DUST Search - I fought this battle, I killed those guys and it didn't change squat

Skihids wrote:

This might be possible for PC battles where there are 1-2 battles per district per day maximum, but you still don't have an appreciation for the shear level of activity and destruction that occurs in instant battles.

CCP has to instantiate as many districts as there are concurrent battles unless you want to remove the "Instant" from "Instant Battles". That's 218 districts for 7k active mercs. Let's then take 20 min Skirmish battles. Each battle would generate wreckage from one MCC, and perhaps a dozen vehicles, totaling 72 MCC and 864 vehicle hulks in one 24 hour period.

Skihids wrote:

So let's assume you role the dice and you and your friend actually make it back to that district where you rammed the dropship with your LAV and you want to point out the epicness to your buddy. It would go something like this:

You: Hey Fred, see that dropship wreckage over there? I did that with my LAV!
Fred: You mean that hulk over by the pipes?
You: No, the one in front of the third pile to the left of the Null cannon over there.
Fred: Oh, you mean that bit of twisted wreckage there.
You: No, the other bit that's peeking out of the right side of the pile.
Fred: Look out!

Right then a LAV hits the pile of junk that completely blocks the road and blows up, adding one more hulk to mountain of junk.

You and Fred carefully climb over the pile of wreckage surrounding the Null Cannon and slide down the slope to cap it.

In a week the huge pile of MCC wreckage would allow you to step out of the MCC and run down without having to activate your inertial dampener.

Allow for environment destruction and there wouldn't be a wall left standing inside a week. When do you allow for downtime for the engineers to come in and rebuild?


Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 0 post(s)
S Park Finner BetaMax. CRONOS. 134	Posted - 2013.06.09 03:04:00 - [1] - Quote Our character is persistent, to some extent the changes to the EVE universe are persistent, but from battle to battle the terrain we fight over never changes. While there may be some deep existential message in that, in the long run it will be the biggest problem with DUST 514. "You know that orbital cannon installation we fought over yesterday? I though we dropped an orbital strike on it. It's still there and it hasn't been damaged a bit. " "Remember how you tripped over that silly little bump at the top of those back stairs? The maintenance guys never fixed it. And that blown out wall on the North side of the compound -- the combat engineers didn't do anything yesterday to shore it up. Enemy troops are still pouring in through it." "Those empty crates outside that warehouse? Here it is two days later and those lazy stevedores haven't moved them an inch." If the aiming issues are fixed, if the user interface issues are fixed, if the gun-game is fixed ... For the average player it will be same-old same-old after a while because, except for a few players, what a mercenary in DUST 514 does doesn't change anything that shows up in their game. That doesn't mean it can't be a good FPS. It doesn't mean that players invested in EVE / DUST 514 interaction or the meta-game won't get a lot out of it. What it does mean, in my opinion, is that without some way to show FPS oriented players that they make a difference in the world that resonates with them the bridge between FPS and MMO is fragile indeed. That fragility breeds a fundamental schizophrenia that will be harder to overcome and more damaging the to the game in the long run than any concerns about gun game or planetary conquest.
S Park Finner BetaMax. CRONOS. 134	Posted - 2013.06.09 03:46:00 - [2] - Quote Avallo Kantor wrote: The point here is that we are causing changes, in terms of ISK to all the players we kill / support/ revive (if the needle decides to work) Often times it's not enough to make a cautious player go negative, but sometimes we are able to force a player to lose ISK in a match, and that rather simple notion of costing them money is what sets this game apart from other games where death is just a breather. That's an excellent point. And to the extent we meet those players over and over again -- form a rivalry or relationship with them where the social bond is persistent I fully agree. But even among friends playing together but not participating in corp-to-corp conflict I don't believe that changes the world. For most players they return to the same worlds and they fight the same battles endlessly. To that extent DUST 514 is a typical FPS with typical maps and no sense of the players having impact on the universe. To get any sense of that kind of impact they have to clue in to the relatively esoteric worlds of faction warfare, planetary conquest of the corporation meta-game. I want to focus on (in my opinion as yet non-existent) mechanisms to first show FPS players that their battles make tangible and meaningful changes in the world and then help them extend that sense of empowerment to the broader worlds of faction warfare, planetary conquest and corporate interaction. While this isn't in the feedback / requests section and I think it will take better minds than mine to resolve the issues I can give some more tangible examples of what I mean... Keep a log of what districts players, even in instant battles, fight on and show how they contributed to the owners efforts on the district. Allow players to sign up for battles on particular districts so they can gain a sense of ownership in the outcome. Implement some destructibility / modification to the environment so actions taken in one battle have a visual / tactical impact on the next battle in the same place. Have the ornaments on the battlefield change from battle to battle to give a sense of a living environment. I don't under-estimate for a moment the technical tissues with making the kinds of things I'm suggesting happen. I know how hard it is to build playable levels where every sight-line and piece of cover impacts the players' experience. I believe I have a reasonable respect for the budgets in computing resources and manpower necessary to implementing mechanisms like this. None-the-less, I'm trying to highlight an underlying problem that I believe has to be address for DUST 514's long term success. In that light technical difficulties must be worked through and priorities have to be adjusted.
S Park Finner BetaMax. CRONOS. 137	Posted - 2013.06.09 20:39:00 - [3] - Quote Duran Lex wrote: People who refuse to learn the game, and try to pass off deliberate game mechanics designed to encourage the rock/paper/scissors gameplay this entire FPS is based on, should not have their suggestions of how to turn this game into another "run and gun shooter" listened to. I may sound like a ****, but if you can't figure out the concept of countering an opponent using his weakness...you should stop playing. I have a lot of sympathy for folks who feel the way Duran does. I don't agree, however, that it is in the interest of the DUST 514 player community or CCP to leave the players he's talking about by the wayside. Any community needs new members to thrive and grow. Most people, especially when an activity is supposed to be fun, don't want to make big changes in their lives to get to the fun part. If you like playing miniature golf with your friends and have a choice between a close-by but easy course and a more challenging course an hour's drive away most folks will go for the close-by course GÇô unless something about the drive is fun too. DUST 514 has to make the trip to the deeper game fun for as many players as possible. Overcoming a series of increasingly difficult challenges is more engaging than being thrown into the deep end of the pool and being forced to face a big, life-threatening challenge. Challenges crafted so they not only bring immediate rewards but also reveal new ways to be rewarded can give the player insight into new ways to have fun. Here are some examples... You kill a drop ship by heroically ramming it with your LAV just after it gets dropped off by the RDV. You tell all your friends about the epic engagement. And for a few days the smouldering wrecks of the two vehicles are still there on the battlefield for you to show off. You're trying to break thorough the enemies defence in your tank but they are tucked behind a row of low hills. Your heavy guns chip away at the hill and destroy their cover. You team pours through and takes the base. When you return to the planet the hills are still gone. You are a combat engineer and block the compound gates with containers. You loose a lot of drop suits and gear but the compound is saved. You're blockade stays in place and your team pesters you to clear the road. In all those cases your exploits are recorded in the history at your DUST 514 website. You can review them, share them, work to improve your performance , or laugh about your epic fail. Notice that each of these examples does several things. It provides a persistent link between your charater and it's public history. It provides a way to share your experience with your friends. It shows players they can change the world in which they play. It reinforces that the changes players make impact the teams and corporations they play for It gives a way for their history to impact the way those teams and corporations view them. Taken together they send a message that the player is part of a bigger community and makes a difference to it. Even with all of that some folks won't get it, won't care or won't like the idea. But many more won't get it if we have no mechanism in place to foster their progress.
S Park Finner BetaMax. CRONOS. 137	Posted - 2013.06.10 13:31:00 - [4] - Quote CrotchGrab 360 wrote: steadyhand amarr wrote: Jesues setting your demands quite high here. Only battlefield games have managed to do battlefield damage correctly, I think some of you need to get your expectations back into reality. The art assets for what you have asked for is mind blowing alone. That said ccp did slam a crashed ship into a planet and update the matches to reflect this it is an outrageous expectation I'll give you that. OP doesn't realize what it would take to get that to happen. His point is valid but his examples were poor. A couple of points worth making here. The original post was intended to point out a gulf between the two communities DUST 514 is trying to serve and a mechanism to bridge that barrier for some FPS players. To that end it is a vision and a call to reprioritize the allocation of human and technilogical assets so the vision can be achieved sooner. The central premise of the mechanism is to show FPS players in ways that make sense to them and reward them that they can make a difference in the world. With each experience, in addition, it is to draw them into rewarding and persistent team and corporation play while putting them in a position where they can write their own stories. It's true the examples are ambitious. But on analysis the constraints are human resources less than technology and that makes them amenable to the reprioritization mentioned about. Some examples... Ways players can can have a record of and show off what they've done... Give each player their own web accessible history of battle including as many different kinds of statistics as possible and a history of battles and major battle events GÇô wins, losses, major equipment destroyed, contribution to destruction of major equipment, facilities captured, etc. Give them the ability to select, make public and publish those events both on their own web site and to social media. Integrate the video capture and publishing capabilities of the next generation of Playstation into the player record so they can show off their efforts Ways players' efforts change the world they play in... Use the greater object count capabilities of next generation hardware to leave destroyed equipment on the battlefield between battles. Use the structured destruction model of early Battlefield destructible environments in combination with larger object counts to reduce the art asset costs of adding destructible environments. Use greater object counts to increase the number of movable objects on the maps. Focus instant battles on a smaller number of more persistent worlds and give players some ability to return to the site of previous battles. This agenda can not be immediately achieved. Some of it depends on the eventual adoption of next generation hardware. Implementing it will mean shifting human resources from other efforts GÇô doubtless with screams of GÇ£why go to the trouble of letting me push around a crate when the swarm launcher needs to be fixed?GÇ¥ It doesn't have the immediacy of a new weapon type or more detailed texture. But at the same time CCP can move forward on multiple fronts at once. For the long-term health of the game, ways to pull FPS players across to more involved and persistent game elements have to be designed and implemented.
S Park Finner BetaMax. CRONOS. 138	Posted - 2013.06.10 15:12:00 - [5] - Quote Skihids wrote: I don't think that the OP realizes how many battles occur on each map every hour. With 7k active players and 32 per battle you have 218 maps instantiated at once. Which one did you destroy that tank on? What are the chances you would ever see it again? How big a pile of junk would accumulate on each one over the course of a single day? You wouldn't be be to move. Aside from that you have the frame rate issues from tracking several hundred pieces of junk. Edited to account for 32 players per match Ah, Lucrezia; bear with me for once: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. Reflect that a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? (with apologies to Browning ) CCP has a history of doing what conventional wisdom says can not be done. 40,000 people playing on a single shard? Can't do it. Battles with thousand's of spaceships? Can't do it. Hundreds of planets with tens of districts each with it's own terrain map and deployed objects changing from battle to battle where mercenaries scramble through the ruins they created and desperately try to rebuild under fire? Can't do it. But, as usual, I digress. Lets say that all the persistence stuff is impossible. I started by saying better minds than mine exist at CCP. And even if some aspects of my examples could not be reasonably implemented right now that does not mean deliberate strategies to provide a path for players to greater involvement in deeper aspects of the game can not be devised. Certainly web based tools are within the grasp of existing technology and well below the current threshold of manageable complexity. What we can guarantee is that if a concerted program to create bridging strategies is not put in place they are unlikely to emerge on their own.
S Park Finner BetaMax. CRONOS. 138	Posted - 2013.06.10 15:53:00 - [6] - Quote Deadeye Dic wrote: There are specific reasons why the maps are the way they are. Resources. CCP has said that there will be destructible objects in game, but not on the scale that BF3 does it. That destruction will not be persistent from one match to another, it doesn't make any sense to do that, since we have no way of "re-building" what was lost. Every map "looks the same" because, well every FPS game has maps that always the same. You have some good ideas concerning this, but you hinge it all on using Next-Gen consoles. The issue here is that not everyone is going to go out this Christmas and blow $400 bucks on a new console. I'm not, I never buy first release consoles, they are always screwed up. A lot of other players won't either. Then there is the fact that CCP has confirmed they are not moving to PS4 in the near future. (See Video Advancing the Core) It is said during the Q&A part and if I remember correctly Jenza asked the question for someone on #tweetfleet. I admit to having mixed feelings about the way I approached this topic. Your reaction is understandable. If the core of the original post was about destructible environments I wouldn't take much issue with your comments. But that isn't the core of the post. What is? CCP has to bring new people into the fold. To do that they have to meet the expectations of FPS players but they also have to create mechanisms that give those players insight into how much fun the deeper aspects of the game can be. Not all players will want or see that. But some will -- and a flow of long term new players will be created, not because some are willing to fight through the husk to get to the meat but because the meal was prepared for them in an appealing way. That is not a next generation console problem or inherently and next generation console solution -- though certainly that equipment will allow for a broader range of options. The problem exists now and I assert it is a more important problem than community (and perhaps CCP) are realizing.
S Park Finner BetaMax. CRONOS. 143	Posted - 2013.06.14 15:02:00 - [7] - Quote You're speaking to a different issue than the original post but you've made so many good points I think it's worth talking about. Skihids wrote: This might be possible for PC battles where there are 1-2 battles per district per day maximum, but you still don't have an appreciation for the shear level of activity and destruction that occurs in instant battles. CCP has to instantiate as many districts as there are concurrent battles unless you want to remove the "Instant" from "Instant Battles". That's 218 districts for 7k active mercs. Let's then take 20 min Skirmish battles. Each battle would generate wreckage from one MCC, and perhaps a dozen vehicles, totaling 72 MCC and 864 vehicle hulks in one 24 hour period. A completely agree with your characterization of the scope of the problem. Skihids wrote: So let's assume you role the dice and you and your friend actually make it back to that district where you rammed the dropship with your LAV and you want to point out the epicness to your buddy. It would go something like this: You: Hey Fred, see that dropship wreckage over there? I did that with my LAV! Fred: You mean that hulk over by the pipes? You: No, the one in front of the third pile to the left of the Null cannon over there. Fred: Oh, you mean that bit of twisted wreckage there. You: No, the other bit that's peeking out of the right side of the pile. Fred: Look out! Right then a LAV hits the pile of junk that completely blocks the road and blows up, adding one more hulk to mountain of junk. You and Fred carefully climb over the pile of wreckage surrounding the Null Cannon and slide down the slope to cap it. In a week the huge pile of MCC wreckage would allow you to step out of the MCC and run down without having to activate your inertial dampener. Allow for environment destruction and there wouldn't be a wall left standing inside a week. When do you allow for downtime for the engineers to come in and rebuild? You're right GÇô if there are no game mechanics to overcome the issue. But there could be. For example... People have been calling for salvaging for a long time. With a salvage mechanism the detritus of the battle could be removed at benefit to the player. Team / Squad / Corporation level joint efforts could provide incentives to group up and limit GÇ£you stole my stuffGÇ¥ issues except between groups. Allowing things to persist but for limited time and number of objects so the build up your talking about has hard limits. Providing a mechanism so players or corporations could GÇ£adopt a districtGÇ¥ even for instant battles. It would improve the possibility of returning to the same battlefield and provide a sense of continuity. People have been calling for practice areas and arenas. Create a game type where entry to the battlefield is staged. The GÇ£defendersGÇ¥ get to enter the battlefield say three minutes earlier than the attackers. They can GÇ£rebuildGÇ¥ the defences of he district during that time GÇô fixing walls, cleaning up wrecks, setting up defensive positions GÇô but with the penalty of having fewer clones for the defence of their territory. Skihids wrote: The numbers show that your vision is impossible no matter what level of technology you assume. You aren't the only merc playing this game. There are thousands of others. Two points here... The vision was originally just a set of examples of ways players with traditional FPS expectations could be helped to transition GÇô if they wanted to GÇô into a different kind of game play. If some of those examples are over-the-top that doesn't mean some other techniques could not be devised. I suggested in an earlier post that off-line, web based capabilities GÇô perhaps modifications to the web-site and PS Vita app GÇô could be as effective as in-game changes. Smart folks are able to devise all sorts of ways to overcome obstacles if they have a compelling objective. The solutions I suggest in this post have their own problems. And they are certainly not the only possible solutions. For example... Onesimus Tarsus wrote: Every. Match. Should. Count. How hard would it be to statistically rate every public match and apply the impact to a greater map-shaping statistic? Such that the so-called planet that the game(s) occur upon are overrun by random mercs reaping the benefits of just winning day by day, holding their patch of glory, or some disciplined Corp comes in, sweeps the rodents away and really gets the planet organized. Profits ensue and EvE players are offered a piece of the pie. It doesn't need graphics or anything. Fantasy Dust 514 League would do. That being said, carefully thought out criticisms like Skihids help people avoid nurturing branches that will not bear fruit.