Breakin Stuff wrote:nerfing assault frames: led to sentinel-primary meta.
Nerfing ferroscatles: Native regen vs. no regen (3 HP/sec doesn't count) Armor is supposed to have higher HP in exchange for slower recovery.
Other armor plates: That was why we reduced the speed penalty in the first place. now the only people who use them are sentinels ANYWAY. Reactives are bluntly crap compared to the other two. you get less HP than a shield extender in exchange for 3 HP/Sec. It's a joke.
6-man squads: limiting social aspects of the game. While I want to drop Soraya off a roof whenever the words :social aspects" come out of his mouth... removing social aspects is going to erode the playerbase BADLY (worse than now). and I'm sorry, the solo-only queue can go take a long walk off a short pier. I have always hated this idea, I have said why I think it's idiotic on numerous occasions and I'm not going to go into it again.
Creodron Flux Scanners: I enjoy having the potential to reliably ferret out scouts before the shotgun shells inevitably obliterate me, thanks. Only scouts cloaked would benefit from your change.
Myofibs: believe it or not, I LOVE skeet shoot. It's the only time when hit detection does not fail me.
*snip*
On Solo Queue
The squad bug this weekend has been annoying but, oddly enough, Ambush match quality has been vastly improved. I've had more down-to-the-wire Ambush matches yesterday and today than in the prior 30 days
combined. A steamrolled Ambush match is happening here and there, but -- for the first time in recent memory -- these have been the exception rather than the norm. Bug or not, improved battle quality is a good thing, and a jump in quality like we've seen this weekend in Ambush might be something worth looking into. If players had somewhere to play where match quality was guaranteed to be high, there's a good chance we'd see improved retention rates and activity levels. There's nothing idiotic about that.
On Social Aspects
Perhaps you're right, but have you considered the possibility that you might not be? Our commitment to "social aspects" (read: stompsquads) has yet to help grow the playerbase. It may very well have accomplished the opposite. Over the years, how many thousands of players have walked for various reasons, low battle quality being among them? If matches had been of higher quality, how many of those players might have looked past the other issues and stayed, simply because Dust battles were awesome? And if Dust battles were awesome, how many of us would've reached out to our PSN pals to tell them about it?
"Dust has its quirks, which are being worked on, but the fights are awesome. You should check it out; it's free, and I think you'll have fun." - said no one since Chromosome.
Low-quality matches have been in the way of a better Dust for a long time now. Stompsquads aren't solely to blame, but they are the leading cause. I'm not saying definitely, but it is definitely possible that we'd get higher quality battles if squad size were reduced. "But the social aspect" hasn't worked for us yet, and I think it highly unlikely that it ever will. But to be safe, because you might be right, we could start with 4-man squads in one mode and monitor that mode for quality improvements. If it proves to be working, then we'd know that we're on the right track. If it doesn't, then we still have the other modes to fall back while we revert and rethink.