It's funny that you brought this up, because I'm currently in a chat with some corp mates explaining further what I'm talking about....and this is not what I mean.

I'm talking about an effective damage reduction over range for each weapon, but no hard falloff. We're all basically within sight of every other player, after all.

We already have damage and range in the game. This is merely an increase in the factors.

It's not about Eve, a spreadsheet vs. spreadsheet of potentials in each shot. The target in DUST is either there or he is not. What damage is delivered should depend on the weapon and the player.

Whether the shot gets there or not should depend on the shooter and the gun. A sniper rifle should hit far and on the money every shot. An HMG should only get a few of the hundreds of rounds on target. But in both, the rounds should reach.

They should not vanish, with zero damage.

Agreed... while disappearing bullets is probably required in order to keep the servers from dying... the range on all weapons needs to be increased substantially.

When I can see a person in front of me clear as day, and I aim and fire at him and don't do a single point of damage... wtf!? This is not good game mechanics... period.

Also.. its very clear the maps were built for SS5-SSPro3 ranges... there is minimal cover and most everything is relatively long range. Yet the bullets just somehow can't make it? Its terrible and it makes the gameplay feel clunky and unintuitive. I am growing increasingly frustrated about it as well, and I am sure i'm not the only one.

Few things that need to be done.

All maps need to be reworked to add more cover, the amount of cover that was added when Shiigeru, or whatever the hell that titan's name was, crashed helped a ton. Add more cover to the outside areas so we can move around and not get picked off immediately.

Remove the reduction to dispersion when you crouch and ADS. Its not realistic and its a large part of the issue here.

Increase max range of most weapons to about 150m for most medium range weps, 80-100m for the HMG, and 20-30m for the shotgun. Bullets should disappear outside or near the edge of the render view, so they appear to go on forever without actually doing so.

Linear damage drop off to ~60% at max range. Allow bullet dispersion to reduce damage at long ranges, not hard coding. The HMG and AR will probably be really balanced just due to bullet dispersion. Laz0rs are the one exception to this, since they have no dispersion, at which point you will need to hardcode weapon damage at all ranges.

I will say, when I can't hit someone from across the street with my AR, something is grossly wrong. I can throw grenades farther than I can shoot, and its ridiculous.

This should be of CRITICAL priority CCP. This mechanic is gamebreaking, and it will drive away players in droves if not addressed quickly.

How do other console shooters handle this problem? I assume they experience the same limitations.

I think other FPS games get around these limitations by creating a optimal range, a falloff range and a no damage range. Within optimal the bullet does full damage, in falloff range the bullet does reduced damage, and no damage range is the point where the projectile deviation from the intended path would be so great that the game automatically discounts the bullet and it "disappears"

Did you play MAG? Ranges were no problem in MAG, and that was on a central server.

This is a matter of class differentiation, not a hard wiring problem.

I'm not talking about range, I'm talking about physics tracking, AKA tracking bullet drop/travel time. Range isn't really the issue to handling this as any game could have unlimited range. In Dust, if CCP wanted, they could make an infinite ammo continuous fire pistol with pin point accuracy over unlimited distance.

I'm all for falloff damage over staged ranges with the round disappearing after it becomes ineffective. I'm not for playing a game where combat can affect whole player corporations, alliances, and possibly sovereignty and it's all low end tactics happening at less than airsoft ranges.

Again, I cite MAG. This was never a problem, and it was on a central server.

What's the difference?

This supports my point, lol. CCP is in a far better position to do this for DUST.

You said that a centralized server was incapable of supporting things like bullet falloff.

Then you went on to say how CCP's servers deal with all those other calcs already anyway.

CCP deals with falloff constantly....in Eve.

Maybe it will, maybe it won't. It would be illogical for 2 reasons:

1) Other games using central servers make these calcs.
2) CCP already makes these calcs on the very server we're using.

Anything either of us say to this point is moot really. We can only cite other examples as evidence until CCP responds.

I don't expect them to respond because their concept of range (from their other responses to game problems) is so fundamentally wrong it's going to take a Gnostic experience for them to wake up.