Why does everybody make it look like Gear is the problem? I just played a few rounds with free militia gear again and guess what? Scored first place on the leaderboard. In my experience pub stomping ONLY happens when there's a good squad in the enemy team. Doesn't matter how they are equipped. And this is the case in EVERY team based shooter. But Dust has the unique fitting system and suddenly everybody thinks he can deny that he's just too bad and just say that the fitting system is the cause for all of this and that the enemy team has only won because they have better gear.

No. No that's not the reason they won. The reason they won is that they played like a team in a team based shooter. Shocking, isn't it? You will ALWAYS encounter this problem. The only thing to make this less severe is a match making which preferably teams up corp-squads against other corp-squads.

Yes we are developing a new matchmaking system which adapts to your skill level, so as you get better you should be put into more challenging battles.

Having said that we don't think matchmaking has a place for all battles, this is New Eden after all. We are working on plans to expand both faction warfare and planetary conquest to more players, hopefully providing a more "gloves off" battle for those that like that sort of thing.

Just to clarify by skill level I don't mean skill points, I mean actual battle effectiveness. In practical terms this could be due to your gear, your skill points, the design of your fittings or choice of weapons, whether you are playing in a squad, whether you use voice comms, whether you are using your preferred input device, how good your internet connection is, your situational awareness of the battle field, how good you are at aiming etc etc.

The true test of good matchmaking will be if the prediction on how effective you and your team will be against another can adapt to a lot of these difficult to track variables. Right now we are experimenting with a few different ways of doing this and the simulations are looking promising so far.

To the point about scaling rewards, we actually do adjust the reward payout based on the gear used in battle. This doesn't vary that much at the moment because we have quite mixed battles but in theory if the matchmaking can produce higher tier battles then I would expect to see higher tier payouts. This is something we will probably have to review once the new system is in place.

I agree to some degree. The corp squad (what i called perm squad in my original post) filter is the most important. I have been tracking my pub battles when possible before the game starts to see which side has corp squads. if one team has one or more and the other has none, consistently the one side wins. The game is a team player game, but not everyone can always play with the same people. I personally enjoy seeing a random group of people find some rhythm in a match.

The gear still makes a difference though. i have gone head to head with some characters where I am hitting them most of the time and their shield barely budges. When the kill screen comes up, it's always proto gear. At the end of the day, if someone has full proto gear and 15+ million skill points, and I have basic gear and 2 million skill points, I would have to be an amazing player and they would have to be mediocre. I don't think there are many mediocre players with full proto gear.

I don't mind having my *** handed to me by someone who is more skilled, but adding lop-sided gear to the equation turns a lop sided match into a pub stomping. it's the pub stomping, not the losing, i want to stop in the game so i enjoy the game enough to keep playing and encourage my friends to play.

While Corp squads can be great, it is hardly the defining factor. I've joined a squad of what seemed like randoms, but they are actually very good, and mesh well together. I've been on teams of what looked like complete randoms vs a team made up primarily 2-3 corps. We still won, because our squads worked better together.

Gear does matter. It should. As an "MMO" (sort of) in-game skills and gear make a difference. As a FPS, real skill is a requirement. The players with real skill will naturally get to better gear quicker. That's the nature of the beast.

A matchmaking system will be beneficial, but the only way to improve yourself is to play with others, and improve your coordination and teamwork to achieve objectives. The Acadamy is a great example of this. As a noob, you play well, and have fun. But you're playing mostly with other noobs. Graduate, and now you are playing with Vets. Were you killed by that Freedom MD or Duvolle TAC? Yes, but you were probably also out played tactically.

It really can't be said enough. If you want to play better, squad up and play with the same people as much as possible!

You want to know what's killing this game? A bunch of topics about what's killing this game.

It's all about communication.
If you got a squad of randoms with comms vs a squad of randoms without comms, chances are, the guys with comms are going to hammer the other squad. Only takes a squad of people on comms for the team to start shaping up, despite the fact most blueberries are idiots, they do have the capacity to follow and learn, some will even mimic you and may survive for a while.

No respecs are killing this game.

I demand a respec!

Why does everybody make it look like Gear is the problem? I just played a few rounds with free militia gear again and guess what? Scored first place on the leaderboard. In my experience pub stomping ONLY happens when there's a good squad in the enemy team. Doesn't matter how they are equipped. And this is the case in EVERY team based shooter. But Dust has the unique fitting system and suddenly everybody thinks he can deny that he's just too bad and just say that the fitting system is the cause for all of this and that the enemy team has only won because they have better gear.

No. No that's not the reason they won. The reason they won is that they played like a team in a team based shooter. Shocking, isn't it? You will ALWAYS encounter this problem. The only thing to make this less severe is a match making which preferably teams up corp-squads against other corp-squads.

I agree, the squads are a much bigger factor than proto gear in my view. But an experienced squad that is fully decked in proto gear (and they usually are) just escalates the issue.

Consider this: In any other competitive shooter, putting an experienced clan up against a bunch of random players would be considered a ridiculous idea. And that's with equal gear.

Right now Dust just isn't different enough from a normal shooter to make this idea any less ridiculous. PC yes, but not for instant battles.

While future updates might change this situation somehow, I really hope that we will see some kind of hotfix before that. Even if it's as simple as "no squads in Ambush OMS" or whatever... I am sure there is something that everyone could live with.

I can handle the many, many flaws of this game because it has some unique characteristics that have enticed me to play an online fps for the first time in my life. I hear everyone whinning about respecs and nerfing and op, but i don't think these are killing the game. a f2p game needs a large player base to survive. For all the arrogant, look down your nose at the 'noobs' talk on the forums, all the vet players need the noobs to stick with this game.

Many noobs are going to leave because of the poor fps mechanics, redundant maps and battle types, and lack of pve. I am not concerned about those who leave for the poor fps mechanics because this game will never be able to beat the fps big players. I've played a bit of CoD and Halo and Battlefield and the mechanics are leagues ahead, but I never wanted to play those games because they were hollow to me. As a product manager with 10 years experience, I can say Dust needs to focus on its differentiators (designing fittings, skill tree progression, eve universe, etc.) and mitigate the right weaknesses. Noobs like me don't care about respecs (one way or the other), and nerfing and op. And if enough noobs don't turn into vets, the player based will never grow to a viable level for this game to survive.

I've seen some great suggestions on other forumns (sadly not often on the official dust ones) for how to improve the redundant maps/battles, add some really interesting pve, and tie into the eve universe better for noobs and vets alike. These suggestions would be great for keeping noobs in the game like me that want something different but are not hard core gamers or hard core online fps players.

But the number one thing that needs to change to stop the noob churn is pub stomping. I have only been playing 2 months now and cannot explain how frustrating it is to go into battles that are brutally lop-sided where one team has no perm squads and militia to basic gear and the other team is one or more perm squads and full out proto gear. I don't even like it when I am 'lucky' enough to be on the proto gear team. I want a challenge not a slaughter regardless of who is doing the slaughtering.

I want two basic settings for the public instant battles: no proto gear and no perm squads. That's it. I just want to skim off the top 20 odd percent of pub stomping. There will still be lots of lop sided battles, but not much outright pub stomping. For those of you who say things like "a really good player can still survive on basic gear", a game can't be designed just for the top 5% of skilled players. I'm not amazing at this game and probably never will be. I've got a job, a family and friends, but I still like to play video games 5-15 hours a week, have money to spend, and for the first time I found an online fps that actually interests me.

Better maps, okay quality pve and better tie ins to the eve universe would be great, but the thing that will keep me playing after my current booster expires is those two basic filters for the public battles. These two settings will also stop me from advising my friends and co-workers to avoid this game. I tell those people this game has potential, but unless they want to spend most of their time being completely slaughtered in 45 to 0 ambushes for the first 300+ hours of game play they should keep away from this game. And it's that word of mouth from noobs like me that is going to kill this game. Not because some of the vets left do to respec, op, nerfing, etc. This game will die because the noob churn steadily lowers not because people are staying but because no one is giving the game a try anymore.

So to all you vets that genuinely care about this game: push ccp to mitigate the pub stomping problem asap or better yet: stop knowingly pub stomping. Without some action by ccp or you, this game WILL die.

lol dust WAS great when it first started closed beta. then slowly all the "NOOBS" joined the game and cried that this and that needed to change. NOW you all are paying for it.

Too true. have to admit i do regret the drama queen topic title. Wrote that after a couple of hours of getting pub stomped most of the time. The last battle I went against a team that had two prototype fitted tanks and a bunch of infantry in prototype gear. They knew how to play the map so well. It was like a noob meat factory. i think the ambush finished with 47 to 0.

I will say for the record that i do like this game. Despite the frustration of being noob meat, no tutorial, and no PvE to get used to the basics of the game, i am still playing and I still think about fits and tactics when i'm not playing. In short, the game has caught my imagination enough to outweigh the frustration.

I just hope ccp fixes the noob experience so more people get hooked while improving the vet experience so vets stay and come back. I want this game to succeed and meet its potential. You're right that framing my criticism so drama negative is not helping the problem. Explaining why (with some suggestions for how) something needs to be improved hopefully will.

Why does everybody make it look like Gear is the problem? I just played a few rounds with free militia gear again and guess what? Scored first place on the leaderboard. In my experience pub stomping ONLY happens when there's a good squad in the enemy team. Doesn't matter how they are equipped. And this is the case in EVERY team based shooter. But Dust has the unique fitting system and suddenly everybody thinks he can deny that he's just too bad and just say that the fitting system is the cause for all of this and that the enemy team has only won because they have better gear.

No. No that's not the reason they won. The reason they won is that they played like a team in a team based shooter. Shocking, isn't it? You will ALWAYS encounter this problem. The only thing to make this less severe is a match making which preferably teams up corp-squads against other corp-squads.