Quinton XD
Brave Newbies Inc.
2
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Posted - 2013.02.18 10:35:00 -
[1] - Quote
Well'p, here we go. I got a little group of chums together to play this game since it was free, and we all haven't really been playing that much of it. I mean, sure, on paper it definitely looks nice; it's basically an MMO with guns. In the FUTURE. And you don't have to do any of that boring WoW shenanigans of clicking an enemy, waiting two minutes, clicking them again, then doing the same thing to another guy. There's not going to be any farming for experience, any farming for gold. Even better, the playerbase ought to be much more mature. More open-minded and relaxed towards the standard newbie to a free game that anyone and everyone will likely try at least once. So, we stepped in to this miracle that was Dust 514.
The interface is smoothe, intuitive, and the tutorial is helpful and voiced with lots of pictures. Helpful to a new player, or at least, helpful to let them maneuver around their... Home thing. Eeehhh okay. Most newbies will skip past all of this, and let's face it, learning how to navigate a screen is easy. Learning how to play the game, however, is not. A new player has no idea what skills to and to not buy, why they need to unlock a tier of weapons by buying said tier before they can buy the weapons in said tier, etc. They also won't know what specific classes do - sure, the description is all well and good, but for the most part they list skills. A brief description, and skills. What do these skills do? You won't know until you actually choose that class and make a character - and, after that, if you don't like that class setup, you'll have to make another character. You're limited to three, and if you want to delete one you don't like, it takes ten hours for the delete to go through. This brings me to my first major point that I feel requires a very serious and necessary overhaul.
Dust 514 punishes new players for their lack of experience and know-how when it comes to proper builds and the game in general.
I'm not a game developer, so I don't know what steps are required to address this issue, but I can tell you from the perspective of a new player that this needs some serious fixing. Maybe you could include a secondary menu on a highlighted class that, with the simple press of a button, allows you to view a more in-depth description of said class, including detailed descriptions of what the individual alotted skills do and the sort of layout (not just a list, but a comprehensive showing of the 'Dropsuit Fitting' screen that allows you to see what the weapons do) and perhaps even a brief video you can watch showing the class in-action. Otherwise, your average new player will jump blindly in to a class that sounds good and get annihilated. Which brings me to my second issue.
Rock-paper-scissors gameplay does not equal an enjoyable experience.
Generally, if the opposing team has a tank and several heavy machine gunners, you're dead. The fact that you have to counter a strategy that you have no idea is comoing at you in order to achieve victory is a bad thing. Yes, the game still gives you a reward for losing, but not all players like losing. I know from personal experience in games like Call of Duty that a new player jumping in to the game with no prior experience is generally going to quit after losing some twenty matches in a row while simultaneously not knowing what they did wrong. The fact that a powerful anti-armor rocket launcher barely does any damage to the vehicle it's meant to kill doesn't help, either. Players will not know this starting out. The fact that a heavy machine gunner is capable of tearing someone to pieces at multiple ranges with little effort will leave a player frustrated and in the mindset of "I'm going to lose anyway, so why bother?" Balancing weapons according to type moreso than they already have been is necessary, here. Singular weapon types completely dominating does not equal balanced gameplay, and the fact that experienced players are capable of being dropped in to matches with complete noobs is a very, very bad idea. Which brings me to my final point.
Players of this game that are experienced and know what they are doing are generally unhelpful towards new players, most of the time even being outright hostile.
A game so focused of online play can only be truly judged by its playerbase, and from what I've seen this game is terrible. The players themselves are cold and detrimental to the experience it wants to give a new player. I learned that asking questions on how to improve your ability is possibly the worst sin you can commit in this game; generally, you will be met with a lot of expletives and - in one case - an outright threat on my life. That was the defining point for me when I put down my controller and decided to uninstall the game from my harddrive. Not out of anger, but because I just didn't want to have to put up with the players themselves anymore. For all its shortcomings, the game itself is fun - but it only takes one rotten apple to spoil the whole bunch, and in this case, it's the people who play it that spoiled it for me. Combat this by having very active and uncompromising moderators observing both voice and text channels constantly, reacting to threats and flaming with immediate and explanationless termination of services. That way, you can separate the players detrimental to the experience from those who just want to have fun playing a video game. And as for the man who threatened me directly, I've already reported your PSN to Sony. Enjoy your inevitable ban.
Final verdict. Good game - it's still in Beta, so there WILL be issues and that's okay, but players are (usually) forever. Fix the problems with the game, then address the issue of unfriendly and hostile players. Until then, I'm not going to touch this game again. |