Dust will live and die by the target audience of fps roleplayers. A lot of the points in the video are valid - I'll pick one:

Warbarges are absolutely unnecessary. The same thing could be done in a loading screen instead. Merc quarters are equally worthless. A sleek menu would do the same thing much better, even more immersively.

Simple design:
GÇó lobbies are menus
GÇó war barge may be a planet screen
GÇó fights are 3d

Unnecessarily complex design:
GÇó lobbies are limited and worthless 3d without menu option
GÇó war barge is a random 3d environment without a purpose
GÇó fights are 3d

I hate to break it to you, but you're kind of ugly for a cheerleader.

Nothing you've said relates in any way whatsoever to the problems being addressed here. This has nothing to do with my corp, because my own corp is mostly insulated from the problems of CCP's **** poor game design. If you want new players from the console market to understand that the game is about more than just running around and shooting things, SOMEONE NEEDS TO TELL THEM THAT, and considering it's CCP that's looking to make a profit from people playing the game, it makes sense for it to be THEM.

If you want to do CCP's job for them, more power to you, but I expect more from a developer. It's sad that you don't.




The difference is your son is your son. He's seen you play, he KNOWS there's more to it than what it seems on the surface. To the uninitiated, Dust 514 is just a random F2P game. They download it on a lark, and give it a few minutes of their time to decide if they want to bother with it. This doesn't mean they are "stupid," but I do suppose it means they are "noobs."

This isn't Eve Online where players come into it expecting to pay a monthly fee, and looking for the challenge that they've heard about from other PC players. This is a random console game, and the average player knows nothing about it. They boot the game up, play a couple matches, and make a call about whether or not they want to keep bothering. They have no investment in the game, and no investment in the Eve Universe. To expect them to just intuit that the game doesn't suck after having a completely sucky new player experience is silly.

You can be a smug prick and pretend like these people are idiots for not being fanboys who read the forums and follow dev blogs, but I think that has more to do with your own shortcomings than those of the players. Sure, maybe the guy in the video is an idiot, I don't know the guy and I don't know how much of his review is genuine, and how much is him trying to gain viewers (being a "personality" and such). What I DO know is that there is a LOT of basic information that every vet knows is important that CCP could go ahead and give the new players up front.

There's nothing wrong with showing a new player who boots up the client for the first time what it is that makes the game tick. There's no special medal for slogging through the crap to get to the gold, it doesn't make you smarter or more sophisticated than these other people, it just means you invested a bit more time into the game on either a hunch, or based on your knowledge of the Eve Universe.

Having a decent new player experience doesn't have to take away from the complexity or the sandbox nature of the game, and just laughing at a new player does nothing to help that new player see why it is that we all play this game.

We can be a bunch of smug assholes because we just happen to know more about the game, and CCP can continue that smugness if they want (as they have done so far). Honestly though, I'd rather CCP work to ENTICE new players to keep playing, and let those new players either stay or leave based on what they think of the ACTUAL game. Not do what they do now, putting up roadblocks and hiding vital information from them.

If CCP would give players the info they need up front about how the game works, we would be left with those who would actually want to play the game for what it is.

If you go to every game that you play's forums and spend hours searching for information, you are an outlier. It doesn't make you smarter, or even better at games. In fact, it probably means you aren't very discerning with your time. I'm not gonna go so far as to insult you for it, but I think you can imagine some insults that I could hurl your direction if you try. Most of us have lives, jobs, responsibilities, friends, family, etc.

People try out F2P games because they are free. If they like it, they keep playing, if they don't there's no skin off their backs. They just delete it. It's low risk. If we want the game to grow, we need to show these people why they shouldn't just delete the game immediately.

I get that having some esoteric knowledge about a F2P FPS gives you a feeling of superiority, you feel like you know something that other people don't know. That can feel good, especially to someone with low self esteem, or little "real world" knowledge to match. That doesn't, however, make people who don't have and/or don't know that there's a REASON to have that knowledge "a complete idiot."

WTF is up with the hater comments on the new guy?

He's giving it to you straight! It's easy to forget how strange the game might seem to a newcomer once you've been playing it for months but don't be so stupid to think that you are somehow superior to "stupid" people just because they haven't had time to figure things out yet.

On a positive, many of the things in the video are relatively easy to fix. For example, show the users K/D ratio if they want to see it, better yet put some options in settings to pick and choose what you want to see.

The game could also have a "verbose" mode so that instead of just killing people from above you get a status message that says "head shot" or "access depot to change loadout" or "enemy railgun, hack to take control and use". Whatever, consider a mouse-over based on distance and line of sight -- with some text in a non-invasive place. Of course, options to turn this crap off once you know what you are doing.

Perhaps you could even have a different voice-over for new players. Instead of telling us not to commit suicide in the war barge we could be told "you have entered the war barge" and "view holo screens to see intelligence on enemy combatants" and "access the options menu to turn off war barge help messages -- press [ key ]".

Hmm, you might also have a series of items in the text hints (you know, the delay screen that gives a different tip every time you see it) that prioritizes certain messages when a player has less then N war points and/or N complete games ON THEIR ACCOUNT.

Might also be nice to have a "wiki" in-game so that users can explore that to help figure out more complex things -- assuming any can be bothered to read anything.

Anyway, just some off the cuff thoughts... not sure they are any good.

The kid, I assume he is a teen based on the voice, does not sound like an idiot but he does sound confused and unsure. He actually sounded fairly reasonable as he actually said the game was OK for a free 2 play game but that he did have issues with it. Calling him an idiot because he did not know as much about the game as someone who has played the game for weeks, months or over a year is completely unfair.

For those of us who remain playing for more than a week it is because we see something in the game that we either enjoy now or for those who are starting to burn out and steadily playing less it is because they see the potential for the future or more likely some element of both.

Now some people say he should have researched the game before or during the period he is playing. But in all honesty how many people do you expect to do research on a F2P game before actually playing it, I certainly didn't. In fact I generally play the game a bit and if I find it an enjoyable experience then it is this point that I will decide to do some research on aspects of the game I find interesting or confusing.

If the first few minutes and hours in the game are not enjoyable or at least interesting then you will loose most of your potential player base long before anybody chooses to research further about the possibilities of the game.

At least in Eve you do get a series of tutorials and starter agent missions which give you an insight into the different options, menus and control systems available to the player in a "relatively" safe environment.

With dust the only option currently available to the player is to select instant Academy battle and pew pew at people. There are no tutorials available and only very limited amount of information provided and this generally in the form of text. I believe CCP need to provide interactive PVE tutorials that go through the basics of the game from the different weapons and modules etc and how to use them "effectively" to more important stuff like how to activate your mic and the fact that you need to re-activate voice every time you move to a different channel to the importance of squads and navigating the various menus. At least in Eve you get an ingame rookie channel that makes it easy to ask questions and get answers.

Yes if a player decides to invest more than a few hours in a game then they could do some research on particular aspects of the game and this is where the playerbase can be most involved but it is CCPs responsibility to ensure as many players as possible get to this stage instead of just ditching this game after the 1st 30 minutes to an hour.

Saying that you do not want players like this in the game may be good for your or even my particular play style or social environment but is not good news for CCP. I like playing with more mature players and I suppose I would be happy if all of the players in the game had the same attitude but that would limit the market for CCP. Please note that I am not equating age with maturity. So long as players are not shouting down the mic how elite they are, ignoring the team, and denigrating the skills of the other players then I am happy playing on the same squad as them.

However, there should be room in this game for these less mature players to ensure the viability of this game They can form their own corps and play with like minded others. A little bit more hand holding by CCP, in the form of interactive tutorials, at the beginning can only be considered as being to their advantage in retaining new players regardless of whether I like their attitudes or not. So long as I have the option to not have them in the same squad as me I.e I join a corp that suits me then I am happy to have them ingame if it ensures that dust becomes a success.

Whether we like it or not we need a certain percentage of the COD, BF3 players to migrate to Dust to ensure that our game has a future. At the end of the day most kids do grow into reasonably mature people and if we are looking at Dust lasting for 10+ years
then it would be good for CCP to have players who grew up with game and are in their mid twenties when dust reaches its 10 year anniversary.

Many of the points the kid raised are valid for different reasons. For example the point he raised about the warbarge does not make him stupid just under informed. If he had received an explanation, say as a small part of a tutorial, that the warbarge was a place that granted individuals the chance to join squads and for squads and teams to discuss strategy then he would have known why it was important. In fact a lot of his questions could have been answered this way thus allowing him a chance to develop a more informed opinion of this game.