DUST Search - Announcement:Answering your DUST 514 and Project Legion concerns

Nemesis 888 wrote:

Meric Voyer wrote:

Pliny Eldritch wrote:

This... This is just stupid.

It's not like this is the first time a change in course from CCP has caused rage and drama, and it sure as &$^% won't be the last. What's sad is that it could have been different this time.

As a community, we're all on the same page with CCP about what Dust is lacking. Many of us also agree that the PS3 has started it's long slow slide to oblivion, and that investing massive resources into it is a waste. You could also probably get most of us to admit that the current Dust player base isn't big enough to justify serious ongoing investment.

Where things have gone wrong is CCP falling for one of the oldest logical fallacies in Software Engineering. When dealing with a large project that is not working, with no obvious or easy fixes, the answer that always feels easiest is to tear it down and start over.

It's also almost always the wrong answer.

Dust is broken. But it's still making money. People are playing it, and they're still paying to play it. CCP should take a page from Square Enix's successful reboot of FFXIV. For those unfamiliar, there are some real parallels between the first FFXIV's failure and Dust's current situation.

Instead of trying to keep Dust limping along on PS3 while trying to develop an entirely new game on PC, CCP should strongly consider putting Dust on life support now. Keep a couple of devs for critical balance and bug fixes, and give the community some tasty discounts to keep them paying and playing.

Use the freed-up devs to expedite a port of the then feature-frozen Dust from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4. Build for both PC and PS4 (as well as the XBone if MS is willing to play ball) simultaneously. It will take longer on the QA end, but if Epic has done their job properly with UE 4, the same code should run on both platforms. Doing both at once makes the Console/PC decision much less expensive in both money and time than porting later. Resist the temptation to do anything but get Dust running on the new systems.

Once Dust is playable on PS4 and PC, give PS3 Dust a Matrix Online style send-off. Instead of making people worry about their investments of time and Aurum and how they might transfer into a new game, make the PC and PS4 ports use the same character data.

Then start refactoring in all the Project Legion goodness, respeccing and resetting as needed - just like EVE's evolution.

^ Sensible solution. CCP has no sense though, so yeah....

Someone at CCP should hire this guy to be the Game Director for DUST/Legion.


Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 6 post(s)
Vargralor Mikramurka Shock Troop Minmatar Republic 42	Posted - 2014.05.07 04:26:00 - [1] - Quote Nemesis 888 wrote: Meric Voyer wrote: Pliny Eldritch wrote: This... This is just stupid. It's not like this is the first time a change in course from CCP has caused rage and drama, and it sure as &$^% won't be the last. What's sad is that it could have been different this time. As a community, we're all on the same page with CCP about what Dust is lacking. Many of us also agree that the PS3 has started it's long slow slide to oblivion, and that investing massive resources into it is a waste. You could also probably get most of us to admit that the current Dust player base isn't big enough to justify serious ongoing investment. Where things have gone wrong is CCP falling for one of the oldest logical fallacies in Software Engineering. When dealing with a large project that is not working, with no obvious or easy fixes, the answer that always feels easiest is to tear it down and start over. It's also almost always the wrong answer. Dust is broken. But it's still making money. People are playing it, and they're still paying to play it. CCP should take a page from Square Enix's successful reboot of FFXIV. For those unfamiliar, there are some real parallels between the first FFXIV's failure and Dust's current situation. Instead of trying to keep Dust limping along on PS3 while trying to develop an entirely new game on PC, CCP should strongly consider putting Dust on life support now. Keep a couple of devs for critical balance and bug fixes, and give the community some tasty discounts to keep them paying and playing. Use the freed-up devs to expedite a port of the then feature-frozen Dust from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4. Build for both PC and PS4 (as well as the XBone if MS is willing to play ball) simultaneously. It will take longer on the QA end, but if Epic has done their job properly with UE 4, the same code should run on both platforms. Doing both at once makes the Console/PC decision much less expensive in both money and time than porting later. Resist the temptation to do anything but get Dust running on the new systems. Once Dust is playable on PS4 and PC, give PS3 Dust a Matrix Online style send-off. Instead of making people worry about their investments of time and Aurum and how they might transfer into a new game, make the PC and PS4 ports use the same character data. Then start refactoring in all the Project Legion goodness, respeccing and resetting as needed - just like EVE's evolution. ^ Sensible solution. CCP has no sense though, so yeah.... Someone at CCP should hire this guy to be the Game Director for DUST/Legion. This would certainly be a good approach if Dust was a good starting point for developing Legion. Unfortunately, as pointed out in several of the Dev comments, changing Dust from what it is now (a lobby shooter) in to a sandbox environment integrated tightly with EVE (the stated eventual goal) is not simply a matter of patching in additional functionality. The entire underlying core of the game has to change. Once you start to look at it in that vein it does make more sense to start again and simply reuse components of Dust where possible. Let's look at battles for instance. Have a good think about what a sandbox playstyle really means. The current battle system would be an anomaly in the new world. The sort of thing used for tournaments and events. In a sandbox environment, two relatively balanced teams only match up against each other if someone f*cked up bigtime.