I wrote about this problem very shortly after PC was released to us. There is no geography in Dust. Or, in other words, we don't actually exist in New Eden. If we did there would be some kind of limitation on how far we could travel in a given amount of time. Instead we instantly teleport everywhere. This is not unlike the situation in Eve up to the Phoebe expansion where smaller groups basically never fielded their capital ships because Pandemic Legion would teleport themselves across the galaxy in minutes and drop a dozen titans on them. The Phoebe expansion fixed this by dramatically reducing the distance capital ships could travel in a short period of time. Dust has infinite travel distance. This creates two force projection problems:

1) A player can fight everywhere at all times, which creates the situation of the top players totally controlling the PC area
2) There is no higher level strategy to district ownership, since you can basically attack anywhere on the map at any time. Even with restrictions on clone pack purchases all you have to do is set up a dummy corporation and transfer isk to it.

I think the only way to truly fix the problem is to firmly tie a Dust character to a location in space. Today my character is at such and such a planet in system X. He can queue up for battles launched from districts on that planet. If I want to join battles launched from another planet I have to select it as my new location and then wait a certain amount of time until he arrives there. The further away the longer the wait. In the meantime I can play instant matches.

This also fixes the problem with the missing strategic level play in PC and makes distance based attrition actually matter. It gives a commander a choice - do we fully secure the planet we're on or use diplomacy to attempt to make sure we're safe? It would allow players to attempt to create safe zones through controlling choke points. For example - http://evemaps.dotlan.net/map/Molden_Heath/Oddelulf#temperate

If you fully control this planet then the 5 planets in the systems behind Istodard are much more easily defended because the attackers have to take a significant attrition penalty from trying to attack from Bosena or Gelfiven. This makes locations have meaning to the players. These planets are ours and through hard work / diplomacy we've created a choke point that makes our home easier to defend. Through careful consideration of SI bonuses, we've created a network of cargo hubs and research labs that let us keep the front line resupplied, with production facilities safely in the rear. That also creates interesting choices for the attackers. The cargo hubs are pretty nasty to try and take, but if they can disrupt the research labs in the logistics chain then they won't be at full strength. Or they can go straight for the factories and try to shut them down despite the attrition disadvantage. Or they could convince a corporation to betray you, and convert one of their factories to a cargo hub to make it more difficult for you to end the disruption.

The first problem is pretty bad, but I think the second one I described is the thing that is really killing Dust as an FPS where the battles are meaningful. If I can join a battle to control a district and not always face 16 top scoring players in the entire game...well that's good. But I still don't care about PC because it doesn't matter which district I own, because with the game design as it is every district is every other district's neighbor. There is no reason to own a particular district.

Cuse and a few other no lifer assholes that feel they are gods gift to dust just want it even easier for them to act like the gods and run over the small corp when honestly they are just a group of stupid no life bitches in my opinion.

\o/ we are a lot kinder then the old vets who used to run this game. as in you would not be in PC period or you would have been paying rent. i don't think you understand that there is no rule book saying we had to be nice and let you play PC at all and yet we still helped you. i am not your god i am your shephard. now graze the pastures in peace young billy goat for there are wolfs outside those fences.

\o/ we are a lot kinder then the old vets who used to run this game. as in you would not be in PC period or you would have been paying rent. i don't think you understand that there is no rule book saying we had to be nice and let you play PC at all and yet we still helped you. i am not your god i am your shephard. now graze the pastures in peace young billy goat for there are wolfs outside those fences.

Corps don't run ringers because they feel threatene, they run ringer just because they can or need to.

No my friend you lost me. Ex... I have a district and you attack with 3 of your players and the rest from OH nyan San or take your pick. We field our team with corp members only and or ally corps. You play with the best veteran players and we have mostly ok and some ok members. Who wins? Experience. Things like this make small corps and people not want to play. Say you have a district and I come with my ringers from other corps and you only have your peeps to fight. I flip your little place and what do you think? Wtf? I think this would some how make pc better for all.

xPainx Pain is right!

Ringers are a huge problem that severely limit the appeal of PC. IMO, ringers a far bigger issue than lag -- which has been a part of PC since its inception, and, not coincidentally, didn't stop an even more deadly group of ringers from dominating PC when lag was even worse.

So it comes as no surprise that the issue of ringers has come up in the PC think-tank that's been set up.

Ringing is a huge issue and should be addressed, post haste.

Said a bit differently, PC 2.0 could be absolutely wonderfully designed and even lag-free, but if the same small group of ringers continues to be enabled to farm any/all land owners, there will still be a very limited group participating. You can only get your face punched in so many times by trolly neckbeards before you give up.

This has been a recurring challenge for us in ML, and all the corps we talk to on a regular basis. The community has itself tried to police this problem. First with Planet Fight Club, and later with the "last district rule". While they had some success, both ultimately failed miserably....and we are left with PC in the state that it's in. That is to say a bad place.

We need to make PC more available/accessible and not tilted so far in favor of a small group of ringers. Perhaps limit the number of non-corp or non-alliance members, or implement type of cost to do so. Because the way it is now, the same group of 20 or so players simply exhibit too much influence on the game mode, IMO, and it's put a huge damper on participation in the Dust end-game.

TL;DR: Lag is certainly a problem in PC, but even if we solve that, the problem of ringers will continue to limit the broader appeal of what every corp should aspire to. We need to solve this issue, or we'll continue to see limited participation in PC.

Sincerely, Leadfoot (ML Director & 2+ year PC participant/FC)

p.s. Rattati, I'm not sure if you're aware of this but very few ringers are paid to fight these days. Fights are so scarce -- because of the above issues -- and the ringers have enough ISK already, that people are generally ringing for free.

And here I was leaving Outcast Mercs alone to graze the pasture in peace.

That was a mistake I won't be letting happen again.

In the politest way possible, Viktor, I don't know if you're trolling or just trying to protect your "interests" by your responses. At no point in time have you ever been CEO of a corporation that holds districts by any virtue other than the fact that hardly anybody plays PC now. The only time you ever had any serious PC logistics experience with Death Dealers should directly contradict your apparent crusade to defend one of the most persistent problems in this iteration of PC: The same 100 odd people played in a gigantically disproportionate number of the battles in Molden Heath.

Corps absolutely have run ringers when they feel threatened as their primary response in PC. Have the stories of STB or Cap Acq in their formative phase somehow vanished into the mists of time? And those are just the repeat offenders that I can name off the top of my head. Can I blame them for playing the game the way the rules let them? No, but damn is that **** not fun.


Small, newer corps are hit the absolute hardest by the proliferation of ringers in Molden Heath. Even if you ignore the vast expense of using clone packs to attack, it's absolutely the case that the most well-matched targets for these newer corporations have a strong incentive to pull out an utterly different team in order to protect their districts. It has happened time and time again over the past two years.


So yeah, you're not going to be able to own districts by running a 1 man "corporation" and begging help off your friends under a legitimate PC rule set. Get over it. Meanwhile stop acting like you have anything except a vested business interest for trying to defend that ****.