Dust 514

**takeDat** · 2013-08-09 09:04

So run logi and follow around a heavy this week for a quick cap! Ty, I'll give it a whirl this afternoon

**Sol-Blackguy** · 2013-08-09 16:22

Next couple of months seem like they're going to be a big deal. Infantry re-balancing and vehicle re-balancing for the 1.4 and 1.5 updates. With Wolfman in charge of both weapons and vehicles, tanks and dropships might be back to their former glory again. I just hope they fix draw distance along the way. Counter sniping is a PITA.

**Sol-Blackguy** · 2013-08-11 19:46

Statement from CPM0 - "State of affairs : Communication & Trust"

Originally Posted by Nova Knife

The first Council of Planetary Management would like to take a moment to acknowledge the reality that most in the community are already painfully aware of – that now, more than ever, we stand at another turning point for Dust 514. With the release of 1.3 having just landed and the finishing touches being put on 1.4, everyone anxiously awaits evidence that either the game will start rising to the potential we've seen all along, or continue to struggle with some of the same issues that have frustrated many of us since early beta.

1.4 is the first "normal" monthly release since CCP restructured their development process following Uprising's troubled launch. This restructuring also comes in the wake of their acknowledgement that Dust is in a very unhealthy state and needs serious work in order to get back on track. No one can say that CCP hasn't realized that they need to step up their game in order for Dust 514 to stay competitive in today's market. Since Uprising, CCP has been making obvious changes in the right direction, and they've done a pretty fair job so far at revamping their internal goals in order to tackle the most pressing problems with the time they have available. That said, the fact remains that they're using both time and money to resolve avoidable issues that crept up over the past year, and have led to the current unhealthy state of core gameplay elements.

However, the most dangerous problems have not been fully recognized nor appreciated, despite constant calls for improvement from the community for almost two years. A lack of trust between the developers and the community continues to stand between Dust 514 and its full potential. A lack of communication also persists, and has at least been briefly acknowledged as 'something to improve on' multiple times by everyone we've approached in management. Sadly though, these acknowledgements come with only with the faintest hint of understanding pertaining to the severity of these problems.

The trust issue is not primarily reflected in communication frequency, although the two are directly related. Too many times across IRC, dev blogs, and forum posts, we've heard designers cite their own preferences when describing their work instead of acknowledging what they've been hearing from the community. And without enough trust that early player input is an essential part of examining a designed element for potential problems, CCP potentially risks that they'll have to revisit a system again later. We've often seen them ask for feedback much too late in the process, after a design is finished, and well past the time when a community-spotted problem could potentially be addressed and resolved before becoming an issue on the live servers.

This cycle of releasing content, receiving negative feedback, and revising in subsequent patches is both inefficient and carries a heavy cost in community goodwill. At the same time, we don't expect CCP's designers to adopt a "Customer is alway right" mindset either. The proper proverb to apply here should really be "Two heads are better than one". Instead, the failure to seek community input early in the process becomes harmful, making a vice out of a virtue. There have been cases when CCP requests that players trust their changes will be positive and not over-react prematurely.... the history of Dust has shown that requests for such trust are misplaced and undeserved in the eyes of the community, and it is too unhealthy to allow it to continue any longer.

The lack of structured communication, on the other hand, is an even easier issue to resolve....and yet we continue to receive strange and aggressive resistance to it despite many examples of success elsewhere within the company. When pressed for the reason we don't see consistent communication from the design teams throughout the development process, we hear responses along the lines that they are simply "too busy", or we're asked in return if we'd prefer to have fewer improvements to the game, accompanied by greater amounts of explanation. But we all know this is a false choice that we should never have to make, as greater amounts of communication can only lead to an improved product in the end.

The peer review process is a crucial stage of design of any kind. Without seeking input from others in the design field AND the end user, no product will ever be as good as it could be. The solution here is simple – the public (or at the very least; The CPM) needs to be considered a peer, for the purposes of design review. We're not asking for designers to write extra material and take extra time, we're asking them to share the same proposals they have to pitch to their team internally, and asking for our input as well. This isn't a request for additional labor, it is a request for transparency.

While the resistance here may be that community discussion "slows the process down", it's a simple fact that any communication upfront necessary to bring a feature to a healthy place will displace many times its own weight down the road should a design need to be fixed because of a preventable problem. Efficiency demands that community engagement shouldn't seen as taking a designer away from his daily duties, but as an essential part of them. Small amounts of time spent communicating with the community each day can save CCP weeks, possibly months worth of work down the line.

No one can deny that CCP is repeating work on game systems they've previously designed, released, and found problems with – problems that in most cases were quickly identified and repeatedly brought up by the community throughout the beta period. There's also no denying that the need to rework any part of a product usually means that time and manpower was wasted initially. We're now seeing CCP fix many of these gameplay issues, but if they do not fix the core community engagement problems that allowed those issues to take root in the first place, we'll find ourselves back in the same unhealthy place time and time again.

This isn't to say there aren't a few shining examples of teams working to improve this situation. A few have stepped forward and taken full advantage of the feedback process, and have shown marked improvements in their area of the game. As a result, they become instantly beloved by the community. A few have worked with the CPM and taken feedback from our meetings to heart, coming back to us with massively improved results. However, we simply cannot afford to leave this up to individual efforts. Communication needs to be both standardized and endorsed by management as a "standard operating practice", and applied consistently across the entire development structure..

A proper, standardized communication platform should consist of the following minimum critical elements: Patch notes no later than a week in advance of a release, dev blogs for the major feature changes that require the most explanation, and stickied forum posts with follow-up participation from devs for upcoming feature changes that have yet to reach code freeze. The first two elements of this communication platform have begun to fall in place, but the third is sorely lacking, and it continues to create an unnecessary backlog for designers and unnecessary toxicity for the community teams to manage. Players consistently find stickied forum posts insulting if they're posted up after the time has passed when anything can be changed before a release, as if their opinions are being asked for only as a token gesture.

Balancing passes deserve special consideration here, because we've consistently heard that balance work is not tied to a code freeze, theoretically being something they could iterate much more rapidly on than other systems. Unfortunately, we've also seen resistance to using this powerful tool. Either way, there is enormous potential here being squandered. If CCP can indeed make more subtle balance adjustments on a week-to-week basis, until they hit a "sweet spot", then this should be done.

If for whatever reason this isn't viable (and they choose instead to include all balance work in a monthly 1.X release) than the same standard should be applied for other feature changes – proposed balancing work (including all affected stats) need to be posted and discussed prior to code freeze. This is the communication standard that CCP has set for itself elsewhere in the company, and the standard that the community expects out of Shanghai as well, especially where balance is concerned. CCP can draw upon their own experience with Eve Online to examine the incredible progress that can be achieved with proper communication and community involvement when making balance adjustments.

In the end, we're all in this together. CCP has at its disposal hundreds, if not thousands of players who are able, willing, and ready to do whatever it takes to help improve Dust 514, asking no more from CCP than a chance to participate. The deep levels of interaction between player and developer have been one of the keys to the success of Eve Online that has earned CCP the devout following they have gathered over the past decade. This success is something CCP needs strive to emulate with Dust 514 to foster that same strong relationship with their customers, encouraging them to keep playing and spending money for years to come.

In the meantime, there is no sense in sugarcoating either the fact that the community's patience is at an end, and the attitude problems that have created the current situation remain unchanged. We request, again, that someone in management step up and take public responsibility for ensuring consistent communication moving forward – for the health of the game, and the health of the community. Swift action is necessary in order to successfully convince the community that their participation is still necessary and relevant to Dust 514's future.

At the time of this writing, a very loose commitment has been given to better involve the CPM more closely in planning stages, but we want to impress upon CCP the severity of the larger communication problems and trust issues at hand. Without substance or detail, a simple pledge to communicate more often is frankly not good enough to dissipate our fears and concerns. As a council, we cannot afford to sit idle without hearing concrete plans to for improvement. We are told that there are meetings in the works to form such plans,and we look forward to hearing from CCP regarding this and working with them to create a solid foundation moving forward.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

The members of the Council of Planetary Management

**Sol-Blackguy** · 2013-08-14 16:51

Good news for armor tanking infantry.

Originally Posted by CCP Wolfman

Hi guys,

A quick heads up for some upcoming changes in 1.4 to armour and movement.

Currently a bug has caused some of the movement speed modifiers on strafe to be ignored. This is good and bad. It’s good because faster strafe speeds are cool. It’s bad because right now strafe speed is at least 1:1 with run speed and this was not our intention. In keeping with normal physical limitations strafe was intended to be slower than run. We had planned to raise the strafe speed from the 1.1 build to around 80% of run speed (it was lurking around 60-70% or so depending on frame). After seeing how popular (and fun) the higher strafe speeds have been we changed our minds. We still wanted to maintain a difference between forward and sideways movement but we didn’t want to make a significant reduction to the speeds. So we’ve settled on strafe speed as 90% of run speed across all suits.

Before anyone freaks out, this does not mean it is set in stone forevermore. It just means that we want to play the game with the settings we actually intended so we can properly judge them. There are a lot of updates to the game in 1.4 so we’ll be watching very closely to see what we need to respond to

A nice thing that also came out of this is that I found some errant numbers and a bug that were causing the heavy frames to move too slowly backwards as well as reducing their strafe speed. Both of those problems are now fixed as well.

Also as promised on IRC yesterday I’m also sharing the buffs we’ve made to armour plates.

Couple of caveats:
- We'd like to introduce a penalty to shield tanking (most likely increasing the delay on shield recharge when you use shield extenders) but we wanted to buff armor first. We will be watching 1.4 closely and if necessary, add the shield delay in 1.5.
- Role skills still need to be updated to better take advantage of armor tanking.

* Adjusted Armor Plate attributes - HP bonus of 85/110/135 (Basic/Enhanced/Complex) and speed penalties of 2%/3%/5% (with full skill bonuses this equates to 93.5/121/148.5)
* Adjusted Ferroscale Plate attributes - HP bonus of 35/50/75 (with full skill bonuses this equates to 38.5/55/82.5)
* Adjusted Reactive Plate attributes - HP bonus of 25/40/60 and speed penalties of 0%/1%/1% (with full skill bonuses this equates to 27.5/44/66)

Cheers

CCP Wolfman

**Cantih** · 2013-08-14 19:21

Those are MUCH more reasonable armor stats.

**Sol-Blackguy** · 2013-08-15 00:59

Only thing I would like to see is the reactive plates give 1/2/3 HP/s across the tiers to make them worth the CPU/PG costs.

**Cantih** · 2013-08-23 09:18

PATCH NOOOOOOTES
https://forums.dust514.com/default.a...68#post1210968

I've bolded stuff I think is kind of nice.

Spoiler: show

And some dev blogs
http://dust514.com/news/blog/2013/08...1.4-and-beyond
http://dust514.com/news/blog/2013/08...-uprising-1.4/

Also, there's an event going on at the moment. Started on Thursday, runs two weeks, there are two separate reward sets. You'll need 30-50 matches played, and beyond that gets a little complicated.
http://dust514.com/news/blog/2013/08...ras-objective/

**takeDat** · 2013-08-23 10:43

I'm actually excited to give this another shot. If i do does anyone have a decent corp? I like mine but it has become too clicky and i am seeing no real benefit for sticking around. Could use a change.

**Sol-Blackguy** · 2013-08-27 13:46

Vehicles 1.5 and beyond:

Originally Posted by CCP Wolfman

Hi guys,

As promised the other day here is an overview on the changes to vehicle gameplay we’re currently working on for 1.5 and beyond. What we didn’t want to do was take every element, hurriedly try to rebalance them all in 4 weeks, and then stuff them back in. So, this will be a staged process, one that we will continue to work on over the releases following 1.5. This will allow us to see how things play out in the game, get community feedback and incorporate that information in to the ongoing work. Ok, here goes…

THE GOAL

Make vehicles fun.

THE PLAN

The goal is a simple one. The plan, however, is somewhat more intricate and will be implemented in a number of stages over the coming days and weeks:

Remove “noise” so that we can focus on the core archetypes.
Right now there are simply too many things doing too much all at once. Module offerings will be streamlined to just the most necessary archetypes. Once we’ve established a solid foundation we’ll start to introduce types and build back out. Similarly, vehicle roles will be reduced and then re-implemented properly once the base interactions are working well. Skill bonuses will be adjusted.

Rebuild with a clear combat philosophy in mind.
There are a number of issues with vehicle combat at the moment, but most of these are symptomatic of a bigger issue: vehicles have no clear role on the battlefield. Vehicles need to be powerful, but not overpowered. They need to be vulnerable, but not weak. They’ve been all of these things at various points in DUST’s development, but they’ve never quite found their niche. We hope to correct that by:

Make base vehicles susceptible. An unfitted vehicle is little more than a weak hull. Base HP does not make a vehicle powerful. Only through fitting can a vehicle become a true threat on the battlefield.
Active vs. passive modules. There will be a far greater emphasis on active module use than ever before. The intent here is to create “waves of opportunity” that allow vehicles to be devastating… temporarily. Active modules will greatly enhance a vehicle’s attributes, but when they enter cooldown, the vehicle is left exposed and vulnerable to attack (more on this below). This back-and-forth allows infantry to engage vehicles, but do so knowing that the vehicle’s pilot has a short window in which he can drastically alter the outcome of any engagement.
Clear usage profiles for modules so players intuitively know and understand why it’s better to use a particular module or set of modules in a given situation.
Proper feedback so that it’s easier to understand what is happening (e.g. an HAV has activated shield hardeners) and how to counter it.
Turrets will now have finite ammunition. Vehicle vs. vehicle combat generally boils down to two vehicles parked opposite one another firing until someone pops. This is not fun. Finite ammunition allows us to make turrets more powerful while preventing them from being a constant threat; spam a target and eventually you will run out of ammo.

Expand
Once we’re confident we’ve gotten the base balance right we’ll start to add back in things we’ve removed as well as introduce new elements to the mix. Pilot dropsuits, improved roles, increased infantry and vehicle interplay, and new turret types for a start.

Active vs. Passive modules

We’re rebuilding everything with the idea that active modules will allow a vehicle to survive a single encounter, while passive modules increase its long-term surviveability across multiple encounters. Active modules will provide very significant bonuses, but once used their long recharge times leave a lone vehicle vulnerable to any follow-up attacks. Passive modules on the other hand provide permanent bonuses that are comparatively small. The breakdown is as follows:

Active

Large, temporary bonuses
High PG/CPU costs
Single encounter surviveability

Passive

Small, persistent bonuses
Comparatively low PG/CPU costs
Multiple encounter surviveability

Module Types

These are the modules that we’ll be focusing on in our first-pass rebalance:

Armor/Shield Hardeners (A): Massive, temporary reduction to damage received.
Used to survive short, high-DPS situations. Long cool down times discourage overuse.

Armor Plates / Shield Extenders (P): Small permanent HP increase
Increases long-term sustainability at the expense of the base hull’s inherent strength (shield recharge time in the case of shields and speed in the case of armor)

Shield Boosters (A): Instant, emergency use high HP restoration in the heat of battle. Ultra-long cool down times.
Last-ditch injection of HP and a kick-start to shield recharge.

Armor Repairers (P): Speed up HP recovery outside of combat
Used to make running repairs between battles (too slow to be of real use in the heat of battle)

Damage Amplifiers (A): Massive, temporary increase to damage dealt.
Used to “punch above your weight class” or to restore something like parity to the playing field when hardeners are used.

Ammo Cache (P): Increases the amount of on-board ammunition available to turrets.
Used to increase ammo capacity. Useful when not near a supply depot.

Armor vs. Shields

The low HP, constant regen rate of vehicle shields previously used offered no real pros/cons. Vehicles now have much higher shield recharge rates than before, but to compensate they also have higher shield recharge delays. When taking fire shields will not regenerate (not until the second wave of module types is introduced, at any rate) requiring players to use shield boosters to kick-start shields, retreat to safety or attempt to destroy all targets and recuperate in the lull that follows. The hope is that this change will offer a readily apparent trade-off between shields and armor that allows players to pick a playstyle that suits them while not overly favoring any particular one.

Shield
Low HP ceiling, fast regen, hit-and-run.
More shields increases shield regen delay.
Once depleted, shields take a long time to kick back in.

Armor
High HP ceiling, slow regen, stand-and-deliver.
More armor slows you down.
Armor has no native regen.

Turrets
As mentioned above, we’ll be adding ammunition to turrets.
Small turrets are no longer mandatory when fitting a vehicle. This should allow for more interesting vehicle setups than before.

I think that's enough for now! We're looking forward to hearing what you think [

]

CCP Wolfman

Very interesting direction they're taking vehicles. I hope this winds up making them more like EVE ships with capacitors, burst tanking, and better logistics modules.

**Sol-Blackguy** · 2013-09-06 03:07

Anyone enjoying CoD 514 with the overzealous aim bot?

**Cantih** · 2013-09-06 04:57

Too busy with XIV. Downloaded the update, but haven't played yet.

And I never use assist anyway, so wouldn't know personally.

**Sol-Blackguy** · 2013-09-06 18:39

I might wind up joining you. Dust is another update away from being entirely turn-based now. Just look at this aim bot action it's complete bullshit. Make sure you watch the whole video too. The computer literally adjusts the player's aim for him:

**takeDat** · 2013-09-06 20:48

Not happy about three auto aim myself...way to drastic

**Sol-Blackguy** · 2013-09-07 20:45

Tried out an Exile on my stacked damage mod armor tanking fit. Aim-assist turned on.
22/3
15/1
17/4
19/0

I have 0 SP invested in ARs and should not be getting these numbers. My only deaths were from grenades and snipers.

**Brill Weave** · 2013-09-07 22:01

I tried. I can't get into this game at all. It's a shitty CoD clone that has a massive disparity between the haves and the have nots.

**Sol-Blackguy** · 2013-09-07 22:35

Originally Posted by Brill Weave

I tried. I can't get into this game at all. It's a shitty CoD clone that has a massive disparity between the haves and the have nots.

Yeah, I don't blame you. At this point, I'd gain more from playing BLOPS2 since everything that made this game different has been stripped away. I'd go back to EVE, but I don't want to give CCP my money anymore...

**takeDat** · 2013-09-11 19:32

Rage uninstalled today...been playing since closed beta and on my main character I am being downed by militia assault rifles while people sit on top of my exploding grenades and take zero damage. I'll find a real shooter to play.

**Brill Weave** · 2013-09-12 07:15

Originally Posted by Sol-Blackguy

Yeah, I don't blame you. At this point, I'd gain more from playing BLOPS2 since everything that made this game different has been stripped away. I'd go back to EVE, but I don't want to give CCP my money anymore...

At least with Blops there's a level playing field. I refuse to spend actual money in order to be competitive in a game. That's not why I play. And to be honest if your game is set up so that people who spend money end up being more successful then it's functionally broken. I know, I know, pay to win etc. But if you want people to get on board with your game at least make it easy for them to do so. Place level restrictions like CoD does on certain game types.

Hell it's basically CoD now it's not like it would be that difficult. Wait until someone is level 10 then turn them loose in the main matchmaking pool. If you're ending matches going 4 - 198 what's the incentive to continue playing? I run around with my sad little assault rifle and get shot by the black hole gun of doom where I really had no chance to begin with. At least with a separate matchmaking system for the nubbins people like me could get a feel for the game and it's mechanics before getting endlessly slaughtered.

**BaneTheBrawler** · 2013-09-12 13:17

Originally Posted by Brill Weave

nubbins people like me could get a feel for the game and it's mechanics before getting endlessly slaughtered.

The above is pretty much what makes CCP tick. EVE players like to throw around that learning curve picture, where EVE's is actually a cliff covered in corpses. That's pretty accurate. Unfortunately, I don't think CCP will catch on to the fact that that doesn't work in a game like DUST until it's too late (it's already too late).

**Sol-Blackguy** · 2013-09-12 22:09

Originally Posted by Brill Weave

At least with Blops there's a level playing field. I refuse to spend actual money in order to be competitive in a game. That's not why I play. And to be honest if your game is set up so that people who spend money end up being more successful then it's functionally broken. I know, I know, pay to win etc. But if you want people to get on board with your game at least make it easy for them to do so. Place level restrictions like CoD does on certain game types.

Hell it's basically CoD now it's not like it would be that difficult. Wait until someone is level 10 then turn them loose in the main matchmaking pool. If you're ending matches going 4 - 198 what's the incentive to continue playing? I run around with my sad little assault rifle and get shot by the black hole gun of doom where I really had no chance to begin with. At least with a separate matchmaking system for the nubbins people like me could get a feel for the game and it's mechanics before getting endlessly slaughtered.

You don't need to spend money to have an advantage, you never did. One thing I'll always defend about Dust (until they fuck that up too) is that it was never P2W. But like you said, match making is a huge deal and they sat there and ignored it during alpha, during beta, and now that they have it in for release and a goddamned aim bot, it's too late. Your tech should give you a slight edge but the way things are balanced now all you need to do is hip fire from across the map since hit boxes are bigger than my ex-wife's ass.
It's a shame really, this game could've been something but CCP decided to sell out to the casuals...

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