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CCP Announces Console MMO Tie-In To the EVE Universe
Hork_Monkey writes "CCP Games, developer of the popular MMO EVE Online, has announced a new game called Dust 514. Building on the EVE universe, this game will provide planetary combat from an RTS and FPS perspective, with significant impact into the space combat aspects of EVE Online. Love or hate EVE Online, this appears to be an innovative way to expand the overall universe by catering to a different gamer audience. A video with a trailer and further explanation was posted from GDC Europe."
That seems like an interesting first.
I've heard that there is a "walk around in stations" change coming to E.O. Does that mean that once this is in place, you will have to be careful when walking around stations? I guess it might allow for station taking missions where you have to fight your way through the station. That could be cool I guess, But EVE is pretty complex as it is.
CCP has always been doing a good job before. Maybe it'll still be fun in the end. I do hope for a PC version toguh, and then running them both :P.
About 4 months now, I was playing wow for a few years and just needed a change.
The universe is complex, but the training and progression system is unbelievable. I have friends int he service who are on duty for sometimes weeks at a time. They are progresssing at the exact same pace that the rest of us are that might play 3-4 nights a week. After about 6 months, you're competent with just about anything you want to do, and then further specialization allows for deeper access to ships and better equipment.
The difference i like between EVE and WoW, you don't really need to raid to get into a decent ship and get good equipment. Just about everyone has access to everything in the game. Just fly to Jita and buy what you're looking for :)
Massively has run another wrap-up article on the announcement: http://www.massively.com/2009/08/18/ccp-games-reveals-new-eve-online-console-mmo-dust-514/ Details on how exactly this will impact 0.0 soverignty are scarce and as usually happens with the EVE forum when big announcements occur, people are assuming the worst. It's an ambitious plan that has the potential to extend EVE into the console market but there's a lot that could go wrong with it. If past experience is anything to go by though, CCP are certainly capable of doing the "impossible".
I thnk it's pretty nice that eve manages to make big news time and time again. The game is already complex and very interesting and ever-changing. This will just add another layer to it, increasing the complexity but also giving eve's universe a chance to interest non-MMORPG people. Yes, i know this new game is called an MMO, but you're using guns. You need to aim. It's not goign to be an MMO, it's going to be an fps with MMO elements, like call of duty already has. The big difference will be the dependancy on you from another game - wich is completely unique. CCP is really trying to make a good game here, and with their history i would like to see how this ends up.
More important, when discussing an EVE tie-in, is the fact that spreadsheets require a keyboard, and optionally a mouse, for best results...
I'm going to be hiring Dust soldiers to do my bidding
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
I guess I was mistaken when I thought I enjoyed playing Halo. Thanks for setting me straight.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You've obviously never seriously played any PC FPS. Designing for console controller means dumbing down the game with slower pace and autoaim. All console FPSs are casual games.
Doing a good job making the game enjoyable? Eve? That's debatable.
My big concern is that typical console gamers are about as far removed from Eve players as they are from people who snapped up Barbie Horse Adventures.
I read the internet for the articles.
He didn't say anything about Halo being fun or not. Just that PC is a better platform for it. I agree for 2 reasons.
Mouse and keyboard is a better control system. Console controllers are gimp. At least 4 fingers are wasted simply holding it. That's if you use the horribly uncomfortable and unergonomic claw style. 6 otherwise.
Number of people in battle. On PC my team is often the same size or larger as the whole battle on console.
I find being offended by me offensive.
sure there are less of keyboard options but if you have a maxshooter 360,
you can program it to use a mouse and keyboard on Xbox 360
Clicky Here
That's the idea. This move is meant to pull in the Halo monkeys of the world who are in it to run-shoot-run.
The idea as I understand it is to have corps issue contracts for battles on planet surfaces. The battles determine regional control of planets, which ultimately determines control of the whole planet. Control the major planets of a system and you control the system, and so on up the scale to entire constellations and regions of space.
The shooters get their fun by fighting the ground battles for whoever pays them the most. The Corporate Overlords of EvE issue mercenary contracts and use the shooters as pawns in the much larger game/metagame. Both sides will (in theory) get a much richer experience from this move.
It's a huge gamble and I hope it pays off for CCP. My only wish is that they port the game to the PC so that I can enjoy it, because I have no intention of shelling out $350+ for a game console.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
I don't think it's going to suck for fans of FPS.
But I question CCP's premise that "console gamers want FPS games". IMHO, there are far, far too many FPS's available for consoles, and console gamers are desperate for deeper, and more varied games.
I have basically stopped playing my 360 because the games themselves seem so limited in terms of genre and gameplay.
I'd love to see EVE for the 360, or any MMO for that matter. I think the fundamental question that needs to be asked of console-game developers is: Why and who decided that MMO's, as one of the most successful and profitable genres of game for the PC, would not work on the 360? It pains me to see MMO's finally brought to consoles, only to see them reduced to yet another FPS.
Sigh.
I won't be playing this game, not because it's an MMO, but because I can't bear to touch yet another FPS.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I've played FPS games on consoles and I've played seriously on my PC. I enjoy both. Why is it that some many people like care how someone plays an FPS or RTS game and then get all worked up over the fact that people enjoy them on consoles. The world isn't this black and white were you can only enjoy playing games either on your PC or your console.
I'm curious how they're going to go about this. For the most part people who play EVE don't do much FPS, and vice versa. Without an overlap in the player base, they'll be essentially making a completely different game for a different demographic. So what's the point of trying to tie the two together?
You know that friend of yours who has different music tastes than you, who will go on for hours about how his favorite musicians don't lip-sync, how they write their own songs, etc? You know, the guy who everyone rolls their eyes at and avoids at parties (lest he go on a long rant about how crappy pop music is today and how the obscure shit he likes is so superior in every way)? You know that smug douchebag?
Well that's what it's like to listen to a PC snob.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I have played all the Quakes, Unreals, and Half-Lifes, including CS semi-professionally. Guess what? I have fun playing Halo as well. Just because a superior control scheme exists for a game, doesn't mean that people can't enjoy the game on it's own merits.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Which obviously means nobody could ever find them fun!
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Planetside is an awesome game but it's really really old now, also full of cheaters (client side hit detection/cone of fire is an awesome idea c/d).
WTB Planetside2 without SoE.
Will there be a PC VERSION ?!?!?! EVE is great fun and I almost died last year when they started talking about FPS combat for EVE. I have too much money in my PC as it is I don't want a reason to buy a consol. Plus I F***ing hate thumb sticks.
"Planetside is an awesome game but it's really really old now"
True. Yet, the age of the game allows it to run on older/less expensive machines. i'd love to see a graphics upgrade though! The populations are sadly lower than we'd like. They are about to merge the Europe server into the US server. We see poplocks regularly again, which is nice.
"also full of cheaters"
The cheaters generally find themselves alone pretty quickly, esp. after all the /report and /appeals start. It was pretty bad last year, but recently hackers are fairly rare.
"(client side hit detection/cone of fire is an awesome idea c/d)."
Indeed!
"WTB Planetside2 without SoE."
In the next few months there will be a number of PlanetSide inspired games* hitting the market. They borrow, rather shamelessly, some of the interesting aspects of PS. None of them are fully copying it (aside from Welkin, which is China's reverse engineered PS), which is a shame. PS has some traits that make it rewarding for players who want depth and duration, but without feeling like a second job. i think one of the reasons PS is waning is that most MMO players don't want a challenge, or something that requires skill, tactics or cooperation. They want to become gods who can stomp on low level characters with a click of the mouse. They want to spend their way into power, rather than earn it.
As for the 'without SOE'... yeah. That would be orgasmic. Shit, i'd buy a console to play it. MAG is close, but it has no persistence. Global Agenda has a power curve and is basically Unreal Tournament or Team Fortress with levels.
i will be sad when PS ends.
*(MAG, Global Agenda and a few others that i can't name)
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
OK, I'll bite. That sounds pretty damn interesting. Questions:
1) The game is 6 years old. Is it still very active? Do we need to worry about the game being "canceled"?
2) Are the only players left the hard-core players? Or are new people still joining in?
3) Looks like they're consolidating everyone to one server this month. Will this be a good or bad thing, in your opinion?
4) Is one of the empires way more popular than the others? Is there good balance?
5) What are the players like in each empires? Is one dominated by younger players, one older (ala WoW)?
Thanks for the info, I might have to check it out, especially if the "reserves" product is available for free.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I am curious about the RTS aspect of this game, not much has been said on it. Also, what does DUST 514 mean?
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
In the top-right corner of this page is an advert* for the following site: http://mmorpged.net/eve/ ** ...but I don't know where to report it to.
IT IS A SCAM
* for those of you not blocking ads. I myself have the slashdot "Ads disabled" checkbox immediately below that ad ticked, rather than running adblock on this site, but the advert's still there for some reason.
** url is not a link to protect the stupid
If you go to that crazy page and read, it talks about "owning your server", "leveling" and "if you just want the ISK for your mount". NONE OF THESE APPLY TO EVE. EVE is a one server game, your character doesn't "level up" and you don't buy a "mount" with lots of currency. The page is a copy of another advert scam page, and they haven't even made it match the game they are scamming for, more than changing the currency. It even says "strategies that [...] make kama for you!". Kama is the currency from the Dofus, which unsuprisingly they ALSO have a page for: http://www.mmorpged.net/dofus/
The Everquest 2 page on the same site is better: http://www.mmorpged.net/everquest2/
It says "all you have to do is take the link here to order your copy of EVE Ultimate gold Guide." (whoops, wrong game) and if you click the order link it invoices you for "Lord of the Rings Online Gold Guide". Clever.
Now, does anyone know where I could report it to google (ads) as a scam?
1) The game is 6 years old. Is it still very active? Do we need to worry about the game being "canceled"?
It's not as active as it was, but since they have condensed down to two servers (North America and Europe)(Soon to be just one server), the battles are intense again. When an empire hits it's population limit for a given continent, no more can go there for that side. We call that a Pop Lock. We're seeing those more and more. Things are pretty busy.
There is no time frame for cancellation. See server merge below.
2) Are the only players left the hard-core players? Or are new people still joining in?
New players are joining steadily, but alas, not enough to cause them to split the servers again. Or to make new content :(
Since the power curve of the game is shallow, new players have access to the same stuff as 6 year vets like me. The difference would be that i have more options right now. You'd have to unload X to get Y. But you can get up to a good level pretty quickly. Once you find your niche, additional cert points are nice to have but aren't critical. i can have you sniping in heavy armor with an implant to see even further than your scope in about a week of play. You can have a sniper rifle on day one.
As a contrast: At Battle Rank 25, i have 3 implants, an aircraft, a mobile spawn point, infiltration suit (invisibility), i can place mine and lil robot turrets and explosive devices, install viruses, hack anything and hack quickly, revive the dead and repair vehicles and armor. But it works out because i'm limited in what i can do/carry at once. If you get the cert for explosives, yours are just as powerful. i don't have 1337 explosives of kill everyone.
Server merges also bring out the veterans. We're seeing players from ages ago coming back.
3) Looks like they're consolidating everyone to one server this month. Will this be a good or bad thing, in your opinion?
Mostly good. It will allow us to have bigger battles in more places. The European players have been using US servers for a long time, so the lag, while a factor, won't be crippling. Communication might be a bit of an issue. Most Europeans understand enough English and use the same terms we do, so even that might be OK. On the downside, there are no other servers to merge. My guess is that PS has about a year to live after the merge. But that's just my guess. i'll prolly play until they shut down. i play mostly for the camaraderie now. Becoming an officer made it a completely different game for me.
4) Is one of the empires way more popular than the others? Is there good balance?
The balance is interesting. It's good if you look at the empires as a whole. One side might have "Better" tanks, but the other side might have better power armor. It also depends on the latest buff/nerf pass. When there is a buff to empire A, players flock to A to play with the new toy. Empires B and C see lower population, being outnumbered and being killed by the weapon of the week. This leads to cries of OP. This usually settles down after a week or so. The empires are pretty well balanced in terms of equipment.
In terms of popularity, there are shifts and there are bad days. Overall the pops are within a few % of each other. Sometimes there are spikes in population on one side. On our raid nights, we cause a spike because we're a big outfit.
A side can do well even if out populated. They just have to adjust their strategy.
5) What are the players like in each empires? Is one dominated by younger players, one older (ala WoW)?
i'm a poor source for this info. i've been VS since day one, and the same outfit since a few months in. i hear that the Terran Republic tends to be less coherent overall. They have some outfits that are amazing though. The TRx are bad ass. Finding an outfit that fits you is key. Some are very military like, others are very casual. My outfit is somewhere between. i don't know of any age/personality trend
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
What I find funniest is that you think being a 'hardcore' gamer is something to be proud of, rather than ashamed.
I've played FPSs since Wolfenstein 3D, some would say obsessively. The level of hardcore I'm talking about can be summed up looking at the game list I played at the bottom. I got tired of upgrading my PC every two years (downing a console's worth of money each time), keeping up with what's the best bang-for-buck setup (I just want to play), aimbotting and dealing with incompatibilities between hardware components and/or software.
Bought a PS3 and haven't played a PC game since (except Nethack). It just works. Killzone 2 is the only FPS I've played extensively, and it's good. I played the campaign almost through to acquaint myself with the controller, and now it's second nature.
Of course it has slower pace, but that doesn't make it less harder, or more casual. It's just as enjoyable as TO:AOT, TCE, NS (as such a serious PC gamer as you are I'm sure you're familiar with those) or BF2 - without the hassle that comes with PCs I just mentioned. No autoaim, either.
"We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer
Quake and such are reliant on sub-100 ms pings etc to be played optimally due to the accuracy of your input devices. Not only is that kind of precision not possible using a controller, we are also dealing with a single server architecture... Thus you will always have what ever the lag is to London.
That is imo the reason why they're going console, in addition to the hackability issue, where they can go more tactical rather than twitch based.
- These characters were randomly selected.
footage was 'slipped' into one of the speeches during fanfest last year and they also showed off the planetary interface. this has probably been in the works for the last two years already.
i look forward to it as it will add a new dynamic to the mmo while giving a new view into the universe. i have an xbox and an sli-pc so if it comes out on either i will be happy.
I would give everything i own for a little bit more.
In the video Hilmar mentioned that the number 514 had some signifficance in the gameworld. Has anyone figured out what that is?
Sindri Traustason.
Yeah this is actually pretty freaken amazing if they pull this off correctly. I'm not sure how they will actually run it so planets win. I'm worried they may try to do something like, 5 'maps' each named after a planet, then a +win/loss for a side at the end of the day decides who gets the resources from the planet. Have to watch out for win trading and other stuff like that.
I hope they can pull this off, and go deeper with it. Its kind of like the mech warrior leagues that I always wanted to be um, more detailed. They would have a star map, then basically fight quick mech warrior battles, but they were set up such that the mechs and weapons they used were based on what resources were available on the strategic map. Based on the outcome, control of the planet or whatever would be determined on the in game play.
I'm with you though, I really won't be touching this on the console, my hands are wired for pc FPS and something about paying for xbox live gold itches me the wrong way. It's definitely a 'get off my lawn' move on my part, but meh. If they had this for the pc I'd be all over it.
I know they are tapping a bigger audience here with consoles, AND they have the chance to suck in people who play and enjoy dust to try out EVE, potentially reaching a bigger audience. Still, I would almost see dust as something that would work well with the PC, since all EVE players are by nature pc users, and I am sure a lot of eve people would love to mine crap in one window and blow up people while on dust. But I guess they can do that on the console, maybe thats another of their thought patterns.
Anyway, this is a pretty unique and cool idea, I hope they pull it off, I'd love to see it in action.
Yeah, PS was always on the cusp of amazing but still hasn't figured itself out. One of my biggest gripes with the game was that all towers and all bases on all continents looked the same. So you have these really cool continents with varied terrain and what not, but at the end of the day, you fight over the same guard tower or same main tower over and over again. It was sorta like playing a FPS that had one level.
Which is a shame, because organizing and transporting your unit from one place to another was amazing. Max charges, gal drops from towers, hell even just catching that once a 5 minute orbital drop thing was amazing.
The way you leveled up was cool. All the weapons you had were good to start, but you increased versatility as you leveled up, making you all the more deadly. I had many a relaxing days on a ridge with a sniper rifle and shotgun waiting for one of the 200+ players swarming around to stop so send one down range.
Honestly, if they had actually taken the time to create different style bases and towers, I would have still been playing that game on and off to this day.
I'll go check out those games, mag, global agenda... can you think of any others?
You've obviously never seriously fought in any wars. Designing for the PC means dumbing down the combat with unrealistic physics and click and shoot aiming. All PC gamers are pussies.
Do you see how dumb you sound? I have played FPS competitively (and done quite well) and still enjoyed playing the halo series. Yeah, KB+mouse is what I prefer...but I don't run off labeling people who like console FPS's. You just come off like some nutso screaming at a town hall meeting.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Agreed. They could have done more to make bases and towers different. For the most part, i play to be a part of my outfit and to be a leader (which makes it a very different game).
Check out:
Section 8 and Welkin 4591.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I cannot believe something as interesting as this is a blurb that never hit the front page.
Consoles are the epitome of auto-aim no skill game play so I am not sure what you are talking about. And vendor lock-in means you are at the mercy of what ever Sony does and there will never be a free game you can play (and games will always be over prices relative to PC games). A budget rig costs $600 and will run Crysis at full settings. I have not updated my rig in 2 years and will likely only need a new video card to get another 2 years of use out of it. On top of all that, PC gaming is just more fun is you actually like skill based play rather than bland most common denominator easy mechanics (and the limitations of a console controller vs an actual keyboard and mouse)