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Cygnus Gogela
Freeport Exploration
Loosely Affiliated Pirates Alliance
50
   |
Posted - 2012.09.14 18:59:00 -
[1] - Quote
Hi CCP. I just got my PS3 for DUST in the mail less than 24 hours ago. Set it up, activated my beta key, updated sisi on my computer, and played my first game. I've rooted around the menus, paced back and forth in my captains quarters, and tried to meet up my EvE guy (Gogela) with my DUST guy. As an avid Halo and FPS player, I thought I'd leave some initial impressions.
Dropping In
Right off the bat, I think CCP should look at the way the game loads up. That should be pretty obvious. As someone logging into the beta for the first time, the login sequence right away drastically lowered my expectations for the game. We're just talking aesthetics here... but I think it's important to get people excited about the game. So... hopefully the screens with safety information about how to hold a PS3 controller will be replaced by hot Minmatar dancers on a table at a pleasure hub. ...or something. Something better. Anything would be better. Once you are at the opening screen it plays EvE music and has some kind of low resolution nebulae in the background. What's up with the "noise"... It's like a light static over the nebulae background image. I see what is trying to be achieved there, I think. You want it to appear grainy and gritty... like a broken up transmission, or one that is being jammed. The "battlefield coms" look... right? Your art department is better than that. It looks like hell. Like something somebody coming up with their first powerpoint presentation would overlay on their slides to hide the fact that they are relatively incompetent at using powerpoint. All it made me do was suspect my HDMI cable was out or something... but it was not. The only thing that appears to have been done well when logging in is the CCP logo and sound. That is crisp and clean. From a branding perspective, it makes CCP look like a AAA developer. Now if only we could extend that to the rest of the opening log-in experience. I know this might sound harsh, but I want DUST to be successful... and some people are going to make up their mind about this game right away. You need to make your players excited about the EvE universe. They need to want to know more... to have that drive to explore and understand this universe. The players need that drive to make them get through the learning curve... which if my initial impressions are any indication, is pretty damn steep (Not EvE steep... but a lot closer to EvE than I would have thought). So, the intro should be cool and engaging. Think about putting in different opening animations or overviews showing space, planets, battles... that kind of thing. Let people see part of the game before they play it, so they know there's more to it than their first match (which will probably decide if they stick with the game) by showing them some more advanced things they might not see for a while... just to plant the seed in the player's head that "I want that". I didn't want anything after logging in... except a manual which I'd imagine would have the tasteful thickness of a phone book (Google it... there was a time when people used phone books to look up phone numbers...).
Menus n Stuff
The map of New Eden is familiar to me as an EvE player, but it about as useful as a rubber chicken to me as a DUST Merc. Navigation is clunky and unintuitive. I managed to get around by highlighting region, then selecting constellation, and THEN I could finally see what the name of the system I am in is called. Sweet. Selecting that system pulls up what appears to be some kind of adaptation of the system map. I can select planets, moons, the sun... but there's no information on them. In fact, there are no tooltips whatsoever. What is the point at all of that map? There are two reasons I bothered to figure it out... 1) I'm in the beta test so I'm checking everything out. 2) I'm a 6 year EvE vet and figured that I would be able to do it if I just screwed around with it enough. Before I started in EvE, though, I wouldn't have given that map a second look. "Open it up... there's stars and no direction. What can I do here? Who cares? Is there any information here I can use? Nope? F-it." Having used the map now and even with EvE as context, I don't see how the map makes any difference at all to a DUST player. Even an EvE player would find it pretty useless. Add some tooltips... and don't send me places I don't care about. It's great that I can zoom in on an asteroid belt... wtf do I care about asteroid belts? Make navigation intuitive and guide people through the map, and make sure it has a purpose. Tell me what that purpose is when I get there. Don't let me hit dead ends that have absolutely no value to me as a merc.
Navigation in general seems to follow an odd logical schema... as if the UI wasn't really thought out. Step one, provide multiple logical schemas based on drop-down menus to see everything w/ a few clicks. Step 2, tie it all together so if you are in fitting, or your character sheet, or wherever, you can buy stuff off the market or add skills or whatever. On paper it makes sense, but in the game it makes for a bewildering array of apparent choices, when in fact there are few. CCP, I think you should play through Mass Effect again. You need to think of navigation in those terms... NOT EvE terms. The mouse and keyboard make EvE's complex interface very logical and efficient. That type of navigation does not translate well to a Dualshock controller. Use that "D" pad for something... else. Maybe use the D-Pad for accessing critical menus instead of the psudo-mouse navigation you have going right now.
Crash and Burn
So sometimes when I hit the little red "O" to initiate a match, the battlefinder comes up and somehow I am put into a match. Other times I get the ring of spinning circles and the game freezes. There's no way to recover from that freeze other than to quit the game and log back in. |
Cygnus Gogela
Freeport Exploration
Loosely Affiliated Pirates Alliance
50
|
Posted - 2012.09.14 19:00:00 -
[2] - Quote
When I am put into a match I have no idea what's going on. Can I select which side I'm fighting for? Doesn't appear so... it just sticks me into one side or the other. OK... I guess.. but sometimes it puts me into a match that has already started... or is just ending. So I wait for 4 or 5 minutes for a game only to come in when my sides clones are already depleted. I end up just hovering over the battlemap until "Defeat" pops up and sonofabit** I get paid ISK for a game I never set foot in. OK... I guess... not much fun though. Other times I would get into a game and it would tell me all of my dropsuit fittings were invalid because I was out of copies... which isn't the case. When I enter into my "captains quarters" (which are the same as in eve, but with 2 non-functional doors instead of one) I check my fittings and see that yes, I am out of everything. I log out and log back in and all of my gear is back again, and now I can enter into matches just fine. WTF over?
So with regards to the red "O" and quick deathmatches, that was my initial experience there. Let's talk about the market now. Sometimes things show up in the market, sometimes they don't. If you can't load one category or another, you are done and the market will not load until you re-log again. Re-logging is definitely an integral part of the game, it seems.
The Battle Itself
With all the other problems going on I was actually surprised the battles were as good as they were. As soon as I saw how important teamwork is in this game I started getting regular kills. Not bad for a nub in... well... what am I in? Now I'm in Malitia gear... and it's clear to me that is something you want right away. You might consider adding guidance on that. I read it in the forums. I was going to do a big writeup on this, but I think I'll wait for a week and play the game more. There are some big problems but I want to test it out more before I say what's on my mind here.
Statistical Wasteland or I Don't Know WTF is Going On
Post-match in most other FPS games I'll hang out in the lobby after the match for some well earned trash talk and statistics review. How many people did I kill? Vehicles? What weapons did I use? Again... if there's a way to do this in DUST I sure couldn't figure it out.
EvE Juice
I wanted my main in EvE to juice up my DUST dude... looks like you can't do that yet. I tried to add my EvE main as a contact in DUST and it crashed the game. So maybe look into that one...
Button Layout(S) < see how I capitalized the "S"... ? That's a hint.
I think the current button layout sucks. I'm just going to say that straight up. If there's a way to adjust it I couldn't find it... I would like to see us have the ability to take the sensitivity settings way up. I also think you should have several other button layouts pre-made for players already. Every FPS does this and you really should have too. |
Cygnus Gogela
Freeport Exploration
Loosely Affiliated Pirates Alliance
50
|
Posted - 2012.09.14 19:29:00 -
[3] - Quote
P.S.
Dues Ex - Check out the navigation there (the game can be purchased for super- cheap). It's able to have a LOT of information in an easily accessible set of navigation tables. Much better navigation than the EvE UI port we have now... |
Cygnus Gogela
Freeport Exploration
Loosely Affiliated Pirates Alliance
50
|
Posted - 2012.09.14 21:07:00 -
[4] - Quote
Maximus Stryker wrote:almost TL;DR but I got through it.
nice write up, looking forward to some of these fixes in the next build.
Thanks. Yah the posting I do here is going to be more for the Devs... so longer, more detailed explanations of why I think what I think about this or that. Most of my normal shiptosting is going to happen in the real EvE forums.  I'll probably just post a few more write-ups about the gameplay that will be pretty verbose over the next few weeks and call it good. I just wanted to get a feel for the game before it launches... I can't imagine it's going to launch in 2012. I'd be surprised if it did, at any rate. |
Cygnus Gogela
Freeport Exploration
Loosely Affiliated Pirates Alliance
50
|
Posted - 2012.09.14 21:31:00 -
[5] - Quote
Villore Isu wrote:Yeah, from that I read somewhere (can't remember where  ) it's going to be open beta for winter, with launch probably spring 2013. TBH this is probably a good thing, all the big AAA titles are released in the winter, by the time Dust is released lots of people will probably be burnt out and looking for a new game. Now all CCP has to do is get their advertising right (as in actually have some)...
I agree completely. Halo 4 coming soon... I'm going to be on that like a fat kid on a cupcake. They launch in fall to catch the holiday shoppers. DUST being free-to-play should hit people when they are poor... in spring when they are paying down their x-mas presents. |
Cygnus Gogela
Freeport Exploration
Loosely Affiliated Pirates Alliance
50
|
Posted - 2012.09.14 22:22:00 -
[6] - Quote
Jane DeArc wrote:Since is is to CCP and not the community, this would have been better in "Feedback and Suggestions" than "General Discussion"
Don't you forum **** me... there's a lot of threads here and there about topics that wouldn't normally be in GD... but then again there's not a lot of community here yet anyway. I was just thinking someone else w/ more game time might want to chime in on some of my criticisms and add a more experienced response. This thread was posted where I meant it to go. |
Cygnus Gogela
Freeport Exploration
Loosely Affiliated Pirates Alliance
50
|
Posted - 2012.09.14 23:03:00 -
[7] - Quote
ReGnUm ReSuRgAM DEI wrote:What Halo did you play?
All of them but "Halo Wars". I actually liked ODST. Hit me up, I'm "Gogela" in Halo Reach right now. |
Cygnus Gogela
Freeport Exploration
Loosely Affiliated Pirates Alliance
50
|
Posted - 2012.09.15 17:37:00 -
[8] - Quote
Iron Wolf Saber wrote:...lots of stuff!
Wow! Thanks for all of that! Good to know all of it...
W/ regards to the database, it's more of a "display" and I'll probably have one for dropsuits and another for vehicles. I don't know about some of the other gear... that can turn into a huge project. Baby steps first. I'm not messing no NDA though, so probably won't put anything up until the NDA is retracted.
W/ regards to my collection, again it'll probably be dropsuits and vehicles. Anything that gets "fit" |
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