While I'm trying to stay relatively neutral, despite it impacting my suit directly, I'll be watching Alpha very closely and assess success or failure when it drops.

As, to be honest, it's what I'll be basing my decision whether I stay in Dust (or even bother going to Legion for that matter).

Anybody else feel this way?

Yes and no.

My main is Havohej Anyone with an Eve-O account can look him up and see that I've been playing that game since 2007. I feel I kinda know CCP because of this. Rattati isn't a unique thing, as far as CCP devs engaging directly with the community and trying to figure out their game and what it needs. CCP devs are notorious for not knowing what players know about their spaceship game, and now their shooter as well. They have a certain meta in mind when they design a suit or ship or weapon or module, and then we do the theorycrafting and come up with **** they never intended, and they don't know what to do about it so they don't change anything until the QQ of the vocal minority on their forums reaches critical mass.

They may break us with Alpha. It's a distinct possibility. I say us meaning scouts in general. Because they want to nerf the shotgun scout, they're going way far with it. Fortunately, it looks like the latest iteration of Alpha is closer to the mark and may not actually destroy our role as we know it to be.

And ****, I'm just scratching the surface of learning the role to begin with.

But if they DO break us, they will at the same time inadvertently make something else overpowered. And they'll nerf that, and we'll take the role we adapt into Alpha through to Hotfix Bravo and we'll be something like 'okay' again.

IVVS blew a lot of wind about numbers not being the thing that should determine advantage. But you know what? In the real world, every single video game must come down to numbers, because that's all any of it is. When they nerf one set of numbers, another set of numbers must inevitably step to the fore. Because we don't have the sort of technology that would really, truly let player skill be the be-all, end-all.

"It's all a game of this or that, now versus then. 'Better off' against 'worse for wear'." In other words, video game balance is a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Nerf Bat. Even Blizzard, the king of the MMO, has not found a way out of this trap.

So yes... Alpha will determine some things for me. Mainly, whether I spent money on Aurum for boosters or not. It won't determine whether I keep playing, though.

I will. Just like I kept playing Eve after I skilled into nano-HACs only for the nano-nerf to land two weeks later. Months of skill training... suddenly marginalized. Fortunately, I was already specced into the meta that rose to the fore after that (I was an assault ship pilot before assault ships were cool). I'll keep playing Dust until the servers are so empty it's not possible to even get a decent match going. If that happens, I'll just be playing Eve.

Two or three years from now, we'll be in Legion Beta saying "We were scouts before scouting was cool."

With our proto knives and ACRs and shotguns and our Complex Damps and our proto REs. And who knows, maybe we'll even be carrying bloody mass drivers like a bunch of 200 eHP hipsters.

But we'll be there, because nobody else will present us with a shooter possessed of anywhere near the complexity of this one. And because, even though they're ******* drunk college kids at heart, they do genuinely give a **** about putting out the best games in a niche they've created. They do listen and at least try to give us what we seem to want.

At the end of the day, given that my chosen way to waste my time and money as a 31 year old male is vidya games (instead bars and booze and hookers and blow), that's good enough for me. Because like Mayo in "An Officer and a Gentleman", I got no place else to go.

(Until/unless somebody DOES come along offering a better spaceship game and/or a better, more complex shooter... you've been warned, CCP).

He's one of us already

Gods above and below. Cat Merc is making more sense than Rattati. what the hell is going on here?! https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2181134#post2181134

Agreed. Invitation sent.

I disagree with Cat on this. Everything hinges on the Mobility nerf to plates. If folks are slow to respond to attacks from behind, then Scouts won't need mountains of HP.

Is my thinking wrong?

I disagree with Cat on this. Everything hinges on the Mobility nerf to plates. If folks are slow to respond to attacks from behind, then Scouts won't need mountains of HP.

Is my thinking wrong?

Yes. It is.
Mobility isn't changing for complex plates only the lower ones. most the change is not significant enough to warrant the loss of stealth

If you were to say, change the speed at which each suit can turn around at instead of them all being the same, then the difference would be significant enough to matter.

But there are also shield tank suits that won't be affected by that change as well. That's why I made a point of saying I need 500eHP against progectile weapons if I want to score a single kill, even if the first shot gets them from behind

CR is > shotgun.

I have never had over 500 eHP and I still manage to get kills.

This is why I keep saying I have nothing wrong with this Hotfix. I have NEVER needed eHP to survive.

Roger that. Back home. Finally able to get into Haerr's updated Scan Table.
Good stuff as always, Haerr. o7

Seems there's an error in progression.
Gallente Scout, Rows 21 - 24.
Values increase rather than decrease.

At first glance, the hunter/hunted scenarios look pretty well balanced to me.
Though Appia raises good points in her eWar / loadout post.
What are the rest of you guys thinking?

@Haerr,

Just checking, does the updated table account for the reduction in the Cal scouts precision bonus? I'm assuming it does, just wanted to be sure.

All values are rounded up, as per bastards (and others) test report, SOURCE in nos. I really wouldn't mind testing it out for myself so if you are up for it grab me the next time you see me online and we'll try it out in-game so that we can see for ourselves.

I was misreading the table; didn't notice the green shading in range K21:L34

You are absolutely correct. Values round up. Denak and I tested this extensively last build.
Would be glad to get together with you post-Alpha to confirm that nothing has changed.

So you're saying you don't run CQC or any type at of combat inside a city point?

Homepoint is where they stick the people that aren't good enough to be in the city

o7 Scouts!
It's been a while, so I give you..

Writings from the Quil
(literary joke.. Anyone? .. Anyone?)

havent played much recently. Been collecting passives and daily bonus, but nothing calls to me. My OCD grinding habits have been focused on League of Legends
(Now hit level 30, so grinding out runepages)

The latest changes sound interesting. The profile nerf to cloaks is something that some of us have wanted for quite a while.
So, on the one hand, I'm happy no more stealth logi.
On the other hand, I'm sad it means the end of my super-ninja commando grind.
(But my amarr ninja heavy, while still not invisble, IS still mostly non-scannable )

I'll probably play more, when my passives hit something interesting enough to try out. ie: kinetics 5 on my caldari scout.
Sadly, due to the annoying SP requirements curve, thats still..(2 weeks or more?) away, when relying on passive only.

Once again Appia, there are other playstyles than your own.

And your condescending tone isn't appreciated.

What is the home point?

I've made it past her squad and killed her a couple times... quite epically . I don't think she's ever killed me ;)
Not many people can handle an aggressive knifer.


What is the home point?

While I'm trying to stay relatively neutral, despite it impacting my suit directly, I'll be watching Alpha very closely and assess success or failure when it drops.

As, to be honest, it's what I'll be basing my decision whether I stay in Dust (or even bother going to Legion for that matter).

Anybody else feel this way?

That is a great question.

The purpose of the CPM is to represent the community to CCP and be a conduit for the community as a focus group of sorts.

The assertion was that being a CEO is a bad thing was just something I was hoping i could easily disperse by listing a bunch of the candidates you may not have known were CEO's.

Being a CEO doesn't inherently make you a viable CPM choice, but it can demonstrate a lot about you.

Your ability to lead a corp successfully is often time a reflection that you are willing to put in the time to keep the corp 'alive' in some sense. Corps that aren't given goals or have a factor that keeps the community together (take WTF as the default French community corporation) often fall by the wayside. A leader is often also heavily involved in putting out fires diplomatically, and being patient and professional is really key when you want to work with CCP.

You can't be the type of person to reign down fire and brimstone and cry and scream because it gets you worse than nowhere.
You get reduced to sitting in a corner with the dunce cap and you compromise your ability to advocate with the traits that voted you in in the first place.

Furthermore being CEO often means you've dealt with other CEO's, at least I assume so I personally know probably about 20 CEO's on dust and am familiar with many more.

This leads to some really happy things happening in terms of having laid the foundation to delegate to those CEO's and ask them to get feedback from their members about 'X' if you simply don't have the time to seek out each member. If that foundation isn't there, you have to work a little harder.

* Strapped on the 200M / 90 Degree Scanner
* Spin scanned roughly 300 degrees
* Painted "returns" far removed from original orientation

Thought CCP "fixed" spin scanning.

What's the catch here?
Are the targets not illuminated for full duration or something?

I'm gonna do some more testing.
We may have to raise a little hell here gents.