+1 Vote for TOTY (Thread of the year)

CRITICAL: the aim, we don't want another KZ2 pls

CCP's stated objective for Dust is to be a AAA shooter. I believe most of us agree that we are not there, yet - but many of us feel we can get there, me included. This thread is a community-driven effort to prioritize Dust development from the players' perspective to elevate Dust to AAA-titlehood.

CRITICAL - these need to be fixed now

• Framerate - rock steady and high fps is critical for an FPS. Many experience huge framerate drops especially in close quarter combat.
• Lag - there are videos of rubberbanding and numerous reports of other really bad lag issues.
• New player experience - you can't throw window after window of graphs, UI elements and pages of text at a new player. There needs to be a proper tutorial for the UI and especially gameplay, which doesn't tell or show you what to do, but lets you do it yourself at your own pace.
• Matchmaking - a newbie MM queue was introduced which was needed, but people are thrown in with the protostompers too early. And non-newbie MM needs more tiers or to allow more time to match similarly skilled and geared players together.
• Getting stuck in terrain, corners and other map elements
• Communication - CCP needs to improve communication with players. Forum posts are not enough. More on this topic in a post below.

FPS - This is a game engine/PS3 issue. They chose Unreal. The PS3 is doing it's best given the scale, with the intended engine. It's not fair to compare with BF3's Frostbite engine, for example, (totally different engine optimized for the PS3). Graphics are going to be ongoing, but don't expect things to get much better with the current engine. They would need to create a whole new engine to get the major graphics rework that you want that would produce improved FPS (another year of dev time).

Lag/Latency - Another variable. More dependent on so-called "internet weather". They're doing pretty good in this area considering the scale. This game does a LOT more on the server-side as opposed to the client-side vs. other games. Improvement here is GOING to take time.

Matchmaking - I disagree with the matchmaking. Newbies play with us, to learn how to play, and to get recruited. Dust is squad-based, and they will learn this very early, or they will leave. I DO however wish, the MM would compensate for putting them up against 2 fully-stacked teams. SP difference, not too much of a problem. Organized TEAM difference? That's the MM issue.

Game Modes - My understanding during the closed beta was that the "Instant Battle" thing is actually what we are trying to get away from. We don't want a random set of game modes that have no purpose. Faction Warfare is being developed so that every battle fought literally effects EVE, and matters. The Instant Battles were simply supposed to be "proofs of concept" for the full game, with a Combat Arena coming later to satisfy the player desire for things like CTF and Domination, etc. But the INTENTION is supposed to be totally player owned and controlled districts, where we decide what buildings and installations to place... naturally this will take time. I imagine the Combat Arena will have a betting system so people can earn isk.

More Maps - I agree with this. A new map every month would be wonderful. This would make maps where certain roles dominate, inevitable, and I agree with that. A map where snipers rule? Yes. A map where heavies rule? Yes. I want to see us spitting out more maps. Monthly is perfect.

KB/M vs. Gamepad - This has already been addressed. Mice have a new sensitivity cap to keep them more in line with gamepads, this reduces the effectiveness of multi-DPI mice.

AFK Camping - You really don't need to be concerned about what someone is doing if they go afk. Yes, them not helping you means the match is unbalanced. Public matches where this occurs is of no consequence to anything. Every game has AFKers in some way. As long as matches are open to the public this will exist. Mid firefight, someone can walk right off and abandon you, and go AFK. That's reality. Get over it. If SP farming is what you're complaining about, that's not going to break the game. Players voted that system in during the beta. That is likely here to stay. It's New Eden, in a public match, no one is nor should be obligated to help you fight.

Minor gripe, but an excuse to keep the thread alive...

What's up with jumping out of the MCC only to land at the bottom of an installation full of toxic waste? Instant death. How about not putting a death trap right under the MCC (we don't all recognize every building on the map before jumping).

+1 Vote for TOTY (Thread of the year)

CRITICAL: the aim, we don't want another KZ2 pls

-Aiming down sights is to slow compared to aiming/looking normally

AAA HA HA HA

Remove AURUM

CCP's stated objective for Dust is to be a AAA shooter. I believe most of us agree that we are not there, yet - but many of us feel we can get there, me included. This thread is a community-driven effort to prioritize Dust development from the players' perspective to elevate Dust to AAA-titlehood.

There has been lots of progress since August when I joined the closed beta, but some of that progress has not been in the areas which I feel is critical or crucial to the success of Dust as an FPS and an MMO. Therefore I feel it is necessary for us to put everything in one place for easy reference for the Devs, and for the community to edit.

Dust must stand on its own as an FPS to be successful. That's what this thread is about. To outline the game design objectives and game mechanics needed for an AAA title.

In following posts my list - it is not meant to be exhaustive. I will review the comments, and add any that I have missed, and even ones I disagree with but which get enough Likes.

This is not a laundry list of all issues and suggestions: please only post high-level CRITICAL or CRUCIAL items, EVERYTHING ELSE belongs in other threads. Don't post your pet projects which don't impact the entire game or have to do with just a subset of players; I'd love to talk at length about how Scouts need TLC, but that belongs in EVERYTHING ELSE or as part of item balancing, balancing, balancing below.

Please don't post balancing issues unless they are gamebreaking or close to it. Balacing is too specific for this thread, and is an on-going effort.

Please post links to constructive threads discussing your suggestions, or on items listed below, so that I can add them.

I am trying to do my part in directing CCP to what I feel is the biggest problem of dust and that is the AIM! Support change! Yes YOU can!

In this thread I have 2 developers looking for video proof of AR aim lag.

FOR RATIONALISM! FOR REASON! Save balancing for after the game isn't broken!

Balancing needs to be an on-going effort, and it needs to continue from now on until the end of Dust.

While balancing needs to be an on-going effort, some issues can't be fixed by balancing.
A standard tank won't be able to go against proto forge EVER. It shouldn't.

HMG lacking range isn't the problem. It's that a heavy have no heavy mid(or long) range anti-infantry weapon.
These things need to be fixed by adding new stuffs, not messing with existed one.

I do believe that my suggestion is another bare minimum requirement for this game. It's called frigging basic suit for a reason. It's also way more easy to solve than eliminate lag and FPS issue. This mean it can be finished in a definite timeline, thus a more realistic roadmap. I don't think CCP released EVE with only Galante/Minmatar frigate and Amarr battleship, did they ? (If this is the case just tell me I will shut up at once ^^")

I'd argue that most would agree with you, and so do I. That would be a properly balanced tank and FG. I'm not sure what you are trying to convey with that example.

Balancing and adding new stuff are not mutually exclusive; you can do both.

Dust's stated objective is a rock-paper-scissors mechanic. When Dust is properly balanced, TAR would not be the be-all end-all weapon it is right now, but just another weapon among many. In a properly balanced game there can be weapons which are superior at one application but vastly inferior at others - sniper rifle and nova knives being prime examples.

I agree that it would have been ideal to have a full suite of suits and weapons and vehicles available at launch. I also feel we should have launched with robust FPS mechanics in place.

But we are stuck with what we have, not what should be. What we have is that we lack both full set of racial gear and solid FPS mechanics. And choosing between those two, FPS mechanics must take precedence.

Unlike lag and frame rate issue, adding basic stuffs have definite solution and (relatively) definite timeline. It can be done in foreseen future. If you think waiting for them to finish it is too long, waiting for lag to be fixed and the end of dust will be upon us before it's fixed. I'm not saying lag shouldn't be fixed or should be leaved for later. I'm saying completing basic stuffs is way more easier and have a lot of gain.

-- Fix passive scanning (more range to suits that should have scanning bonuses like scout and logi; red dots that are behind you but are very close should light up on the map if your suit has the right precision for it and range).
-- Fix scout suit that currently does not have a role as it's worse at everything that it was supposed to be good at than other suits.
-- Along the lines of balancing: fix breach versions of weapons. Breach SG and Breach MD are useless. Breach FG is borderline useless.
-- Balancing: make other weapons more competitive relative to assault rifles
-- Fix knifing mechanic: fast animation and damage output, and knifer must be able to catch up to a backpedalling target if you are just a couple of paces behind them.

Not sure how you can make such assumptions unless you have insider information and are a game designer. For all we know Devs might have just the first draft graphics for suits and weapons, no place in the game, no stats, no playtesting, nothing. I have no idea how many man-hours all that would take. Just like I have no idea how many man-hours it would take to fix lag and framerate issues. Therefore discussing which one could come first is pointless. And that's largely irrelevant for the purposes of this thread.

I feel that fixing lag and framerate takes precedence over new suits and gear, and I bet most would agree. I appreciate these could be worked in parallel and are likely done by separate people. But this thread is about prioritization, and extra features belong under EVERYTHING ELSE. The game works fine without more suits and weapons, but doesn't without lag, framerate and balancing fixes.

I strongly agree with the ones about scanning and scouts - passive scanning is a non-feature in Uprising due to unnecessarily short scan ranges, and Logis are better scouts than Scouts in all aspects that matter.

Nevertheless, items above belong either under Balancing, or under EVERYTHING ELSE. Scanning does impact everyone, but it's not a (near-)gamebreaking problem.

I was debating about including it and I decided to because I feel that passive scanning is what makes or breaks scout and as of not scout is broken. Since 1 out of 4 dropsuits practically never gets used, I think it affects the game profoundly. But I definitely see your point that these things are difficult to prioritize.

Trouble with dust is that everything will be added or sorted later.

The game has been in development for a long time and most of the basic issues should have been put right during beta but alas things remain the same for the most part.

I dont want to play a good game 4 or 5 years down the line I want to play one now, which leaves dust out on a limb.

Yes it has potential but who wants mediocre when you can purchase any number of decent fps now, and the free to play just is not enough to hold you to it when it clearly has many issues still.

Very critical is Dusts possibility to get new players!
Maybe the most critical Part!!

i showed Dust to everyone of my Friends to get them involved, but most of them not even survived a day online.
Dust must evolve in this point to simply survive the Goal of another "Decade" Game.

The Academy is quite a good idea, but they need far more then this, new players neet to be taken by the hand:

• Trainings, like aiming on "Drones" and Stuff - Like in EVE the Aura Missions with simple tutorials
• More SP/WP based Rankings for open Games (minimum 5) - With: 1 bloody noobs, 2 Advanced Noobs, 3 Medium skilled/trained Mercs, 4 Professional Mercs and 5 Proto Pro Gamer
• Friendly Games/Duell's aside of PC and Corp Matches (without gaining WP or whatever)

The Tutorials are the most important thing for a newbie, just to get a look and feel to the game.
Getting stomped by well skilled, well organized, well stuffed Mercs at the first days will lead to 80-90% falling apart