So I've been thinking a lot lately while I've been playing faction warefare in EVE about how risk vs. reward works in DUST or rather, how it doesn't. This isn't a nerf this buff that thread, but rather a few changes to make more gameplay styles viable full time.
Some of the basic spots I see problems are
Let us rewind a bit, to my recent experiences in EVE. Mainly in FW.
Recently, the remains of the Minmatar militia have been plexing(Basically orbiting something in space for a set amount of time in low sec and being rewarded with LP. Every time someone does this, the system becomes more contested.) in the system Helgatild. The I an in alliance attempted several times to fight them on the plexes to stop them from flipping the system.
Our initial attempt was 6-7 of us in Imperial Navy Slicers generally fit to be fast with good range but are very weak and cost quite a lot for a frigate. They had roughly 15 cheaply fit Merlins with remote shield logis in Bursts. They roughly had twice as many pilots, but their ships cost 5X less then ours and thus, they won the "ISK war".
After reshipping and getting a few more people, we still wanted to try running the quick Slicers, although some of us brought other fast "kitey" ships. When we all get back in Helgatild they now had 20 people in system. We had 15. We sought the opportunity to get into a novice plex that just opened (only frigs allowed) because they were split up in the large(anything can be in) and the medium(cruisers and smaller can be in).
This meant that our fast, long range ships can dictate range, when you warp into a plex there is always an acceleration gate that takes anyone in at the same spot. We see their fleet warp on our directional scan and burn away from them in a group so we don't get tackled. We killed off several of them that burned away from their group but we warped off with only three casualties on our side. And so this time we won the "ISK war", but they still are plexing the system.
Their ships were very cheap, yet effective in larger numbers. My corp had a stockpile of Tristans(Gallente frigates) and Inquisitors(Amarr logistics frigates) and we attempt to use the same tactics against them with little success we had 20 while their fleet grew to 40.
We fought several more times after this, even using their exact fleet composition "Ghetto Merlins". The entire constant of us not being able to win the fight is that we were outnumbered. Even though their ships were much cheaper in most cases they had numbers.
In every single fight we knew how much we were all risking and what we were going against, even with being outnumbered. We have a set level of risk and a clear reward.
Now, how does this have anything to do with DUST?
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Let's start with vehicles. So a pilot calls out a neutron blaster fit Madrugar which would cost 300-400K depending on module choices. That is what he is risking. He knows that they will get roughly 150K up to 350K if they're lucky.
With the way payments are, there's very little room to loose tanks without supplemental income. It would be completely understandable for a tank to die to a single force of equally risking or skilled opponent or to a larger force of less risking/skilled opponents but with the way AV is you're very likely to lose at least one tank a game if not more.
Even if it may seem to an outside player that the pilot is just a
no skill kill farmer he still is filling a role that exists in the game and should still be treated no differently than a logi.
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On to scouts.
Many people claim that the scout is low risk and they have every inclination to do so, but for the wrong reasons in many cases. The scouts currently are good at two things Scanning and assassination. Many scouts' preferred method is using remotes however as anyone who played competitively in early uprising would tell you, they were used just as often on slayer Caldari assault fits. Even though remotes are a lot easier to use actively on a scout due to increased mobility it's still the remotes.
I hate spawning into remote just as much as anyone else, as it's very
low risk behavior. I primarily run an almost all EWAR scanning scout to provide intel to my squad and as such I usually have high KD/R because I can pick and choose my fights, this may be viewed as low risk but I'm in a very weak suit that pretty much any decent fit suit would have no problems killing. This instance I find
mostly balanced in terms of risk vs. reward. Any mistake and this suit is dead nearly instantly and it gets very few WPs.
But maybe I'm biased.
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Snipers..... Need I say more?
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Having a decent balanced risk/reward system in place would mean more diversity as the people who chose not to do what they enjoy simply because they're limited by their wallets will be able to do what they find enjoyable in the game instead of worrying so much about having to run what is
efficient or
good.
How do you guys feel about risk vs. reward right now? What are your ideas on fixing some of these problems?
**** the meta. **** the FoTM. **** what anyone else does. Just have fun with what time we have left in this game.
Quick edit: I typed this up while sleep deprived and unable to sleep from a headache so I apologize if bad post was bad.