The skills and loadouts take a lot of reading and thinking and customizing, and tweaking, and retweaking...I love it personally! However I have had several friends that just couldn't get into the game because of complexity of it all. They just want to shoot people in the face not spend an hour in the menus.

Possible solutions

Create a skill or career path system that a player can select and the SP they earn will automatically be applied to the skills that belong to that path. Similar to Dungeons and Dragons online. At any time the player can leave the path and pick their own way as they get more comfortable with the game.

Possible paths could include

Espionage- with a focus in the scout suits, hacking, explsives, scanning, dampening, droplinks, knives and side arms for CQC.

Support- focus in logistics suits, repairing, nanohives, nanite injectors, and light weapons.

Defender- Focus on heavy suits, HMGs, AV, and tanking.

Assailant- focus on the assualt suit, AR, SMG, Grenades, and various low level support skills to make them versatile.

There could be multiple offshoots from each path or just variants of these that focus on sniper rifles etc.

For each path there could be a complete dropsuitfitting purchasable in the market for ISK that lets the player continue playing without being bogged down by the market and loadouts. There could even be high end loadouts for them as they progress down their chosen path.

Any thoughts?
Speak Freely

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't EvE built on a similar system?

I don't play EvE, but I've read about it and heard a lot from people who play. EvE is actually rather difficult, but that's part of its charm. It's an actual challenge for the core gamers (which in this age is something we're sorely lacking). I would hate to see DUST become more streamlined. I enjoy the fact it took me the 4 weeks I've been playing to understand what I understand now. And even at that, I still don't know half as much as I'd like to about the game. And this is not to mention I'll have to learn all the new stuff they've got planned for DUST as the months go by AND all the expansions the game will experience as the years go by after it's full release.

I DO agree however, that there should be at least some kind of tutorial for certain elements. Vehicle maneuvering for example, especially Dropships.

There is a gigantic elephant in the room here...

DUST 514 needs players to be successful. Normally, you'd never hear me speak out for lazy mushbrains who can't take 3 days of playing a game to figure out how it works, but the entire enterprise that CCP is going for here is a massive COD or MW FPS crowd to populate the ground level combat of the Eve universe.

Two major things could crush this game if only 100k dedicated people end up playing it: 1) It is totally free. All incoming money relies solely on the AUR market. More players playing equals more people buying gear, boosters, etc... on the market. The second 2) is that there are literally a thousand solar systems or more in the Eve universe and most of those systems have belts, moons or planets that could be potential battlefields. If there are only 20k people signed into Dust 4 months after launch during a given hour because so many people jumped ship, that will make for a pretty pathetic number of active battles literally strewn across a thousand star systems.

I don't know about you, but I want as many people to stick around as possible for the second reason and CCP wants just as many peeps to stick around for the first reason.

IF implementing some kind of rookie skill and equipment training system will keep people logged in, I'm pretty much all for it. I am not for the dumbing down of this system as it is (it hardly seems complicated to me as I am typically not a FPS person) but the OPs idea would keep the game open to both types of players AND doesn't do anything that they couldn't do on their own already. The one point of contention I have is making stock dropsuit fittings easily available. MAYBE add some kind of "completed fitting" tax (5% over actual market costs) so lazy people can still play, don't lose too much ISK but are still being held responsible for their being lazy. "Convenience fee."

One thing is certain in DUST 514: more players, more battles, more AUR and ISK being spent...more fun for everyone.

Oh don't get me wrong at all...

I have played Eve off and on for 2+ years and, thus, this game being considered "complex" somewhat baffles me. There IS a threshold of how simple and "canned" this game can get without it going to hell in a ham sandwich. It is still a good deal of new information for a typical gamer to absorb and many people will simply quit if they aren't assimilated into the system in a relatively fluid manner.

There is no way this game is getting LESS complicated than it already is. No way. As corp battles get more involved, maps get bigger and things like racial dropsuits and suit skill bonuses get added and integration with Eve get added into this game, it will only get more complicated. Much more complicated. The basics shouldn't change much, but player involvement and objectives sure will...which will only serve to alienate the uninitiated further without some serious help.

The OPs point is that a system can and should be implemented into the game that, without reducing its appeal to the hardcore/pro complicated/steep learning curve crowd, make the game more easily played by the newly injected FPS gamer. In essence, make it "simpler" by adding mechanics that allow someone to build a stock class quickly and efficiently so they can get out there and kill people without diminishing the awesome complexity that is the DUST skill system. People who learn the game mechanics will always have an advantage over people who just spawn without knowledge.