DUST Search - A change that will radically improve Dust tactical gameplay

KingBabar wrote:

For me its always been game mechanics and fun over lore and realism, any day, any game. I don't really care how one would justify it but I'm pretty confident that a "reasonable" explanation can be thought out.

I simply want a height limit to drop uplinks. About 2 stories or so higher than the adjacent ground. The rooftop/tower camping mentality is a virus that this game sorely need to lose.

Ambush: Flies up on tower or climbs up on rooftop and drop links. The game slows down to a crawl, its very boring for the guys on the ground having to either just get out of reach, or climb a ladder which is camped from the top. Its also extremely boring for the few guys who prefer a short range face to face fight. What happens when someone is brave enough to jump down? They get insta dropped by the 10 enemies waiting below.

Domination: Much the same situation as Ambush, only slightly worse. The first team with the good DS squad will normally sit up there raining down death and boredom to both teams. very often in both Ambush and Domination, its the roofcamping team that loses, at least that's my personal experience.

Skirmish: Fly around the map at the start of game and place an uplink or two close to but high up from all the objectives and you're more or less guaranteed a win as long as your bluedots at least tries to hack stuff. In this game mode I don't have an especially good argument against it, cause in skirmish this can be countered by flying around dropping flux nades.

In Dom and Bush you can easily get into situations where its impossible to get them of the roof short of getting an OB, there will be multiple forge fatties waiting to shoot anything out of the skies long before you can fly up there.

Consequences for gameplay: Bare with me on this one. Try to imagine what it will mean for the game to not allow uplinks in high places.

1. Deployment of uplinks would be much more tactical, rather than the usual "put them on top". Ideally, uplinks should scale from militia to proto by getting less and less DB, and possible spawn time/numbers too. Imagine a 15 DB proto uplink that can only be detected by either a Gal super scanner or not least by actually looking at it. This should scale downwards and we'd have a sort of Equipment-Ewar going on. This will furthermore reward situational awareness and people would need to interpret enemy movement. Where can that link be?

2. Now camping on top of something would have a risk/reward factor, well, sort off. If you do set up with multiple hives, a dude with a scanner, a dude with a forge, a sniper and whatnot. If someone either falls down or get countersniped, it's gonna be a beach to get back up there again. He'd have to call in a new DS and so on.

3. Will this change average player mentality? "Nah, its such a hassle flying/climbing up there I'd rather actually push the point and go for the win instead of pathetically trying to pad my KDR..."

I sure can dream....


Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 1 post(s)
Jadd Hatchen KILL-EM-QUICK 643	Posted - 2014.11.06 16:40:00 - [1] - Quote KingBabar wrote: For me its always been game mechanics and fun over lore and realism, any day, any game. I don't really care how one would justify it but I'm pretty confident that a "reasonable" explanation can be thought out. I simply want a height limit to drop uplinks. About 2 stories or so higher than the adjacent ground. The rooftop/tower camping mentality is a virus that this game sorely need to lose. Ambush: Flies up on tower or climbs up on rooftop and drop links. The game slows down to a crawl, its very boring for the guys on the ground having to either just get out of reach, or climb a ladder which is camped from the top. Its also extremely boring for the few guys who prefer a short range face to face fight. What happens when someone is brave enough to jump down? They get insta dropped by the 10 enemies waiting below. Domination: Much the same situation as Ambush, only slightly worse. The first team with the good DS squad will normally sit up there raining down death and boredom to both teams. very often in both Ambush and Domination, its the roofcamping team that loses, at least that's my personal experience. Skirmish: Fly around the map at the start of game and place an uplink or two close to but high up from all the objectives and you're more or less guaranteed a win as long as your bluedots at least tries to hack stuff. In this game mode I don't have an especially good argument against it, cause in skirmish this can be countered by flying around dropping flux nades. In Dom and Bush you can easily get into situations where its impossible to get them of the roof short of getting an OB, there will be multiple forge fatties waiting to shoot anything out of the skies long before you can fly up there. Consequences for gameplay: Bare with me on this one. Try to imagine what it will mean for the game to not allow uplinks in high places. 1. Deployment of uplinks would be much more tactical, rather than the usual "put them on top". Ideally, uplinks should scale from militia to proto by getting less and less DB, and possible spawn time/numbers too. Imagine a 15 DB proto uplink that can only be detected by either a Gal super scanner or not least by actually looking at it. This should scale downwards and we'd have a sort of Equipment-Ewar going on. This will furthermore reward situational awareness and people would need to interpret enemy movement. Where can that link be? 2. Now camping on top of something would have a risk/reward factor, well, sort off. If you do set up with multiple hives, a dude with a scanner, a dude with a forge, a sniper and whatnot. If someone either falls down or get countersniped, it's gonna be a beach to get back up there again. He'd have to call in a new DS and so on. 3. Will this change average player mentality? "Nah, its such a hassle flying/climbing up there I'd rather actually push the point and go for the win instead of pathetically trying to pad my KDR..." I sure can dream.... Naw you are wrong... Why? Because the style of gaming that CCP develops is known as "emergent gameplay." What is this? It's the idea that they give us tools and an environment and it is up to us to decide how to use those tools in that environment. Example: During the original beta there was no spawning in the MCC, you started in one area on the ground. I immediately took to liking dropships and the first thing I did was explore the limits of where one could be taken. This led to the discovery that I could land one on top of the MCC and even deploy uplinks there. This then became such a common practice in beta that when the game went live, they added the internal spawn to the MCC. Instead of denying players something that they have created or discovered in the game, how about finding a way to merge it more fully with the game? In this case you don't like the deployables being in places that are not normally accessible to a solo guy on the ground. So there are two current solutions: 1 - Get an EMP strike if you are in a PC match or in FW match. This removes most deployables in its area of effect. 2 - Use your team to coordinate a dropship to remove them. Use and assault dropship to just destroy them directly or use a standard dropship loaded with guys to take over the position yourself. As for "merging" this concept of 3 dimensional play to the game... How about suggesting a new suit type? Make it either a medium or light suit type that has a short "super-jump" or "flightpack" capability. The idea is you charge up (or have a starting capacitance) the "jump/pack" and then look up at the direction you wish to go in and activate it. Away you go and you leap tall buildings in a single bound! Afterall, if these are supposed to be radically powered armor dropsuits, why not beef up a version to be able to do "hops" like this? The idea would be that you sacrifice some slots/armor/shields to gain the ability to "jump/pack" a huge distance into the air. The as you fall, you can steer (maybe give them even more steering control than normal in freefall) and land on top of a target using the usual inertial dampeners that all suits have. They would be limited to light weapons and sidearms and be a truly "assault" version of the medium suit. Just give them a lot less high power and low power slots so that they can't tank like the grounded version of the assault suits. Call them something like "jump-pack assault dropsuits." Walla! Issue solved by ADDING more stuff and options to the game rather than NERFING stuff already in the game.