Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Dust 514: Meaning crushed into a first person spread sheet manipulation program?

There's a weird see-saw of values in Dust 514. Maybe it applies to alot of PVP first person shooter games, I dunno.

But like being killed is supposed to be a big deal.

And yet even in a heavy suit you are essentially paper thin and will just pop at the slightest breeze of bullets (never mind how you'll get behind a corner but lag means you're actually still out in the open (ie, you started running behind cover maybe a half or quater a second latter than events seem to depict)).

So when it gets to the point where the other team (because they actually team up) keep blasting you and then they park a sniper over your side so you spawn, run out, then die anyway - well, what is it? Are we supposed to think it's a big deal to get killed? If so, it's so big a deal that actually it's just shit gameplay.

Or we retract - say it's not a big deal? Well then the whole thing becomes an esoteric exercise.

It's like it could really do with some in between ground, instead of being a hard binary between continuing and dead. Like maybe some kind of retreat option (maybe at a certain level of damage a retreat button becomes available) - it'd still count as a defeat inflicted by the other guy. But your character wouldn't have actually died - thus preserving the idea that continuing to live matters.

Maybe you'd say that respawning is like a retreat - but you are depicted as dying to do so.

Maybe you'd say it doesn't matter - except it does. Drain all the 'big deal' out of it and the whole thing is essentially a first person spread sheet manipulation program.

Oh wait, spread sheet manipulation....Eve....

Maybe you have a point....

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