Garrett Blacknova
Codex Troopers
4899
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Posted - 2014.04.05 05:33:00 -
[1] - Quote
A long, long time ago, in New Eden, I hijacked the brain of a Capsuleer (a.k.a my friend let me play on his account for a while).
I promptly decided that, as cool as it was, I didn't have the free time or patience to make the game worth the financial investment it would require to maintain my account. As such, I decided to keep an eye on the game as an interesting concept, but NOT to actually get involved more heavily.
Because I was following EVE, I heard about DUST quite early. I didn't go for the closed beta as soon as it was available, but I got in around the E3 build when they were phasing out Skirmish 1.0 - as rough as it was around the edges, it was pretty enjoyable. I quickly made some friends, and when they realised that I was more willing than most to risk my own survival in order to save a teammate (and their K/D), I had a couple of friends ask if I'd become a regular in their squad. Because I was still not convinced the game was worth spending money on, I declined, but when they found out my reasons, one of the squad members bought a Merc Pack for me (we've since become irl friends after it turned out he lived in the country).
After a while, my girlfriend saw me playing, and said "that reminds me of Battlefield" (meaning 2142, which she used to play on her parents' Mac). I got her to apply for the closed beta and she was lucky enough to get access for the following weekend. She, too, enjoyed the game, and wanted more. Because access to the beta was still limited at the time, I bought her a Merc Pack so she could get more time with the game, and ended up enjoying her exploits as a sniper almost as much as I enjoyed playing the game myself.
I've since lost touch with most of my original DUST friends as they've moved on, but I've made new friends along the way too. I've also had an amicable break-up with the girlfriend I got into the game, but now she has her own PS3 and we can play the game together instead of taking turns.
When I started out, I was rusty at FPS gameplay, but I had been playing the High Moon Transformers games a lot, and those third-person shooters gave me enough of a grounding to hold my own. As an avid reader, I was also willing to sit back and spend HOURS (literally) digging through the skill sheet to work out how everything works relates and works together. My girlfriend, uninterested in all the stats, simply got me to watch her play, figure out what skills she was using most and buff them, and also identify any weaknesses she could cover with the right skill training. Between us, we put together some relatively cheap Sniper fittings which she was able to use effectively (she's always been one of the good Snipers - even as far back as her first Sniper suit, she never tried redline camping). As time went on, she learned more about the game simply by watching me play, and by watching where I directed her while upgrading her own skills.
When CCP decided to give away free vehicles, I skilled into Swarm Launchers (which have remained a secondary role for me to this day), and my girlfriend decided to try out a Forge Gun (which she has stuck with to this day as well). We both still run our other fittings as well, but now we had AV weapons if we needed them. It wasn't until vehicles started to get heavily nerfed that I actually tried them out - and I enjoyed it when I was running a broken-nerfed Missile Sica, then later a Gunnlogi. I had the tankiest raw HP tanks in the game, and it was hilarious. I also ran proper fittings, but I found that simply having more raw HP than everything else on the battlefield was a good scare tactic against enemy tanks. Seeing me unhardened and losing HP so slowly put a huge dent in the enemy's morale for some reason. It's like they knew I could harden any time (I couldn't) but chose not to because I wasn't scared. Of course, my reckless terror tactics resulted in the occasional death, but that's fine too. My Sagaris was the only time I ever lost more than I made back in a half-hour of play, and only one of those ever died on me.
Around the time I picked up tanks, I also decided to try out the Shotgun - in most modern shooters, I was bad with such weapons, but I'd found that the semi-automatic "Scatter Blaster" in the Transformers games suited me, and the DUST Shotgun's performance seemed close enough to compare with it. It was everything I'd ever wanted, and has become a mainstay in my DUST arsenal ever since. The lack of range - particularly with me not bothering to train Sharpshooter skill back when it was the done thing - got me killed more than once, but it was devastating when I got in close and tore a victim's head off with it. I was already good at using my Scout suit to avoid detection and get around enemy positions, but now, I was almost always taking at least one of them with me before going down.
As time has gone on, Scouts have seen nerfs, and coming into 1.8, we've had a buff almost back to our former glory. Tanks have been nerfed, buffed, and nerfed again, and so has all that shiny AV weaponry. Various things have changed, and I've been here to see almost all of it.
My NPE was a massive portion of self-teaching, followed by visits to these forums where I learned a LOT from doing the same thing I did in-game - I read. I dug through so many threads. I don't know who to credit for most of my DUST knowledge, but I know that I paid attention to everyone, and tested the things I was reading. When I started noticing discrepancies between my testing and the advice other players were offering, I spoke up, and became a familiar presence here. I wasn't always correct, but when I was proven wrong, I was one of the rare ones who would accept my mistake and learn from it. I had a few times where I argued quite strongly about things only to later come back humble and apologetic after another round of testing.
And here I am. Still playing, still posting, still enjoying the game more for its potential than... |