I’ve been avoiding talking about Uprising too much during this week-long “preview” of the new settings, waiting until I could get my hands on the new weapons and give them a try before writing anything. I will say that CCP did get a lot of things right within my sphere of game play (like being cloaked upon spawn, thank God. No more dying before my screen even loads), but did get a few things wrong. The graphics got a major boost with this new release, and despite a lot of aliasing along the horizon, the game looks a lot better. Every battleground isn’t a dirt pit anymore, with grass and small scrub now populating the area (though the scrub only renders within 20 meters of you, as if you’re some kind of plant deity with a green-thumb aura about you, causing plant life to spring up from the ground around you), and some things such as giant shipping containers don’t render at a distance, causing them to materialize out of thin air as you approach or look through a scope. The clouds of nanites created by nanohives got a graphic overhaul as well, becoming not as opaque, and the explosions of flux-grenades are a lot less sudden-blue-bubble, which looks a lot more ‘realistic’ (as advanced sci-fi tech can be), but doesn’t show you the diameter of the affected area anymore, which I sort of miss. Dead bodies are also a lot more ragdoll, causing them to slip and slide off edges and slopes, and less “sudden statue syndrome” that plagued them in Chromosome.
There was also a change to the aiming system and how it worked, the details of which I’m a little sketchy on. You have some people claiming that they’re having a hard time hitting anyone, and others claiming that it’s better than ever. I know that I’m certainly having trouble hitting people for the most part with the militia assault rifle (again, waiting on the scrambler, the Amarr loyalist that I am), but that might be less to do with the new aiming system and more to do with what I perceive to be an increase in the AR’s kick. Up close and personal I’ve had both great success and great failure with the scrambler pistol (a beauty of a weapon), but that’s likely more because of my own panicked shooting. On average, I’m complete shit up close. This is definitely one of the harder FPSs I’ve played aiming-wise, though I’m sure I just need to mess with the default settings and fine tune them.
With the reduction to the SP gained in Ambush matches, I’ve started to play mostly skirmish games. I found out early on that a good fit was the Anti-armor starter fit of a Swarm Launcher and Scrambler pistol, but I created my own variation with a bit more of a tank and a better pistol, the Assault Scrambler. With Skirmish matches taking place on larger battlefields, a lot of players call in the free LAVs to get around, and that’s where the Swarm Launcher comes in. A well placed swarm of missiles nets you a 90 war points with the kill of the vehicle and its driver. If you’re lucky, the LAV had an extra passenger or two. The new “Enforcer” class of HAVs have very low hit points, meant to be analogous to the fragile but hard-hitting sniper fits in EVE, and just a couple of swarm bunches can net you a nice 150 for the tank and another 50 for every player inside, including the driver. I am, however, a bit dismayed to see the loss of the 1.5x zoom on the launcher, which I think was very helpful in discriminating targets, as it can be hard to get the lock on the right target if you have two close together, and the only way I’ve found to unlock a target without firing the swarms is to look away. Even the “switch weapon” button fires the damn thing when you have a lock. For when the un-swarmable infantry come at me, I’ve got the trusty Assault Scrambler. I ain’t perfect, but I am getting quite just-above-adequate with it and finally (in this build, at least) showing that I do, in fact, have rather decent FPS skills. If there’s no vehicles to be found, then I’m running around in my shield-tanked advanced Amarrian medium frame (speed s arguably a lot more important in this game since “tracking” isn’t an algorithm, but player skill) armed with the militia AR and assault scrambler (of course).
Forge guns seem a lot more unwieldy to me now, though that may be working as intended, and I don’t think I’ll be putting any sp into them this time around. I’ll miss my assault forge gun and its quick application of damage (compared to other forge guns, at least).
Laser rifles have also been tampered with. The Viziam has been brought down from 20 dps to 15, making it equal to both the standard and advanced variants, except it doesn’t heat up as fast. I didn’t have a laser rifle overheat on me too much in Chromosome, and with almost all all Amarrian bonuses giving a heat reduction (it’s the laser capacitor use bonus of DUST), the Viziam is pretty much now just an overpriced copy of the base weapon. The beam has been changed from the yellow “standard crystal” color to a more bluish-grey color reminiscent of multifrequency, but also suffers from extreme aliasing and so looks terrible. I don’t see a lot of fights happening at the ranges that I did in Chromose either, and since the LR is terrible up close, I don’t want to skill into it just yet for fear that I’ll never be far enough away from an enemy to take advantage of the LR’s strengths. As such, I haven’t seen the LR’s new iron sights in game, but based upon what I’ve read in the forums, they must look worse than they did in the early preview videos.
One of the biggest complaints people have had, however, is the increase in needed sp for the more advanced gear. What used to cost just a few hundred thousand sp now costs a couple million, and I’m okay with that. CCP said that during the beta the skill tree would be a lot quicker to progress up so that players would be able to test all of the gear more quickly. I put most of my refunded sp into the core skills, granting me +25% shield and armor across the board and access to the advanced shield tanking modules instead of having a slimly fitted prototype specialization, and am only using the basic medium frames, and have plenty enough success to be happy with them. The fact that you can gain skill points actively by playing instead of having to rely on the passive sp gain for advancement still makes the DUST 514 skill tree a lot quicker to progress up than the EVE skill tree. The only major problem I have with the new skill system (post bug-fixing) is that there are still skills that are entirely just sp sinks, granting no bonus per level. There are very few of those types of skills in EVE, and I think it should be the same way in DUST, even if it’s a paltry +2% per level.
Now I wouldn’t be too much of an Amarrian loyalist if I didn’t mention the Amarr version of the logistics dropsuit. In DUST, the Amarr are weirdly not the big armor buffer tank enthusiasts that they are in EVE (it’s the Gallente now), but take a more Minmatar approach to tanking in that they are a “jack of all trades” tanker, usually having the same base armor and hp. The Amarrian logisuit on the other hand, is (like all logistics suits at the moment), made for armor tanking. It gets the +1 to armor repair rate per level bonus that all logisuits get, but then also gets a +2% efficacy to armor repair modules. Now, in DUST, the best armor repair module repairs at a constant 5hp/s (and as there is no capacitor in DUST, doesn’t run out), so at lvl 5 Amarrian Logistics, you’d get an extra half a point repaired every second. Now, 10.5hp/s total with one repper might sound like a lot (unless you’re an EVE player, where even a small repper averages 20hp/s), but that’s a whole .5hp/s more than another race running the same fit. To get any real benefit from it, you’d have to fit all lows with reppers, getting an extra 1.5hp/s over the competition for a total of 21.5hp/s, but being able to fit almost nothing else because of it. However, the Gallente logisuit, has 2 more low slots and thus could get 25hp/s total, making the Amarr logisuit’s bonus not look too great. The Amarr logisuit also has 1 less total slot (2 if you count equipment slots) than all the other races logisuits, with a 3/3 high/low slot layout, but gets a sidearm slot. I’m not sure if the sidearm slot really balances out the lack of a 7th slot and only 3 equipment slots compared to the other races’ 4, especially coupled with paltry .5 extra hp/s bonus. I guess it could be worse, however, and be the .3 seconds shaved off of reload time the Caldari assault suits get or the .5 second faster reload that the Heavies get (also Amarrian!).
That is the pre-official release review, and when the real thing hits PS3s on the 14th, I’ll be sure to play around with the new weapons (Scrambler Rifle, Plasma Cannon, Flaylock Pistol) even though I’ll realistically only use the SR. Still, the best way to know how to deal with an enemy-held weapon is to have some experience wielding it yourself. Hopefully, come the 14th, they’ll have smoothed over some of the rough edges from this preview and the whole game will be better for it.
A thing of beauty.
I played around with the Tactical Assault Rifle on my test character (my first character, who I unfortunately saddled with not one but two misspelled names) after seeing it in battle and learning that it was a semi-automatic, more accurate rifle with a 1.5x zoom on it. I certainly hope that the Scrambler Rifle comes in a tactical variation, as although my aim is still lacking in this game, the TAR is quite fun and deadly. The fact that it comes in a prototype Duvolle variant is just scary.
Accurate blaster fire - never a good thing.
Some of the issues I’ve seen with the new game are sluggish weapon switching (which has proved deadly on a few occasions), difficulty selecting equipment with the selection wheel, and some hit-detection issues. I once came across an enemy hacking a CRU and I pulled out my trusty ASP to put him down. From 5m away I lined the shots up on his head and not a one hit, but his knives certainly did once he heard me firing. The aforementioned Enforcer HAVs might be a little too weak, as I was able to basically solo one that was firing from his redline by driving up behind him in a LAV and jumping out to toss 3 AV grenades to kill him before the redline-timer killed me, not to mention the 2 hits from a militia swarm launcher that I mentioned before as well. Maybe the couple that I ran into were just undertanked HAVs, or maybe (as those on the forums have said), they are just too weak in general. I don’t know for sure, I’m not a tanker, I just know what happened with the ones I killed.
More jittery than Michael J. Fox
LAV physics have gotten a bit ridiculous, or maybe the vehicle needs a redesign, as it’s has a huge flip risk. At least they added the “flip vehicle” option for overturned vehicles so that there aren’t just upside down LAVs littering the field. They also apparently have excellent acceleration as I was able to go from 0 to instant death upon collision with an object 5 meters in front of me.
Forge guns seem a lot more unwieldy to me now, though that may be working as intended, and I don’t think I’ll be putting any sp into them this time around. I’ll miss my assault forge gun and its quick application of damage (compared to other forge guns, at least).
Laser rifles have also been tampered with. The Viziam has been brought down from 20 dps to 15, making it equal to both the standard and advanced variants, except it doesn’t heat up as fast. I didn’t have a laser rifle overheat on me too much in Chromosome, and with almost all all Amarrian bonuses giving a heat reduction (it’s the laser capacitor use bonus of DUST), the Viziam is pretty much now just an overpriced copy of the base weapon. The beam has been changed from the yellow “standard crystal” color to a more bluish-grey color reminiscent of multifrequency, but also suffers from extreme aliasing and so looks terrible. I don’t see a lot of fights happening at the ranges that I did in Chromose either, and since the LR is terrible up close, I don’t want to skill into it just yet for fear that I’ll never be far enough away from an enemy to take advantage of the LR’s strengths. As such, I haven’t seen the LR’s new iron sights in game, but based upon what I’ve read in the forums, they must look worse than they did in the early preview videos.
Just like in EVE, wise investment is a priority.
One of the biggest complaints people have had, however, is the increase in needed sp for the more advanced gear. What used to cost just a few hundred thousand sp now costs a couple million, and I’m okay with that. CCP said that during the beta the skill tree would be a lot quicker to progress up so that players would be able to test all of the gear more quickly. I put most of my refunded sp into the core skills, granting me +25% shield and armor across the board and access to the advanced shield tanking modules instead of having a slimly fitted prototype specialization, and am only using the basic medium frames, and have plenty enough success to be happy with them. The fact that you can gain skill points actively by playing instead of having to rely on the passive sp gain for advancement still makes the DUST 514 skill tree a lot quicker to progress up than the EVE skill tree. The only major problem I have with the new skill system (post bug-fixing) is that there are still skills that are entirely just sp sinks, granting no bonus per level. There are very few of those types of skills in EVE, and I think it should be the same way in DUST, even if it’s a paltry +2% per level.
Now I wouldn’t be too much of an Amarrian loyalist if I didn’t mention the Amarr version of the logistics dropsuit. In DUST, the Amarr are weirdly not the big armor buffer tank enthusiasts that they are in EVE (it’s the Gallente now), but take a more Minmatar approach to tanking in that they are a “jack of all trades” tanker, usually having the same base armor and hp. The Amarrian logisuit on the other hand, is (like all logistics suits at the moment), made for armor tanking. It gets the +1 to armor repair rate per level bonus that all logisuits get, but then also gets a +2% efficacy to armor repair modules. Now, in DUST, the best armor repair module repairs at a constant 5hp/s (and as there is no capacitor in DUST, doesn’t run out), so at lvl 5 Amarrian Logistics, you’d get an extra half a point repaired every second. Now, 10.5hp/s total with one repper might sound like a lot (unless you’re an EVE player, where even a small repper averages 20hp/s), but that’s a whole .5hp/s more than another race running the same fit. To get any real benefit from it, you’d have to fit all lows with reppers, getting an extra 1.5hp/s over the competition for a total of 21.5hp/s, but being able to fit almost nothing else because of it. However, the Gallente logisuit, has 2 more low slots and thus could get 25hp/s total, making the Amarr logisuit’s bonus not look too great. The Amarr logisuit also has 1 less total slot (2 if you count equipment slots) than all the other races logisuits, with a 3/3 high/low slot layout, but gets a sidearm slot. I’m not sure if the sidearm slot really balances out the lack of a 7th slot and only 3 equipment slots compared to the other races’ 4, especially coupled with paltry .5 extra hp/s bonus. I guess it could be worse, however, and be the .3 seconds shaved off of reload time the Caldari assault suits get or the .5 second faster reload that the Heavies get (also Amarrian!).
That is the pre-official release review, and when the real thing hits PS3s on the 14th, I’ll be sure to play around with the new weapons (Scrambler Rifle, Plasma Cannon, Flaylock Pistol) even though I’ll realistically only use the SR. Still, the best way to know how to deal with an enemy-held weapon is to have some experience wielding it yourself. Hopefully, come the 14th, they’ll have smoothed over some of the rough edges from this preview and the whole game will be better for it.
