DUST 514: The Dark Side of 1.4

Before I continue with my DUST tutorial, it would be remiss of me not to mention some of the things that don't endear me to the game, now at version 1.4. Despite the fact that I've been playing for all of a month (or maybe because of it), I have definitely formed some very strong opinions about things that I see as just plain wrong about the game.

Matchmaking

This is the single biggest problem with DUST. Current matchmaking results in heavily unbalanced team matchups and lead to something called "Proto-stomping."

Proto-stomping occurs when players who have been playing this game the longest (many from the original closed betas last summer) come online with their best prototype dropsuits and weapons and just stomp the shit out of the other team. As near as I can tell, this happens because DUST's matchmaking wasn't taking into account the total "attack power" of a team prior to the most recent 1.4 patch.

Post-patch, Scotty (the new matchmaking AI) still has a lot of bugs and issues. While Scotty now appears to be trying to balance out teams by their hitting power, this is occurring on a team based level - which in my opinion doesn't offer enough granularity. You can have a whole team of people equipped in average equipment paired up with a team full of people with low end equipment and one proto-equipped squad. That proto-equipped team will likely still murder you.

As a beginner player, if you get placed into a team where many people are running advanced and proto gear, you're likely to also get killed repeatedly as the team on the other side will have many players you just can't kill. Let's not forget the arbitrary 1500 War Point cap for beginner players to be promoted out of Academy (training grounds) into the general populace. I see this as perhaps the single biggest reason for proto-stomping. People proto-stomp because they can get a lot of points from easy kills to keep leveling up their characters.

As I see it, the only way matchmaking can be fixed is for the AI to gain greater granularity all around. Instead of matching up teams by total attack power, they need to make sure that each side is balanced down to the individual player level. Proto teams should be matched up against other proto teams and they can have at it. I think less people will be tempted to proto-stomp (due to the ISK cost of the equipment involved) when they know they are likely to incur a huge financial risk by playing this way.

Next, I think that points gained in battle should be relative to the player. If you are in proto gear and kill a newbie you should get less points because it was an easy kill. But if you get killed by a newbie in proto gear, the newbie should get more points because you're worth more. This will also dissuade proto-stomping because people in proto-gear won't be able to quickly grind points by preying on weaker players.

Finally, I think that new players need to be able to remain in Academy far longer than the 1500 War Point cap. I think that number should be closer to 20000 minimum or perhaps have a time limit such as a few weeks in Academy matches. This gives players a chance to learn the intricacies of the game and continue to be competitive against other people that are similarly matched in gear and ability. New players should be given an option to play in Academy matches or venture out into the general populace as they see fit.

Vehicular Manslaughter
 

One of the biggest complaints prior to the 1.4 patch was what was commonly referred to as "murder-taxis." Murder-taxis are LAVs, basically jeeps, that are driven around by players and used to hit other players for kills. In my 30 days of playing, I've seen players rack up ridiculous numbers of kills per game many times in the 20's and up mainly by driving around in a jeep. Get a clue! DUST is a FIRST PERSON SHOOTER, not GTA on steroids!

Post 1.4, the effect of the murder-taxi has been toned down a bit. Where you used to be able to kill people at almost any speed by hitting them, now murder-taxis need to be traveling at full speed in order to kill. While this is a big improvement, it doesn't go far enough in my view.

What happens to a moving vehicle when they hit a man sized object at speed? They get totaled - that's what happens in the real world. These murder-taxis are hitting players in armored and shielded dropsuits. You'd think they should take a lot more damage than what they are taking now. I have no issue if you get killed being run over by a tank, because that makes sense. But getting killed by a LAV and then watching that jeep merrily drive away makes my blood boil.

I will state the obvious again: DUST is primarily a shooter and people should play it that way. LAV's are support vehicles, and they should be used to support other ground vehicles and provide fast ground transport for troops. If a player decides to hit an armored and shielded opponent, the LAV should take the appropriate amount of damage based on speed of impact, up to the point where a full speed hit on a single player could possibly total the LAV. Again this should dissuade people from driving their way through a shooting game.

WMDs

Being a shooter, DUST will basically survive or fail based on the balancing of the various weapons available to players. Post 1.4, there are issues with two weapons: Mass Drivers and Laser rifles. Prior to the 1.4 patch, laser rifles had iron sights and were not nearly as powerful as they are now post 1.4. Now, you get a nice laser dot that tells you where your shot will land, and the power of laser rifles has been amped up.

My main character is running an advanced medium assault suit. It has just over 400 points in armor and 160 shields. I find myself getting killed with about a half-dozen on target hits by laser rifles. That just doesn't feel right. I have two starter characters in basic suits and they get killed with about 3 decent hits! If you make the laser rifle easier to hit with, you should reduce the damage so it takes more hits to kill.

Another weapon that continues to grief all current players are mass drivers. They are basically grenade launchers. However, in their current form they might as well be highly mobile tank turrets. The cycle rate, ammo count and splash damage combine to allow basically one player in a strategic location to wipe out entire squads.

I don't mind the splash damage because grenades do splash damage, I can live with that. If you take a direct hit from a grenade you die. But I can't live with the fact that you can plaster an area with about 2 mass driver shots per second. It doesn't take much skill to kill with a mass driver, and the current setup allows a player running a mass driver to rack up a lot of kills very quickly.

In my opinion, they should reduce the cycle rate to about 1/2 to 1/3 what it is now, reduce the ammo count and also increase loading times for the weapons in order to balance them out. These restrictions will ensure that you will actually need more skill to kill with this weapon rather than being able to kill by taking pot shots at other players.

There are other issues and bugs, but they are understandable given that the game is provided free of charge and that it is continually being patched, changed and hopefully improved. Despite these concerns and my personal play experience, I have generally enjoyed this game. It is my hope that CCP do a better job listening to the concerns of players and dealing with them in a timely manner. 

Time in a Bottle

 I'll be back! (and other famous last words)

General Douglas MacArthur makes good on his promise to return to the Philippines during WWII

I return to my orphaned blog nearly two years to the day since my last post. At the time I had big plans for content and updates, mainly because of my own personal interests with regards to gaming and tech and specifically because I had a lot of time on my hands. I had always been a super-consumer of tech and gaming news, and I felt that I also had something positive I could contribute back to the the community in this regard.

I launched the blog with the intention that it would be my little corner of the web where I could occasionally climb up on my soapbox and talk about things that mattered to me and may also be of interest to a wider audience in general. I would post what I felt were newsworthy items, provide some analysis or commentary, and talk about games and tech. Although I only managed to squeak past a dozen posts, what is present is a good representation of the vision I had for my blog.

Then, REAL LIFE (tm) caught up with me and, well, we know the old saying about the best laid plans...

 

A blast from the past

Last night I had spent the better part of an hour revisiting my original posts and discovered that they made for a good time capsule. The posts covered a very short period of time, and they had captured what in my mind were newsworthy or discussion worthy items of the period in question. The intervening two years neatly encapsulated these posts and allowed me to view them with 20/20 hindsight.

In the quickly changing technology and gaming landscape, industry observers and pundits  alike have a hard time making predictions based on current trends with any amount of accuracy even months out, much less for a period of years. What I found most interesting about some of my posts, was how prophetic some of them actually turned out to be.

The next next-gen

On the matter of next-gen hardware, I think I got most of it right - much to my surprise. Back in 2011, much of the gaming press was still casting about trying to figure out when the next, next-gen was going to arrive. Estimates ranged from holiday 2012 all the way up to 2017. In my commentary and analysis of Nintendo's Wii-U, I predicted that both Microsoft's and Sony's next-gen consoles would be out probably by 2013 and latest by 2014.

 

I was also spot on regarding the Wii-U's (mis)fortunes to date. Nintendo's Wii-U sales have been lackluster and it suffers from the same issues facing the previous generation Wii - lack of content from third parties and first party developers - which I predicted would be a problem for Nintendo. And now that Microsoft and Sony are launching real next-gen hardware with lots of content during their launch windows this holiday season, I see the Nintendo ship slowly sinking under its own weight.

It's all about the games

I started this blog with an initial post on the XCOM reboot by 2K Games. XCOM is a series very near and dear to my heart and to the hearts of many gamers now in their 30's and 40's. It was a simple game to grasp, but like any good game it was difficult to master. There was a lot of concern with the direction that 2K was taking this franchise and I put in my two cents worth on what I thought 2K needed to do to to make things right with the XCOM fanbase. 

At the time, there was a lot of concern that 2K was going to make a shooter with the XCOM license but not provide the game with the strategic and role-playing elements that made the original XCOM series a critical success. In the intervening two years, 2K has reworked the original concept into The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, due out next month.

The Evolution of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified courtesy IGN

Recent trailers during and after E3 show a very polished third person perspective shooter, but with strategic and role-play elements necessary for a proper XCOM branded game. While the focus has changed from being the overall commander to that of a battlefield commander, the inclusion of real-time shooter mechanics create a more frenetic and fast paced game with a sense of real urgency. If anything, the real-time battles are even more visceral and immediate.

We even got an updated turn-based XCOM from Firaxis which came out of left field to become one of the best games of 2012. The first time I heard of this development was well into 2012 and long after I had stopped blogging; but just the same, I'm very glad Firaxis was able to create a modern XCOM game for the current generation of gamers, many of whom knew nothing about this seminal franchise.

Firaxis' XCOM Enemy Unknown gameplay, a modern update to a seminal classic

Looking back, I'm really quite amazed at how relevant some of my posts still are, two years after they were made.

Demon's Souls Revisted

Demon's Souls is a very unforgiving RPG released on the PS3 back in 2009. It is extremely hardcore and has developed a small but rabid cult following, due mainly to the difficulty and the unique gameplay mechanics. Demon's Souls was created by Japan's FROM Software, the same company that makes the Armored Core giant robot combat games with a heavy RPG emphasis. Come to think of it, those games also have a difficult learning curve as well.

The reason I'm revisiting Demon's Souls is because of the recent interest generated by the announcement of a followup game, Dark Souls, which was shown at this year's E3. This was a surprise to many as the sales of Demon's Souls didn't break any records. It was a sleeper hit. However, this new IP developed a hardcore RPG fanbase, something which Sony needs to differentiate itself from Microsoft's Xbox 360.

The vast majority of people who played Demon's Souls back during its release found the difficulty so high that many just gave up from frustration. You die. A LOT. However, unlike other games, being dead doesn't mean you can't continue playing - you just play under different rules. Getting past the first few hours is really critical to surviving in the game and developing your character.

In fact, you die immediately after meeting your first boss following the short in-game tutorial. This is SUPPOSED to happen, because it brings you to the Nexus, which is sort of your hub for leveling your character, getting your weapons and armor fixed and/or upgraded and also buying necessary supplies.

The in game currency is souls, which is amassed from the enemies you kill. Souls are needed to purchase supplies from the various vendors you find in game. Learning magic spells and miracles will also cost you a lot of souls. However, unlike standard RPGs, you don't gain experience or level up right away during combat. Souls are also used to purchase stat increases and levels from a special NPC character in the Nexus. This makes souls a valuable commodity as you must choose how to use this very limited resource.

The first key to the game is learning how to fight. Frantic button mashing won't help you kill enemies; in fact it will do the exact opposite and get you killed. Unlike most modern day RPGs, Demon's Souls tracks stamina. Every action you take be it running, dodging, attacking or defending uses stamina. If your stamina is used up, even fairly weak monsters can kill you because you can't even lift your shield to defend or move out of the way by dodging.

Managing your stamina is very important, and it regenerates fairly quickly during short periods of inactivity. However, the same rules also apply to your enemies - meaning that after they go through their attacks, they also have short periods of vulnerability due to lowered stamina. Enemies have predictable attack patterns, so after a while you'll learn when to block, when to dodge and when to press the attack.

The other key is learning to block and dodge. Effectively targeting enemies and switching targets is key to blocking and eventually attacking. Also don't be afraid to dodge an attack as some especially strong enemies can drain your stamina from blocking just a few hits. This combat mechanic is quite realistic and provides for a more tactical combat experience. You really have to plan your attacks in order to succeed.

As mentioned before, dying in game doesn't mean you've lost. When you lose your body from death, you revert to soul form. Your hitpoints becomes half of what it is when in body form, but your attacks become a bit more powerful in soul form so you do a bit more damage. Dying in game also causes you to lose all the souls you've collected up to that point and creates a bloodstain. You restart the level you're on from the beginning and if you're able to get back to that bloodstain, you can reclaim the souls. If you die again, a new bloodstain is created and the souls trapped in the previous bloodstain are gone forever.

After entering the Nexus the first time in soul form, you only have one area you can access. You end up fighting in this area in soul form up to your encouter with the first boss in this area. You must defeat this boss in order to unlock a special NPC called The Maiden in Black. She is the one that you can purchase your levels and stat increases by trading in souls that you've collected.



Unlike other RPGs where NPCs critical to the continuation of the game are invulnerable, NPCs in Demon's Souls can be killed. If you kill a merchant or vendor, they will no longer be available to sell you goods. If you kill The Maiden in Black, you won't be able to level up your character. The game may seem rather harsh, but it basically imposes no artificial boundaries. You are free to do whatever you want, but you face the consequences of your actions or decisions, just like in the real world.

To regain your body, you must kill another boss, or have a magic item called Stone of Ephemeral Eyes. The stone can be found in various places in the levels and may be purchased from some vendors. Killing a boss demon will shift the world tendency to white. This makes all the enemies weaker and easier to kill but will provide fewer souls. However, dying in body form in the game will shift the world tendency to black which makes the enemies stronger and provides more souls when killed. Shifting the World Tendency to pure white or pure black will cause special events and NPCs to appear. In offline mode, only your actions will affect the world tendency.

Besides world tendency, there is also character tendency which affects difficulty and also provides extra content in pure white or pure black world tendency. Character tendency can be thought of as alignment or "karma." If you kill friendly NPCs you will move towards black. If you kill black phantoms that appear in the game, you will move towards white. Again special content or abilities are granted at pure white or pure black tendencies.

Character development in Demon's Souls is not limited in any way. You can build a character however you want, with whatever abilities suits your own combat preferences. For example, you could build a barbarian-mage, that has huge strength and stamina for close quarters fighting, but can also hit enemies with ranged magic attacks. If you prefer purely ranged combat, you could build a rogue-mage that can use bows and magic only.

With each level you gain, you are granted one point that you can assign to any of your stats. Each following level requires ever more souls to reach, so you have to choose how to increase your stats wisely to maximize the benefits of your fighting style. Each stat can be increased up to 99 points and you would need to be at level 712 to max out your stats.

You probably won't max out your stats during the first playthrough, so Demon's Souls has a feature called New Game + or NG+ for short. It allows you to use your current character with current stats, tendencies and equipment to play the game over again. However, enemy strength and difficulty scale with your character. NG+ allows you to play through and try different things, such as drastically changing your character and world tendencies, or killing certain NPCs for loot which you didn't do the first time around.

The online component of Demon's Souls is also quite unique and can be fraught with danger. As you connect to the world server, you find that you cannot explicitly alter world tendency. The world tendency in various areas of the game are calculated daily based on the aggregate tendencies of all player worlds online at that time. It is very difficult to have pure white or pure black world tendencies in an online game, so special events and content available in pure white and pure black world tendencies usually won't be available to you. If you want to experience pure black or white tendency worlds, you're best off playing offline by yourself.

As you play the game online you'll notice ghosts of other players in your game. You can't interact with these ghosts but you can observe what they are doing. These ghosts represent other players that are questing in the same area as you in their own instance of the game. You'll also see bloodstains from other players in your game.

Activating a bloodstain left by other players will create a playback event of the last 10 seconds or so of that player's actions prior to their death. Viewing these actions can give you clues or hints at what may be lying in wait for you just around the corner. Areas with lots of bloodstains would indicate an especially tough enemy or boss and could serve as a heads up for you.

You can also read and leave messages for other players in an online game. When you read a comment and you find it helpful, you can recommend it. Recommending a comment will give the player that left it a health boost every time a recommendation is left. Conversely, you can also leave your own message for others, which may lead to health boosts for you while you game.

In online mode, you can invite blue phantoms which are players that have placed a blue stone in different areas of a level. Activating these blue stones will transport that character into your game as a blue phantom. While it is possible to arrange to specifically game with a friend, it isn't easy to do. Usually, you must arrange beforehand where one of you will leave your blue stone. You will want to place it in an out of the way area otherwise you may find it impossible to find your friend. Even then, that doesn't guarantee success. Blue phantoms gain souls while playing with you in co-op mode, which they take back to their own world when they leave or when you dismiss them.

Also, other players can invade your game as a black phantom, and kill you in PvP fashion to gain lots of souls. While you can control to some extent whether you want someone to co-op with you, you can't stop others from invading your world as a black phantom. Phantoms, when they invade, will be chosen from people with a similar level rating as yours. However, given the fact that you may freely develop your character as you see fit, the abilities of these phantoms can and probably will differ quite a bit from your own character.

Invading black phantoms will usually be well balanced fighter magic user classed characters. They can wear out enemies with ranged magic attacks and then move in for the kill using close quarters combat. So while you are free to develop your character any way you like, be aware that unless you have a good defense against this type of character, you will be killed more often than not by invading black phantoms.

You may find that you might want to experiment and play with different online and offline characters to address this issue. As you develop your character you too can use blue and black stones to offer your services to other players or to also invade another players' games to kill them in PvP combat.

Demon's Souls is an incredibly difficult game, especially at the outset. The in game tutorial doesn't do much beyond providing you with the very basics of gameplay before pressing you headlong into an unforgiving environment. The instruction manual is useless for the most part. You are better off finding online resources such as the Demon's Souls Wiki or have a read through an online guide, such as this: 1up Demon's Souls Strategy Guide and Walkthrough.

Having said that, if you gave up in frustration before - have a second look. If you've never played the game before, go and pick it up as you should be able to find it cheap. The game offers at least 100-200 hours of gameplay and increases replayability with NG+ mode. Unique offline and online modes round out the interesting mechanics. Demon's Souls can be an incredibly gratifying game as you feel a very real sense of achievement as you slowly progress through the game. With a bit of persistence and perseverence, this may become one of your all time favorite modern RPGs.

NGP morphs into PS Vita at E3

Sony's E3 conference gave birth to the new branding for NGP. It's now called the PS Vita. I can't help but think that Sony must be using the same guys Nintendo used to name the Wii U. In fact, I get visions of Dragonball dancing in my head as I just finished watching the original Dragonball anime and am now about 20 episodes into Dragonball Z. Kakarrot! Raditz! Vegeta! Vita! 

Stupid name aside, the new Playstation Portable (I refuse to call it Vita) looks to be a very capable piece of hardware. It features dual analog controls which allows for shooters to finally get the proper control scheme on a portable platform. Also included were dual touchscreens one each on the front and rear of the device with Sony showing off unique ways to interact with them. Also announced were WIFI and WIFI + 3G variants as this device will be more firmly tied to Sony's Online portal (for better or worse). UMDs will not be supported and the only way to get content would by purchasing them from the Playstation Store.

However, what Sony really stressed were the next-gen graphics capabilities and the very capable OLED screen used as the primary display. Sony claims their new portable will offer PS3-like graphics in a portable device... claims which aren't too far from the truth. A demo of Uncharted for the new portable wowed the E3 audience. However, given the obvious technical wizardy packed into the new handheld, I have to wonder what the battery life will be like. If Sony can manage 6-7 hours or more like on the current PSP's that would be great, but if it slides into 3DS territory, then you lose much of the advantage of a portable system.

It was clear Sony came out swinging for the fences. Their only real competition in the portable space has been Nintendo's wildly successful DS series of handhelds. Pricing for the WIFI unit was announced to be USD 249 while the WIFI + 3G unit would be priced higher at USD 299. This is on par with the 3DS, which would give Sony a much needed leg up in it's battle to gain market share against Nintendo.

However, neither pricing nor the technical capabilities have been the key drivers for the success or lack thereof of the PSP platform. The original PSPs had always been more powerful than Nintendo's DS series. It's always been the games that mattered. There was a distinct lack of compelling titles for the PSP, most titles being ports from the PS and PS2 throughout most of it's lifecycle. Original and unique titles were few and far between with most of the best RPG experiences being Japanese only affairs which didn't find release in the US.

The PSP suffered from a lack of identity. Sony used the platform to create PS2 like experiences on a portable device, instead of creating unique experiences for the device playing to it's strengths as a portable. So the messaging that the new portable will offer PS3 like power in a portable format has me wondering. Has Sony learned from past history or are they doomed to repeat it? Some of the demos shown at the Sony press conference and in their E3 booth are a step in the right direction. Let's hope that Sony has finally learned that it's all about the games!