DUST Search - FutureDust: How can we strengthen the EVE lore connection...

Greiv Rabbah wrote:

Vell0cet wrote:

18. WoW-style gear-level coloring (e.g. in the killfeed). While not from EVE, I think this is something we should steal from WoW. Initially I was against this, but I think it would radically improve the NPE so players understand when theyGÇÖre being killed with higher-tiered gear. MIL = White, STD = Green, ADV = Blue, PRO = Purple, Experimental = Yellow, Officer = Orange. These colors have become pretty standard across the gaming industry and I think it would probably help DUST be more accessible.
(continued)

just about everything else i think was perfect, but why not have it mirror wow directly as white=mlt green=std yellow=adv red=pro purple=experimental blue=officer

oh and also how is having 5 damage types more simple than having 4? and the tactical overlay would be awesome always. you could activate it by pressing O on the controller while not at an installation.

And rattati, i forgot about clothes/faces.
Right now dust mercs with faces are an exclusive club. you can easily tell players with strong ties to EVE by our faces. I would like my Dust character to have a face, but more importantly i want to be able to wear outfits in social areas(like my MQ) or have modifications like my robot arm applied to my dust character (I bought the EVE CE, I'm ***still*** holding onto that code, PLEASE let me use it to give my merc a robot arm.) clothes and prosthetics dont use assets that dont already exist, in fact theyre in EVE already

[This line assumed to be filled with more obsessing on wanting my robot arm from eve to be applicable to my dust merc]


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Vell0cet OSG Planetary Operations Covert Intervention 2802	Posted - 2015.03.21 07:08:00 - [1] - Quote This is a great topic for discussion and IGÇÖm very happy CCP Rattati opened it up for the roundtable. IGÇÖm glad weGÇÖre continuing it here on the forums. This is an area that I really would love to see CCP Shanghai focus on over the next year. IGÇÖm going to post a lot of stuff that probably isnGÇÖt feasible with the current level of resources, but my hope is that the fact that DUST has been profitable and that CCP Iceland are warming up to it, we may see more resources coming in over the next year or two. Some of this stuff may only work on PS4/PC but IGÇÖll include it here to maybe help inspire the team about things they can work towards going forward. 1. Full racial parity in heavy weapons, vehicles and turrets with ACTUAL ART ASSETS. This is my #1 wish for DUST. It will finally feel like itGÇÖs officially left GÇ£betaGÇ¥ once we have racial parity across these areas. This is critical to have at launch for any next-gen platform. We should get these assets into DUST ASAP so we can balance them to have them ready for a relaunch on a new platform. We need symmetry across the races, the game feels really incomplete without them. 2. Capacitors for suits and vehicles. I started writing up a long proposal for CCP Rattati, but got busy and still havenGÇÖt finished it yet. Capacitors add a ton of depth to combat, tactics and logistics. Imagine if rep tools, scanners, etc. had to manage their capacitor. That solves a lot of the GÇ£YouGÇÖve been scannedGÇ¥ spam if players have to make choices about when they want to use their capacitor resource. Logistic suits would have a large cap pool and regen, so this will help differentiate the suits for their roles and reduce the effectiveness of other suits at using this equipment. Capacitors add a ton of depth and tactics to vehicle gameplay. You would have a lot more interesting fits, with some capstable fits while others are focused on bursts of power until capped out. The ability to cripple vehicles would add a ton of balance to the AV-Vehicle fight, allowing for vehicles to be very strong, but vulnerable to being tackled and neuted at the same time. ThatGÇÖs rich, fun and satisfying combat. 3. EVE-style eWar. Neuts, webs, target painters (targets take extra damage, can produce a lockable location on the map for a squadmate with swarms, an orbital, and even artillery if thatGÇÖs ever added), ECM (breaks locks and has a chance to disable your tacnet so youGÇÖre dependant on your eyes, like an EVE-style flash-bang), tracking disruptors (reduces the range/tracking speed of turrets), dampeners (reduce the range of tacnet and locking range for reptools and swarms). Some of this stuff could be implemented as small ewar turrets (great for LAVGÇÖs, and even possibly dropships), as new grenade types, proxy mines and handheld equipment like the scanner/rep-tool. We can add modules that support or protect against these as well so you can enhance these or counter them. 4. Player-owned drones. Drones are the primary weapons platform for the Gallante. The fact that we donGÇÖt have them is a big reason why Gallante tend to be a bit weaker than the other races. IGÇÖm pretty certain the PS3 canGÇÖt handle these, but they should be a priority for a hardware migration. There is a lot that can be done here. Everything from having a robot horse like thing like this that acts like a mobile nanohive, to different kinds of ewar drones that web, neut, scan, etc. I picture them being like fast moving spheres that orbit their target in a fast erratic pattern, avoiding traveling in front of you while applying their effect (best countered with AoE weapons, or help from a friendly). We could have drones that act like stationary turrets that can be anchored to floors, walls, ceilings etc., scout drones that the player can manually control that might be able to detect cloaked players via heat signature or drones that repair shields or armor. This would also add a ton of depth and variety to combat. 5. Eventually we need Amarr and Minmatar sockets and MCCs/RDVs. The game really feels incomplete without them. Any new socket development should work on these races before adding more Caldari and Gallente stuff. 6. Remote shield reps. For parity and balance. You should be able to fit a heavy shield buffer and get shield reps; that should be a viable gameplay style. 7. More modules & skills from EVE. Things like resistance plating/shield hardening for specific damage types (and a version that adds limited resistances to all damage types). Each resistance type would have itGÇÖs own skill for armor and shield (we need more SP sinks). Also modules that increase weapon range (for balance purposes these should probably only affect falloff range and not optimal). 8. A badass, story-based tutorial featuring Aura. She should have some GLaDOS-style dark humor where she keeps killing you in the tutorial, apologies, but ends up doing it again (e.g. this could be used to explain the spawning mechanics/uplinks etc.). A well-crafted tutorial would likely bring in a ton of revenue in the long run as it would surely improve player retention. Yes most players are familiar with FPS mechanics, but DUST has a lot of depth which is its strongest selling point. If itGÇÖs never explained to the player though then this depth is lost on the player and actually becomes a liability. Players should be walked through the gameplay mechanics. Ranges (optimal, falloff), damage profiles, sig radius, scanners, equipment, calling in vehicles, orbitals etc. should all be covered. Supply depots (switching suits), and CRUs should be explained. Ideally they should be given the opportunity to try a wide range of weapons in the tutorial too, just to show stuff off. This will take resources, but the cost is well-worth-it. (continued) Best PvE idea ever!
Vell0cet OSG Planetary Operations Covert Intervention 2802	Posted - 2015.03.21 07:10:00 - [2] - Quote 9. EVE assets in DUST. It would be great if we could have some EVE models brought into DUST in the form of wrecked ships/drones on the battlefield. Light drones from EVE in particular might be good choices (a Hobgoblin is 30m along itGÇÖs axis apparently). The sense of scale it would bring to the game would be really fantastic, and since the models already exist, it would be a matter of damaging/scuffing up the models and figuring how best to arrange them on the landscape. Light drones might work well for small sockets, and frigate wrecks could make for awesome medium sockets. This would be so immersive and amazing, but CCP would really have to respect the scale ( cool link showing scale of EVE ships: https://youtu.be/bac6yvYzaVI?t=3m55s). Frigates and drones make the most sense for the time being. 10. Along the lines of #9 having a connection to fights in EVE. Ideally when a ship explodes over a planet where a battle is happening there would be an explosion in the skybox followed by meteorites of the debris in the skybox. A minute later flaming debris would rain down on the battlefield. We could have some generic debris from each of the 4 races (and possibly a 5th catchall set of debris for ORE, pirate factions etc.) and whatever was destroyed in space, that raceGÇÖs debris would rain down. Now thatGÇÖs a hell-of-a-way to join two games in one universe. From a coding standpoint this is pretty reasonable. When a ship in EVE explodes near a planet it generates a CREST call to DUST passing in the planet identifier as well as the race of the destroyed ship. DUST takes the call and triggers the appropriate event. 11. GÇ£EquipmentGÇ¥ for vehicles. This would be analogous to the GÇ£utility high slotGÇ¥ on some ships in EVE. Can be used for Ewar/remote repping turrets, scanners, CRUs, etc. 12. Rigs for suits and vehicles. Rigs boost some stats but have drawbacks to others (e.g. armor vs. speed, shield vs. profile, damage vs. weapon fitting cost increases, capacitor vs. PG/CPU reduction of suit/vehicle). More skills can be added for each of these that reduce the drawbacks somewhat. 13. A genuine mass stat. This is the stat that speed, jump height, strafing inertia, stamina use, speed of vehicle ingress/egress etc. would use to derive those values. These stats can be derived from the mass stat at fitting time, so it shouldnGÇÖt impact gameplay performance. It would help keep things inline with Newtonian physics and keep a sense of verisimilitude to the universe. 14. Command suits/vehicles. These would have EVE-style warfare links that provide a bonus to your squamates who are within x radius of your position (maybe 50-100m). Command suits are expensive, have a ton of survivability but are slower with low damage output (perhaps limited to sidearms only). Warfare links would boost things like profile, speed, armor, shields, passive scan range/precision, etc. You can add leadership skills as well as a bunch of warfare link skills (more large SP sinks). 15. Visual Killmails. Whenever you get a kill the data is saved to the server and at the end of the match the killer (not the victim) can view all of the kill cams for each kill. She can save a limited number of her favorite kills to the server (maybe like 5). She can purchase additional kill cam slots for AUR to permanently increase this capacity. These clips can be linked in chat or mails, so you can share them with your friends (or taunt your victims). That brings me to: 16. Bounties. Like in EVE you can place bounties on other players. Every death debits some of that amount from the bounty total to the killer. The person issuing the bounty is rewarded with a link for every kill his bounty paid for, so he can enjoy the satisfaction of watching his victim dying. The bounty system should mirror EVE so itGÇÖs never profitable to have a friend kill you for the bounty over and over. That would always result in a net ISK loss. 17. Damage type icons. In EVE there are color-coded icons for each damage type. Damage types work a little differently in DUST (which is one of those areas where simplification of EVEGÇÖs systems makes a lot of sense). We should use these and put little damage type icons in the corner of each weapon, to clearly identify what damage type it does. 18. WOW-style gear-level coloring (e.g. in the killfeed). While not from EVE, I think this is something we should steal from WOW. Initially I was against this, but I think it would radically improve the NPE so players understand when theyGÇÖre being killed with higher-tiered gear. MIL = White, STD = Green, ADV = Blue, PRO = Purple, Experimental = Yellow, Officer = Orange. These colors have become pretty standard across the gaming industry and I think it would probably help DUST be more accessible. 19. Better UI for stats of suit. I think the fitting screen, and the info screens could use some love. On a related note, I think adding a UI like EVEGÇÖs ISIS system (it was in EVE before the terror group stole the acronym) would be really valuable. (continued) Best PvE idea ever!
Vell0cet OSG Planetary Operations Covert Intervention 2802	Posted - 2015.03.21 07:11:00 - [3] - Quote 20. ISK efficiency. Seriously, why isnGÇÖt this in the game yet? It discourages protostomping, and is a stat new players will usually do well with since theyGÇÖre running cheap stuff. Throw them a bone! Help a noobGÇÖs ego out! This measures the ISK value of suits/vehicles destroyed (BPOGÇÖs count as the value of what the equivalent ISK version would have cost) - the ISK value of what was lost. If logiGÇÖs are concerned about this stat being low for them, you could give them credit in the form of a GÇ£guardianGÇ¥ bonus for when theyGÇÖre repping someone who getGÇÖs a kill, a percent is added to the logiGÇÖs column. 21. A test map. It would be awesome if we could deploy to an empty map with team killing on. You have infinite SP, ISK, LP, access to experimental/officer gear, etc. Anything you do on the map has no effect on your stats in any way. You earn no SP, WPs, ISK or mission credit. You can deploy with friends and team killing is on. This allows you to test different fits, play with weapons, find out what you like Best PvE idea ever!
Vell0cet OSG Planetary Operations Covert Intervention 2808	Posted - 2015.03.21 15:45:00 - [4] - Quote Greiv Rabbah wrote: Vell0cet wrote: 18. WoW-style gear-level coloring (e.g. in the killfeed). While not from EVE, I think this is something we should steal from WoW. Initially I was against this, but I think it would radically improve the NPE so players understand when theyGÇÖre being killed with higher-tiered gear. MIL = White, STD = Green, ADV = Blue, PRO = Purple, Experimental = Yellow, Officer = Orange. These colors have become pretty standard across the gaming industry and I think it would probably help DUST be more accessible. (continued) just about everything else i think was perfect, but why not have it mirror wow directly as white=mlt green=std yellow=adv red=pro purple=experimental blue=officer oh and also how is having 5 damage types more simple than having 4? and the tactical overlay would be awesome always. you could activate it by pressing O on the controller while not at an installation. And rattati, i forgot about clothes/faces. Right now dust mercs with faces are an exclusive club. you can easily tell players with strong ties to EVE by our faces. I would like my Dust character to have a face, but more importantly i want to be able to wear outfits in social areas(like my MQ) or have modifications like my robot arm applied to my dust character (I bought the EVE CE, I'm *still* holding onto that code, PLEASE let me use it to give my merc a robot arm.) clothes and prosthetics dont use assets that dont already exist, in fact theyre in EVE already [This line assumed to be filled with more obsessing on wanting my robot arm from eve to be applicable to my dust merc] Yeah it should mirror whatever the industry convention is. I'm sure I misremembered the correct color progression. As for the 5 damage types, it's a lot simpler than EVE because in that game ammo does a blend of multiple damage types, and this blend changes based on the range. Some ammo types even do a blend of 3 damage types. There is a ton of complexity there and is a perfect example of CCP Rattati's point about not bringing in everything to DUST 1 to 1. What we have now works well for a FPS and is a good example of how to simplify EVE's complexity without loosing depth. Another example is module overheating in EVE. This is another system that wouldn't work in an FPS. It requires too much micromanagement to work for a game like DUST. We have overheat in this game in a way that makes sense for an FPS. Best PvE idea ever!
Vell0cet OSG Planetary Operations Covert Intervention 2808	Posted - 2015.03.21 16:03:00 - [5] - Quote Breakin Stuff wrote: There is literally mountains of ways to increase New Eden immersion. Unfortunately most of them require game additions and overhauls that have either been problematic or have proven impossible on the PS3. Like adding more weapons. It adds yet more sh*t that the database system has to page through and front-load to matches despite the fact that we need them. The more fittings and variables that have to be loaded the more performance suffers. It's obstacles like this that I wish players were more aware of. It's like the lock warning for dropships thing. Most players are still unaware that this was tested and went rather disastrously. Knowing where the system's ability to handle modifications to the client and page from the server would be IMMENSELY helpful when providing input and ideas for integration of more neat new eden things. There is one way to radically improve the database issue. If we had a boosters as a PLEX equivalent in DUST, then we could make a few significant changes. We could delete all AUR gear (excluding BPO's). Existing gear would be migrated to the equivalent ISK version. That would radically clean up the database, and simplify the market screen, as well as eliminate the issue of having to create new fittings just to use up AUR gear from boxes/salvage when many of us are already capped out on fittings as it is. It would also open the door to unlocking all tiers at level 1 of a skill (since we've removed the main reason for AUR gear). I think this simplification would actually increase revenue to CCP. Best PvE idea ever!
Vell0cet OSG Planetary Operations Covert Intervention 2809	Posted - 2015.03.21 20:10:00 - [6] - Quote Diving even further down the rabbit hole. There are a couple more very long-term ideas of where DUST could take inspiration from EVE. The first is the idea of building GÇ£sandcastlesGÇ¥ on our districts. Ideally, we could have a mode similar to how Planetary Interaction works in EVE where we could arrange buildings and other structures on the map. There would be a central, upgradable structure for every district like the command center in EVEGÇÖs PI system. This would have PG and CPU that increases with each upgrade tier. We could place a variety of different destroyable structures on the map, each with itGÇÖs own ISK and PG/CPU cost. Some examples are: 1. Resource collection. This would generate resources to sell for ISK. A gang of fragile drones would collect resources on the map and ferry them back to the structure. Also it might be possible to have automated drones that fly into space to mine asteroids and bring the material back to the resource collector. These of course could be killed by EVE pilots. 2. Manufacturing. This could be used to produce warbarge components for corp fleets. 3. Turrets. These can be placed strategically around the base. 4. Defense drones. These would deploy from a drone hangar and assist against any hostile attack 5. Structures to combat ships in EVE. The battle commander could instruct these to lock ships in EVE and fire. The physical scaling of the weapons should be appropriate. Turrets and missile batteries should probably be equivalent in physical size (and damage) to medium turrets on EVE ships. Reference that video I linked for the size of these relative to people. They should be the long-range versions so beam lasers, artillery, rail, and missiles. EVE pilots would see theyGÇÖve been locked on their overview. Imagine fighting on the ground and seeing enormous turret/missile batteries firing at the sky. We could even have orbital drone hangars that launch drones into orbit to attack hostile EVE ships. These could chase ships around the system like how fighters in EVE work. There doesnGÇÖt need to be a ground fight for these to activate either. If an EVE pilot who is hostile to your corp (via corp standings or war decs) lands on grid with your planet, these systems would automatically engage the enemy even if no DUST mercs were on the ground. 6. Infrastructure. You could place power stations or CPU mainframe structures on the map. If an enemy team blows these up, you base will loose CPU/PG and some structures would offline. 7. Shield generators. These would be the mechanism to allow fights to take place at certain times so bases canGÇÖt be ninja-ganked at 4:30 in the AM. You could have strontium bays that need to be stocked to allow for this mechanism. 8. Ewar turrets and augmenters. These could do things like increase the sig profile of attackers, dampen the profile of friendlies, improve passive scan radius, actively scan a certain area, neut enemies, etc. 9. Structures that help EVE. These could provide system-wide bonuses to a variety of things for friendly ships. If we had that kind of depth to building/destroying sandcastles, PC would be so rich and fun. This game would really be in a league of itGÇÖs own in terms of FPS games. It would be a major ISK-sink for corps as well. This vision would require large battles with potentially hundreds of mercs to really make sense. I donGÇÖt expect to see for a very long time, but itGÇÖs part of vision I picture for DUST/Legion in 10+ years. You could imagine how this could interact with EVE sovereignty mechanics as well. One Universe // One War and all of that. The other main idea for linking the games is outlined in the link in my sig. The idea being that you could have cooperative PvE between EVE and DUST via exploration of special sites in EVE. This would be analogous to running GÇ£dungeonsGÇ¥ in other MMOs. Best PvE idea ever!
Vell0cet OSG Planetary Operations Covert Intervention 2810	Posted - 2015.03.22 14:52:00 - [7] - Quote CELESTA AUNGM wrote: GÇªWow. Don't mistake me for being ANTI-Lore (I'm not). But,GÇª I assumed from his words and from the discussion attempts in the Fanfest video, that Rattati was looking for a way to bring EVE Lore atmosphere to the game WITHOUT trying to align Dust to be more like EVE-Online. Most of the post ideas I read here are very nice (kudos), but most of them seem to be asking for a mechanics-reworking or playstyle-behavior that more closely resembles EVE's mechanics. In other words, you're inadvertently proposing that Dust be more like EVE-Online. GÇªI thought Rattati was only asking to have more Lore flavor in Dust, not more EVE-alignment in Dust. I think you raise the central existential dilemma facing DUST. Do we want to pull combat concepts from EVE? or have DUST try to be a clone of Battlefield 2142 with New Eden skins/models? I think the second option is a terrible idea. CCP Shanghai can't compete with other studios in the dumbed-down FPS space. The market is too crowded, and other developers have much larger budgets, bigger teams, more experience and will always be able to deliver better performing, shinier, more polished FPS games. When you're David fighting Goliath you play to your strengths, not try to play to your competitors' strengths. I think focusing DUST development on making this game a "thinking-man's shooter" is a much better long-term goal for the game. Yes we want better FPS movement, controls, and performance (and these things really do need serious attention prior to launch on a new platform), but many of us want to see tools to make fights more tactical instead of just point, shoot, strafe, bunny-hop, kill, die, respawn. If that's what I wanted, we could get that better in dozens of AAA FPS games, and realistically those competitors will always able to deliver that kind of gameplay better. The "thinking man's shooter" market however is wide-fracking-open. I think there is a lot of potential for growth by expanding the FPS market to capture players who are more RPG-oriented that don't usually play FPS games because they're typically not very deep or interesting. Just as Skyrim was a way for an RPG game to draw in more FPS-oriented players, I'd like to see DUST be an FPS that draws in RPG players to the genre. So which direction should CCP go? Into the market that's full of well-funded competitors, that doesn't play to their core-strengths as a company? or try to focus on the green-field market of the FPS-RPG-MMO hybrid that we have. All of the best parts of DUST are the RPG elements. The FPS elements tend to fall between "passable" and "horrible." Just to be clear, I don't want DUST to become turn-based or anything, but translating combat concepts from EVE like player-controlled drones (which actually exist in many other FPS games btw), adding capacitors so you can't spam stuff indefinitely and are open to new kinds of attacks or EVE-style ewar and making them work well in a fast-paced FPS environment is a much smarter long-term direction for DUST IMO. For example I proposed adding ECM (electronic countermeasures) to DUST. In EVE ECM has a chance to break locks and prevents your ship from targeting anything until the effect fails or is no longer applied to your ship. Locking targets isn't nearly as important in DUST as it is in EVE and I'm not suggesting we change that. What I'm suggesting is how we can take a concept like ECM and bring it into an FPS game in a way that makes sense. We do have locking in a few areas, so it makes sense to retain that functionality, but that's not going to be enough for it to be useful. Why not add the ability to disable tacnet like a flashbang as well? Ok so now we have an EVE-inspired tool that fit the lore and racial ewar in a way that makes sense for an FPS. It would add some richness to tactics (i.e. throw an ECM grenade into a cluster of logi/heavies before running in with a scout to sew confusion) and keep things interesting without turning DUST into a point-and-click naval combat sim. Best PvE idea ever!
Vell0cet OSG Planetary Operations Covert Intervention 2860	Posted - 2015.03.30 02:26:00 - [8] - Quote Zeke Dunevent wrote: More than just about anything in life right now I want Rattati to notice this thread. This is a culmination of what Dust could be if steps in the right direction continue to be taken. It's threads like this that lead me to believe that perhaps there is still hope for Dust to be everything that I had dreamed for it to become back in beta. Well said. Best PvE idea ever!