Yes so what? Afking is a viable tactic here. HTFU

Yes so what? Afking is a viable tactic here. HTFU

If they get rid of AFKing I would estimate at least a 20% drop in player numbers overnight with new players unable or unwilling to earn SP by playing. It would make NPE even worse.

CCP can't afford that - have enough critical issues already.

Boredom causes AFK.

If they want to fix the Murder Taxi Game, which they don't, the simplest solution is to remove the ability to kill with a LAV.

But think.. if people see a skirmish game like the above, do you really believe they will eventually move on to PC.. which is way worse for stomping newer corps?

Granted I've done both. And I've hated both.

So next time someone cries about the MCC camping, remember to take a step back and see if they are legitimately trying to solve the problem, or if they are simply the cause of the problem.

TL;DR: Pubstomping is causing people to AFK in the MCC, or worse yet is castrating the growth of the player base.

Actually, all they would have to do is remove the BPO for the LAV and replace with a BPO for a dropship.

After all, those are paper thin and still get you to where you need to be.

Aspiring pilots get to learn without ISK sink.

Free LAVs are not a problem there are no more free LAVs.

But then I would have to let go of my two Saga BPOs. But if that's what it has to come down to, I'm all for making those into Myron or Viper BPOs.

I have advocated constantly for:

1)the need for all items to be unlocked, without SP required to unlock them.
2)the need for prices of advanced and prototype gear to go up, high enough to rival tank prices currently.
3)the need for SP to only be used to improve the effectiveness of items, but per variant instead of per weapon, module, vehicle, etc.

basically, if ISK is used to balance the gap between vets and newbies, then all this goes away. Teams of 6-12 can only do so much if they run basic gear in games because advanced will cost too much. EXCEPT IN PC! Which is where prototype gear and advanced gear are used. In PC (and with the latest PC update we're already seeing the price of clones and biomass go up), ISK rewards should be huge compared to instant battles, where you can only make profit if you run militia or basic gear. Dying once in advanced or prototype gear in a public match should be so expensive you're set back 1-4 games.

Furthermore, the gap between vets and newbs balances itself, if vets decides to use expensive gear, their wallets drop more quickly compared to newbies who constantly run militia gear.

What causes AFK'ers is the lack of content, not necessarily pubstompers (although I will agree that it is a contributing factor). It's no fun to keep doing the same thing thousands of times over if it means nothing.

The amount of SP gained for showing up is too high. It is a hard problem to fix because lazy and greedy people will always find a way to cheat.

CCP fanbois will have you believe CCP didn't want those new players anyways and is catering to hard core elite group of gamer only and not the global FPS community at large

Try not to sweat it

What causes AFK'ers is the lack of content, not necessarily pubstompers (although I will agree that it is a contributing factor). It's no fun to keep doing the same thing thousands of times over if it means nothing.

ISK is a terrible way to balance things, it creates all sorts of negative behaviours. Fear of death is already why you see redline sniping and no one willing to play to objectives. It also does nothing about the actual in-game problem, ISK costs are a meta level above the gun game itself.

Your suggestion also creates even more wealthy versus poor class warfare. If you're in a big corp who wins tonnes of PC battles as you suggest then you can bring your enormous wallet to bear when you play in regular battles whereas the other guy hasn't go the wallet to compete.

They made the difference between militia and proto far too great. The power gap between total newbie suit to best fit suit on planet should have been no more than 40-50% with a smaller price gap as well.

So Tl;dr, they should go in the opposite direction to your suggestion.

The power gap should remain as is; we don't want to take away a sense of progression from grinders. Except now its ISK grinding instead of SP grinding, and you can lose ISK whereas you cannot lose SP. Which means those rich guys you talk about? They won't be rich for long if they spend their suits in public matches, and find they have to constantly buy more for PC. Like I said. Prototype suits should be equivalent of tanks. They should be top-tier, exclusive, inaccessible except for the most prestigious contractors or the most vital of corporation battles.

I don't think you realise how much ISK those beta players have compared to the new guys. What you're essentially suggesting is restricting game winning gear to people who have hundreds of millions of ISK or the big corps and the newer players never being able to afford running more than their standard fits.

What you are proposing will have the reverse effect to what you are trying to achieve.

Those beta players don't have enough to run Madrugars with impunity in public matches, so dropsuits will be even riskier considering how easily they're destroyed compared to tanks.

And I did say dropsuits should cost the equivalent of tanks.

Is game winning gear restricted to those who have 10 mill SP or more, currently? Not really. Prototype assault suits can be acquired with less than 10 mill. But what about modules, the weapon, fitting upgrades? In practise, currently, game winning gear is certainly restricted to the people who have lots of SP, and/or those who run boosters.

All the problems you point out with my system are evident in the current system, and I seem to feel that my proposal will lessen the severity of these issues.

Newer players will be earning profit in public matches because they're running cheaper gear. The richest players may run prototype gear in pub matches but will play much more conservatively because of its cost. Most players will want to keep making profit, and hence will run less expensive prices.

What people argue the SP system does currently is provide a goal to reach, and this satisfaction of reaching a goal is what makes it better than my ISK-based progression system. Well, you've just proved this ISK system gives us a goal to reach too. New players will strive for a bigger wallet, to acquire the best gear. But why purchase it if you're going to lose it to some murder taxi?

I'm not saying you're wrong, far from it. I simply cannot see your point of view. Your arguments are failing to convince me, as much as I want them to. I know that a system developed by an inexperienced student, for that's what I am, surely cannot be more effective than that developed by CCP. But I have yet to have someone prove me absolutely wrong; I've found counter-arguments in everything thrown at this system.

Also I'll keep liking if you continue. :D

They actually do have enough ISK to run Madrugars with impunity in public matches
There are plenty of people from before commercial release that are sitting on hundreds of millions of isk so losing one tank that costs less than 2 million is a drop in the bucket

But constantly running them in public matches where they earn 300-400k will lead to disastrous hits to the wallet. And even so, if dropsuits were made to cost the same amount, then they'd lose ISK even faster if they wanted to run that kinda gear.

To be honest, I was hoping common sense would take over once the prices are in. There will always be some outliers and people who simply run protogear for the hell of it but much less than what's happening now.

Note that my suggestion meant having all items unlocked. Not only does this mean CCP can implement new items without forcing all players to groan at another SP sink, but now people will want to test out new things, try new play styles, and ISK will be distributed into many more fits than what we have now. I have about 7 variants of the same dropsuit, all of which I maintain because they're all useful in some situation. Imagine if you had access to all other dropsuits, all other weapons, all other modules. It'd be hard to resist not using them all.

But that's where specialisation with the alternative SP system kicks in. Players can choose a certain module (or module variant) to put SP into to make more effective, giving them an edge over other players.

And you guys might say, wait, if there's no SP to unlock things, then veterans with hundreds of billions of ISK can run tanks all day because they have no SP requirement from stopping them!

Yes, yes they can. But the inverse is true, and the whole enemy team can whip out AV which they don't need to put SP into to use.

I know i go afk when i see 9 blue dots in the mountains.

I hear around 1.2 - 1.5 mil is the average cost of a well fit tank, a well fit tank with a decent driver is functionally invincible to everything but concentrated fire which is something that rarely happens in a pub match so going several rounds without losing a tank is a common occurrence so they arent really losing anything
The rest of your argument is well meaning but misguided and shows you have a lack of experience with the game that others have, we remember different builds with different costs and requirements and how they all played out and what behavior was common
What we have now while not ideal considering it could use some consolidation on some skills and altered bonus' on others is better than before and so are costs

Besides, the idea of balancing by cost is an idiotic one considering how many ways it can be broken, especially when market integration between Dust and EVE finally happens
A decent solution that should have been implemented ages ago is matchmaking by gear brackets, pretty hard to proto pubstomp people if you cant use your proto gear in the first place, obviously though FW and PC should be free for alls

So how will they balance market integration with the current system?

How will we solve the SP gap between vets and newbies?

How do we resolve protostomping?

How do we retain new players?

The answers to these questions, apparently, are simple. Implement matchmaking, you all say. Well then CCP has to make it clear that matchmaking is NOT what New Eden is all about! I joined because I wanted perpetual war, not perpetual matchmade games with people my own skill. War isn't matchmade.

So how else can we resolve these problems? If my problem is lack of experience, yours is too much! You have enough SP to be able to sit back and say "the SP system could use some consolidation" because whatever happens, you've got a fallback plan.

I'm thinking about the newbies who graduated from the Academy yesterday, who graduated today, who will graduate tomorrow, who are getting demolished because prototype gear is too bloody easy to run! Because the SP gap means even if players aren't protostomped, they're outplayed by the versatility of their opponents, who can counter any tactic they bring to bear simply by altering their gear to match it.

I'm thinking about where the SP system will take us in two years, or five years. How much starter SP will we give away for free by then to new players? How many respecs will we give out, after saying no more? How many skills have to become SP sinks for vets and unattainable goals for newbies?

What I actually mean when I say tanks and prototype/advanced dropsuit prices should be similar: technology wise, a dropsuit should be bloody advanced and that's where the cost comes from. For tanks, it's simply the sheer volume of material which goes into making the thing, and we have miners all over New Eden for that! Dropsuit designers, probably less so.

I'm trying to retain that essence of DUST 514 as One Universe//One War instead of Multiple Matchmade Categories//One War.

If players can access prototype gear now for cheap prices, once EVE ISK floods the market protostomping gets worse. I'm saying increase the price and remove the skill penalty BECAUSE it doesn't matter anymore! ISK matters! We're immortal mercenaries for god's sake, not monks training in remote monastaries, building up ki to unleash untold inner power. Make clones cost money, too. Make ammunition cost money. Make sights for your gun cost money.

No? But surely this is what they'll end up doing with SP eventually? Dividing skills further and further, making them more specific and more specific, but not lowering SP requirements, until newbies who simply want to have fun are met with a wall branded "LEARNING CURVE".

I'm trying in vain to find a solution to the dwindling player numbers on DUST. So please, PLEASE refrain from calling my ideas idiotic, because my keyboard warrior mode activates and walls of text appear. Unless you have a suitable alternative, BESIDES telling me to sit on my arse and wait for CCP to consolidate.

Boredom causes AFK.

I can be pubstomped whole day, will just alternate my tactics and adjust to cost effective fittings. Will not RQ or go AFK. But I've been here for a year and it's basically the same game all the time. But I still want my weekly SP ration. So if I can I will AFK and do something productive IRL (teh forums, hah). Sometimes after getting my cap I will squad up and play with my friends for no bonus SP whatsoever, but meh. There is nothing to do here.

CCP doesn't care. They've put the mechanic in place and never said it's wrong to do. So yeah.

God your posts have so much meaningless fluff
First off if proto gear is made more quickly and cheaply accessable to everyone then more people use it and proto stomping as we see it dies down since more people are on a more even playing field
A more even playing field encourages true competition, true competition appeals to a wider audience bringing more people in and due to the even playing field they wont have a horrible off putting experience being killed by people with up to 5X more health than they have

You want perpetual war then feel free to jump into Planetary Conquest, the price of admission has been lowered recently to entice more people to fight for districts and as Ive mentioned before PC and FW should remain free for alls in regards to gear

Consolidating the SP system would also lessen the SP gap if you understand what it truly means
Rather than having proficiency, sharpshooter, reload, ammo capacity etc skills for every single weapon we have them all lumped together into, for example, light weapon reload speed, light weapon ammo capacity, and so on
This also gives the new player many more toys to play with

And to preempt what I know is coming, not specifically from you but from some fanboy, putting things behind timelocks is not content and will drive more people away than it will keep around

If prototype gear is made more accessible then there is sense of progress, which is what we want in an MMO-type game.

If perpetual war is limited to a certain game type, then it detracts from an MMO-type game.

Consolidating SP how you suggest we consolidate SP does mean new players get more toys, but also means vets get all the toys. Leans more towards a competitive FPS-type game.

So does encouraging an even playing field for a wider audience. Definitely sounds like an FPS-type game.

See what's happening here? Lets assume you're right and CCP chooses your path. It is a path of confusion. Are we an MMOFPS, an MMO, or an FPS? Because DUST is one of the first of its kind, and I don't think we know the answer to what it really is. I don't think CCP does. And I don't think your assessment clarifies the problem.

What I envisage DUST to be is what the trailers make it out to be. An FPS which is another window through which to view New Eden. And I believe making ISK important will help DUST reach that vision. That is my vyzion of the game. Oh, see what I did there?

So my proposal seeks to achieve this because no matter what happens, no matter what you tell me about my lack of experience, I know that protostomping won't stop unless you absolutely stomp down on the SP requirement for prototype specialised dropsuits. And if you do that, why not just take it a step further and make them expensive as hell to balance it out?

Then when EVE/DUST markets are integrated, you say prices won't matter. Then jack up the prices again, until the point that capsuleers must fund you to afford prototype gear. Then make PC more important in EVE by giving more ISK to capsuleers for districts. Then capsuleers fund mercenaries with that ISK. And mercenaries do what mercenaries do, and fight for the highest bidder. Sounds better than dumping hundreds of millions of ISK on a DUST corp to run prototype all day and roflstomp through pubs.

A bit less fluff, too.

Thats where i leave the battle except im in a squad and pray for that the next match is more fun.


The solution is already brought up within this thread:

- Fix MCC sniping with a barrier
- Fix redline sniping with a barrier
- Fix that u can kill enemys behind red line
- AFK for more than 60 seconds = No WP and no ISK reward for the current round
- AFK for 90 seconds = Kick from server or auto initiate vote kick with AFK reason
- Add new game modes - Mililtia only, Advanced only, Proto only
- Add new maps! No one really cares about that building A is changed with set-up B. We want new maps!
- Open up more districts & planets for planetary conquests and leave them for new corps



For the fixing stuff, i cannot see any reason why that cannot be solved right away. That must be the same coding stuff that has been used for walls and the entire MCC just with the except of you still might be able to jump out of the MCC.