@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

More interested in seeing how the matchmaker works with a larger player-base before going into tier locking. Tier locking is essentially sharding and for the sake of dogma toward a One Universe ideal (New Eden), I'm not a fan.

Hold them longer? I mean, there's a pretty sizable portion of the community that would disagree with you, lol



O.o Calm your ****, yo.



Interested to know how we go about this without a riot over STD and APEX BPOs.

Lately I hear that Locus Grenades help

I don't see a larger player base happening without a port. I only use my ps3 for dust.

I'm pretty sure the squads of Proto and Adv I have been slaughtering today with my 'Quafe' Assault Rifle are experiencing a much more bitter flavor than they would had I been using Proto Gear. The flavor in this game is complex.

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.

You think I am fine with the status quo? I have been arguing against the status quo all day except I have been focusing on squads in Public Contracts and the use of Proto and Officer Gear in Public Contracts.

I'm not going to support the removal of Std and Adv Gear though. Those tiers bring about the variety, in terms of capabilities, that you get when you come across any person in this game that you choose to battle against.

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.

So unlock advanced at level 1 of a skill and proto at 5? Makes suits a bit grindy.

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.

Are you kidding me? Do I really have to explain this to you?

If I know you are approaching me from around the corner I can cook a grenade, time it right, and blow you to pieces before you know what is going on.

As a matter of fact I just played an Acquisition match against Doushe Gabbana at which there was a moment where both of us were positioned around the corner from one another, we had no direct line of sight to each other at any point before this moment, yet it was very obvious that both of us knew exactly where one another was positioned, we knew the speed we were approaching each other, and with my experience in the game I knew for a fact that he was going to throw a grenade at me; which he did.

***I'm editing this to add that even though Doushe Gabbana was running Proto and used a Locus Grenade against me while I was running an APEX Suit (230 Shield/492 Armor) and a 'Quafe' Assault Rifle he was not able to take me out with that grenade. Doushe Gabbana is a skilled player with plenty of experience in this game and him failing to take me out with a Locus Grenade should show that telling a newberry to use Locus Grenades to combat Proto players is not a viable or effective option.

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.

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.

If you can think of such a system id like to hear it but i think is easier said than done.

Not when the person in Proto also has Locus Grenades and especially not if the person in Proto has Precision Enhancing Modules at Level 5 equipped.

This game needs Proto Gear removed from Public Contracts.

Devs, GMs and CSMs, I think it's time for an official feedback thread on this 'tier locking' topic.

I believe technically this is true but I feel it would take too much flavor out of the game.

Though I do believe Militia Gear should be removed and replaced with more racial variances of weapons and vehicles. All Militia BPOs people have can be converted to Standard BPOs.

Well, sure, most things are [more easily said than done]. And I admit, I'm more of a 'broad strokes' kind of guy, but I'll take a crack at it.

Here's the basic idea: Those protos that are lining up to smash Doms? I want them to think "why the hell would I bring a proto suit to that dom pub? It's simply not worth it."

So why is it currently worth it for them? What are they after? ISK? K:D padding? Control/bonuses/perks/bragging rights/special ****? Find their reward system, then find a natural, organic way to balance (read: reduce) it.

If they're after ISK: It simply should not be profitable to take a proto squad int oa match against a bunch of militia nubs. You shouldn't expect even a decent ISK payout from such an endeavor. A couple ideas here:

1) Make match ISK rewards DIRECTLY MATCH in-game efforts.
2) Make ISK rewards relevant to per-kill match-ups (e.g., an ADV kill is worth more than a STANDARD kill, etc.)
3) Reduce per-kill ISK reward for multiple kills on the same scrub (kill#1=2(ISK), kill#2=1(ISK), kill#3=.5(ISK), etc.).

If they're after K:D: There's gotta be another type of ranking system that become more valuable to them than the K:D. Most modern FPS's have ELO/Rankings/Skill Rating systems. If this exists, make it more prominent. If it doesn't, implement it. A few ideas here:

1) Ranks: Create race specific military ranks granted as a skill-based reward system. Grant unique rank-based suits/skins/vehicles/equipment/etc. to show off your skills.
2) Tiers: Diamond, Platinum, Gold, Silver: What tier are you, based on your performance? Create tier-bling to sit next to your name on killboards, leaderboards, lobbies, etc.
3) Score: Even if it's just a raw number system, a ranking score could replace the less informative K:D. Obviously, more advanced kills are worth more than noob kills, so they affect (or don't affect) your Score accordingly.

If they're after other ****: Well, this one's easiest. FW and PC make certain rewards available that simply aren't available through pubs. This is currently implemented, so just analyze the data to see if it's having the effect you're after (i.e., increasing FW/PC matches and increasing net gudfights), and if not, adjust multipliers accordingly.

Speaking of PC: Disclaimer: I don't even play PC yet. I'm talking out of my ass. But it seems to me that if you took Molden Heath and applied value multipliers to each system (i.e., each system is actually WORTH a different amount to own), and perhaps even subdivisions on a district by district basis (in EVE, these system's values tend to be roughly inversely proportionate to their security rating), you create districts that are highly valuable, and district which are hardly worth fighting over. The principle is simple: if the investment cost of dumping high value resources into attacking/defending a system is higher than that system's output value, then I will not dump high value resources into that system. I will, instead, throw low value assets (read standard/advanced suits) at that system.

Two really basic, organic ways to implement variable district values and PC risk/reward analysis could be based on 1) planetary composition/valuable material availability (some districts are richer manufacturing hubs than others), and 2) logistical deployment costs (it's more difficult/expensive to get quality equipment all the way out to the front lines from the manufacturing rich center systems, for example, so I'll only do it when the district I'm fighting for justifies the cost).

Plus you implement some of the ideas up above as a force multiplier.

I really think the above tools are more than you need. And that's just me, some *******, spitballing ideas on a Tuesday morning, with nary an original thought. These are all tools successfully implemented in other games. Guys whose job this is already know everything I've said, plus probably have 20 other super good ideas on their belt. I really think it's not a matter of finding "such a system", as you say. The systems are there; it's just a matter of picking the ones that are truest to the spirit of Dust (I tried to list my ideas in that order, btw). Then you just find the right multipliers/scalars to apply to each of them, to get the results you're after - but I'll leave that to the dudes with math degrees and statistical analysis algorithms or some ****.


TL;DR, I guess: You asked for some ideas about a system that could hamper proto stomping; there are PLENTY of such ideas, and I've listed a few.

Dust has something really special with it's New Eden background, and the FW and PC dynamics. That's what it's doing right. It could use some improvement in implementing modern FPS gameplay elements like those above, which are the way you craft what we're all really after.

Gudfights.

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.

I like your idea on rewards for proto stomping if i went 30-1 kdr and got first place my isk payout should still be less than my proto suit cost.

What if we have "Academy Battles" be a permanent game mode that only allow militia items.

I don't feel that removing one tier would destroy versatility.

My opinion about destroying versatility was towards making it so either only basic suits can be used, limiting people to one tier, or implementing a metalock within the 20-something range which is substantially lower than any of the base APEX suits.

The most versatility lost with my idea of removing Proto/Officer gear from Pubs would be the removal of Officer Suits specifically which no one runs consistently in Pubs anyways.

I would also like to clarify that my main stance is for the removal of squads from Pubs. I'm simply attacking from more than one angle at what I see is a major problem in this game.

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.

Stop with all the Fu Fu carebear post every day about banning proto or no squads. Git gud or go play a different game. You new generation of dust players cry way to much. We had to fight against full proto q syncs of real monsters back in the day like Team Players and the real AE. There was never so much complaining back then about it because we had to adapt or die. The people now a days running proto Aren't even that good to be complaining about it. Only way to get better is to fight against someone who is better then you. That Fu Fu crap is not going to help any noob learn how to fight. Thats why we have a abundance of bad players and bad corps running around clueless because they never challenge themselves.