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EVE Online, Dust 514, and the future of MMOs
cowboyupinbl
Member Posts: 32
As a quick update for those of you who don't know, EVE Online is a space-faring MMO where you play a pilot and control your spaceship through space. While there is combat, much of the game resolves around mining, trading, pirating, etc that are not focused on direct combat or action, with an extensively deep player economy. You don't control your character, just his spaceship. Entire logins can be spent flying through space while mining asteroids and maintaining your ship's systems, leading to some calling it a "screensaver MMO". I haven't played it, but it seems like more of an actual world that you have to carve your place in as a pilot, person, and businessman rather than throwing action in your face all the time.
Now, there's been an update in the works for years that has finally realized into screenshots/demo videos and is shaping up for a fall/winter release this year. It's been nicknamed "Walking In Stations" (recently officially titled as 'Incarna) and will allow you for the first time to take control of your actual character's avatar while in space stations. You can walk around, shop, interact with other players, etc face-to-face for the first time in the 7 years of the game's release. It's meant to both give you a more personal connection to your character, and also to allow you to rent out storefronts to set up legitimate shops to maintain and further deepen the game's economy system.
Almost to coincide with this, developer CCP has recently begun spreading buzz about the upcoming Dust 514. It's a straight-up FPS being developed for 360/PS3 and will take place in the same universe as EVE, but down on the ground floor of the planets as infantrymen in the ongoing war for control. Not only is this an interesting idea in itself, but CCP is actually merging the two worlds directly so that guilds can span both games and have pilots, soldiers, and merchants all under one hood and working together. Guilds in Dust 514 can be hired by pilots or merchants in EVE to claim territory down on land for their factions, or to gain mining spots, etc, etc., and I imagine players of Dust 514 will have the option to trade for new gear with the merchants of EVE.
This all is going to leave the EVE Online universe a multi-faceted, 3-tiered game in itself. There are players who focus entirely on the economy who are planning on living in the space stations 24/7, pilots who like flying who will stick with their space sims, and new players drawn to the FPS aspects of Dust 514 -- 3 totally different groups of players, all interacting in ONE massive universe, all on ONE server. Already in EVE, it's typical for 40,000+ players to be online throughout the galaxies all at the same time. These updates will make this world even bigger.
To me, this seems like the future of MMOs. Once this gets established, which probably won't be until the middle of next year, everything that came before it will look small and be instantly outdated. This has all kind of built up and snowballed in the background; EVE doesn't get much mainstream attention, and is looked at mainly as a niche game. Yet all of a sudden I feel like this will completely change the entire MMO industry. How can anything ever be the same after something like this? By offering all of their updates and expansions for free, showcasing absolutely GORGEOUS graphics for EVE, Incarna, and Dust 514 that put Crysis to pitiful shame, I see this becoming a major, major central hub of the MMO universe.
How do you see future MMOs comparing to this? Do you think this will take off, or be a fluke?
Comments
dust 514 will be eating red dead redemptions dust
Dust 514 won't be on the same server as EvE Online actually. They only share some little data of the new planetary-feature, that will hit the EvE-server in May.
Nevertheless, the idea of building a digital world this way is awesome.
Considering they have absolutely nothing in common, and aren't even the same genre, I don't see how that's relevant.
To me eve is headed where most of the mmos should have gone a loong time ago but didn't because of lack of ballz and prolly even creativity, as in everyone copying wow because they know it works already and comming up with smthn new and not tested may lead to failure, like creating open sandboxy worlds where player interactions play a major role. Wish luck to CCP.
Life is a game - Play it!...
I think he just wanted to use a pun with "dust" in it.
Doesn't take long for people to blame WoW for everything...
As a couple others points out Dust 514 and EVE don't really share the same universe, at least in the traditional sense. That being said I think what we know so far is a pretty good move on the part of CCP and yes I think that MMOs are going to move more towards the single server style of EVE and incorporate other platforms (phone, consoles, etc) into assocaited games like Dust 514 is being incorportated into EVE.
Unfortunatly designing areas for space games (where the world is 99% _space_ and 1% planets/asteriods/etc.) is a lot easier than it is for non space games. I think its gonna be a while before we see a world(s) big enough to be able to handle large populations on a single server (without heavy instancing).
There's two directions this can go,
The first is what the OP is talking about: three distinctly different groups of players interacting in the same game, but different aspects, tripling the appeal. In this analysis, there will be three times as many people playing in the EVE system (ground, stations, and space) as there are now.
But I don't think that's going to happen...
What is far more likely is that your average EVE player is going to think that he must invest in an XBOX 360 or PS3, invest in more alts, and invest more time (and money) in the game in order to find satisfaction in the expanded game. In other words, this doesn't broaden the appeal of EVE, but deepen the committment of those people who already find EVE appealing.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Darfkall Online claims to be able to host up to 10.000 concurrent players at once without instancing.
I know that the "no-instance" part is pretty much true, but I doubt they ever had that many players logged in at the same time.
Ironically, it'd be easier to play EVE on a PS3 controller, and Dust with a mouse and keyboard... I hate trying to aim with those damn thumbsticks.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Problem is the outside the spaceship part of EVE is dull as hell when it's not imbalanced. Incarna really won't add much because its just a chat room with avatars.
DUST-well, CCP is going to have fun trying to convince console FPS players to try it over COD, the latest Halo game, or FFXIV. I think we'll see DUST fold fairly quickly, and CCP patch planetary interaction to allow EVE players to directly attack it, which will make it as dead as lowsec.
^^ That's Dust 514. While obviously the gameplay will have to keep up with COD and such, with a game that pretty I don't they'll have too hard a time getting to at least try it.
they are both shooters both only on the xbox/ps3 so there is 2 things in common and just because dust is remotely linked to an mmo an mmo it is not, if it is a good shooter then hey more power to it and i hope it is but if it is a mediocre one and people just play it because it is "linked to eve' well................................
The planetary interaction in Eve is awesome. Those Console shooter guys better not suck because ill be pissed if i lose my planet because they need to l2p.
This is the first time CCP has ever left me scratching my head. Why would they take the conflict aspects of PI out of the hands of the actual owners of the planets.
It takes a lot of work to set up a extraction infastructure on a planet and to lose all of that because players such at a Fps mini game is kinda lame.
They did say PI would work without Dust but if I have a choice of not using Dust players ill do that.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
What? That is absolute nonsense. You wouldn't compare Dust to RDR the same way that you wouldn't compare RDR to WoW. They're not the same. Just because they have levels and a world to explore, doesn't make them anywhere near comparable experiences. FPS and TPS are also different genres, which play differently than their counterpart.
Similarly, you certainly don't compare games simply because they're on the same platform. You don't compare Mario to Zelda just because they're both Nintendo console games.
Dust 514 and Red Dead Redemption are creating completely different experiences, with absolutely nothing in common with one another other than sharing a platform.
EVE is all about player interaction. Why would CCP just give you a free ISK fountain?
Give me liberty or give me lasers
OP- I think that CCP is making a mistake with DUST 514 releasing on the console because they are cutting out their foundation fan base which is the PC market. I think they should do the following.
1.) Release dust 514 on the PC and console.
2.) Create a common social area with walking on stations for both games. Which is a problem because Dust 514 uses the UT III engine and the Eve engine is not the UT III engine.
3.) Create an interface UI that bridges both games.
The point is that if your going to bridge an existing MMORPG with 2 games you had better think about how you can bring them both together with walking talking avatars instead of a chat room, message board, or email system.
Wow, this sounds so cool. I haven't played Eve in 5 years I think I'll go take another look . . .
I think the point is that they're not SUPPOSED to interact. I don't think CCP wants the players of each game to necessarily care about the other games involved if they don't want to. They seem to want Eve/Walking In Stations to stand apart from Dust, but to let there be crossover elements that influence things like what terrain you're fighting on, or how the politics will shift in EVE, changes that are all caused to one game by the opposite game.
This reminds me of the failed MMO Seed, which had players in a crashed spaceship on a foreign planet. There was no combat in the game, just community and the players had to both form their own political system of leadership along with acting as scientists and inventors to both study the new planet and build/expand their territory. The game started out on the ship, the planet outside unable to sustain life, and the devs were going to leave it to the community, and which direction they gravitated in, as to what new things would be added to the game -- would the inventors find a way to contact home and call for more spaceships?; would the scientists find a way to terraform the outside world, thus expanding the gameworld?: would the political system rise and be just, or fall to shady gangs and corrupt leaders? Etc, etc. It was a great idea, but the lack of combat just caused it to fail the mainstream market and the game shut down within 6 months, if I remember right., before anyone could see any of the cool possibilities.
I like the idea of player's decisions, either within the same game or from a different game set in the same universe, changing the outcome of the world around you as you play. It brings the world to life in such a cool way. In reality, nothing is static and the world is always changing by greater forces beyond your control; things like this help bring them into games.
In what sense is Dust not a Massively Multiplayer Online game. It seems to me that it checks all 3 boxes there.
Online? Check!
Multiplayer? Check!
Massively? Check!
What is it missing that it doesn't count as an MMO in your eyes? Elves?
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Well Dust and EVE are pretty clearly linked. Dust players will fight in clans linked to EVE corps and alliances as mercenaries according to contracts created by EVE players, on planets owned by EVE players, in environments created by EVE players. That seems pretty linked to me, I dunno, maybe you want more?
Give me liberty or give me lasers
The whole thing reminds me of the Starship Troopers line "The Moble Infantry does the dieing While the fleet just does the flying!"
I can't freaking wait! I hope they use instanced battlefields based on the player created planetary upgrades made in EVE as the maps in Dust. How freaking awesome would that be!
I also hope the walking in stations allows you to take a dropship to the planet surface to hire some Dust grunts to go do some dieing!
CAN NOT FREAKING WAIT!!!
WTF podded again?
I don"t know but the way the Op explians Dust514 is that there will hardly be any combat. Why would I want to play a mmo where all i do is craft ? I hope we get a better explanation of the game because this does not sound right.
DUST 514: set orbit to 10m, watch avatar destroingg things.
What? Are you reading the same thing? Dust 514 will be a FPS. The games of which will be played on the planets of EVE, paid for by the corps in EVE, and the results of those Dust games will affect EVE's sovereignty system.
Maybe you were reading the part about Walking In Stations (Incarna)? That will be a purely social experience in EVE, and is not technically related to Dust.
+1