Aighun
Zumari Force Projection
Caldari State
717
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Posted - 2013.04.03 23:48:00 -
[1] - Quote
Cross posted from Discussions:
A while back I was reading Caliban's War. A passage where the main character prepares to risk her life in battle and considers how her strengths and weaknesses match up against the monster she is about to fight stuck with me and got me thinking about dropouts in DUST 514. Here is Bobbie considering how her suit stacks up against the monster:
"Unfortunately her armor had a lot of the same restrictions it had. While it made her very fast when she wanted to be, it was not particularly good at lateral movement. Most things built for speed weren't. Cheetah's and horses didn't do a lot of sideways running. She was strong in her suit, but not nearly as strong as it was. She did have the advantage with firearms in that she could run away from the creature while conning to attack from range. The creature could not throw a massive object at her without stopping to anchor itself. It might ungodly sting, but it still weighed what it weighed, and Newton had a few things to say about a light object throwing a heavy one."
from James S.A. Corey, Caliban's War
Reminded me of a lot of things I was looking to find in Dust. One of the burning questions that this game raises is always "How do I overcome a more powerful enemy?" And also, "What do I have to sacrifice in one area, in order to get more out of another?" I read this during the great strafing debates. And it got me thinking, "Why can't we have suits with much faster strafing speed, if they have to sacrifice something else to get that speed?" And also made me realize how simplistic and ultimately shallow the current movement scheme of scout = fast, Assault = medium fast, Logistics = medium slow, heavy = slow really is. Why not have a heavy suit that can turn as fast as a scout, but limit the arc of that turn to about 60 degrees? Why not have an assault suit that can strafe more quickly than a scout suit, but can only sprint as fast as a heavy suit?
WIll we see anything like this on May 6th? Have the suits that are in beta been used to establish some basic parameters for suits in general and will we see many iterations that offer a lot of different options? When the new dropsuits are released, will they differ drastically from suit to suit, or will all medium framed suits play about the same as other medium framed suits? Hopefully we will see a lot of different options, and hopefully this will bring more depth to gameplay. Especially with character movement.
When the new suits are released, I would like to be able to see stats on forward movement speed. Backward movement speed. Lateral movement speed. And turn speed.
It seems like there is a lot of room to come up with interesting combinations of speeds and offer players a lot of options for more dynamic, deep, and exciting gameplay. And It would make sense if this was dictated by EVE for each racial variant on a specific type of drop suit. It would do the game nothing but good to have more options for character movement. And to keep things balanced, for each increase in movement speed in any direction, a particular suit would have to sacrifice movement speed in some of the other areas.
Some examples: Minmatar Scout suit: could have the fastest forward speed in game. Very slow lateral movement very fast turn speed when standing still, slow turn speed while moving. Very quick forward bursts while sprinting. Low stamina.
Gallente Scout could do with some reductions in speed, as it is overall the fastest suit in the game in every direction at this point.
But as I am not overly familiar with EVE, any more in depth knowledge on how each races strengths and weaknesses would affect dropsuit movement would be appreciated.
It would be great to see an assault suit that could equip a lateral burst module, or had increased lateral movement, decent forward movement, decent turn speed, but very slow reverse speed.
A heavy suit with very fast turn speed, almost no ability to move laterally, no ability to sprint.
In addition to lots of iterations on movement speed and the viewable stats already available it would also be great to see stats and have suits with different options for armor resistance and shield resistance. Or to at least be able to purchase modules to change armor and shield resistance.
And it would also be great if we could have active modules for dropsuits. An armor resistance module that drained power such that any weapons that used the suit power pack as a per source would do less damage. Shield boost modules that would reduce movement speed.
And finally, more options for melee. It would be awesome if each suit had a different melee attack. One suit could allow you to perform a no damage attack that would stun your opponent. Another could perform a take down or throw and toss an opponent to the ground. And all of these abilities should come at some cost. There should always be some sort of trade off. |