however the battle systems best 4 PvP

they can actually do both. open world is certainly the priority but contract types can be easily separated with game modes. allowing players to customize their experience and still stay true to dust lore. this would give the game serious variety and a never ending supply of both NPC and player corp contracts. a world where each contract type is a game mode would do well.

we addressed it here: http://tinyurl.com/ahwmme6

Dust 514 is getting its own battle arena mode where more classical game modes would be found.

The best part is you can set up a betting system on it and its probably going to have specially tuned maps instead of the random generated ones.

Open world and Exploration to come later though.

It's not going to be open world. Look at the game we are currently playing, is that remotely open world? You dont release a beta to a game that is nothing like the final product.

The "open world' meta game will involve contracts and PERHAPS moving war barges and the like in EVE space to prepare for attacks. But the actual DUST gameplay will be 100% like we are seeing now with two teams figthing an arena style match.

There wont be a mode where I walk around a planet exploring and randomly run into other DUST players.

If you want that experience, i guess, go play planetside?

But trust me, most FPS players will get bored of that experience cause it seems pointless. DUST has a chance to shine because of how its implementing individual matches (with wins and losses so the player feels their experience had a point, and a goal) with a bigger meta game to drive the importance of those results.

The lack of an open world design is what allows that to work. Open world FPS is a really cool theory, but from WWII Online, to Planetside, to Planetside 2, it just isnt all that much fun once you get passed the novelty.

the probly is that there are just 2 modes. increase that to 10 and add new ones regularly and you have a winner. would love to do bounty hunter and hired assassin as well.

tha was MAGs problem. they thought 3 good modes could hold players for a year but people got bored.

Hope this is not too divergent from the OP, but arena matches between groups of players (not necessarily corporations) with agreed upon terms (reward, match type, map, etc.) and that allows betting from others. Discuss. I am interested in hearing what you guys think.

Hope I don't need to say this, but I am: This is just something I would love to see, not something we are doing. I just want to get your guys opinion and feedback on it.

For the OP: I see us having both eventually depended on the context of the action. I think we should always have set numbers though and let the clone count be influenced by the resources your corp has.

Even though there are only 24 or 64 or 256 on each side the clone count could vary widely. Someone could filed 8 people in a 24 v 24 match but have 1000 clones at their disposal.

Again, I think you guys are seriously mis-judging what this game is if you think it could become an open world MMO. It is 100% an arena shooter built ontop of a persistant universe to give each match meaning and have your characters persist in an impactful way.

It is COD/HALO + consequences. Thats it.

If you are playing this game, thinking it will become more, you are going to be massively let down.

You will not see the day that bases and players exist persistantly together in DUST. Players will interact in individual matches and that is about it.

It can still be amazingly cool, with the economic factors and conquest of districts/planets. But all of this will occur within the format we have now of individual matches.

That may grow, to eventually having to fly warbridges to the planet in order to drop more resources for players on the ground, etc. But it will always be "a round of DUST is being played" similar to "a round of Halo, or COD"

Honestly, its for the best. Try to play Planetside or WWIIOnline. Despite all the claims of persistance, your actions ultimately feel 100 times LESS important then a match of Halo, because you see no real results. Sure, maybe the enemy just decides the fight was boring and logs off or goes somewhere else, but it doesnt feel like a victory. And as soon as you go to bed, guess what? Everything you did is gone.

DUST has the potential to capture the FUN of arena shooters and give it a persistant, epic backbone that drives those matches. But it will never, nor should it ever, be a persistant open world FPS.

I dunno, you already have planetside for that. And what that game devolves into is a big zerg of one team running around capping bases, fighting small groups and rolling over them, while a big zerg of another team does the same, and the zergs never clash. Its boring.

The problem with a "virtual battlefield" is that war isnt fun. Its not fun to sit around at a base for hours waiting for a potential attack that never comes. And winning is always the path of least resistance, so fair, even, fun fights will mainly be avoided while massive, lopsided, boring slaughters will happen left and right.

DUST will mantain the fun of knowing you helped take that base, or helped shift that war effort, or took out that 20 million ISK tank and turned the tied of the battle, but will funnel it into fun, even matches where teams actually fight instead of taking bases where nobody is defending.

That may be reasonable. However, I would suspect that if they are serious about their "thousands of maps" (which i personally always thought seemed a little too ambitious and unrealistic, but we will see), and those maps are big enough, and filled out enough to be worth exploring, they could implement a mode where each planet is its own little open world experience similar to the multiplayer on red dead dedemption and gta.

However, with so much space to explore, what would be the odds of finding other players? What would be the point in all this exploring? Do you think they will populate 1000 different planets with enough content to make them worth anything?

The most realistic possibility is this:

Every planet does have a number of unique maps procedurely developed based on various stats of the planet. A map for every district.

Every planet will have a "open world" instance that allows players to just hang out, explore, fight NPC stuff, maybe player kill. These instances will consist of the pvp maps, strung together with some rather useless, boring environment connecting them.

To make the world feel connected, players will be kicked off the planet when a pvp match is scheduled, and players can not re-enter until its over.

That is probably as close to a truly open world experience as youll get in this game. And even that is a bit of a long shot.

Open world just isn't possible on a console FPS, just forget about it its never going to happen no matter how much you wish for it.

None of those games are MMOs, the ones that do have multiplayer don't have 16 vs 16 on their open worlds, and in many cases during the single player, parts of the world aren't loaded so it actually runs at a playable speed, not something you could do with multiple players in an open world.

There was also an argument that if the planet exploration is set up, then most likely you won't find other players. But that actually might be the beauty of it. To think about it, in all MMOs nowadays you are just one among the others; you do the same quests, explore the same locations, etc. There is really nothing heroic and unique and discovering something that has been discovered long before you, even if it grants you personal satisfaction.

In Dust (optimistic ideas follow), if every single planet holds something valuable to explore, not counting the beforementioned stations and ships, I think every player will have a chance of finding something really unique. It could be a new piece of Sleeper tech, or a blueprint of a Terran weapon, or an altar that is crucially tied up to the history of New Eden. I, personally, would do anything to participate in this sort of exploration, exploration where your discoveries are truly leaving an impact on the entire world and its economy.

DCUO might be an MMO but its not open world none of those games are they just have big maps, if your idea of open world is 1 large randomly generated map for each planet then i guess thats possible until a large amount of players try to enter the same world and the servers completely crap themselves.

Perhaps sitting around waiting for an "attack" can be circumvented by an alert 15 mins of more in advance of an attack on a base. A contract is taken, an alert posted, and the two factions have an opportunity to mobilize forces to the soon-to-be-contested location.

Separately, in regards to the lopsided battles... Yes, I support them outright. I know this opinion won't be popular, but I don't think "small corps" should be catered to. They don't stand a chance in conquest and hopefully CCP could provide another niche for them to fill. Every FPS in existence centers on relatively small player counts. I'd be interested in a game where battles are decided just as much if not more beforehand in the warbarge than on the actual battlefield.

ugh I wish eve players would stop assuming that everyone else in dust doesn't know what eve is, i've been playing it for years, It CAN'T handle 2000 ships mate, they have to do time dilation, I dare say that 2000 mercs firing ARs and strafing back and forth will produce more server problems than 1000 clients pressing F1 at target 000231, in grind 0005 at so and so gate/moon.

Don't get me wrong I'd love to play in an open world, but people getting their hopes up and expecting all this open world PVE vs drones stuff are really jumping the gun and are just going to end up bitter and disappointed, atm this game barely seems to be handling the larger maps with 16 vs 16.

i remmaber CCP saying that corps that won districts/planets will have the option to customize it. By that i mean like putting defense instalations and other things like radar scaners (from the 2009 show). Also that is if you think about it somewhat Open world, but what i dont get is when mercs take over districts (for eve pilots for ressoursec, we get money and territory right, so can we use the same ressources like to build our own stuff?). Any ways open world would be great but in my opinion you shouldn't be able to walk around districts/maps, that corps allready own other wise you'd see what they have built for deffence and would be really easy to go and try have a strategy before the battle even starts. But +1 for the idea

A few contributions to the conversation if I may:

As I've had lot of experience with beta testing both normal software and games (including those on consoles) I can say it is a given the "finished" product can and often does differ drastically from alpha and beta stages. There is still a lot of content not yet implemented that has been advertised in promo material (ie ground drones). We have yet to see the full scope of even CCP's initial concept.

In the matter of persistence, statements of plans would indicate it would be more on the Eve side for actually creating those aspects. I'm sure that I'm not the only person that also plays Eve that sees the structures DUST mercs fight on and around are directly modeled after Eve PI components, I can easily identify Extractor Heads, Command Centers, and Storage Facilites. Also if memory serves it was stated in the future DUST will play a part in securing PI interests in Souvernty outside of Faction Warfare.

I would think CCP is trying to make something more than a run and gun arena death-match, and there has been some interesting PVE EVE cross over suggestions, with positive feedback from developers and players alike. Will Dust characters do industry or world/universe shaping on their own, I find that highly unlikely. Would they be involved in things other than simple PVP conquest, it would seem like a good option to have and a degree of immersion similar to a MMORPG only for those elect to pursue it.

Since I have no knowledge of the electronic logistics they have or will employ, I will only offer a educated guess that districts, planets, solar systems etc. will be partitioned in a manner that each relative unit would be on it own independent but otherwise linked to the whole encapsulated within a node of the cluster. From experience I do know certain MMORPGs owned by the company that the console Dust runs on handles real time action of upwards of 200 or more in a single zone with less advanced technology. (If anyone is curious about the technical things I'm happy to share but it would be improper to bore those not interested)

DUST in its very concept is ground breaking, it would be a shame to clone other options en mass when it can be so much more and offer things that are a matter or choice in the way an individual chooses to play or not depending on their preference much like Eve itself.