Framerate and lag issues. I really don't know what people are on about. Stew (the notorious PS2 fanboy from the MAG forums) keep saying how both these qualities and the graphics suck in Dust. I hardly get any framerate or lag issue at all.

Its pay to win. Many will claim that its not, but it is. Yes you can buy a proto suit for 44K ISK or whatnot, but who can afford this in the long run? It might be that this ingame economy system isn't fully tuned yet, but I have a hard time seeing people pay for a 100K loadout only by using the ISK they earn as off today. And yes you might claim to be so good that you hardly ever die and that you basically earn enough ISK to keep it up. But what do you do later on when you face a clan of elite killers or whatnot, when you suddenly die 15 times in a hard fought (in lack of a better term) clan battle? And I'm pretty sure that a guy with all top notch AUR equipment will have severly better stats (on the suit, armor, stamina recovery and so on) than somebody using only ISK equipment. (Low CPU/PG cost on the AUR equipment will give you room for more or better equipment) Its not like a total noob can buy his way to success, far from it. But with high quality players an extra +10 damage buff might be exactly whats needed to come out on top.

Yes and no. One big thing to remember is AUR bought weapons will be able to be sold/bought using ISK so everyone is on the same level. As for the high loadout price, it's something that has to happen. Obviously when your fighting for a planet with millions and millions of ISK worth of resources or your paid a high price to take it, ofcourse you and the clan your vsing are going to bring your A-game and win no matter how much you lose. 15 deaths with a 100k suit, 1.5mil, x12 (or 16) thats only 18mil worth of ISK lost. As far as I'm concerned, thats not a large amount (however we are moving at 4x ISK/SP). I don't know, we will just have to find out when the game is fully finished.

First off, I have a pretty standard nett, currently wireless. Normally I get the short hand of the stick since I'm placed in Norway and have 5-7 jumps just to get to the UK. When the lag hit the fan in MAG I got totally owned, with the server placed in Los Angeles. It might be that i have a bit of lag but that I simply don't notice it much. This is a crude, aim assisting game after all. And again, compared to MAG, a 0.3 second delay doesn't really mean much in this game, except for the mentioned scout bunnies. In MAG on the other hand, I can get headshotted and die before I even see my enemy coming around the corner.

And when it comes to the "pay to win" isue, I find your reply a little insulting, or perhaps its just you who don't have the smarts. Read my text again please. I said something like "AUR equipment doesn't make a noob good". Far from it. You say that your passive skills will make up for this and that, and it does. I wrote under the assumption that we have skill wise evenly matched players. This goes for both playing skills, and experience (passive skills) progression in the game. So basically you have two identical players in every consiveable way, except that one player spends AUR and can therefore equip an ekstra shield extrender, damage buff or whatever, BECAUSE OF THE LOWER CPU/PG COST OF SAID ITEMS THE PLAYER SPENDING AUR ARE USING.

And another point: If its not "pay to win", then please explain to me why there isn't an ISK equivalent to the Tucker nades? And don't dismiss them as "just nades" they're a definite advantage to all that can afford them. And again, I don't really mind the if not "pay to win", lets call it "pay to get a slight advantage which may result in a win" its still not a level playing field. But as I said in my OP, I don't mind, its a brilliant way to fund a game. But lets at be honest.

The easy way to see an OP weapon that needs balancing is to measure the most used weapon that causes deaths. I imagine the most used weapons are: Creodon, Boundless SMG, RE, and the Duvalle in that order. (excluding vehicles) The DuValle is becoming more popular. The Creodon has intense damage and an insane low recoil. It is my number one choice.

First off, I'm KingBabar wich some of you may now from MAG. I haven't been able to log into this forum until now due to lousy password memory.

I haven't read anything yet so my statements and comments will be my own, not influenced by any drama.

The critique I'e heard from other players:

Framerate and lag issues. I really don't know what people are on about. Stew (the notorious PS2 fanboy from the MAG forums) keep saying how both these qualities and the graphics suck in Dust. I hardly get any framerate or lag issue at all.

Except when encountering scout suits up close. Its the only hardware in the game that I consider to be OP. Its not so much the speed or general build of the suits themselves, its the game's lack of speed to update my screen fast enough. I've stood right infront of guys dancing around me and fired my 72 SMG bullets without taking them down. This never happens when I face an assault suit. Its not enough to break the game for me, but it should definately be looked into.

Again Stew told me about the poor 30 frames per sec, and that it should really be 60 frames per sec. Really? I can't even count to 30 in a second...
As for graphics; its quite clear that this isn't COD or near in quality to many of the A-Line shooters out there. Neither was MAG. I'll take gameplay over graphics any day. Me being close to blind (no joke) I do prefer games with "bad" graphics compared to the fanzy ones, which only result in me being dropped without having the slightest idea who did it. If I've understood it correctly there will be loads and loads of map as the game progresses and quantity in different maps is something new and much desired from any shooter fan. One point that I think is lacking by the guys telling me how bad everything is, is the map layout. In short, its very good. I really like the three objectiva approach and the way the two back spawns make it possible to attack and many different ways. I also see that some of the containers or cover thingys in general are very well placed. Many of them are slightly at ascew, wich is more important than you might think.

pay to win. Many will claim that its not, but it is. Yes you can buy a proto suit for 44K ISK or whatnot, but who can afford this in the long run? It might be that this ingame economy system isn't fully tuned yet, but I have a hard time seeing people pay for a 100K loadout only by using the ISK they earn as off today. And yes you might claim to be so good that you hardly ever die and that you basically earn enough ISK to keep it up. But what do you do later on when you face a clan of elite killers or whatnot, when you suddenly die 15 times in a hard fought (in lack of a better term) clan battle? And I'm pretty sure that a guy with all top notch AUR equipment will have severly better stats (on the suit, armor, stamina recovery and so on) than somebody using only ISK equipment. (Low CPU/PG cost on the AUR equipment will give you room for more or better equipment) Its not like a total noob can buy his way to success, far from it. But with high quality players an extra +10 damage buff might be exactly whats needed to come out on top.

I got a PSN message from a very good english MAG player claiming that the Creodon AR is OP. I don't really get this. Its the best AR so I guess its supposed to be good? As far as I know it has a lower DPS than the Duvalle but it has better accuracy, mostly due to the slow rate of fire. I did try a Creodon with a proto suit two rounds and I did fairly well, like 18-2 the first round and 34-7 the second. Then again, I've done 28-2 and 30-4 with only nades and a pistol so I dunno if its even measurable. Seeing that the snipers kill me from the top of all kinds of installations and drop me with a single shot, I face guys with 1100 hp fireing HMs and those big ass anti tank guns with 600 damage and 150-200 in splash, I just don't se what makes that AR so OP compared to all the rest.

You forgot the small missile launcher. I'd say atleast 50% of my deaths are missiles.

Your hard enough to hit on EU. If I haven't got my trusty Duvolle I'm history (btw I like the mass driver, SMG loadout you were using. Looks cool)

First off, I'm KingBabar wich some of you may now from MAG. I haven't been able to log into this forum until now due to lousy password memory.

I haven't read anything yet so my statements and comments will be my own, not influenced by any drama.

The critique I'e heard from other players:

........
........

...........Its pay to win. Many will claim that its not, but it is. Yes you can buy a proto suit for 44K ISK or whatnot, but who can afford this in the long run? It might be that this ingame economy system isn't fully tuned yet, but I have a hard time seeing people pay for a 100K loadout only by using the ISK they earn as off today. And yes you might claim to be so good that you hardly ever die and that you basically earn enough ISK to keep it up. But what do you do later on when you face a clan of elite killers or whatnot, when you suddenly die 15 times in a hard fought (in lack of a better term) clan battle? And I'm pretty sure that a guy with all top notch AUR equipment will have severly better stats (on the suit, armor, stamina recovery and so on) than somebody using only ISK equipment....

Yeah Ive read Stews comments and they're semi-ignorant. none the less we have to wait for august build to see how far ccp has pushed this envelope now that more of the hard work is done with hardware.

The second thing is the skill boosters - not availiable through ISK(for now), and pretty much mandatory if you want to be competitive - the arms race is going to be furious when this game goes live.

Love your post, KingBabar.

Two topics: Scouts and pay-to-win.

I'm hoping once the build is close-to-finalized for release and optimization happens we might get better framerates. Then again the textures are going to be upgraded so who knows? I like fast scouts, although I haven't used one yet. It's true the scout suit moves faster that the frame rate, but it hasn't caused me too much trouble. I've kinda settled on switching to smg, pulsing fire, and back-pedalling/strafing. They typically go down first. I think what makes it work is having Sidearm Sharpshooter trained up - allows you to do damage at a long enough range that the scout's angular velocity isn't crippling.

That being said, those $#@$!#@!! Scouts with their $#@#$!$!! Creodron shotguns and their %$#%#%@! trained up sharpshooter skill are absolutely owning my proto assault suit right now. It p****es me off. The range on that thing is frightening.


As for the pay-to-win you'll hear points like once the market goes live we'll all be able to buy AUR items for ISK, and that for lower-tier AUR items the upgrade in stats in balanced by greater fitting requirements. These are good points, seems like CCP has done a craftsman-like job of balancing these things, imo.

There are only 2 thing in the AUR store that strike me as pay-to-win. As you point out the top-tier AUR modules have lower fitting requirements over any ISK variant - definitely pay-to-win. The second thing is the skill boosters - not availiable through ISK(for now), and pretty much mandatory if you want to be competitive - the arms race is going to be furious when this game goes live.

I'm the last guy who wants a level playing field, but these 2 things smell a little off to me. If a module or booster is so important that every player has to buy it or resign themselves to being seriously gimped it seems a little bit pay-to-win to me.

P.S. What Lurchasaurus says above - as soon as CCP was aware of it, they announced it would be changed next build. I think they're committed to no pay-to-win, but they've gotta balance that with running a business.

I have to admit that I have no idea whatsoever how this AUR vs ISK exchange thingy will work. And as I stated in the OP, I really don't care if someone can buy an advantage, they have to keep the AUR stuff interesting enough to create the neccissary revenue. I trust CCP to do this in a good way, lets leave it at that.

I can however say with a certainty that this cat will spend his AUR losely, at least once I get to unlock the proto AR suit. not to mention the xp multipliers. I've calculated that I can buy 2155 AUR proto suits each month at the price of a monthly buss card, so in other words; its an easy choice for those who can afford it.

I didn't mention the RE in my OP since I knew it would be nerfed. But I agree, its terrible unbalanced at the moment. I kind of pity the guys who automatically go for the easy way, using the stuff thats obviously OP. I met a guy ingame that spent more or less his entire game putting out RE at spawnpoints, he needed to be certain that he got the cheapest kills possible. I can't help but think that his time would be better spent practicing his gungame.

As for the high DPS on pistols, I agree. I did a pistol and nades only until I got about 12M skill points. I did reasonably well, I had a 1.7 kdr. When everyone got an extra million skillpoionts, I however started to struggle. The Scrambler is good vs noobs but any decent player with a decent gun should be able to take you out. The main problem with using the Scrambler as a primary is the low amount of total ammo. I would not reccomend it.