The Info Broker
Dust Reports
426
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Posted - 2013.07.19 02:45:00 -
[1] - Quote
I've been getting increasingly concerned by the spread of the negativity around the Dust 514 community. It seems like the hardest of veterans and the squishiest of blueberries are starting to talk about Dust 514 in the past tense. I've been thinking about what has happened to cause this, and hopefully what can be done to get fans back behind the game.
The Psychology of a Dust 514 player
Dust 514 is a game that rewards time commitment and dedication. Its mechanics are set up to make you feel like you are constantly making progress. This unfortunately causes some negative community issues, players who would normally leave a game, or not play as much to prevent burnout have a negative feeling of 'losing' potential skill on their characters. This causes a certain percentage of players to stay despite not enjoying gameplay to just chase SP. These players find themselves holding onto the promise of a better game in the future. Soontm probably sums up their general disappointment. This is the case for some of the bitter vets who have been here for nearly a year. This group isn't a small subset of veterans, even prominent members of the CPM had more or less given up on the gameplay of dust just chasing SP for months before being elected to the CPM.
There is no easy fix for this as the problem primarily is with the player themselves. Making the choice to play when you don't want to will naturally make Dust start feeling like less of a game and more of a job. While CCP doesn't help these players by gating a lot of good content behind millions of SP I hope players who hate playing dust stop playing, and don't give into the temptation to AFK farm out SP making pubs even less exciting for the community.
New Content/Patches either feels marginalized or game breaking
I feel like this is the prominent problem with Dust at the moment. 1.2 was supposed to bring in new maps, and new game modes. While it did technically deliver on this, I know a lot of people were expecting content that felt truly new. Instead we got a few new module layouts and two new modules, and a simplified version of Skirmish. While I don't mean to downplay how much it did to help the game I think it fell a bit short of some peoples expectations in making dust feel like it got 'new' content.
The new weapons were not at all balanced to the top end play. The plasma cannon proved to be useless in comparison to the forge gun, the scrambler rifle was decently done, but still was not equal to the duvolle, and the Flaylock proved to be so overpowered that it had to be banned by the players themselves so save the integrity of the matches, the same can be said about the contact grenades. The result is complete spamming of flaylocks in PC, and the extinction of the plasma cannon and scrambler rifle, at least in high end PC matches.
It's great to see CCP is primarily focusing on balance for 1.3. I think they are finally addressing some long broken issues that are causing the players to turn on the game and CCP. Making LAV's cost ISK, and fixing flaylocks and cal logi suits is certainly a step in the right direction, however whenever they make two steps in the right direction they seem to always make one step back in the wrong one. A recent example of this is the promotion on the M2 contact grenades. They have openly come out and said balancing this grenade is a priority, then they release a promotion so you can stock up on them on the cheap and without the SP investment. What's even worse is the paid AUR M2 contacts require a lot less CPU and PG making it clearly superior to the proto ISK version. Vehicle balancing is also still a real problem with Logi-Lav's turning the average match of Dust 514 into a homicidal crazy taxi game.
Planetary Conquest - only top talent need apply
When CCP took out contracts with 1.2 it turned PC into the only place players could turn for real competition. Factional Warfare was supposed to fill this void, but matches are still relatively infrequent, and getting a good fight there isn't always going to happen. What I've observed over the last two months of watching PC is that only about three alliances have any major sway in PC, and the corporations outside of those alliances are mostly around due to the good will from the top three groups. 245 districts all with the same incentive and reward means that there is no in game incentive for the top groups to fight. Looking solely at game mechanics the top Corps are primarily encouraged to destroy the smaller less skilled Corporations and take their land with little contest. This would turn Dust 514 back into a lobby shooter for all but a few thousand players (only a couple hundred of which would be involved in PC). It's extremely lucky for the community that the top groups motto is 'lol ISK'. By making ISK relatively worthless by not allowing player trading you've fostered a PC environment where nobody is out to make as much ISK possible by cutting other players throats. I think at this point the major PC alliances are more worried about keeping players in the game than filling up their wallets. If they all acted in only their best interest PC would so extremely exclusive that it would just be written off by 98% of the community.
Personally I think Team True Grit is doing an outstanding job of addressing PC issues. With two fixes already addressing the more core fighting mechanics they have shown they are really on top of player concerns and complaints. The problem with PC at the moment is that it only works largely because the community has got together and decided to make it work, planet fight club and land sales at absurd rates to indie groups keep PC alive in its current state. I think PC would thrive if they opened up a new region, and incentive the new region with better rewards so we can split up the talent levels. If a new region of space was opened up and generated more income we would see the top talent migrate to it. |
The Info Broker
Dust Reports
432
|
Posted - 2013.07.19 04:50:00 -
[4] - Quote
Iron Wolf Saber wrote:o-O I haven't given up chasing SP. I just leveled 2 all my suits, heavy weapons, and most of my lights, afterwards I plan on leveling up to 2 the side arms and vehicle command then going back for level 3.
Mostly referencing Jenza and Nova who both were AFK'ing to the cap before taking the CPM positions. Just pointing out that vet burnout is a serious issue, and it's turning players off even those who are really dedicated to making dust better. New content and balance are both important, but I'm hoping to hear from the players themselves on why they don't enjoy playing dust matches if that is the case for them. |