Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Silas Vitalia]

I seem to recall CCP aversion to having any shooty fps bits befouled by non-shooty standing around and chatting. 

I imagine the best you'll get is a bunch of armored merc types standing in the same 'planning' room before a PVE drop ala DUST.

I was thinking more like, you know how in your events, you had your alt "House Staff" doing stuff ?

would Legion be a more useful tool for that sort of thing ?

I feel like it would make those things much worse - the game is likely dedicated to FPS shooty things, so it's not like you will have 'social' oriented avatar areas or clothing / emote / social props (bars, drinks, items, whatever). 

In some ways all text makes it easier to do as you imagine...

[Makoto Priano]

Provided they do full market integration, I actually rather like the idea of EVE: Legion. The original rumor was that it'd just be DUST 514 on PC-- but if they're adding scavenging, PvE, full market integration, and a more sandbox-y feel, then I'm much more curious. Mind, F2P makes me twitch, so we'll see how I actually get caught by Valkyrie and Legion-- but I definitely like the idea of more games in the universe, ideally as a method for CCP to do a sort-of-WiS thing.

[orange]

full market integration

Seriously!

[Elmund Egivand]

To apologise for all the shite the Dust players had to wade through, CCP should allow them to port all their character data to Legion and let them keep the SP. I think that's only fair.

[Lyn Farel]

Were they making any money with DUST ? If not, how would that prove different with Legion, where it is not even backed by a major publisher/console maker like Sony ?

[Esna Pitoojee]

To apologise for all the shite the Dust players had to wade through, CCP should allow them to port all their character data to Legion and let them keep the SP. I think that's only fair.

This looks like it will be happening.

[Morwen Lagann]

An important factor here that I didn't see anyone raise: CCP Rouge seriously did not realize that the Q&A session that was being held after the Dust keynote was not being broadcast on the Twitch stream. He deliberately ended the keynote early so he wouldn't run out of material and intended to finish it all, on camera, live, for the stream, at the Q&A session. The kneejerk reactions that the Dust players gave, if anything, showed exactly how much like EVE players they are.

[Ollie]

I haven't seen either of those sessions - what did the Q+A add that wasn't in the main session?

[Morwen Lagann]

More or less exactly what he said at the keynote on Saturday. Development on Dust WILL be continuing, AND the plan is for Dust players to be able to migrate their chars to Legion IF it goes anywhere.

[V. Gesakaarin]

Legion sounds more like what seems to me what brings people to Eve, and keeps them stuck there even when they throw hands up in the air and rage quit in a fit of bittervet, and that's its social dynamic. Eve as a game can be pretty shit as regards its gameplay: the PvE can be a boring and repetitive grind done by rote muscle memory, the industry and PI can be so convoluted, difficult to manage, and unclear you might want to stick a rusty spoon in your eye, and the spaceship PvP can end up pretty simple once you have a clear understanding of the meta, what's FOTM, and how to exploit things to your own advantage to the point that it's just not a challenge anymore.

What the appeal to Eve is for me though is that while pretty terrible in most of its gameplay, most will remain because of the friends you meet and the enemies you create, the alliances and the rivalries, and that the social element is the actual sandbox. That even while you might hate the game, you'll probably stick around for the familiar people and relationships you've created in the virtual world - good or bad. Even if that means you have to remain in a state of constant self-loathing that you're still participating in what is probably an almost masochistic enterprise.

Dust ultimately failed for me because it didn't try to provide some sort of meaningful social experience and it just didn't convey that sense of "scope" that Eve can have by virtue of its design and where it sets the boundaries of what you can and cannot do. In the end, Dust didn't provide anything meaningful and seems to have tried to compete directly in the same vein as CoD or Battlefield. The thing is, a new CoD or Battlefield game is released every few months because eventually all the gun porn and shiny gimmicks and the appeal fades because all you're doing is just shooting people in the face. I just don't think Dust has the same sort of brand or resources to get people to buy into it all the time, and if all that it really offers is 16v16 shooting people in the face gameplay then nothing fundamentally differentiates it from any other 16v16, 32v32, or 64v64 FPS multiplayer gameplay.

I'm not sure why CCP tried to compete on that level, and on a console that was probably going to be a legacy system soon around the time Dust was released, but I do think Legion is a step in the right direction from making their FPS generic as all the rest except with shiny sci-fi toys but more in-line with Eve in providing some sort of meaningful social experiences for its players. I can only hope CCP learns from Dust and try to build in some sort of solid social elements into Valkyrie because in much the same way it might suffer from the same consequences with long term retention and interest as Dust seems to have had if the core gameplay becomes generic and repetitive as "Just another space fighter shooter."

[Silas Vitalia]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QXc-Ka65QI

[Vincent Pryce]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QXc-Ka65QI

I laughed so hard. Partly because it's so true and tragicomic.

[Templar Ordo]

I also think Legion is a step in the right direction.

At the same time, I am furious on CCP on how they went along and introduced the thing.
Before the announcement and long before the Fanfest, they introduced a LOT of extra prices on Aurum and boosters, and several weeks of bonus SP and so on. In other words, they milked the community as much as possible before the PC announcement...
As the announcement was made, they said NOTHING of what would happen to those that were hardcore console players. They literally left them there on the spot, in that room. 
Now, I think you can be more positive than this guy, but I feel with him:
https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=159617


Moreover, I'm a bit tired that just because Fanfest is there, they have to make such announcement, even before they have all the answers. Of course people will get frustrated and leave the communities for that. They could've easily waited and announced this later, all while having more answers on the following questions:

• Legion for PS4?
  
• Dust 514 character transfer to Legion?
  
  • Expected PC requirements?
    
  • Release date (even if it was a hard guess)?
  
  Also, while dust 514 and Legion will be "two different games", they will essentially mean the same thing. So as far as I know, you won't be able to play both of them at the same time. When Legion is released for real, Dust 514 is going down.
  How else would they pull of a character transfer?
  That is their wish, at least. See CCP Logibro's comment here.
  
  Nonetheless, this game is looking awesome and for sure now they can actually make the game that they've dreamed of.
  PIE will follow it through Dust 514, into Legion.
  
  FOR THE EMPIRE!
  
  Edit: Another topic worth reading, especially for the backstage, is this RP influenced topic starter. He nailed the feeling quite well IMO:
  https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2115239#post2115239

[Lyn Farel]

At the same time, I am furious on CCP on how they went along and introduced the thing.
Before the announcement and long before the Fanfest, they introduced a LOT of extra prices on Aurum and boosters, and several weeks of bonus SP and so on. In other words, they milked the community as much as possible before the PC announcement...

But it was to help the R&D department ! 

[PracticalTechnicality]

A very informative post you have made there, Ordo.  I am enthusiastic about the future of Project Legion, as much as Dust514 may now be set on the road to retirement (despite promises of support - it seems more like 'we will keep it until the PS3 is deprecated' at which point it is a loss). 

The key issues, as you have pointed out, are not in the vision, potential project management or platform; but in the horrific miscommunications that characterise almost every CCP announcement.  They think they are 'one of us', while maintaining that this is a two-class society of developers and players.  They cannot expect accolades for work done, but compliance with polarising or downright unpopular decisions.  The attitudes coming out of the Community department are a worrying indicator of how CCP think that 'bro mentality' trumps social responsibility when you are building social groups in the interest of profiting off of them. 

With the Project Legion announcement, CCP broke the social contract with Dust 514 players in an ugly, open-fracture-like, fashion before walking away as if they'd done nothing wrong.  The fact that one could almost see frost creeping along the stage and walls during the Dust 514 discussions after the keynote, complete with golf claps that would have put tears into the eyes of the most hardened public figures, showed exactly how people felt.  Putting the squeeze on people via events and aurum fueled sales only made the betrayal all the worse. 

Dust was a failure in most terms.  It over promised, under delivered and showcased the worst aspects of EVE's Community Dev's willful blindness or complete slavish worship of their parent company in the pursuit of 'forced success'.  The announcement of switch over should have been a humble moment, espousing the need to return to core values and a core platform, and reduce the responsibility the company has for supporting an architecture that has been all but abandoned by the gaming industry (Cell, that is).  Instead we get a presto-change-o that would make Dynamo blink in awe, followed by a crass denial that this changes anything.  It ONLY makes it awesome you see?  You should be emotionally invested already.  BTW it isn't greenlit and is pretty much a call for the forensics teams to start picking over dust's still twitching corpse for cause of death, but it is AWESOME. 

I believe it will be awesome despite this bare faced duplicity.  But I also believe that CCP still has a lot of growing up to do.  We're not your friends, we're your customers.  We might be close, but there is a professional boundary.  You have an obligation to be even handed and open with your customers when you are going to change things.  You have nothing to apologise for but mistakes made and promises broken, and you have no obligation (when apologising) further than to clearly state such an apology and hope it sticks.  The continued culture of 'one of us' when it suits you and 'hand of god' when it doesn't isn't lost on your player base.  You built your game on a (spurious and incorrect) claim that you have to be smart to survive in New Eden.  Give us the respect that the pedestal you lead people to believe they stand on should grant, and treat us like logical, capable human beings - come clean, be honest and follow your vision.  Do not stoop to replying to rage and do not manage yourselves as 'walking among the peasants' to try and curry celebrity status.  Keep it clean and keep it professional, but stop this 'I'm good for it bro' nonsense. 

Pseudo-rant done.