DUST Search - NEW PLAYERS: Leaving Games Is Best Defense Against Stomps

Press Attache wrote:

Shaun Iwairo wrote:

ShamelessALT wrote:

If you think the old days were harder then now for new players, I wanna have whatever the hell you are smoking...

It's interesting that everyone saying things are easier now are completely ignoring just how many other new players they had the luxury of going up against when they were new too. Like, not a single one even acknowledges it. A couple of little improvements here and there doesn't mean squat when you're a new player being thrown to the wolf pack that is the current playerbase.

They are not little improvements, they are massive changes from when we started.

You think starting now is harder than when Imps could q sync pubs? You are wrong. A noob today has a much better chance going up against turd rock, or glory, or any of the pubstar corps than against q sync'd squads of actually good players.

Higher SP gains mean you are stuck in basic for a lot less time than the old system. Missions add even more SP on top. And of course, being able to triple stack boosters makes that initial progress even faster.

Gear changes matter as well. The vets come from a time when a basic suit had far fewer slots to go along with the gimped fitting. Now, you can take a basic gal logi and with a couple of fitting mods run all proto gear, an adv Weapon and a not horrible tank. On a dirt cheap suit.

There is no doubt that new bros still need help, but to attempt to forward your argument that it is worse today than it was is blatantly false. Stop it. Unless you want people to ignore you because of your refusal to accept facts and plug your ears until everyone comes around to your way of thinking, in which case carry on.


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Shaun Iwairo Simple Minded People Pty. Ltd. 369	Posted - 2015.10.26 23:50:00 - [1] - Quote THUNDERGROOVE wrote: Daemonn Adima wrote: Most vets who have made a new toon come back saying "holy **** the TTK on new players is insane and the performance disparity to proto is far too great". New players have it far better than it used to be. The gap between standard and prototype has done nothing but closer and closer. Low end gear has better HP and regeneration. Now the only difference between standard and prototype weapons are damage, where before you even would have more range, better falloff. Coordination and actual skill > SP. If you don't want to play with other people and take advantage of teamwork then that's all on you. It will get you much farther than playing by yourself regardless of the amount of SP you have. On paper, things are kinda better for new players in terms of base suit stats. But that's it. The gap between the performance of Basic -> Complex modules is HUGE. In many cases they're over 100% stronger. That's where SP matters, it gives you the ability to run hugely effective modules while further buffing those modules. Being locked out of those modules really hurts a new players chances of survival, especially when you consider the composition of the current playerbase. I'm not saying that things weren't hard on new players previously, but there is no way around the fact that new players are so much more likely to have to face up against huge numbers of high SP players than they were a year or two ago. Watch this old video of C Moody running a pub. Notice how many times MLT and STD comes up in the killfeed? Todays playerbase has shifted so far towards high SP players that you'd never see that anymore. Sure, he was running proto and he wrecked (though he'd wreck in anything) but at least you could see that the lower SP players had plenty of targets they could have a fair crack at. Those targets are few and far between for current new players. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo Simple Minded People Pty. Ltd. 372	Posted - 2015.10.27 01:01:00 - [2] - Quote TheD1CK wrote: Sorry.. you have another word for 1 player with a severe SP advantage battling guys that barely know how to fit a suit? Because imo, when 1 player is dropping 30+ kills vs the enemy as they are using fits that have no place in a pub.. it is not only ruining the game for the the other side, but your own team also, as they wait about trying to pick up scraps. Unless.. you might be one of those that think a maxed fit in pubs dropping 20/30 kills is "skill" it is in some cases, and if we actually had balanced modes in term of gear use/SP level, I would not argue it. But, we don't. In that case, what does it matter that upto 30 people didn't enjoy a battle because someone was too l33t You've got the right thinking but no-one is going to take you seriously if you stick to your guns on the 'one player running proto' line. If there were matches with only one or two high SP players running proto, but the rest of the team is mostly new players then we'd be in a much better situation. Case in point: the video I posted above. It's more of an overall playerbase thing. It's many high SP players running proto and even more running ADV with complex mods and the SP modifiers to back them up. That's the what current new players are bashing their heads against, with barely a couple of other new players around to give them an even engagement. The people that are saying 'we had to go up against proto when we were new' are technically right, but what they're not acknowledging is the frequency at which it was happening. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo Simple Minded People Pty. Ltd. 379	Posted - 2015.10.27 05:35:00 - [3] - Quote Eh as long as gear + SP provides a ~90% TTK differential between new and old players, I reserve my right to flag it as a problem. It conflates outcomes during the learning experience - make the wrong move get rekt, make the right move get rekt. It is just poor game design to throw two players with that big of a stat difference into the same combat arena. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo Simple Minded People Pty. Ltd. 381	Posted - 2015.10.27 06:01:00 - [4] - Quote Kail Mako wrote: Every single time, (barring the first) I have managed to come out with something close to 30 kills in my very first match. (barring the first) I... umm. Who do you think we are talking about when we say 'new players'? (not that I'm for this whole match-leaving idea, more just maybe not throwing new players into matches comprised of 90% well established players, or if we have to do that maybe not adding a 90% TTK disadvantage to them while they're trying to learn the game) Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo Simple Minded People Pty. Ltd. 381	Posted - 2015.10.27 06:26:00 - [5] - Quote Kail Mako wrote: Shaun Iwairo wrote: (barring the first) I... umm. Who do you think we are talking about when we say 'new players'? (not that I'm for this whole match-leaving idea, more just maybe not throwing new players into matches comprised of 90% well established players, or if we have to do that maybe not adding a 90% TTK disadvantage to them while they're trying to learn the game) You totally and utterly failed to see the point of the post....... The point is that when you're a new player you're going to have trouble, but you still need to stick it out so you can get better. If you're playing on a team, and you have at least a half-full roster you shouldn't leave. It's not fair to either side. I gave that little anecdote about going through The Academy six times to illustrate the difference between veterans and noobs no matter how much isk, or sp they have. Edit: Also, I must admit that I'm not familiar with the term: TTK. Go figure, me being a "veteran" and all. (Time To Kill. A new player playing the same class as a vet (say assault) will need to land 90% more rounds to come out on top in that engagement. You can read the link in my signature to get a better idea.) New players expect to have trouble learning a new game. It's part of the challenge. But with the current playerbase of Dust, what new players experience is just cruel. While they're trying to learn all the things that they'd expect to learn in a new FPS (guns, map, etc) the best way to measure if they've actually learned something is when they start racking some kills up. Except we don't really let them. We've got this extra layer of 'new player experience' that puts them at a significant stat disadvantage. Not a skill disadvantage like they'd expect to have. Actual stats. Can you think of any other PvP games that does that to new players? 'OK here's our game, here's a bunch of stuff to learn and oh by the way most of the players you'll be going up against will have much more HP and do much more DPS than you.' No wonder we can't keep any new players. As a nice side effect, the longer we spend not getting new players, the worse the situation is going to get. Vets will stick around gathering ISK and SP to further improve their stats and the gap just gets bigger and bigger for each new player decides to try Dust. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo Simple Minded People Pty. Ltd. 382	Posted - 2015.10.27 08:10:00 - [6] - Quote ShamelessALT wrote: If you think the old days were harder then now for new players, I wanna have whatever the hell you are smoking... It's interesting that everyone saying things are easier now are completely ignoring just how many other new players they had the luxury of going up against when they were new too. Like, not a single one even acknowledges it. A couple of little improvements here and there doesn't mean squat when you're a new player being thrown to the wolf pack that is the current playerbase. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo Simple Minded People Pty. Ltd. 382	Posted - 2015.10.27 11:55:00 - [7] - Quote Press Attache wrote: Shaun Iwairo wrote: ShamelessALT wrote: If you think the old days were harder then now for new players, I wanna have whatever the hell you are smoking... It's interesting that everyone saying things are easier now are completely ignoring just how many other new players they had the luxury of going up against when they were new too. Like, not a single one even acknowledges it. A couple of little improvements here and there doesn't mean squat when you're a new player being thrown to the wolf pack that is the current playerbase. They are not little improvements, they are massive changes from when we started. You think starting now is harder than when Imps could q sync pubs? You are wrong. A noob today has a much better chance going up against turd rock, or glory, or any of the pubstar corps than against q sync'd squads of actually good players. Higher SP gains mean you are stuck in basic for a lot less time than the old system. Missions add even more SP on top. And of course, being able to triple stack boosters makes that initial progress even faster. Gear changes matter as well. The vets come from a time when a basic suit had far fewer slots to go along with the gimped fitting. Now, you can take a basic gal logi and with a couple of fitting mods run all proto gear, an adv Weapon and a not horrible tank. On a dirt cheap suit. There is no doubt that new bros still need help, but to attempt to forward your argument that it is worse today than it was is blatantly false. Stop it. Unless you want people to ignore you because of your refusal to accept facts and plug your ears until everyone comes around to your way of thinking, in which case carry on. I've been trying to get an accurate perspective on what things were like a year or two ago (rather than just relying on what we all remember, which has been very conflicted so far) by watching some old youtube videos of pubs and taking some numbers down. It's a long process but so far I've got data on over 1000 kills. It's showing me that kills with MLT+STD were just as common as kills with ADV, and kills with proto were ~2.5x less likely to happen than either. As a ratio it'd look like MLT+STD:ADV:PRO - 5:5:2. I'm using these numbers as an indicator of the time that the players had been in Dust and I dunno man, it really doesn't seem like the pubs that new players get today. I think I might need to make myself a bit clearer about what I mean in 'new player'. I'm talking about the guys that haven't decided if they'll stick with the game yet. Like that first week or two they play where they're working out if they like it or not. Complex mods are just a shadow in the distance, they don't care that it's technically possible to take a basic gal logi and with a couple of fitting mods run all proto gear because they can't run proto gear yet. Weekly SP cap may as well be 2m, they're not going to earn enough WPs to take advantage of it. Anyway, I respect your position. We're coming unstuck at 'was the playerbase more stacked against new players a year or two ago than it is now?' I say no, you say yes. It's a hard thing to quantify but I'm trying. Also, I jumped in this thread partway through because of some replies, not to support what OP said. That has to be the most stupid reaction to a problem I've ever heard. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo Simple Minded People Pty. Ltd. 390	Posted - 2015.10.28 04:14:00 - [8] - Quote Kail Mako wrote: Kalante Schiffer wrote: Krixus Flux wrote: This Dust 514 doesn't compare to the old Dust 514. When somebody said git gud scrub, you could actually sit down, calculate your mistakes, hone your skills, and learn Dust warfare. Now its a bunch of gamers who use the cheapest tactics while using forums to change metas for personal attempt at digital stardom. Like ChicagoCubs4Ever mutated; that guy sucked at other FPS games but somehow was a star here. Oh and Guitar Hero is awesome! That's funny. It's easy to talk sh*t about someone who led one of best corps in this game. He was also one of the best FC's hands down if not the best. It's a shame how he went about quitting dust. I bet this guy's definition of "the cheapest tactics" boil down to "any tactics I don't personally use." lol 'this guy' Something is killing new player retention.