I think the concerns over losing players may not be the same for Dust.

EVE has tons of "captive" players that it can advertise to anytime it wants... that's why I'm here.

Eve in its first year looked like this

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/EVEHistory/2000.06_Orion.jpg

I don't think you understand, eve is the only mmo is history to have a continuous growth in sub numbers. There have been some little dips with bad expansions but that's protest stuff.

Eve has never lost player count, in all ten years. You can trust dust will do the same.

Hey come back, it's been a 12 month break, we've got giant robots, the game is good now, and you've got 8 million free sp! People will keep poping in just like eve becuase no other mmo has ever undergone so much development after release. Most mmos drop the devs, but ccp hires MORE devs after release.

Arena Net does this has well, they still have over 300 people hired there.

You can trust dust will strive. In 10 years it will have graphics comparable with that days consoles. Just look at eve ten years ok. They set the bar for supporting an mmo after release. It took them a long time but you'll never have to worry bout lack of new content in dust after release : )

So it took them only ten years to update their game enough to the point where it's actually almost fun enough to play for longer than one to three months for an average gamer?

Cool, so Dust will have an almost decent playerbase by 2022!

/sarcasm

But seriously, here's my biggest worry with this game.

When you have an online PC game like EVE or WOW, you can afford to lose players due to inadequacies now and again. The reason being that you can always just eventually put out patches, updates, and expansions and then advertise your game some more. For PC games, it's easy to advertise your game on it's own system through sidebar ads and video ads with direct links to the actual game as long as you have the cash and a site willing to advertise.

But the same does not hold true for Console games.

When a console game loses a portion of its playerbase, it's nearly impossible to advertise to get people to come back. You can't have front page advertising for a game on PS Home or the PS Store 2, 3, 5, 10 years after the launch say, "hey guys, we got it right this time, come on back and give it a try!" Maybe you get to run a 20 character line for a week in the notification bar in the top right of the screen on the XMB. For consoles, you have to rely almost completely on the community of players and basic word of mouth to get people back into it.

"You John, remember that Dust game a couple years back on the PS3?"
"Yeah, it sucked, why?"
"Well a buddy of mine still plays it, says they just did a patch or something like that, says it's a bunch better."
"I'm surprised they still have the servers running."
"Wanna try it out again after this match, (of COD 7, MW4)?"
"Meh, maybe...."

Then /if/ John and his friend actually download the game, they need to be instantly wowed into acatively playing it or else it's gone for good in their eyes.

And that's all you can honestly hope for.

That's my biggest worry. Player retention and acquisition. Sure you can have a ten year plan how players can invest their time and SP, but you better have a damned good game to keep them there.

This +100!

Right now this game is on PS3. The player base for PS3 in general will probably not wait around forever for CCP to "get it right." The PC market is not the same beast as the PS3 market.

I look at my own friends list...when Dust was finally here for open beta I talked the game up and a lot of my friends gave it a try. But within a few weeks I saw that pretty much 90% of them had completely moved on. So yeah, I too worry that by the time they "get it right" many PS3/4 players will have moved on.

When we go back to EVE and rave about Dust, or even affect some aspects of an EVE player's empire, you can bet they will be here... advertising or not.

I've only been playing it for 7 + years, so i'm sure there are older players. But when i started this is what i remember. The graphics offcourse where only half as good, you could see stars and clouds, but they felt really far away, over half of the ships wheren't even there and did not have half as much detail and colors, alott off skills have dissappeard over the years, you do get them reinbursted and many more have been added. Doing missions was easier, not a reall challenge, plus you did not get alott of loot.
offcourse alott of bug updates. My oldest memory, is me flying thrue space going thrue sobaseki and getting my ass handed to me, by a battleship. High/med sec Gate Camping, was commen then and a reall pain in the but. Also reall money trading was more commen, offcourse they did not want it, but trying to fight it was more difficult. As for PVP and corps, i would not know what has changed for them, i do know however that alott of great corps had risen and fallen over the many years. its just like comparing a pentium 3 or 4 with the modern i5 and i7. There is change but the core/essence of it is still the same. Not sure how it was in the first year/beta. But i'm sure you have played old games before and know that they improve with each sequel, graphic wise, etc. Plus of the stage we are now with modern day computers, in the many years to come technology with games just becomes better and more reallistic. So to me it would not be a suprise if in another 7 years time, we would actually have the feeling of flying in space or beeing on an alien planet fighting our wars. Seeing the details of our surroundings as we do now when we look around.
We would have twice as many dropsuits, vehicles, weapons. atleast a few every year. skills will be added, so we might have a 100 + skills now, in a few years time that number will have doubled. Eveything becomes more complex, different ways of making money will be added, now we just have the same kind of buildings, but those will become different aswell, maybe even boarding ships.
The idea's that people have in there head now and the ones ccp have offcourse, alott of these things can't be added now. but many of them will be added to the game over the many years to come. Even with eve's promise off walking in station's, it's not off the table, they just need to make it and that takes time.

But ok i'm sure you get the general idea.

+ 1, I was suggesting some new game modes, and someone actually said no new game modes and kept taking about open world. While I would love to see open world, this won't be even remotely possible until PS4, and until then, we need more variety. That is why multiplayer is so strong in games like CoD. There are so many options, that you never get bored.

@Daddrobit

I'm not worried about player retention.

Same. Also, Daddrobit, it doesn't sound like you like EVE even today, however there are plenty of people that love love love the game.

I haven't played as long as the OP would like to see, but I have seen it enough that they appear to have doubled down on investing in EVE. Every expansion for the last 3 years, except when they took out the station hanger(never let them forget this one!!!), has been a home run.

I started playing at the start of 2004

Got to admit i dont really remember much about the game at that point and the changes have all been smooth and gradual

Everytime i was starting to get alittle bored new ships and new modules or a new feature would come out, or they would become more open to me

EvE has always rewarded those who continue to play while not making so new players could not join in, that was the golden rule of EvE

But when you look back and see the old Vids and chat with people you remember just had bad the game was back then

My first experience:
I logged into the game and was faced with this UI thing, i had never seen so many options and buttons no idea what i was doing
I ask for some help where to start, there was no guides, just dumped in a ship in the middle of nowhere no idea how to fly
I got a few responses all saying no idea and one responding saying he had been playing for hours and still had not reached the nearest station and everyone should quit

The bugs were everywhere, thinking about them now i have no idea how i did not see them as game breaking and quit
Chatting with a corp mate recently reminding me of when we had to queue to get through gates, as the system had not been used it had shut down and you had to wait for it to be activated on the server, no time scales just keep trying and hope the rats or other players dont find you before the gate works

The universe has grown so much in that time but its still the same area, some new systems loads of new gates, even unknown systems now off the grid to allow more players in and avoid over crowding

Every game you go and play after playing EvE you compare to EvE and you will miss one of the features you loved thats not in X game and that talks you into giving it another go
Dust will go the same way, its already way better than EvE at launch, hell its already better than the big FPS games are at launch
When the FPS gamers see the depth numbers wont be an issue and you wont think about the player base, i loved EvE with its 2000 active players it gives a close community which we currently have, then it can expanded slowly but it means the games success and growth is based on us, act wisely CCP will follow our lead, and give us the tools we need to improve that area but they have never forced us to play a certain way

Dust is what i have been after for along time an FPS with true depth it cant fail

But the same does not hold true for Console games.

When a console game loses a portion of its playerbase, it's nearly impossible to advertise to get people to come back.

The two games aren't comparable; about the only thing DUST has in common with EVE is that it's based in the same universe, and is made by CCP.

EVE was brutal, unfinished, and had serious problems when it was young. However, it was a unique experience (sandbox space based MMO where everyone plays on the same server) and never really had competition for its niche. I honestly believe that if EVE had a serious competitor in the early days, it probably would have died long before it grew into what it is today.

DUST, on the other hand, isn't particularly unique. It is a generic FPS with above average customization, clunky gameplay, and a near-pointless tie-in to the EVE universe. It is also limited to the one less popular console this generation. Console FPS are a dime a dozen, and Planetside 2/Defiance do what DUST is supposed to do just as well as it does at this point. The core FPS elements are below average, and CCP's meaningful dev cycle is slower than Blizzard's.

CCP seems to expect to be able to pull an EVE, where the game is broken and unfinished for years while they slowly fix it up, but as a game, it is not unique nor interesting enough to survive on microtransactions for years if the majority of the population sees it as a bad/boring game. Unfortunately, I fear this is where we are at this point. Practically anywhere on the internet you talk about DUST, you tend to get "meh" or "lolbad" reception. From what we know about Uprising, I doubt that is going to change any time soon, and if closed beta to now is any indication, it'll be another 6 months for the next update.