Be Excellent To Each Other

CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson has debuted Dust 514, a strategic first-person console MMO that connects in to the existing EVE Online universe, allowing ground battles for planets to be fought by console teams.

when Dust 514 launches, the map of EVE, currently divined only by player structures owned in the PC game, will also take into account infantry successes and failures within the console game. Players in the PC MMO can "fund mercenaries and give them goals" in the console title.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24886

I'd be interested in fighting on the ground for you PC spods, if this turns out to be any good.

The graphics are rubbish.

So could xboxers hitch a ride with the PC fly boys?

And I have just sold my Eve Char.... arse!!

How much did you get for him?

£100.00

Might get a new monitor with it

K: And between the Employer in Eve and the soldiers only money is transfered? Or are there more ways, which would mean the Eve player could support his soldiers.
CCP: Through higher values of money the player supports his soldiers more. And yes, money will be the minimum an Eve player can transfer to his soldiers.

K: And in return the Eve player get's the corresponding Sector of one planet, if his soldiers win the battle. If he owns most sectors on a planet, he will own the planet. But what does he get from that?
CCP: What can be done with the planets will be announced next year at the time our next expansion is due. This will introduce planetary control. If a player controls a certain amound of planets in one sun system, he will own the whole system. That expands our souverenity system and makes warfare within Eve more transparent and shifts it to a whole new level.

I'm not paying one hundred million ISK for a ship to keep my clone safe while myp lies facedown in the mud.

I'd be interested in fighting on the ground for you PC spods, if this turns out to be any good.

... battles take place on dynamic battlefields about 5 kilometers across. Unlike EVE itself, there will be a cap to the number of players per battle — CCP is 'still playing with numbers' (and presumably watching the development of 256-player MAG with interest), but assures us that this will not be less than 64 players. There will be a command structure, with infantry and squadron leaders on each side led by a player-commander on board the hulking Mobile Command Center airship. The commander will effectively be playing a real-time strategy game with living units, and will have an RTS-style view of the battlefield. He'll be dependent on the situational awareness of infantry players to clear the fog of war. He'll also be the target, with the ultimate aim of a battle — after several, varying sub-objectives — being to destroy the opposing side's MCC.

I'd be interested in sitting above a planet, dropping Antimatter L onto the XBox players in the streets below and listening to the lovely, lovely tears.

I'd be interested in firing planet based 10,000mm railguns at PC spods in orbit... 'Wah wah, some consoletard blew up my Navy issue Raven wah wah'

Hmmm, so a presumably full price Xbox title with micro-payments.

That's a big presumption.

CCP has revealed that DUST 514 - the strategic FPS for consoles that will link with the sci-fi MMO EVE Online - will not require a subscription to play, but will charge real money for in-game items at a "virtual items marketplace

It's the "full price" bit I was wondering about. Seems to me the most sensible business model here is to distribute on disk (clearly cannot be XLBAH, I agree) but not to charge very much for the client. The EvE client is free to download, after all.

Actually, the most sensible arrangement is for Microsoft to allow the client to be downloaded from the Xbox Marketplace for free, but without the size (etc) constraints associated with XBLAH. Depends how badly they want MMOs on the 360.

What, like the Games-on-Demand thing they're doing?

I don't see the harm, as long as the stuff you have to pay for is available elsewhere for free. Which in this case appears to be correct, you can get in-game money for real money, but you can get in game money for running missions.

As to Micropayments, EA have been doing it for years... in fact, in NFS:Shift, you can either buy cars with in game money, or with MS Moon Money.

I don't see the harm, as long as the stuff you have to pay for is available elsewhere for free. Which in this case appears to be correct, you can get in-game money for real money, but you can get in game money for running missions.

Who brings a Navy Raven to a fight?

You'll have to pay a one-off fee to play PlayStation 3-exclusive MMO shooter Dust 514, developer CCP has confirmed.

A payment of between $10 and $20 will be converted into in-game currency.

"In the beginning you have to pre-buy credits, so you pay something like $10-$20 to enter the game and you get the equivalent number of credits in the game once you do that," CCP boss Hilmar Veigar Pétursson told Eurogamer sister site GamesIndustry.biz.

"We call this the cover charge."

Despite the payment, CCP insists gamers are getting Dust 514, which ties into PC-exclusive MMO Eve Online, for free.

"We might go fully free-to-play down the line, but in the beginning we have a cover charge just to manage the initial launch of it."

What, exactly, you'll be able to spend your virtual money on is yet to be decided.

"We have some initial assumptions but we'll put it out there and see how the player base during the trials reacts to it," CCP said.

CCP showcased the Unreal Engine 3-powered game during Sony's E3 press conference last month. A closed beta will happen at the end of the year ahead of a full PlayStation Network download-only release in spring 2012.

The console shooter directly connects to the PC MMO Eve Online, which launched in 2003. Dust 514 and Eve Online will share one "vibrant universe" - one single-shard super computer server.

"Sony allows us to use our systems," CCP CTO Halldor Fannar explained to Eurogamer.

"Microsoft has Xbox Live. They're very strict on that. There are a lot of issues we run into. It may be a basic thing people don't realise, but with Dust and Eve on Sony's network, we can allow them to chat together. Voice chat, text chat, that's all one world.

"One of the reasons for the partnership with Sony is because they're opening up new ways to do these things.

"We're going to be managing most of it. We're using PlayStation just for credentials, stuff like that. Then it's all our stuff.

"With our agreement with Sony they seem to be fine with our three month expansion cycle. They've been looking at the MMO space for a while, trying to understand why something like that hasn't still happened on the console. They're coming to terms with it. There are certain things they have to relax just to allow these things to function."

Well, the two don't play together directly. So how is that a problem?

The console shooter directly connects to the PC MMO Eve Online, which launched in 2003. Dust 514 and Eve Online will share one "vibrant universe" - one single-shard super computer server.

"Sony allows us to use our systems," CCP CTO Halldor Fannar explained to Eurogamer.

"Microsoft has Xbox Live. They're very strict on that. There are a lot of issues we run into. It may be a basic thing people don't realise, but with Dust and Eve on Sony's network, we can allow them to chat together. Voice chat, text chat, that's all one world.

"One of the reasons for the partnership with Sony is because they're opening up new ways to do these things.

"We're going to be managing most of it. We're using PlayStation just for credentials, stuff like that. Then it's all our stuff.

"With our agreement with Sony they seem to be fine with our three month expansion cycle. They've been looking at the MMO space for a while, trying to understand why something like that hasn't still happened on the console. They're coming to terms with it. There are certain things they have to relax just to allow these things to function."