Dust 514

Games
1

So, CCP’s MMOFPS has been properly announced and it’s a PS3 exclusive. It’s basically vehicular and troop based combat, with a persistent world/universe, with different options for fitting out your character and their vehicles, and a background market on which all this equipment is bought and sold.

There’s a blog detailing what I’m going to say here, but it says it much better than me. http://www.dust514.com/en/news/article/1980/beginnings

And the videos of Dust are here. http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/06/06/introducing-dust-514-a-persistent-shooter-from-ccp/

So far the details on it are that it will be a free download with no subscription fee. It will be funded by microtransactions. Interestingly it will be operating two currencies at once, Aurum and ISK. Aurum is the purchased currency, and it will by some items in the market, however you will still need ISK to buy other items. And Isk isn’t purchasable through Dust 514 (although I’m guessing Eve players can transfer it to friendly Dust Corps.) There will also be a secondary player market, where items purchased with Aurum can be sold along with other items for Isk. So selling MT items on that market gets you the Isk to buy general stuff. It’s a fairly convoluted way of doing things, but I’m sure it’s being done for a particular purpose (some of which I could guess at.)

Also, there’s fitting screens for the FPS players. There will be different kinds of armour and weapons that you can kit your man out with. And there will be vehicle fitting, so you can choose what guns, armour, speed modules, etc. go on your helicopter, tank, jet, etc…

The biggest selling point of all this though is that there’s persistence to it all. The conquering and liberating of places actual stays effected on the universe. And the persistence is tied to an already established universe, i.e. the Eve MMO. With all the interactions that implies.

From looking at the blogs, and responses on gaming sites, it looks like Eve’s players are being their usual butthurt bittervet selves about CCP striking out in a new direction, and the oh so many ways it will negatively effect them (they’re like attention starved children.) While people who haven’t seen CCP fall through on promise after promise are actually quite enthusiastic about it all, and applauding the new approach at a “persistant shooter” as soon as someone tells them what is actually going on.

2

I’ll admit, I’d never heard of Dust before, but thought what they showed was one of the more interesting demos of the day. I’m also fascinated by the idea that it shares the same universe as Eve Online, but one thing that I wasn’t totally clear on: will there be any actual crossover between the two titles? Specifically, can people take ISK they make in Eve and sell it to Dust 514 players?

3

I don’t understand the console exclusive part of it. I’ve followed this game, and it seems to be a purposeful decision, nothing to do with hardware problems or contracts. Why would you take a hardcore set of PC players who are addicted to your game, then design a game they can’t play, but tease them with tying it to their Eve gaming world? It is like taking control of their world out of their hands and handing it to some alien players on the PS3 that they will never be able to play with.

Dunno it is just weird?

4

I’m not an EVE player myself but I followed the Dust thing a while and originally the idea was that the console FPS is linked to the EVE MMO.

Actually the key point was that the FPS crowd is “hired” by the EVE corps to fight in their interest for resources transfered to the corporations if the FPS guys secured them.

This sounded pretty fascinating but I have no idea how much of the original idea is still in Dust 514 these days.

I think my information is based on an EDGE article from last year shortly after the reveal of Dust.

5

No, you’re not allowed directly buy or sell currency for real life cash, if that’s what you’re getting at. The way it works in Eve at the moment is that you can buy and sell Plex, which are 60 days of game time. So you pay $30 for a Plex, then someone can buy that off you on the market for 600 million Isk or so. People who don’t want to grind for Isk get a way of converting real life cash to in game money, and people who have lots of in game currency have a way of paying for their play time with in game resources.

I think the Aurum that’s being referred to as the MicroTransaction currency will allow you to buy things from a special market in Dust. You can then either use those items or sell them on the in game market for Isk. So like Plex its a way of converting cash into in game money, and in this case also a way of buying certain useful in game items. You can’t buy everything with Aurum, so some of the items that you buy with it will be sold for Isk because players will want a way of converting real life money to Isk. Much like Eve players selling Plex to convert cash into in game currency. That means players who don’t want to spend real life money, have a way of getting access to the items on the real life money market, because that will be the route for Dust players to convert their cash into in game currency.

If you were asking if there’s a way of players in Eve transferring in game money (Isk) to players in Dust, I’d imagine that’s going to be at the heart of the interaction. They’re talking about Dust and Eve players being allowed in the same corporations (guilds/clans.) So they’ll be able to share resources and act as a cohesive unit, relying on each other. The other part of the idea was that Dust players could form mercenary bands, and hire themselves out to Eve corporations for Isk. So a corporation who couldn’t afford or manage a Dust group could rent them for particular battles. And as a corollary to that particular skilled or elite Dust players could command high prices from the Eve corporations in must win planetary battles.

I don’t think Dust will have as big an effect on Eve as some people are thinking. From what I’ve seen the biggest connect will be through the economy. Otherwise it will give benefits to people in Eve, but they haven’t announced what the mechanics of those benefits are yet. It could allow for faster building of the mega-ships you see in Eve, it could allow for corporations to generate bigger profit, it could allow for certain region controlling corporations to lock down their control of an area, and similarly allow for their opponents to get an inroad into them in an attack. I don’t think it’ll be anything like a Dust battle handing sovereignty over to someone who has showed no prowess in the space fighting aspect. It’ll just give an edge to certain people, another form of a multifaceted interaction.

As for why they’re putting it on consoles and not PCs, I dunno. I guess CCP just wanted to try something different, maybe tap into a bigger market, maybe avoid the exploits possible with online PC shooters, maybe they figured anyone who wants a bit of Eve and who has a PC has already tried the game and decided on it. On the PS3 versus XBox aspect, the speculation (based on the Final Fantasy MMO) is that Microsoft wouldn’t have allowed CCP the amount of control over the network and server hardware CCP would need to properly integrate the two different games. And I’m certain that CCP wouldn’t hand control of their Eve servers to Microsoft.

6

From what i understand, that’s exactly the only way of interaction between the two games: you can’t make a “strafing run” with your ship on the planet surface, but Eve players can offer contracts and rewards and stuff to Dust players.

7

Thanks, Buceph, I think you answered my question. :)

Basically, my first thought as soon as they mentioned the relationship between the two games was whether Eve players – who have been known to be unscrupulous on occasion, and in fact celebrate that aspect of the game – might immediately start concocting schemes to bilk Dust 514 players out of currency. It might be completely impossible, but the thought crossed my mind.

8

In the Sony conference, during the Dust video there was talk about Orbital Bombardment. So maybe there’ll be a mechanism of setting up big guns in space.

Yeah, I’m wondering how they’re going to get around some corps paying off their Dust opponents and getting them to teamkill half their allies. :D

9

Actually Aurum is also a currency inside Eve Online, you can buy Aurum by trading Plex for it.

10

Really? Has it been around for a while? I stopped playing last year. I just couldn’t commit to the time needed for it. Maybe they’ve been seeding it for a while?

I had initially thought that the market for Dust items would eventually be turned over to Eve players or Dust players, and maybe having both involved. But having Aurum available to Eve players could mean that the MicroTransaction market would be seeded by Eve item construction as well, with a secondary transaction taking the real money and converting it into something needed in Eve. (I dunno, I haven’t played in ages. I just look at Fanfest and read some of the blogs now.)

Edit: Just saw your image, it wasn’t there for me the first time. I guess this isn’t a Dust only thing. I missed the clothes market.

11

It’s not in the game yet, it will be used for vanity items when incarna is released in around 2 weeks.

12

I would love to play this…

On a PC.

My current gaming life doesn’t suit consoles at all, nor long-form games like EVE.

13

Making it PS3 only seems stupid when your fanbase is all on the PC.

Also, restricting an online multiplayer game to the only platform you couldn’t play online with for a month is pretty amusing. ;)

14

Seems really interesting, and I’d jump in and give it a go if it was on PC. Strange decision, but I wish them luck with it. Good to see a company trying something different.

15

I’m hoping this ends up as a sci-fi version of MAG.

16

The Planetside vibe on this is very strong. Unfortunately it’s not nearly strong enough to get me to buy a PS3 simply to play Dust. Too bad there is no PC version of the game. Ah well.

Still waiting for someone to remake Planetside with all the excellent multiplayer team-oriented action that game had.

17

I don’t get it, you could have had all kinds of shades of awesome as you could flip on your PC from space combat to ground combat …and back up as the action moves on…instead you have to turn on your PS3??

My computer don’t break a sweat on almost any game, and its an old quad-core…

18

I think this is awesome, personally. :)

19

PS3? I’m not buying that. If it had been 360 exclusive, ok, I’m down, but I’m not picking up the ugly stepchild “lol lost ur infos” console just for one game.

It does look to be a cool game, but not a “buy console to play” cool game.

As far as interaction with Eve, there’s some talk from CCP about using dreads to bombard planets while fights are going on. If it’s allowed, uh, the console players are well and truly fucked. There’s nothing Eve players like more than randomly killing people for entertainment, and I can’t think of anything more entertaining than firing randomly into an FPS fight with a dread.

I think there’s a video where a Moros bombards a planet while a fight is going on, and then an assassin kills the dread pilot. Entertaining, but not sure how relevant or where it got to.

edit: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43301853/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/bizarre-rabid-beaver-attacks-philly-park/from/toolbar/?gt1=43001

Ah, apparently they can shoot back. Well that could be problematic.

edit: Here’s CCP’s blahg on the subject: http://www.dust514.com/en/news/?article=1980

and another blog: http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=918

20

There are also rumors that if dreads are able to bombard planets, the Dust players will be able to somehow fight back (build/activate some kind of weapon) to knock dreads out of the sky.