They actually told you (and everyone else) why they have said nothing over and over and over again over the last year. CCP has had year after year of over-promising, and under-delivering. In fact, their tendency to share too much, that they failed to then deliver on, is where most people's faith in CCP went. CCP's new strategy is to not announce anything until it is basically done. So if and when they announce something new, it's because they're absolutely sure it's happening as opposed to something they might be working on. It's frustrating dealing with silence, but it's a lot worse to be constantly let down by broken promises.

...That's exactly what it means, but you may not understand why that's a good thing. Development staff are specialized, and it's hard on a limited budget to hire everyone you might need. Maybe DUST in itself, hypothetically, can't afford to hire a 3D artist. So, on it's own, DUST would never have a 3D artist. However, it can afford half a 3D artist. So if CCP has two projects in one location that need a 3D artist, they can now afford a 3D artist, who can do work for both projects. (Hypothetically.)

So, extending that hypothetical, if DUST could afford to hire one and a half more people, maybe they could get a 3D artist on their own. However, if they were sharing the staff with another project, they could afford a 3D artist, a map designer, and a programmer, split between two projects. Staff that can float allow projects more flexibility.

Vell0cet, that's not even remotely how businesses work. DUST has its own budget, and Gunjack development would pull from the R&D budget. If you just dumped resources into DUST with no concern for proper budgeting, DUST would be a money losing pit and would probably be cancelled. DUST has the resources that DUST can afford.

I agree with your overall assessment, however we must rationally admit that those are projections not objective facts. And that as players clearly invested in this game it is possible we are subject to a certain degree of bias.
Further none of us have access to CCP financials so we don't know what money there was available to be disbursed at any given time. We can infer, we can observe, we can assess, and frankly we should try to stay as aware and up to speed as possible. That's sensible behavior in any purchase. But we must also acknowledge that we do not, and can not, know.

I want to see Dust go the way of Amazon and not Hellgate: London, but it is not as simple as saying "throw enough money at it and it becomes a sure thing" I think upon reflection all of us know that.

Regardless the other projects that CCP is working on at various studios are not in a 1:1 zero sum relationship with EVE, or Dust and the development of either of those flagship products will not be defined, assured, or ended by the presence (or lack there of) of other items within the larger company. If a product needs to be fed cash from outside it's planned budget that's a bad state to be in, even Amazon in the early years was budgeted for the expenditures it had, and intended long term business plan or no, if those expenditures had too far out paced the budgeted resources it could very well have folded just like the Xerox visual UI from the days prior to Apple and MS.

Long term planning is vital to success, you are spot on, but anything successful in business must be able to attain and maintain a self sustaining concept and resource cycle which is exactly what will determine Dusts future AFAIK, not the existence (or lack there of) of any current or future entry in the CCP corporate catalog.

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I don't think CCP has a whole is focusing on anything with Dust right now. It makes more sense for them to focus on mobile and VR as it is potentially a money maker and they can expand onto something different I think. The Dust team is too small and probably not getting enough money to get much bigger stuff done, but at the same time CCP doesn't seem willing to invest in Dust at all if it is just operating on its own project.

The game is not going grow and it really hadn't . If pop raises it only raised back to what it was around a year ago

Vell0cet, the truth is there's no world where CCP would be wise to spend all their R&D budget on DUST. Hate to break this to you. It's marked for new projects for a reason.

You and I both know DUST has a lot of potential, Vell0cet,but CCP cannot continue making solitary bets. They spent over ten years solely betting on EVE alone. Then they bet on WoD and it didn't eork, and then they bet on Carbon/WiS and it didn't work, and then they bet on DUST and it didn't pan put incredibly well. They're betting big on Valkyrie, but I don't know how big a deal that is really going to be.

Rather than making one big bet at a time, CCP needs to work on smaller, achievable goals, and more importantly, to do more than one at a time. I definitely want to see DUST on next gen, but this criticism of them creating Gunjack is silly, because this is a small risk for a potential strong result. It makes sense. CCP uses its R&D budget to develop future possibilities, like Gunjack, while also investing in existing propdrties as it makes sense. As an investing term, they need to diversify. They need to not have their whole business hinged on one product. Or two.

Since I am here,

Gunjack is pretty awesome in the GearVR, i didn't expect it to be so great to be honest, but there is something mesmerizingly fun there. It cannot be judged from a 2D trailer, that much is sure.

CCP has had to look hard and deep at how they do things given what has happened. Projects are treated as separate business cases where each lead makes the strongest case possible. Budgets are granted on a case by case basis and certainly do not come out of other project budgets.

Gunjack does not detract in any way from DUST 514. As a matter of fact, it makes the CCP Shanghai studio much stronger and capable, showing what can be done with the right vision, the right methods, a great tool in UE4 and a small team.

CCP needs to diversify, yet smartly, and Gunjack is one of the ways to do that while keeping EVE Online as the ultimate sci-fi mmo experience.

CPM1 spent a lot of time hanging around Hilmar at Fanfest where possible for good reason. :P Just saying.

Regarding your above response, Vell0cet, I agree CCP needs to be concerned about Star Citizen and other competitors on their way. I responded in a thread on the EVE forums just today, once again stating my strong desire for WiS to be properly returned to. (Walking in Stations, for the uninitiated.) And game integration is definitely something I've always wanted.

But as far as I'm aware, until that's a priority for the EVE team and the EVE developers, there's not a lot I can say on that. (CPM don't have a lot of access to EVE developers.) Integration with EVE, the API, a lot of that is all Iceland's domain. The EVE team is busy reinventing nullsec to be... about as boring as it was before... rather than doing things that push the envelope. That's on EVE players to demand a change in what they do there and on EVE developers to do it.

Vell0cet, I could talk to CSM X folks on Skype near instantly if we really had a reason to.

While, from a design standpoint, it'd be easy to implement with Fozzie Sov (one of the reasons I am okay with them doing that with sov), the reality is: Absolutely nobody at EVE dev is going to be willing to do it. Developing almost anything that interacts with EVE (or Tranquility in general, such as chat channels, corp features, API, etc.) heavily requires the EVE team to do it.

Design is almost never easy unless you're copying someone else's good design.

Vell0cet, it doesn't matter that there are ways because EVE devs don't care.

It's often much easier to describe a mechanic than it is to code it. Large pieces of software (like games) have their own internal models, interfaces, designs, etc., the technicalities of which are usually impossible to predict without inspection. Without those technicalities there's no way to know what the actual implementation difficulty of any given change is.

The same story's true where it comes to game design. It's easy to say "I can see a mechanic where an action in Eve schedules a battle in Dust". Even a cursory design-oriented examination turns up questions which would take more time to answer: What specific action in Eve would trigger these battles in Dust? How often would they be able to be triggered? What parties would be able to fight in Dust? What in-battle rewards are there for Dust players? Clearly the list can get extensive. Who's going to pay for the designers whose job it is to answer these questions, not to mention the coders who would then have to implement the design?

If something's truly easy, it has usually already been done.

They don't.

I spent threr pages trying to explain things to Vell0cet. Inevitably, continually daft comments are going to get a daft answer.

Vell0cet, you literally have not registered anything I've said to you.

But that's okay, I've accepted that somehow Cross can say all the same things I do and he gets lathered in praise for it. I'm just going to be bitter about it forever. Cross, you, me, CCP Atlanta. I want a rematch.

I personally think trying to link the games now would just be a waste of resources.

The only way a meaningful link is going to happen is if this game gets a serious upgrade, aka Legion. They need all new code that they've built with staff that isn't all fired, so they can actually go back in and easily fix things and upgrade things, unlike now.

Make DUST 514-2, then work on a link.

False. Proving my point. You have not read a thing I've said.

Vell0cet, the truth is there's no world where CCP would be wise to spend all their R&D budget on DUST. Hate to break this to you. It's marked for new projects for a reason.

All =/= Heavily
They can invest 90% and still have 10% left over for side projects.

Which is exactly what Gunjack is. Hilmar straight up said he can fund it with what's in his wallet right now during FanFest 2015.

Pass along congratulations from the unwashed masses.

When you return please sterilize the community by killing everyone who has posted in this thread.

The CSM, like the CPM, are representatives of their own community and as such it is incumbent upon them to pass along the feedback from their community. The most effective way to get the CSM on board with a Dust related idea is to get the EVE player base on board with it. Frankly they wouldn't be very effective at representing the views of their community of they let the CPM or anyone else convince them to push ideas that have no vocal support among their own player base. No matter how good those ideas may be conceptually.
CSM and CPM are advisory bodies, not executive ones.

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It's not a matter of the CPM and CSM having a close relationship or the ability to communicate, we chat not infrequently.
It is a matter of not having anything 'business' related to talk about because for us to go to the duel Dev teams of EVE and Dust and say "our constituents want X" we have to be hearing that from the players within both communities.

You are right that the footprint of Dust within EVE is pretty ephemeral, I did what I could personally to change that at Fanfest this year but any one player (shiny forum tag or no) can only do so much and it is really about reaching out from one player base to the other on the individual level and building support for more robust interaction/connection. If there is mutual community support I think it'll happen, if however we're asking for it to happen so that we can build mutual community interaction I think we'll likely be waiting a long time indeed.

We may not have mechanics, but if there were a ground swell of support from both communities for an idea or method that could provide those mechanics I believe it would be looked into. Lacking that demonstration of support however, well, player feedback may not define Dev priorities but it does feed them and if something lacks community support it is going to be hard to get one, let alone two, Dev teams on board with making it a priority.

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EDIT: As to shared events, I think Lore is the way to go because while it requires interaction from CCP folks with regards to keeping the event dynamic and doing some NPC RPing, it doesn't require new code or engineering to enact and it still provides contemporary connective tissue between the games and communities.
For example.

Have not as of this post read the article but was not optimistic, or frankly even interested in, VR at the time I arrived in Iceland for Fanfest.

Post Fanfest my assessment is that VR could be wickedly cool for the right games but that there will likely be many games which try to sell "because VR" as oppose to games that use the functionality of VR as a meaningful part of their UI.

The hardware intensiveness is a legitimate aspect and should be considered.
That being said I've played an earlier version of Gunjack on the gal 6 and it was fun if you like the space invaders style of game (I happen to) with no motion sickness or image tearing issues at all.

Now as to consumer uptake on the hardware, that is an entirely different matter and one which I could only really provide conjecture or hearsay.

The game itself however works fine, is visually solid (though I'm not the most "eye candy" obsessed person so maybe a grain of salt here) and is fun if you like the light weight style of shooter experience it provides.

It should also be noted that the Gal 6 VR and the next gen of Occulus Rift (which I got a peak at running Valk) are not the same experience. Valkyrie is much more hardware intensive and provides a lot more visual power and depth, but requires a lot more hardware support to do so.

Just some of my observations.

Cheers,
Cross