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Combat Placenta
Red and Silver Hand
Amarr Empire
7
   |
Posted - 2015.06.19 23:05:00 -
[1] - Quote
The issue is not the PS3.
The issue is not folks being unaware of Dusts existence.
Dust has been around for a long time now. People looking for the FPS experience that Dust attempts to provide have more than likely stumbled across the game already, at the very least they have heard about it, and the type of gamer that enjoys a game type such as Dust is (in my opinion) far more likely to check something out for themselves than to read bad reviews on the Internet and discount the game without trying it. Awarness, or lack there of, is not what's driving down the numbers.
The PS3 is an old system, of course. I won't even begin to get into old games that still support vibrant and active player bases and communities, regardless of the age of said games or systems. I'm fairly certain GTAO will continue on, even after the release of any new GTAs, for as long as R* keeps the servers running. The PS3 in itself is not what's driving down the numbers.
When Dust was originally given to the world, one of its main draws was the idea of a combined universe. A PC space sim and a console FPS, living in the same world, working together, against each other, driving economies as well as shattering them. When our merc boots touched down on a planet, the pilots in space would feel their world rumble, and with the help of those pilots we would be able to wipe our enemies from the map, furthering the agendas of the great Eve alliances, and increasing their power to unlimited levels.
Awesome, I know.
Then came time to make this (freakin awesome) dream a reality. This is when it all started rolling down hill. I won't speculate on the why (as I normally do), but what we got was the orbital strike, the only meaningful connection to Eve. While it was cooler than hell, it seemed to be nothing more than a pain in the button for Eve pilots, and there really was no reward for them what so ever. They had no reason to risk dropping whatever they were up to just to drop bombs over Baghdad, so the idea of the Eve/Dust connection sputtered and died.
To compound this failure, for whatever reasons, Dust began as, and remained, the land of constant nerfing and buffing. Yes, this is required to balance a game, but when every single thing in game is nerfed and buffed back and forth over and over again year after year, with no actual progress made, it is a problem. CCP had the grand vision (and it was grand), but finite details required for a cohesive gaming experience were never hammered out, seemingly never considered.
Calls came out from the forums on what the game needed to really get going. A single player experience, a better new player experience, trees, areas outside of the merc quarters, the full lineup of racial vehicles, more clearly defined roles for each suit and vehicle, different roles for each suit and vehicle, a market, player trading, a way for vets and rookies to compete together without ruining the others experience, a way for vets and rookies to compete separately without ruining the others experience, tericide, etc etc. The list goes on.
In the end CCP did what I always do when I get high and try to clean my room. Running back and forth from place to place, messing with some stuff over here, running off to mess with some stuff over there. Changing their mind and rearranging this pile before deciding that's not how they wanted it and rearranging it all over again. Stopping to take stock of work that has been accomplished and realizing nothing has really got done before zoning out and staring into space under the guise of planing the next move. Then saying f*ck it, I'll do it later.
I know there are a lot of new people that have joined since I left, and to them there may be the illusion of progress. But Riley you were here before I got here. The games in the same place. The same numbers have been shuffled around back and forth, over and over again for the life of the game. All the change and work has simply been a giant circle, a strange episode of the Twilight Zone. Yes there has been large amounts of change and work done, but in the grand scheme of things it has not moved the game forward an inch.
I remember the release of "the volcano map". And that was back when Dust development was going strong. Of course we would later find out that CCP was aware of the Fanfest 14 agenda for at least a good half year, even as they pushed booster and pack sales. And now Legion is MIA, possibly not going to happen, so Dust is back in action. With each layer of sh*tty code piled on top of the previously sh*tty code, the internals of the game get more twisted and needlessly compicated. From a performance perspective I can buy the possible merits of tericide.
I'm the end, from what I've seen from CCP, they are silent because there is no plan. It's all about using minimal effort to create maximum profit. In the end, no matter how the numbers are tweaked, we are playing the same basic game that they have been pushing for however many years they've been pushing it.
And that, in my opinion, is why there is a decline in the player base. If a gamer is able to push past the enormous barrier of entry, what is there to keep them around? What have we heard from the many vets who tried to cling on? I've got so many friends here, I've put so much work in, there is so much promise, I've grown bored of my current game library, I'm waiting for x game, I'm waiting for x system. At the end of the day, the draw of Dust over the long term is not what it provides, but the dream of what it could possibly have provided. You can only sustain a player base so long on hopes and dreams, and we have been watching that fact in action for a long time now.
Thus, in my opinion, you have the explanation for the dwindling player base numbers.
Sorry about the essay.
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Combat Placenta
Red and Silver Hand
Amarr Empire
7
|
Posted - 2015.06.20 01:35:00 -
[2] - Quote
While I can appreciate the fact that resources are now limited and they are making due with what they have, it is still the same basic system they have had in place for a long time now. Hotfix to hotfix, patch to patch, no changes have been substantial enough to advance the game as a whole. That's not to say that the work and the changes aren't appreciated, but it's all just a shuffle of numbers and concepts. The game never changes or develops at the most basic levels (I can accept that the various strategies in game can change greatly from number shuffle to number shuffle, but that doesn't address the true issues).
No one patch will be the magic bullet, in my opinion at least. I used to believe in the idea that the small changes over time would add up and the game would finally come together, but no longer.
Dust may never flat out die, but you get what you put in to something. CCP as a company is simply trying to keep Dust alive just enough. Therefore Dust is staying alive just enough, as there are obviously people still putting money into it. I'm not saying what people should or shouldn't do with their money, I'm saying CCP is content with the current operating cost to profit ratio, and I don't see that changing.
Unless we have been victimized by the greatest troll in all human history and we have in reality been taking part in the most extensive beta test ever. |
Combat Placenta
Red and Silver Hand
Amarr Empire
7
|
Posted - 2015.06.20 02:10:00 -
[3] - Quote
Jathniel wrote:
But a bunch of people bitched about it, and called PC gamers "elitists", selfish, and every other name in the book. Called CCP a bunch of "sell outs" that only "catered to the paying PC crowd". People refused to see the benefit of the Legion call.
If everyone simply didn't ***** about Legion, CCP would probably be more willing to share whatever they're working on. If they're working on anything at all.
So you could say, everyone shot themselves in the foot.
Doesn't matter what business model we want CCP to follow. You don't earn anything special from being dedicated to a company to the end.
No one would need to worry about Dust now, if we hadn't stabbed CCP in the back, then.
Dust was released on the PS3. Whether is or isn't the system it should have been on is irrelevant, as we all obviously know it was put on the PS3. The player base was obviously all PS3 users. I'm sure many people came from Eve. I'm sure many people came from PC gaming in general.
But it was a PS3 game, thus it built up a large following of players who only had a PS3 and no PC, for various reasons. Some were father's who don't have the money to burn, some are kids who don't have the means to purchase a gaming PC, some are just regular folks who simply live paycheck to paycheck and are not in a position to drop even a couple hundred dollars on anything, much less a $500+ gaming rig (oh I'm low balling it, I know).
Yet many PC gamers are always more than willing to point out that a few hundred dollar purchase is more than justified to follow a free to play game from a system you own to a system you don't own. Many are also kind enough to mention that if a person was able to purchase a console at one point in their life, they are more than able to purchase a PC whenever they want.
In the months before FanFest 14, CCP was pushing boosters and packs like you wouldn't believe (you may have been there). They did, in all honesty, have some great updates between I want to say like August and November of 2013. They got everyone hyped up for the big FanFest announcement. Dust players flew half way across the globe to attend FanFest.
I'm sure you know what happened next.
15 minutes of a high resolution video of Dust, that was actually going to be Project Legion, and it was going to be on PC, and mumble mumble mumble updates for Dust are over mumble mumble. Moving on.....
If CCP didn't understand the ensuing rage, then I don't know what to say. I would imagine the rage probably hurt. The individual developers had worked to create what we had, and I know that no one individual is responsible for what happened. Especially not the dudes in the trenches doing all the serious work, coding and character modeling and what have you.
But all in all I can guarantee you that what really hurt them was Eves lack of interest in Dust. Dust was made as an extention of the shady @ss bullsh*t that Eve corps partake in, and that's cool, I still love the idea. But at the end of the day, not enough space folks wanted to put boots on the ground and get slaughtered night in and night out. I'm not saying there aren't people who equally split their love/time between Eve and Dust, but a majority of the people who love Eve and really put in work up there simply do not want to come down to a planet and get massacred for weeks and months before they build up SP and learn the game. And if someone plays Eve, loves it, has no gun game and a lower level FPS skill (there are plenty of them out there), they will not stick around for long at all.
And if Eve can't control it, they don't want it in Tranquility.
CCP built our world for Eve, and while they built up a brand new player base of PS3 users, it was always for Eve. In a last ditch attempt to gain Eves acceptance, they threw the PS3 player base to the wolves. For nothing.
Name calling is obviously a pointless endeavour, but the rage at CCP was 100% justified. |
Combat Placenta
Red and Silver Hand
Amarr Empire
11
|
Posted - 2015.06.20 14:13:00 -
[4] - Quote
Can we turn Toschs post above me into a petition? |
Combat Placenta
Red and Silver Hand
Amarr Empire
11
|
Posted - 2015.06.20 15:29:00 -
[5] - Quote
Regis Blackbird wrote:
This will spill over to other titles like Valkyrie and EVE, making any investors thinking twice (or five) times before they ever invest in CCP again.
That already happened, a long time ago.
CCPs inability to bring together their ideas is frustrating, and I won't say they haven't been blasted for that. But the true rage was a result of their abandonment of a large section of the player base. I would personally regain a large amount of trust/respect if they would step up and own that simple fact, from there the bridge of trust could be rebuilt. It's on CCP to start that process.
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Combat Placenta
Red and Silver Hand
Amarr Empire
11
|
Posted - 2015.06.20 16:35:00 -
[6] - Quote
One Eyed King wrote:
And what good would it be to port a broken, unbalanced, and frustrating game to a new system?
Not all the games problems are due to hardware constraints.
PC had exploits that ruined the economy.
While weapons and suits are better balanced, there is still quite a ways to go.
Porting this game to another system too soon will only ensure its failure the next iteration, and thus for the long term.
They have to get the fundamentals right before doing anything else.
I completely agree and support all of this 100% |
Combat Placenta
Red and Silver Hand
Amarr Empire
17
|
Posted - 2015.06.20 20:52:00 -
[7] - Quote
thor424 wrote:Combat Placenta wrote:One Eyed King wrote:
And what good would it be to port a broken, unbalanced, and frustrating game to a new system?
Not all the games problems are due to hardware constraints.
PC had exploits that ruined the economy.
While weapons and suits are better balanced, there is still quite a ways to go.
Porting this game to another system too soon will only ensure its failure the next iteration, and thus for the long term.
They have to get the fundamentals right before doing anything else.
I completely agree with and support all of this 100% You two will be well versed in each other's tactics fighting each other 1v1 match after match.
I'm not saying the game does not need to be moved as soon as possible. I personally think they need to start from near scratch. Like the head of a tick stuck in a dogs skin after you rip off the body, there are chunks of ideas and systems for Dust that failed but are still stuck in the game/code.
A new game system is needed, and with the connection to Eve dead the game itself needs a massive overhaul, much more than patches and hot fixes will ever accomplish.
It's not ideal I know, but stagnation on the PS3 will kill the game, as will a straight port of a stagnating game to a new system.
Maybe if we just take shots at each other here on the forums the problems will fix themselves...... |
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