Thanks again for taking the time to reply. I know you're busy and having the respect for your players to address us directly is really awesome.

If I were running a smaller gaming studio trying to compete directly with powerhouses in my industry, I would be looking to find the existing competitive advantages of my team and product and build on those. The reality is you can't beat those studios on accessibility, polish, immersion, or PvE (they have huge campaigns with tons of scripted content and story lines). You're 100% right about the sandbox though. That and the depth of your skills and fittings along with the sense of loss that forces you to play your character like their life has value are the things that make your product so incredible (your artists are pretty amazing too).

I can assure you that we all want the player base to increase massively from what it is now. I believe there is a viable market for a better version of what DUST was supposed to be. I know there are a lot of players like myself who find most FPS games shallow and boring. Many of us are older, with limited free time and deeper pockets. I have to believe there is a way to tap into that market somehow and make a financially successful product. It's hard to believe that building/refining/improving on the successes of DUST isn't a better direction than gutting so much of it (the progression system) and starting from scratch. Would you at least consider an ISIS-like overlay over the existing EVE-style system as an alternative? Continue work on your proposals, but simultaneously explore alternatives?

I completely agree that the game needs to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible. I really don't understand why UI/UX improvements and a AAA tutorial can't bring accessibility to an improved version of the existing system. As someone who has studied UI design, one point that was repeatedly hammered into my brain was how critical the first launch experience is of a piece of software. I think you should get the tutorial team together and have them play a couple hours of Portal 1 (better yet, have the team watch someone who has never played it and take notes). That game did an absolutely amazing job of introducing players to foreign concepts, but it had personality, humor and flair that kept driving it forward. I think there's a lot you guys could take away from that game. The first Halo did an awesome job of this as well. It introduced radical concepts like the shield regeneration system but in a tutorial that got right into the action from the beginning. You go from a boring scene in a lab to having aliens board your ship with the power going out and fires everywhere. Now that's a way to grab a prospective customer and suck them in!



It sounds like you guys are way below your targets financially, and I can appreciate the difficulty this puts you in. You have access to the numbers and we obviously don't, so it's really hard to give feedback here. All I can say is that the existing model got me to spend more on DUST than any video game in my life (hell I bought a PS3 just to play DUST). I bought BPOs (including the DREN set and the Collector's Edition), as well as boosters (a bunch of Omegas). I never used an AUR suit (that wasn't a BPO) and was planning to sell the ones I got from the freebies, events, and thrown in with the BPO packs on the market once that came out. One of the big problems with AUR gear is that it's a bit like having the word "douchebag" tattooed onto your suit. For some reason, paying money for boosters and selling them in the market for ISK to buy normal suits doesn't feel as sleazy as using a 'I paid real money for this suit' Proto Amarr Assault Suit. Paying money shouldn't broadcast to other players that you've paid money like the naming of AUR gear does. Hopefully that's valuable feedback.