Dust 514

[Cantih]

The DUST portion of the CSM minutes are up, they start on page 112
http://community.eveonline.com/counc...ember_2012.pdf

As for people's reaction, we don't have an online count like EVE gives us yet, but Chribba set a API scraper and this is the character population and creation rate. http://dustboard.com/global If you be conservative and assume three characters per player, it's still 500k which is still nearly as big as EVE (and probably FFXI these days, which IS respectable for anything non-WoW/CoD). And the skill boosters and standard tier suit BPOs are the best sellers of the AUR items, so income is coming in to CCP.

Personally, I think development so far has been fine from what I've seen the past eight months I've been playing. But despite it being version 0.7 (and hopefully soon 0.8) I realize it's still really only half done.

As for people to play with, anyone on BG playing DUST (or EVE) should get on to the bluegartr chat channel (and speak up occasionally to make the box blink), for squadding and whatnot. I've only ever seen Tekki occasionally.

[Intervention]

Next time I'm on I'll add the channel, my play time right now is shot due to my work schedule. I'm lucky to get 2 ambush matches before passing out. But for sure I wouldn't mind squading up my logi or tank driver. Especially my tank, having competent peeps manning the turrets would be a huge benefit.

[Cantih]

There's going to be an event today, from 8am to 10am pacific time.
https://forums.dust514.com/default.a...515#post585515

If you find yourself on the State Peacekeepers side (press up on the D-pad to check), remember to sabotage your team by being useless!
(Or if you don't care about KDR, SA's Goons have discovered that by cooking a grenade in your hand and letting it blow (not throwing it however), will allow you to team kill if you're nearby someone. They're using it to crusade against snipers, but it can be used to effect here.)

Also, there's a minor update today that will alter the ambush spawn mechanics. Hopefully it will make that mode play better.

There was an IGN livestream of the game yesterday and they had CCP Pokethulu on for the hour. The only really new bit of info was that there would be an in-game event around either GDC, FanFest, PAX East, or E3, I cant exactly remember which. (Oh, and there's going to be a player gathering at GDC, though only EVE devs are going to be there, I need to stick that in the EVE thread.)
The next site doing this is going to be The Escapist http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...ve-in-Dust-514
If you are a member there, you have the chance to join their corp and play with them. Or if you're in another corp, you might want to get on the horn with your CEO or directors about taking one of the contracts and fighting against them.

Lastly, there's a threadnaught about Corps & Faction Warfare that CCP FoxFour got in on. If you want to see a bunch of talk on that system, you can have a look here https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=60795

[Cantih]

There's an event happening Friday, 6AM to 2PM PST
https://forums.dust514.com/default.a...422#post598422

THERE IS A REWARD THIS TIME!
http://i.imgur.com/V3WjqZ8.png
If it's like the Quafe event, it'll probably be 25 copies of a proto tier suit.

[Ziero]

EDIT: Oh, and if you want to play and hang with other BGers without going through making a corp, from the MQ hit select to bring up the chat. Scroll down through the tabs on the left until you reach Create/Join, and enter the channel name "bluegartr" (no quotes). It might be empty at times, but you can have multiple channels up, so better to have it there than not.

While I'm certainly not wanting for Squad Mates, I'll certainly join up with the BG channel for those times where I have rf1. This game is made for large group play...it just needs to give players access to it. I know the next build is supposed to bump things up to 6 per squad 24 v 24 matches, but until this game is full on MAG numbers, it's still growing imo.

Dropships

Dropship controls ARE asstastic. That said, if you get good with them you can have a CRAZY amount of control. I know some pilots in my Corps can literally fly through tunnels in the middle of large buildings and not touch a wall. Being a pilot isn't for everyone though and right now, it's more of a support role only good for transport and mobile spawning anyway.

LAVS

The starter LAV has some twitchy ass controls to it, but really, unless you build a strong LAV don't expect these to do anything besides get you from point A to point B. They're cheap and disposable quick transport, not something that will really affect a losing battle. And as someone who loves to focus on AV, they're really just free points for anyone who sees em coming.

Infantry

Infantry is the bread and butter of the game, but unless you're one of those monster gamers don't expect to be able to do much on your own. Especially if you're just starting out. There's tons of skills that need to be upgraded and improved before you're actually using a decent character, basic starter gear will get eaten alive by higher tier players. Unless you start getting good at the game that is. If you start learning maps, using attack routes, traveling in groups and getting good with your aim, then a Militia suit can be just as dangerous as a full Proto one. It's best to try and focus on core stats first, so that ALL your builds will be better overall, and work your way up from there.

Also, unless you have an AV weapon, don't even bother shooting at vehicles. If you're really worried about vehicles though, AV grenades can make short work of most of em and usually scare off a tank easy enough.

Tanks

Just having a tank won't make you the top player in a match, unless it's a hard core, suped up, well built tank, you'll just be a rolling target for AVers. A good tank will also have reliable infantry to help keep it going, from being an extra set of eyes or carrying a rep tool, to having someone who can take out Swarmers or shoot up enemy infantry that got way too close for comfort. I know it's usually infantry who takes me down when I go tank hunting as opposed to the tank actually shooting at me.

This game isn't very "Pick up and win" friendly. This is more of the old school FFXI style "grind to be badass" type of play. Once you get a grip on the mechanics and start thinking and running tactically, this game is a lot more fun. Right now we basically only have access to the lowest of the low types of game modes, the games made specifically for newbies to get their feet wet and nothing more. But until they add the modes made for dedicated hard core players to finally duke it out in, newbs will be curbed stomped left and right by Proto suits and Super tanks. Luckily, just having an active character puts you in a good position because even if you don't want to play until the game improves, you'll still be able to accrue SP for if and when you do jump back into things.

But the best thing you can do to get better at this game is to find people to play with. Corps will dominate Dust, just like they do in EVE or any other MMO.

[Sol-Blackguy]

The issue with LAVs is that nobody is using them correctly. Except for the guy in this video:

I've seen a handful of players that invested 100% of their points into LAVs and they run the higher tier models as infantry support with mobile Clone Reanimation Units built in. They can take one or two AV grenades before having to pull back, but for the most part can keep a squad in the fight for as long as possible while providing steady repair and decent support fire. The only issue you run into with this is some blueberry hijacking the damn thing and getting it blown up because they assume it's just another throw away transport. I'm actually hoping that once the full game is released we don't have infinite LAVs so players will take them more seriously. They can be a powerful asset on the field when used properly.

[Cantih]

Big news today, CCP is getting out details on how Planetary Conquest will work, and it will be in the next major patch (no date, but I'm assuming anytime just before fanfest to just after E3).

http://dust514.com/news/blog/2013/03...tary-conquest/
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Planetary_Conquest
https://forums.dust514.com/default.a...043#post617043

Also, there's an event happening RIGHT NOW, there's about an hour left. Remember, if you're on the Caldari side, fight to lose.

[Ziero]

....hot damn, THAT'S The game I was waiting for. They just need to keep upping the player count until it starts looking like a real all out War. Sad I missed out on the event though, I gotta try and keep up with these better.

[Cantih]

I manage it by using a certain link as my bookmark. At the top of the dust forum there's a tab, "Dev Posts", and it sends you here https://forums.dust514.com/default.a...ge=1&gmbadge=1
Every time I load up the site, that's the page I hit, so I'm always on top of important news I need to know. Plus it's in one of my bookmark folders that I hit "open all in tabs" daily.

[Sol-Blackguy]

So I finally have the core skills capped to the point that I can start to specialize into a specific role. I was going to go straight assault until I discovered how fun Logistics is. When you get into a team that understands the support role, Logis are absolute beasts with all the war points they earn their squad. Most skirmish matches I'm in, I get around 1500~2000WP without even firing my weapon. Along with that, there's a bunch of area denial that takes place. I lay mines on the field around common travel routes and collect kills from unsuspecting LAVs trying to zerg an objective.
Remote explosives are especially fun too. Lay a few down on captured objectives near a commonly hacked objective, detonate and watch the kills flow in. People tend to wise up so you have to be creative with where you lay them down at and take advantage of their 5m blast radius. Then there's the full demolitions side to it. Does the enemy keep taking a CRU near a neutral point too often? Then toss a few flux grenades at it, lay out some explosives and BOOM! Bonus points if you manage to get some free kills from people spawning in. So far I've gotten 5 kills in one press of a button.
Last but not least, there's the mass driver. I only have 3 levels in it so far, but this thing is an absolute beast in close/mid range combat or firing from above. I like how people will try to bunny hop away expecting to escape the obvious 3 dimensional blast radius only to get blown up anyway. I have weaponry at level 5 with dual complex damage mods and annihilate clusters of enemies. I can't imagine how deadly it'll be once I start maxing the proficiency.
I took a look at the Artificer starting class not too long ago and what really perplexed me was why the starter suit build started off with a sub machine gun of all things. Then I came across a guy from a pick up squad that used a Logi with the assault SMG. He must have been playing since closed beta and decided to max out SMG, Proficiency, Sidearm Sharpshooter/Proficiency, weaponry, and I think he might have had dual damage mods with the damage he was doing. Whenever he fired, all you would see is a cone of bullets followed by a pile of dead bodies like a heavy machine gun. I did the math and it looks like with the 40% range increase, you're only falling 5m~6m short of a HMG without any skills invested into sharpshooting. I might actually consider doing this one day, but it seems like more of a novelty and I still need to finish skilling up to use the logistics LAV with scanners and a portable CRU. (Which is going to take at least 2 months.)

-EDIT-
And to top things off, I just found out Logistics get a 10% hacking speed bonus!

TL;DR - The Logistics class is a secret badass.

[Sol-Blackguy]

Some video of the new glitch from today's patch:

[Cantih]

This is a pretty nasty one. I went for a full reinstall, but if you can wait for a proper fix, pressing down, wait, up, wait, circle, circle is your best bet to clear your screen.
You'll have no weapon though, so call in a LAV and practice your driving!

[Sol-Blackguy]

People have been getting disconnected randomly too. I didn't have a problem yesterday but I've been getting kicked 2-3 times in the middle of a game. But that might be an issue with PSN.

[Kiarax]

So is this game worth checking out at all as a solo player who doesn't play EVE? It looks pretty cool but from the sounds of it it's not really something you can just jump in to and start having fun.

[Sol-Blackguy]

So is this game worth checking out at all as a solo player who doesn't play EVE? It looks pretty cool but from the sounds of it it's not really something you can just jump in to and start having fun.

Yeah, it's kind of hard to describe and the stuff on YouTube only shows so much you can do. Best thing to do is hop in and try for yourself since it's free. If you're familiar with EVE's fitting and skill system you'll pretty much feel right at home on that side. Whether you like it or not, you'll have a character gaining passive SP to go back to whenever you might decide to come back without being too far behind everyone else.

[Intervention]

So is this game worth checking out at all as a solo player who doesn't play EVE? It looks pretty cool but from the sounds of it it's not really something you can just jump in to and start having fun.

I would say if you are decent fan of fps that you'll get into it no problem, no experience into EVE is really necessary. It's a easy pick up and play game, what gets really deep is the actual planning of your character. You do start off with a decent amount of points and have 3 character slots to play with. Most new players experiment with their first character and then focus for more specific builds for one of their other slots.

Oh ya its free too, so doesn't hurt to try.

[Kiarax]

Never played EVE but I am at least vaguely familiar with its skill system. Will look in to giving it a shot, thanks.

[Cantih]

If you haven't yet, remember to create your character using this link https://dust514.com/recruit/qssjbN/ to get some extra free stuff.

[Sol-Blackguy]

As much as I love this game, it also makes me rage at times. For example, Skirmish is my favorite battle mode since my proximity mines and bombs really shine. But it seems like I wind up getting surrounded to easily and once I go to respawn, I notice my entire team is either sniping on their own red line or inside the MCC waiting for the battle to be over so they can collect their isk and SP. The last straw was ~an hour ago when my team didn't even go in at all and I realized I was by myself again. I got on teamspeak and went on a 20 minute rant about how everyone on the red line should go back to offline games so they can hit the reset button when things go sour and stop wasting space for players that want to actually try. One of my teammates started crying and his dad got on to try and yell at me. I told him if my kids gave up on something so easily, I'd probably / my wrists because I wasn't doing my job as a father. These fucking blueberries made me lose my voice.

[takeDat]

Fantastically well done. As much as try not to rage out loud in game, when blueberries lame out I get so annoyed.