Traynor Youngs
Royal Uhlans
Amarr Empire
287
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Posted - 2012.08.03 18:29:00 -
[2] - Quote
After reading the entire document, I can say that there are a few places that I have concerns.
1. Corps. They need to be in, in full force, from launch. If that is technically unfeasible, then launch should be pushed back. There is absolutely NO reason why there should not be very very robust social/group tools in DUST from day 1.
2. Market interaction. I understand that balancing the costs means that some drop suits would cost as much or more than Eve frigates and that seems kind of silly when looked at logically. The converse is that the average Eve player has a couple of BILLION isk laying around at any given time (in either liquid or real assets) and can go out and spend a few hours running missions in empire and raise a couple hundred million in short order. This presents a problem. There are two possible solutions, make Dust gear as expensive as Eve ships (thus creating the silly situation where an assault rifle costs as much as a frigate or cruiser) or tax the crap out of money moving from eve to dust (thus restricting the market interaction between the games). I believe that any arbitrary rules that restrict gameplay are bad. But it would also be bad for Eve players to gentrify DUST such that its unplayable if you don't have an Eve patron. I don't have an easy solution for this problem. Perhaps I will start a new thread to discuss the implications of various solutions.
3. Lack of an interaction between DUST and Planetary Interaction in Eve. THe only way that planets make money (the driving force in Eve) is through PI, if DUST cannot affect PI, then it cannot affect the bottom line, and DUST will be ultimately a side mini metagame for Eve players. Trying to bandage this by having DUST 0.0 combat be "additive" to Sov warfare is poor design.
These are especially troubling concerns because I had thought that they would have been ironed out by now. We are likely one more beta build away from launch and some of the most important things that set DUST apart from other FPS games are going to go live with lackluster versions of what they should be.
I understand that CCP are able and willing to take the long view and iterate going forward after launch, I would simply prefer a more focused and streamlined launch of a product that is dead center where CCP aimed at it being, instead of the typical "Jesus Feature" to be iterated further |