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Mithridates VI
DUST 411
660
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Posted - 2013.04.07 06:26:00 -
[1] - Quote
I was going to host this on DUST411.com and link to it but farming page views with content exclusivity is kind of lame, so I'll just include it in the body of this post.
This is a transcript of the official DUST 514 podcast because text is easier to refer to than the audio.
> Begin Transcript
Ominous Echoing Voice: Merc Cast: Your official DUST 514 podcast.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Hi and welcome to the first episode of DUST 514 podcast. The official podcast for DUST 514. I'm [CCP] Cmdr Wang.
[CCP] Frame: And I'm [CCP] Frame.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Alright... and we're here to talk about some of the cool and interesting things that's been going on behind the DUST 514 project. So basically, the goal here is to bring you guys an inside look of development on DUST 514. So with that in mind, first of all, let's talk about the playtests we've been having lately. They're pretty interesting.
[CCP] Frame: Yeah! We've been having quite a lot of fun and every day we sign up and get into the playtest room and experience the game (to/do) its newest features and changes and every day it's more and more fun.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Yeah, exactly, I mean one of the things that I've noticed in the coming build -again, spoiler alert here- is the new character creation process. I mean, it looks phenomenal.
[CCP] Frame: Yeah and especially that way, visually, you can choose the characters and the races and everything is so dynamic and everything is so FPS friendly now [unintelligible... "character creator"] it feels like an MMO and no longer just pages of sheets that you go through and then afterwards you're done with your character created, so it's really cool.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: That's right and actually this kinda ties into our very first subject that we're going to be talking about, which is skill points.
[CCP] Frame: Yes! Skill point and skill point progression, which has been changed radically in the upcoming build. It is actually also very very well streamlined now and it gives you a better idea how you can progress your character.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: That's right and with us to talk about some details on the new skill system is [CCP] Praetorian, the Creative Director of DUST 514. So, without further ado, let's go ahead and start an interview with [CCP] Praetorian. Praetorian, would you like to just kind of introduce yourself to our audience out there?
[CCP] Praetorian: Sure. My name is Atli Mar, I'm [CCP] Praetorian and I'm the Creative Director on DUST 514.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Great. So, Praetorian! ...[CCP] Praetorian, I should say, we go way back don't we?
[CCP] Praetorian: Yep.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: So let me ask you a question on behalf of our playerbase... and first question is "Is there anything you can tell us about some of the major changes that's coming in the next release?"
[CCP] Praetorian: Sure. So, this release has been mostly focused on polishing the core, both with the core shooter and progression gameplay, as well as the game engine itself. The team has made fantastic improvements across the board. The game plays better, is far more accessible... it's overall, y'know, a lot better. The velocity of improvements has been amazing. We have finalised the skill progression system, both from the philosophy of item progression, but we have also removed secondary and tertiary prerequisites. While this makes the system simpler to use and understand, we have been adding some cool new skills so the overall system is deeper and more robust than before.
[CCP] Frame: [Starts to talk.]
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Alright. Go ahead.
[CCP] Frame: So what are the reasons for the skill system change?
[CCP] Praetorian: When we launched the beta, we didn't have the full dropsuit, weapon and vehicle systems in place, so we've now progressed a lot further with these systems to a point where we have now realised the role based dropsuit and vehicle progression and we believe that due to these changes many people may feel that they have specced some of their points on something that, while it was awesome at the time, may not suit their playstyle.
[CCP] Frame: Alright, so we're essentially restoring some parts of the skill points to them.
[CCP] Praetorian: Sure.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Now here's a question that I'm sure that players will be interested in knowing is "How will this change affect our players?"
[CCP] Praetorian: The effect is minimal. Especially due to the new node-based skill UI, that makes it so much easier to manage your skills, it's pretty awesome. So for the players to have more options we decided to refund skill points and allow players to spend their skill points on exactly what they want. Now, they may choose to spend them on pretty much the same thing they had, but we believe that many of the players will choose to spend them differently since they will have a more complete picture of the whole system.
[CCP] Frame: So that is the way... How would the skills respec be implemented in the end of the day? [something unintelligible about the players]
[CCP] Praetorian: Well, instead of reimbursing skill points of only those skill that are affected and having to rearrange skills per player on the backend and stuff like that we will be reimbursing all the skill points accrued since the character was created. This means that after the expansion goes live players will be able to respec their character to their preference and then obviously the ISK cost of skill books will be reimbursed.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Okay... Well then, does this mean that, y'know, in the next build will we have different skill requirements for equipment?
[CCP] Praetorian: Some of it, yeah, but we're ensuring that we tune the skill tree so that the difference isn't that great, it's not that [maybe "noticable"]. |
Mithridates VI
DUST 411
660
|
Posted - 2013.04.07 06:26:00 -
[2] - Quote
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Okay. So, basically, I mean if I can already use an assault rifle, after the changes then it should be no problem for me to get back into it.
[CCP] Praetorian: Absolutely.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Okay.
[CCP] Frame: Alright, so can you highlight for us some of the changes to the skill point system like how players can take advantage of the new system and, y'know, for example when they have the new skill point pool again can they use, like, the new weapons that are coming to the new build?
[CCP] Praetorian: A good example is training assault rifle operation to reduce its kick and the sharpshooter skill to reduce its dispersion whereas before you skilled up entire classes of weapons, now you can really focus on a specific weapon, making it feel like your own. We have a dev blog coming out SoonGäó that details the iteration for the skill system and on top of that we will be sharing our complete item sheet, an excel sheet of all of the items and their attributes, where the community can dissect all the stats, obviously both for the items and the related skills. Obviously, we would love the feedback so we can do further iteration.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Alright, so there you go folks, you hear it. We'll be sharing all those vital informations with you very soon and we definitely want to hear your feedback and once again thanks for coming and speaking with our audience, [CCP] Praetorian.
[CCP] Praetorian: Thank you.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Okay.
[CCP] Frame: Alright, thank you.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Okay, so that was very interesting info from Atli about changes to the skill point system.
[CCP] Frame: Yeah and based on my experience in the skill point system I can definitely tell you that just skilling up into specific things in-game feels a lot more fluid and responsive and makes a lot more sense, so a lot of features and all the UI was a lot more FPS oriented and it really makes a lot more sense now.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Absolutely, I mean, just on a visual level, things look a lot more streamlined and easy to understand at a glance with the new system and also all the different classifications for skills now also tend to make a lot more sense as well. For example, like, there's one tree basically for all dropsuits related skills now, for example, that we saw in one of our playests.
[CCP] Frame: Yeah, definitely, you can find whatever you want to skill into very quickly. You will definitely be able to quickly purchase a skill book and start training straight away and see your progress and see what you are unlocking and stuff like that.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Yep, exactly and that's another thing is the UI, the interface, is a lot smoother now as well, I mean everything's just a couple of clicks away.
[CCP] Frame: Yeah.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: It's a definite improvement over the previous system.
[CCP] Frame: Definitely, I'm really excited about it and every time I skill up everything it just feels so cool when you unlock the level five now and just give you so many more options and it just goes deeper and deeper, so yeah.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Alright, so the next topic I want to talk about is come upcoming events. Now, I know a lot of our audience out there played the Uprising events and we had some really good feedback on that, particularly with the Black Eagles dropsuit. So, coming in April, we have a whole new series of events coming up for our players as well.
[CCP] Frame: Yeah and it's going to be really interesting to see how you, the players, react to it and see how many prizes you can rack up because there's going to be quite a lot of cool items to get to and for those that are extremely dedicated there's going to be really very cool stuff, so yeah. We'll see how hardcore you actually are.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: That's right, I mean, we're not going to give out all the details right now. Of course there will be a lot of new information coming out on our website and social media very soon but just to give our audience out there a quick idea of what it is, there are daily missions every day, throughout the week, and then basically by completing this mission requirements you will be eligible to receive prizes in the form of in-game items.
[CCP] Frame: And those prizes will depend on your performance and the amount of matches that you play on the day.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Exactly. So we're looking forward to being able to roll out the details to the public very quickly and hopefully we'll see you on the battlefield.
[CCP] Frame: Yeah and sounds pretty exciting, all the things that we mentioned, also, in this podcast you can definitely hear again, you can download the MP3 from our website and you can relisten whenever you want... and we will see you on the battleground.
[CCP] Cmdr Wang: Alright, this is [CCP] Cmdr, out.
[CCP] Frame: And [CCP] Frame. |
Mithridates VI
DUST 411
674
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Posted - 2013.04.07 21:34:00 -
[3] - Quote
Sylvana Nightwind wrote:Damn man that's a lot of typing :)
Yeah, needed a place to link people to when they "heard on the grapevine" that we were going to get an avatar creator like Skyrim or that they weren't getting skillbook ISK back.
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Mithridates VI
DUST 411
682
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Posted - 2013.04.07 23:13:00 -
[4] - Quote
hydraSlav's wrote:Hat off for actually typing all that out
My aim is to do future Merc Casts as well, probably a lot more quickly after their release, I had to type that one out twice because I fail at saving files. |
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