Kevall Longstride
DUST University
Ivy League
352
   |
Posted - 2013.07.11 11:34:00 -
[1] - Quote
Ok. This are just my thoughts.
I'm a reasonably smart guy. I work in a bookies and I work with numbers daily basis. So the numbers being flung about so far is something I understand. And as I'm reading them in the new blog I had something of an epiphany.
This is incredibly dull.
The level of understanding required to get the most of your districts, risk/reward determinations, profit and loss, attrition rates blah blah bla.........snooze.
I know that their are players and corp that eat this all up with a ladle. But maybe I'm going out on a limb here to say this, I'm guessing these are in the minority.
The vast majority of players just want to shoot things. Nothing more complicated than that. And what they have right now are three options that are in fact just one.
An increasingly stale parade of Pub matches. Too infrequent Faction Warfare that offers nothing as a reward for participation. And Planetary Conquest, so convoluted in its complexity and of such value to an ISK starved economy that corporations are unwilling to allow anyone but their very best players in it, denying a majority access to develop their skill to level where they could participate in PC.
I know a lot of work has gone into PC. But I'm concerned that in is desire to provide consequence in the world of the Dust Mercenary, they've given us a consequence that a majority care little about, because the personal rewards are not tangible enough and the rewards for a corp are too ethereal.
I believe that in terms of engaging and keeping in the game new players and fresh blood, PC is ill conceived as a game mechanic and is more likely to turn them off.
Hopefully the new monthly point build cycle will bring us rapid progress on developing game modes other than the four we have in Pub matches, better rewards for Faction Warfare (gear as salvage that can only be gained in Faction Warfare and unavailable I the market place would be the first way to start) and as for PC....
Every fix so far has been broken by the players and the latest one before it even launched. It's off putting to new players and the latest iteration is going to do nothing to help prevent burnout of players. It's a game, not a second job.
The NPE, corp mechanics, balancing issues, murder taxis, Dropships becoming viable again... these are matters that should've been fixed already before PC was looked at.
I still love playing the game and I'll be here till the servers pack up but I'm just concerned that a priorities need to be realigned before further iteration on PC. |
Kevall Longstride
DUST University
Ivy League
352
|
Posted - 2013.07.11 17:44:00 -
[2] - Quote
CCP Nullarbor wrote:Work on PC is not done at the exclusion of the other things you mentioned. In fact these changes took less than a days work, we are otherwise very busy working on the upcoming releases.
Prioritization of work is more complicated than just what is most important to the players right now. We need to consider alignment with teams doing work on systems that may intersect with the design, resolving dependencies between teams and finding places we can have a big impact for a small amount of effort. PC changes now are just good timing in the interest of shaking things up a bit.
If I gave the impression that I believe that other things are being sacrificed for PC I apologise. I know that different teams are working on them and they are forthcoming.
But every iteration on PC so far has made it more and more complicated with nothing other than an increased payout of ISK and some extra salvage. I explain to new players in chat how it works, I can hear their brain thinking about the uninstall option.
There is no benefit to a corp to be had from PC that can be felt or seen by the rank and file members. The vast majority of eve players couldn't possibly care less about its bonus's to them and their corp. The vast majority of Eve players couldn't care less about dust to be honest. When I won the CCP office tour at Fanfast, some of them went tonto on the forums and social media demanding to know how the hell a Dust player won a tour of CCP! The logic of it being a game also made by CCP and I chucked a Plex into the pot like they did, seemed to elude them at that point....
PC is too complicated, without the kind of consequential impact on Eve or benefit that would make the doubters change their mind about it and consider Dust as being worthwhile to take seriously.
Corps want to fight each other. Lets give them a way to do it that's free from the need for resource management or the kind of thinking and preparation more appropriate to a new business start up. A basic war dec system, a league tournament or standings systems. Anything other than PC, which is going to be exclusively the domain of the mega corps and alliances in no time once again or cause burnout and its too much of a grind.
If we want to make eve players care about Dust, we need to start being able to go after their stuff and make a lot more more ISK doing it. |