Vell0cet wrote:Moejoe Omnipotent wrote:Player count has flat-lined because mostly Eve players are left.
Dust has failed to appeal to its target audience. I think a lot of you have completely forgotten or have completely ignored what CCP's intentions were and who they were targeting with Dust. It wasn't most of you guys.
That may be, but notice how the EVE elements are the only thing keeping this game going? If CCP removed all of the RPG, suit fitting, ISK vs. risk, and connections to EVE this game would be horrible. CCP can't compete with AAA shooters with insane budgets , code that goes years back and has been improved over many versions that have been vetted/tweaked/polished by years of play. That style of pick-up-and-play meaningless FPS gameplay is saturated and done better by studios who have been doing FPS games for a long time. I can guarantee the CoD team isn't spending their time working out basic hit-detection issues like CCP has been.
For DUST to succeed, it needs to embrace its strengths, cater to RPG fans as a "thinking man's shooter." I can't stand other FPS games myself. It's spawn, kill, die, respawn, etc
ad nausium. You don't get the rush of playing with something to loose, or the thrill of taking down someone who was wearing an expensive fit, or a costly vehicle. You don't get the thrill of planning out how to maximize your ISK-efficiency in your cheap suits, or maximize your firepower/surviability/utility in your expensive fits. I actually think this game will draw in a huge following once the core is worked out, the missing content is in place, the matchmaker is fixed and we get a compelling NPE that let's new players see the potential and depth the game has to offer instead of running around cluelessly with ARs in starter fits.
The target market for DUST is the legions of console FPS players.
The peeps currently sticking with DUST
tends to be the pre-invested EVE crowd.
There's no dichotomy here, in the end DUST will have failed if it doesn't serve both markets, and serve them well. For the FPSer downloading the free shooter DUST has to be a decent free shooter - this is why we would be fools to ignore the core FPS aspects of the game. For the EVE-inspired players DUST has to be intimately connected to EVE so that New Eden can become the dynamic player-driven story that drives the high end gameplay in DUST.
And in between we need non-arbitrary gameplay and systems that are functionally embedded in New Eden and support the evolution of FPS players into fully-invested citizens of New Eden.
It's not either/or it's both, and since the pump that feeds the DUST engine is
retaining new FPS players, the only sensible way to build the game, the only way that will work, is from the core FPS priorities up. EVE players cannot save this game, only console FPSers can give us what we need.
Imo if we want those players to buy into the frustration, grind and hard knocks(not talking about the state of DUST, talking about life in a brutal virtual universe) that are part and parcel of life in New Eden, we have to give them a quality experience, and that means a quality FPS experience. That doesn't mean we need to be like every other FPS out there, but it does mean that DUST pubs have to deliver good gameplay, feature good controls, and be grounded in good FPS fundamentals.
There is no other way.