So, DUST.
I played it a month. I read the promises. They sounded really ambitious. I saw the first steps of progress they made in the first patches...and I bailed. I did so because I'm a hopelessly cynical bastard who knows the value of of a Harpa Pledge, but other, more functional people didn't have that crutch. They totally believed that DUST would develop into a real element of EVE Online.
Did the game ever become good? What kept that community believing? What bone was thrown to the dogs that kept them faithful that more would come? All these years, I've been treating the DUSTers in my channels as The Condemned, a doomed race of strange portraits in local. The end will come for them, it has to, and it won't be clean. What kept them going? There must have been some very cool moments or memories that happened to keep folks coming back..
Tell me DUSTers! What was great about 514?
That strange, wonderful period where nobody played scouts, scanners weren't a thing yet, objectives and capturables "informed" on their surroundings, and I could hold an objective, solo, with a Minmatar scout suit, SMG, nova knives, and remote explosives, against an entire organized squad. Booby trap the objective, detonate the first couple of fools who try to hack it, nova knife their friend who was standing watch when he tries to hack in turn, drop another explosive pack. Vary as needed.
Getting two kills with a single nova knife swipe and getting away clean? Priceless. Holding off eight players for half the match, solo? Likewise priceless. And though it was relatively common, scoring a nova knife one-shot on a heavy was always an amazing feeling.
For a time, that was the very incarnation of my preferred style of gameplay: fast, stealthy, based almost entirely on speed and cunning. And the best part was, I was one of only a handful of people who played like that. The pre-cloak scout was not underpowered; it just demanded a very information-based style of gameplay.
Over time, I wasn't especially loyal. I found other things to keep me occupied, though never another multiplayer FPS that interested me very much. I might have found my place again after the cloaks appeared, but....
Perhaps Yun Hee Ryeon will make a return once Project Legion kicks off, if that ever happens.