Lately I hear that Locus Grenades help

I suggest running away and finding a target you can handle or not engaging someone in proto to begin with. Pick your targets right or support someone else who can kill them until you get good enough to take them down yourself.

?????? Is there some magical quality of EWAR Modules that reduces the damage of grenades?

Hey big secret the balancing factor is called gun game those same vets you cry about most if them have weak alts that do just fine

I have a lr am..assault with 2 mill so that has a 9.3 kdr and I drop 30 bombs with it regularly ..

And can't honestly understand the qq if you can't zap a proto suit with a suit 1/10 of the value of that proto suit you need to learn to shoot

A 20k std assault can easily kill any suit

Plus grenade buff ....

You know what would really help?

Tier genocide. Put Militia, Basic, and Advanced gear into the gas chambers. Or just delete them. I don't care which.

What "flavor?"

The "ooooh! My new Rifle does [x] more DPS! It shoots the same, sounds the same, looks the same, has the same mag size, same sight, same everything except damage!"-type flavor?

The "oooohh! My shield extender has 22 more HP, but is still fundamentally identical to the blatantly obsolete shlt-tier stuff below it!"-type flavor?

Tastes more like the flavor of rotten meat to me. I think our stew could do without it.

The "flavor" as I see it,comes from the module TYPES, the suit TYPES, the weapon TYPES, and all variants within.

Tiers? How is one fitting kitted out with full Advanced stuff meaningfully different ("flavor"-wise) from the same exact fitting but with proto?

They are functionally identical, but one does more damage, has more health, stealth and better [insert trait here]. They are the same flavor, but one is simply more powerful. One may as well be obsolete.

Get rid of the sub proto tiers, and you know what? You still have 30 slots for different flavors, and you don't have to waste one on less "flavorful" (ie weaker) ones.

The best part of the game, to me, is functional variety.

@Shaun

CPU&PG differences can be replicated via new variants of, say, shield extenders that have different characteristics.

Ex: proto stays the same
Take Advantage tier, bump it to proto, keep the CPU/pg the same, and add resistances, recharge delay, whatever to it.

Boom. Kinda keeps lesser items but they add flavor

And all the score of noobs, low-skill FPS players and the ISK poor also taste a flavor as they get their teeth kicked in.

It's called bullshlt.

Nuance can be built in other ways. Explored. But you evidently are fine with the status quo. Look at the state of the game. Why is it this way?

I can guarantee you, having all these tiers weakens the game, causes needless headaches and work for the developers. FIVE TIERS need to be balanced within and among themselves, IN ADDITION TO balancing players with regards to skill AND SP. And all that work for what? Gloating that you killed some fool with lesser gear?

Is that effort worth it? Look at our playerbase and tell me it is. Look at DUST in its current state and tell me it is.

OK. Jumped to conclusions. A Minotaur can't help it... Anyway

Look at my post to Aeon. I amended my position. Just Militia and standard removed. Power gap lessened, putting back an emphasis on player skill. Some tier-based gobbledygook still in play, but easier to manage, I imagine.

A compromise, if you will. Is that still disagreeable? With advanced and proto, playing in pubs w/o segregation is possible. Emphasis moves on getting officer out of pubs, which would probably be met with little resistance.

Why not use PC as a way to solve this problem naturally? Structure it such that lower value systems are unattractive to high level players (proto/captain), but offer benefits/rewards that are meaningful for young players, while higher value systems are structured to entice captains/protos and be out of reach for the average noob?

Made properly accessible and appropriately structured, PC could become a naturally 'tiered' solution that magnetizes everyone away from pubs and toward it, not unlike the tiering that naturally occurs in EVE between high-sec and low-sec systems.

Summa, I usually at least partially agree with things you say, but you can't have it both ways. You can't say "remove proto from pubs" then go and say that tiers add flavor to the game. Those statements contradict each other. I get there's a fine line but you're gonna need to pick a stance with less contradiction if you want to be taken seriously.

The problem is that unless you play PC Or Fw people like to play with friends to earn isk and sp. If they cant get isk in pubs playing with friends then where are they gunna get it? I like the idea of no teams in pubs but maybe it should only be in ambush and dom and teams can be set for skirmish cuz its closely related to FW and PC. As for Acquisition idk i never played it.