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Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 1 post(s) |
Vrain Matari
Mikramurka Shock Troop
Minmatar Republic
3241
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Posted - 2017.05.27 00:49:00 -
[1] - Quote
Short & sweet:
Dust launches in early 2012 but with two revisions:
- it's the version of Dust we had when they shut down the servers, the Rattati'd version
- it's got butter smooth mechanics, masterful netcode and solid well-distributed servers.
Successful?
Spending merc fortune like water keeping these clone tumors under control....
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Vrain Matari
Mikramurka Shock Troop
Minmatar Republic
3245
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Posted - 2017.05.28 05:12:00 -
[2] - Quote
Joel II X wrote:Unsuccessful.
Vets will still be stomping new friends. New friends never come back to ascend to vet-dom. [I]New[I] new friends join and get stomped. The cycle continues.
In a far away land, a prophesy is spread throughout the masses: "How to Improve NPE!" They look towards the horizon for a hero, only to find a red shevron in the distance.
It's probably a Thale's.
Damn near poetry, that.
Spending merc fortune like water keeping these clone tumors under control....
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Vrain Matari
Mikramurka Shock Troop
Minmatar Republic
3246
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Posted - 2017.05.31 01:33:00 -
[3] - Quote
Full disclosure, this thread was intended as an attempt to separate out the incidentals(poor code, poor mechanics, lag) from the heart of the current conversation we're having, game design.
We all suffered tremendously(the devs more than the players, methinks) from the crappy foundations Dust had but for the conversation going forward we have to forget about that and hone in on the game design. Adding an edit to the OP to also get rid of the PS3 factor.
Dust Fiend makes a great point regarding new player frustration with game mechanics, i'd like riff on that by suggesting there was a feedback loop: crappy mechanics served to amplify players' frustration with game design and vice versa.
Dust lost players on both ends: in the first 15 minutes and in the long term.
Still, something in Dust's game design gave Dust its magic: we all know it's not an easy game to forget and we all know that there's not another game out there that gives the experience Dust did. I want to make sure we identify what that was and keep it in Nova.
Re: the OP imho without the poor mechanics or end of platform issue Dust would have had much longer legs and the deeper playerbase would have alleviated a significant amount of new player frustration. Revenue and server population would have reflected this. That being said, many players above(and the devs, obviously) have identified pathological game design that meant poor long-term prospects for Dust.
Short term crappy and long term pathological, so where did the magic come in?
Spending merc fortune like water keeping these clone tumors under control....
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Vrain Matari
Mikramurka Shock Troop
Minmatar Republic
3248
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Posted - 2017.06.01 13:52:00 -
[4] - Quote
Regarding where Dust's magic came from, it seems like a fairly short list of candidates:
- Shingle shard - every player can cross paths and interact with every other player at all times.
- Shingle shard shared with Eve - shared comms and that sense of being part of something far greater.
- Social tools - free voice comms, text comms, player volition to create channels, squads, corps.
- MMO character progression that required players to make decisions that had consequences.
- A satisfyingly complex fitting minigame that allowed/required players to optimize suits over several variables simultaneously(risk, offense, defense, intel, mobility, utility...) <-this list is actually quite long in Dust.
- A genuinely brutal battlefield experience. Players knew that what they had, they had earned.
- An uneven playing field. Every player had faced adversity and poor odds and sometimes come out victorious.
These are not necessarily good or bad, and do not necessarily need to be in Nova to give us that magic again.
What needs to be added to the list and what can be removed from it?
There's a lot of synergy between some of these traits, e.g. points 1, 2 & 3 all build on each other, likewise points 4 & 5. Points 6 & 7 feedback into points 1 & 3.
So add what you think is missing and go at what's left with a chinsaw to get to the minimal set of properties to give us that Dust magic in Nova.
Spending merc fortune like water keeping these clone tumors under control....
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Vrain Matari
Mikramurka Shock Troop
Minmatar Republic
3250
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Posted - 2017.06.01 14:53:00 -
[5] - Quote
byte modal wrote:mmmm shingles.
ok sorry. going back to read the rest ;)
lol. i'm having way too much fun reading that post for some reason!!!
" Shingle shard - every player can cross paths and interact with every other player at all times - infecting each other in every instance!
Shingle shard shared with Eve - shared comms and that sense of being part of something far greater."
"Shingle shard shared"
I will be saying that all day today around the office. It's harder than it looks.
<3<3<3
This brightened my morning lol. And I don't know why!!!
Clackers are especially terrifying in a shingle shard environment. 
P.S. Now that you have me lolling about it too i can't bring myself to change it.
Spending merc fortune like water keeping these clone tumors under control....
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