I'm sure you could add armor mods in there (there is a skill that upgrades CPU output). Whatever it takes to make this change work. Nerfing weapons isn't the only way to deal with it. You could buff the health on all dropsuits across the board.

Also a T2 suit with 2 complex shields and max shield/mechanics skills would provide you with plenty of survivability.

Nobody has mentioned a friggin simple solution to the player retention aspect in this thread.

Somebody mentioned in another thread I was looking at that there is a matchmaking setup that CCP already has made up but that they haven't flipped the switch on...Now, that could be complete flop, but if it isn't then they should freaking hit the switch.

You want to keep newbies playing the game? Keep them interested or make them more interested? Let them fight other newbies. Lowbies fight lowbies. Protos fight protos. I have to believe some kind of simple matchmaking utility based on, say, total SP but involving WP earned could completely solve many of the problems.

I've read several newbie QQ threads and they all say the same things: pisspoor spawns and superskilled players dumping on them every match they join. CCP is trying to address the spawn problem but they appear to have taken little action on the other problem. The much bigger problem, imo.

That is all ignoring the fact that the game isn't finished. When this thing fully integrates with Eve the lion's share of the pros are probably going to grab their proto gear and haul out into null sec for the big SP/ISK to be gained. That could be a long way off, I guess, and that is a problem.

I agree with whoever posted that this thing shouldn't have gone into open beta as it is. I, personally, have mostly enjoyed playing despite being so-so at shooters. I think part of what keeps me playing is seeing vast potential in this game. Potential does not guarantee success though, and the success of this game relies on it keeping at least a steady flux of players. I am very concerned about player retention as well and the OP was dead nuts about that problem. Gotta keep people around for this thing to be a success. There are over a thousand solar systems in Eve, most have at least one celestial body for ground forces to fight over. That'll be pretty lame if the population is so sparse you can't even set up a halfway decent battle over it.

I just don't think completely flattening the SP skill system is exactly the way to go...

SP gives older players far too great of an advantage on the battlefield over the newbies than it should.

The purpose of SP should be to give players access to a larger selection of equipment and skills so they can expand their role on the battlefield. It should not be rewarding older players with enormous amounts of health and damage bonuses through passive skill bonuses and the modules that SP can unlock.

Look at the competitive games out there that are and have been popular. League of Legends, Halo, Quake, Counter-Strike, Street Fighter, hell even Call of Duty, the list goes on. All of these games have something in common. They are fair to both new players and older players. There are no insane bonuses given to players through leveling up. Bonuses, when there are any, are minimal. For example, League of Legends has a progression system, the "skill tree" but manages to stay fair and competitive. How? The bonuses that are granted to players for leveling up are minimal (percent increases to stats are typically between 2%-5%). The "equipment" you can unlock (in this case new champions) are balanced so that high level champions do not have a significant advantage over low level champions. A new player can jump right into the game and immediately begin having fun.

The progression system in Dust 514, the skillbooks, gives an enormous advantage to older players. I don't think that there has been any shooter in history with such a huge "artificial" skill gap between low level and high level players, and there's a reason for that. This system is not fun.

Being a free, downloadable game on the PS Store, 99% of downloaders will make their mind up about this game within 1 or 2 matches. Do you think players are left with a good first impression when they jump into a match and face opponents with over 200% of their health and can deal over 30% extra damage than they can? Do they have fun when they can barely scratch other players but they themselves can lose all their health and armor in the blink of an eye? No. When newbies have to deal with BS like this, they delete the game off their hard drive. They have no incentive to continue getting stomped on by older players; they didn't play a dime for this game. They won't put up with it. This game was advertised as a competitive FPS set in and connected to the universe of a PC MMO, not a a wannabe role-playing game.

On the other side of the spectrum, older players get extremely bored extremely quickly after having acquired 3-4 mill SP and all the health and damage bonuses that come with it. How can an online game be fun when it provides you with no challenge? Why should a player who wants to be challenged be forced to find a corp and participate in corp battles (in many cases against the same familiar faces over and over) which may only come a few times a week? This isn't a problem in any other online game. You can instantly jump into a pub and face a challenging team in LoL, Halo, COD, etc. The incentive to play these games is for the challenge and competition. Once you've acquired complex shield mods and passive damage bonuses in Dust 514, you're essentially a god in pubs and have reached end-game because nobody can touch you, and therefore there is no incentive to continue playing.

This is a a big reason why player retention is pathetic right now and the playerbase is so small. Fortunately, a fix is easy.

Many skillbooks already do a good job at allowing players to expand their role on the field and rewarding them with small bonuses for continuous play like any progression system should. Many low level equipment are already relatively balanced with their high level counterparts (E.G a proto AR gives just a 10% damage bonus at the cost of a lot of CPU). There are, however, some skills and equipment that go way over the top.

These are shield/armor skills and damage skills.

Health modules, damage modules, and their respective skills should not grant players such an enormous advantage in-game vs. newer players. Please think very carefully about these numbers for a second. A 20% health or damage advantage in any shooter is considered huge advantage. In Dust, you can easily stack enough skills and mods over time to have a 250% health advantage and 30% damage advantage over a new player using a similar role. The unfairness of this is mind-boggling. This is game breaking.

This fact also renders modules that don't boost your health or damage output completely useless. Why would you improve your hacking speed a bit, or increase the distance you can sprint for or running speed a bit, or reduce your signature profile a bit, when you can just stack up on a few health modules and become a god?

Tweak down all health and damage bonuses granted by skillbooks and modules. Here are some suggestions:

-Complex shield mods should grant no more than 30 health max. The progression could go something like this: 10 HP for standard, 20 HP for advanced, 30 HP for prototype.
-Same deal with armor mods. Standard could grant 30 HP, advanced 40 HP, prototype 50 HP.
-Damage mod bonuses should be halved and the stacking penalty fixed.
-Damage bonuses on weapon proficiency skills should be removed and replaced with accuracy bonuses or just the ability to use more weapons.
-Shield control skill should grant 2% extra shields per level, not 5%.
-Weaponry skill should grant 1% extra damage per level, not 2%.

Finally all of these suggestions are intended to only effect infantry. In the few areas where vehicles would be effected (for example, nerfing the shield control skill which effects both infantry and vehicles) simply introducing separate skills for vehicles and tuning them from there would keep them balanced with infantry.

The SP cap has been a terrible idea, because it's ensured that new players will never have the opportunity to compete at a somewhat level playing field.

This isn't like a game where a level 1 player can kill a level 20 player if he's good. This is a game where a level 20 player is a demi-god.

I am not the one getting trounced. I find my insane health and damage bonuses unfair and it makes the game un-challenging and extremely boring for me to play. I am not the only one who feels this way.

I believe segregating players by SP and splitting the playerbase can be avoided entirely.

My suggestion does not come remotely close to flattening the SP skill system. The skillbook system does not revolve solely around health upgrades and the sort of health upgrades I'm asking for are still substantial.

IMO most proto wearers in pubs are just trying to compensate for other things,

So you are saying since people want to run good gear they are compensating for something? Take a good hard look at yr corp then, as last i check zdog takes out a mad or surya every since game again randoms or groups. The only difference is he loses multi tanks again good players consistently. Hell, if one of his tanks gets blown up he takes another or he leaves/hides ina corner. In the games. Ive played against him ive never seen him get a kill w/ a gun.

Now yes we have tankers too; but before you say something, think first; aspeople can turn that line u said on you just as easily (like i just did).

No matter the corp, people want to run their good gear simply b/c they can or want to.


Back on topic, i agree with u dubbs, yes sp helps, but a scrub is a scrub no matter the suit. However moejoe, reducing hp modules would only hinder gameplay in my mind, as most would run damage mods; and it becomes an cod style i see u first i win more often then not game

Way to be narrow minded and completely ignoring the rest of my post and quoting only part of what I said like some crap journalist trying to start a fight. I don't hold it against anyone who uses proto gear in pubs, just laugh at them when I destroy them with my cheap gear. This is especially true for tankers, as I do well above average at fending off even destroying them.

1. Except that there is no different tactic. New players going up against a proto suit is like throwing a coyote into a cage of chickens and expecting the chickens to come up with a tactic to defeat or avoid it. There is none and it's unreasonable to think that they should be able to come up with one. With my suggestion the proto suit would still be dangerous. They would have well over a 50%+ health advantage on top of a damage bonus and all their other passive bonuses (such as stamina, reload speed, weapon range, profile scanning, etc). Remember that in most shooters even a 20% advantage is considered a big deal.

2. Unless you want a playerbase as small as MAG's was late in its life-cycle, making sure that these sort of players are happy as
well should be considered a big issue.

I believe the gear gap will be solved by new content designed for vet players to move into. For these early low content days we are in now I believe the solution is a matchmaking system based on total skill points.

By doing this the new players won't be stomped by assaults with 500hp sheilds, and the vets will continue to be challenged by their peers.

Also your not the best person to speak about the welfare of new players to this game zitro, your squad regularly destroys friendly tanks owned by these new players. What do you think would cause you to quit first? Being run over by an op assault, or having the first gunloggi you could afford be destroyed by a friendly surya who purposly ran you over?

You might want to reread his actual name and delete this bit? You are confusing 3 different Imperfects...

The advantage is not slight. If you discuss this with any experienced FPS player, they will all tell you that running in militia gear is a huge mistake and that health and damage mods are the most important and powerful things in the game right now. Don't take this as a presonal attack because I don't mean to offend you, but I get the impression that most people who claim that the advantage isn't as big as we think it is aren't very good at shooters. In other words, either they play too poorly for these health/damage bonuses to make a difference for them, or that they don't have enough experience with shooters to notice the difference.

This game is free and a PS Store exclusive. These types of games are all about first impressions. Nobody is going to create an account, wait a month to gather some passive SP, and come back to play. 99.9% of downloaders simply don't care for this game enough to do this. And on top of this, why should players even have to go through this wait in the first place? It doesn't benefit this game in any way.

Tweak down all health and damage bonuses granted by skillbooks and modules. Here are some suggestions:

-Complex shield mods should grant no more than 30 health max. The progression could go something like this: 10 HP for standard, 20 HP for advanced, 30 HP for prototype.
-Same deal with armor mods. Standard could grant 30 HP, advanced 40 HP, prototype 50 HP.
-Damage mod bonuses should be halved and the stacking penalty fixed.
-Damage bonuses on weapon proficiency skills should be removed and replaced with accuracy bonuses or just the ability to use more weapons.
-Shield control skill should grant 2% extra shields per level, not 5%.
-Weaponry skill should grant 1% extra damage per level, not 2%.

.

Tweak down all health and damage bonuses granted by skillbooks and modules. Here are some suggestions:

-Complex shield mods should grant no more than 30 health max. The progression could go something like this: 10 HP for standard, 20 HP for advanced, 30 HP for prototype.
-Same deal with armor mods. Standard could grant 30 HP, advanced 40 HP, prototype 50 HP.
-Damage mod bonuses should be halved and the stacking penalty fixed.
-Damage bonuses on weapon proficiency skills should be removed and replaced with accuracy bonuses or just the ability to use more weapons.
-Shield control skill should grant 2% extra shields per level, not 5%.
-Weaponry skill should grant 1% extra damage per level, not 2%.

In the few areas where vehicles would be effected (for example, nerfing the shield control skill which effects both infantry and vehicles) simply introducing separate skills for vehicles and tuning them from there would keep them balanced with infantry.

Too many people here don't understand what it means to be in a true beta, not some glorified nearly complete demo with "beta" in the title to make the players feel special. Moejoe, and others, are prime examples of this. They come in acting like they think they're in a complete game and want sweeping changes to core mechanics that, though they don't make sense now, will be necessary when all the features are in place. Get used to disappointment or learn what being a real beta tester is about.

Little jibes about failing player retention, threats to leave, incessant whining, and other intimidation tactics are the best way to ensure your opinions and ideas get ignored. It's the main reason most of the butt hurt players feel they're being ignored, because they pulled that crap.

Don't want to play a beta, then leave. Want to contribute, then pull up your big person pants, be respectful, and just give the unembellished thought or idea.

Nerfing health mods isn't a "sweeping change to core mechanics." It is a balancing matter.

No need to get defensive on CCP's behalf. It's really not warranted. Nobody is attacking you or this game.

Again, SP isn't centered around health upgrades. There are plenty of upgrades and unlockables out there that can give you a big advantage over other players and create that gap you guys want between old and new players. It's just that the health/damage upgrades specifically are way too over-the-top right now and make this game too frustrating for newer players, too easy for older players, and render the other modules and skills practically useless.

My suggestion does not remove health/damage upgrades or make them useless. Health upgrades will still be a very important part of the game and a big deciding factor in the outcome of gunfights like they are now. Even with the numbers I used they would continue to be one of the most important skills in the game. It's just that right now they do way more than this, practically making you a demi-god and rendering the other modules and skills useless because they can't do nearly as much for you as health upgrades can. A nerf would help make the other modules and skills relevant and make the gameplay experience more fun for everyone.

Nerfing damage upgrades would mitigate some of the side-effects of nerfing health upgrades (making people too squishy). An across-the-board health boost to dropsuits might help if that's not enough, but really, if you were to use the numbers I suggested an assault player can still have 400 shield and 200 armor with room to spare (200% of what the militia newbies get). Factor in damage bonus nerfs and I think this is plenty of health.