Initial Thoughts On Uprising 1.4

So 1.4 is finally here and now that the bugs are slowly being cleared away, we can start to see the intended direction CCP want the game to move in. While 1.3 fixed the flaylock pistol, the meta simply shifted to the 3 weapons that shared it's biggest strengths: mass drivers, forge guns and locus grenades. Shortly before 1.4 hit, it seemed like mass drivers were falling in usage in PC matches due to the strength of grenades and forge guns. This patch seems more likely to really shake things a bit, so here's some of my initial impressions.

Matchmaking

This is the probably the biggest change Dust will ever see and it's amazing how many people didn't realize how big a deal this would be. In an ideal world, this should have been in the game from open beta or even before then. For too long were new players getting completely wrecked by squads of proto bears in public matches. I can still remember what the #Dust514 feed was like on twitter during the months of seeing What The French drop 2-4 tanks in every ambush match and just rolling over the new players.

After the rough first day, matchmaking is now grouping players together by some unknown algorithm. This seems to be working as intended so far from what I can tell, with matches being far more even than before. I have no idea what this experience is like on the new player's end of the spectrum, but for a veteran it's exactly what I wanted. I have no desire for some hollow victory over those who can barely fight back, so even the losses I'm getting feel good.

The best part about this change is the complete role reversal for the older proto bears. Seeing those who used gear as a crutch come up against players around their own level and get crushed because they have no idea how to fight competent at the game is hilarious. I'm seeing people put this solely on the new auto aim system, when in reality it's mostly just because the playing field is actually level now. With improvements to hit detection and armour, the game plays very differently.

New Controls

Going to be upfront here, I barely use the pad to play. So when speaking about the new auto aim, I can only do so from the perspective of someone who plays against it. From what I've seen so far, it's barely been noticeable. I'm constantly fighting against people who I'd consider my betters, so I don't mind having to sharpen up if I want to win. The best player I squad with uses a DS3 (without aim assist) and you can see for yourself how well he does.



What I do want to mention is the issues with mouse controls. For some reason the turning rate when moving normally and when aiming is the opposite of what it should be. I'm currently restricted to hip firing most of the time and turrets turn crazy fast for me. Hopefully they can switch them around because aiming is pretty much broken until they do.

Outside that, I still have my polling rate set at 125hz as maxed settings on 1khz still doesn't reach the turn speed I currently have.

New Maps

4 maps were added to the pool with the 1.4 patch. Overall I like them over the previous maps, but they have their issues. In general the maps seem huge and feel as though they were designed for 24v24 or 32v32 sized teams. Border Gulch is a great example of this, as the bridge alone makes for an amazing 16v16 experience. I've heard rumblings about the Research Facility having problems in PC, but need more time to play on them myself.

Based purely on their layout, they clearly want people to start using more vehicles in matches for Skirmish on these. Having an LAV running around to help initiate assaults on points will be key on maps such as Border Gulch and Fracture Road.

What these maps do make me truly excited for is the possibility of new game modes. Fracture Road looks like a perfect map for Skirmish 1.0 and the bridge section on Border Gulch would be great for 6v6 domination.

Only thing left to say is it's frustrating to play on the old maps now. Ambush on Border Gulch is just so much more fun than any other map with the same game type.

New Meta and Other Changes

The changes to scanning have had a good impact on the way equipment slots are used. It's worth using up to 2 equipment slots in a squad to bring those scanners instead of more uplinks. The squad view changes combined with this now give those who used speed and shields to tank, an alternative in the form of profile signature reduction to sneak around.

The armour changes seem like they could make plates and repair tools dominate the meta. Armour tanks are now incredibly beefy and are doing well despite the increased accuracy that auto aim brought in. They're still vulnerable to things like grenades and direct mass driver hits, but they benefit from high damage output and third party repairs.

Speaking of repair tools, armour also has the advantage of generating more war points than shields due to gains from triage and guardian. This means another equipment slot is being taken away from uplinks in favour of more varied equipment. The final benefit to all this is armoured vehicles are more survivable in combat. Repair tools are pretty good when used on vehicles (especially the flux), so those armour tankers will need to work more with their logistics.

Mass drivers don't seem quite as good as before as they didn't receive a damage buff, weren't missing many shots before and are now hitting people who have more health. Forge guns have a slower projectile from what I've been told (and the new PC map has more cover against the high ground sniping spots). HMGs and scrambler rifles are much improved over their previous iterations.

I guess that just leaves grenades to be nerfed.

The Plasma Cannon In Review

So after watching a video on this weapon, I figured I'd hurry up and do a review of it before too many people base their thoughts on a single opinion. I was going to save this to be part of the Mordu blog, but that is looking more and more like it'll get delayed until September (you'll see why when it comes out). But anyway, before we look into the weapon, here's a bit of backstory.

So during the Mordu event, one of the goals was to blow up 100 installations in a week. Not specialized into heavies, I decided to stick to my advanced swarm launcher. The problem with this is swarms can't target neutral installations. With the best way to score killing blows, on them being to pick empty regions and play Ambush OMS, killing neutrals was needed. This led to me trying out the Plasma Cannon.

My initial reaction was similar to the one seen in Pyrex's video. The weapon felt weak and hard to aim, requiring 4 direct hits to kill an installation with a reload between shots. It was the only thing I had though, so I grinned and beared it. Thus began my journey into learning this weapon. At this point, I wasn't keeping track of my stats at all, so I just kept hammering out games with this weapon I'd previously considered a joke.

After I'd deemed myself having passed the magical 100 destructions barrier, I decided to take it into regular matches with friends as I was still unsure of my kill assist count. Having gotten used to aiming the damn thing, I figured I'd try it out in a more "real" environment. This took a lot of getting used to as the weapon plays very differently to how you figure it would do. It's somewhat fitting that it's a hybrid between being effective against everything (Gallente use "Hybrid" weapons in EVE Online). It's an anti-vehicle weapon, but isn't as good an anti-vehicle weapon as a swarm launcher. It's a 1-hit kill weapon, but isn't as good as the shotgun or sniper rifle. It's an area denial weapon, but isn't as good as the mass driver or flaylock pistol. It's a mid-range weapon, but also works up close or far away.

Once I realized this, I experimented more with different ranges and outfits. What I discovered is that the weapon itself wasn't bad, it just had a different role to anything else in Dust. The cannon fits the role of a mid-range support weapon, designed to be used from the back of a group of players. With it's arc, you can fire it over your team-mates and score kills from range. If a vehicle shows up, you're also able to do decent damage without needing to switch to an AV fit. With enough practice, you can land shots up close or far away, it just takes time. I see those "amazing long range Plasma Cannon kill" videos and remember how I hit a multitude of similar shots earlier that day. The curve is no more different than the difference between gonewild and gonewildcurvy once you're experienced with it.

Hell, even it's weaknesses are great once you see how people try to exploit them. The natural reaction from someone who survives your shot is to instantly charge into you and try to rush you down before you can reload. Seeing this, I've started putting skill points into the new commando suits. I'd tried to use shotguns a few weeks back and am now reaping the rewards. A simple switch to the shotgun after ducking behind cover and boom, dead enemy. The commando suit has several nice benefits with using the plasma cannon alongside this too. The decrease in time reloading has a big impact on your ability to project damage. You also have enough base health to survive small bursts of damage, while the loss in speed has little impact due to fighting from the back.

The cannon has it's share of annoying problems though. There's an annoying reload bug that can get you killed more often than not. The projectile is slow enough to people to dodge direct hits a lot of the time. Scoring direct hits can suffer a lot from the game's hit detection sometimes letting your shot pass through an enemy without harming them. There's also an annoying grace period after firing that delays switching weapons. With a bit more speed (20% faster or so) and a bit less post-firing delay, the weapon would be in a really great place.

It's a good weapon overall in the end. Huge skill ceiling, has a useful role to play and can stand it's ground against a variety of enemies. It's not a weapon for everyone and it's not meant to be, but I like many other cannoneers seem to have fallen under it's strange charm. It also kills anything below a heavy with a single shot (including proto gear) which is just wonderful.

I give it a B- out of 10. Needs some tweeks, but an otherwise good weapon.

Life Is Hard, Get Used To It

Life's a bitch.

Probably the most important thing a teacher ever told me while I was at school and something I've only come to realize the weight of recently. This cliché applies to almost anything, but in this case, I'll apply it to Dust 514 in particular. There's a few points I'll go into.

First of all, Dust will evolve over time in the same way that most multiplayer games that involve strategy at some level do. If you move into the most powerful playstyle there is in a game, the meta will shift one way or another. If something is too dominant and the game has active developer support, it will get patched to allow for competing strategies. It's almost a bad idea to invest so heavily into something too dominant because in all likelihood it will get nerfed before you can reap the rewards from the time invested into it.

To use a Dust example, the Caldari Logistics suit was straight up better at being an Assault suit that the Caldari Assault suit. Large amounts of people went straight into it with no real intention of playing a "logi" role. Considering that part of the fitting system in Dust is to allow this style of gameplay to a degree, that in itself isn't the issue. The fact that Logistics suit outperforms a dropsuit at it's named role is an issue however.

So they're nerfing the logistics suits and people are crying "woe is me". To be honest, I haven't played around much with Caldari suits beyond my recruiter militia assault, so all I can do is make a loose prediction. The new Caldari logi looks like it will do fine in a hybrid support/combat role. It will still have a large amount of high slots and the new bonuses still allow for an improved tanking capability, but it will be weaker than an assault counterpart for actual combat.

People are suggesting that we should start seeing respecs until CCP finishes balancing the game. But this won't work out in the long term and balance changes will almost always exist. That's not to say that having some form of respec system that allows players to make tweeks to their skills would be bad though. Merely that offering constant respecs until the game is "balanced" or "complete" makes the consequence of choosing your skills meaningless.

With that in mind, I'd like to go into my second point: what does Dust 514 teach it's players? Back in 2006, I read this article about what World of Warcraft was teaching it's players through it's game design. It could be said that Dust shares some of the flaws that article points out, but for now I'll look at some good things Dust teaches it's players.

The skill system teaches the importance of forward thinking. If you do some brief research before investing heavily into something, you are rewarded for doing so. It also teaches the consequences of making choices. If you choose to specialize heavily into something and that becomes weaker through some means, you have to deal with being weak until you . Someone who is more general with their skill tree has to face being weaker against a specialized player.

It isn't just the skill tree either. The social aspect of this game has a similar vibe. Do well in a public match? Maybe someone will want to invite you to their corp. Leave a corporation under poor circumstances? Get blacklisted by their alliance. Send someone an angry mail after a match?

Get put on some guy's blog!

I'd agree with CCP lessening this to a degree though (it is a game). EVE has the ability to remap your learning capabilities, so Dust players getting the ability to refund a skill every x months would help prevent people getting completely screwed. So long as choices continue to matter, then I'm fine with what CCP decide to do.

Last of all, don't throw money at a company based on what they say they "could do" unless you're willing to live with not getting any return on that investment. If Kickstarter has shown us anything over the past year, it's that companies will talk big, with few actually delivering on their set goals.

Money should be used to purchase goods and services, not hopes. People who spent money on Dust to "support CCP" and were then angry with what they got out of it are simply self entitled. You were given tangible benefits from you purchases. If they don't meet with your expectations, then you should simply not purchase said benefits again and move on with your life one way or another. If you can get a refund, then all the power to you.

You can sit around complaining and feeling sorry for yourself about this all you want, but you're only going to make yourself miserable and piss off those around you. If you want to do this, you're free to. Just don't expect people to think highly of you in return however. I'd advise that you instead take what you've learned from this experience and use it to your advantage in the future.

CCP aren't innocent in all this and have made numerous mistakes along the way. Incorrect skill descriptions, obvious balance issues, poorly handling the game's release (merc packs), a lack of communication with the playerbase (exceptions include True Grit) and a rushed feel to features.

But they've been slowly moving in the right direction more recently however. Only time will tell how this turns out, so I guess you could go outside and enjoy the sun in the meantime. There isn't much point doing something if it's just making you miserable, because life's a bitch and you should really just make the most of it.

Dust 514 and Why The Metagame Is Important

I was hoping to write about something else today, but this has been nagging at me for the past week and people were talking about it today. Despite the topic of the article, I should note that I'm not against change for the sake of balance, but simply that it should be left in the hands of the players first.

The LAV

There's been a lot of talk recently about LAVs since the buff they received to their health. Since the buff, they've seen a huge spike in popularity. It's rare to play a game of Dust without running into (or getting run over by) an LAV. They're cheap/free, they're fun to use, they're extremely powerful against any dropsuit they slam into and people are using them en masse because of this.

Despite what some people might think, this is actually a great thing! Players of all levels are adapting to be competitive in an environment that rewards thinking about how to beat what is currently strong. In other words, the metagame is shifting. The previous strong tactic of squads with full proto/advanced gear stomping is now facing a decline against the rise of the 4 wheeled menace.

Now if Dust turned into a bumper car game and using LAVs became the only viable way to play, we'd have a problem. Many are calling for LAVs to be nerfed and while there's somoe valid points being made. A slow moving vehicle shouldn't really 1-hit KO a heavy and it's a bit strange that the LAV doesn't take small amount of damage it return for hitting a sold metal suit.

Despite this though, there are already counters to LAVs in the game. Off the top of my head, I can think of 6 standard weapons that are at least somewhat effective against LAVs (not including sniper rifles killing drivers). AV grenades do strong amounts of damage to them, with the other 2 classes being moderately effective. Equipment such as remote and proxy explosives are also highly effective. On top of just infantry equipment, turret based platforms such as installations and other vehicles are also highly effective against them.

The story of so called "cheap" tactics such as spamming LAVs has existed in competitive games for decades. The book 'Playing to Win' by David Sirlin goes into detail about about this.

In Street Fighter, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations “cheap.” This “cheapness” is truly the mantra of the scrub. Performing a throw on someone is often called cheap. A throw is a special kind of move that grabs an opponent and damages him, even when the opponent is defending against all other kinds of attacks. The entire purpose of the throw is to be able to damage an opponent who sits and blocks and doesn’t attack. As far as the game is concerned, throwing is an integral part of the design—it’s meant to be there—yet the scrub has constructed his own set of principles in his mind that state he should be totally impervious to all attacks while blocking. The scrub thinks of blocking as a kind of magic shield that will protect him indefinitely.

By this same token, the LAV could be seen as similar to the throw example Sirlin uses. People who were using superior gear, teamplay and gunplay that would previously wipe the floor with others are now faced with a literally "cheap" tactic that can cause them to lose in situations they would previously win. A call for LAVs to be nerfed because people think the spamming of them being a dominant strategy is stupid seems to be a popular sentiment right now. The issue with this is that people haven't had time to adapt to an environment where LAVs are this strong. As more and more people use this and it becomes truly dominant, smart players will start to use more and more anti vehicle gear to counter it. The cool part is that by doing so, those players leave themselves open to being countered themselves. Eventually you'll end up with someone hitting a few sweet spots that combine a mix of different infantry and vehicle loadouts. This process comes from a shifting metagame and is called "Perfect Imblance".



I asked Counter-Strike 1.6 commentator Darryl "SyN" Kucmerowski for his thoughts on how this played out in Counter-Strike.

Some maps have seemed to change, while others have always been one way or another. One thing is almost all the maps have, at one time or another, changed from seemingly CT based to T and back to CT again.

What makes those changes happen is the evolution of tactics. A team will develop a set of strategies that works for a map on a particular side and then once word gets out of how that seems to work, you see the copy cats start and eventually, someone finds a counter for that tactic simply because they have to.

For instance, Inferno used to be a pretty heavily CT based map WAY back in the day but then we started to see people boosting window and that forced a lot of changes as to how you would defend that map.

Some maps though just evolve through the execution and timing of tactics, like dust2. If you time things properly you can get CT's moving one way and hit another on dust2 pretty easily.

Now of course, with no changes you'll eventually start to see this process decay over time. But there's a lot of things in the pipeline that will shake this up. There will be balance changes and sometimes the meta of the game might get silly. But as players adapt to each other, strategies will come and go. Just as they always have across many genres and will continue to do so.

But What About The TAC AR

So the TAC AR was deemed too strong and was nerfed. Where this differs over the LAV for example though, is that where the spamming of LAVs is a counter to certain strategies, the TAC AR made other weapons almost redundant. When comparing it to other weapons of a similar role, it outperformed them in pretty much every way. It had higher damage, a longer range and better accuracy than pretty much any other light weapon. With certain types of auto-click mice and pads, it could out-damage every other hitscan light weapon in the game.

With such power it quickly became the dominant light weapon and made other weapons invalid. It remains to be seen if CCP nerfed it too much, but one thing is for certain: the metagame will decide how good it is, not CCP.