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KAGEHOSHI Horned Wolf
Seraphim Initiative.
CRONOS.
4291
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Posted - 2013.06.11 20:11:00 -
[1] - Quote
There are cool things that Dust does right. Items depleting when you die create good risk vs reward in choosing what to use, the ability to call in vehicles whenever and wherever you want, and the deep skill system, and a persistent universe where corporations of players can conquer planets. There are more negatives (at this point at least) sadly.
Dust's gameplay is very basic and generic, the only thing really special about the shooter gameplay is the ability to call in vehicles to one's location. Back when we were first introduced to Dust 514 in 2009, it was suppose to be a 64 player minimum game with MCC commanders directing troops like an RTS, and player-deployed installations. Other than that its just the same things we have experience before in other shooters, no wow factor. That would be forgivable and all if it actually played well and had the basics down to build upon, but that is not the case; frame rate issues, bad controls, and sticky terrain, bugged mass driver, and bugged nanite injector, are one of many problems that get in the way get in the way of the enjoyment. I can play 64 player MAG battles with better frame rate.
The balance is also terrible: 1MPH instant kill LAV impacts, useless weapons that make you feel like you wasted your precious SP (laser rifle, etc), 1-hit kill contact grenades (the best of which is pay-to-win). The bad matchmaking allows for veterans with large SP advantage to completely stomp on players fresh out of Instant Battle Academy, and the SP differences are made even worse because SP limits what you're allowed to use instead of giving bonuses.
If gameplay and balance is bad, why expect players to stick around and have the patience for the complexities and grindfest?
The game modes are nothing we haven't seen before, just team deathmatches and control-point capture with a bunch of variants that never truly change anything. Having only 2 bland generic modes really add to the sense that the game is nothing special. We actually had an interesting and fairly unique mode (Skirmish 1.0), but they removed it instead of fixing it; I know its coming back some undisclosed time in the future (SOON lol), but this is about the current state of Dust.
The actual locations you fight in are all pretty boring and few. Only 6 maps, and only 3 outposts (what people usually call "cities") which is made even worse by the fact that we are suppose to be fighting on thousands of planets; it doesn't even come close to feeling like we have planetary variety. The terrain itself is boring, no canyons like the craterlake map which we played Skirmish 1.0, no underground tunnels or caves, not any kind of geological features to make things feel interesting.
Dust isn't a great looking game either. The lighting is beautiful, and the actual terrain looks good IMO, but the artificial structures like buildings, vehicles, and basically everything else suffer from horrible texture loading, and bad textures in general. Dust is by no means an impressive looking game, in fact I think MAG (a game that did 256 player battles on PS3 3 years ago) still has better textures than Dust.
This isn't just an FPS, it is also an MMO tied to EVE Online, so it can't just be judged by its FPS gameplay. This is an MMO ywt it launched without PVE... W.T.F? This is even more of a disappointment since last year's Fanfest said that PVE would be here by 2012. There is no social hubs to interact with other players like in other MMOs. There isn't even basic trading yet. The EVE is trivial at best right now; the premise of the game was that us mercenaries could be hired by EVE players to attack and defend their economically important planetary sites, but the game did not launch with that.
If had had to judge Dust by its current state, a 5/10 would seem fair, if not a little generous.
It won't always be like that. Dust will improve, gameplay will be fixed and refined, PVE will come, Skirmish 1.0 will be back, boarding EVE ships will give greater connections between Dust and EVE, more maps/map elements will come, new equipment like cloak field and the infantry active modules will spice up gameplay to make it more interesting, and there are possible 0 gravity environments coming. That is all great, but it will take years, and until then we're just suppose to hope and imagine the distant future while playing the current crappy game?
Dust will improve, but so will games in general. I have a feeling that Dust will always be playing catch up when it comes to the actual gameplay. Example: That commander mode that Dust was uppose to have, MAG had it, BF4 has it, and other games will have it, and by this time this long planned feature actually comes to Dust, it will just be anything exciting or impressive. I guess being stuck playing catch up is kind of forgivable considering its a free game and all. |
KAGEHOSHI Horned Wolf
Seraphim Initiative.
CRONOS.
4297
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Posted - 2013.06.11 21:13:00 -
[2] - Quote
McFurious wrote:CCP could have avoided all of this flak they're getting if they didn't call Uprising the release version instead of "Planetary Conquest Beta"
Calling it release was a terrible idea indeed. |
KAGEHOSHI Horned Wolf
Seraphim Initiative.
CRONOS.
4306
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Posted - 2013.06.12 02:08:00 -
[3] - Quote
I remember when I first played Skirmish 2.0, I thought the old Skirmish would also be there somewhere, and that Skirmish just came in many flavors. I was very disappointed upon realizing that it was not the case. |
KAGEHOSHI Horned Wolf
Seraphim Initiative.
CRONOS.
4306
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Posted - 2013.06.12 03:24:00 -
[4] - Quote
I don't know if the state of Dust is because of lack of funds, lack of manpower, incompetence, or some combination. |
KAGEHOSHI Horned Wolf
Seraphim Initiative.
CRONOS.
4324
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Posted - 2013.06.12 18:36:00 -
[5] - Quote
Vrain Matari wrote:KAGEHOSHI Horned Wolf wrote:I don't know if the state of Dust is because of lack of funds, lack of manpower, incompetence, or some combination. I suppose we've all been thinking about this lately, and what probable causes might be. High on my list is the tinfoil hat intuition that resources are being diverted somewhere else. Perhaps fear and desperation is just slowly pushing me out to the deep end, dunno yet ;) Other than that, lack of manpower coupled with the fact the task at hand is a phenomenal technical challenge by any measure are what come to mind in my more lucid moments. And i honestly believe that if mighty development houses like Blizzard or Bungie met, on some dark night, the technical monster that CCP is locked in mortal combat with, they would turn around and slink away as quietly as possible. Because they are too old and wise to pick that fight, and they just don't have the balls or the backbone for it now, if they ever did.
The thing is though, the huge technical challenge is not where CCP has been failing (mostly), its mostly the shooter part that others tend to get right. |
KAGEHOSHI Horned Wolf
Seraphim Initiative.
CRONOS.
4338
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Posted - 2013.06.12 23:45:00 -
[6] - Quote
Aside from the obvious fixes, I think the addition of PVE would be the greatest one thing that could be done to alleviate the situation. |
KAGEHOSHI Horned Wolf
Seraphim Initiative.
CRONOS.
4352
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Posted - 2013.06.13 16:22:00 -
[7] - Quote
I'm hoping someone will convince me otherwise regarding the comparatively mediocre gameplay of the future. |
KAGEHOSHI Horned Wolf
Seraphim Initiative.
CRONOS.
4369
|
Posted - 2013.06.14 19:40:00 -
[8] - Quote
DUST Fiend wrote:I'm getting sick and tired of hearing about DUST's future from CCP, I want to hear about what they're doing NOW to make the game worth playing, especially in light of all these new, real AAA FPS shooters on the horizon.
I have a list of revealed stuff that's coming in 1.2 or soon after 1.2
UI menu/accessibility improvement
Weapon range system improvement
combat rifle
pilot spec
commando spec
snow/ice terrain terrain textures
Other terrain texture set
starry skybox
About 1 "rapid fire" update every month; enhancements to game
welcome screen: progression, emails, corp members online, events, corp battle.
Switch squads more easily
Daily bonuses
Battle finder improvement
Aiming and movement improvement
Matchmaking takes into account player preference, intra-team balancing, gear based matching, friend matching
Destroyer vehicle spec; fast turn rate on turret, faster repeating fire
Crater terrain.
research outpost (GA)
production outpost (CA)
Engine tweaks
Most of it sounds good (YAY SNOW/ICE), and the aiming thing sounds like a step in the right direction. I really doubt it will fix frame rate issues though, hit detection, the crippling lack of game mode variety (especially the lack of PVE), or lack of meaningful connection to EVE. More maps and outposts is always good though. The frequency of meaningful improvements hopefully will increase with the rapid fire update.
Something else depressing is that CCP LogicLoop keeps pushing to get Skirmish 1.0 a priority, but he seems alone in it. The others don't seem to think its a big priority right now. |
KAGEHOSHI Horned Wolf
Seraphim Initiative.
CRONOS.
4374
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Posted - 2013.06.15 14:27:00 -
[9] - Quote
KAGEHOSHI Horned Wolf wrote:I'm hoping someone will convince me otherwise regarding the comparatively mediocre gameplay of the future.
So far no one has  |
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