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.

Not that it's any of your collective concern, but I am in Iceland going to my brothers wedding and to my other brother's newborn baptism, but please keep tinfoiling, it pleases me.

Put me on the phone with CCP Hilmar next time you need to make a business case, and I'll get you all the resources you could ever want (and a raise). Keep up the good work.

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.

In case you're curious, Aeon, we've never had access to FoxFour as CPM1, and when I've asked for just some super simple API stuff for DUST outside of that, I was told it could not be done, but couldn't even get an answer as to why. Recently someone asked FoxFour about getting DUST Alerts workng again, and I offered to help host it or whatever if needbe, but didn't get a response. (This was all public forums and Twitter, FWIW.) And so, if you've had better luck contacting him, more power to you, but I don't really need your usual accusatory tone when I have, in fact, done my job.

Note: FoxFour has many other things on his plate, and we're not really his responsibility, so I am not blaming him for anything at all here. He's even helped DUST when he didn't have to. Just being clear, this is not a thing I ignored.

Aeon, I almost hope you get on the next CPM so you can eat your words as I ask you if you're really asking the hard questions or just coasting by on what you're given.

Not that it's any of your collective concern, but I am in Iceland going to my brothers wedding and to my other brother's newborn baptism, but please keep tinfoiling, it pleases me.

Not that it's any of your collective concern, but I am in Iceland going to my brothers wedding and to my other brother's newborn baptism, but please keep tinfoiling, it pleases me.

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.

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.

If the game's development was financed the game not existing would mean no funds were borrowed. (Crude example.)

On a more serious and less snarky/condescending note, why don't we have another community crowdsourcing of ideas for FW like we did for PC? I think that some very constructive discussions took place AND we could involve the CSM, CPM, & players from BOTH games?

First, I don't think strapping cellphones to our faces is ever going to really take off (hey, I could be wrong). (A) It's ridiculous and (B) its ridiculous. I don't have a problem with VR either. I think Valkyrie has a chance at being a success. I worry they've made it far too "accessible" (i.e. simplistic in this case) to have the longevity it needs to recoup the development costs. I wouldn't really mind CCP doing something on mobile that made sense (and had a good chance of making a profit).

I think Fallout Shelter is a great example of this. It's a mobile app based on the Fallout series, and is the perfect kind of experience for a mobile app. CCP could make a starbase manager where you build your virtual starbase, send ships out to mine, rat, explore, defend PvP attackers, build new ships, manufacture stuff, trade stuff, manage the food/water/power/people etc. of the base. That would be a perfect tie-in to the universe that makes sense on a mobile platform.


This I really disagree with. Trying to perfect the NPE isn't about getting new players today, it's about increasing the precent. That same percent should roughly apply to a new platform. I'm going to pull fictional numbers out of my ass, but if you could increase retention from 10% to 20%, when the game launches on a new platform with a big marketing push, that additional 10% retention could mean millions of more players retained (and if the average spend is $30) that's a ton of money coming in.

Getting the retention high now isn't about a the current numbers, it's about huge money on a relaunch if the NPE is done right.

I'll toss a few ideas in the thread (no computer for optimal trello-ing atm), but we need to expand our proverbial reach if we want Dust to be taken seriously by CCP HQ. I don't think that's currently the case based on the new product pipeline nor by having both of Ratman's hands tied with resources.
I feel that we need a dialogue with our EVE overlords in a constructive manner, both with the CSM and any of their players interested in FW. We don't need to start with firing upon one another and putting huge amounts of isk at risk, but starting with smaller things... donating to the ground-war effort to supply troops with gear (maybe FW only gear?), having EVE players decide on where we fight, something to increase our interaction in a natural way. Hell, use the current EVE FW mechanics of controlling an area to lock onto enemy vessels and have US put our damned orbital artillery to use, like a reverse orbital strike.

How often do you guys talk to the CSM? I think DUST could "easily" (from a design standpoint) be added to "Fozzie Sov."

Recently someone asked FoxFour about getting DUST Alerts workng again, and I offered to help host it or whatever if needbe, but didn't get a response. (This was all public forums and Twitter, FWIW.)

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

My point was that there are ways to integrate DUST into Fonzie Sov that wouldn't require major/complex changes. EVE has code that spawns nodes in system to be fought over, DUST has code to spawn PC battles, an interface exists between the games for making transactions (like orbitals) via the CREST API. It would be reasonably "easy" for EVE to generate a PC Sov battle for Mercs to fight in. EVE has a mechanism for raising the index of a system that helps defend Sov, the idea of PvE in DUST has been discussed and could be a possibility. Assuming they figure out how to make that happen, running PvE in DUST could raise the index of the system without a ton of work (beside creating the PvE engine obviously) from an integration standpoint. The EVE server knows where DUST FW battles are happening. EVE has a UI for displaying events/anomolies in system, it seems like it would be pretty easy to add FW battles to the UI when you're in system,.Another thing they could easily change would simply be improving the EVE bonuses when you own a planet in PC. Make it a really desirable bonus and EVE players will start to care.

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 should care [two more paragraphs of non-information]

They don't.

They should care, because Star Citizen is nipping at their heals and trying to take their marketshare (and ultimately their jobs). Solid integration with DUST/Legion/whatever would give them a competitive advantage.

I get that CCP Iceland pulled back from DUST integration after the disastrous launch, but I think CCP Rattati has demonstrated pretty damn well that DUST isn't the turd everyone thought it was. DUST has more or less proven itself over the past year to be resilient. I don't think many other games would have survived the launch, the drama with the Legion announcement, the aging hardware that's been eclipsed by next-gen consoles for nearly 2 years now, and the gutting of it's dev team. I think it's time for EVE Devs/CCP upper management to seriously consider adding EVE/DUST integration back onto the roadmap. It would be good for the health of both games.

They don't.