DUST Search - CCP devs please take a seat over here...

Alldin Kan wrote:

*Framerate issues are still present after 1 year. Other FPS games should have overcome this in a shorter timeframe with the current staff they have.

*Responsiveness to resolving key issues is one of the longest (if not the worst) in game development, usually being 3-5 months, doing improper tweaking, and then producing additional problems. See Examples:

-Dropsuit fitting bug fixed months later.
-Dropship missiles too strong? After 5 months of terror, damage is lowered AND its splash radius.
-Lasers are too strong? "Let's wait 4-5 months to tweak their damage values."
-HMGs are still good? "Let's further lower the damage and see what happens, heavy class is supposed to be point defense right?"
-Marauder tanks are not finished? "Let's remove them entirely for now and put in place Enforcer tanks, their lower Health\CPU\PG makes sense" (later on a health buff had to be implemented... and now LAVs are a true murder taxi)
-DS3 aiming was fine but then... "We feel that further tweaks may be necessary to controls to give our players a better experience." (Uprising finally launches, along with one of worst control systems in recent months of gaming. These changes were never reverted to Chromosome settings and a fix is not coming anytime soon as usual.)

There's probably more to note, but I'll leave it there. Now here's the stuff that Dust is lacking:

*Various (FUN and strategic) game modes.

*An aggressive style gameplay.

*Better maneuverability when traversing the area (seriously, I can't climb over some crates or move over metal railings.

*Diverse map layouts; we're still fighting in the middle of nowhere on very familiar surroundings. When can we fight to secure a city or large facilities? (Not talking about FW districts)

*Weapon customization. Currently there's none and it was supposed to be a high priority.

*Interactive environment. We only have installations... where are the lock mechanisms for opening/closing gates, a protective shielding over a strategic location, hidden loot around the map (I thought Dust was an MMO), and what about environmental hazards (traps) that can be activated by a player?

It's nice that you all want to try to link Dust to EVE so that in the future we get an interesting game experience but all of those efforts will be in vain if you don't polish the core mechanics of this game. PS4 is coming soon along with a few popular Free to Play shooters and WiiU is soon to get the return of 2 game juggernaughts (we all know what are they). If Dust doesn't greatly improve by then, I'm afraid this game will start loosing a considerable amount of it's playerbase.


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Avallo Kantor DUST University Ivy League 50	Posted - 2013.06.15 00:22:00 - [1] - Quote Alldin Kan wrote: Framerate issues are still present after 1 year. Other FPS games should have overcome this in a shorter timeframe with the current staff they have. Responsiveness to resolving key issues is one of the longest (if not the worst) in game development, usually being 3-5 months, doing improper tweaking, and then producing additional problems. See Examples: -Dropsuit fitting bug fixed months later. -Dropship missiles too strong? After 5 months of terror, damage is lowered AND its splash radius. -Lasers are too strong? "Let's wait 4-5 months to tweak their damage values." -HMGs are still good? "Let's further lower the damage and see what happens, heavy class is supposed to be point defense right?" -Marauder tanks are not finished? "Let's remove them entirely for now and put in place Enforcer tanks, their lower Health\CPU\PG makes sense" (later on a health buff had to be implemented... and now LAVs are a true murder taxi) -DS3 aiming was fine but then... "We feel that further tweaks may be necessary to controls to give our players a better experience." (Uprising finally launches, along with one of worst control systems in recent months of gaming. These changes were never reverted to Chromosome settings and a fix is not coming anytime soon as usual.) There's probably more to note, but I'll leave it there. Now here's the stuff that Dust is lacking: Various (FUN and strategic) game modes. An aggressive style gameplay. Better maneuverability when traversing the area (seriously, I can't climb over some crates or move over metal railings. Diverse map layouts; we're still fighting in the middle of nowhere on very familiar surroundings. When can we fight to secure a city or large facilities? (Not talking about FW districts) Weapon customization. Currently there's none and it was supposed to be a high priority. Interactive environment. We only have installations... where are the lock mechanisms for opening/closing gates, a protective shielding over a strategic location, hidden loot around the map (I thought Dust was an MMO), and what about environmental hazards (traps) that can be activated by a player? It's nice that you all want to try to link Dust to EVE so that in the future we get an interesting game experience but all of those efforts will be in vain if you don't polish the core mechanics of this game. PS4 is coming soon along with a few popular Free to Play shooters and WiiU is soon to get the return of 2 game juggernaughts (we all know what are they). If Dust doesn't greatly improve by then, I'm afraid this game will start loosing a considerable amount of it's playerbase. I believe the reason many of these balance fixes are taking so long is because CCP does not often take just the word of the players on the forums into consideration for balance. This is mostly because you can look at any forum for any game and there will be calls for "OP" weapons to be nerfed and "UP" things to be buffed. I'm sure if Pong had a forum that it would have people posting for nerfing right or left side. That's not to say many of these concerns are invalid or wrong, in my opinion many of the concerns raised on balance have been quite accurate, but it's never in the best interest of a company to do whiplash balancing as it may do more harm than good. CCP takes the approach of carefully monitoring the game (through some sort of metrics) over a period of many weeks to make sure that this claim is valid, and that can often be more difficult than one could initially predict. It's not a simple matter that weapon A and B should do the same damage, it's a game where Weapon A does more damage at Range X and damages Shields A% and Armor B% but at range Y only does... etc etc while Weapon B has completely different optimal ranges, damage types, etc. Not to mention that you have to take into consideration the other factors of what a player is doing in the system. Is the situation in question a really good player against a bad one, is it a situation where the "OP" weapon is simply in it's best environment while Weapon B is in it's worst? There's also other aspects to consider as well, if more players are running around in Shield tanked dropsuits, is a weapon that does more damage to shield necessarily OP compared to the weapon that does more damage to armor tanks? Often times the game's math for balancing is a bit more complicated than making a weapon that has Fire rate X and damage per shot of Y and another that has Damage per shot of Y and fire rate X to make them be equivalent damage. Also, based on my experience in EVE online the Devs consider balance from more of a Rock Paper Scissors approach, they build things (or try to) by making one thing have a weakness that is countered by a weapon and a strength that counters another weapon. Any attempts to nerf Rock must be balanced by making sure it just doesn't make Scissors an unstoppable powerhouse and Paper a useless joke. As to your other points: I always think more game modes would be fun, and I hope whatever they add will be modes I wouldn't normally see in an FPS. Something that tries to play to the notions of permanence and long term meaning rather than a throw away capture a flag match that never changes anything. As for the gameplay style, I think DUST tries to have longer gun fights with more survivability (if you spec into it) which is more of a style decisions and up to personal taste. To be Continued
Avallo Kantor DUST University Ivy League 50	Posted - 2013.06.15 00:26:00 - [2] - Quote I also agree with better maneuverability, within reason. There are some railings that should be jumped over, and others I find I can accidentally walk over without even jumping. I'm also a big component for having slight fluxations of gravity for each planet so not all of them have -exactly- earth gravity. As for the map layouts more diversity will come in time, and with each additional slot and mesh they add they'll be able to expand the number of different maps much faster than just adding standard pre-made maps. As for hidden loot around the map, I am strongly against that, as I think it doesn't make sense, and isn't appropriate for this game. The random salvage at the end of the match more or less already does this, and just randomly spawning valuable weapons all around a map just doesn't make sense in the lore, or from the goals that DUST is trying to get to. Also, I never have frame rate or lag issues unless I play for more than 2 hours. And then it's fine if I just shut off my PS3 for like 30 min.