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Heinrich Jagerblitzen
D3LTA FORC3
Orion Empire
159
   |
Posted - 2013.05.04 10:30:00 -
[1] - Quote
No need for fancy introductions or flowery speeches - you asked the tough questions and deserve solid answers. Whether or not I was elected and despite the fact that I will NOT be running for CPM1 once this is over, the community deserves to know where I stand on these issues as well. Without further ado...
This AFK Stuff
This is a rather complex issue and it should be no surprise that this will be my longest of this entire survey. First and foremost you all should know that I simply hate grinds, period. Any kind of grind, in any kind of game. In the long run, if Dust514 becomes the compelling sandbox game we hope it will be, than it will have an intrinsic fun value that drives people to log in the same way people to for EVE Online, and the game should be balanced for player skill, not skill points. Grinds are an industry tactic to get you to spend money playing a game you might otherwise be bored with, and I hold CCP to a high standard in trying to overcome this problem.
How does this apply to AFK skill point accrual? Frankly, because of my aforementioned hatred of all things grind, I really don't think we should have to log into the game at all to obtain usable skills, let alone log into a match. If the game were full passive GÇô the AFK debate would be nonexistent. Every player joining a match would be doing so to participate with their friends, not to complete their forced daily grind. We cannot afford to lose sight of this undeniable fact when engaging in the AFK debate.
Now, I understand that culturally, rewarding player skill in combat with a tangible, visceral, instant reward system is essential to satisfying the pavlovian response cycle that makes many shooters compelling play. But in the process of tying this psychological reward to skill points (as opposed to isk and loot only), the designers have essentially created AFK behavior as a completely unnecessary by-product. Again, if we all progressed equally (or at a boosted rate w/ aurum purchases), we'd log in and play for fun, or to get rich, or both. AFK problem solved.
Where does that leave us in the meantime? Well, for starters many of you in the community have been quite outspoken in support of active skill point accrual. You have your reasons for doing so, I have mine. And it would be completely irresponsible for me to impose my loathing of skill point grinds (and this obnoxious and completely unnecessary AFK behavior as its byproduct) upon the community simply because I'm in a position to influence CCP. So lets get that out of the way. However, we'll continue to get annoying AFK behavior for as long as we cling to an active SP system. There are many ways of dealing with this, essentially, but they tend to fall into two primary categories:
1.) Remove all SP for being in a match, except for that which you accrue by killing people or successfully completing objectives. This is the standard knee-jerk feel-good response, because it rewards the hardcore and punishes the lazy, but it comes at a significant cost. It not only guarantees that you have to grind to get ahead (turning your time as a merc into work rather than play), it also creates an unhealthy obsession with warpoint accrual, which is destructive in a game that's about teamwork and tactics as the community's already unhealthy obsession with K/D ratio. I want mercs to focus solely on what their squad commanders tell them, and for discipline and cooperation to be the qualities that bring success to your corp, and the highest rewards the game has to offer. K/D obsession taints that, as does the warpoint chasing that stems from our refuse to entertain the idea of a purely passive skillpoint accrual system.
While many here come from other shooters, myself included (many of you may not know this but I chose my EVE name "Hans" because my Modern Warfare crew butchered the pronunciation of the "Hanshotfirst" in my Xbox Live handle so often that I grew accustomed to responding to "Hans" in combat) However, Dust514 is a truly unique game and we need to think outside the box here, and not let our old habits and expectations cripple the game from becoming what it needs to become: A premier tactical and strategic warfare experience. It should also be noted while we're on the subject of removing time-based SP accrual that it also directly punishes new players, which undermines CCP's stated objective of make the "shallow" end truly shallow, and the "deep" end of the game truly deep (and balanced for player skill). It has taken ages to reduce the "learning cliff" for EVE Online, and they'd be foolish to bring that back into Dust514 just because some people want everyone to have to be GOOD at the game in order to play it and enjoy all of the gear available.
2.) Allow more friendly fire options (or vote-to-kick options) to allow player enforcement of this issue.NOW we're thinking like residents of New Eden. This, more than anything, needs to happen and needs to happen as soon as possible. Faction Warfare is a great example. I couldn't tell you for the life of me why CCP continues to cling to this idea that Faction Warfare is akin to public matches and therefore needs the same artificial (and annoying as hell) safety system keeping us from murdering whomever we want. It's even worse now that they've revealed the lack of additional rewards for FW matches above and beyond instant highsec battles, another issue I will be blasting them on until it is resolved. Bottom line is this - I'm a career faction warfare pilot, and on plenty of occasions me and my Alliance have shot fellow militia members for myriad reasons GÇô and we've always been prepared to handle all of the social consequences for doing so. |
Heinrich Jagerblitzen
D3LTA FORC3
Orion Empire
159
|
Posted - 2013.05.04 10:30:00 -
[2] - Quote
Sharpshooter Skill
I'm actually quite happy to see it go away. By affecting base range of a weapon, it becomes a must-have skill rather than one that compliments a playstyle, and I abhor old-school skill systems where there's always an optimal set of skills to grab. It makes for a boring game, and I think that all the sharpshooter skill did was punish those that didn't max it out right away, which eliminates the feeling that I made a choice to invest points there. Besides, its conceptually garbage to begin with GÇô every gun has a range that hinges on the amount of gunpowder you pour into it and the shape and weight of its projectile (to use 21st century tech as an example) GÇô NOT the skill of the weapon's operator. Sharpshooter immediately screams out "can my character aim accurately?" and thus should affect a weapon's accuracy, not its range.
Friendly Fire
Friendly Fire needs to exist everywhere in the game except for highsec random matchmaking, and everywhere else we should allow players to enforce justice themselves. Self-destructing vehicles and the inability to murder someone standing right next to me are obnoxiously frustrating, immersion-breaking, and they have no place in the "cold harsh world" that CCP has decided to create with New Eden. The sooner we have friendly fire tools (tools being everything you could kill an enemy with), the better. I want Faction Warfare to be a place where people queue-sync multiple intact squads because they want to win, and where they cooperate with space-faring vessels for orbital support. The punishment for not working with other players and filling up a match to win should be that you take the risk of a random member joining a match to fill space, and that the random may not pull their weight. I'm absolutely confident that if CCP were to actually deliver on better rewards for FW to provide incentives for coordinated queue-syncing, that friendly fire won't be anything to be afraid of because players will simply grief the useless into not bothering to show up if they don't actually want to help their faction win.
Proximity Chat
I don't see the need for this as crucial compared to the myriad other tools we need much sooner GÇô player trade, a working economy, corporate management tools, etc. There are some simple communication options I'd love to see, such as a push-to-talk that broadcasts to your whole team rather than your squad, and a push-to-talk that lets you broadcast to your enemy as long as they could turn it off to reduce spam (proximity would be fine in this case) but I don't see lack of proximity chat as something that's crippling the game the way that the absence of other features is.
The decision not to make a specific caldari, gallente and amarr logi
Non-issue. CCP is on-board, The full racial suit line-ups are in the backlog, and will be released as soon as they are finished. Many are coming in Uprising.
Breach Weapons
I used to be a huge fan of the breach SMG series early in the closed beta, but these and other breach weapons were hit way too hard with the nerfbat during the most manic phase of Dust514's weapons balancing last year (you all know the period I'm talking about, when we often had no idea why a weapon was being changed before it was suddenly buffed or nerfed to comical extremes). As a result, we now have a couple options here or there that are functional, but most would agree that breach weapons simply don't have the damage output to compensate for their reduced fire rate. I don't think that resulting DPS needs to be exactly comparable for breach variants, they can be slightly less than stock weapons and compensated for by the fact that breach fire has less recoil and that the user is more likely to land solid hits (assuming perfect hit detection, of course). And breach Forge Guns, when used in groups, have a wonderful Alpha quality to them that I can see being more and more useful as the scale of combat gets bigger and vehicles are more commonplace. But right now? They need some love, and the plummeted popularity of breach variants simply confirms that there's still a problem.
Matchmaking
I'll be really blunt about this one GÇô I really could care less about the mechanics that drive highsec matchmaking. To me the really interesting part of the game should be Faction Warfare, Planetary Conquest, and 0.0 interaction, along with stuff like the recently mentioned "Penetration" game play for EVE ships and structures, none of which will rely on matchmaking algorithms. Granted, this shouldn't be comically out of balance, and I'm hoping CCP continues to tweak and refine the formula based on player feedback, but much like EVE Online itself the best advice I have for a noob is to plug into a group right away, and not to rely on the game itself to hold your hand and teach you how to stay alive. New Eden isn't fair, EVE isn't fair, and I don't really care if Dust514 is all that fair either, in the end.
CCP's time and resources need to be spent first and foremost on making sure that there are enough hardcore sandbox tools for the dedicated community to chew on and be satisfied with so that we're resorting to random matches as little as possible to begin with. The more that elite players engage in corp battles over districts, the less time they're back in highsec stomping noobs, and the less need there is to continually micromanage for perfect matchmaking balance. |
Heinrich Jagerblitzen
D3LTA FORC3
Orion Empire
159
|
Posted - 2013.05.04 10:30:00 -
[3] - Quote
Leaving matches to avoid losing assets
Non-issue, really. It's another one of those things like AFK skill point accrual that is best left to player enforcement during advanced game play forms, or ignored during basic game play forms like highsec random matches, because there's nothing you can do to control other players that join a public match. If someone wants to be a coward and leave a match to protect their fancy suit and tank, whatever, I simply will inform my corp CEO that we have a dickhead in the midst and have them dealt with accordingly, or wait for another person to join the public match.
Framerate
Non-issue until Uprising is released and we see whether the framerate holds up in situ as well as it did when we played it at Fanfest. Don't get me wrong GÇô It is my opinion that maintaining a buttery smooth 30 FPS or better at all times and pitch-perfect hit detection should always be CCP's priority #1. This is a FPS, not a strategy game, and there should be no compromise on basic performance when we all have plenty of other shooters we could go play without these functionality issues. However, I'm confident that CCP has nailed the bulk of them with Uprising and we'll see far less forum chatter devoted to stability issues that have plagued us for a year since the launch of closed beta.
Armor tanking vs shield tanking
Too early to tell as there's dozens of variables that will affect the combat meta once Uprising deploys on the 6th, and the new weapons are added on the 14th. Let's revisit this a few weeks later to hammer out any lingering imbalances and take a new survey of where the holes are in the gear lineup once we've seen how everything performs.
The lack of game modes
CCP is not only delivering a new game mode at Dust 514's launch on May 14th (and will no doubt continue to add more here and there) but has also been adamant about pushing development of the game as a whole towards open-ended Conquest gameplay for 0.0 space as well as "Penetration" game modes allowing us to take over EVE ships and EVE structures. As long as they keep their eye on this prize, Dust514 is headed in the right direction. During one of the Round Table discussions at Fanfest 2013 the issue of game mode variety was explicitly raised, and CCP Praetorian rightfully pointed out that in many other standard run-of-the-mill shooters, the developers wasted time building a dozen different game modes that mostly go unused. With this fact in mind, I cannot in good conscience push CCP to develop the same recycled game modes that go unplayed after the initial novelty wears off, when they need to put their time and energy into developing the game modes that no other shooter on the market has to offer.
Lazer rifles being OP
I absolutely refuse to fall into the trap of "OMG IT HURTS AND KILLED ME THEREFORE IT MUST BE OP" that has wasted countless hours of people's time and filled page after page of whining on the forums. The bottom line is, lazer rifles have an inherent drawback built into them by the fact that they need time to charge to be effective, and are absolute garbage at close range. Thus, they fall firmly into the category of being well-balanced by player skill, which is far different than being an overpowered weapon.
A noobie can't just pick up a lazer and start melting everyone they come in contact with, you need to be well positioned on the battlefield, you need to hide the fact that you're charging your lazer or the victim will simply run for cover, you need to keep your bead on the target, and you need to monitor your heat build-up. If you do all of these things (and I'm one of those that can, in the interest of full disclosure) you can truly pwn with them, and they're delightfully fun. If every other weapon in the game required this much practice and knowledge in order to reach maximum effectiveness, Dustt514 would be in fantastic shape where its gear meta is concerned.
Unlimited ammo for vehicles
Now that we have the ability to recall our vehicles, I'm much more open minded about limiting ammo supply (and not just for tanks here, dropships and LAV's as well). We're all aware of how of how boring ambush mode gets when there's 3-4 tanks on the field, and one of the trivial ways to balance vehicle spam is to limit ammo supply. The reason that recalling vehicles comes into play is that everyone should be able to repair and protect their assets (for as much as CCP's charging for them), and if you run out of ammo I see nothing wrong conceptually with calling for pickup and asking for another. This recall / redeploy time would serves the same function that reloading between clips does for infantry, and creates a moment of vulnerability that can only be avoided by keeping supply depots alive for vehicles to interact with.
Last but not least, limiting ammo on vehicles provides an opportunity for a deeper set of support roles, such as an LAV that's equipped with an ammunition hold and capable of rearming a more stationary HAV that's laying waste from a secure position. This tactical depth is far, far more interesting than simply nerfing powerful combat vehicles to the point where they're no longer fun or worth the isk to deploy. HAV's should be incredibly powerful, but they should still require teamwork like everything else. |
Heinrich Jagerblitzen
D3LTA FORC3
Orion Empire
159
|
Posted - 2013.05.04 10:31:00 -
[4] - Quote
Command Structure
It's too early to call this a crisis yet, the current squad leader role works fine for the most part but especially as we move to Planetary Conquest and 16 vs 16 matches (or larger) we're going to need a "commander" role with similar functionality, along with the ability for the commander to relay orders to his squad leaders directly. In general I see this evolving organically as the map size and player count goes up and up, it won't be something CCP can ignore for much longer even though there hasn't been a glaring need in the past year. As I've said before, I want this game to be the premier tactical and strategic warfare experience where working in discreet teams to accomplish a variety of objectives should lead to the greatest success, and this can only be realized if CCP adds in additional leadership structure at the appropriate points whenever the player count in combat outgrows the existing tools we have to manage our troops.
Proto Pub Stomping
I absolutely LOVE stomping on rich nerds that wear protogear into pub matches and lose them to my militia suits and militia guns. More of this, please!!
Scrambler pistol 450% headshot dmg mod
To be honest, I don't think we know if this is even a serious problem because the hit detection has been so horrible the past year. This is another one of those "OMG I JUST GOT HIT AND I DIED THAT GUN MUST BE OP" complaints in my opinion, at least until we know for a fact that when you aim at a person's head, its actually hitting their head. In practice, the hit detection the last year has been so abysmal that I suspect that even the majority of the players trying to take advantage of this bonus aren't successful at it (which is exactly why SMG's have consistently been the most popular sidearm). and this is just going to have to be a "wait and see" issue until we all have some hours with Uprising and we can see how Scrambler Pistols operate when you can aim and shoot reliably.
The one thing that HAS been a problem where Scrambler pistols are concerned has been their ability to snipe at comical range, which is one of the workarounds for the hit detection issue because everything has less transversal movement the farther distance you put between you and your target. This is an issue created by the Sidearm Sharpshooter skill (and made worse by Sidearm Sharpshooter Specialist), NOT the 450% bonus alone. With the range nerfed and the pistol once again being used as a close quarters weapon against fast-moving targets, its way too early to call the bonus as OP.
And believe me, I know this won't stop anyone from complaining about it either, but it does mean that I'll continue to ignore those that want to jump to conclusions based on an emotional response that isn't tempered by experimental evidence. In general, I think its rather foolish to make declarative statements about balance right before the meta is about to shift drastically because of these new variables, and I am deeply appreciative of those amongst you that understand this and show respect by not wasting forum space complaining about things that we don't know are problematic until we've had more time with them.
Prone
Meh. I really don't see a major need for this. One of the more common (and completely valid) community concerns is frustration over "eyeshots", or the fact that bullets technically emerge from our heads and not our waists where the gun is carried. The ability to shoot over hills when the weapons and lower torso is behind cover has frustrated many of us throughout the last year, and this problem would only be exacerbated by a prone position. If CCP wants to re-rig hit detection (and I'm always a fan of better gunplay physics, it should be the bedrock foundation of the game) to address the "eyeshot" problem, I could see experimenting with a prone position at that time, but not sooner.
Drones as assets
Are we talking drones as weapons? Or Rogue Drones as NPC's to fight against? If it's the former, I'd really want to hear some good ideas on paper first before CCP goes too far down that rabbit hole, the latter I'm terribly excited about both for farming purposes and just for the sake of relaxing gameplay to alleviate the burnout from endless PvP. The fun value of drones as weapons though GÇô (if we're talking small robots that fly around and can be dispatched to attack targets) depends entirely on the quality of hit detection in the game, something that's been passable at very best, and unplayable at its worst over the given year. Let's take Uprising for a spin and confirm that we can actually predict where our bullets will land before we add skeet shooting into the mix. Fair enough?
Heavies being OP
I won't bother to re-hash my previous thoughts on gear balancing here, as I've said before the days preceding a game-changing build are always the worst possible time to bother with intense debates about what is and isn't over-powered. Dropsuits are changing so drastically with Uprising that anyone running around starting forum fires because this or that suit is out of whack is just going to get ignored (the exception being constructive feedback from those of you that HAVE played Uprising at FF with me, which I absolutely want to hear as soon as possible).
AV vs Tanks
Again. Play Uprising, we'll talk afterwords. |
Heinrich Jagerblitzen
D3LTA FORC3
Orion Empire
159
|
Posted - 2013.05.04 10:31:00 -
[5] - Quote
something like 10 pages of text to copypasta, be patient |
Heinrich Jagerblitzen
D3LTA FORC3
Orion Empire
159
|
Posted - 2013.05.04 10:31:00 -
[6] - Quote
page 6 goes here |
Heinrich Jagerblitzen
D3LTA FORC3
Orion Empire
159
|
Posted - 2013.05.04 10:31:00 -
[7] - Quote
just a few more |
Heinrich Jagerblitzen
D3LTA FORC3
Orion Empire
159
|
Posted - 2013.05.04 10:32:00 -
[8] - Quote
second to last than I fill w/ good stuff |
Heinrich Jagerblitzen
D3LTA FORC3
Orion Empire
159
|
Posted - 2013.05.04 10:32:00 -
[9] - Quote
ONE MORE, PLZ MODERATORS HAVE MERCY |
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