My idea is that we create a new post-academy and open it up to veterans as well as new players. During this mode, your skills are not applied. Your suits are not there. You get nothing except Frontline outfits. No vehicles. Nothing. Everyone is on the same page. The payout and salvage should be less than regular pubs, of course, but this will be a good place for new players to learn the game even more so than the academy. Not only that, they can interact and squad with veterans and will have the chance to hold their own without getting smashed by high SP mercs.

Whenever they want to dip their toe into a real match, they have the ability to do so and get stomped. But, they then have the chance to go back to this other game mode and get better. IGÇÖm sure there are plenty of veterans that would love this new game mode, too, because it eliminates everything except FPS skill.

I posteda while ago about banning squads in pub matches. i know that ccp hates the idea, but it is the quickest way to fix pubmatches.

I posteda while ago about banning squadsin pub matches. i know that ccp hatesthe idea, but it is the quickest way to fix pubmatches.
Also, make it so you cannot back out once in deployment. make the game an investment, not a choice.

Squads can be just as much of a benefit to a new player as a means to protostomp. That's probably why CCP is against it.

An optional gamemode where squads are disabled would be an alternative... if we had a healthy enough playerbase to attempt such a thing.

Squads can be just as much of a benefit to a new player as a means to protostomp. That's probably why CCP is against it.

An optional gamemode where squads are disabled would be an alternative... if we had a healthy enough playerbase to attempt such a thing.

i disagree. Squads in general hinder the players more than they help. The goal here isn't to see the newbie live longer. i don't know where people get this idea. the idea is to have them PARTICIPATE in this battle. if a squad is against a newbie they spend more time respawning, selecting suits, etc. not participating in the team.
if a squad is For the newbie then the squad destroys everything, and the newbie gets little to no role in the battle flow.

i disagree.
squads in general hinder the players more than they help. the goal here isn't to seethe newbie live longer. i don't know where people get this idea. the idea is to have them PARTICIPATE in this battle. if a squad is against a newbie they spend more time respawning, selecting suits, etc. not participating in the team.
if a squad is For the newbie, then the squad destroyes everything, and the newbie gets little to no role in the battle flow.

You are looking at this from the wrong perspective, I think. When I said squads help newbies, I meant that the players in the squads can communicate with one another; veterans can share fitting suggestions, strategy, map knowledge, etc over comms. I've taught more than one new player little tricks and tips over the course of my Dust lifetime.

Those players continued playing for months and months. Now imagine what would have happened to them if I didn't explain scan profile vs. scan precision or how nanohives distribute ammo or the best time to start firing on an ADS with a swarm launcher or how ScP deal extra damage on headshots or any number of little tidbits of information.

Right now we do not have a comprehensive tutorial for Dust 514. Veterans can be that tutorial, but if new players are barred from joining squads in the most commonly played gamemade (pubs) then that tutorial gets crippled in a big way.

don't know about you, but i did not learn how to use squadfinder or invites until well after the normal person would have quit.
and furthermore what pubstomping squad invites bewbies onto their squad. it's almost unheard of. i used to do exactly as you say, but now i have trouble getting them to respond into an in game mail.

I would actually suggest the opposite, emm. The one thing I love about Planetside 2 on PS4 is that it automatically puts you in a squad. I think the academy should do the same thing to get these new players getting together right away. You always have the option to leave the squad, but in my mind, the only reason to do that is to start your own squad with friends.

This defies literally all the logic.

Even if newbros are getting nothing but kill assists they are hearing about the nuances of the game. They see orders being thrown around. They see OBs getting dropped in conjunction with scans for more effect. They learn that grouping up to make a coordinated movement is vital to success.

sadly, the don't see any orders, they don't know that equipment is used to scan enemies. they only know their rifle, and if they are smart, some of them correlate the dots on their tacnet to specific timings, and they get to see the battle. this isnot what we want. new players need to participate, and if i did everything you just posted as a noob, the game would be extremely boring, mand have little to no incentive to keep playing

Sorry for the longwinded post, but take this as your warning that IGÇÖm going to take my time explaining what I recently experienced.

After being part of this game since closed betaGÇöI think November 2011GÇöI decided to create three new characters and enter the academy. I wanted to see what the NPE was like and get back to the GÇ£rootsGÇ¥ of this game. What occurred opened my eyes to some positives and negatives of this game.

First, the NPE (in the academy) was a very fun experience. It was a breath of fresh air to know that matchmaking actually worked and that everyone was on the same level of all-time war points. I didnGÇÖt experience any lag issues, hit detection issues, GÇ£weird things,GÇ¥ or spamming of any sort. Everyone ran Frontline suits or some of the MK-II stuff that Dust gives you when you first start. I only ran Frontline, and I did not put my SP toward anything.

My first observation was around the quality of gameplay in the sense there were no frame rate problems, hit detection issues, etc. My second observation was that I was truly playing against new players. I thought the academy was going to be filled with people like me that just wanted to get back and witnessGÇöfirst handGÇöwhat the NPE is about. Nope. Situational awareness does not exist in the academy. These players had no idea how to read their mini-maps. I wasnGÇÖt cloaked, again no skills put into anything, but these mercs would run right by me without thinking twice. Because of this, I went 76-13 with one character. I felt bad after a while, and even let some enemies run right by me without engaging them.

This, of course, continued until I was kicked out of the academy. I still did not put any SP toward anything and entered my first GÇ£realGÇ¥ match. Well, as everyone can guess, I was slaughtered. The character that went 76-13 in the academy went 1-16 outside. Not only that, I experienced all the game issues that werenGÇÖt there in the academy, like bad hit detection, GÇ£weird things,GÇ¥ and plenty of spamming.

The first game was actually a pretty interesting experience where a couple players from a well-known PC corp red lined us and then proceeded to run into our red line and kill everyone. LetGÇÖs be clear, I could care less about all of that. I have experienced that from the very beginning, and itGÇÖs like water off a duckGÇÖs back. What is worrisome is that I know truly brand new players, just coming out of the academy, experience the exact same thing. I donGÇÖt think I would ever come back, and IGÇÖm going to make a wild guess that there are plenty of people that try this game and feel the same way after a couple of GÇ£realGÇ¥ matches.

All of this is well and good, and IGÇÖm positive CCP knows that the NPE needs fixed. So, my idea is this: we need a better game mode for those coming out of the academy. My idea is that we create a new post-academy and open it up to veterans as well as new players. During this mode, your skills are not applied. Your suits are not there. You get nothing except Frontline outfits. No vehicles. Nothing. Everyone is on the same page. The payout and salvage should be less than regular pubs, of course, but this will be a good place for new players to learn the game even more so than the academy. Not only that, they can interact and squad with veterans and will have the chance to hold their own without getting smashed by high SP mercs.

Whenever they want to dip their toe into a real match, they have the ability to do so and get stomped. But, they then have the chance to go back to this other game mode and get better. IGÇÖm sure there are plenty of veterans that would love this new game mode, too, because it eliminates everything except FPS skill.

The truth is that this game will never survive without an influx of new players, and right nowGÇöafter walking in their shoesGÇöthere is no way weGÇÖre going to keep the majority of them when all they do is come into the real matches and die. I highly suggest that a lot of you veterans do what I did and play with a character that has no SP. DonGÇÖt change the Frontline suits; donGÇÖt apply any SP; and just play a regular match. You will then witness what a lot of new players go through.

Let me know your thoughts, ask any questions you want, and as always, Happy Gaming!!!

---
This has been my experience when I made my other two alts.

You could tell who the vets were (I went something like 30/10)

My biggest surprise was how much fun this game mode was. Being on equal footing I wasn't worried about scouts or proto gear or any other legit but frustrating tactics

There should be a "frontline/militia" only mode. It still won't be as easy for new players because vets will still have an experience and gameplay advantage but at least they can compete with their low skills and learn without getting their face smashed in.

Sorry for the longwinded post, but take this as your warning that IGÇÖm going to take my time explaining what I recently experienced.

After being part of this game since closed betaGÇöI think November 2011GÇöI decided to create three new characters and enter the academy. I wanted to see what the NPE was like and get back to the GÇ£rootsGÇ¥ of this game. What occurred opened my eyes to some positives and negatives of this game.
..................................

The truth is that this game will never survive without an influx of new players, and right nowGÇöafter walking in their shoesGÇöthere is no way weGÇÖre going to keep the majority of them when all they do is come into the real matches and die. I highly suggest that a lot of you veterans do what I did and play with a character that has no SP. DonGÇÖt change the Frontline suits; donGÇÖt apply any SP; and just play a regular match. You will then witness what a lot of new players go through.

Let me know your thoughts, ask any questions you want, and as always, Happy Gaming!!!

I agree with others that this is an incredibly well thought out post.
That said, Iddon't particularly care for the idea of a "pure fps" game mode.
I've said it many times before, but for a game that was intended as a mmo/fps blend and a "boots-on-the-ground" companion to eve with strategy and RPG elements (supposedly) making up the other half, a lot seems to have been done to attract your RPG/strategy types, but once you're here, you get left out in the cold and its quickly explained that this is not an mmo, not a strategy game, eve link doesn't matter because "this isn't eve" and "you want an mmo? Buy a PCand go play eve" and even rattata cries out"this isn't eve. That's not what hilmar veigar told us, but its something you quickly learn. The law of the land is "shooter or go home" and many of us don'thave fps skill because we came here for something more. Some of us stick around in the hopes that it will grow to something more. I see great potential in this game, but not by making it more uninviting to anybody not accustomed to shooters. For my part I love games like tenchu or MGS and I'm great at them, so a minja was a clear choice for me after testing it out, but once cloaks came out the minja became largely obsolete and I got beat down with corps that would have begged me to join before there were cloaks but instead the new message for a minja was "shooter or go home" and I had to start playing assaults to keep in the game. This never has been addressed, and makes dust ever more unwelcoming, even for those of us who remember before combat rifles, and indeed before the scout had a minmatar counterpart. more fps isnt a good solution i think when this game is already too little mmo/strategy. I think instead of being a lobby shooter like it is, there should be more options available to those of us who aren't good at the point and shoot stuff. I'd like to take a space elevator to a planet and explore, treasure hunting or questing. I'd like to pilot a mobile command center, a rapid deployment vehicle, or place turrets where desired.II'd like to see the non-fps elements added in or put back in rather than see this game become even more of a shooter. Maybe nobody would care, but with how every update in the past year has made this game more shooter and less anything else, or otherwise just worked on improving the shooter aspects... If this game became even more of a pure fps and less anything else that was advertised to us... Maybe it would be good riddance for a lot of the playerbase, but I'd probably leave dust for good

Greiv, you bring up great points that I continuously forget about. I didn't come to Dust because of the mmo aspect. I moved from the Battlefield series over here because Dust was a FREE FPS. Granted, I had never heard of EvE, CCP, or anything of the sort.

But let me ask you this: do you think CCP would garner more players on PS3 and Dust 514 if they expanded the FPS model or the MMO model? Let's take into account that they can't do both at the same time, which is the obvious best choice in my mind.

Again, I'm not from an MMO background. So, in my opinion--on the PS3--I think they will attract and keep more players by making Dust a better FPS. Then, after they get a solid foundation there, they can move on to expand the MMO aspects. A lot of people disagree with this thought process because Dust 514 was sold as a direct link to EvE; some even bought PS3s just to play it.

My opinion is that we have to forget what we were sold in the very beginning. We need to move forward from where we currently sit, and that is a poor FPS with no MMO. Where do we go from here? I say we put everything into making the FPS aspect better, especially from a NPE. That's the key. Attract and retain new players so that the game will generate more money, which will then allow CCP to hire more people, which will then allow them to focus on more aspects of the game, which will then make a better experience for everyone; that includes FPS and MMO seeking individuals.