One question, and this is a crazy one.

If we were to setup a system that allows a SKIN to take into account the Corporation Name. Would corporations be interested in having CCP customize, based on request, a corp skin that would be available in the marketplace, but say "This SKIN only appilies if you are in D-Uni", for example?

I don't have the tech yet, but this seems fairly awesome, so I would love to get your feedback. A bit of a off-topic, but I already have 30 plus top corp emails joining the cause, so I'm happy.

One question, and this is a crazy one.

If we were to setup a system that allows a SKIN to take into account the Corporation Name. Would corporations be interested in having CCP customize, based on request, a corp skin that would be available in the marketplace, but say "This SKIN only appilies if you are in D-Uni", for example?

I don't have the tech yet, but this seems fairly awesome, so I would love to get your feedback. A bit of a off-topic, but I already have 30 plus top corp emails joining the cause, so I'm happy.

I would like to add in that when designing PC think of three points:

Ringers of the best players will be involved no matter what. Flip side if you tell someone this is the pinnacle, they need to be climbing towards something and currently it is to fight the best players in a game where they try their hardest. I think the issue is that the best have not been invested in training other players for quite a long time. Make them require other players so it isn't the same 16 guys from a combination of corps always fighting each other.

Make the corp care for its Mercs and the Mercs care for the corp. I have said this in other threads but corp loyalty should be a two way street. Players should need corps and corps should need players. Others have said it as well but let the individual player get value from playing in the big games. If they never feel value why would they strive for this? If the corp doesn't need the corp members because they will use ringers why do they care about baby corp mates?

Always remember, someone is going to ring together all the big alliances and try to game the system with politics. We all know that the best players for some reason hate fighting each other in tough fights in this game, so force this a little by encouraging a rotation that doesn't become a peaceful sit down with another corp. This game requires fighting to interact and focus on fighting.

One question, and this is a crazy one.

If we were to setup a system that allows a SKIN to take into account the Corporation Name. Would corporations be interested in having CCP customize, based on request, a corp skin that would be available in the marketplace, but say "This SKIN only appilies if you are in D-Uni", for example?

I don't have the tech yet, but this seems fairly awesome, so I would love to get your feedback. A bit of a off-topic, but I already have 30 plus top corp emails joining the cause, so I'm happy.

One question, and this is a crazy one.

If we were to setup a system that allows a SKIN to take into account the Corporation Name. Would corporations be interested in having CCP customize, based on request, a corp skin that would be available in the marketplace, but say "This SKIN only appilies if you are in D-Uni", for example?

I don't have the tech yet, but this seems fairly awesome, so I would love to get your feedback. A bit of a off-topic, but I already have 30 plus top corp emails joining the cause, so I'm happy.

One question, and this is a crazy one.

If we were to setup a system that allows a SKIN to take into account the Corporation Name. Would corporations be interested in having CCP customize, based on request, a corp skin that would be available in the marketplace, but say "This SKIN only appilies if you are in D-Uni", for example?

I don't have the tech yet, but this seems fairly awesome, so I would love to get your feedback. A bit of a off-topic, but I already have 30 plus top corp emails joining the cause, so I'm happy.

One question, and this is a crazy one.

If we were to setup a system that allows a SKIN to take into account the Corporation Name. Would corporations be interested in having CCP customize, based on request, a corp skin that would be available in the marketplace, but say "This SKIN only appilies if you are in D-Uni", for example?

I don't have the tech yet, but this seems fairly awesome, so I would love to get your feedback. A bit of a off-topic, but I already have 30 plus top corp emails joining the cause, so I'm happy.

A part of this revamp is finding a unique, non power creep, reward, such as but not limited to district unique customization f.ex.

Thing about raiding, and difficult things, is that the fun is in the doing, it's not for everyone, but there is meaning in it, even if others find it repetitive or boring. Some of my best gaming experiences were WoW raids, but not "just for the loot to get better loot", it's not as simple as that. I also play W40k that takes hours to plan, even more hours to paint (if you do that) , make terrain, get your stuff to a friends house, all for a battle that may be lost in the first round. It's still fun.

One question, and this is a crazy one.

If we were to setup a system that allows a SKIN to take into account the Corporation Name. Would corporations be interested in having CCP customize, based on request, a corp skin that would be available in the marketplace, but say "This SKIN only appilies if you are in D-Uni", for example?

I don't have the tech yet, but this seems fairly awesome, so I would love to get your feedback. A bit of a off-topic, but I already have 30 plus top corp emails joining the cause, so I'm happy.

As long as district raiding comes as originally promised, I will be a happy man.

I don't have the tech yet, but this seems fairly awesome, so I would love to get your feedback.

One question, and this is a crazy one.

If we were to setup a system that allows a SKIN to take into account the Corporation Name. Would corporations be interested in having CCP customize, based on request, a corp skin that would be available in the marketplace, but say "This SKIN only appilies if you are in D-Uni", for example?

I don't have the tech yet, but this seems fairly awesome, so I would love to get your feedback. A bit of a off-topic, but I already have 30 plus top corp emails joining the cause, so I'm happy.

One question, and this is a crazy one.

If we were to setup a system that allows a SKIN to take into account the Corporation Name. Would corporations be interested in having CCP customize, based on request, a corp skin that would be available in the marketplace, but say "This SKIN only appilies if you are in D-Uni", for example?

I don't have the tech yet, but this seems fairly awesome, so I would love to get your feedback. A bit of a off-topic, but I already have 30 plus top corp emails joining the cause, so I'm happy.

We held no more than 5 districts at a time and our PC adventure lasted just over 6 months, hardly a majority of the time.

I'm also very grateful too for the considerations that the PC community gave us because they wanted to help us achieve our stated goal which was to give new players a taste of PC in an as controlled manner as was possible. The limited logistical mechanics of PC made that a real headache but we had a serious crack at it. If we only had some sort of Meta lock out for training matches or the proposed Arena SI, it would've have been very different.

And quite a few D-UNI alumni are now still active in PC having had a taste of it, so in that respect it worked out as well as I'd hoped.

But it was a lot of very hard work....

Immortal Guides has had similar experience with PC. We have twice owned a district that we used for training, but both times ended up giving it away because we did not have a deep enough officer pool or enough student participation to handle all the logistical challenges.

However, since I started the Learning Alliance several of the small member Corps have acquired districts in order to train PC teams. Having several small Corps supporting each other seems to make the logistical challenge a little more sustainable. The hope of course is that these Corps will continue to grow and develop their PC teams until they become contenders and move on to a PC Alliance.

Regardless, anything that can be done to make the logistical challenge of getting into PC a little less onerous would be a good thing. As a start, if there were some districts that spawned smaller battles (8v8 or 12v12) it would make it much easier for smaller Corps to get started.

my CEO is interested but we don't really understand what's to be discussed. are you (rattati) going to share what can and can't be done development wise? the second post you linked - is that the scope of the discussion or are you accepting any ideas at all.

what if my CEO does not play dust but our corp own dust districts?

Send your representative, the person who handles the PC logistics, scheduling and timers.

send us your info to talk about your experience and how it can be better

I am not sure that I have the time available to participate in live Skipe conversations. I am prolific on the forums, but I do most of my posting while at work. If I was talking on Skipe about PC balance, my supervisor may suspect that it is not work relatedGǪ

Seriously though TheD1CK, CEO of Dead ManGÇÖs Game, is probably the best person to have at the table talking about the experience of new Corps trying to get into PC. Dead ManGÇÖs Game is one of very few Corps that managed to train up and break into PC after all the established PC Corps were in place. He has also been heavily involved in trying to help other small Corps do the same. He would be the best person to speak to the issues faced by Corps trying to get into PC.


Edit: Just to make sure I sent a copy of the Original Post to TheD1CK to encourage him to get involved. (Used EVE-Gate mail on my EVE character. You can cut and past. Wish we had EVE-Gate mail access for our DUST characters.)

Idea time,

First all if large scale battles can't be had in PC yet due to hardware (hopefully some day) we really need to get some form of attrition warfare, a way for numbers to matter, not just magic number 16, please give thought to this.

Anyway,

It's always seemed cool to know where my merc is when viewing the star map, but a bit frustrating to know it doesn't mean ANYTHING. What if you could use that for PC?


TROOP MOVEMENT

16 is all you need right? but they can't be everywhere at the same time no? At least they shouldn't.

Have each character be able to move his location in the starmap, then have him be able to participate in PC battles if he's ACTUALLY at the contested district (or planet if that's too specific) EVE does it if I understand it correctly, you have travel time, we could do that in Dust514 too.

Say for example I could move to an adjacent planet one time each day, to an adjacent district each hour or something like that.

* Small corps would have all its PC guys stationed at their home district venturing too far would leave it hard to defend.
* Big corps could not overextend with just 16 in corp, not without leaving everything behind undefended.
* Ringers could still ring IF they take their time to get to the location.
* New strategies for battle logistics could be formulated by having some stay defend, others move and attack, rallying to vulnerable locations, etc.
* Star map would be cleaner, with corps owning adjacent locations, not districts here and there or all around.

Of course, there could be drawbacks to having to move around, if any you could fix in with a warbarge module :D call it a 'Warp drive' similar to the experimental weapons lab, have it consume some amount of WB components for instant travel, some 1000 per planet or per use or something, discount @each level.

This is brilliant!
Please listen to his idea.
Another piece would be to allow people to see what the counts of mercs by corp are per planet. Then they could tell if someone is massing an army against them. Then even the corp mercs not in PCs simply hanging around the HQ would add value by being a deterant. The enemy doesn't know that isn't our best player bumming around the main base, when really that 10 man team from our corp and those 6 ringers are preparing for an attack/raid.
Plus, having more than one 16 merc skilled team becomes important. The other piece is give districts the ability to spend points to kick mercs out of their district back to a safe district or home district. Then the topic of land ownership becomes interesting.

There are problems with that

1. How will attackers join the fight? Someone ferries them? If so then the change is pointless. If attackers can join freely then that team is sooooo screwed. An organized PC team will demolish a disorganized pub style team. If the attacker or defender chooses who can join then it is very similar to the current scenario of choose your ringers.

2. PC is not whoever fields their best 16 corp members for the most part anymore. The closest to that statement is whoever fields the best of their corp and ringers they can get. I already proposed a solution to Ratati that makes it so corps can't field whatever best 16 players in the game they can find at the time.

3. Attrition with the current size of Dust's playerbase is very bad. There is another word for it in gaming, it is called burning out. Defending districts with attrition makes PC become a job, literally. People do not want PC to be like a job or have more logistical crap to deal with. People would have to work even harder to defend their land which makes owning districts a pain. We want PC to grow, not make corps feel like owning districts is feeding and caring for a baby which would chase more away.

Imagine defending one district from constant attacks and dealing with attrition, I hope that corp does not have plans for the weekend because they have to deal with a constant zerg.

4. PC is suppose to be competitive, it should reward those who can compete not punish them for not recruiting every soul they encounter to have legions of troops to field any second. This thing already exists in PC and most hate it, it is called a blue donut. It is when an alliance that can field many PC teams exists and anyone that fights them is basically fighting an endless amount of players. The corp can win every fight but it starts to be a job for the players because every day they have PCs which becomes a major drag. Some people say it is a good thing if PC starts allowing zergs but when they get a district, they start complaining about how PC is a pain and feels like a job.

5. Making a district a nightmare to defend makes districts less valuable which can reduce the amount of corps in PC. It could lead to corps on timers that barely anyone plays have districts with little risk while everyone else has tremendous risk.

1. You'd join in the same as we do now, squad up with a TCO. Just that in order to go into a district to attack or defend your character (each character in squad) needs to be at the location, not in another star system or planet.

2. True, and in some cases there's just a ferry and 15 top tier ringers, same ringers that might pop up in a different battle across Molden Heath after this one :/

3. By attrition I don't mean encourage burnout. A bigger number of average players should have a way of beating a low number of really good players, currently there's NO way for that to ever happen. As it stands a single A team can take or defend any district against ALL of the Dust player base if it would come to it.

4. Agree that skill should be rewarded, but should not enable to take up to 60% of the territory without numbers to hold them all. There should be other ways of showing competitiveness of a single good team other than hold ALL districts, district tiers could help or just being able to conquer ANY district should be enough. Holding large amount of districts should be a sign of a competitive (and large) CORP, not a sign of a competitive team.

5. Agree, it should not be a drag to have to defend a district, defending 30 districts w/ a small corp? hell yes it should be difficult.

Edit: Just to make sure I sent a copy of the Original Post to TheD1CK to encourage him to get involved. (Used EVE-Gate mail on my EVE character. You can cut and past. Wish we had EVE-Gate mail access for our DUST characters.)