Man, you guys should try EVE. You know how much SP you get for a fight there? It's zero. And, as predicted, everyone stop playing because getting SP is the only reason to play a game. That's why EVE has zero players.

The two arguments I've seen against the SP cap are:

• Hardcore players "stop playing" after they reach the skill cap because of diminished returns.
• Casual players "can't catch up" to hardcore players because of the skill cap.

So, if we took the skill cap away and a "hardcore player" didn't stop playing because there was no skill cap:

• Hardcore players would keep playing & earning sp/isk.
• Casual players would be able to "catch up" to the hardcore players who play the game for longer periods of time than they do.

Clearly, we need to get rid of the SP cap.

i feel i lost SP last reset and will this one as well....since i dont play til i earn 1 and 0 SP a game

That's why I say this "anti-grind" is the worst kind of grind.

Simply normalize the SP payouts so most active players get them.

Completely right -- the SP should be available uncapped so that the players who play the most matches have the highest SP and completely outstrip everyone else in the game with both ISK and SP to the point where unless you're one of the "haves" you become a "have not" and corporation matches become a liability because of there being no SP gains for your character when the time spent could be used skilling up.

This is the age of the microwave society. We want to drive a marauder and we want it now god damnit. And if I can't grind at full speed until I get it I'm going to go play another game because kitten balanced gameplay and making sure new players can get in after I start. The only thing that matters are how many skill points I have and how good this equipment makes my kdr look. Kitten everything that doesn't help me play my game the way I want to and kitten you for wanting to play it differently, you're clearly wrong. I beat all of the other first person shooters in 40 hours of game-play and I'll be kittened if I can't do the same with this one. After all, video games are made to be beaten -- not played.

he following topics were discussed by the dev team this week regarding gameplay issues in the beta:

Casual vs. Hardcore players in DUST 514

Player concern on how will casual players be able to keep up with hardcore players who might spend more time playing and gaining an advantage in SP and ISK.

Planned resolutions
- A revamped reward system will narrow the gap between casual and hardcore players
- Match Making system (introduced soon) will help put players into fair matches
- Dropsuit HP will be more consistant to avoid some becoming overpowered

Source


This raises two questions for me that seem quite relvant to the current SP cap system.

1. What are "Hardcore" and "Casual" players defined as within Dust 514?
Is someone who plays a total of 7 hours in a week Casual or Hardcore? How about 14 hours? How about 21?
What average playtime in a day makes someone a "Hardcore" player? Does that include all playtime or only play time
that happens in match? Does in match play time include the matches someone is added to which are already half finished?

2. How robust is this Match Making system intended to be? (i.e. how much of the "play time gap" will the match making system
be expected to properly account for?). Is the current SP system doing enough to balance time investment as is or is
the current system seen as inadequate and in need of an additional mechanic to 'normalize' player rewards?


It seems to me that both of these questions need to be answered before an approach to the issue can be made constructively.
Because;
if Player A sees anyone who plays 7 hours or more per week as hardcore and the current SP system as not going far enough to protect casual players.
And Player B sees anyone who plays less than 30 hours as casual and thinks the current SP system is excessively stringent when combined with the planned Match Making system.

Not only are they likely to disagree about solutions but they're really not even talking about the same thing when we move beyond the most macro level.

0.02 ISK
Cross

You mad bro?

Why don't you offer up new ideas or solutions to help solve the problem. While you are working on that stop being fking hypocrite about peoples play style preference when you just did the same.

You are absolutely correct Cross. Who or what defines a casual or hardcore player. Truth is though I dont care.

What I offerend up was a solution that makes sp part of the reward system instead of main part of the reward system. Skill points should give you access to gear and bonuses on them. Make that middle of the road with no caps, daily bonus, and mild anti grind. Add in LP programs with standings and you have an addition grind and currency. skill advantage is a constant but shifting longer grinds to gear access and purchasing is preferable.

I notice I didn't seem to address your OP very much in my post, that's what I get for posting tired I guess >.<
Anyway my general sense of the OP is that the idea as merit on the macro and on the mechanical I'm still chewing over possible implications (i.e. how easy would it be to find ways to 'break/exploit' the system).
One major area I'm interested to get your feedback on is how you see a LP system interacting with/affecting the AUR gear current present as the revenue source for Dust? They seem conceptually similar and thus depending on iteration might tread on each others toes, what are your thoughts there?

Cheers :)
Cross

What I'm driving at most is what niche will the loyalty gear fill, i.e. what's it's draw?

For a quick (rough) macro comparison I'll use the current gear.

• Milita gear - low ISK cost point, some AUR BPOs, no skill requirements (drawbacks... just about everything else)
• AUR gear - Lower skill requirements than proximately equivalent ISK gear (darabacks; costs AUR = RIL cash)
• Proto gear - Best stats, fitting options, etc. in theory it's just the best gear (Drawbacks; Highest cost in both ISK and Skill Points)
• LP gear - Pros ??? (Drawbacks??)

(Rolled a 17, Is the DC check 15 and what skill do I add (reflex save? or fortitude?))

4th edition rules, so you just use your death saving bonus -- dc was 10, so you'll live

Wait, where did tabletop RPGs come into this?

I'd expect LP gear to be better quality than Proto with lower skill requirements. Additionally I'd expect we'd find some faction gear that requires unusual skill combinations (like requiring two different suit operation skills at lvl 3 for a heavy-logistic suit or an assault-scout suit).

Dear CCP,

• Hard Cap of 832,000 SP/Weekly (and an awesome animation on our SP calculator like an overheat gauge w/ sound, etc.. instead of displaying SP gives a countdown of how long we have until our Hard Cap is reset, like the cooldown timers)
• Hard Cap of 40,000 SP/Match (and a different awesome animation on our SP calculator like an overheat gauge w/ sound, etc.. Also, the "total SP" should list for out of 40,000 points rather than just giving us the "potential" if we had a skill booster implant - it should all play into the theme that it's awesome to break the SP Gage)
• Soft Cap of 208,000 SP/Daily (Add animation & sounds indicating that you're stressing the SP Gague)
1/2 sp gain until Grind.

• Grind at 416,000 SP/Daily (Add animation & sounds indicating that you're severely stressing the SP Gague)
1/4 sp gain once grind is in effect/Daily

• Learning Overdrive Mode. (Add animation & sounds indicating that the SP Gague is "supercharged")
If it's been 3 or more days since the last time a character was signed in the soft cap removed for the next 48 hours.

What's this mean to us?

For everyone:

• It will take a minimum of 6 matches to hit the soft cap on SP in a given day.
• Awesome animations on our SP to help remind us when we hit thresholds & make them goals rather than something to be afraid of.

For a new player or a player who has trouble reaching the SP Cap:

• Join a corp. They'll find ways to help you keep up(but not Warriors or they'll get the ways we try to help removed from the game ).

For a daily casual player:

• If you play to the soft cap every day it'll take you 4 days to hardcap your sp for the week.
• It will take you twice as many matches to work through the soft cap for your SP as it would to play daily.
• It would take four times as many matches to work through the grind for your SP as it would to play daily.

For a weekend warrior:

• If you haven't been playing for a few days and you drop in you can play to the grind two days in a row and it'll take you 2 days to hardcap your sp for the week (and you won't ever see any dip in SP gains).
• If you play play through the grind it'll take you 1 day, but 3 times as many matches to hardcap your sp for the week.

For a hardcore player:

• You can hardcap 3+ characters a week without even feeling the grind if you play it right...or you can focus on one, knowing you're going to hit a hard cap for sp, then help out with training up the newbies in your corp, participating in faction warfare, etc...

Keep It Classy,
L.R.

I think when we talk about the amount of numbers tweaking that needs to be done to this game, we're talking about the wrong thing. This game is - or so I gather from their workshops at the EVE fan conference - meant to be balanced in a manner that is both dynamic and self-correcting. In place of putting artificial caps on how much ISK can be earned per whatever unit of time, let's consider the intrinsic issues at hand here - people are crashing vehicles into walls for the sole sake of repairing them, only to crash them again and repeat ad nauseam.

Perhaps instead of putting a cap on total experience, we should consider mechanisms which make this exploitation of the reward mechanism less viable. If we're tracking the types of damage a vehicle takes (or how much damage is dealt to that vehicle by other players) and the amount of damage an engineer repairs on each vehicle, we should therefore be able to derive what percentage of total damage repaired was by way of crashing. We could therefore say that engineers should not get experience for any non-hostile vehicle damage that exceeds n% of their total repairs, so long as they make a substantial amount of repairs (to prevent a player's experience in repairs being quartered if they only fixed their vehicle once).