Haven't updated this blog due to being sick as a dog to the extent I've been having fever dreams of a Dust 514/Firefall mixture. I think it wound up being something like the Defiance video game but with a sexier GUI.
At any rate, this edition (while I'm dosed up on Codeine) is based on the new player experience as it currently stands. Obviously this is a temporary thing according to CCP Grayscale but new players are getting sent out of the Instant Battle Academy at 400 WP, this is literally one game even for some of the worst players and considering all you have to do to amass that is get 20 kills or hack 4 objectives, it's easy to get past the limit.
So, with that in mind I probably did something really stupid and came up with thread on E-Bushido and how I personally am not going to fire on starter fits (Assault - Frontline, for example) as it's not really giving new players an opportunity if they're just getting their ass handed to them by someone with 18,000,000 SP. There was a great deal of mixed reaction but what surprised me the most is that there were players actually saying that it's teaching them bad habits.
I'm sitting here thinking to myself, "What the hell kind of bad habits could that possibly teach a new player? Are we considering actually leaving the Red Line and not AFK camping the MCC to be bad habits?" Of course, there is the fact that these players are all from PC capable corporations so honestly I feel their opinion is moot - wanting to kill new players just so they can rack up their KDR and feel like they're some kind of shooter god.
But this isn't good for the game's health by any means. New players don't have the tools they need to make conscious decisions to be able to fight back and potentially do really good - I've even heard of new players becoming frustrated because a veteran's shields recharge faster than they can apply damage due to stacked regulators and the math makes sense being as a Caldari Assault can potentially have a 1.5-2.0 second recharge delay. This essentially means that they'd be able to recover shield HP before you've even finished reloading as a new player.
The only weapon(s) in the game that even classify as something a new player can use effectively against veterans are the Mass Driver and the Plasma Cannon as they're very similar to the aptly named "noob tube" in the Call of Duty franchise but they also require just as much skill as any other weapon. Despite this, if they're dropping that much SP into a weapon such as that just to stay competitive they're probably not putting much SP into their survivability.
What it all boils down to is that new players can't apply as much damage or be able to take as much as a veteran who is going to have both of those aspects locked down around the 10,000,000 SP mark. While segregated new players from veterans is a bad thing there isn't any other way for them to have the tools they need to stay competitive until they have a lot of SP and the only way they can get it (without something like PvE) is if they ARE segregated into their own little area of the game. Otherwise, they're just going to keep getting slaughtered on a game that isn't difficult, it's just punishing.
For more information, see these videos that explain the balance of skill and power as well as explain the difference between a difficult and a punishing game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toVNkuCELpU
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