What makes DUST special IS that a player with 50 million SP can still have a use for a militia Dropsuit. That ALL of those 2,000+ suits/items you have are actually useful and donGÇÖt become obsolete once you reach the next GÇ£level.GÇ¥ High SP players can squeeze higher meta modules into that militia suit and create great ISK efficient fits with it. ItGÇÖs incredibly gratifying to kill someone wearing a very expensive suit using a cheap one. The asymmetrical nature of DUST 514 is what makes the game compelling.

And no, looking at your old suits stacked up in your quarters doesnGÇÖt fix this. The inevitable result is to introduce an expansion with suit D that everyone works towards, and then gets bored with: i.e. the gear treadmill. People get exhausted with this kind of system and eventually move on to another game. All MMOGÇÖs with this approach to progression have declined in users over time. The only one that hasnGÇÖt is EVE, and it doesnGÇÖt use this approach. It is foolish to ignore this point.

The proposed system makes it difficult to change directions if youGÇÖre deeply invested in something you donGÇÖt like. Under the system proposed you donGÇÖt unlock certain weapons until much deeper in the tree. As balancing nerfs/buffs come out (and theyGÇÖre unavoidable in a game of this nature) itGÇÖs going to make adjusting your character much more difficult.

In the current system, you can quickly start a different weapon and move on, while waiting for your weapon of choice to get fixed. I think your proposed progression system will create a lot of unnecessary friction and frustration by limiting playerGÇÖs freedom for the questionable benefit of accessibility (which can be better addressed via the UI and tutorials).

You can have depth AND accessibility if you build the right UIs and invest the resources into making an amazing, story-based gameplay tutorial. EVEGÇÖs ISIS, and Mastery systems are excellent examples of how this can be done.

I suspect that your proposed system may very well draw in more players, at least initially, but it will suffer the same fate as other MMOGÇÖs using more traditional skill progression systems, and players will get bored and burn out.

Can whatever system you put in place be change after launch ,like the 3 different trees we had from beta till now in Dust?

With a PC game can't you do both the new easy progression and keep the lvl 5 system so we can just get what we want since we know what we want.

Are the weapons of each dropsuit tree race specific as Gallentee have Assault rifle but no scrambler or rail rifle?

Will electronics and engineering skills still that bring those numbers as cpu and pg still be in the game?

how will you implement passive skills and bonuses?

I would want to know why the current skill system could not be a base for EVE Legion with a UI overlay guiding players into roles? Has a investigation of this been done?

Respec Discussion

for what it's worth i'm of a strong opinion that players should be able to experiment easily at a low level/tier/etc with their progression and fitting variety...while it could spike increasingly in difficulty/time as they specialize deeper into roles/skills.

I feel the current pace at which players can unlock basic suits/modules/weapons in dust514 is pretty close to where it should be-while reaching high end suits/modules/weapons/passives could reasonably use some tweaking (increased time/difficulty).

Posting the skill tree

Methodology Discussion

I think the above quotes really illustrate where we disagree. I have serious concerns about the financial viability of targeting a more casual player with Project Legion at the expense of your more hardcore fans. As much as I love New Eden and have invested in DUST 514, I have very little interest in playing the game of the nature youGÇÖre describing. I donGÇÖt think IGÇÖm alone. Now you may believe that by bringing in a flood of casual players it will more than make up for the losses from players like myself. There are some important points to consider with this strategy though.

The online FPS player (the more casual players you seem to be targeting) are more fickle than the more hardcore players. LetGÇÖs be brutally honest here. Project Legion could be really great, and might have some cool visual flair, but it will never be able to compete directly with the major gaming studios/publishers with budgets that dwarf yours and teams with decades of experience producing shiny/polished games for the same core audience

Your concern that EVE is a different financial model is a bit misguided. EVE is free-to-play as well with the PLEX system. Why canGÇÖt we reduce the amount of unboosted passive and active SP gained by some percentage (maybe 30% or so) and increase the percentage of boosters by the same amount to make them a better value and more desirable? If we can buy/sell boosters on the market like PLEX then the systems will be very similar. Players can grind ISK to gain access to boosters, and players with more real money than time can sell them boosters for ISK.

I strongly suggest that EVE: Legion adopt a progression system that mirrors EVE Online. I don't see why not.

Negative Respec/Skillback idea

ISIS UI Discussion

Will new players be able to see a noticeable improvement in their abilities as they apply their skill points early in their career?

Will new players that specialize in one role be able to develop enough in a month or two to be able to compete with veteran players? I donGÇÖt mean even playing field, but rather narrowing the gap in the area they specialise in enough to give them a fighting chance.

Are you simply collapsing 5 level skills into single nodes? Are you taking a lot of small rewarding steps and replacing them with a few huge daunting steps? Am I going to have to grind for two weeks to get 25% PG from the Engineering node when I only need 5% more PG to make my fit work?

Monetization Discussion

How is restricting players for newcomers and/or idiots a better idea than keeping everything free and explaining it all?

Item and Variation discussion.

I-¦m assuming dropsuits and vehicle BPOs will be available for purchase with AURUM then?

Feedback on Progression

He must be trying to derive a substantial amount of income from respecs - and all respec discussion

Survey Discussion

Just to reiterate fully however, once unlocked those weapons can be used in any fit/with any suit so regardless of race or role correct? (with the possible exception of special cases such has Heavy Weapons)

NPE Discussion

Drop Suit BPO

Natus Nobilis NFS World Progression System