WILLIAM Forrester
Sanmatar Kelkoons
Minmatar Republic
35
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Posted - 2014.02.27 22:55:00 -
[1] - Quote
So I played Dust a bit last year and then I came back to it today to see what had changed (got loads of Skill Points, which was cool).
But basically nothing, it's the same vanilla FPS it's been since it first came out.
This is a big problem for me, how do I sell it to my friends? I'd love to be able to finish this sentence,
"DUST 514 is awesome and you should play it because ..."
but I can't.
It's just an FPS, it's just deathmatches, it's not pay to win but it is "get pwned as a noob, repeatedly". It's just got nothing to really sell it, it's got no Unique Selling Point, it's got nothing to separate it from the crowd of other fps's.
The problem with the games direction at the moment is that a lot of effort is being made but DUST is not emerging as an interesting game in it's own right, it's never going to get any press if it carries on going in the direction it's going now.
What weapons or graphics or vehicles are going to make people excited about it?
You can't inch your way to glory.
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In light of this I wanted to offer a different road map, some ways of quickly setting DUST apart, which would really help the game evolve without a huge amount of time and money.
1) Get meta-modes.
It's really dull just to load the game and think "shall I play 3, 4 or 23 games today?" Why would I play more than a couple?
You need to make playing games in succession mean something.
I have to think "yeah I really want to play just one more game", that's what addictive games feel like.
Eg. a) Journey Mode : Your team has to travel across a section of stars to save a downed pilot, this means playing 10 games in a row (normal matches made by the computer), if you win all of them you get a BIG reward and a medal, if you lose any single one the mission is over.
This is a great way of pitting experienced teams against swarms of noobs.
b) Lone Warrior : You spawn into a new district wearing whatever suit you want, then one other person joins the game wearing only militia gear (using one of the starter setups) and you fight, then another joins, then another, the enemy team slowly gets bigger and bigger up to the maximum size. When your clone stock is depleted the game is over.
So get your sniper rifle and climb up high as they will be swarming you soon.
c) Military Training : As you play the game you get level ups and medals and promotions and progress awards. These don't make you any more powerful they just make you feel good, the more you fight the better you get, maybe the computer gives you special missions (blow up 5 tanks etc) for rewards on your journey.
d) Military OP: You are shown a star map and then a series of matches takes place (again normal matches match made by the computer) and a story plays out, win a lot in series and you get a good ending, lose a few and the ending gets worse, lose most and you see a tragic ending.
What's crazy is all the players in the game could be seeing a different story page come up but as they all have to play a skirmish next they can all play together, thinking it means different things.
So I might be fighting the last battle of the "Defend the Homeland" campaign while you are a mercenary fighting in "Loot, and lots of it" but it's just a skirmish for both of us.
Completing these little stories would make me want to come on and play 5-10 games in a row to see what would happen, to join a corp so we could play together as we went on.
All of these things require so little programming, you just have to tell the player the match means something other than "win or lose wasn't that fun". Tell them its a campaign to save their home and the next 5 matches will determine the outcome and I guarantee you no one will stop playing after 4.
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2) Get PVE
Seriously I've talked about this before but just use the normal skins and pain them black and use this AI
a) Move towards the player until you get to optimal range
b) Shoot
c) go to a)
I know you want to make this grand and amazing vision but just make a simple, easy to put together PVE mode, you could do it in such a short time with the game you already have. You could delete it later but you're shooting yourselves in the foot, I have 14 million skill points and I feel like all the happens is I get shot repeatedly by pro's over and over again.
Let me play on my own, against some computer controlled opponents. Let me practice and try out the different weapons without getting sniped from a mile away.
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3) Get some EVE links.
Just something, let me see local in the corner of my screen when I am in my quarters, let me see the markets, let me get some notifications about traffic in the system. The EVE universe is so alive and some really simple things like this would make the DUST players feel that they are in it.
How much effort would it be just to put local in the corner of the screen all the time you are not on the battlefield? It would feel like EVE then.
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4) Make the game different, make the game special.
It doesn't matter how good you make the gameplay if it only offers standard FPS deathmatches it's never going to take off, it can't, it's competing with a thousand other games directly.
Be different, go in a new direction, do something no one else does.
You can't just keep adding guns and suits and hope you'll come to some magic number where thousands of players will flock to your game and suddenly love it more than anything.
Make DUST the only place that has a certain thing and people will want to come here to get it. Even if it's something super niche.
I believe in this game and I think you've got so much potential as a development team, right now, the game is going nowhere. It hasn't changed in a year, nothing exciting has happened. You've got to do something powerful and unique.
Do it! Make this game different!
Give me something unique to tell my friends about. |