Dame Heavy
Expert Intervention
Caldari State
1
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Posted - 2013.06.03 18:45:00 -
[1] - Quote
A new player walks in with 500k sp and can try the militia versions of about half the weapons. During the academy they are fighting similar skilled opponents with comparable gear and skills. The player starts to enjoy the game and then is kicked out of the academy.
Now they are thrown into the game with players who have practiced at this game for months, and who have *millions* of skill points invested. These veterens have suits with far more shielding, armor, cpu/pg, far superior weaponry, and quite easily +10-30% passive bonuses to all the above as well.
The new player can't compete with all this on any level. The general board consensus is to purchase a mic, join a corporation and let your teammates carry you. (in so many words) And yes they'll be carrying you. You aren't competitive in a fight, and you can't really assist either. A new player wanting to assist can EITHER revive teammates, drop uplinks, repair armor, or drop ammo resupplys...but your veteran teammates are capable of doing all of them better, to a far superior degree, and probably a couple of them at once.
A new player is a nonentity on the battlefield. You're an undergeared civilian in the middle of a pitched battle with hardened and well-equipped soldiers. What I hear so often is that the new players just have to stick with it, keep dying, and gradually things will get better. Well it won't. Not for a long time:
Due to asynchronous gearing/skill point gap, (and player learning curve) in a typical deathmatch is a new player is going to die (far) more often then they get kills, in every game they play in. So for every game they play, they are going to drag down their side of the team. While the other team contends with newbies too, in any case this is not a fun feeling for newbies on either side. A typical deathmatch will take about 9 minutes with another 3 minutes of miscellaneous loading (not just the 90 second pre-game, I mean altogether). The newbie will get between 1000-3000, let's say 2000 sp avg. (Skirmish works about the same, it takes longer but more things to do) That works out to 166 sp/minute.
To equal the 500k they start with, the new player has to play 3012 minutes, or 50 hours. And at this point they still aren't much better off then they were before. I've heard estimates bandied about that to get a narrowly competent (in one role) character you need 2 million. That will require 150 hours of gameplay just to have a somewhat level playing field. (Even if my math is really off and it took 75 hours...that's still a whole lot of time too!)
New players are not going to be abused for 150 hours just to have a *fair* chance of playing. It's just not going to happen, and people will limited free time won't put up with it either. (buying loads of gear with real $$ just to get a 'fair' experience isn't much fun either) EVE might be able to get away with that sort of abuse, but that's because there is nothing else out there like EVE. Players are forced to take the EVE abuse for something new and original, and out of legions scared off some will come back because EVE is the only game like itself out there.
But Dust 514 isn't EVE. It's a first person shooter and it's in competition with hundreds of first-person-shooters released over the last fifteen years, and more to come.
Now don't get me wrong, the setting, options, and gameplay still strike a chord with me, and free to play brought me in. (all good things) There are actually many things I enjoy in this game, but this post is already long enough and it's not relevant to list them. I'd like to keep playing this game and have fun with my friends on it.
But I'm only going to keep playing this game if it's fun, and having the job of nonentity and padding out other player's scores ain't it. Right now my only recourse is to sit on the sidelines and let the sp accrue for a few weeks, which is a shame because me and my friends are excited about the game *right now*. I'm willing to die a bunch to get proficient, but I'm not going to take abuse as a second job.
So here's my ideas of leveling the playing field, so everybody can have fun: (without penalizing the veterans, which is key)
-Match up people based on total character skill points as much as feasibly possible (ie 500k-1million get matched up together, 1-2million get matched up, 2-4million, etc) For groups entering at once take an average. This way like will fight like, and veterans will fight veterans. A veteran can always reroll a new character and fight in scrub gear if they miss the good old days...but then the newbies will have an even shot on them.
-Whenever a player dies without getting a kill, give them a stackable +20% hp/shields/dmg/etc *until they get one kill.* So a player who dies 5 times in a row would be twice as tough. (and perhaps an even match for a veteran's gear) There is no limit to the stacking.
-Allow respecs - it's frustrating for a new character to spend hours and hours to build a character and then discover he/she spent the sp wrong and essentially wasted all that time. Or accidentally misclicked and wasted a load of sp. While I appreciate the respec I got, respecs should be a consistent game mechanic for sanity's sake.
-Put in an optional ladder system of some kind, giving the veterans something to spend their time in. Give out ingame aurum/skins/public honor/etc or anything that doesn't boost their stats out of reach again.
-Give out prizes to long-winded players whose posts to 'feedback/requests' generate the most angry responses...
I have high hopes for the future CCP. |
Dame Heavy
Expert Intervention
Caldari State
1
|
Posted - 2013.06.04 13:10:00 -
[2] - Quote
EXASTRA INVICTAS wrote:[quote=Dame Heavy]The biggest differences between new players and old players will always be:
1) Experience
2) Knowledge
3) Fitting Ease
On the other side, skill is a big factor in how well you play in DUST. Considering how broken some things are, you have to play a LOT to get used to how you need to compensate for certain oddities in the game.
I know I cherry-picked out a few comments that you made, but I have to strongly disagree with this sentiment. (though I have nothing against you personally) I don't think actual player skill has much to do with things after all. Players with lots of skill points and gear will ALWAYS win over a militia player. It's not a slight edge, it's overwhelming. Veterans with sp/gear may or may not be competent on a case by case basis. But if these same veteran-players equipped militia gear and fought a sp/geared newb, the newbie would consistently win.
Using the the Dust 514 Fitting Tool (as I am away from my PS3) that is stickied on the rookie training grounds, I did a little math. I tried to do the math as accurately as I could, not because I'm particularly bitter (I can always play another game if I get too frustrated) but because I think the facts speak for themselves and well, math is fun.
Militia assault rifle
12.5 bullets a second
31 dmg a bullet
387 dmg a second
Duvolle Tactical Assault Rifle
13.15 bullets a second
78.5 dmg a bullet
+15% AR dmg skills (90.3 dmg a bullet total)
1032 dmg a second
Milita Caldari suit
210 shield +44 shield extenders
120 armor + 80 armor plates
Total = 454
Caldari Assault ck.0 suit
300 shield + 264 shield extenders + 141 shield upgrade skill + 26 shield ext efficiency skill
120 armor + 345 plates + armor upgrade 116 skill + 34 armor plate efficiency skill
731 shields
615 armor
Total = 1346
Militia person would have to hit the veteran with 44 bullets to kill them if they hit every time. They get 48 bullets in a militia clip. Unless their accuracy is over 91% they'll be reloading for 3.5 seconds before they can damage the Veteran again and in the meantime they'll be sitting ducks.
On the other hand the Veteran just has to hit the Militia with 5.03 bullets(we'll say 6) if they hit every time. Which will take only 0.46 seconds. It's a good thing the Militia person only used shield extensions and armor plats, since if they didn't they would die in 4 bullets in 0.37 seconds!
The Twin test.
Now I'm going to make assumptions about the players, the first being that they don't hit every time. Both are twins that always play together, only difference is one is starting from scratch with militia gear and another is starting by using an account of a decked out veteran player. I'm going to assume both are experienced FPS players and are equally clever, strafing, jumpy fools and can both hit clever, strafing, jumpy fools 7 times out of 10. The twin using the veteran account also gets bonuses vs dispersion, so he gets a 25% bonus, so he'll hit 8.75 out of 10 now. (since he's using a tighter spread) I'm going to discount the vet-twin-ar kick bonus entirely because I have no idea how to take it into account.
Fight #1
The twins fight under fair circumstances against each other and start firing away. The veteran-equipped twin shoots 7 bullets in 0.53 seconds, 6 of which hit the militia twin and kill him by doing 541 dmg.
In the same 0.53 seconds, the militia twin fires 6.5 bullets, of which 4.7 hit. Rounding up to 5 bullets, that does 155 damage and does about 12% of the veteran-equipped twin's total health. The veteran twin barely notices the blip on his way to devour another newbie player.
Fight #2
Both twins continue to shuck, jive, and shoot bullets, but next time the militia twin catches the veteran-equipped twin in another firefight and starts firing early. Hitting 7 out of 10 times, the militia twin hits with 34 bullets out of the militia clip (doing 1054 dmg) and is forced to reload. 3.5 agonizing seconds of reload later, it takes another 22 bullets to hit 15 times and do 465 dmg. (ie enough to finally kill the veteran player)
Total time required by the militia twin to kill the veteran-equipped twin: 7.98 seconds. At any time the veteran twin could have taken 0.53 seconds out his day and killed the militia twin. |