Hello,.... and sorry to Leonid and all the players who gave an endorsement to your point of view. I disgree with most of what you're wishing for.

From time to time the forum repeatedly flares up with one of three counter POVs that (respectfully) challenge Dust's structure: One is the POV from the Classic FPS gamers among us who suggested Dust should correct itself and join the "ole-guard" design of traditional shooters...stop trying to be so DIFFERENT...

One is the POV that all weapons in this fantasy game should be matched to a real-life counterpart weapon, and immitate its performance and physics. Dust's SMG should be like the Karlov Precision IV smg made in Prussia between 1990-1994; the mass-driver should be modified to mirror the US thump-gun from Vietnam era, etc...

I'm not a military-buff (I know the names of many of today's and yesterday's war pieces, but that doesn't make me JACK, LOL). But my photography interest got me plugged into flight-based games alot, so I'm always drawn to "flying controls" and "aerodynamics" in lots of my games. That's the THIRD POV that flares up from time to time... "The flight-characteristics of the DS, and the ground-characteristics of the HAVs ought to comply with the Bell AH- Hawk and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle---CCP needs some advice about...."
...

I TRY not to get into the trap of wanting Dropships to "fly" and have things in the game comply with real-combat entities. PC and Playstation have made some pretty solid contibutions to "photo-realistic, militarily-faithful" combat games.... Eve Online and Dust 514 clearly appear to want to escape any relationships to Earth-race or Earth-tech (kinda the reason why for me it's a nice break from gritty Sturmovik and heavenly BoS). Trying to increase military-realism in a game with tiny maps and TONS of counter-technology going on... is going to burden the balancing act unnecessarily.

Perhaps as a result of its pioneering-track, "Balance" is more crucial to this game than ANY we may have typically play.
By the way, it's sort of a balance of "player behavior" that CCP is struggling to tweak, not really raw-clinical balance of the playing pieces. We're seeing this is REALLY hard to acheive, and I don't think it's necessarily doing it wrong if some of the weapons/vehicles they originally intended to be POWERFUL, have to be curbed down and twitched up until the way players USE them is controlled enough to have a fun game.

I want the gear, the personal protection technology, and the vehicles to be CONVINCING, not comical. That's true. But I don't think it's a good idea for Dust to be "combat-realistic" in the way some of us are wishing.

You mention NSWE indicators and a compass...

You do have a compass, and North is always up on the map.
This ******* baffles me, because I always get weird ass directions from people and when I ask them to tell me in cardinal directions I just get uhhhhhhhhhhhhs.

I think a grid system on the map would be great though.

A lot of the other complaints are restricted by the lackluster performance of the PS3 though, between rendering issues and other shortcomings of a system that's 7 1/2 years old.

Sounds like your issues stem from dust being a game that attempts to achieve balanced gameplay.

you made a good point about directional awareness and relaying reliable information to your team. everything else was just silly.

Thermal imagery and night vision? We don't even have a night map anymore. And thermal would completely negate the purpose and use of the cloak. Making something completely useless isn't a hard counter, just bad game design.

Making guns have the ability to shoot across the entire map and pop anything, just because in theory they can achieve much longer distance is just ********. In EVE, everything is automated because its an entirely different genre of game that uses entirely different sets of rules. This is an FPS game and it needs to be balanced like one.

My advice is for you to start reading Sci - Fi war novels. You aren't gonna get flavor over function in a video game.

The thing is, to someone who actually touched and used some modern real world gear, the technology and gear in Dust IS comical by comparison.

So many times have I wished I just had an old fashioned chopper rather than the crap dropship. So many times have I wished I had an EOTech or ELCAN sight rather than the cosmetic **** that is bolted onto my rifles now.

I'm not striving for military realism, im striving for a military evolution. Equipment that makes me believe that it is FUTURE wargear we're using, and not just obviously inferior tech with pretty text descriptions and shiny knobs and buttons.

And also the new and interesting limitatilons of future wargear.

Take warhammer 40.000 for example. Plasma guns are insanely lethal and destructive weapons BUT very prone to overheating too and perfectly capable of killing the operator when being overheated.

Stuff like that makes a setting and a game interesting.

I guess this question of mine has more to do with flavor, but it also touches on game mechanics.

Being both a bit of a scien"e AND science-fiction AND military buff, I have to say that warfare depicted in Dust doesn't feel very "science fiction".

Oh sure, combat clones, laser rifles, plasma blasters, personal shields etc. all cool, but if you have a military advisor or consultant involved in development I can pretty much guarantee you that he or she would feel a bit disappointed with performance or certain weapons and the lack of certain pieces of gear.

For starters our supposedly "tactical" satellite overview maps don't even have numbered grids or even basic NSWE-indicators, which of course mess up all efforts at team coordination (in a team oriented FPS no less). Having to talk to your team in terms of "The enemy is over there by that huge mushroom-like thingie" is only confusing and a bit silly. A lot of us want to give out quick and curt broadcasts like "Hostiles moving south through grid Charlie-7" and everyone will know exactly where that is relative to their own position.

Real world militaries have GPS systems, with grids and of course, a compass. Yet the supposed "sci-fi setting" of New Eden lack these things. A bit strange as i'm sure you'd agree.

Also we have a lack of thermal imaging (night vision, IR etc.). Having to use a radar scanner to find cloaked scouts and our "naked" eyes, seem a bit primitive. My advice: take inspiration from the Predator movies, because those alien trophy hunters haveadvanced imaging systems that real world militaries drool over).

Then there's the unimpressive performance of artillery. The supposed main battle tank weapons are severely outperformed by modern day counterparts. Both railguns and blasters have pathetic range and are easily stopped completely by the most flimsy of obstacles (no, a thin catwalk railing shouldn't stop a supposedly 80 GJ railgun round). We have big missile launcher pods, with a pathetic blast radius and the missiles aren't even guided, but dumb-fire (huge inconsistency seeing as how Caldari ships in Eve spam guided missiles all the time in space above us Dust mercs heads).

I could go on of course, but I think any reader will get the gist of what I mean when I say that Dust doesen't "feel" very sci-fi.

Sci-fi usually means noticeable technological improvements over current tech after all.

Now I don't just want to nag, demand and complain. If you lack a military advisor in your team I'd happily do some research and share my knowledge with you. Pro Bono and without credit if you'd like. I just want to see the game develop into something that can really brag about being a sci-fi shooter and make all players feel it.

Keep up the otherwise good work.

I guess this question of mine has more to do with flavor, but it also touches on game mechanics.

Being both a bit of a scien"e AND science-fiction AND military buff, I have to say that warfare depicted in Dust doesn't feel very "science fiction".

Oh sure, combat clones, laser rifles, plasma blasters, personal shields etc. all cool, but if you have a military advisor or consultant involved in development I can pretty much guarantee you that he or she would feel a bit disappointed with performance or certain weapons and the lack of certain pieces of gear.

For starters our supposedly "tactical" satellite overview maps don't even have numbered grids or even basic NSWE-indicators, which of course mess up all efforts at team coordination (in a team oriented FPS no less). Having to talk to your team in terms of "The enemy is over there by that huge mushroom-like thingie" is only confusing and a bit silly. A lot of us want to give out quick and curt broadcasts like "Hostiles moving south through grid Charlie-7" and everyone will know exactly where that is relative to their own position.

Real world militaries have GPS systems, with grids and of course, a compass. Yet the supposed "sci-fi setting" of New Eden lack these things. A bit strange as i'm sure you'd agree.

Also we have a lack of thermal imaging (night vision, IR etc.). Having to use a radar scanner to find cloaked scouts and our "naked" eyes, seem a bit primitive. My advice: take inspiration from the Predator movies, because those alien trophy hunters haveadvanced imaging systems that real world militaries drool over).

Then there's the unimpressive performance of artillery. The supposed main battle tank weapons are severely outperformed by modern day counterparts. Both railguns and blasters have pathetic range and are easily stopped completely by the most flimsy of obstacles (no, a thin catwalk railing shouldn't stop a supposedly 80 GJ railgun round). We have big missile launcher pods, with a pathetic blast radius and the missiles aren't even guided, but dumb-fire (huge inconsistency seeing as how Caldari ships in Eve spam guided missiles all the time in space above us Dust mercs heads).

I could go on of course, but I think any reader will get the gist of what I mean when I say that Dust doesen't "feel" very sci-fi.

Sci-fi usually means noticeable technological improvements over current tech after all.

Now I don't just want to nag, demand and complain. If you lack a military advisor in your team I'd happily do some research and share my knowledge with you. Pro Bono and without credit if you'd like. I just want to see the game develop into something that can really brag about being a sci-fi shooter and make all players feel it.

Keep up the otherwise good work.

Your post is by far even more silly.

Remember a game series called Alien vs Predator? They managed to balance thermal imaging AND cloaking devices in multiplayer perfectly.

Don't try to lecture me about game design unless you've played a few franchises first...

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Can't be that hard to put in. I think people have been asking for a tac-net grid for a while though and we still don't have one. Can't imagine why.

You haven't used much imagination where thermal vision is concerned. It could be a hard counter to the scout's cloak, but perhaps the cloak encompasses more than just regular visible light and might cloak both infrared and ultraviolet spectrums. Perhaps this could introduce new cloaking variations:

- Visible but not IR or UV spectrums.
- IR and UV but not Visible spectrums.

With these variations would come new vision modules:

- Thermal vision for detecting IR and UV cloaks.
- Sonar vision for detecting visible spectrum cloaks.

How's that for balance?

Before you got saying GÇ£you could just use your eyes for IR and UV cloaksGÇ¥ perhaps these cloaks could be used when we get night maps, or maybe they reduce your scan profile to near enough zero? There's so many possibilities that it doesn't take a genius to play around and come up with some cool ****.

Edit: Or maybe we just have one thermal module to track the visible light cloakers and use our eyes for the UV and IR ones, to keep it simple.

In terms of vision, it needs to be mentioned that DUST mercs are literally never - N-E-V-E-R - using their "naked eyes" to see. We have no vision slits in our helmets.

There are cameras and other forward-facing sensors which record things in a wide spectrum, not just normal visible light, and that data is then translated into something our brains will process.

Basically, night vision, etc. are incorporated into what we see already.

Lol, that game is FAR from what dust is. I did play it, if you are referring to the only good one, and alien was by far more enjoyable the predator or humans. Though admittedly the predator vs squad of humans game mode was pretty entertaining.

Again, a far different type of FPS then what dust is. Predators and aliens could OHK anyone and the TTK was shorter then CoD. Not to mention a large portion of the game was centered around different forms of imagery so yea, of course an entire game designed around a concept can pull it off.

Just because it works in one game, doesn't mean it will in others.

Don't create a thread on a forum if you cant handle criticism and difference of opinion.

What bothers me the most out of this "sci-fi" game is the range of everything.
It's pathetic.
Modern day rifles have way more range than these airsoft Dust rifles.
Not to mention tanks! Just play World of Tanks with WW2 vehicles and laugh at the "super advanced tanks" that can't shoot further than 300 meters or something.

In an era where battles are fought over tens of kilometers in space, where an Orbital Strike can reach the planet surface with quite good accuracy, but a tank ON THE SURFACE can't shoot further than a few hundred meters?

I laughed at the "mushroom thingy" part, since that is exactly how we call it in our Corp.

I am also surprised that these super advanced suits don't have anything like... pneumatic legs to jump higher, or a mini jump drive in the boots.
So many possibilities, and so many wasted.

The thing is, to someone who actually touched and used some modern real world gear, the technology and gear in Dust IS comical by comparison.

So many times have I wished I just had an old fashioned chopper rather than the crap dropship. So many times have I wished I had an EOTech or ELCAN sight rather than the cosmetic **** that is bolted onto my rifles now.

I'm not striving for military realism, im striving for a military evolution. Equipment that makes me believe that it is FUTURE wargear we're using, and not just obviously inferior tech with pretty text descriptions and shiny knobs and buttons.

And also the new and interesting limitatilons of future wargear.

Take warhammer 40.000 for example. Plasma guns are insanely lethal and destructive weapons BUT very prone to overheating too and perfectly capable of killing the operator when being overheated.

Stuff like that makes a setting and a game interesting.

Actually Leonid, the stuff you mentioned in this quote IS stuff I mostly WOULD agree with you about. LOL!

I wouldn't want future-EARTH technology reflected in the game (CCP cleverly crafted the New Eden lore so that these Gallente, Amar, etc have originated from Earth, but are so long detached, reduced to primordial, and forced to evolve independent for generations, that CCP can claim they're not Earth-related at all).

But yes, it DOES make sense, and is painfully lacking sometimes, for some some more understandable "physics" to be attached to the technology (not earth physics necessarily, but believable physics that follows a general course of logic).
I sense some of your logic, Leonid, in the descriptions of some of the gear early in Dust's introduction:

--Drop Uplink that causes gradual degradation of the clone body and eventual death the more times you use it to spawn on the map.

--Dangerous heat discharge from Amar laser-based weaponry that is harmful to the user if you fire it incessantly.

--CRU field was supposed to drain a percentage of the player's health and shielding when you first spawn and step away from the CRU.

Maybe that much physics was originally their intent, but they decided to "dumb down" the game until they could get a better knowledge of how "smart and logical" a game we console players can handle.
LOL, we PS3 players do tend to be more visceral than cerebral...