I think dust is having growing pains nothing more. Well that and people projecting feeling as fact.

Bottom line is that dust has a 10 year dev plan and was announced before open beta of which I started day one and had done my homework on dust 3 months beforehand.

Not bothered or worried.

the part-timers have left. the hardcore have stayed.

A 10 year plan that includes several key leaders leaving (who have not been replaced to date), including the Executive Producer, and several complete changes to the development focus and schedule? No, there is no 10 year plan. There may be a 10 year budget, tons of ideas for features, but the plan is gone, even being generous by assuming it existed in the first place.

Dust 514 = Hovering ~3000 players average, which is damn good for a FTP game.

Dust 514 Forums = Cutting their inner thighs with razors while listening to Linkin Park.

True.

I do know about the people getting fired though but that isn't actually an issue, they were probably dead weight in many respects.

Did you just call the EP dead weight? Do you even know what that job entails?

What do you base your opinion on, facts and sources please.

It's not an opinion, those are the facts... do you even know the difference?

The development has changed radically several times in cadence, focus, and methods multiple times as direct responses to critical reception. Each time with a "bear with us as we do something new". This is not following a plan, it is the antithesis of long term planning to continually throw out the plan and start using a new one. It is crisis management, which tells of a complete lack of self awareness of the quality of their shipped features.

Several key personnel left, and to date no revealed replacements. The EP leaving is especially telling, he/she is essentially the "word of god" on what goes in the game, how it is balanced and monetized, and creating all high-level plans short and long term. Monetization especially has been one of the worst managed aspects of DUST. Even if you appreciate the gameplay, CCP has no intention or capability of running DUST as at a loss indefinitely. Uprising was the revelation that SP was how they intended to make their money. A short term solution, because the more SP you have, the less value a booster presents, and sales taper. Boosters falling off the top sellers list actually reveals there is NOT the necessary fresh blood to maintain sales.

On the EP note, boo hoo, they have other producers and one of those will get promoted once a decision is made. If any of the people getting fired made any real impact there'd be no patches, since those people got fired we are getting updates a lot quicker, funny that.

It's not an opinion, those are the facts... do you even know the difference?

The development has changed radically several times in cadence, focus, and methods multiple times as direct responses to critical reception. Each time with a "bear with us as we do something new". This is not following a plan, it is the antithesis of long term planning to continually throw out the plan and start using a new one. It is crisis management, which tells of a complete lack of self awareness of the quality of their shipped features.

Several key personnel left, and to date no revealed replacements. The EP leaving is especially telling, he/she is essentially the "word of god" on what goes in the game, how it is balanced and monetized, and creating all high-level plans short and long term. Monetization especially has been one of the worst managed aspects of DUST. Even if you appreciate the gameplay, CCP has no intention or capability of running DUST as at a loss indefinitely. Uprising was the revelation that SP was how they intended to make their money. A short term solution, because the more SP you have, the less value a booster presents, and sales taper. Boosters falling off the top sellers list actually reveals there is NOT the necessary fresh blood to maintain sales.

I'll ask you again, facts and sources please.

I'm sorry but I'd actually have to be an idiot to just take what you say, especially off a game forum, I hope you understand.

lol?

1.5 is what? Fixes to fixes basically, with minor "new" improvements coming from the team that's mainly in charge of PC mechanics. Firing people had NOTHING to do with how often updates are coming lol...what a short sighted, ignorant view.

Not at all.

For me the punchline is that in spite of all the trials and tribulations we've seen in the development of DUST - there have been too many - i think real good has come of it.

Specifically, the decisions and prioritization we seen in patches 1.3 and onwards are bang on in terms of my personal list of high-priority areas that were holding the game back.

The approach so far is logical and foundation-building, starting with emergency repairs and moving on to filling in the infrastructure and adding only leveragable content. I'm feeling a lot more secure about DUST's future than before 1.3.

With core mechanics finally in a working(but not elegant) state, new player retention should be seen to grow slowly and steadily from the release date of 1.4 onwards.

If CCP's treatment of the NPE in 1.5 works, that slow rate should tick up a wee bit. Once we get to ~8,000 the matchmaker should have enough bodies to do its job properly, and player's experiences in pubs should improve noticeably. At that point our growth should be steady, new consoles and shiny new games notwithstanding.

In terms of timeline this should take us to the New Year, roughly at build 1.7, and we should be starting to see some serious content and the the connection to EVE starting to open up.

I'm genuinely curious: what makes playing DUST "hardcore"?

im pretty sure the hardcore ppl are the ones that left
cant sit and tell me some of these corps remaining on this game are hardcore thats a sick joke

For your own sake, don't set your hopes so high. The CPM and CSM required an emergency additional session with CCP at their last meeting because the roadmap of the future of integration was universally panned. Of note it was too insignificant for even the EVE players who look down on DUST.

CCP have been flailing about with Dust 514 since the beginning. There's clearly little to no long term growth plan, and it's obvious that the playerbase is becoming fatigued with their complete and utter lack of direction and inability to follow through with basic promises about the game. They came in thinking they could develop a game for an aging console at the end of it's life cycle the same way they develop for PC and it's biting them in the ass.

They made promise after promise about feature after feature and have only manage to implement what 2% of the game they tried to sell us 2 years ago?

It's been almost 2 years since the start of the beta, and we've still got a bare bones lobby shooter with less than 6 (half-ass designed) maps, 16 vs 16 gameplay, half the suits (and less meaningful customization than CoD), no meaningful interaction with EVE online, only 2 extremely uninteresting and unimaginative game modes... man, when you start listing this stuff out it gets depressing.

Any more, they've failed so many times to follow through with their plans and announcements, most people who've been around for awhile aren't even phased when they announce something new they're working on. People just assume "yeah, that'll probably never happen." CCP can no longer rest on telling us about the gum drops and sugar plum fairies of Future Dust 514 that they dream about at night in bed. They've got to actually start delivering actual content. At this point, the entire game is roughly equivalent to a DLC pack for most other games, and it's so far removed from the game CCP pretend like it is that it's comical.

In conclusion, the game is dying a slow agonizing death.

im still here mavado lol but i do admit the game is meh now