1.) Rattati said something about "players made it clear they wanted better gameplay" --- I worry that CCP now thinks players care MORE about smooth gameplay than all the grand meta stuff of Dust, and that Nova might turn into a fun little lobby shooter, but be missing economy, player groups, eve-link etc... It needs all of the above!

2.) I worry that CCP is going to be reluctant to take risks with Nova, based that Dust wasn't as successful as it could have been. Really tho, Dust had a winning formula, any other shooter should be envious of the persistent universe of Dust. THAT'S what keeps players long-term.

Compare that to the player retention gimmicks of other shooters: unlocking customization options in RNG loot drops... And you have them all beat! Your player retention system is better, that's how you kept a player base for nearly 4 years in this free ps3 shooter. Maximize that!


3.) Ultimately, I worry that CCP thinks that a shooter can't be done in their universe, and are half-heartedly working on "nova" while some higher-up suit-and-tie has his finger on the "abort" button waiting to axe the whole thing at the first moment of trouble...

Really if it werent for a handful of specific blunders Dust would have been much more successful than it was.

I think Nova should be the opportunity to learn from all the mistakes and do it properly from the beginning!

Although I do still think the greatest concern is the upper management of CCP. If Nova gets f*cked, it won't be because of the people directly involved with the game.

I would like to see the addition of an MMO/Social aspect to both games. Have the ability to activate a customized clone in a space station and enter a Bar or Corporate Retreat, or some other meeting establishment. (The fire marshal could impose limits on the number of patrons in an establishment, which would conveniently control lag with a lore explanation.) Automatically activate a voice chat channel for the establishment with proximity controls on volume so only the people close to you are at full volume and the people farther away recede into background noise. Then have a raised voice/Shout option that would allow everyone in the establishment to hear you, and a whisper option to talk to just one specific person.

Public bars would be great for meeting new people to play with or to recruit for your Corp. (A complain to management option, where a certain number of complaints would get someone thrown out, should help deal with those who would be deliberately annoying or racist/sexist, etc.) Private rooms could be used to negotiate with Officers from other Corps. Corporate Retreats could be used to socialize with Corp members between matches, and for Corp meetings. It would really add to the MMO aspect of the game, make it feel a lot less like just a lobby shooter, and would not be all that hard to setup as there would be no combat mechanics.

I really doubt too many EVE players will take the time away from EVE to play a game that doesn't remotely resemble EVE. Making a game that directly competes with your primary source of income doesn't seem like the greatest bet to me. It would serve them far better to make Nova worthwhile to EVE players while they're still within EVE, through a stronger connection or even the arena matches we were teased with so long ago.

Making an FPS to appease EVE players is just destined to fail, or at the very least fracture the community. Making an FPS that draws people further into EVE, that feels like a better direction to take.

Also, that argument is pure garbage, because EVE was pretty crappy when it came out but was steadily built upon over time. At no time did EVE players as a whole express any interest in the continuation of DUST, or diverting assets to the game in order to keep up with the kind of updates that took EVE from a meh game to a memorable experience. EVE players want things for EVE. Some might like a nice shooter, but unless it directly benefits them back in EVE I don't see them giving much of a ****.

There was a lot of opposition in the EVE community to integrating DUST more fully with EVE. I think a lot of that was due to DUST being on a different platform so EVE players could not play DUST on the same hardware they played EVE on. With Nova being on PC that barrier is removed. Also with other spaceship games promising to provide a first or third person avatar experience, demand for something similar in EVE should increase, and the competition should put pressure on CCP to implement something like that.

There was mention at one of the Fanfests (the one with the Legion announcement) of letting you chose on the loading screen which game you enter and being able to use the same character in all three games. They even made a change to the database to make that possible. But I agree, I think you should be able to switch from one game to another without leaving the game. It can't be that hard to automate shutting one game down and opening another. The Jump Clone mechanic makes the transition easy lore wise. Yes, it would mean a long loading screen, but it would make all the games feel like part of the same game without having to fully integrate the game engines. They could play the latest Scope News clip while you are waiting to entertain players while the other game loaded.

I've been pretty clear that all I really want out of Nova is the combined arms aspect and a stronger EVE link of some kind. I guess it just rubs me the wrong way to think that EVE players are the primary target audience when all they bothered to do was **** all over DUST the entire time it was alive, and likely won't have a whole lot of interest in anyways if it doesn't directly benefit them EVE side.

No, I expect CCP to cheat. Just have your EVE character jumpclone into a DUST clone (close EVE and open DUST2 in the background while you watch the latest Scope News broadcast) and then your EVE character is walking around in a dropsuit ready for some FPS action.

You get to have FPS and Spaceships in the same game without having to go single shard and seamless. The whole Jumpclone technology of uploading your consciousness to the net and downloading into a new body really makes it easy since by definition it is not a seamless transition.

Actually running it that way wouldn't be entirely nonsensical. Keep SP pools seperate of course, and given how Valkyrie has a unique currency (VISK) I could see them using the same concept for Nova to get around that issue initially. Existing Dust characters could also be converted to EVE Alpha Clones as well as Nova clones if characters are shared.

It would effectively let Dust players use their name in EVE and EVE players in Nova, which is kinda appealing.

I can sort of see the appeal to that but it seems like a ton of work to basically give your Nova character your EVE name. You're always in your dropsuit, and I could be wrong but I'm fairly certain DUST clones used an entirely different process of cloning than capsuleers.

Wouldn't it just be easier to link your accounts so when you sign in you have the same name? None of your EVE skills or assets would apply so aside from RP, what would be the point in developing that tech?

I guess I've just seen enough vitriol from EVE players towards DUST that I don't really trust them to do anything but try and drag the game down if they feel it draws away from EVE in any way.

The game is going to start off without much of an EVE connection, so the first thing EVE players will experience is...not EVE? Just seems like a weird way to go about it. Naturally there will be crossover so at the end of the day this argument is moot, I just feel like if EVE players truly were the target audience, removing that EVE link is probably not the first thing you want them to experience.

I think I mostly agree with you.

Any of the 3 games (4 if a version of Gunjack comes to the PC) should be an independent entry point for new players. The player should then have the option to get involved with one of the other games if they chose by acquiring a Small Ships Pilots license, Large Ship Pilot license, or Infantry Rating. The games should stand on their own, but be tied together through shared markets, shared organizations (Corps, Alliances), and shared impacts (Holding a District effecting taxes on Planetary Interaction in the district, or the bonuses to make the cost of maintaining a station at the planet less costly, etc.)

The effects on the other games on the game you are playing should only impact a player once they get more heavily into the meta-game (Planetary Conquest, Faction Warfare, POS management, Planetary Interaction in Low Sec/Null Sec, etc.) Players who just do PUBs in DUST2 or Highsec Industry in EVE should not see any effects from the other games.

The games can have separate monetization, so CCP gets more out of you if you chose to play more than one of the games, which is fare since they would have separate development teams.

No, I just read every Dev and CPM post, tweet, Skype, and Discord message. It's all available for everyone to read and if you set the emotional bias aside, its an easy logical conclusion.

That's exactly why I think it's a mistake not to leave the FPS on consoles.... There's too much overlap in the people who play PC shooters, and the people who already play EVE.

Consoles are a completely separate player base to tap into.

But hey, what do I know.

Also have an open currency exchange market, and let market forces set the exchange rate. Let the players decide how much VISK they would pay for 1 ISK and visa versa.

Well you can share currency but then the rate of Isk injection must be the same, which is significantly higher in EVE than it ever was in DUST.

Here's the thing, good gameplay is what is going to attract people first, people from the mainstream shooting arena. Secondly, The universe is going to be about retention, but is almost always going to have to be second. It is incredibly difficult to make a well playing shooter mostly about the universe.

Ok so this is a very good question so let me try to explain my thoughts as clearly as possible.

Is there anything wrong with the free market determining the price of goods between the two games? Absolutely not. Free market is one of the major reasons EVE online is so interesting and I have no issue with it. However what I do take issue with is how that money is generated between the two games.

For the sake of argument (and we can cover player contracts at a later time as that is less problematic) lets focus on the bread and butter of raw ISK injections into the game. PvE missions/ratting of about the same time investment so we're comparing apples to apples.

For simplicity sake, lets say a Nova match nets you around 200k ISK every 20 minutes from doing a standard low-risk mission.

• Lets say a a high-sec Level 4 EVE mission that takes about 20 minutes nets you about 2 million ISK (This is actually pretty low, but we'll use it for easy math)

So at this point, you can effectively generate ISK at 10 times the rate in EVE compared to Nova (200,000 vs 2,000,000) which means it is far more efficient to hop on EVE, run a 20 minute mission, and then go back to Nova with the amount of cash that would have taken you about 10 times as long to earn in Nova.

Immediately it's already apparent that players who invest a little time in EVE are going to have a much easier time generating money and thus able to operate at a much higher level simply due to income efficiency. So players are already encouraged to NOT play Nova to make money.

Secondly, we have to look at inflation of prices. Lets assume that this market operates in a vacuum for a moment. The players who are playing EVE for their ISK generation are going to have a lot more of it than players who exclusively earn through Nova. With that being said, larger amounts of ISK in the market means that the relative value of said ISK goes down, which will cause prices to go up, this is simple inflation.

So now prices are being dragged up be the inflated bank accounts of Nova players who use EVE, where the Nova exclusive players are locked in at an income rate of 10%. That means that Nova players will need to play 5-10 as many matches as Nova/Eve players just to keep up with the inflated prices from the free market.

Now lets consider the already massive amounts of funds available in EVE right now. I personally have over 2 billion sitting on an EVE character and I am by no means rich in the EVE universe, far from it. So the moment that market opens up, you will see yet a further increase in the prices of items on the market due to rampant inflation.

So now Nova exclusive players are generating 10% of what Nova/EVE players are making and prices are much higher than the ISK income of Nova exclusive players can reasonably maintain. So why would anyone want to play Nova to make money?

So now if we take say player contracts into account. Yes, Nova players would be able to generate money off of EVE players but that doesnt solve the problem of effectively rendering the ISK gain from Nova exclusively obsolete because it is far smaller in the grand scheme of things, yet ISK gain in EVE is still very viable. You have effectively made ISK gain in Nova so inconsequentially small that it's wasted content.

Imagine how that would be for someone brand new to the game who comes in, has to start off running cheap missions because they're new, and realizing that the money they earned from a match isn't enough to buy them the gear they need to run another match due to inflation and the low relative value of ISK payouts? That's going to be incredibly frustrating and turn off a lot of new players, as well as more casual players that rely on those types of matches and payouts to enjoy the game they want to (and there is nothing wrong with that kind of player)

To be fair, we're on a forum for a game that doesn't exist anymore. I don't think an "Official" place exists for Nova at this time.

I try to but then I'm branded a fanboy and dismissed! Lol