your legitimate balance issues you brought up are all already adressed in the next build cheers my dude

People didn't seem to see this.
But really, this is the best solution I can see.

i know, they were examples, not news.

my real point was people complaining about the very existence of progression, and trying to handwave away any discussion of balance because "more sp = better so why bother?"

there you go, that's why bother. because there are things that can be fixed in the current framework and ccp seems willing to listen.

there are 2 kinds of imbalance, one of them (SP) is intentional and it's not going away. that doesn't mean we should give up and ignore the other kind.

there's 2 different kinds of balance in this thread. let me put it this way...

wanting to balance a prototype forge gun to make it useful against high end tanks, is perfectly valid. it's another piece of high end equipment. that is the sort of feedback we should be giving ccp.

wanting to balance a militia fit against a full prototype fit is not. otherwise why have varying "tiers" of equipment? if you're against grinding then fine, you are entitled to your opinion and to play at your own pace, but ccp can't just cut the progression system out of the game for you.


so when we debate balance, we need to consider the tech level of the equipment. of COURSE a creodron is better than a militia AR. and it should stay that way. if you can't accept that then why are you here? it's not like it was a big secret ccp sprung on you? progression was a SELLING POINT?!

but how about when compared to a duvolle?

or how about a properly fitted marauder being able to take so much damage, that a prototype swarm can literally never kill it? (as in it has more health than they can carry in ammo) THAT'S a balance issue.

or how about when a scout suit can dance around an equal tier heavy suit and never take damage? people have tried to compare this to eve: a battleship being unable to hit a speedy frigate, but what frigate can put out enough dps to solo a battleship?

or why can a 0 investment militia vehicle kill ANY dropsuit, by brushing lightly up against them? that's **** tier beating top end, THAT'S a balance issue.

or a piece of 10k SP and 2k ISK equipment being a guaranteed one shot kill to any infantry it touches? RE? working as intended?


there are plenty of legitimate balance issues in dust, but "more SP = better" isn't really one of them. you don't have to LIKE it, but you also don't have to play. there is literally every other shooter in the world for you where there is either 0 progression, or only token progression.

^ Grind to win doesn't work in fps.

good thing this isnt a simple fps.

Yeah but this is a very large scale. Overall, other hardcore fps players and I will be staying with this game. The newbies won't as said before. We need a player base.

if you really look at it, alot of the FPS games I have played are a "grind" in some way. You have to "perform x kills with x weapon" to unlock new gear.

Sorry, I skipped a couple pages, but just getting in, my well fitted tank cost me about 18 000 000 SP to get all the parts. Consider the armor, shields, turrets, large turret, repairers, damage control units, nano shielding, ninite armor, and the tank itself which is about 1 200 000 SP in itself to attain.


Meanwhile, my anti tank fit cost me around 5 000 000 SP. Prototype Forge, Prototype Heavy Suit, Carthum Scrambler, and the rest.

A lot of the skills actually overlap like mechanics, electronics, shield skills, armor upgrades and a few of the other basic skills. THerefore any discussion of which build takes more SP needs to exclude those skill sets and consider only the ones required to get into a proto forge and fat suit or the marauder and its guns lets say small missiles and large rail, the proto versions.

Note I am not picking on you Icy Tiger you were just a conveniently quote.

I think we need all or at least the majority of the weapons and gear before this discussion will be truly meaningful and less trolly and flame filled. Although this particular thread has not been nearly as bad as some of the others. So kudos to all for being at least a bit more civil.

Anyway ammount of SP should not equal to "I win" scenarios. The beauty of EVE is that the small guy can ruin the big fat fellow day, and the reason most PVP people fly affordable stuff and not pimped stuff most of the time.

there will always be a playerbase. you can play for free. why wouldnt someone want a game like this with infinite depth when all you have to do is download it?

Lol, you think people that download this free game play for a week go collectively 10k/150 D are going to want to keep playing???

Haha, a free downloaded game is just as easy to download as it is to delete my friend

IMHO playerbase is potentially the biggest downfall of this game. And balance issues is the #1 reason people leave console FPS's

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=30261&find=unread

Gentlemen,

It is clear that you have passion and commitment to seeing that dust reaches its full potential

I, like many here, have fallen into the short sighted perspective that what we see and have been playing has anything to do with what we will see and be playing next week.

Whatch that video, every minute of it. Listen to how they talk and visualize what they're referring to in game. Then realize that this was march.

The kind of systems we have been playing with and the kind of systems CCP plays with on "Mainside" (name of the internal test server?) are very different. Imagine tanks dependent on capacitors for power to fie, repair or accelerate.

Please, keep posting you thoughts and ideas but realize that the WHOLE time we have been playing the game we haven't even been playing the real game. Not even the real test build.

Peace be with you

This is the most important point in the discussion right now. As soon as we start talking technical details we're obsoleting our analyses.

What we can still discuss intelligently is our expectations and why we have those expectations.

Expectations

1. Game design philosopy. Stupid Drunk1 said it best. Literal-minded balancing makes no-holds barred interstellar war bland, bland, bland. CCP's style of balancing is much more interesting and leaves a lot of room for clever, clever bastards to do their thing. I'm already afraid, because there are some clever, clever bastards in both the EVE and FPS communities and you just know they're going to get together and cook up awesome hideousness. This is just not possible in a 'balanced' game.
2. Tank balancing. I expect tanks to be tough and deadly. Why? Because THAT'S WHAT TANKS ARE. Sheesh. I also expect a well-trained, well-equipped 3-Merc AV team to have a fairly high success rate against tough tanks. If it turns out that this is not the case, then I'll be the first to admit it's time to worry about it.
3. AR infantry balancing, or expectations inherited from mainstream FPS games. I expect a 12 man team of the very best FPS killers in the very best gear all set up as AR infantry to get their asses handed to them on a regular basis. A group invested too heavily into any too-narrow category of strategies and tactics will see any competent enemy commander immediately exploit the weaknesses of that over-specialization. The enemy commander will do this without thinking, because it requires very little thought to exploit such a fundamental failure of judgement in an opponent. And yes, the decision to exploit is always situational.

The endgame of DUST is going to be about waging a real, genuine war with the tools at hand, and a lot less like a traditional FPS match. CCP will protect the traditional FPS playstyle in hisec, but anywhere else all bets are off. All one can really say about that is....Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

P.S. If anybody wants to know what I and many other EVE vets think of as 'balanced' gameplay, I suggest fitting up a good pvp ship in EVE and heading out to Rancer - that's where a lot of us learned about balance. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually missing Ginger Magician at this very moment, guys =p

I'm not even against grind to win. It sounds bad, but when you think about it... once you grind thru the first 5-6mil SP, you should be able to hang with most of the guys with 20mil+ SP. Law of diminishing return.

My concern is when you try and attract an audience. You get a newb who tries the game out for a week. They get rap3d hard by 20mil SP guys, and quit...never play again. Long term, this will be bad for the player population. Hopefully HiSec will take care of this.

2. Tanks take no skill to use. Things shouldn't get kills if they take no skill. I think the concept is simple enough.

First off tanks are not OP the missle splash dmg is. With better av options next build...the av gernade fix tanks will have much more difficult a time.

Having a "perfectly imbalanced" game does not work in dust, unless they allow for sp respec. There will be a dominant feature that emerges a "best " fitting, or a weapon that easily crosses from paper to scissor. If a counter to that is found, in the current state people cannot reallocate their sp to counter. We need more linear options that are viable to allow for unique play stylesnto.emerge. ccp can do that, or at least have the commitment to see it through.

Without strong cps mechanics this game will die. When grinding feels like a job necessary to be competitive the game loses its ability to be fun....a game should be fun. But this is so much more then a game it is a whole new world! ....sorry folks, just a game and like it was said before free can be deleted just as fast.

Ccp must deliver on fun or our sandbox will be very lonely.

Sitting in tanks holding down R1 is fun. You should try it this weekend.

1. CCP does not have a style of balancing. This is perfectly well and dandy in EvE(on the computer side), but this is not okay where we are. First person shooters need a steady balance to be considered skillful. We need a skillful games so we don't get wrecked by noobs as we are now.

2. Tanks take no skill to use. Things shouldn't get kills if they take no skill. I think the concept is simple enough.

3. The fps community will completely vanish without balance. This is a promise.

1. CCP does not have a style of balancing. This is perfectly well and dandy in EvE(on the computer side), but this is not okay where we are. First person shooters need a steady balance to be considered skillful. We need a skillful games so we don't get wrecked by noobs as we are now.

2. Tanks take no skill to use. Things shouldn't get kills if they take no skill. I think the concept is simple enough.

3. The fps community will completely vanish without balance. This is a promise.