I'll just leave this here.

I'll just leave this here.

I'll just leave this here.

To what skill level players are we wanting to balance the game for? I have heard many people say we should balance for the top players. I think that this is incorrect, we should aim for the average player. I see it like this. Like with most things in life - according to statistics - people fall into a Bell curve withe top players on the right and the bottom players on the left. This leaves the average players in the middle of the curve (or at the peak) and they are who we should balance for. Top players will always be in top because they have personal skill that gear doesn't make up for. The bottom players are bad and no amount of gear will make them better.

If we balance for the middle 65%, people playing will be happy. An average player like me will feel like they have something to contribute, top players will not really notice and the bottom rung can't compete anyways.

I was just wanting to know what you fellow mercs thought about it. The best and worst part of the forums is the cancerous rot that it spews. Without it we would get no where fast. I also want to take this time to say thanks to all the people who post (it means you care) even if it is just to troll. Failures and mistakes are the only way to learn and out trolls know how to point this out like no other group does.

Even better than I could type it.

You forget one thing, and unfortunately thats the big picture:

Dust is NOT about pubmatches. It's about PC.
And there you see the big black guys. So if the game is meant to be pplaced focused on PC where everybody rolls out their best suits, why the heck should we try to balance the game on the average playerbase?

Dust is a hardcore game, if you want the EZ mode search for a different game.

Anyways, I understand and respect your opinion, and I know what you aim for, but like I said, the big picture behind dust is PC not Pub...

Dust is a hardcore game

...All too often the developer will put in a batch of other strategies or techniques that are slightly more powerful than the [easy access intro strategies] and that require a lot more skill to perform (technique). And theyGÇÖll simply continue expecting to keep climbing up this power ladder because ability B is indisputably stronger than ability A. TheyGÇÖll expect the player to abandon their initial strategy as soon as a more powerful object comes along. But this is a fallacy. If ability GÇÿBGÇÖ is 10% stronger than ability GÇÿAGÇÖ but 3x harder to execute, then ability GÇÿBGÇÖ is only better if you are a machine. This leads to players blindly continuing to do the easier tactic for as long as its effective....

I suppose the answer would be that the issue is complex. I would not like to see high skill players laying waste to everything because they find the weapon balance to be too easy but neither do I want to have the weapons etc so hard to use because they were balanced based on these high skilled players.

My instinct would be to balance based on the skill level of the majority but also create an additional connected environment, let's call it the competition level, where everything is balanced for high skills.

High Sec - learning environment and casual games
Low Sec - casual play and FW
Null Sec - PC and competitive egame environment

You will never get a real balance but you need to identify your revenue source and cater to them, I guess.

You forget one thing, and unfortunately thats the big picture:

Dust is NOT about pubmatches. It's about PC.
And there you see the big black guys. So if the game is meant to be pplaced focused on PC where everybody rolls out their best suits, why the heck should we try to balance the game on the average playerbase?

Dust is a hardcore game, if you want the EZ mode search for a different game.

Anyways, I understand and respect your opinion, and I know what you aim for, but like I said, the big picture behind dust is PC not Pub...

Balancing a game around the higher levels provides at least an approximation of balance at lower levels as well.
Balancing the game around the middle can result in either or both ends of the scale being unbalanced.
Balancing the game around the lowest tiers will usually result in increasing imbalances as you advance further up the skill tree.

Pretty sure balancing around the top level is the least stupid option.

Dust is NOT about pubmatches. It's about PC.
And there you see the big black guys.

Dust is a hardcore game

Quite the opposite. If you balance towards the highest skilled players, new players would just get mauled repeatedly. Remember how relevant fighting games were before Street Fighter IV? The Marvel vs Capcom series balanced accordingly to the pros, cutting off newer players from having a chance and literally killed arcades before consoles even had a chance to. You should skill for newer players while giving the pros a fighting chance.

No matter what you do, you either have a purely luck-based game, or skilled players have an advantage.

Skill should ALWAYS be an advantage in FPS games. ALWAYS. A-L-W-A-Y-S. Do I need to say this in more ways or do you understand where I'm coming from with this?

With a skilled player against an unskilled player, the skilled player should be expected to win more often than not, regardless of equipment. With two equally skilled high-level players, the one who has the better equipment for the situation should have an advantage. For example, if you have a great Shotgunnner against a great AR user, the Shotgunner should win if they're in a CQC-friendly environment, and the AR guy should win in open spaces. If you give the Shotgun to a total noob, and put him up against that same great AR player, the great AR guy will probably win more often than not even in the CQC encounter, because he'll be able to force conditions where he can use his range advantage in spite of the surroundings.

If the gear is balanced at the top level, scaling it back is easy, and at each tier, the gear will remain at least relatively well balanced. Balance variations from scaling down are almost always less severe than when you scale the same principles up from the lower levels.

If you start at the top and scale back, the tweaks needed at the lowest level should be less severe than if you start from the middle and work up.

Looking at Advanced gear, if that was used as the tier for initial game balance, the imbalances at Militia level are likely to be less severe than the imbalances at Prototype level, even though Militia gear is two steps down and Prototype is only a single tier above the balance point.

If the game was balanced around Standard gear, the potential imbalance at Prototype level is FAR worse than the potential imbalance at Militia level would be when balancing the game for Prototype gear.

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The trouble is that DUST can't provide meaningful progression without giving the high-SP character better equipment, and that in turn means that experienced players get a gear advantage on top of the skill they've gained from playing the game. Highly-skilled players have skill AND equipment advantages, and at the moment, there isn't much being done to help new players ease into the game without being stomped by players running full proto.

I am not talking balancing around the power of the gear. I am only talking about player skills.

Weapons and gear should be balanced by advanced level stuff and the higher level items should be difficult to master but their rewards are better. The only thing that really bothered me about the TAC was the range. It should do high damage at a good rof within a reasonable range but when no other light weapon except a SN can touch it then it is broken. This game is built around hard counters to everything and no weapon being supreme. The levels of weapons should reflect their specialization and offer a slight improvement of the previous level.

Balancing in DUST should happen in PC and not pub matches where you face a bunch of retards who dont know which end the bullet comes out of

The best thing the game could do is provide some kind of benefit for old players to group up with/train/skill up with/help new players so that they could close that technical skill gap ASAP.

I think the CPM gets this. Balancing/mechanics/core gameplay etc, can only go so far to give everyone the balance that is fair. What remains needed are tools for the corporation/player role in Eve called 'enablers'. Enablers are people who try to grow other players in the game and consistantly provide content to the communities that they manage.

Social tools, training environments, recommended skill training certificates/queues, linked/recommended fits, reimbursement programs, player made tutorials,

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1050070#post1050070

Balance should come from every part of the game not just 10% or less of the content. The problem is stagnation due to the lack of content and burnout from grinding. The SP grind hurts DUST more than people think, we have it because FPS players want instant gratification and we do it by giving them SP based on actions not time. I could play to cap every week but that doesn't prove I am good. Good players wouldn't care about SP over time because they can win with any gun.

Everyone would say I am wrong but if this game had been time based from the beginning then we would have twice the number of people we have now if not more. That should get someone raging somewhere.

The problem is that the sense of progression in the game NEEDS to be there for it to be true to what DUST is meant to be.

What we need is more matchmaking options. The academy is a good start, but we need a more flexible system. The devs have done a good job in reducing the previously huge gaps between higher- and lower-tier gear, and the same has been done with reduced benefits from passive skills, but it would be stupid to balance everything out to a basic level.

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The argument SHOULDN'T be that starting gear should be able to compete with max-level upgraded equipment in equally-skilled hands. That would be stupid. What needs to be done is to allow players with lower SP count to fight against other similarly-leveled players.

They could divide the game into several matchmaking layers. When you first start off, there's the 2 million SP or 10,000 WP limit where you can only fight Academy battles. After that, you get to compete "properly" - but as your SP count rises, you get locked out of the lower-tier matchmaking options. You can choose to fight at your level within the lowest SP-based matchmaking tier, or you can step it up a little and try to compete against people with potentially more SP than you have. As you skill up higher, you have less options, but because lower-level players CAN throw themselves in the deep end, and because higher-level players wanting to learn a new playstyle will have to compete on your level, there will still be gear imbalances which let the high-tier players bring their shiny toys and show them off against weaker opponents.