Bones McGavins
TacoCat Industries
566
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Posted - 2014.03.17 18:10:00 -
[1] - Quote
So I decided to mess around with alts to get the 2 mil sp for them this weekend. This led me to use the starter fits a bunch on low skill characters. The New Player Experience is a lot worse today than it was a year ago. This isnt just due to more players with more SP and ISK running around, the balance itself has skewed towards a very harsh introduction.
The main issues are radar and weapon ranges.
Back when I was a noob, the sharpshooter sill provided a range increase to weapons. This lead to a very broken battlefield for new players and CCP correctly resolved this issue. However, in 1.7 we got the RR which has a pretty massive range increase from the AR. Go to adv or pro RR and it is 2X that of the AR.
Now add in the fact a new player is constantly on the enemy radar. What can they really even do? No amount of player skill can reliably counter 2X range while the enemy can track your position on the radar and kill you if you get close.
Im a decent if not pretty good DUST player. I run advanced gear or std on my scout. But I normally have the character skill to keep me off radar and use a SCR which has enough range to fight back. But put me in a starter character with a starter fit? Im lucky to pull a 1.5.
Imagine a new player who has zero idea what "Youve been scanned" even means. Doesnt know that the HUD tells you what % effectiveness your gun is, and definitely hasnt checked forums or ran personal tests to judge weapon ranges. New players today have it way worse than before, not to mention the fact that the gap is even wider just due to SP increase of the community.
Active Scanner changes will help this. But I think the range gap between rails and ARs should be narrowed a bit.
Note, this isnt a "NERF RRs THEY ARE OP!" post. Or even a "BUFF AR THEY ARE UP". Because I realize at higher level play that range difference isnt as big of a deal. But in pub matches, against a new player, it is a ridiculous advantage.
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Bones McGavins
TacoCat Industries
566
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Posted - 2014.03.17 18:48:00 -
[2] - Quote
Ok, but personal skill aside. You have a character who can fire 45m, the enemy team is filled with characters firing 90-100m. They can all see you on their radar at all times, you can not see them unless they see you.
What do you do? Even fantastic FPS players are pretty boned in that situation. That is the NPE right now.
Yeah I know I can get a scanner up and a basic RR to fight back with very little SP investment, but new players wont. The current starter fits dont hold up to the current DUST experience at all anymore. They did a year ago when it was AR 514. But scanners and RR make the starter fits pretty useless.
I say this as someone who constantly defends scanners as a great addition to the game and giving scouts a defined role. And as someone hwo realizes RR is weaker than the CBR and SR in skilled hands. |