DUST Search - Do you guys think Mechs could ever belong in Dust?

Scheneighnay McBob wrote:

Pokey Dravon wrote:

Scheneighnay McBob wrote:

DeadlyAztec11 wrote:

Pokey Dravon wrote:

Function before Form.

Give me a mechanic or purpose that needs to be fulfilled that would only make sense if that mechanic or purpose was being fulfilled by a mech/MTAC.

I'm not necessarily pro-mech, but I'll play the Devil's advocate for the sake of the discussion.

I imagine the mech to be a larger and more menacing vehicle which would do more things than an HAV. Not only would it have offensive capabilities, but it would be very mobile. It would be a moving spawn point and would have massive health. It would have the capability to have both anti air, anti personnel and anti ground vehicle. The real downside would be the massive cost and how large of a target it would be.

If you brought out a mech and thought it would win you the game then the enemy team could bring out HAV's, turrets and anti MANPADS suddenly your giant mech is disintegrating on the ground and the battle just hot a lot costlier.

But mechs have a 1-man crew. IMO, the more crew members a vehicle can have, the more effective it should be with all of them.

Honestly, mechs are a bad idea in general because vehicles are a force multiplier- any vehicle that can be effective with a single crew member is inherently OP because there's no downside to using them.
If you have 7 people in a dropship, that's 7 people that could be fighting elsewhere. However, the dropship can potentially make those 7 people far more effective if they're coordinated.
That wasn't the case with HAVs- an HAV could be effective with 1 person, and it made that 1 person far more effective with no need for coordination of any kind. That's why HAVs were so much better than any other vehicle.

So, my main point: single-person vehicles (or vehicles which a single person can be effective in) must not be added unless they have a glaring weakness to counteract how much more effective they make a player.
My idea: make an incredibly weak "pilot suit" which is required to operate single-person vehicles, and make some vehicles much more vulnerable to AV than vehicles that need actual crews. I'm saying make the pilot suit extremely weak so we don't have the pilot jumping out and gunning down AVers like they did sometimes in Dust.

See and this is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. This argument of "Oh well it should need this many people to do this but if the other thing has only this many people then it needs to be this but not too much of that so make the other thing weak and require only one person."

As soon as you lock yourself into a system where elements more or less have a singlular purpose of "Kill A, Be killed by B" the balance conversation will immediate degrade into something like this. We've seen it a million times throughout Dust's life and as you know.....the **** never worked right. When the only metric to measure something is its ability to kill and be killed by other elements (which are also as equally shallow), you're going to end up with a shallow gameplay and a endless balance problems, especially when dealing with something with the potential of being a really interesting support/utility element in the game design.

Having strengths and weaknesses to other elements is absolutely a good thing to have. Dont think I'm saying otherwise. But there needs to be more to it than that. If anything it helps? "Well MTACs are kinda UP against infantry this balance cycle, but they still cover rough terrain nobody's business. We just need to change up our MTAC strategy to deal with it for the time being and focus more on taking advantage of its other strengths." So even if a role seems weak against its predator that patch cycle, you don't feel like you're totally screwed because you still have other useful things you can do.

You know what really kills gameplay?

When 1 vehicle is clearly better than all the others.
In Dust, HAVs did absolutely everything, while LAVs and dropships were glorified taxis, whose turrets were ignored because it wasn't worth it to man them.

Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 0 post(s)
jace silencerww The1 Dark8 Emperium7 215	Posted - 2017.01.13 05:24:00 - [1] - Quote Talos Vagheitan wrote: Universes with Mechs tend to contain nothing but Mechs... but could they exist alongside the rest of Dust? Or is it just too silly to have walking tanks stomping around the map... Would lore or gameplay be the biggest problem? Hmm.... the lore could be worked around. Game play is much harder. how big are they, how fast, what type of weapons, range os its weapons, how much ehp it has, how many people can get in, can they use weapons/turrets, etc... then how would it deal against lav or dropships? the big problem is could it handle itself against a HAV? using an old fit of mine I could do 12,000-14,000 damage not counting against shields, armor or weak spots. what to skill into next?
jace silencerww The1 Dark8 Emperium7 215	Posted - 2017.01.13 05:28:00 - [2] - Quote Scheneighnay McBob wrote: Pokey Dravon wrote: Scheneighnay McBob wrote: DeadlyAztec11 wrote: Pokey Dravon wrote: Function before Form. Give me a mechanic or purpose that needs to be fulfilled that would only make sense if that mechanic or purpose was being fulfilled by a mech/MTAC. I'm not necessarily pro-mech, but I'll play the Devil's advocate for the sake of the discussion. I imagine the mech to be a larger and more menacing vehicle which would do more things than an HAV. Not only would it have offensive capabilities, but it would be very mobile. It would be a moving spawn point and would have massive health. It would have the capability to have both anti air, anti personnel and anti ground vehicle. The real downside would be the massive cost and how large of a target it would be. If you brought out a mech and thought it would win you the game then the enemy team could bring out HAV's, turrets and anti MANPADS suddenly your giant mech is disintegrating on the ground and the battle just hot a lot costlier. But mechs have a 1-man crew. IMO, the more crew members a vehicle can have, the more effective it should be with all of them. Honestly, mechs are a bad idea in general because vehicles are a force multiplier- any vehicle that can be effective with a single crew member is inherently OP because there's no downside to using them. If you have 7 people in a dropship, that's 7 people that could be fighting elsewhere. However, the dropship can potentially make those 7 people far more effective if they're coordinated. That wasn't the case with HAVs- an HAV could be effective with 1 person, and it made that 1 person far more effective with no need for coordination of any kind. That's why HAVs were so much better than any other vehicle. So, my main point: single-person vehicles (or vehicles which a single person can be effective in) must not be added unless they have a glaring weakness to counteract how much more effective they make a player. My idea: make an incredibly weak "pilot suit" which is required to operate single-person vehicles, and make some vehicles much more vulnerable to AV than vehicles that need actual crews. I'm saying make the pilot suit extremely weak so we don't have the pilot jumping out and gunning down AVers like they did sometimes in Dust. See and this is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. This argument of "Oh well it should need this many people to do this but if the other thing has only this many people then it needs to be this but not too much of that so make the other thing weak and require only one person." As soon as you lock yourself into a system where elements more or less have a singlular purpose of "Kill A, Be killed by B" the balance conversation will immediate degrade into something like this. We've seen it a million times throughout Dust's life and as you know.....the **** never worked right. When the only metric to measure something is its ability to kill and be killed by other elements (which are also as equally shallow), you're going to end up with a shallow gameplay and a endless balance problems, especially when dealing with something with the potential of being a really interesting support/utility element in the game design. Having strengths and weaknesses to other elements is absolutely a good thing to have. Dont think I'm saying otherwise. But there needs to be more to it than that. If anything it helps? "Well MTACs are kinda UP against infantry this balance cycle, but they still cover rough terrain nobody's business. We just need to change up our MTAC strategy to deal with it for the time being and focus more on taking advantage of its other strengths." So even if a role seems weak against its predator that patch cycle, you don't feel like you're totally screwed because you still have other useful things you can do. You know what really kills gameplay? When 1 vehicle is clearly better than all the others. In Dust, HAVs did absolutely everything, while LAVs and dropships were glorified taxis, whose turrets were ignored because it wasn't worth it to man them. you must not have went against an ADS with a good gunner. they could rule the whole battlefield. the only way to shut them down was 3-4 forge gunners but then a great ads gunner would jump out kill the forge gunner. what to skill into next?
jace silencerww The1 Dark8 Emperium7 221	Posted - 2017.01.16 18:54:00 - [3] - Quote DeadlyAztec11 wrote: jace silencerww wrote: you must not have went against an ADS with a good gunner. they could rule the whole battlefield. the only way to shut them down was 3-4 forge gunners but then a great ads gunner would jump out, kill the forge gunner and wait for the ADS to pick him back up. Hav were not as hard to kill as you think , use a plc, jump mods and proto av grenades could kill tanks fast and even faster using kubos plc. That's ridiculous. Vehicles were only a force multiplier. The reason they were so impactful was because they were paired with equally good infantry. Just like how in real life vehicles without infantry support are taken out easily, it is the same within the game. And saying that you need an officer weapon to compete in AV is ludicrous. I can kinda see that. however I went in many battles where mine side was redlined and the battle was have way over then My buddy mildinsanity (RIP my friend) would call in his tank and I jump in with him and we could turn the battle around. not saying we would win ever battle. though we would put up a hell of a fight. so how was that having a good ground team? as for the kubo plc I would pull that out against proto tankers I knew that were really good and needed to kill the first time I attacked them. I cant remember their names right now but I knew 2 guys that flew ADS all the time. 1 would fly the ADS the other would be the gunner and they could switch between flying or gunning and they could easily get 20+ kills per battle and have 1500+ war points each. what to skill into next?