These are my goodbyes - this is my catharsis.(
Pretty version)
Just under 2 years ago, I heard about a game coming to consoles, that would be part of a GÇ£livingGÇ¥ universe, and with a life-span well beyond that of most games; A universe of consequence, intrigue and not-at-least persistence.
Sure, it was an online shooter, an FPS, a genre that I generally donGÇÖt play, but the notion that I could train to a specific skill-set and play in my own way, that it was a never-ending story written in-part by the players, that was enough for me to look beyond it being a much-loathed game-type.
A little over one-and-a-half year ago, I got my invite to the closed beta, to play this thing that should eventually be a grand experience: The MMOFPSRGP to end all MMOFSPRPGs.
Sure, it was a broken, and kind-of bland shooter...
Sure, it was an incomplete, and slightly misguided RPG experience...
Sure, it was an underwhelming, and GÇ£smallGÇ¥ MMO...
...but think of what it will be as content is added, scale is increased, bugs fixed, infrastructure is put in place, all as we move from one console generation to the next.
Investing into the game, buying Aurum to get some select items (blueprints and boosters) seemed logical. Buying a Dren package for a more complete set of blueprints is expensive, but long-term worth it. Playing the game for the next some years, having access to these will be useful, and giving CCP Games a bit of money for the current-and-future entertainment makes sense.
Open Beta arrived, and with it more players. Friends are encouraged to come and play, to try this wonderful experience; Game is still not impressive, and friends are rather underwhelmed, and move on to other games.
I help moderate an online community around DUST514, posting a bit of news, drum up some excitement about events.
The game is eventually released, and more content is released. Sure, it is still buggy and incomplete, but when measuring a gameGÇÖs life across many years, early issues are not too critical, and CCP Games move into a monthly release-cycle to ensure that things are improved quickly.
A CPM0 member tries to scold me for saying that the game is still in a Beta state and questioning the merchantability of the product. Obviously the game will never be finished, as CCP Games will continue to release incremental improvements for years to come.
Late last year I figured I can improve my own experience of the game, by adding my own expertise: Looking at fittings, calculating more data than is shown in-game and making a website where I could manage my characters, fittings, skills etc.
Sharing my prototyping with the community for feedback, I hear that they have been presented internally at CCP Games, used as argument for why they should release the DUST514 SDE and give players access to more information. We worked a bit with some from CCP Games to clarify what is needed and how, offering advice for free, and as the SDE is released, I open my pet-project (dust.thang.dk) to the general community.
Time and money gets invested in this; A separate website is opened (NewEden-Dev.com) by DUST514 and EVE players together, documentation for DUST514, the DUST514 SDE and 3rd Party Development is written, and an out-of-game group (Team Fairy DUST) is created for the purpose of collecting and sharing information (e.g. the Laser Rifle details released earlier this year).
Eventually CCP Games opened up the Historical Market Data endpoint for the EVE API, and I found that we could extract sales-numbers and historical pricing for DUST514 equipment. Work went into first collecting this data, and later presenting it (The TryHardinatorGäó, The Stomp-o-meterGäó). Various players started encouraging me to write more detailed posts about the numbers, both out of interest, but also
due to the dearth of information from CCP Games.
Sure, finding and analysing data takes time, writing articles with graphs, getting others to read copy, posting them and answering questions is all part of how I am now playing this game; being a community-service.
Digging through the data I even find bits and pieces that I decide to keep out of my reviews, areas that could be used negatively, all out of respect for CCP Games.
Uprising 1.7 causes some issues - stability, and my Playstation 3 starts acting strange. Reaching out, I find that IGÇÖm not alone in this, and as CCP Games is being quiet about it, I reach out to Sony.
A single message comes back from Sony:
The recommendation to uninstall DUST514, along with instructions on how to.