Weapon Scaling In Dust 514

So anti vehicle balance has been a hot topic recently. I decided to try out all manner of different means to destroy my enemies. Some saw success, some felt lacklustre. After getting some different opinions on the matter, I decided to take a break from playing tonight to see if I could crunch some numbers.

The Weapon Scaling Formula

So there was one constant that I found within the majority of the different weapon types I looked at. The following formula appeared

y = zx-x

x = Standard weapon damage
y = The difference between weapon ranks Standard->Advanced and Advanced->Prototype
z = 1.05

There are several notable points we can gather from this.

• A fully skilled commando using a standard light weapon does more damage than another dropsuit with a prototype light weapon.
• An advanced weapon with a complex damage modifier is slightly better than prototype weapon without one.
• A standard weapon with maximum specialization skills is slightly better against it's specific offence type (shields/armour) than a prototype weapon that is boosted by a complex damage modifier.
• Prototype weapons have a pretty bad price:performance increase ratio compared to using an advanced frame that provides an additional high slot for a complex damage mod.
• Skill points give a bigger improvement to damage over equipment.

Now there's some balance issues that weapons have right now, but generally the difference between tiers of weapons is reasonable.

But while this formula applies to most weapons in the game, there are a few notable exceptions.

The Swarm Launcher

These are every Duster's first anti vehicle weapon. Every player is given a militia variant of these on one of their starter fits. They also have both the best and the worst damage scaling in the game. With a z multiplier of 1.25, they get a massive boost of damage between ranks. This would be great, if it wasn't scaled from the top down.

What does that mean?

Typically when balancing competitive games, you want to make sure the game is balanced at it's highest levels of play. This is due to the fact that you want your game to either be as good or better as players improve at the game. It's also harder to balance lower levels of player skill, as it becomes harder to determine if there's an imbalance within the game or between the player's level of skill (although developers should try). In Dust, this balance also exists between tiers of gear, with standard vs standard, advanced vs advanced and prototype vs prototype supposedly being balanced against each other. This is all further complicated when you throw vehicles into the mix.

Because of this balance issue, the need for prototype to perform well against prototype means that scaling has to be fairly equal between the different tiers. In the case of Swarms, their huge scaling multiplier makes them weak at lower tiers. When there's nothing stopping someone from using a prototype fitted tank against a player who only has access to a militia swarm launcher, you end up with a situation where the new player's anti vehicle weapon deals negligible amounts of damage. Considering the gap between a basic swarm launcher and an advanced, it wouldn't surprise me if they weren't performing well enough to kill tanks at their own level.

In summary, the difference between most weapon tiers is a complex damage modifier. The difference between swarm launcher tiers is 2 complex damage modifiers and 5 ranks of specialization. This is really bad for new players and forces people to use prototype weapons to be competitive.

The Forge Gun

Unlike the swarm launcher, the forge gun benefits from having a more normal scaling system. With a z multiplier of 1.1, it tends to be balanced at different tiers. Forge guns were bugged when they entered 1.8, so it's hard to determine how balanced they are.

From a personal perspective, they seem to perform well at killing vehicles and at killing infantry. So maybe 1.1 is the correct z multiplier for an anti vehicle weapon? I'd be interested in hearing opinions on this.

If so, it puts the plasma cannon in a poor place. As the Gallente anti vehicle weapon, it gets stuck with a 1.05 z multiplier. The regular plasma cannon does a reasonable job against standard tanks, but considering it's level of scaling compared to other anti vehicle options, maybe it could do with being on the same z multiplier as forge guns.

Nova Knives

These have a pretty crazy z multiplier at 1.66. If you're looking into using knives, you should definitely be using the advanced ones at least.

From a damage over time perspective, they also lose charge time between tiers. The base skill also increases this too, so they become amazing at the prototype level compared to the standard ones. Although it could be argued that the advanced ones already do enough damage to make the jump to prototype not worthwhile.

What's somewhat disturbing is that a Minmatar scout with maxed out suit and knife skills does less damage with standard knives than someone without bonuses using advanced.

Grenades

I'll finish with grenades as it's getting late and I'll look at vehicle turrets another time. But these seem to be on a separate scale when it comes to damage.

The AV grenade has a z multiplier of 1.2, thus making it closer to the swarm launcher than other weapons. AV grenades fell out of fashion after being nerfed in Uprising 1.7, but can still do serious damage to vehicles when used as a group.

The other 2 grenades get a 1.25 z multiplier, so perhaps it's the role of a grenade that makes them unique for this. Flux grenades bring great utility beyond just their damage and said utility increases at a 1.1 multiplier due to their radius increasing. Locus grenades I'm not so sure about, since their biggest impact on me is to force me out of cover. They do this well regardless of their damage, since I'm trying (and get the opportunity) to avoid that completely.

Grenades have a fairly low cost at all tiers, so you could say they give the biggest bang for your buck when you upgrade to higher tiers.

So What Does All This Mean?

Well if you're looking for better performance at killing vehicles, I'd suggest that you work towards the better tiers of swarm launchers as the lower ones are under-performing right now. If you're looking for a lower level means of anti vehicle, both the forge gun and the plasma cannon have better standard level performance.

Nova knives scale like crazy and you should be using the advanced ones as they truly shine over the standard. Skills are less important compared to ISK investment and prototype level knives are mostly only worthwhile if you're looking to chew through health stacked sentinels.

Grenades are an extremely cost effective means of bumping up anti-vehicle damage, although they are more skill point intensive. If you're looking for other long term investments of skills, you should pick up weapon specializations and commando skills (for light weapons).

When it comes to other weapons, skills are king here too. Specialization  You're also better off using standard or advanced dropsuits with complex modules, rather than upgrading your weapon from standard to advanced. Upgrading a weapon to prototype gives the lowest benefit for cost, so really the last upgrade to a suit you should make.

Design 514: The New Player Experience

"We're Killing Dust"

So this topic has been brought up again with the recent "WE ARE KILLING THIS GAME" videos by CEOPyrex. During this, the point was brought up that certain players have been entering public contracts in squads of full of proto gear and higher tier vehicles. This isn't a new problem by any means, as newer players have been getting the sharp end of the stick on this for something like 15 months now. The problem actually pre-dates the game entering open beta. I remember week 2 of the game going live on Tranquillity, struggling with my exile assault rifle against GEKs and people who were already using tanks.

But how long this has been a problem isn't exactly relevant to fixing it. Looking at the solutions that CCP have tried and failed with during that time does. Lets look at a few.

Offering Better Alternatives

I'm sure there's a carrot/stick analogy here, but whatever. Offering a better place for veterans to really go full throttle against each other is a pretty standard affair. The challenge is greater, but so long as the rewards are too, many high level players will be willing to try. Every attempt Dust has made towards providing this has failed on a few basic levels.

• The original corporation battles had a poor reward:risk ratio.
• Faction warfare rewards don't provide a sustainable way to play. Game mode doesn't provide a reliable way to play with a full team. Could potentially work with full team queuing and a method of trading assets between players.
• Planetary conquest has a huge barrier of entry before you even get into the match. There's too many other issues to fully list them all. CCP are fully replacing it and scrapping it's current form in the future.
• Tournaments lack the tools for third parties to run them effectively. CCP lack man power to run regular events themselves.

There's also the final issue that none of these provide as many skill points per hour as running public contract ambush matches. So are inferior options to people simply wanting to acquire SP.

The Current New Player Experience

So with the carrot not being...carroty enough for the veterans, CCP decided to give new players a stick free zone in the form of the academy. This provides separate matches for players under a certain amount of lifetime warpoints. Much like it's carrot based cousins however, this stick free zone has it's issues.

For starters, there's nothing stopping veterans from remaking alts to play in it. Some people enjoy being vindictive and likely won't stop just because they're asked. There's the issue of people saving up skill points and then coming back to play with a large advantage over there peers. New players have no means to play with more experienced friends in this safe haven of sorts. Finally, the academy does little to prepare those who go through it for what awaits them in public contracts.

Designing A Better New Player Experience

Until today, I had no real suggestion that would meaningfully address this problem. That was until I read this article by game designer David Sirlin regarding the same topic on one of his own games. In it he talks about how when teaching people to play his games, he would provide a simpler ruleset to get them used to the basics. Having used this method with one of his earlier games, it's how I teach new players before introducing them to the more advanced parts of the game.

Looking around, other games have this too. Counterstrike has some lighter modes to allow people to get used to the movement and weapons. Smash Brothers has a variety of modes and stages that allow for people of all skill levels to enjoy. Early levels in platformers start with easier jumps and weaker enemies. World of Warcraft starts your character with a couple of basic skills and progressively gives you more.

Dust 514 throws you straight into everything with a few boxes of text between you and the enemy. Tanks don't care if the pen is mightier than the sword, because this isn't the 19th century. Dust is a complicated game and gives a serious advantage to those who are knowledgeable. The closest thing we have to easing the transition for new players is slight limitation of tanks in ambush. Not to mention the gap between the basic starter fits and 

So the solution seems fairly obvious now. We add a way to play that boils Dust down to it's simplest form, while keeping the current modes intact. What I would propose are "Training Matches" that only allow a select amount of free, premade fittings to be used. This would include basic gear with a small variety of fits to allow players to get used to using different weapons and equipment in a number of different roles. It would also limit vehicles to basic LAVs only in order to get people used to vehicles in a simpler form. Also removing things like the warbarge strike and possibly turret installations.

The downside to this mode would be limited rewards. You wouldn't be earning nearly as much ISK per match. The SP rewards could be smaller post-cap as well to keep public contracts more competitive. There's the possibility to add a further bridge between this and the more competitive modes with a full team version. Entering the full team queue would provide a mode with slightly more advanced mechanics, such as higher tier outfits and more vehicle types. The ISK rewards would still be lower than public contracts, but it would provide a way for people to get used to playing in larger groups.

There's obviously more to something like this than a couple of simple paragraphs can cover. As a basic concept though, doing something that's based on what many other games have done with a large amount of success seems like a good place to start. Adapting it to fit Dust is the harder part.

Design 514: Balancing Cloaks

As a quick note, I have only 4 or so hours of laptop battery to last the next 3 days while I'm visiting family. Boots on the Ground was meant to happen before I left, but ended up not due to DST shenanigans and me needing to be up early the next day. I'll be writing a couple of blogs while I'm gone, including this one.

So anyway, Uprising 1.8 was released recently and while not perfect from a balance standpoint, it seems much better when looking at the overall design. Classes now feel like they have actual roles. Sentinels are kings of point defence, Logistics are no longer just better assaults with more equipment, Commandos actually have a role as long range damage dealers and Scouts are fast, sneaky little buggers. There's still balancing to be done (Assaults are close to being good), but picking a dropsuit gives you a purpose on the battlefield.

One of the biggest additions with this update was the cloaking device. This was seen as controversial from the moment it was announced, but has actually turned out pretty well. Moving around while cloaked makes you visible to the keen eye, allowing good players to kill bad cloaked players. Cloaking in and of itself has been designed well and has allowed for new play styles to arise.

What has become problematic however is not cloaking itself, but rather the other benefit of the cloaking device. Not only do these provide the cloaking effect, but also a (stacking penalty free) 25% reduction to dropsuit profile. This means that scouts can be invisible to most types of detection based purely on using a cloaking device. The player Haerr has provided a handy spreadsheet that shows how this all plays out. There's a few key points I want to touch on based on this info.

Gallente can get under all detection with skills, a cloak and an enhanced profile dampener. This means that I can (and do) run a basic suit that costs barely anything but cannot be found by people spending more on a single Gallente bonused scanner or a Caldari Scout with a full stack of precision mods. The fact that my cheap suit that isn't even dedicated to avoiding it's counters can do this is a balance problem.

Outside of Gallente, other suits can get under most detection with a single complex profile dampener and under the rest with a single enhanced. So not only are they part of the same problem, but have made the benefit of being Gallente a moot point. Why specialize into Gallente when you can pick another race and get more out of it? The only advantage left to Gallente would be if you didn't care that much about avoiding the specialized counters. Unless you don't care about being a Scout.

Which brings me to the armour stacking. At the current time of posting this, the Gallente Scout that simply stacks armour is a much better than the Assault that does the same. Sure you might lose when purely comparing health, but the increased speed, the reduced dropsuit profile, the extra equipment slot and the easily fit cloak means you're just better where it matters. Throw on an enhanced dampener instead of the 4th plate and you're basically an invisible Assault. The other races are having similar issues, but the Gallente is really where the problem is most apparent.

The final problem is that there's no reason not to use the cloak when it's available. I can't think of a single instance where being cloaked isn't advantageous. Cloaking just seems so mindless when compared to other actions in the game. When I fire my weapon, I sacrifice ammo and risk the enemy knowing my position in exchange for damaging my opponent. When I drop a nanohive, I exchange an equipment slot for my team gaining additional ammo and the risk of losing said gains to the enemy destroying it. When I cloak, my only risk is when I can't find a position within 30 seconds to decloak, at which point I get my cloak back after a short period of waiting. There is no risk when it comes to cloaking. It's essentially an anti-risk device that has no drawbacks other than short, manageable periods of time where you don't use it.

While I can see what CCP were going for when they gave the cloaking device it's profile dampening, it just dumbs down the gameplay of those who use it. It allows players to be great at avoiding detection without the need to invest into anti-detection modules. It makes racial parity somewhat pointless and gives Scouts the capability to do other roles better than those who should do them best. It enables a 1 dimensional play style that has no drawbacks.

So what's the solution to this? Give it a drawback.

When CCP announced the cloaking device, my initial thoughts were that the scanner would be it's hard counter. If they reversed the dropsuit profile bonus on the cloaks, that could very well be a reality. Switching it from a 25% reduction to a 20% increase would force people to think more about when they should use their cloak. It would also force people who want reduced detection to use modules for it. It would keep Scouts from being able to do both their own role and the Assault's role at the same time. Running some quick numbers, new detection would work out like this.

Moderately dampened uncloaked Gallente Scout
Heavily dampened uncloaked non-Gallente Scout
Heavily dampened cloaked Gallente Scout
Gallente Logi focused scanner/Heavily precise Caldari Scout
Moderately dampened cloaked Gallente Scout
Lightly dampened uncloaked Gallente Scout
Moderately precise Caldari Scout
Moderately dampened uncloaked non-Gallente Scout
Focused scanner
Heavily dampened cloaked non-Gallente Scout
Gallente Logi proto scanner/Lightly precise Caldari Scout/Heavily precise non-Caldari Scout
Lightly dampened cloaked Gallente Scout
Lightly dampened uncloaked non-Gallente Scout/Regular dampened uncloaked Gallente Scout
Regular Caldari Scout
Lightly dampened cloaked non-Gallente Scout
Regular uncloaked non-Gallente Scout/Regular cloaked Gallente Scout

There's more to that list of course, but in terms of balancing it's much better than it is now. There's a sense of progression for both sides of the detection war. The best detection can only be trumped by a large investment into dampening. Being cloaked opens you to being vulnerable against certain targets while being safer against everyone else.

Does this fix everything? No. There will need to be more numbers tweaked and fine tuning. But this provides a first step in a more balanced direction.

Design 514: Slippery Slopes

Design 514

Has it really been around 3 months since my last post? I guess I've just been busy, but man does time fly.

Anyway, not that long ago, a Game Designer position opened up at CCP Shanghai. I initially thought about applying since game design had been a dream of mine since I was 6 years old. In the end though, I've decided I'd rather stick to working on building a number of Dust 514 leagues. Building a league from the ground up allows me to be independent, so that things like game company staff being laid off won't impact me. It also comes with a large amount of design work, so I've found a happy place to be in (even if it means being broke for the near future).

Something I do want to continue with however, was a series of blog posts looking at Dust 514's design. Hell, I might look into the design of other games and even explanations of the design behind the leagues I'll be setting up over the next 6 months.

So About Slippery Slopes

If a game has slippery slope, it means that falling behind causes you to fall even further behind.

-David Sirlin

The concept of slippery slopes in games dates back millennia. Perhaps the oldest example most would be familiar with is capturing pieces in Chess. As you capture more of your opponent's pieces, the stronger your force becomes relative to your opponent. This works well, as it makes the struggle to take pieces without losing any yourself a key factor to winning games. It's also nicely balanced as it's hard to pull off against equally skilled opponents, with the reward scaling alongside the difference in the skill.

Dust 514 has a number of these itself. Some are intended mechanics (such as Warbarge Strikes) and some are more emergent (vehicle dominance in ambush). There are also parts of the game that don't feature slippery slopes, where similar parts of other games would. We'll start with the intended mechanics.

Warbarge Strikes

For those who might be unfamiliar with the Warbarge Strike mechanic, here's a brief intro. A Warbarge Strike is an ability that allows players to call multiple projectiles down onto a targeted area. These projectiles detonate on the first object they collide with and deal area of effect damage that scales with distance from the point of impact (vehicles can be killed by direct hits, infantry might survive indirect hits). They are earned every time a squad reaches an accumulative 2500 war points between it's members. War points are earned through performing various activities in matches, such as killing enemies, taking objectives and repairing allies.

I've gone in depth about some of the faults with Warbarge Strikes in videos before. There are a number of ways to game the system in which they are earned, most of which have not been patched out and are widely used. The most common of these is to jump into a vehicle just as you call a strike in and increase the WP/kill via the vehicle kill assist mechanic. At it's worst, this allows squads to generate around 300 points per kill from what would normally be 50 or 60. It's actually possible to generate 1 or more additional strikes using this method.

Outside of the way people call the strike in, the way people get to this point lends itself to gaming the system too. Vehicles have a number of tricks like the one mentioned above that can be used to speed up the war point generating process in a bizarre manner. Having more people in a vehicle increases the WP/kill, even if those people don't do anything. If they help with assisting a kill, they actually get more war points than the person who gets the killing blow. Infantry who put rep tools on vehicles will receive guardian points from said vehicle, even if the vehicle is shield tanked, has full hp and the enemy have no anti-vehicle weaponry.

Equipment spam before firing into the air while standing on top of a nanohive and hurting/killing oneself to give friendlies repair/revive points are some other examples of gameplay that doesn't make much sense, yet contributes towards earning these strikes.

Finally, the war point mechanic that strikes are linked to, also directly impacts how many skill points are earned through playing a match. Every time CCP has added new war point rewards for actions players take (to benefit different roles), they have also increased the frequency that Warbarge Strikes can be acquired. The more rewards that are added for being useful on the battlefield, the more common Warbarge Strikes will become.

It should be noted that the Warbarge Strike itself is a fine mechanic. It allows teams to break strong enemy positions, deflect large offensive efforts and keeps vehicle users on their toes. The similar EVE-side Orbital Strikes work without the issues of Warbarge Strikes, despite each one being a slightly different spin on the original Warbarge Strike. They both add a layer of strategy to the game and have potential to create interesting situations.

It all comes down to the method in which they are earned. Orbital Strikes are earned by EVE players holding a point in space above the planet for a set amount of time. This means Dust players can play without having to change their gameplay style in order to rack up points. Landing a successful Orbital Strike doesn't speed up the process towards another.

If I were to redesign Warbarge Strikes, I would change the mechanic that earns them to something that creates conflict between teams. Maybe something along the lines of holding a null cannon for 5 straight minutes grants a Warbarge Strike or a separate objective that only provides strikes. This forces a decision between an aggressive strategy to prevent the enemy team from receiving a strike, or a defensive strategy to increase the chances of receiving your own. If all seems lost and you're simply waiting for the match to end, it might be worth trying to rush past the enemy team to prevent your own team being obliterated before it's over.

So what if a team held 5 points for an entire match in Skirmish? Not only would they be certain to win the match, but nobody wants to sit in their redline getting picked to death by Warbarge Strikes.

Changing Skirmish

Even if the strikes stayed the same, redline camping remains an issue in Skirmish. In the case of one team being completely dominant for the entire match, the result is normally a 10 minute wait until the losing team's MCC dies. During this 10 minutes, some teams will try to fight back, but the standard play at this point is to sit back and snipe each other for the remainder of the match.

It's worth noting that Skirmish isn't a game mode original to Dust and other games with similar modes have already solved this problem. In the "Arathi Basin" battleground in World of Warcraft, holding all 5 points on the map speeds up the rate at which the game ends significantly. This allows the losing side to move on from a hopeless situation quickly, rather than dragging an already painful experience out. It's entirely possible that a team can come back from this, but given the difficulty of taking all 5 points on the map, is unlikely.

This is one of the best examples of a well implemented slippery slope in gaming. Allowing a swift ending to matches with completely uneven teams, with minimal impact in more balanced cases. Dust's Skirmish mode could benefit from such a mechanic, with the explanation of some kind of 'super cannon' activating upon all points on the map being held.

This might create an issue where quickly winning Skirmish matches would result in fewer war points than Ambush, but could be fixed by giving players (outside of their redline) points whenever the enemy MCC reaches certain %'s of it's health.

Vehicles in Ambush

It's harder for me to discuss this specific topic while staying unbiased. When Dust launched into open beta over a year ago, the number one complaint I saw on twitter from people was losing to tanks in Ambush matches. Vehicles have always given an advantage to the teams that use them and the smaller map size of Ambush, combined with the lack of neutral installations that can be turned against them (with the Ambush OMS variant that does this being chance based).

Given the power of vehicles and the size of the maps, it makes it extremely difficult to put yourself in a position where you have time to call in your own. An assault dropship can get from one side of the map to the other in order to kill players while they call in their own vehicles and a railgun tank can destroy them while they're still in the air.

Running anti-vehicle setups requires you to sacrifice more team members to counter the vehicles than the enemy team as well, so while the counter exists, you're left with a disadvantage in the infantry vs infantry fight.

In the end, what you're left with is a rush to obtain the vehicle advantage with the loser being at a disadvantage for the remainder of the match. Since Ambush is almost always decided on kills, so the losing side simply have to die repeatedly before moving onto the next match. It is possible to win despite the disadvantage, but it's still one of the more frustrating slippery slopes in Dust.

Dust 572: The Best Way To Play

So earlier this morning, I read a post in response to someone talking about Dust's frame rate problems. The original post claimed to have frame rates as low as 1-3 per second. This is a serious problem as first person shooters running at anything below 30 frames per second don't function very well. Hell, most PC gamers can't stand anything below 60 and pros generally favour 120 FPS.

The response was an interesting claim to solve the problem however. By forcing Dust 514 to run in 572p, the game could achieve a much higher and more stable frame rate. I had some time before the servers went down today, so decided to try it out.

The first thing I noticed was an immediate sense of nostalgia. If you've ever wondered what closed beta looked like, 572p is a fairly good indicator. The performance is a bit higher now though, as the game has seen some general performance increases since then.

The second thing I noticed was the menu animations were much smoother. Granted the game looks like ass and could be mistaken for a PlayStation 2 title, but there's hints that the game is running better. Menus are more responsive and animations are smoother.

This was all good and well, but how did it perform in a live match environment? I loaded into a faction warfare match and it was like nothing I've experienced in Dust before. The frame rate was higher than I'd seen before and the responsiveness felt incredible. I'm normally a terrible shot with a scrambler pistol, but here I was racking up head-shot kills. For the first time in a long time, I was enjoying playing Dust for the sake of playing Dust. Christopher Franklin's "Kinaesthetics" video comes to mind when trying to describe this.



Now this match was obviously not under the stress that PC battles can put on a system. People were using equipment, but not spamming it everywhere. I would be interested in hearing how it performs in a more stressful environment compared to 720p though. If it didn't make my eyes hurt so much, I'd probably never play Dust in 720p again, but I can see this being less bothersome to people who want the extra edge.

There's a potential nightmarish outcome to all this. If CCP don't improve the 720p experience, it's possible a group of players could exploit the frame rate drop from equipment spam while avoiding it themselves. The endgame to all this would be a world where players are forced to play in 572p and spam equipment to compete. Here's hoping it won't come to that.

Dust 514 Squad Cups Results and Videos

Over the weekend, the first Dust 514 6v6 Squad Cups took place with over 50 teams competing across 3 regions. I'll be compiling a list of videos I find from the tournament too. Feel free to contact me if you find any that should be on here.

Asia

1st Place - Nyain San
2nd Place - B.market

Bracket

No videos yet

Europe

1st Place - Power Rangers
2nd Place - United Pwnage Service
3rd Place - What The French

Bracket

Ro32 Videos

United Pwnage Service vs Diamond 7
What The French vs Les Croustillants
Forsaken Immortals vs Dust GAC Equipo 1

Ro16 Videos

United Pwnage Service vs Norwegian Dust 514
What The French vs Academy Inferno
Forsaken Immortals vs Fat Bastards

Ro8 Videos

United Pwnage Service vs French The Win
United Pwnage Service vs French The Win (second PoV)
Forsaken Immortals vs Power Rangers
What The French vs Gli Sbabbari

Ro4 Videos

United Pwnage Service vs Maphia Clan Unit Unicorn

North America

1st Place - 0uter.Heaven
2nd Place - GAC America
3rd Place - MH Neighbourhood Watch

Bracket

Ro32 Videos

MH Neighborhood Watch vs Onslaught Inc 2

Ro16 Videos

MH Neighborhood Watch vs Random Gunz

Ro8 Videos

MH Neighborhood Watch vs Killer Rubber Duckies

Ro4 Videos

MH Neighborhood Watch vs 0uter.Heaven

New Faction Warfare: There Is No Grind

So with the new Faction Warfare announcements, one thing has been bothered some people. In order to reach the maximum level of standings with a faction, you will need to win over 1500 matches for said faction.

Already the complaints of "another thing to grind" are beginning to come in from people. But I might have the solution to this, something to make the grind not even be an issue.


Don't tell anyone what their standings are.

Well OK, you can give people a rough idea. But do we really need to tell people the nitty gritty details? Surely all anyone needs to know is whether they're in the green or the red. Lets say someone has won 50 matches and has no team kills, that person could be told they have "fair" standings with that faction. Push it up to 100 wins with no team kills and they're told they have "good" standings. Maybe use a medal system like in EVE and keep thing ambiguous.

So long as players have enough information to know whether they need to be careful with team killing or have some winning to do, they should be fine. Giving out exact details only serves to make it feel more like a grind. Players will feel a natural sense of progression without any kind of force to keep them going beyond what they find enjoyable.

These Faction Warfare changes are still months away, so it will be interesting to see where True Grit goes with this.

Dust 514 News And What EVE Players Should Know

Edit: There was a small mistake with this post. Planetary Conquest won't involve Sov, you can go blame Lt Royal.

So over the last 48 hours, a large amount of new Dust 514 content has been announced. While no items, vehicles or game modes were mentioned, we've been given a rough roadmap of the upcoming Dust-EVE linked content. By now, most Dusters that care know about these changes, so here's the important parts that EVE players will want to know about.

New Orbitals

• Orbitals will be based on a king of the hill style system above planets. EVE pilots will have to run the timer down for their side to give Dust players the ability to call in orbitals for Faction Warfare and Planetary Conquest(?).
• Kills from orbitals will give kill mails.
• Faction Warfare pilots will gain loyal points from orbital bombardments.

Faction Warfare

• Dust players will receive loyalty points for participating in Faction Warfare. Dust players who fight more for a side will increase standings and receive more loyalty points as a result.
• Faction Warfare orbitals will be from EVE only, no more NPC strikes.
• CREST will give data on Faction Warfare districts. This will allow EVE players to see the status of the ground war on websites like Dotlan.
• It's still undecided if Dust players will ever be able to sign up to a single faction (like in EVE) and not just be mercenaries.
• Expected to be rolled out over the next 3 or so months.

Planetary Conquest 2.0

• All new PC system in the works. Will involve EVE players a lot more.
• New EVE ship being added, the 'War Barge'. Will be required to start certain kinds of Dust battles in PC 2.0. Can only be flown by EVE pilots. Will be vulnerable to EVE pilots while travelling and vulnerable to Dust mercs during ground battles.
• Will be involved with sovereignty mechanics in some way. (False info, sorry)
• EVE developers already at work on this, so could be as soon as the next summer expansion?

Other

• Dust 514 getting a new market system that will allow trading between players. Another step towards EVE and Dust trading?

You can find all this mentioned during their EVE Vegas talk (starts around 4h 15m) and on the Dust forums.  

A Merc's Thoughts On The Interdictor Changes

So while I'm at home with the family for a few days, I won't be able to play any Dust and very limited amounts of EVE. I still have time to write on my laptop though, so I'll be able to get a couple blogs done while I'm here.

Anyway, the new Interdictor changes coming in Rubicon were announced and since destroyers are still the primary means for planetary bombardment, the tech 2 variant is important to anyone looking to shoot up some districts.

Lets get the Flycatcher and the Heretic out of the way first. If either of these ships used turrets they would be the kings of small turret orbitals. The Flycatcher has the highest potential hp of it's hull size and would most likely have made an amazing rail boat. The Heretic has a great slot layout to support both a tank and a scram/web combo. Along with it's resist bonus and naturally great Amarr resist profile, a 6 or 7 laser Heretic could have been the best solo planet bomber in the game.

Both of those ships can still serve as good support vessels for any small bombing fleet though. The Flycatcher has a whopping 5 mid slots and the Heretic gets 2 utility mids as well. There's still a chance these ships might be changed before the expansion hits, but it's doubtful they will suddenly become turret ships in this balance pass.

The Eris is interesting to say the least. The potential from it's 4 low slots gives it a chance at running dual plates with a resist mod and a rack of small rails. It's problem comes in that it only gets 4 turret slots (and 4 launcher slots). A 4 turret orbital might be viable when the new mechanics come in, but for now it has to compete with the precision strike. Is a 4 turret hybrid strike worth it over a precision? Probably not and certainly not enough to justify risking a tech 2 destroyer over. With the new mechanics it could potential work as a solo kiter and being able to simultaneously fight people with missiles while bombing has it's merits, but there are better options.

There's a large amount of people against the split weapon system idea, so CCP may yet back down on it and go for a 6, 7 or even 8 turret version (a man can hope). If that becomes the case, the Eris will be the best planetary bomber in the game.

The future king of planetary bombardment is looking to be this next ship, the Sabre. With it's 4 mid slots and 7 turrets, it can fit 2 medium shield extenders and an adaptive hardner for an amazing tank (which also regens on it's own). The problem however, is that it uses projectile weapons. Tactical EMP S is often referred to as the "fluffy cloud orbital" because of it's complete lack of killing power (as well as looking like fluffy clouds). It could be used in clearing large areas of equipment or throwing down on a battle while armour based infantry and vehicles charge in. Sadly those are niche situations and have less application than the alternatives that can murder vehicles and clear swathes of infantry.

With this in mind, it's possible that a 75mm rail Sabre could be brought in since you mostly want it for the tank. Rails can hit out quite far with Spike, giving it a small amount of combat utility between bombings and being able to obliterate decent sized areas on the ground that it's aimed at. I guess the hardest part will be explaining the kill mail of a Sabre with 7 small rails, 3 tank mods in it's mids, a 1mn afterburner, a damage control and a magstab.

But hey, maybe they'll change their mind on the other 3 ships.

Please don't argue about balance on twitter

Last couple days, my twitter feed has been full of messages with 3-5 people tagged while said people try to argue their point. Because twitter only has 140 characters (including @ mentions), you're left with something like 70-100 characters to make your point. When it comes down to discussing anything, 70-100 words normally isn't enough to make a valid point, let alone 70-100 characters.

If you want to discuss balance, there are far more platforms that suit it better. Blogs are a great way to write a detailed explanation about something for example. Reddit is a good way to have a lengthy discussion while allowing people to downvote off-topic posts and fallacies. Chat locations such as IRC or private Skype groups are a good way to get a quick back and forth going. Hell, even the forums can be reasonable sometimes when people put the effort into their posts and ignore the trolls.

Twitter is inferior to all of these when it comes to any kind of discussion. Twitter is great for promotion, reporting problems, dick jokes and talking about what you just ate. It is not good for lengthy discussions where people need space to make a point.

I've spent the last 2 days watching my twitter feed be filled with people who all actually agree on the same thing (more spread out objectives). Due to the nature of twitter however, it's devolved into ad hominems and strawman arguments. What's funny is that talking about this on Skype with a group resulted in a paragraph that put the entire argument to rest.

Tower camping is only an issue when they can lock down half the map, including points. And blap anything that tries to get up there are take them off (bar a sniper. And snipers can't always get great angles in-map.. coz the mountains that go high enough are in the redline.

-Black Jackal

So can we keep this off twitter in the future? I'd greatly appreciate it and I don't want to have to unfollow people who otherwise tweet useful things I want to read.

The October 2013 Faction Warfare Event In Review

So credit where it's due, CCP have been trying new things when it comes to events. There's the standard double and triple XP events of course. There's also the grind X for items type too. The recent faction warfare event could be labelled as such, but the tie in with faction warfare is a new angle. Unlike the Caldari Prime event, the game now supports players choosing sides and there are actual benefits to the player for participating.

The Good

The event was announced weeks ahead of time, giving players some time to prepare. It's possible to get everyone in your corp/alliance to fight together on a single side, so queue-syncing is much easier to pull off. The rewards require effort to acquire and it's possible for the average player to reach the 20 match minimum.

The event also got people to really put time into faction warfare and it seems like many groups will continue to play it. Dust and EVE players are also reaching out to each other to work together. The rise of faction warfare as a much more competitive environment has allowed players to go full blast without the guilt of proto stomping. Anyone going into the warzone knows what they're in for.

The Bad

With no long term consequences, there's no reason for anyone to be loyal to any side. By itself, this wouldn't be so bad. In conjunction with the prize system however, you've got some real problems.

So each reward tier requires a certain win rate to obtain the prototype level gear. This alone would be fine, but with the game's current meta favouring certain suits/weapons/equipment, the strongest people will naturally gravitate towards the best rewards. In this case, most of the top players went Amarr. So what did everyone else with no loyalties also do? Joined Amarr.

I suppose it's my own fault for picking Minmatar, but the repair tools and mass drivers looked so nice. There were a number of groups playing Minmatar with some success, but why would the average corp pick the losing side when only winners are rewarded? CCP tout the "you're a mercenary" line when it comes to loyalty, but it's almost silly how one sided this all became. How CCP use the data from this event will be as interesting as how the playerbase interacts with faction warfare going forward.

Overall the event had some cool ideas and a good effort:reward balance, but favoured those who picked the winning side. It was interesting to watch play out, but I hope they try something different in future events.

p.s. Some more heavy rewards would be nice in the future.

Boots On The Ground S01E19

We go over Uprising 1.5, the new Squad cups, CCP Rouge and the faction warfare event.





Audio version on the right ->

Dust 514 Community Helps Raise Over $8000 For Family In Need

For those not already familiar with this, the family of community member Jason "Quickgloves" Selby was recently struck with tragedy when his son Weston was born prematurely. Since then, he has been staying at the hospital with his wife and child, praying for Weston's recovery. While doing so however, he has been unable to work and would be unable to pay for their stay near the hospital.

Looking to support their friends, Christina Lockerd and Kimberly Bullock set up some fundraisers to help support Jason so he could stay by his child's side. News quickly reached the Dust community and a thread was stickied with details on donating. Donations started coming in along with a large amount of well wishes.

Shortly after, a fundraiser event was announced by drunk night organizer "DS 10". Donations of money to the fundraiser gave people a chance to win in game currency (ISK) for both EVE and Dust from a lottery. Billions of ISK were given out to those helped raise around $3000 in just a few days and the overall amount of money has now passed the $8000 mark.

It seems so surreal that I was talking to Jason a few weeks ago about he and his wife Amanda playing Diablo 3 together. I can't imagine what it's been like since then and I can only hope it all works out. I've already donated what I can, but the fundraisers and forum threads are both still open if anyone wants to send him some support.

Amarr Hold The Ground and Push The Sky

So in a strange twist, the past couple of days have seen the Amarr take every ground district in the warzone. What was previously a Gallente/Minmatar domination of the ground has changed completely over the last 48 hours. I also saw a post on the EVE subreddit today called "Amarr FW is in tier 2!" It seems the guys up in the stars are flipping systems and pushing back against the Minnies as well. I guess this is one of the best examples of the "One Universe One War" tag line playing out the way CCP intended.

So why the sudden change on the ground? On Tuesday, a faction warfare event started offering rewards to mercs who participated and won a certain % of their matches for a single faction. The rewards are varied by which faction you fight for, so looking at the current meta on the ground, a large amount of players are fighting for the Amarr because they offer the "best" rewards. The Minmatar rewards are nice too and I've personally been fighting for them, but the evidence suggests heavily that people want those drop uplinks more than they want the repair tools.

The bizarre thing about all this though is that while the rewards are nice, they aren't that nice. You're talking somewhere in the region of 5 million ISK on the Dust side to just buy them off the market. I've seen people throwing tanks close to that value into matches in order to keep their win ratio up. It's bizarre, but with not much else to do, I guess it makes sense that people will be going all out to get their rewards.

The event lasts until the 15th, so whether or not the Amarr will continue to hold everything past then is still unknown. It's possible we might see podsicles and bunnies start talking to each other to set something up going forward. There are a large number of mercs looking for work and with orbitals being a bit more commonplace now, the possibility of joint operations for a common cause exist. There's also methods of paying mercs across the games if you're willing, although the exchange rate heavily favours Dust right now (8:1 EVE:Dust).

Funny how a small carrot on a stick can impact so many.

Streaming On The 8th October

With the patch coming out on Tuesday, I'll be doing an all day stream (aiming for 8 hours minimum) to try out the new patch. During this, I'll be running open squads for people who want to fight for the Minmitar during the next event, so feel free to join in.

You can find my stream over on twitch. I'll likely start shortly after downtime ends.

Boots On The Ground S01E17+18

Forgot to do one of these last week, so here's both the new episodes. The past few weeks has been good in that I'm learning what direction to take the show and what to avoid. I was fairly unhappy with how episode 18 turned out, but 17 was well received.







Audio versions are on the right as usual.

SyNergy Gaming pulls out of Molden Heath

If you've spoken with Mavado over the past couple months, you'll have seen this coming. With Dust not living up to the expectations of it's veteran players, there's been a steady decrease in activity since Uprising launched. Throw in new AAA titles coming out (GTAV) and new consoles just months away, you'll start seeing a lot more of the veteran playerbase moving on.

It's worth noting that EoN still has a presence in Dust/EVE and will likely continue to even after the next gen hits. We still hold over 100 districts (40% of Molden Heath) between the remaining corps. For now though, some of EoN are moving on to do other things and there's no knowing if or when they'll be back.

Won dust. Nothing else to prove. Everyone except imps lost in a war vs us. Nothing left but stay and get frustrated farming as you watch your activity dwindle.

-Mavado, alliance leader of EoN.

Boots On The Ground S01E16

With the move finished, we're back to a weekly schedule again. This means a shorter format with more meaningful discussion can take place. With the lack of a particularly long PC or tournament discussion, I decided to leave it as a single part with the news first.



Audio link on the sidebar.

Moving Is Finished, Time To Work

Moving is done for the moment. Might need to take a couple days to sort things now and again, but I've likely got the rest of the year to work on current projects with little interruption. I've spent this morning clearing out my secondary hard-drive and getting my computer to a happier state. Before the end of today, I'll be able to record, edit, upload and stream anything I want to. So here's an overview of what I'll be doing the next couple of months.

Blogging

Most recently I've been doing a lot of meta blogging and haven't produced as much actual content as I would like. I'll be writing more now and it will contain content that I'll have spent more time on. This will also include more EVE Online content, as I will be playing more EVE. I'll be looking into doing more high quality Dust posts over the coming months too, likely including guides and some more opinion pieces. There's some cool stuff in store for when the orbital changes come too (hopefully in 1.5).

Boots On The Ground

I'll be recording weekly again and with my new upload speeds, should result in quicker delivery and overall higher quality. Interest in the show has dropped a bit, but I'm still committed to making it. If anyone wishes to be a guest on the show, details are in the blog on the sidebar.

CPM Live

With the success of the CPM Ask Me Anything that took place over a month ago, I've been wanting to push to do a live weekly show with the CPM members that are interested. According to Hans' latest blog, the development schedule requires a level of compressed feedback that the show should help facilitate. Format will likely be an hour long and involve answering questions posted in the Youtube comments system. I will play a pure moderator role and mostly just filter questions coming in. Time and day is still to be set, a blog will be posted when they are.

General Youtube

I've mostly just been putting low effort videos onto Youtube recently and it shows. The best videos I've made recently can't be shown to the public yet and I haven't had time for better content. After some feedback from various places, raw gameplay videos will probably stop after the Logi Bro games are up. I will be taking more time to actually edit and produce more enjoyable content. I will also be streaming EVE and Dust on the channel too, so those will be archived and used for videos.

In the end, I'll probably monetize streaming, guides and talk shows, with tournament stuff later on. This means my other videos will have no restrictions on things like music, so I can make some videos for the sake of making cool stuff.

The 4 Minute Update

This project came to a grinding halt when we realized it's problems early on. It's been in limbo until new artwork and a real intro can be made. The older interviews will likely need redone or require a rework. This is frustrating since people took the time to talk to us back in July, but hopefully we can work things out. Artwork is almost done now, so it'll be back shortly after that has been finalized.

Other Projects

In about 2 weeks, I'll disappear for a couple days to do some personal stuff and work on something with a couple real life friends. This is something outside of gaming, so I'll only mention it in the future when it impacts other stuff I'm working on.

Anyway, time to go get some of this done.

Boots On The Ground S01E15

Starting next week, we'll be back to a normal, weekly schedule again. For now, enjoy an exhausted Gimble try to host the show.

Audio link is on the sidebar.