Improve? I think the game is getting worse. I enjoyed chromosome a lot more than uprising.

Replication > All!

^ This!

Skirmish 1.0 and that 1 map was sooooo great, nothing even comes close those.

There are cool things that Dust does right. Items depleting when you die create good risk vs reward in choosing what to use, the ability to call in vehicles whenever and wherever you want, and the deep skill system, and a persistent universe where corporations of players can conquer planets. There are more negatives (at this point at least) sadly.

Dust's gameplay is very basic and generic, the only thing really special about the shooter gameplay is the ability to call in vehicles to one's location. Back when we were first introduced to Dust 514 in 2009, it was suppose to be a 64 player minimum game with MCC commanders directing troops like an RTS, and player-deployed installations. Other than that its just the same things we have experience before in other shooters, no wow factor. That would be forgivable and all if it actually played well and had the basics down to build upon, but that is not the case; frame rate issues, bad controls, and sticky terrain, bugged mass driver, and bugged nanite injector, are one of many problems that get in the way get in the way of the enjoyment. I can play 64 player MAG battles with better frame rate.

The balance is also terrible: 1MPH instant kill LAV impacts, useless weapons that make you feel like you wasted your precious SP (laser rifle, etc), 1-hit kill contact grenades (the best of which is pay-to-win). The bad matchmaking allows for veterans with large SP advantage to completely stomp on players fresh out of Instant Battle Academy, and the SP differences are made even worse because SP limits what you're allowed to use instead of giving bonuses.

If gameplay and balance is bad, why expect players to stick around and have the patience for the complexities and grindfest?

The game modes are nothing we haven't seen before, just team deathmatches and control-point capture with a bunch of variants that never truly change anything. Having only 2 bland generic modes really add to the sense that the game is nothing special. We actually had an interesting and fairly unique mode (Skirmish 1.0), but they removed it instead of fixing it; I know its coming back some undisclosed time in the future (SOON lol), but this is about the current state of Dust.

The actual locations you fight in are all pretty boring and few. Only 6 maps, and only 3 outposts (what people usually call "cities") which is made even worse by the fact that we are suppose to be fighting on thousands of planets; it doesn't even come close to feeling like we have planetary variety. The terrain itself is boring, no canyons like the craterlake map which we played Skirmish 1.0, no underground tunnels or caves, not any kind of geological features to make things feel interesting.

Dust isn't a great looking game either. The lighting is beautiful, and the actual terrain looks good IMO, but the artificial structures like buildings, vehicles, and basically everything else suffer from horrible texture loading, and bad textures in general. Dust is by no means an impressive looking game, in fact I think MAG (a game that did 256 player battles on PS3 3 years ago) still has better textures than Dust.

This isn't just an FPS, it is also an MMO tied to EVE Online, so it can't just be judged by its FPS gameplay. This is an MMO ywt it launched without PVE... W.T.F? This is even more of a disappointment since last year's Fanfest said that PVE would be here by 2012. There is no social hubs to interact with other players like in other MMOs. There isn't even basic trading yet. The EVE is trivial at best right now; the premise of the game was that us mercenaries could be hired by EVE players to attack and defend their economically important planetary sites, but the game did not launch with that.

If had had to judge Dust by its current state, a 5/10 would seem fair, if not a little generous.

It won't always be like that. Dust will improve, gameplay will be fixed and refined, PVE will come, Skirmish 1.0 will be back, boarding EVE ships will give greater connections between Dust and EVE, more maps/map elements will come, new equipment like cloak field and the infantry active modules will spice up gameplay to make it more interesting, and there are possible 0 gravity environments coming. That is all great, but it will take years, and until then we're just suppose to hope and imagine the distant future while playing the current crappy game?

Dust will improve, but so will games in general. I have a feeling that Dust will always be playing catch up when it comes to the actual gameplay. Example: That commander mode that Dust was uppose to have, MAG had it, BF4 has it, and other games will have it, and by this time this long planned feature actually comes to Dust, it will just be anything exciting or impressive. I guess being stuck playing catch up is kind of forgivable considering its a free game and all.

I do so hate to say it but that is a fair assessment, when the ps4 comes out i won't be abandoning dust thats for sure after sinking this much time into but other game will probably get some of my attention i have a feeling that if dust players moved to say destiny rivalry's would probable move with them (as it did with mag-dust if i understand) but I will always hold onto the hope that dust can become more

ps.Im calling now that if dust works out the next game to join new eden will be a one off payment racing game with corps building tracks on planets (as PI) and hosting tournaments across the universe for isk and the races broadcast to enable betting (sorry for the off topic)

CCP could have avoided all of this flak they're getting if they didn't call Uprising the release version instead of "Planetary Conquest Beta"

Can't you play both games?

Why does it have to be one or the other.

And nah your wrong about the next game: the next game will be some sort of sim city type deal with planetary governers on the mobile platform.

The whole die and lose your gear is kinda meaningless to me now. I have about over 20 million isk from the close beta and I never went below that despite running prototype and advanced gear mostly.

Decent summary.

You sort of lost track of the utter failure to provide "meta" game in the form of FW and PC having any impact back and forth between Eve and Dust514. Players also don't care about either PC or FW since they are still so limited in development.

The failure to provide improvement on skirmish 1.0 is, in many ways, the Dust teams most profound visionary failure beyond their basic mechanical FPS failures. The current game modes are trivial and forgettable.

I don't know if the state of Dust is because of lack of funds, lack of manpower, incompetence, or some combination.

I suppose we've all been thinking about this lately, and what probable causes might be.

High on my list is the tinfoil hat intuition that resources are being diverted somewhere else. Perhaps fear and desperation is just slowly pushing me out to the deep end, dunno yet ;)

Other than that, lack of manpower coupled with the fact the task at hand is a phenomenal technical challenge by any measure are what come to mind in my more lucid moments.

And i honestly believe that if mighty development houses like Blizzard or Bungie met, on some dark night, the technical monster that CCP is locked in mortal combat with, they would turn around and slink away as quietly as possible. Because they are too old and wise to pick that fight, and they just don't have the balls or the backbone for it now, if they ever did.

Decent summary.

You sort of lost track of the utter failure to provide "meta" game in the form of FW and PC having any impact back and forth between Eve and Dust514. Players also don't care about either PC or FW since they are still so limited in development.

The failure to provide improvement on skirmish 1.0 is, in many ways, the Dust teams most profound visionary failure beyond their basic mechanical FPS failures. The current game modes are trivial and forgettable.

I'm getting sick and tired of hearing about DUST's future from CCP, I want to hear about what they're doing NOW to make the game worth playing, especially in light of all these new, real AAA FPS shooters on the horizon.

I'm hoping someone will convince me otherwise regarding the comparatively mediocre gameplay of the future.