I still do great on my alts

But I can't expect a new player to know the maps like I know them. Know my weapons like I know them. or have great friends and squad mates like I do.

Note before we begin: I understand that it may seem like I am stating "New players just don't have skill so they get stomped on" but I am not, or at least trying not to say such a thing. By skill, I just mean being familiar to the game, the skills, the fittings, knowing things like "don't shoot an Assault Rifle at the tank" and "don't charge straight at the guy with the machine gun that has a Ghostbuster behind him." There is nothing wrong with being unfamiliar with a game; we are all unfamiliar about a great many of things. I will be using skill in that manner rather than a "you suck n00bz!"

It is very popular to say that DUST has a terrible "New Player Experience" (NPE). The game is brutally difficult to get into, much like EVE. Many people lament tales of themselves or their friends doing the Academy for a couple of games, doing decently, and then being murdered repeatedly by Boundless weapons and tanks they they can't even seem to hurt. This causes them to fall away from the game which limits growth.

I have been thinking on this one a couple of days: how much of it is not being able to use Prototype gear, not having better modules, and not having the passive skills that help your radar, HP, speed, stamina, etc (SP) and how much is just not being familiar with the game's maps, movements, playstyles, weapon ranges, and even the concept of fittings (Skill)?

If there was an avid EVE player that was quite familiar with FPS, understood the notion of fittings/vehicle/SP investment, and read extensive online guides about 'how to play', would they have a better experience than someone who has never played EVE, didn't do any research, but was given a character with 200,000,000 SP? I haven't started a new character other than one as a drunken joke (haven't played him other than that) and started playing only about two or three weeks after Open Beta (after the final reset). This means that I wasn't seeing mountains of Prototype stuff from the beginning; it was mostly Militia, Standard, and the odd Advanced. I was quite familiar with the game before the Protobear was awoken so I honestly do not know the extent of how difficult it would be to compete with people that have 20, 30, 50 times the SP as you.

EVE is brutal too and many fights come down to "who has the most ISK in the fight and who has the most SP in the relevant skill?" but you can play 1,000 hours without ever having to actually fight others. Even then, the tutorial teaches you tackle, mining, shooting people, and the art of GETTING THE HELL OUT OF DODGE when the poopoo hits the fan. It is a slower paced game and lets people get familiar with everything before "there is a a Hurricane fleet locking you and you are going to die." You do have the High Security suicide ganks but the odds are low assuming they are not flying something worth lots and lots of cash.

With the NPE in DUST being "as bad as it is", is it just a case of people not being familiar with the game at all (Skill) or just 10-40 million SP being too great of a barrier to overcome (SP)?

Cheers.

Currently it is 80% SP, 20% skill. With some tiercide it can be 25% SP and 75% skill.

With the NPE in DUST being "as bad as it is", is it just a case of people not being familiar with the game at all (Skill) or just 10-40 million SP being too great of a barrier to overcome (SP)?

What if all uncreated mercs started gathering passive SP from a certain point? Let's say today, April 20, 2014 (or further in the past for better NPE today). This way any new players have a bit more SP to play with from the beginning. Players starting next year will have even more to help close that SP vs Skill gap from the very beginning. They won't have 30/40+ mil, but they can definitely start getting some cores out of the way. I don't think that would be the sole fix, but I'll bet that would help a lot of people stick around without such a grind.

I still do great on my alts

But I can't expect a new player to know the maps like I know them. Know my weapons like I know them. or have great friends and squad mates like I do.

In no other FPS will you see scores of 30:0 or 50:1 like you see fairly commonly in Dust. Any game where those sorts of differentials exist across the playerbase at large is completely broken from a competitive perspective.

First off, I was an EvE player long before Dust was even in alpha stage development, and (...) I had a limited amount of FPS experience through the Battlefield franchise. So, I was placed to quickly get to grips with the nomenclature and ethos behind a Dust when I finally installed it, just after Uprising launched. I understood damage profiles, fitting concepts, and what each of the modules could do for me and how they were tiered into three different bands of effectiveness. If I did not have my EvE experience to fall back on then all of that would have been lost to me, and the tutorials would have simply confused me further. Very little is explained very clearly. Much of it seems to assume I would understand power grid limits, stacking penalties, and how bonuses effect your performance on the field.

1. Is this a hard FPS to master?

No not really, this game has very minimal penalties for movement and has reticles that light up red when you have a bead on someone.

Thanks to everyone for replying

Minor Edit by Joseph to focus on what I will be talking about.
Exactly my point. I basically had the same thing. I had played some shooters but knew everything about EVE through my years as a player, even if it was long ago. I cannot imagine how a new player would feel going "Why can I fit this module but not this module? What's CPU and PG?" EVE's rough tutorial can at least be remedied by linking to the "Getting Started" forum thread because it is on PC. A console can't do that.

To those stating: "Of course SP is an obstacle; if someone has three times as much HP as you, does 25% more damage, and can shoot farther than you does that sound like a fair fight?"

This is completely correct. However, is that an issue for the person that is first starting? Is that what is causing the "how the hell does this game work?" It is certainly a huge issue but is it as bad as someone knowing nothing about EVE's fitting, damage profiles, optimal range, or even the concept of the skill tree? I remember reading about a new player that immediately dumped all their points into turret skills because they thought that vehicles spawned on the map like in Battlefield. Without any kind of information on the game, you can expect that many people will be stuck in a fog like "where are these vehicles coming from?" The good news is that a couple 5-10 minute long Training Modes (1. How to move. 2. Suit Types, Weapon Types, and how Fittings work. 3. Equipment. 4. Vehicles and Anti-Vehicle. 5. Skill Points and the importance of being careful and wise (IE: You only get 400,400 if you log on every day and cap every week). 7. Bot Match) can fix a lot of these issues.



It is true that the notion of "shoot people and try not to get shot" is pretty easy to come across. But that is just the shooting game. That isn't where a huge portion of the concern comes from. Fittings, where to put Skill Points, what each suit is 'meant to do', what weapons work best in what situations, how do you get vehicles or new weapons, etc, are far deeper and more intricate than the gun play itself. Every FPS comes down to shoot the red-reticule but DUST is one of the few FPS that has people confused. Is that confusion causing more problems than "those guys have 30 million more SP than me?"

I never suggested this game was UFO Defense or Daggerfall. I know that most FPS give you some level of customization but it is generally "this weapon, this sidearm, this throwable item" at least that is what I have noticed in the Call of Duty games. My last Battlefield I played was BF2 and that was just class based but I assume the newer ones are not as such.

The point I was making was that the game has no tutorial. This game has concepts that are fairly alien to other FPS (not saying that makes it better, more lofty, or whatever; just that it has concepts that others don't) that are never really explained. If it weren't for looking online, we wouldn't know you get 1,000 SP an hour Passive. If it weren't for looking online, we wouldn't know that Advanced or Prototype weapons have better range. PG/CPU never got a quick blurb about what it does. The game, ironically, is about as well explained as UFO Defense or Daggerfall rather than being closer to the tutorials that X-COM or Skyrim have.

"Is the lack of game knowledge a bigger obstacle for a freshly made character or the fact that people have 30 times as much SP as them?"

A very good question, so I will give you a good answer.

Skill > SP

Start a new character, take it through the academy and see how you do compared to your main. Chances are if you were a **** player on your main, meaning you didn't do well running anything less than proto gear you will do very bad on your new alt, but if you are a good player, getting 25/0 in proto and maybe 10/3 in standard, you will do much better out of the academy.

One can say that a new character cannot compete with a 1500 HP sentinel, but is that because he only has 450 HP or is it because he is charging it head on? Now, sure, he cannot take out an Assault gk0 with a G-1 Frontline suit in a head on fight, but that is just a numbers game. There is nothing stopping him from grabbing a shotgun and OHKing anything short of a well fit assault or better.

Yes, the NPE sucks and 50,000,000 SP guys are stomping 500,000 SP guys, but it has less to do with SP and ISK than it has to do with new players not getting the chance to learn the skills required to survive. A lot of people forget that most of the guys with 30,000,000+ SP started playing in January, when there was no proto. We all had time to learn the game and the protostomp only happened when you had the odd SVER True Blood tank stomp or Pink Fluffy / Imperfects against you. We had time to learn; I chose Caldari HAVs and by the time I had a Gunlogi, everyone else was running Advanced Dropsuits; when I had a 80GJ Compressed Particle Cannon on my Sagaris, everyone was running prototype gear, too. We all learned at the same rate. Then you throw hardened gladiators who had 100,000,000 ISK from the asset refund in with newberries who do not get a High-Sec to learn in and it should come to no surprise that MAYBE 1 in 25 newberries I meet stick around; but they stick around for the social aspect- not the gameplay.

The Academy was a good step, but it is not enough. There needs to be a very strict matchmaking system:

Mode 1: Militia and standard dropsuits and weapons, only. Militia vehicles and standard turrets, only. 2 vehicles/battle. All equipment allowed. All modules allowed.
Rewards are <200,000 ISK / battle

Mode 2: Same as right now (only vehicles limits)
Rewards are 200,000 - 1,350,000 / battle

NPE would be spared its huge embarressment with the implementation of PVE like in EvE.

A place where they can go at their own pace, make friends, skill up and earn a little stockpile of isk before taking on the hoards.

Instead... well starter fits shooting madrugars and an academy which is 80% full of our own alts. Well played.

I think the only 4 things that need to happen are as follows:

1) More starter fits to now include the MLT light suit and MLT heavy suit

2) There should be a "help" option that explains things like Officer Weapons, generic strategies, etc.

3) I think you should start off with 2 mil SP as opposed to 500k with a 500k starter pool.

4) Introduce more MLT equivalent gear such as MLT Combat Rifle, MLT Rail Rifle, MLT HMG, etc. I would also like to see MLT Logi somehow b/c no basic suit can replicate a logi.

"OH, it's a game for smart people". Is this the group that we only want to cater too? Those that enjoy the complexity, and the challenge that goes with it.

This is more or less my area of expertise. I have been constantly restarting this game for seven months now. The most sp I ever reached(barring the million clone event) was 2mil, so I really have never gotten into a decent advanced suit ever.

I can tell you that it is a fair balance of both. I do decently in a fair few of my games, coming anywhere form 10th to 3rd usually on the killboard, and this is my first FPS. But if the enemy is using proto, then there is no hope on me winning, and my deaths usually go upwards of 15.

It really come down to teamwork though. A well coordinated squad will stomp me every time even if they are just in standard gear.

Being a new player also doesn't easily allow experimentation. Skilled players with practice can make any weapon or suit work, while a new player will be doing pretty bad at best if they choose to do something a bit gimmicky or underpowered.

To answer your question, it is equally as much one as it is the other, with a slight lean towards just lack of practice.

What isnt mentioned about how bad the NPE is already and will, even more so, be in the future: The "runaway SP" concept.

The thing is: A new player joins with fixed 500k SP and has a fixed passive SP gain. When is he able to catch up to the vets, saying if he joins the game now? Say someone goes in, plays every day (for reasonable hours ... say 12 :P) and buys active AND passive boosters straight, all the time. Even then it may take MONTHS to even out.

And that is only if you dump really much money into dust. If you dont do this, you may never catch up (because the game maybe cancelled before that in a few years). If the only way to hit some sort of "stat ceiling" is to max out every skill there is in the game, the vet will always have the advantage, through just out-coring the Newb, through the possibility of switching to counter-gear (that the noob then cant counter because he has only maxed out a few Skills and the vet has more), through just being more proto than the less vet player.

So the runaway effect materializes very impressively on a broader scale, as you can see by the more and more obscene kill/WP records on the end-of-match-screens. The more the vets run away with the SP advantage, the less new players will stay (who will endure running 3/10 for more than a few days before calling BS and leaving?), because the SP gap is getting greater by the day. When I started out it was 500k-25mio. Now it may be 500k-60mio. Who knows. Just estimating here, but you see the point.

So as long as there is no matchmaking or SP-rubberbanding effect (like accelerated SP accrual at the bottom) it will stay ridiculous.

I still do great on my alts

But I can't expect a new player to know the maps like I know them. Know my weapons like I know them. or have great friends and squad mates like I do.

With the NPE in DUST being "as bad as it is", is it just a case of people not being familiar with the game at all (Skill) or just 10-40 million SP being too great of a barrier to overcome (SP)?

you don't catch up to old players in these games. you equal out.

that is to say you get your skills with X role to a comparative level as the vets then you can compete equally.

each role has a skill ceiling, if you are fighting as an assault skills in logi gear or tanks are useless.

you reach that point and you are comparatively equal to the vets.

This is more or less my area of expertise. I have been constantly restarting this game for seven months now. The most sp I ever reached(barring the million clone event) was 2mil, so I really have never gotten into a decent advanced suit ever.

I stick with this game for the love of Eve, and because I imagine that one day it can be a great thing.

"I have all the skills and know nothing about DUST" or "I know everything about DUST but only have 500,000 SP"?