BL4CK FRIAR
Defiant Kelkoons
31
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Posted - 2013.03.04 23:02:00 -
[1] - Quote
To start off, this is not a QQ thread, nor is it a fanboy thread for other games. I am simply trying to do what CCP wants by giving my feedback.
What DUST does well
There are a lot of things that this game does well, in fact as far as core game play goes, it hits all the marks spot on or above par. People complain about hit detection, and this is a problem, but I think its a connection problem more then sloppy workmanship. Everything behaves the way it is supposed to by and far in the game and then there is the Eve Connection which puts this game above the curve amongst its peers. The skill system is fairly well thought out, though there are a good many skills that seem to have no filling to them such as piloting having no further use then to unlock ships where as it should have something like a +5 per level ship handling or something. I like how this game makes it so you never know what you are running into. A scout may be squishy in of itself, but you never know what the guy or gal is rocking and that scout may have a Mass Driver and be a close match for a Heavy.
Where DUST fails
There are so many things missing in this game right now to distinguish this game from the herd. Make no mistake that if this game didnt have the affiliation with Eve, or the high expectations CCP has set for us, this game would be a top tier F2P game in my opinion. The problem is that first, most F2P (with the exception of PLanetside 2 and Ghost Recon Online) arent exactly a distinguished class of games to begin with. This class is generally something you pick up for a week and then move back to MW or COD, and the only thing I think that holds a lot of peoples intrest for this game is EVE Online, which I feel CCP has not exploited enough at this time.
Look at the forum integration, or lack of, for the game. If you want to bring DUST into the greater fold of Eve, then the artificial partition of forums is doing just the opposite. If you are an RPer, as a DUST player you do not have access to The Summit and while CPP could make a Summit section on these forums this is still a barrier between Duster RP and Podder RP.The there is the rest of the Forum segregation. Dusters can of course go onto the forums for Eve, and vice versa, and we can read in a guest mod, but the inability to interact with one another in things like null sec flame wars and so on. This needs to be fixed ASAP as it makes it very clear that these are two separate games instead of One Universe played two different ways.
The next big thing that this game does to make it simply another FPS instead of a spouse to Eve Online is the absolute lack of community in game. Its true that Eve Online is not very good for "face to face" interactions. Your character in Eve can interact with one another via space ships, but not through Incarna which CCP needs to get on top of, but DUST feels even more isolating then Eve perhaps because there is only one activity Duster can partake in that is social and that is shooting one another in the face. This of course is not a problem if all you want is a shooter, but this game was never billed as just another shooter.
One thing that would be nice to see is the Event Horizon bar come from PSHome, to the game itself. A place where we can just walk around, buy drinks, play some sort of poker with our buddies or perhaps play a movie that we had rented on the PS Store. There could be general instances of this and then there could be private instances rented with AUR either by individuals or Corps (youll have to make it so that we can donate AUR to corps, but that is a great source of income right there guys). Later on this could be integrated into the MCC as a social place.
Corp logos, arm patches and what not would be another great thing to have, this is something that lacks in Eve of course but lets face it, I was tagging walls in Counter Strike in the late 90's and had a logo back then, so this isnt exactly a hard thing to do considering you already have all the possible combinations stored in your mainframe. Again this is a great AUR sink for corps. This could even be extended, much like Planetside 2, to open up camo and color options for suits and vehicles.
Graphics in the game look okay, but even that okay look isnt consistent as there is often a large deal of bleed in these graphics, and this is something I dont understand in the least as I have never seen a game bleed like this. One minute the game looks good and then the next it looks like a oil painting that was splashed with water while it was still wet, this however is the least of my concerns and so ill move on.
Perhaps the thing that makes me rage the most about this game is the utter lack of teamwork and cover. If you get in the game with a good group then team work happens, and there are things to take cover behind, but these things seem to happen more by accident then by design. I was playing Ghost Recon Online today, the first time I had ever played, and I noticed that botht these elements were in the game in spades. It got me to thinking of "why is there a leadership skill in Eve but not in Dust". A skill that gives damage modifiers, scan radius and dampening to squads that stay close to one another and work tightly. Perhaps this would need a piece of equipment fitted by the squad leader but this should be a no brainer. Now you can point to how you can assign defend orders and the like, but this isnt something that benefits anyone but the squad leader in a very real manner. If there was a device like this in game, that made you even better then you are alone if you stayed within range of your team mates with buffs for lack of a better term, this would be the strongest and greatest advocate of teamwork in game.
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