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.

No, weapon types will be linked to Role and not necessarily Race. You will end up with 2 different Rail Rifle depending on the race though.

Respec will have a gradually increasing cost, so your choices matter

The respec bit is the one I find most... strange. Not that a respec thing is not a bad idea or that other games don't have it or anything like that; it is just the sudden reversal of everything that CCP and CPM has said before. Things like "Pay to Win", or "your choices matter", or stuff like that. I don't necessarily have anything against respecs but I have to ask why the sudden change in design philosophy?

Can we still choose to use our cheap-fits in a high-meta match? I want to tactically deploy ISK assets to optimize my ISK efficiency (fun gambling).

The low meta matches are for new or casual players, right? Low rewards, low cost, fun matches for the masses?

When people start questioning the methodology of an internal study because its findings happen to contradict their strongly held views, you know you've hit a nerve.

Again, I have to remind everyone to please till Z has presented his completed work. I only ask because I suspect it is strongly connected to the new player market and a lot of the ISK sinks that have been put in place to prevent the current PC derived glut of ISK plaguing the game.

The progression in the game is just part of Z's job title. He's also in charge of the economy which tells me that the two are linked.

That can't be right. If they were going to do this, they would absolutely need a weighted performance attribute. If you have a lot of nice gear, but have low K/D - WP/D - and poor ISK efficiency, you should be ranked lower, and not dropped into a battle where your solo-no-coms-using 0/10 tard tactics cannot harm the experience for the other players.

Who here demanded to see all the research and the methodology behind it before they swallowed a couple of painkillers?

Or enquired as to the quality of the peer review behind the research which led to Pepto Pismol?

I'm all for being more empirical in such choices but really, asking or even demanding as some have in this thread, details of a computer game company's R&D process is taking perceived entitlement to a new level.

My point is, we'll all happily put into our bodies a pill given to us by a doctor without thought as to how it came to be. But when research finds that changes to a computer game are needed......

Did anyone ask Picasso what was in his head?

First question i have is about the methodology of your study, the sample space and these things, because if the questions were linked to the Dust skill tree, then you have a serious bias compromising your study.

If we get an Eve-style charaction creation process where we see ourselves outside of our Dropsuits and you drive home the idea of buying gear, it will only be counter-intuitive to the morons (which, lets be honest, do we really want the morons in Legion?).

Hell, you could even give us the option to go into battle without a dropsuit. It would be a sub-par setup (1 LW, 1 SA, 1G, 1E) and only available in certain situations (non-hostile environment temperate planets), but it could be an option and it would be a good reminder that we only own that which we spend our AUR/Isk on (though we only own the quantities that we purchase).

Stand apart from the other **** shooters on the market, if we wanted to play them, we would be playing them rather than Dust/Legion. There is no reason that we need to have our hands held in this way and IMHO it is the top of a slippery slope through the "BPO-ification" of all items because some simpletons ***** and moan about being consumers within the game and how they don't want to have to math.

If only you'd commit to ensuring your players understand how and why Dust/Legion stands apart you could forget this process of oversimplification.

Yeah, I play EVE now. While the description for most things does a decent job in explaining what they do, I would not say the EVE skill tree is completely obvious.

Just some minor examples... Its not obvious that 'damage' armor compensation affects the energized adaptive nano membrane. its not necessarily difficult to find out, but the skill tree doesn't link those two together in any way, I had to find that information out externally.

Same for 'damage' shield compensation... nothing tells me that doesn't work for shield hardeners... in fact I hadn't even heard of passive shield resistance modules until I had to look up online what that skill does.

Things like... Capacitor Emission Systems... I still don't know if that works for laser weapons or not. I'm assuming it doesn't but the description says 'Energy Emission Weapons'... I have no idea what is... is it neuts? vampire mods? The ui tells me nothing so i'll have to look it up later.

'Racial' Sensor Compensation? I still don't know what that does and how its different from Signature Analysis.

Things like Shield Operation... "...including the use of shield boosters and other basic shield modules" - what is a "basic shield module" for $100 please Alex.

These things aren't impossible to figure out by any means but the game gives me nothing in terms of what these do, I must look on a forum or occasionally on battleclinic comments to find out what some of these skills actually do. At 8 weeks played (so not that long) I'm definitely still confused about what some of these core skills actually do... and if I should be prioritizing these over something else. Looking up these skills online is something I am willing to do personally, but its these kinds of things that could scare away potential players of Legion.

Having some skill sinks isn't a crisis either though. Eve has plenty of skills sinks as well.

To say the assault rail rifle requires an assault dropsuit isn't really that much different than Mining Barges requiring Industry 5 and Astrogeology 3 on top of Mining Frigate 3 is it?

I really don't know if there is a good Dust equivalent to a battle badger lol.

Yeah, the lack of passive bonuses on skills in Dust really hurts the game.

But Industry doesn't help the Mining Barge at all.. right?

So like... having to go

Assault Dropsuit into Assault Rail Rifle to then put that Assault Rail Rifle on your Logistics suit.

2/3 of those skills will directly affect your current suit you are wearing - Logi suit with an ARR while one does not.

That Mining Barge needs:
Industry 5
Astrogeology 3
Mining Frigate 3
Mining Barge 1

Of the above, only two of those four skills (Astrogeo and Min Barge) actually affect the ship you are currently running (Mining Barge with Strip Miners).

So functionally... its not really all that different. Some skills affect what you are currently running and some do not. It wouldn't any different in Z's skill system either. Although he has already said that he is making sure EVERY single node does something and has sorta/unofficially confirmed passive bonus nodes as well.

but... don't get me wrong. I could easily make a 5 level skill tree work, I am very familiar after 1 year in Dust and 8 weeks in EVE with the 5 level system. These changes aren't for people like me though, they are for people like my 18 year old stepbrother who used to play COD religiously and was confused and generally became disinterested in Dust after about 45 minutes. He's a solid FPS player and I wish I could have played more Dust with him when it was in its prime, he just couldn't/didn't want to figure out the skill tree.

Although... there is one thing that CCP Z mentioned which might be a valid concern. Prior to the legion release a lot of posts started to crop up about how "im bored and there is nothing left to skill into" because they had their racial dropsuit of choice and a couple of weapons with maxed core skills. For people to be saying that 8-12 months into a games life might indicate a poorly designed skill tree.

So requiring a Heavy Assault Cruiser before tech II medium rails would be kind of silly I agree. What if you needed Caldari Cruiser III to use tech II rails though? If it would help guide newbies to the fact that the Moa uses medium rails?

While it might be obvious to you that you should pair rails on the Moa, it may not be obvious to others and making that connection, at a relatively insignificant cost in training time, might be worth it?

I dunno... just a thought. Playing a little devil's advocate I guess.

Making the skill sinks relatively light wouldn't be catastrophic. But locking all weapons behind the racial specialization set of the skill tree would be silly I agree. To require caldari assault dropsuit (at virtually the end of the assault role tree) before being able to use any rail rifle would be bad design imo. I would 100% fight against a change like that.

A complex skill tree doesn't introduce depth into the game though. There are other, far more substantial ways of introduce sandbox elements and giving tools for the players to make their own content.

Do you truly believe that EVE's skill system is the core to the experience you built for yourself? Do you think those pirates wouldn't have blown up your Raven if EVE had a more intuitive skill system?

Kinda see where I'm going here? Its the sandbox mechanics that make EVE, not its skill system.

While a good post on your first experiences in New Eden.. I don't see how the skill system does anything to relate to that. Do you mean you lost that Raven because you ****-fit it since you didn't understand the skill in Eve at the time? I'm failing to see how the structure of the skill system made that lost Raven more meaningful to you...

Now with BPO suit... you understand that if you put 500k isk worth of rare modules on your BPO suit and then you die... you are out 500k isk worth of modules right? Just because the suit itself is a BPO doesn't mean everything on your character is.

Also... Eve is a cool game, I'm really enjoying it myself, but it does NOT translate 1:1 into a first person shooter experience. The closest we can get is that we're all flying frigates pretty much. There is no translation of anything Cruiser+ in Eve (maybe marauder HAVs in chromosome were the closest to anything like a Cruiser imo) and I don't think there ever could/will be. In Eve its a lot easier to have very large ships with massive power differentials due to the 'navy simulator' kind of mechanics that dominate its combat. In an FPS its much more fast-paced low TTK style combat where you should expect anything you have to be relatively much more disposable than things are in Eve. We could possibly expand on the vehicle selection to get more analogues of the BC+ style ships in EVE, although I believe they would be generally very rare, much more than you would see those types of ships in EVE.

I also haven't seen any posts wanting vehicle BPOs in game. I know I certainly don't want to see BPO vehicles myself.

Also... Eve is a cool game, I'm really enjoying it myself, but it does NOT translate 1:1 into a first person shooter experience. The closest we can get is that we're all flying frigates pretty much. There is no translation of anything Cruiser+ in Eve (maybe marauder HAVs in chromosome were the closest to anything like a Cruiser imo) and I don't think there ever could/will be. In Eve its a lot easier to have very large ships with massive power differentials due to the 'navy simulator' kind of mechanics that dominate its combat. In an FPS its much more fast-paced low TTK style combat where you should expect anything you have to be relatively much more disposable than things are in Eve. We could possibly expand on the vehicle selection to get more analogues of the BC+ style ships in EVE, although I believe they would be generally very rare, much more than you would see those types of ships in EVE.

I also haven't seen any posts wanting vehicle BPOs in game. I know I certainly don't want to see BPO vehicles myself.

eh... lol. OK, this morning is off to a strange start. Skimming through here to see what I missed over the weekend and you got my attention. Totally misread you and thought you said "killing prostitutes..."



carry on. carry on...

Stuff

If a dropsuit costs 250k isk in modules + 0 isk in suit or it costs 240k in modules + 10k in suit.... whats the difference?

Your example newscast would be exactly the same either way.

[quote=Natu Nobilis]
It does, but this thread nor this section of the forums is the right place to post it.

Hopefully this is because he is taking our advice and revising his ideas for Progression