We celebrate our second anniversary with a new FPS in the New Eden universe to discuss! We talk about Project Nova, CCP’s next iteration of DUST on the PC, announced at Fanfest this weekend. We are joined by Jadek Menaheim, Kane Spero, Rabbit Rokior, and Ripley Riley.
Project Nova footage via: Dennie Fleetfoot, Sgt Kirk, and Aeon Amadi. Thanks so much to CPM2 for providing this footage.
It’s available now on iTunes or you can find it at http://biomassed.net/podcast
A couple of my thoughts
I think that CCP needs to consider what it was that kept players coming back to Dust despite its flaws. For many of the vets I would suggest that it was the setting, the long term vision and the potential scope of the game, the EVE connection, the planetary battles and the meta gameplay that comes with it, and the ability to form corporations with their friends
I think CCP needs to make sure that whilst they are making a lobby shooter initially that they are communicating that the game is going somewhere and where that somewhere is at least in general terms. By all means focus on the gun gameplay at first, but if you want the same kind of players that were attracted to Dust in the first place, and spent money on it, and logged in day after day, make sure they know that they are investing in a game that is going somewhere.
I don’t want to spend money to unlock a weapon for a few hours. I want to invest in my character.
I’ll flat out say that there needs to be a strong social component from the start, at least a chat and the ability to form groups/corps with your friends. One of the lessons from EVE and Dust is that players who join corporations stay longer. This is something that I think is done poorly in other ftp shooters, and could form a competitive advantage for Nova.
I agree that it’s key they get the social aspects in particular in quickly. Corporations is key, and CCP intends to support them. (Though they won’t be, at least immediately, connected to EVE corporations.) Though I do think the EVE connection needs to hold off, until players (and developers) in both game communities strongly desire that connection.
“Though I do think the EVE connection needs to hold off, until players (and developers) in both game communities strongly desire that connection.”
Players have wanted such connection since Dust was conceived. Also, having simple chat functions won’t cut it; there’s going to have to be actual group activities for corp retention to be a thing.
You’re missing the “both game communities” part. Most EVE players would be hostile to their developers being “wasted” on working on link to a console game (which they were), and EVE developers from everyone I met seemed pretty much completely uninterested in integrating DUST.
Every EVE player I know was in favor of having a better connection. Note that I said better; of course nobody would take it well if there was a connection that didn’t matter, as several did.
“EVE developers from everyone I met seemed pretty much completely uninterested in integrating DUST.”
Then that’s a internal thing they need to work out.
“Every EVE player you know” is a small group. I’m sure CCP was quite clear exactly where the support for EVE devs working on DUST integration was.
It’s going to be much stronger now that both are PC games, and hence, a lot of paying EVE players will also be playing DUST.
Largely the opposition from EVE players was “I don’t want my gameplay to be affected by another game that I need to buy a PS3 to play”. Granted that argument will basically disappear, but EVE players will likely remain skeptical until the product is actually worth their attention.