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.

Music Mondays 3: Pig With The Face Of A Boy

Haven't found as much this week, but here's a few choice picks.

Songs of the Week

Climate Change Denier (contains full frontal nudity)

A few years ago, Pig With The Face Of A Boy released a Tetris themed song about the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. At current it has over 3.6 million views and for good reason. Their latest release "Climate Change Denier" was a pleasant surprise to find in my Youtube feed and is an enjoyable listen, albeit not as memorable as the Complete History Of The Soviet Union.



I'd been getting a bit sick of the Slam Jam mashups over the past couple months. The best examples of good mashups are things like Gangnam Style or Panic Station. This is the first mashup since Slamjam Station that I've truly enjoyed and just fits the two songs so well together. There's also a free .mp3 download available.



Someone asked for some hip hop, so here's Duane and BrandO rapping about Duck Hunt.

Artist of the Week

Pascal Michael Stiefel aka Plasma 3 Music

Not unlike Atpunk from last week, I found P3M through a remix involving a (now former) member of Game Grumps. he has a large number of game music remixes over several websites.

Duck Tales Orchestra fan rendition
Newgrounds
Soundcloud

Music Mondays 2: Slightly Late Edition

So you can thank the Dust 514 grindathon event this week for this not being done until now. Hopefully I'll avoid this situation in the future, but better late than never. It's worth adding that despite this being 2 days late, I'm only including music I found before this Monday.

Tracks of the Week

**SEIZURE WARNING**


I found out about Atpunk a couple months ago when he released his "Welcome Back!" Jontron Remix (which also deserves a seizure warning). His latest track is very reminiscent of Anamanaguchi and is an overall solid original piece from someone who is most well known for remixes.


It's a little weird that these guys aren't more popular. Critical Hit is a band formed from a number of well known musicians, including the violinist Taylor Davis and composer Jason Hayes (World of Warcraft). Their début album is a compilation of video game covers, ranging from Modern Warfare to Angry Birds. I've never played a Call of Duty game, but the cover is a good listen despite that. Also, here's a bonus .gif of Joel Taylor.



If you like Trance (or any electronic music), Trancecrafter is the best artist you've probably never heard of. I mentioned in my first blog that I go to websites like Newgrounds to find people early in their careers and that's how I found TC. Sadly he rarely releases full tracks, so I was pleasantly surprised when this popped up in my subscriptions on Saturday. This song is part of a 78 track compilation that is raising money for the charity "Sport Relief". You can buy it from Bandcamp for the low price of a tenner.

Artist of the Week

Rob A Ronawsky

Beyond his music, I don't actually know much about Rob A Ronawsky. His music mostly focuses around guitar covers of anime theme songs. The best example of this is his cover of the Attack on Titan opening song...



and his Attack on Titan Medley.


He has a whole slew of different Soundcloud and Youtube pages though. If you're looking for the best way to listen to his music, I'd suggest starting with his main Soundcloud page. If you want his other tracks, your best bet is to search "Rob A Ranowsky" on Youtube as that will display all of his channels.

He also has a Facebook page.

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

Music Mondays 1: Spooky Introduction

Outside of gaming, one of my favourite pastimes is looking around online for music to listen to. I follow upwards of 150 different music channels on Youtube and regularly look around websites such as Newgrounds or Soundcloud for new artists to follow.

My normal pattern is to browse around for up and coming artists. Then follow them as they continue on their way through their music careers, listening to their progress over time. I do this on a regular basis, so I figured it'd make a good regular blog. Anyway, here's what I've been listening to this week. It was Halloween, so this will mostly themed around that.

Tracks of the Week



I should probably mention that I've never played any Silent Hill games, but enjoyed this Medley regardless. Jules is currently in the middle of his third year of weekly video game covers, so he may well be a regular on this blog for the near future. You can find free downloads of his work in the descriptions of his videos.



There's a number of Castlevania tracks going around this week. OCRemix uploaded 4 in a row including this remix of Vampire Killer by zircon. I wasn't that impressed with the other 3 tracks, but you can find them on their Youtube channel.



OK, so this one is a bit older, but I'd never heard it until this week when I was watching a playthrough of the game. Bloody Tears is a classic though and this version lives up to the name.

Artist of the Week

Psyguy

I found this guy a while back but didn't pay him much mind outside of a few tracks I'd downloaded from him. He caught my attention today again, when I was looking around for covers of the Sonic Adventure 2 track 'Pumpkin Hill'. While his cover wasn't as good as the original, I decided to give some of his other music a second listen. Here's a few choice picks.

Bloody Tears
Guile's Theme
Escape From The City
Chocobo Theme
Sonic Boom
Digimon Theme

Eris: King Of Orbitals

You may remember from my previous Interdictor blog that I mentioned the Eris could potentially be a great orbital bombardment ship if it gained some turret slots. It seems the idea of a split weapon ship that people will actually want to use was unlikely, so they have now changed it to 7 turret slots. The difference between 7 and 8 turret orbitals is minimal, so looking at the current ship options for supporting ground battles, the Eris is now King.

Doing some rough numbers leaves it with a strong tank (well over 13k ehp), a rack of 7 small rails, a micro warpdrive, along with a spare mid slot and high slot. I don't have access to a fitting tool with the updated stats yet, but I feel the following will be the cookie cutter Eris fit for small gun orbitals.

7x 75mm Gatling Rail II

1x <High>

1x Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive

1x <Mid>

1x Damage Contol II

2x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

1x 400mm Reinforced Steel Plates II

1x Small Anti-Explosive Pump II

1x Small Trimark Armor Pump I

Sadly I remapped away from ship skill attributes today before these changes came out and have no skills in interdictors. I will be sure to have my friends who can fly them try this fit when the new faction warfare changes come in though.

Making Money From New Eden

So I got into a small argument on twitter earlier, but managed to stop myself after remembering that's a bad idea and I won't be responding through twitter about this. I should probably be doing other work, but I feel like few have voiced an opinion close to mine.

It's worth noting before I begin that I haven't followed all of this Adolf Somer Stalin drama as closely as some, but I have grasp on the basics. Somer Blink and others are giving rewards to those who use their referral link for buying PLEX. These are in the form of lottery credit or straight up ISK payments. Through this method, it's possible to exchange ISK for small amounts of real life money. Because of it's roundabout nature, this doesn't violate the rule against trading ISK and real world money.

A group of players have taken issue with this however. Since even though this is "technically" allowed, it's an obvious loophole to get around the rule that was supposed to prevent this. I've heard that this kind of behaviour breaks the sandbox, but so does PLEX and people seem fine with that. When it comes to PLEX, you might be buying ISK at a rate determined by the in-game market, but you're still buying ISK with money. Considering how high the turnover on PLEX is, it seems people have been fine with a broken sandbox for a long time.

The fact is that there are lots of legitimate ways to turn in game money into cash. themittani.com and evenews24.com both pay their staff in ISK while making ad profits on their websites. syndicatecl.com make advertisement revenue from their tournament streams while paying out prizes in ISK and more companies are looking to do the same (ESL are getting into Dust 514). That's not even mentioning all the streamers, bloggers and other content creators who make money from what they do as well.

In the interest of being honest about conflicts of interest, I run adverts on my blog and a number of my Youtube videos. I've had a lot of positive feedback about both of these and complaints are almost entirely about the content I've made. I don't think anyone has ever come to me and said I should be banned for doing what I do. Hell, Nintendo tried to prevent people on Youtube making money from their content and had to change their stance after it turned into a PR nightmare. We live in a world where people make money by creating content around the games that they play and that isn't likely to change.

There's a second problem people have with Somer though. CCP decided to give their staff a number of unique ships in EVE as a reward for their work. This is the more serious issue because it's straight up giving certain players an advantage over others. Allowing people to move ISK around in the sandbox because of purchasable items is one thing, but straight up handing people billions of ISK in assets is straight up ignoring that the sandbox even exists. This wasn't the first time either, they also gave out the same ships to SCL staff too.

If CCP wants to reward fans who work for third party websites, they should give out of game assets. Things like clothing, posters or board games would be appreciated and wouldn't upset the game.

The last point I'd like to go into is CCP promoting third parties. It's hard to criticize CCP for any kind of promotion of their fans. Mad Ani got a partnership on twitch.tv after a large amount of promotion by CCP. EVE radio (who make money via donations and premium services) will have CCP staff come on as guests and will see an increase in listeners when that happens. CCP have a program dedicated to promoting this and before this RMT drama, I never saw complaints about them promoting websites based around their game. It's weird to see quotes like this...

So to confirm, CCP give Somer huge advantages over their rivals such as prizes and promotion. They utilise an RMT loophole to make $$$. 

from someone who sells merchandise, has a history of interviewing CCP staff and has an article on CCP's website promoting his website.

I guess this entire situation is all a big mess though. CCP could close down this loophole, but other loopholes exist. Considering the amount of money involved here, it doesn't seem like the impact will be that much bigger compared to the sheer size of the PLEX system. Some players might cash out their hundreds of billions, but if that was all that was keeping them here, were they truly happy anyway?

For now though, the only people I see doing anything wrong here are CCP. Giving out unique rewards to groups of players outside of tournaments and events seems like a line they should avoid crossing. If the referral system starts to negatively impact the game, they can look into shutting that down too. For now, I'm going to go make some more videos though, before people come after those too.