Aeon Amadi
Chimera Core
9212
   |
Posted - 2015.03.19 04:29:00 -
[1] - Quote
The following is satirical and does not represent the opinions or views of the author, the community, or the reader in any way. Readers should be advised that the following does not contain any semblance of proof, evidence thereof, "Crystal Ball" evidence, "Tin Foil" evidence, or anything of the sort. The following was designed to raise a laugh while mildly poking at the Dust 514 video game as a whole in polite gesture of humor. You have been warned.
"Good morning everyone! Welcome to the Dust 514: Collected Learnings presentation, umm.. Here we're going to have an in-depth discussion about community collaboration in development, data-driven balancing, and an overview of the current state of DUST 514; the past and the future.
To begin, I would like to mention that Dust 514 is not dead. We have no abandoned it and are continuing development in a small way through a handful of dedicated and very loyal developers who you all know and lov-"
The crowd cheers and gives a small, scattered applause
"Ahem; very loyal developers who you all know and love. The first thing we want to go over is the rough ride we had through Uprising 1.0 onward."
Host goes on to remind us about the wishy-washy balancing methods experienced throughout 1.0 - 1.5 starting with how the community "politely" insinuated that aiming was broken because weapons stopped doing damage past their optimal range. The host shows a few funny slides of the whole conundrum and goes over a few isolated balancing mechanics that were critical pain points, how they decided to go with an (almost) monthly release schedule to fix the catastrophe that was early Uprising.
Eventually he brings up Aim Assist which causes a split reaction of whoops and hollers in favor and "boos" from those who were not in favor. There's only about two dozen or so people in the room so it really doesn't sound like much anyway.
Somewhere in the mid-section the few participating members of the CPM (assuming they're not on stage) are quietly whispering to themselves concerning mixed nostalgia and talking each other down with a heavy emphasis on political correctness.
Finally, the host brings up the hilarity of Marketing literally trolling the entire community when Contact Grenades were a major pain point, being primarily Aurum only items with one ISK variant that was in no-way even close to the same in power, and they decided to have a sale on them. Kain Spero bursts into a raucous laughter somewhere in the back where he's probably sitting with Zatara.
Eventually they get to the Uprising 1.7 "Tank Era" factor and how the community played a "critical role in balancing them" despite the fact that it literally took months to get any sort of major effort out of them to do so. They briefly mention (and show a slide) as to how Rail Rifle and Combat Rifles were OP as hell but no-one bothered to do anything about them because #reasons.
Uprising 1.8 is briefly brought up as the "most beloved Uprising build" with the introduction of racial parity for Scouts and Sentinels, briefly glossing over the fact that from this point on Dust 514 would effectively belong to them and all other roles were basically dead.
Finally, they skim over the most recent hotfixes and builds and mark their popular success because they assigned a developer (who seemed to have a knack for the obvious) to Senior Producer of Dust 514, joking about how they basically threw him to the wolves.
They open for questions with the initial statement of (much to the bitterness of the small audience therein): "We'll now open for questions regarding -DUST 514-.... We will -NOT- discuss Project Legion or anything of the future planning for either game. If you would like to do that, please kindly see us after the round-table where we will answer your questions on a case by case basis."
At which point about 80% of the audience besides the CPM gets up from their seats and immediately exits the room.
WARNING: RISK OF TRAVEL THROUGH AN ALTERNATIVE TIME-LINE IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE IN 3... 2... 1...
They open for questions and the first question is "What is the future of Dust 514 and/or Project Legion?"
To which a developer promptly lifts his hand in gesture, hurriedly stating, "One moment" and retrieves a slip of paper from his back pocket. To which he reads the words (glancing over them carefully as to ensure accuracy):
"Project Legion is the Dust 514 experience brought to the PC, we don't want to connect it to Eve Online yet until it's able to stand on it's own two feet. Fundamentally, it is the same as Dust 514 except without the PS3's hardware limitations. Dust 514 is still going strong with a great community and we have no plans to change that. It's very important for us to hear their feedback and what they want out of the game. It's really important for us to have that dialogue going all the time."
To which this same rhetoric is then repeated anytime anything about the future of either game is brought up.
Have a suggestion for the Planetary Services Department?
Founder of AIV
|