were space battles. Ship to ship, which could occur with soldiers on foot. Granted in game you could also fly ships to damage capital ships from the outside, but CCP could adjust that to make it that only Eve pilots do that role. Ground combat would only take place on ships themselves. Then after that space battle, if one side lost it, the side which won was in a prime position to attack the selected planet in a ground campaign.
Dust also needs an increase from just 16 people per side. More players means more variety in matches and map strategies would be forced to change and new ones created. Also, once and if (a big if) PC ever gets fully fixed, it needs to be expanded outside of Molden Heath. More planets and environments would be helpful and, even if just for a brief period, encourage corps to jump back into that game mode.
New player experiences DEFINITELY need to be dealt with. Even though we've had a large decrease in the player base, the secondary problem is there's no fresh flow. I would advocate for a longer Academy time (when I first joined it was 25k total WP accumulation; the current 400 is ridiculous). Even a secondary Academy for building up extra SP while avoiding a stomping of new players in regular Academy would be great. Also, a tutorial mode would be massively helpful. New people have no idea what they're doing at all and never will without spending large amounts of time which most don't want to do or can't.
Technical issues should also be at the top of CCPs list to resolve. I'd place these even above content updates in terms of an immediate timeframe. Things like matchmaking (i.e. Scotty), lag, hitboxes, invisible walls, and frame rate should be high priority fixes and would lead to a partial reduction in frustration among players. Matchmaking resolution would easily solve many problems in pubs we have now and greatly assist new players. In one pub match earlier this week, the matchmaking was asinine. The other side was comprised of 15 Lord-British people who all q-synced. Only one guy wasn't, while all of my entire side was practically NPC corp people. I think only myself and one other guy belonged to player owned corps (yes I was running solo). Three matches later, it happened again, only with 12 Lord-British this time.
Having gone through several bouts now of OP weapons, equipment, or vehicles, I truly believe that CCP's constant balancing act needs to take a place on the back burner until more major issues are resolved. Like these new upcoming suits should have been placed in a long time ago already. People will always complain somewhere about something being OP here or there, or thinking they die too fast to a player, but some of them just need to "HTFU" as many say. Learn to work around it. That's what I had to do (originally had a KDR of 0.64). If balance can be implemented in a small patch or a hotfix which takes up little development time, then that should be done. However, these massive rebalances in lieu of new development or technical issues patch after patch are just stupid. We've already lost more of the player base I'm sure due to boredom and frustration over those who were angry over weapons, dropsuits, or vehicle damage.
There's two main reasons I keep "riding out" Dust in its current form. The first is that right now, while sometimes monotonous, it still has that slightly different flavor than other FPS games I've played. For me in its current form it provides a bit of a challenge in trying to work around and with other players that have more SP than I do and also in working around FOTMs. The second is that I enjoy going into matches and talking with people themselves. However, eventually that'll burn out. I can clearly see what this came could really become, but at its current rate, I wonder if it'll ever get anywhere near what everyone keeps anticipating and hoping. As others have said, the last few updates have been "encouraging" but two steps forward after months and months of player frustration and a reduction in playerbase due to a ton of disasterous updates isn't going to cut it.
It's a trap! In this patch we can't repel firepower of that magnitude! - Admiral Ackbar would say in ambush w Nyain San
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