Tuesday 27 August 2013

EVE 514: Friends With Benefits Part 2

It's been 2 months since the last one of these, I've got a couple hours to kill and they didn't announce changes to 1.4 that fix exploits I've done videos for. So lets do this.

Today I'll be talking about something that hasn't really seen a huge amount, unified naming standards between the games. At the time of writing, the weapon names in Dust don't really follow a single particular standard, but rather follow multiple different standards. You've got your Assault Rifle, Laser Rifle, Sniper Rifle and such that use vague names similar to current modern weaponry. Then you've got your science fiction sounding names like Swarm Launcher, Mass Driver, Forge Gun and Plasma Cannon. There's the EVE style names like Blaster, Rail Rifle, Ion Pistol and Railgun that mirror their EVE counterparts.

There's also the Scrambler Pistol and Rifle!

There two issues I take with this. The first is that when you use standard current day names for weapons, people will naturally gravitate towards them because of the familiarity. This isn't helped by the fact that implementation of new weapons don't include militia variants, which combined with beginner suits only using standard weapons, leads to a lack of variety. With the Assault Rifle being a good all round weapon, the combination of name, militia variant and starter fits just begs new players to specialize into them.

Since the game's skill tree rewards specialization, you'll essentially be trapping those who want to bling out their weapon of choice into the first weapon they choose. Naming conventions could end up creating a weird situation where people end up with a weapon they may not have chosen otherwise.

The second is that it's a perfect opportunity to bridge the gap between the two games. If we take Railguns and Blasters as an example, an EVE player will better understand what Dust players are talking about if the rifles were named Blaster Rifles and Rail Rifles. If you reverse this, the Dust player could understand why his EVE side orbital support that uses pulse lasers, would struggle to stay near the beacon when a ship with beam lasers is attacking it from afar. Some ideas would include -

Assault Rifle -> Blaster Rifle
Scambler Rifle -> Pulse Rifle
Laser Rifle -> Beam Rifle
Scrambler Pistol -> Scorch Pistol
Combat Rifle -> Auto Rifle

This would create a consistency throughout all games set in New Eden (which is at 2 currently with a 3rd on the way), allowing for players to better understand each other. I've talked to some CPM members about this subject and it's not the first time this has come up. However it's been a while since it was last brought up, with Hans Jagerblitzen saying "if CCP has mentioned anything abut names it was way back in beta".

If anything like this came to pass, what would you want renamed?

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