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[Aria Jenneth]

Yup.

The livestream confirms it.

Not a very good game.

Yet.

And that's your subjective opinion.

It's never going to be good.

It's going to die.

Nobody plays terrible games.

Apparently I do. What's more, I (gasp!) rather enjoy this one.

The live feed, while amusing, was playing Ambush, mostly in a heavy suit. Neat to see how it works, but pretty well confirms my lack of interest in that mode. Skirmish is much more interesting. Ah! Another note.

18. Skirmish mode is the larger, and far and away the more tactically complicated, of the two current modes. It's essentially territorial conquest. Two MCCs (command vehicles) are slugging it out in the skies over the complex, and it's up to the ground troops to support them by trying to bring ground batteries to bear on the other side's MCC. This is done, presently, by hacking missile launchers called "null canons." Matches can still be lost by losing too many clones. More on hacking, later; it's a large part of what makes Skirmish interesting.

[Aria Jenneth]

Thanks for the informed and concise descriptions, it makes me wonder why CCP didn't hire someone from some of the lesser FPS studios (gearbox? former DICE employees) to at least being advised on some key points of FPS design.

They did, from DICE. They announced it ages ago.

[BloodBird]

Yup.

The livestream confirms it.

Not a very good game.

Yet.

And that's your subjective opinion.

It's never going to be good.

It's going to die.

Nobody plays terrible games.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but again, this is your personal opinion. The game's in BETA stages and frankly, it has loads of potential to become an awesome shooter and good addition to the EVE universe. Maybe it will die, maybe many do think it sucks. But you don't get to just arbitrarily declare this as fact just like so while it's still being developed and played by a great deal of people who seem to be enjoying themselves, so far.

Give it a year, at least. If it's dying or dead by then, and/or officially considered to be sub-par to... well, anything you want to mention, then you will be right. Then, it will be fact.

[Alain Colcer]

Thanks for the informed and concise descriptions, it makes me wonder why CCP didn't hire someone from some of the lesser FPS studios (gearbox? former DICE employees) to at least being advised on some key points of FPS design.

They did, from DICE. They announced it ages ago.

odd, from what i hear, it doesnt show 

[Aria Jenneth]

Give it a year, at least. If it's dying or dead by then, and/or officially considered to be sub-par to... well, anything you want to mention, then you will be right. Then, it will be fact.

Considering that it's an FtP shooter with strong RPG elements, I'd give it even a bit more than that. The market for those isn't exactly flooded.


Bruno:

Apologies; I apparently hadn't read your post thoroughly. I was in a bit of a hurry. To your points:

1. Dynamic terrain isn't in yet, but they're clearly working on it. Weather is static, but night-day seems to be in place.
2. If you mean "winning the match," that's how it works now. If you mean "getting paid more," that's how it works now. If you mean "let players actually enjoy the concrete fruits of their victories at particular locations," SOON (TM).
3. That's how it works presently. You hit a cap after 3-4 hours, after which passive SP gain is faster than battle-grinding.
4. Not sure what you mean by "weapon physics." The mass driver's arc of fire doesn't change with better skill, but skills do affect various aspects of weapons, including damage, maximum range (mostly useful for short-range weapons), recoil, reload time, and clip size (which makes more sense in some cases than in others, but what the heck). The same weapon will perform differently in the hands of differently-skilled characters, but the differences are incremental. You're incidentally the first person I've heard mention this as any kind of issue. I'd advise playing it yourself before you conclude CCP has made any kind of mistake.


Also, I said earlier that I'd talk a bit about hacking.

19. Hacking is a pretty important part of DUST, as it allows facilities and vehicles to be flipped to the player's side on the battlefield. The mechanic itself is simple: approach the object to be hacked, face it, and hold O. Times to hack vary, typically between 10 and 20 seconds, and can be modified with skills and modules. The trick here is that while your suit keeps up its scanning, so you're likely to get a warning before somebody jumps you, that scanning can be defeated, and you're a sitting duck (and often quite exposed) as long as you're there. Yes, you can stop hacking and defend yourself. No, that doesn't usually end well if somebody got the drop on you.

Also, starting to hack an objective will cause that objective's icon on everybody's HUD to begin flashing. This is typically the point where you get ambushed by a hidden defender or somebody remote-detonates that pack of explosives you failed to notice.


20. Stealth in DUST is a matter of visibility-- not visibility versus invisibility (though the scout suit's description might give you the impression that you're going to be emulating the Major from Ghost in the Shell), but electronic visibility. Suits have two stealth statistics that are locked in permanent competition. These are scan profile and scan resolution.

Whichever is lower, wins. For the scanner, winning means getting a little orange tag over an opponent's head, giving away their position, and getting their location marked on both the minimap and the battlefield overview. This intel is automatically shared with your entire squad.

For the scanee, winning means that none of this happens.

Certain actions will raise your scan profile, such as sprinting and firing. Scan range is limited, but line of sight trumps range, range is shorter behind you, and actually looking straight at someone will pierce even the teeniest profile. This has several implications.

First, you can always be visually detected, and detection rapidly leads to exposure (a fierce fight against a lone assault suit at best; at worst, a whole squad). Maintaining, literally, a low profile will reduce the enemy's awareness of you to an unmarked and (hopefully) unnoticed figure, but a scout suit still stands out on the face of a sand dune like a guy in a suit standing on the face of a sand dune. You still have to be sneaky if you want to sneak around.

Second, snipers live and die largely by trickery and mind games. Place yourself someplace like the crest of an exposed hill, and you'll frequently find yourself shot off of it. Find a less ostentatious perch a bit out of the way with limited lines of sight on your position, and you'll be much harder to pick off by dint of being much harder to spot in the first place. This is important when looking to pick at hostile assault teams, but absolutely critical when stalking another sniper. If two snipers are aware of each other, the one who's already crouched and ready to fire has a massive advantage-- an advantage that vanishes if your opponent is looking elsewhere.

Third, scouts are brilliant for flanking. It takes some serious guts to turn your back on a heavy to check for scouts coming in from the opposite side to ninja your butt. Heavy suits are virtually always obvious, and assaults are obvious when firing. A well-skilled, stealth-equipped scout is likely to stay unnoticed unless he steps through somebody's crosshairs. ... Of course, that's not too uncommon, considering how chaotic battles can become.

[Aria Jenneth]

odd, from what i hear, it doesnt show 

They're working with the Unreal engine. It's a bit dated, however you look at it.

[Alain Colcer]

now those were interesting details....sounds better.

Regarding weapon physics, yeah i mean exactly that, skills that affect RoF, range, damage and recoil make the gun different depending on the player, while in FPS you want weaponry to stay equal across the battlefield.

You might have killed a soldier just now, picked up his weapon and start shooting. It might have a slightly modified ammunition, but the gun itself is just the same in your hands that in others.

In Eve you are piloting ships, so it is reasonable to consider everything will get a boost in performance from an equipment standpoint.

In dust you are piloting suits, which have a different framework, all sort of ammo expansions, weapon holsters, grenades and the sort could be added, but the gun you pick from the wall to fight any given day should not be altered by time-dependant skills but the ability of the player to aim and shoot.

[Alain Colcer]

odd, from what i hear, it doesnt show 

They're working with the Unreal engine. It's a bit dated, however you look at it.

Don't mind if the graphics aren't uber and nextgen, i just hear that some mechanics (spawning in particular) have been kept like it was a game from 6 years ago, and given the nature (from what i can infer) of the DUST514 battlefield, certain things do not work.

[Aria Jenneth]

Bruno:

Spawning - on the Ambush maps, this is the single most common player complaint. (But they're playing Ambush, so who cares? - I kid.) A few intriguing suggestions have been made for how to fix this, notably "sky spawning"-- spawning a couple thousand feet above the field and letting people steer their free-fall a bit as they descend.

In Skirmish, spawning outside of either team's "base" area is random within about 20 yards of a spawnable point-- an objective or an allied clone facility (both can be hacked), or virtually on top of a mobile spawn point placed by a member of your squad. Any of these can easily drop you directly into an enemy's sights, especially the last, which is usually the only effective position to spawn-camp.

However, you spawn from the battlefield overview map, so you have all your squad's intel at your disposal. You spawn into whirling melees (blue and red both near point) or at undefended sites (neither blue nor red visible at point) at your own damn risk. It's often worthwhile to spawn at your base and just hike in around the perimeter if you're fast and/or trying to be sneaky; everybody expects trouble from nearby battlefield spawn points, not reinforcements from the base.

Weapon physics - DUST is not a pure FPS in the mode of Battlefield, or even, quite, an FPS-RPG like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. It's more like a hybrid of Battlefield and Fallout, with Battlefield-style maps but skills that actually affect weapon damage and such (but not usually ROF). Now, that said, the effectiveness of these weapons depends MUCH more on player skill than on character stats-- character stats function more like tiebreakers than trumps.

In other words, a sniper rifle is plenty deadly even in the hands of a relatively unskilled character, as are a shotgun, mass driver, etc.

What you seem to want is something like Battlefield meets S.T.A.L.K.E.R., where success is a result of equipment quality and player skill. DUST consciously chose to add in "how well your character can compensate for recoil."

Incidentally, the skills in DUST are kind of creepy. They're not learned skills, not even the way they work in Eve with skillsofts apparently downloading knowledge into your cranium. DUST skills are hardwired; the points spent seem to reflect how well your brain is integrated with the hardwiring. You could think of DUST skills almost as features of your suit, except it's a bit of the suit that shares your head with you.

[Aria Jenneth]

Let me lay out an example of how skills, modules, and so on work in practice, looking at one weapon whose tactical implications I've had a good deal of opportunity to study, sniper rifles.

Sniper rifles come in three variants: standard, tactical, and charge. Standard and tactical are available in higher qualities; charge seems to have balance issues at higher grades, so currently is stuck at lowest tech level.

Standard does middling damage, has a middling rate of fire, and has a weak scope; tactical does low damage at a high rate of fire, and a better scope; charge does highest damage, requires "charging up" (fires on trigger release, not trigger pull-- charging takes a couple seconds) and has a weak scope.

You may notice I wouldn't consider any of these scopes actually "good," but that's a balance issue.

At basic level, the three function about like this:

Charge one-shots scout suits, period.
Charge and standard reliably kill assault suits with a head shot. Tactical kills scout suits with a head shot.
All three require two body shots to kill an assault suit. Standard and tactical require two body shots to down a scout.

Weaponry skill boosts damage by 3% per level, to a maximum of +15%. Modules boost damage by 3, 5, or 10% each, depending on quality, and the highest-end suits can equip 3 damage modules for a maximum total of 30%. Sniper rifle operation skill reduces scope sway; this does not affect damage, but makes sniping from a standing position moderately more feasible (don't think the sway ever goes away entirely while standing, tho) and lets you get back into firing position faster if you maneuver while crouched. Sniper rifle proficiency again increases damage, however-- +3% per level, again to a maximum of +15%.

At the high end, then, skills and modules each boost the rifle by roughly the same amount-- about 30%, depending a little on how CCP is choosing to do its math this time (does damage get compound interest, so to speak? I don't know). With skills alone, that's probably enough to expand the charged rifle's menu to include lower-end assault suits with no headshot required, and to allow the standard to take a scout out with a body shot.

As a side note, nobody downs a heavy suit in one shot with a sniper rifle. You MIGHT be able to pull it off on a headshot with the charged rifle, maxed skills, and full damage mods.

I look forward to studying this further....

[Alain Colcer]

uhm i see your points, its interesting nobody described the mechanics as well as you did, had a very innacurate impression from other people's posts....(or reviews even).

One question, in BF2142 the squad leader was an integral part of succesful infantry tactics, is there a structure for squads and roles?

Are there any options to actual role choosing too? join squads (battlefield-like) and within squads can choose specific roles (America's Army like)?


And is there a "rosetta-comm" menu available? or some sort of quick broadcast commands?

[kalaratiri]

From my very brief play around with this, I seem to recall there was a 'squad' mechanic not unlike the fleets currently in Eve, with a squad leader + members under a (wing?) and with an (fc? o.o ) at the top. It may have changed however, as this was well before Christmas.

[Aria Jenneth]

Hm. I haven't played around very much with the command systems so far. I know that (1) they exist; (2) they allow at least squad commanders to gain war points for actions taken by others in obedience to their orders-- for instance, directing squaddies to defend such-and-such a point, person, or vehicle gives war points for every kill scored while within a certain distance of that thing; (3) I haven't actually seen an overall commander yet, which doesn't mean that they don't or can't exist; (4) headset comms work only within a squad for non-leaders, but, for leaders, across all squad leaders + each leader's own squad members; (5) highly-organized corporations do routinely play in organized engagements, and tend to dominate when faced with less-organized forces; (6) squad commanders are the only ones who can request orbital strikes-- and only after their squads have put in a solid performance.

Tarquin's so far acted mostly as a lone-wolf saboteur, specifically operating where the rest of the team isn't, so I haven't had much chance to play around with any aspect of this stuff. A lot of the relative nubbins seem to just use voice comms to give a sort of running commentary on their actions. "Trying to hold at B ... aw, fuck, damn snipers."

Not so useful. Need more Eve-style fleet squad/fleet commanders-- and the game does seem to support those. Just I haven't had the privilege of being in such a squad yet.

Perhaps when SYNE gets a few more DUSTies, I'll be a bit more of a team player.

[Laerise [PIE]]

Hm. I haven't played around very much with the command systems so far. I know that (1) they exist; (2) they allow at least squad commanders to gain war points for actions taken by others in obedience to their orders-- for instance, directing squaddies to defend such-and-such a point, person, or vehicle gives war points for every kill scored while within a certain distance of that thing; (3) I haven't actually seen an overall commander yet, which doesn't mean that they don't or can't exist; (4) headset comms work only within a squad for non-leaders, but, for leaders, across all squad leaders + each leader's own squad members; (5) highly-organized corporations do routinely play in organized engagements, and tend to dominate when faced with less-organized forces; (6) squad commanders are the only ones who can request orbital strikes-- and only after their squads have put in a solid performance.

Tarquin's so far acted mostly as a lone-wolf saboteur, specifically operating where the rest of the team isn't, so I haven't had much chance to play around with any aspect of this stuff. A lot of the relative nubbins seem to just use voice comms to give a sort of running commentary on their actions. "Trying to hold at B ... aw, fuck, damn snipers."

Not so useful. Need more Eve-style fleet squad/fleet commanders-- and the game does seem to support those. Just I haven't had the privilege of being in such a squad yet.

Perhaps when SYNE gets a few more DUSTies, I'll be a bit more of a team player.

Are there any news on when/if proximity chat and/or more advanced chat channels (aka. command only - snipers only etc ) will be implemented? This was one of the major complaints I keep seeing that should not be that hard to fix ( ts3 offers that functionality already ).

[Aria Jenneth]

Laerise:

I haven't seen any. It's possible that it might be in the works; communications are actually my area of most frustration with the game at the moment, and it doesn't seem as though CCP has given the finer details very much thought.

For example, I hit X to "reply message" to an Evemail. Hitting X again will send it-- no matter what state the mail is in, where the cursor is, or whether I've entered any content.

This has resulted in some pretty, ah, empty communiques. There has GOT to be a better way-- an easily achievable one, even.