Shotglass Boys
Condotta Rouvenor
Gallente Federation
2
   |
Posted - 2013.02.20 08:45:00 -
[1] - Quote
So my roommate and I have been playing on his PS3 for a bit over a week now and have a few notices. Note: long post.
We have almost exclusively sniped after trying to play other ways and getting stomped into the dirt for hours without much idea what was going on. Both of us are fairly skilled console FPS players, him more-so than me, but both of us are usually top-3 ranked and always top-half ranked in Big Team Halo 4 (which is what we mostly play) to give a crude snapshot of our skill level.
That all said, my roommate and I have the following issues with the game, in order of annoyance and the likelihood they'd get us to quit playing:
1)Weekly SP Cap: Regardless of the argument for these (preventing "essential newb grinding" or "week 1 2m SP players" or whatever), as a casual gamer picking this game up, they suck and literally make us stop playing the game whenever we hit them.
Dust: "Nice, you just got 1750 WP in that last match after killing 1/6 of their clone reserves on the way to a clone depletion victory, here's 7k SP."
Me: "Awesome, I'm finally getting the hang of this."
Dust: "Not bad, you just got 2nd with 550 SP on your god-awful team of 8 snipers with 2-15 KDRs. Here's 550 WP."
Me: "Cool... see you next Thursday when my cap resets. Back to Halo 4."
Even worse is when you log on and find your passive SP has capped you out - as I've just done.
If you want to encourage people to play your game and also reward skill rather than punishing them, why not make getting SPs equal to WPs by default, then give daily "Rest SP bonuses" where you get diminishing multipliers to your SP earned each day? If you got 5x SP for your first match, then 4x for your next, etc... that'd encourage people to jump on each day to get them rather than encouraging them to log off if they play a ton over the weekend (while they're lying on the couch sick) and find themselves capped out on weekdays (also as I've just done).
If you can buy something with AUR to circumvent the cap, fair enough, they need to make money, but even then - when I cap, I log for the week. Some players I know wouldn't come back after the first one.
2)Controller responsiveness: It seems like there's too much of a "dead zone" in the PS3 controller. Compared to Halo, sniping in Dust is unresponsive, sluggish, and it's almost impossible to nudge-shove-readjust-twitch-complain-grunt-nudge-overshoot-get-it-almost-finally-arg! the cursor over your target.
My roommate said maybe our controller is broken in some way (we only have one but spend 98% of our console time on XBOX), but in Halo you start to turn as soon as there's a tiny bit of stick movement. In Dust, with sensitivity maxed, it takes significant stick movement to initiate reticule movement - especially noticeable when sniping. Casually easy snipes in Halo (a guy standing still on a hill) can become 20-second long exercises in frustration trying to make the damn cursor move to where you could make it go in Halo in 2 seconds.
If it's a product of the PS3 controller they can't control, back to XBOX. If they can control it and it's intentional to keep people from sniping, there's gotta be a better way...
3)Invisible Mountain Shields: Nothing worse than trying to snipe another sniper whose entire body is clearly visible atop a mountain only to bounce off their invisible force field. Even worse is when they can counter-snipe you with impunity from their place of invulnerability. Yes, I've been on the other side too, watching tank rounds and sniper shells plink ineffectually at my sniping spot, but when that happens I wish they'd just be able to hit me since I know how fricking annoying it is.
4)WALL OF ORANGE Targeting: The opaque health bars and names of your targets is a pain (again, from a sniper's perspective - after our original close-in raping early on we haven't gone back to close-range stuff). Having an empty vehicle, a tank, and the guy who is about to hack A all near each other makes it impossible to see what you are shooting when your cursor passes over. Target rich environments (such as the whole enemy team spawning at one location full of turrets) can make the HUD a mess of orange that is impossible to see through. How about a setting in the options menu that removes names and turns shield/health bars into small, razor-thin, semi-transparent lines when zoomed in? Or a button press while zoomed that turns them on/off? Not being able to pick a target due to a flood of information you don't want or care about sucks.
5)In-game WP Rewards: After Halo 4's (and Black Ops/Modern Warfare from what I remember from the last one I played a couple years ago) "reward everything" model, getting WP in Dust seems rather thin. Snipe the guy who is AFK three times in the foot? 50 WP. Headshot the guy who is sprinting in a Scout at full speed into A to hack it? 50 WP.
In Halo, if I snipe someone who is about to kill a teammate, is shouts out "Protector" and gives me extra points. If I kill the guy carrying the flag (hacking the objective in Dust-speak) I get extra points. If I shoot a guy while he's sprinting/in the air (tough shots), extra points. Etc.
6)Null Cannon hits: These things are invulnerable, why show me I hit one? In a related note, why show me when I've hit an ally when I can't hurt them?
7)False-Positive "Orange Dot": When aiming at a target on the on the other side of a wall and having your reticule give the "clear shot" orange light-up is misleading.
In spite of all this, we're enjoying the game (having hit the cap two weeks in a row, obviously). Looking forward to where it goes from here. |
Shotglass Boys
Condotta Rouvenor
Gallente Federation
2
|
Posted - 2013.02.20 22:15:00 -
[2] - Quote
I seem to have been in error about the passive SP capping. Perhaps my roommate played while I was sleeping 14 hour stretches after a week of being sick.
I understand the reasoning behind capping SP. I played EVE from the Beta off-and-on up until 3-4 years ago and so know all about the way SP work there (and also love the suit/vehicle loadout carryover). I was primarily expressing how it is experienced by someone coming from another (and likely competing) game franchise. When we hit the cap last week and figured out what was going on (since it is no-where explained in game), I read up a bit on why it is the way it is. It makes sense, keeping "hardcore" players from drastically outpacing newbies SP-wise; as stated they are already nearly unstoppable experience-wise.
That said, when you hit it the first time without knowing why it's there, it feels like punishment. "You like our game? Great, here's a 80-90% SP cut to reward you." I'm actually grateful for it as it got me to stop playing the game and do some other stuff that needed to be done, but I think for sustainability reasons encouraging your most dedicated players to take days-long breaks from your game may not be optimal.
World of Warcraft got my money for an extra couple months just because I was stuck on the "Daily Quest" treadmill and didn't want to "miss any". If WoW had a weekly XP cap instead, it would have been far easier to quit giving them my money months before as a few days off goes a long way to breaking a habit. Again, not saying the SP cap is wrong, but giving feedback on two new players' experiences of it.
I also get the "squads rock" thing as I played EVE up until the Stab nerf made it pretty much impossible to survive PVP solo and haven't been back since. EVE's blob-warfare solo-suicide nature is a topic for a different CCP forum however. I've played Halo with groups of my roommate's friends in XBOX-live chat and mopped the floor with random pubs map-after-map.
As for sniping, my roommate and I snipe in most games. I usually lean towards sniping (I was our outfit's primary sniper in Planetside I when I played it during beta and a while after) or assault rifles, my roommate leans to sniping or medic (if its available). Sniping was the middle ground.
We made another character designed to be a medic and played a few hours (we usually take turns playing a map or two), but found most people just respawn instantly and people with armor damage just ran off when we tried to mend them and we'd end up chasing them into a firefight trying to heal them - If we didn't get sniped or gunned down by some lightning-fast guy with a shotgun appearing out of nowhere or the like that is.
The first time firing at someone 50' away and having your SMG or Assault Rifle bullets simply disappear somewhere between you and them was somewhat surprising and disheartening coming from other games where bullets from equivalent weapons travel further than you can throw them... |