Good points but wrong forum. You need to speak logic somewhere that people will actually understand it.


PS; the player makes the suit, the suit doesn't make the player. I'll stand by this until the very end.

The change to Armor Repairers is the one that you should focus on.

Basic: 2 -> 2.5 (25% increase)
Advanced: 3 -> 5 (66.7% increase)
Complex: 5 -> 7.5 (50% increase)

It is that exact reasoning that has Shield Extenders being completely terrible for defensive purposes unless it is Complex (aside from the ludicrous fitting cost)

Everyone is calling for tiericide

Not true.

And anyway, even those who do call for it don't always agree on what it actually means.

It was an exaggeration, but it's a pretty common thing for many people in the community to be asking for.

And everyone agrees protostomping is bad, and buffing Prototype gear while nerfing the rest is very clearly NOT going to help with that.

CCP could just simply lower the price of proto suits to make them much more affordable to everyone else. Proto dropsuits gain a lot of power, but also cost too much, allowing only the rich to spam proto and protostomp while the other team can only afford standard and advanced.

Make proto suits much cheaper. More people can use proto suits on the field. A counter to protostomps. Fight fire with fire.

A dust 514 tiericide at the moment feels way entirely outside of the scope of the team's capabilities.

It's true that the change to armor reppers and grenades and grenades favour protostomping.



The change to locus grenades is baffling. Nobody has ever complained of core locus grenades being weak, and standard grenades were in a really good spot.

The locus changes seem completely unnecessary.

I have cores. They're already -really- damn powerful. There's no need to make them even more nuclear whilst making the lower tier ones wimpy firecrackers.

The only tiericide we need is to remove dropsuit tiers and make them all equivalent to the current proto suits, unlocked at level 1 of the appropriate skill. Then the skill should be reworked to provide some skill to the suit, just like every ship operation skill does in EVE. The skill bonuses would be easy: just take the racial assault bonuses and apply those to the regular suits, then give assaults a defensive bonus in addition to the fitting reduction bonus on weapons.

CCP could just simply lower the price of proto suits to make them much more affordable to everyone else. Proto dropsuits gain a lot of power, but also cost too much, allowing only the rich to spam proto and protostomp while the other team can only afford standard and advanced.

Make proto suits much cheaper. More people can use proto suits on the field. A counter to protostomps. Fight fire with fire.

It's already hard to retain new players.

I haven't studied the Alpha hotfix in great detail, but I agree that anything that increases the disparity between standard and proto gear is a bad idea, and will only kill the game faster.

It's already hard to retain new players. Please think carefully about increasing veteran player advantages.

Full tiericide may be beyond the scope of the Dust 514 balance team, but lets not introduce greater imbalance.

I really don't see why people think "protostomping" is a problem. The difference between my prototype fits and advanced fits are usually ~50-150HP, a slightly better weapon and depending on the suit better equipment.

If you're unable to kill me in my prototype suit there's a very small chance that me being ADV will give you much more of an edge.

Tiercide player skill CCP, that'll teach them protostompers for being better!

The locus changes seem completely unnecessary.

I have cores. They're already -really- damn powerful. There's no need to make them even more nuclear whilst making the lower tier ones wimpy firecrackers.

New players? AHAHAHAH.

This game was barely getting looks before fanfest.. who wants to start a game based on building your character over time when, well they dont have much time left...

I don't think dust needs to worry about new players anymore. How about retaining the players who are still here. Now thats a goal to strive for.

Thanks man. I had my laugh for the day.

I really don't see why people think "protostomping" is a problem. The difference between my prototype fits and advanced fits are usually ~50-150HP, a slightly better weapon and depending on the suit better equipment.

If you're unable to kill me in my prototype suit there's a very small chance that me being ADV will give you much more of an edge.

Tiercide player skill CCP, that'll teach them protostompers for being better!

Good points but wrong forum. You need to speak logic somewhere that people will actually understand it.


PS; the player makes the suit, the suit doesn't make the player. I'll stand by this until the very end.

I know it seems like DUST 514 has no new players, but this simply isn't true. I've spent a lot of time recently in Academy battles recording footage for my Youtube tutorial series, and there's still are a lot of new players trying DUST 514. The problem is that they don't stick around longer than a few matches.

Two main reasons (IMHO)

1. They are getting farmed in the Academy by veteran players creating disposable alts.

2. After their first two or three battles, they REALLY get farmed by the rest of the community, and it doesn't get better for 3 - 6 months.

It takes close to 10 matches for new players to earn enough ISK to meaningfully spend their 500k starting SP, and most give up in frustration before they ever reach that point.

SPOILER: Personal opinions follow!!!
If Dust is going to keep its equipment tiers, standard gear should be 85% as effective as Proto-gear, with Advanced gear around 95%. Said another way, proto gear should only be 5% more effective than advanced gear and 15% more effective than standard gear. FPS games aren't supposed to give any player an artificial advantage over another. It's supposed to be a level playing field where player skill triumphs. This is what new players expect when they try out DUST 514, because it's the foundation of every other FPS game.