Thats the point, CCP don't want noncommittal, they want committed. Thats why they won't confirm anything now until its solid.

If it doesn't go to PC or PS4 then it's dead anyway. So it doesn't matter. What you are talking about would matter if it were already on PC and we are calling for a PS4 port. This game has to move on to have a real future.

The full team is not yet back in Shanghai, those that are arrived two hours before they left Iceland and as such are fighting massive amounts of jet lag. Once everything is settled I'm sure normal service will resume very quickly.

They do actually know that the game needs to move to a new format for it to continue I hasten to add. It's not like it's escaped their notice

But such a move has costs as I'm sure you'll understand. The game would most likely have to done from scratch as the PS3 architecture and code is simply not able to be ported as is to an X64 based architecture. Not a small job by any means.

Really Kevall, i'm sure it's just a project on the side that may or may not turn into something wonderful and i'm not going to tell CCP how to run their business.

but you of all people must see the dissonance in this right?

Seriously guys, the Nemisis thing is hardly a dent in resources. When I spoke to Hilmar about player concerns regarding it taking up resources he joked that he could fund it himself it cost so little.

I'm really not at all concerned about 'squandered' resources as far as Nemesis is concerned. It's all been done so far in their 20% free time. Obviously if I can't persuede you that's the case then fine but its really fixating on a small project and overblowing it's importance. That's why it was part of the VR Lab at Harpa, they wanted feedback on the application of the tech used.

The level of misdirection in repeatedly hammering the "Dust is profitable!!!111" line after FanFest astounds the mind, and sounds like it comes directly from the Marketing department. Yes, THAT Marketing department.

Is Dust profitable? On what basis, a month-to-month basis? Week-to-week? I would be incredibly shocked to hear that Dust has recouped its development costs (profitable on a lifetime basis). This statistic is meaningless in any case. From all our communications with Rat and the remaining vestiges of a "team" working on Dust, the original development team has been dramatically downsized compared to its size even a year and a half ago. Profitability here is a matter of having slashed upkeep costs, not improved sales. They even took Logibro off of Dust and stuck him on Eve. That's probably good for his career, but doesn't bode well for the overall status of the Dust team.

Even further, the comments out of Hilmar et. al aren't really that positive. "Dust is profitable" being your pitch for the year implies what, precisely? That if it was not profitable that it would have instantly been shut down? That it made a narrow shave with death but that as long as it's not actively losing money they won't throw it away? At best these types of comments might appease investors, but I can't see how as a player they're entirely happy news.


The question that really needs to be answered by CCP by this point is: What is their new scope for Dust? It's evident to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that they've cut back on their original vision and scope. Will Dust survive to go onto a new platform? Will Dust ever have the resources necessary to fix the core issues with the game, or is this current level of bare-minimum maintenance the intended ongoing status quo for Dust until its eventual demise? Rat has been doing an exceptional job for a man fighting with two hands tied behind his back, but any time outstanding core issues with the game arise in the conversation we get a response of "don't have the resources". What is the scope of Dust?


Answering questions is not CCP's strong suit, and this year's FanFest follows up on that tradition in spectacular fashion. Rouge hasn't given a single of iota of communication to the Dust community for nearly a year, but he'll readily give an interview at FanFest about how New Eden "deserves" a PC FPS. If anything, his interviews made it sound like he has been stymied in his attempt to abandon Dust and this isn't appealing to him. Do I really think that's how he feels? No, but I can't really tell the difference if he's unwilling to communicate.


At this point I'm severely disappointed with CPM1 even though all of the current council were on my recommendations list. Some have done better than others, but in general this continuous cheer-leading optimism untempered by any public-facing censure for CCP's silence on the serious long-term issues plaguing Dust (Legion, platform issues, etc.) is absurd. The "back room" strategy of trying to act optimistic in public but "push for communication" in private with CCP has clearly failed, and did so months ago. The CPM has consistently failed to put any serious pressure on CCP over the issue, and even go out of their way to try to pressure-release any build up of curiosity by posting vague, generally upbeat content like your original post here, Dennie.


I'm glad you guys enjoyed your trips to Iceland, but all the news out of FF has been neutral at best, sobering (as per the usual) at worst, and minimal in all cases. If you heard good, substantial, REAL news about Dust and CCP's scope for Dust, that is fantastic. It's about time that the rest of Shanghai and CCP take a tip from Rat's work on the grit of the game and start communicating with the players. Otherwise, seemingly nothing has changed in Dust's status. From all outward appearances CCP is simply running the game on life-support to suck every last drop of cash out of those still willing to pay without having any intent to recommit to digging it out of its long-standing pitfalls.

There is a somewhat difficult demand to fill when you both expect a statement "right now" and you also want "reliable" statements SoTa. When CCP can make a reliable statement, they will.

I will - for now - answer that question with another question (because I can't very well shake my fist at CCP for over-promising and then do the same kitten myself now can I?), so...

How would you mercs like a Drone survival mode?

I think a test server would be even more doable, we wouldn't even need active drones for that we could use our current turrets for many of the basic things. Just tweak some stats, maybe some AI values and off we go, new place to test fittings and train new players.

I think the hard part is spinning up matches like that because it would require different client logic, but my impression is that it's doable and unless I'm greatly mistaken it is something the Dust team wants to get into game for us and it's looking at options for. As always "want to do" and "can do" aren't guaranteed to be one and the same, but it is certainly on the radar as something worth doing if the method can be found.

If we can get an even more sophisticated version using drones, all the better

I fail to see how CCP is on the "cutting edge", particularly with dust.

Also, ive never played planetside 2, but its clearly a much more ambitious project, and they also didnt have to fire most of their dev team and halt client side development in order to become profitable.

Just sayin'

Assets can be ported without much trouble as I understand it from UE3 to 4 for use in any new game.

The legacy code for everything else needs to die with fire. The only defence the Devs could give me about coding for the PS3 was that it wasn't as bad as the PS2.

It's not too much of an imaginative stretch that should a port become a reality the current team would want 'fresh code' to work with rather than the older stuff.

I think the Dust Dev team might say instead 'Old code is code that works but not how we want it to work'

Well, CCP have done it before with Crimewatch in Eve, where they gutted the whole code and rewrote it from stratch. It was deemed easier to rebuild it than figuring out how to repair it. It's also what is planned for the Corp mechanics.

Dust is a strange creature. It's already a hybridisation of its original PC code, mixed with PS3 cell tech and utilising a heavily modified UE3. Much of the hotfix process has been spent just figuring out what it can and can't do.

Rattati and his team have found a huge amount of what it can do, hence the fairly significant changes that hot fixes have brought. But by the same token there's s lot that it can't do. It needs a way to fix that so the game can be iterated upon and improved should the opportunity to go next gen happen. How much work needs doing exactly has not made privy to us. But it's something I'm sure that Shanghai would love to get their teeth into.