There is a point here, that I think covers both DUST and EVE. CCP has focused on making EVE a better spaceship game, and DUST a better shooting game. But EVE is a bad spaceship game and DUST is a bad shooting game. But what they both are, are good people games. They let people be who they would be in a magnified sense without laws. They let us play politician, soldier, and thief. Renegade and pirate.

CCP needs to stop focusing on making spaceship and shooting games, and focus on making people games. That's what they're the best at.

I'm sorry, but as far as DUST goes, that's just in your imagination. Having clan support doesn't suddenly make this game some in depth role playing experience where you can be who and what you want to be. You're just one of many (yet not nearly enough) faceless soldiers all running around doing the exact same thing, day in and day out.

The only reason anyone really "knows" anyone is because we've generally had the same tiny pool of players for 2 years and we just got familiar with everyone. The social aspects of this game are generally not any different than any other game when you get right down to it and ignore the parts that are born in your imagination.

The gameplay, IMO, is not nearly as bad as one might conclude from posts on these forums.

That said, the reason I'm still around are because of (a) my friends and corpmates, and (b) the competitive gameplay that PC allows.

The community is only a bit above average. I don't think it's much different from most FPS games I've played over the years, but the detailed nature of the game does cater to people of a bit higher intelligence than the average lobby shooter.

Also, I think the community is pretty good, but I don't really know. Does Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefield and... uh... all the other shooters, do they have forums?

The gameplay, IMO, is not nearly as bad as one might conclude from posts on these forums.

That said, the reason I'm still around are because of (a) my friends and corpmates, and (b) the competitive gameplay that PC allows.

The community is only a bit above average. I don't think it's much different from most FPS games I've played over the years, but the detailed nature of the game does cater to people of a bit higher intelligence than the average lobby shooter....but, in the end, the community at large has little to do with my enjoyment of this game. So on this point I disagree with the OP.

I don't think community is the real X-Factor though it may be for some, just as a counter argument I play this game pretty much solo, because I get tired of bong rips and people using comms for everything but playing the game.

I actually just play this game because when you get past all the Epeen swinging and accept that it's a doomed game anyways its a whole lot of fun to just make a bunch of different suits and weapons and just see what you can do.

Try hards ruining your fun with their proto stomping? L2forge ya silly billies. A MLT Forge suit costs around 2.4-2.7k depending on if you want to have a few extra things like a MLT heavy damage mod and locus grenade. forge guns don't care about if the other guys 200k suit has 800-1000 ehp. The Potato Lasik Cannon is another fun one although its much easier for the other guy to just side step your shot.

Rolling over all the new players getting bored in your Proto fits in pubbies? Well stop playing on casual difficulty you manchild. It's like playing a fps campaign on "I only want to play for the story" mode. And put down the turbo controller because its poor sportsmanship and you have no right to complain about the game if you do everything you can to exploit it. Inb4 getting CCP to do something about it, the game's not getting any serious tweaks beyond these hotfix value shifts so stop hiding behind "Imma playtester u guise" arguments.

Most important rule, HAVE FUN! This game is as rewarding as you want it to be, but like all rpg styled online games if you get sucked into the rat race, you're going to wake up 7 years from now and go...

"What the hell was I thinking ?" -World of Warcraft addicts.

If you follow these steps even the most cynical should have fun assuming you like the game in the first place. If these concepts don't work well... it's time to move on. Or I suppose it works to in a kind of I found my wife online kind of mentality that you only derive pleasure from the game because of the people you play with. I haven't found anyone to be that fun to play with from anyone else online but maybe I'm an ******* except for maybe 2 or 3 players. It's your typical: children, "brosefs", "imma gurl u guise," "Look at me I'm so awesome!" players.

I know what you mean, you've got to find the right group, if you're dealing with numnuts it isn't fun and it's better to play solo.

I tried that for months but I just gave up. If I played with good players like AE I just had to listen to them circle jerk for hours on comms and watch them roll newberries in proto stomping gear and circle jerk some more... I never understood how that's remotely fun, do they enjoy ball-in-a-cup as well? Is it for their Seananners styled "Smack my ***** up" montage? If I played with a starter corp I had to basically play the game as though it were solo (Because let's face it they didn't know what the hell they were doing) then watch them all point fingers at each other over who failed and why. Only a few times did I find decent and cool players but they were often not in the same timezone and from what I've seen most of them quit after the Legion announcement.

Now I just stick with the have fun concept and care very little for how things are going metagame wise.

Pester some people from any of those corps I put down earlier

Kain & killar in the same thread...
Its like a fat, ugly, piece of sh!t family reunion.

Killar in GD?

With you're irrelevant douchebag cousin showing up right in time to ***** about the reunion

Nintendo got it right with miiverse: a friendly environment that anyone can and should participate it.

Anyways, if you want to increase the active player base than implementing these two ideas would really help.

1) somewhere in the "tutorial" where you first enter a battle/ do your first fitting/ level up your first skill, mention something about the forums! In big letters!

"BE PART OF THE DUST COMMUNITY! JOIN THE FORUMS! MAKE FRIENDS! RECRUIT ALLIES! FIND YOUR RIVALS! etc.

2) get some good moderators on the forums so that beginners don't get torn apart by asking a newbie question. And close posts asap that quickly become nothing more than two people arguing. That way we get a "nicer" forum community. (^_^ )