Last week, we established that CCP wants Dust to have longevity and be a partner, rather than a subsidiary, of Eve Online in the New Eden universe.
Exactly what should CCP be doing in order to make these goals a reality, though? There's not much more to the equation of making Dust an equal-stakes partner in New Eden than integrating the two games more completely across the board. The more subtle problem CCP faces is guaranteeing D514's longevity. On that vector the two most important objectives have to be:
- Keep the Dust project financially viable in the short-term
- Maintain their core player base
With these two things accomplished CCP gain the time they need time to continue improving Dust which- make no mistake- is deep in the trenches of development. If CCP maintain their core without hemorrhaging ISKies, they will have a living, breathing community that new players can step into from day one. Meanwhile they can keep searching for the place where a more casual audience will give Dust a chance. "More casual" is misleading here- Dust 514 is the most hardcore shooter on the market.
Without that core of players New Eden's main draw completely vanishes. In the absence of a massive universe of people to influence and experience, Dust will always play third or fourth fiddle to mainstream FPS's.
The product of these goals has given us what Dust is today: A very rudimentary FPS with the deepest MMO experience in the FPSMMO genre. Call it cheerleading as you will, but up through Chromosome CCP were making the right calls for keeping up with their long term goals. Yes, it took several months without much core content to get Dust onto Tranquility, but without that connection the game would have practically zero factors keeping its core base even moderately interested. Two three-month-long update cycles wouldn't have been enough to salvage the mechanics into a realm beyond mediocre, but that time was just enough to make the final push transforming Dust's MMO experience into the best on PS3.
The most recent Uprising is where CCP lost focus. In particular, they lost sight of what it would take to maintain their core player base. After months and months of deepening the MMO experience of Dust, CCP had a virtual guarantee that the core wouldn't flock somewhere else for lack of social tools. It was finally time to nip and tuck the sub-par shooting as top priority. Sure, simultaneously releasing a small stream of content like PC, gear, maps, and game modes just makes sense to keep the AUR wheels rolling, but not so much as to tear resources away from mechanics improvements.
Uprising hit the spot dead on except that way too much emphasis was put on the content: suits, gear, and vehicles. Meanwhile the mechanics department actually took a step backwards! Combine that with even more mechanics issues running rampant in Planetary Conquest battles along with the inevitable snags of trying to introduce a system as complex as PC and you've got the recipe for disaster that has hit the core community as of late.
People seem to be referencing this graph a lot lately (props to Chribba):
It's definitely an interesting read. The real concern is that some of the players leaving in that downward trend used to be diehard Dust fanatics. More important is something like this:
I know it's a taboo thing to reference MAG, but oh shit I've already done it. MAG was a game that had almost the exact opposite feature set that Dust currently sports while still being an FPSMMO. It had crisp battle mechanics, but basic at best MMO features. Yet MAG kept an active core player base for two years with mere trickles of content and a $30-$60 price tag up front to boot.
To summarize all those pieces and parts, here's the conclusion to take away: FPS players have shown that they prefer a game where their bullets hit what they shoot from the 10 guns they have, rather than a game with 100 glitchy pieces of future tech...and CCP started going for the second one with Uprising. Fuck new suits, fuck new weapons, and fuck new vehicles if making those takes away from making the day-to-day environment playable.
Now there's a bit of a hot-button issue that I just danced around here that ties in quite nicely with that train of thought. Admittedly "hot-button" might be a bit off, considering. (shameless self-reference)
This is exactly what I was hoping to read on your blog, so kudos for that. I'm afraid that, while I'm not the type to keep playing an online FPS daily or even weekly for months/years, I am further held back on Dust by its relatively poor mechanics, and the downgrade taken in Uprising doesn't help.
ReplyDeleteI like the MMO nature of the beast, and getting to play with you helps a lot, both because you understand it and because I prefer playing online with a friend. That's an advantage I have that most prospective players lack, however.
Dust can be free to play, it can piggyback on Eve's shoulders for relevance while it improves, and it can have all the marketing it wants... But it can't last if too many people simply don't like to play it. This issue becomes all the more important as the PS4 is around the corner with its own batch of mechanically solid F2P FPS games, the least of which is Planetside 2 itself. Some of the Dust core are involved enough in the Eve politics to stick with it as long as it may run (and may that be long!), but the more casual players and even some of the disenfranchised core of the game may be quite tempted to flee if they can find an alternative where they, at the very least, simply have more fun.
Dust should be frustrating, but not for these reasons. It should frustrate politically, it should frustrate in the heat of a tight match, and it should frustrate a little in its learning curve. The one thing that should be unobtrusive is the mechanics themselves.
9.3/10 for you. c;