we are not talking to the same target audience (hardcore MMO players vs Online FPS Players).

The most difficult balance in developing a skill system for Legion is finding the balance between making it easy for new players to figure out, while making it complex and flexible enough to keep veteran players interested.

Some of the criticism with CCP Z's plan comes from people thinking that it leans too far toward the new player, and that it will not be as fun for veteran players as a result.

While thinking about this I also thought about the certificate system in EVE, as well as what CCP did when they changed the UI for the skill system in DUST. If you know where to look, you can still open the old skill system in DUST which uses a list interface rather than a node interface. The key that I took from this was knowing where to look.

My proposal is that the skill system that is prominently displayed when you start the game would be CCP Z's Role based Item Progression system, and if you purchase your skills through that progression you will get a skill plan that works for the role you choose. The prerequisites for the skills in that interface would be set by the interface, rather than being the actual prerequisites for the skill.

Then there should be a second skill system interface designed for the veteran player which is much more free form. This second system should be buried a bit so that you have to discover it, or be told about it. This interface would include the same skills as CCP Z's interface (possible more skills), but they would be based on their actual prerequisites, rather than role based prerequisites.

So lets say you want to use the Tactical Assault Rifle:
- New Player Interface: You need to skill up through the Assault suit tree, get Assault Rifle, and then you can get the Tactical Assault Rifle skill.
- Veteran Player Interface: You simply go to the weapons tree, get the Assault Rifle skill, and then you can get the Tactical Assault Rifle skill.


Key premises:

1) You can't go wrong with the New Player Interface, but you can be more creative with the Veteran Player Interface. On the flip side, the Veteran Player Interface will give you the freedom to make mistakes, while the New Player Interface imposes restrictions that protect you from yourself.

2) The New Player Interface is the default which new players will find easily when they start the game. They will only discover the Veteran Player Interface if they are exploring the UI, or doing research. In either case they are taking actions which indicate that they are ready to discover greater complexity in the game.

Greetings CPM members:

I am the CEO of the second largest training Corporation in DUST 514, a cofounder of the Learning Coalition, and a sponsor of the Spanish Rookie help channel (Novatos Espa+¦ol).

I see CCP ZGÇÖs proposed Item Progression Tree as a vastly superior way to unlock items, but I believe that completely abandoning the 5 level skill system, specifically the 5 level skills that provide bonuses, is a huge mistake!

I have spent hours talking players who were completely new to the New Eden universe through how skills and fittings interact to allow them to build a suit that works for what they want to do. I completely agree with Dennie Fleetfoot that CCP ZGÇÖs proposed system will make getting started a lot easier for new players.

But I have also talked to those same players two or three weeks later and had them tell me that DUST 514 is so much better than CoD, Battlefield, or any other FPS they have played because of the depth and complexity of the character/fit customization.

The fitting optimisation skills are a mini game within the game. I remember how satisfied I felt when I realized that I could make my fit work for less than half the skill point cost by training Heavy Weapon Optimization to 4 rather than training Electronics to 5. I had solved the puzzle! That is depth through complexity. That is fun!

Other item optimization skills are important as well. It is one thing to have access to a weapon or a piece of equipment, but it is another thing to put the skill points into specialising in it. Skills that reduce PG or CPU usage; reduce sway, kick, or dispersion; or otherwise make the item easier to fit or more effective, help to make you feel like a specialist. They arenGÇÖt mandatary, but they give you a slight advantage with that item over someone who does not specialise.

If we are going to use the Item Progression tree to unlock items, it should also unlock 5 level bonus skills associated with each of those items. If Item Progression is the tree, the Item Optimization skills should be the leaves on that tree.

Personal Enhancement skills are important too:

I want my character to be more than the sum of his modules!

I want to be Tonny Stark, not one of those dam suits! I want to train skills that make my character better regardless of what fit he wares. I want to train Electronics and Engineering so I can make unconventional fits that no one else has considered. That is sand in the sandbox. DonGÇÖt take my sand away! When no one in the squad has hacking mods equipped, I want to be the guy who can hack a little faster because I put skill points into a skill that others considered merely a quality of life skill. Or I might want to be the Logi who can see other medium frame suits on my radar closing in on me when I am hacking, because I put some points into Scan Precession. These are skills that give the character individuality beyond what suit he wares. This helps with immersion, and with forming an emotional tie to your character. He is not a robot! Under the armour he is flesh and blood.

If Item Progression is the tree, then Personal Enhancement skills would be the roots that make the entire tree stronger.

The 5 Level Skill system is what has allowed EVE Online to work for 11 years. The 5 Level Skill system is one of the best things that DUST 514 has going for it. It is a large part of why DUST 514 is better than Call of Duty or Battlefield. It is a diminishing returns system which allows new players to get more than half of the potential benefit by skilling to level 3, for a very reasonable expenditure of skill points, while also letting veteran players go back and gain small advantages over their opponents by spending large amounts of skill points to nudge a skill up to level 5.

Abandoning this fundamental aspect of the game just because skills donGÇÖt work well for unlocking equipment is like throwing the baby out with the bath water. The Item Progression tree is a good replacement for skills such as Dropsuit Command which served only to unlock items, but getting rid of the bonus skills at the same time is like an American remake of a French movie, it completely misses the point!

Fox Gaden / Crash Gaden / Renier Gaden

Note how about you delete the post that are not asking questions you can moderate the thread.

1st batch of answers:
Yes we could keep the 5 levels. From the studies and the research we made on DUST, people seems to not understand it. ThatGÇÖs why we want to remove it.


Yes


They will be a node to unlock (same as a new weapon, Drop Suit or module)

I like the concept of 're-spec as negative skill training'.

I.e. you decide you don't want Gallente Prototype Assault Riles any more, so you flag that as de-respecializing, then the SP used to buy that drains into your unallocated SP pool slowly.

So, while you can definitely recoup all the SP you spent (I originally thought about only a percentage coming back, but that penalises honest mistakes, whereas FOTM players will just suck it up), getting that SP will take time, perhaps days or weeks to become available, which puts a massive crimp on FOTM-chasing.

Dust skill tree is incomplete. And i don-¦t mean "It-¦s ok but missing certain nodes because all the suits weren-¦t there", i mean incomplete in "It trashes the purpose of the skill tree".

1-3-5 to unlock basic-advanced-proto is a terrible way of using the tree.

It-¦s counterintuitive, makes people hate the skills because they-¦re not seen as "The thing tht will give me that extra 2% so i can get the final blow instead of recieving it" or "the extra 3% i needed to make my kickassfitting that i played around for hours on my Dust fitting tool, without having to buy an implant for it" (Wish we had implants), but instead as that "Thing that unlocks shiny dropsuit" with absolutely no regard to the rest of the skills needed to use modules with the shiny dropsuit.

How many people went straight for the dropsuit while still using basic modules?

How many times they complained on the forums that their suit was nerfed, and that they wanted respec because of it?

You think it was because the skilltree is complicated? No.

It-¦s because the skill tree doesn-¦t serve much purpose other than unlocking things (instead of being it-¦s own ecosystem of positive feedback troughout any game modes) and because it was (is) incomplete!

People like unlocking things because it-¦s an achievment. Doesn-¦t matter if i have the proper fitting, i have ALL THE BLACK PROTOTYPE SUITS, then i-¦m better than a militia guy, right? Wait, how did that milita guy killed me? I unlocked a better suit, why am i dying? This skilltree sucks.

Trashing a system that was implemented badly and getting a new one opesn the possibility of instead making the bad tried system good, to get the whole fiasco again with the new one. Dumbing down is not necessarily better, specially when it removes the "Secret CCP Special Sauce" that is the wild range of possible fittings, that you said it won-¦t be the case anymore fort they will be linked to role. (Or was their unlocking?)

People didn't seem to understand it? Have you tried explaining it to them?

I suspect that this can be solved with the NPE.


I share the worries of dumbing down the skill tree and making it boring and restrictive.

Also, the complete and total openness from you has been refreshing. I noticed it in the "DUST 514" Progression speech where someone just asked "How much of this is coming to DUST 514?" and you just said, completely without bullshit, "It is for Legion." That wasn't something that we were particularly happy to hear because of the "Is DUST totally dead then?" before Rouge was able to get the information out at the CCP keynote but the plan speaking, honesty that we have seen from you is nice.

Same with this post. Even if it isn't things that we are necessarily happy to see, we all appreciate the fact that you are informing us as the Project moves forward.

I still fail to see how any of this is related to DUST 514. I strongly remember this being the DUST 514 forums for the DUST 514 PlayStation Exclusive.

CCP Z still hasn't answered anything that pertains to the advancements of DUST 514 and nor has any of the other devs. Why doesn't CCP do something right for once? Maybe because CCP means Consistently Causing Problems?

Go make a darn(m) LEGION forum.

Maybe I'm being a little over sensitive here but I'm beginning to detect a very disturbing undercurrent of dismissing 'casual players' as not being worthy enough or too stupid to join our game. I hope I'm misreading that.

The current progression system in Dust 514 is not complex in itself (it is a simple skill tree with 5 level nodes), but it's the combination of finding gear in the market, then checking prerequisites, then figuring out how much your core skills affect the values you are seeing (and not seeing) on the fitting screen which is daunting.

Negative Respec/Skillback idea
I love it. That is really the kind of thing I will be looking at for our respec system

ISIS UI Discussion
100% agreed here again, ISIS is the basis of our thinking. I will share the mockups with you when they are ready

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


Yes, but mostly they will unlock new items

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.

It is a choice you make. Within a couple of months, you will be more than competitive with Veteran player if you invest your effort in one role only

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?

We are basically creating 5 nodes level 1 instead of 1 node with 5 levels. It helps people understand and allow our trees to be more linear

Monetization Discussion

I can promise you, we are working on the fairest, none pay to win system ever seem in a free to play game.

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

Less frustration leads to better engagement. When a system is way too complex and obscure, you have 2 solution: explain it better, make it simpler. Both solutions are not exclusive, and thatGÇÖs what we are shooting for.

Again remember, as CCP_ROUGE stated it during the Keynote, Legion is a prototype, Legion is NOT Dust514, even if they share the same DNA. We have to make drastic changes to make Legion first green lit and then successful. Progression seems to be one of them.

If you look at the ecosystem he talked about: Player driven economy, sandbox MMO, Immersive experience, the new Progression System we are working on makes a lot more sense.

I am going through all the replies here and will make sure the feedback will help us improve our current design

Think about it this way: there will be no market in the way it has been implemented on PS3. All items have to be looted from our scavenging/pve/wild pvp areas and then traded between players.

Again, no weapon or module will be available for AURUM or give you any type of leapfrogging through the Progression.

Basically, all variations of an item will have the same Metalevel but variations will be a little better in terms of performance .

[Roles]
Dust 514 has had a very limited and boring set of roles. It was fairly recently that we got the commando, which added some spice to the formula, and there are promised roles we are still missing: there was a role mentioned by CCP called the commander or crusader mentioned by CCP that was supposed to give area-of effect bonuses to teammates, and penalties to enemies (like rate of fire reduction). There is also the still missing pilot suit that was supposed to give bonuses to vehicles.
Despite the game's lack of modes besides just the basic archetypes, you want to remove the commando? I implore you to not only keep the commando, but to also expand specializations into a wide variety of options with various specialties (like that area-of-effect specialization CCP never added).

I like a lot the sidegrades idea and that is something that our Design Team is currently looking at (more or less modules, different weapon types, different abilities like being able to hack or not ...)

So, wait. Are there plans to introduce any kind of industry/production/invention, be it through the EVE/Legion connection or as a self sufficient profession for Legion players? Edit: Or does the Legion economy amount to nothing more than fully operational items popping out of thin air?

If you want Legion to live then PVE is going to have to be priority #1

Are you going to use some thing like the security system for missions restricting open pvp to every man for him self going from 1-0.0?

are all the racial vehicles and turrets going to be in legions launch? It would be great to have the perfect imbalance in the game.

Have you thought about making Medium weapons like a light machine gun and other suppression weapons for the Commandos to use?