Corporation forums on the EVE forums!

Today there was much rejoicing as CCP Guard brings us some info on the long awaited corporation forums on EVE Gate. Why does this have any relevance for DUST 514 players? Read on and find out yourself.

The subject says it all! Ok, it actually doesn‘t so I‘m going to write some more words about this.

We are adding the option for every corporation in EVE to have it‘s own Corporation Forum, on the EVE Online forum.

Why are we doing this? 

There are two reasons basically. We are very interested in providing corporations, particularly new and smaller corporations, with a community enhancing tool which boosts communication and corp cohesion without all the hassle of starting their own external forum. We also have DUST approaching and this will provide corporations with a cross-game platform where both their EVE members and their DUST members can talk and discuss whose planet to curbstomp next.

How will corp forums 1.0 work?

 

Once we launch this feature in the coming days, every CEO who goes to the forums will have the option to activate a Corp Forum. We know that not every corporation is interested in, or needs, a private forum on the EVE forums, so your CEO will have the option not to activate them and you will never even notice their existence in the code base. If, however, your CEO curiously chooses to activate them because he likes pretty buttons, they are there to stay and will become visible at the top of the category list for every corp member with your corporation logo next to the title. They will be collapsable much like every forum category so even if your CEO is a button-happy-son-of-a-gun and you have no interest in corp forums, they shouldn‘t get in your way too much.

Acme Awesome Corp has been extra awesome after getting its own forum

Tell me more about how these forums work, Guard? Tell me more!

All right, since you ask so nicely.

There will be three channels in your Corp Forum.

• Corporation Announcements will be the place for corp directors or your CEO to post announcements about upcoming ops, wars, or just whatever the heck they please! Nobody tells them what to do after all. Regular members will have read-only access to this section of the corp forum.
• General discussion will be the public area where every member of the corporation will be able to start threads and post replies.
• The Board Room will be the private area for the directors and the CEO to discuss business amongst themselves, far from the prying eyes of their minions.

Access will be determined by in-game roles.

Click to enlarge (but don't click the green cross unless you´re ready for corp forums)

But who‘s going to moderate when someone posts ASCII penises and stuff?

 

Not us! Neither CCP Staff nor the Volunteer Forum Moderators will monitor your Corp Forums. As the proprietors of the database, CCP staff will have emergency access in case something terrible happens that we need to verify, but Volunteer Moderators will under no circumstances be able to gain access.

Your corporation should have all the tools necessary to maintain order and to discipline rowdy members who just can‘t stop posting ASCII penises for some reason. But additionally to the ability to simply kick people from your corp, we decided to add limited moderation roles for directors. They will be able to lock topics, move them between channels, delete all your badposts and the like. These are somewhat similar tools to the ones our Volunteer Moderators have, apart from the fact that they will only work in your own corp forum (sorry).

While I‘m slow-clapping, is there anything else I should know?

 

Only that this is the first version of Corp Forums and that both the Community Team and the Web Team will be listening to your feedback very carefully. We decided to launch a rather streamlined version to begin with, while including a few options that give you the control you need to enjoy your new corp forums. If there‘s anything else you really need or if you notice something that we may have missed, let us know.

The current expected launch date is February 8th, which constitutes as "soon" in every sense of the word I believe.

Skills to Pay the Bills

If you look at any modern FPS game, you will see that they all feature some sort of progression system. Most will offer XP for completing objectives and getting kills in games. This in turn helps you rank up, which in turn unlocks more items for you to use in games. A good example of this is in more recent offerings of either the Battlefield series or the Call of Duty series. But how will this system of progression work for a truly persistent game such as DUST 514?

Looking at CCP’s previous work, EVE Online is a unique game among most MMOs for many reasons. Among those many reasons, one of them is its skill system. For those unfamiliar, instead of grinding away at the same action over and over until you have completed it an arbitrarily defined number of times, you instead train a single skill at a time, in real time. This training goes on regardless of what you’re doing or whether you’re even playing.

In development: The new EVE Online website

The new EVE-Online.com looks amazing, and we can not wait to see it in action soon with all the in-game features now presented in our browser! Also, I can only imagine how cool DUST site will be if it takes bunch of things from here.

DUST 514 Beta release date! ...or not?

Conspiracy Keanu moment, but Hilmar actually did reply to one of our fellow #tweetfleet members today with strange hashtag, which may be either simple trolling (random numbers threw around, but it all makes sense a little bit at least when you look at it deeper!) or actual meaningful information:

@EVE_Scatha @grideris @redrapp @ccp_cmdrwang @ccp_manifest @dust514 @ccpgames how is this: #D514S153
— Hilmar Veigar(@HilmarVeigar) January 27, 2012

Now, 15.3. could be 15th of March (Icelanders actually do use DD/MM/YYYY format, check it on EVE Online website), and S could mean Start. Yes, it is speculation, but think about it for a second: Fanfest 2012 starts on March 22nd (15+7=22 by the way), and it would only make sense to get people into beta a week before to be able to play matches on massive scale from their home together with Fanfest attendees, else it would feel rather empty if you played only with some developers backstage and random bots at the event...? And did I mention that it would make sense for NDA to drop by that time?

If you find or have more fun speculations over this specific hashtag... hit me up over at twitter @Broadcastorm and share. I am listening.

No sleep! We must go deeper!

This post should not be taken seriously, but I keep my right to tell you "I told you so" if it turns out to be true about the date.

Community Events at Fanfest 2012

CCP Navigator brings us details about community events for Fanfest 2012! Here they are:

As hundreds of players from all over the world prepare for the trip to the Harpa center in Reykjavik for Fanfest 2012, we here in the Community team wanted to give you an insight into some of the community events we will be hosting this year.

The aim of community events at Fanfest is to provide players with non-EVE activities that they can participate in outside of the normal roundtables, presentations and panels. This also ties in to our drive to enable players to raise funds for our charity of choice, Get Well Gamers.

Get Well Gamers President, Ryan Sharpe, will be attending Fanfest this year and will be making a sizeable donation of toys to the hospital in Reykjavik on behalf of EVE Online players.

Questions from the Flock

Recently I asked on twitter if anyone had any requests for me to discuss. I later woke to find that I had been inundated with a whole pile of questions. So I’ve decided I would answer the majority of them in a single post and save a few for later. Please keep them coming, either in the comments below, or on twitter. Please also remember that many of these answers are just educated guesses and are in some cases what I would like to see. And make sure you keep your Magic Crystal Ball close at all times: it's important.

So without further ado, here's some answers!

Joseph D Stargazer (@Blind_Hope) asks: How much money you think a planet would take to conquer against sizeable defences.

This really depends. So far, we've had little indication of how much many of the supporting items will cost (such as the cost for the war barge and moving the war barge) and only hints for equipment. That's without taking into account that the price will change once players start manufacturing everything and set their own prices. So really, at best it's a guess for anyone, even CCP. Then there is the question of just how many battles it will take to claim the entire planet. As CCP has revealed very few specifics about the meta-game of how planetary capture mechanics work, there’s not much we can do for this but guess.

Support DUST 514 Base - if you wish

We here at DUST 514 Base operate completely as fans, providing you latest up-to-date blog posts, news, and articles that relate to the game itself in any shape or form. For that, we spend a lot of time sitting at our computers for entire day sometimes, just to bring you those things first.

You may have noticed that Base doesn't have any annoying ads (feels almost like you have adblock on?), popups or anything that may obscure your enjoyment on the site. You also may have noticed that we recently moved from blogspot to official .com domain and that we are aiming to provide better coverage of the game when it goes live in terms of video, audio and articles.

If you appreciate what we do here, and would like to see us develop even more as a fansite and community, consider donating a buck or two to Grideris (Ben Gruber), and me. We would really appreciate your help, and every single donation will go towards the quality of the fansite and our coverage to you. And that's going to be awesome for all of us!

If you clicked the button, we really appreciate it. And we love you. Thank you for supporting us!

Develop: Sony and CCP on PS3 virtual item policy, Hilmar and Reid interview

Develop online just published new article on the microtransaction model negotiations between Sony and CCP regarding DUST 514. Also, there is interview with Hilmar, CEO of CCP and David Reid right here, that covers some questions regarding DUST. Take a look!

Dust 514 to establish universal PSN microtransaction rules; Game could still hit retail

Sony Computer Entertainment is negotiating an in-game currency policy for all virtual items traded on PS3, the CEO of CCP Games has said.

Hilmar Pétursson told Develop that the studio was “breaking new ground” in outlining protocol on how developers can trade goods across the PlayStation Network.

It is expected that the negotiations will establish pricing tiers of virtual items, as well as the revenue split between Sony and developers.

The talks could pave the way for a more standardised virtual item policy for other third-party developers. It could also open the floodgates on in-game item sales across the PlayStation Network and, in theory, encourage more free-to-play games on PS3.

“We’re having many meetings with Sony to ensure they have solid policies on virtual currency,” Pétursson said in a new interview with Develop.

“Given the amount of back and forth there, we can definitely see us breaking new ground.”

He confirmed that the revenue split on virtual items was still a topic for negotiation.

CCP will this year launch its online PS3 shooter Dust 514 – a game that will unite PlayStation owners and PC-bound Eve Online customers within the same server.

Like with Eve, Dust players can buy and trade in-game items with virtual currency, which will likely be purchased over the PlayStation Network. 

‘CLICK AND MORTAR’

Dust 514 has yet to be ruled out for sale at retail, CCP confirmed. That in turn could spur Sony to sell custom virtual currency cards in store.

David Reid, CCP’s newly promoted marketing executive, said the meetings with Sony have been frequent and “fantastic”.

“We are both trailblazing together. CCP and Sony are right there in the same room figuring all this out together. I’ve only joined the company for about 72 hours and about half that time is speaking to Sony,” he said.

“If there is a retail play, Sony has tremendous routes into that. They have PlayStation Network cards sold over the counter. There’s so many ways for us to get our brand everywhere.”

A version of Dust 514 will also appear on PS Vita. That could mean the game’s server will connect to PS3 and PC, possibly with a universal currency.

Pétursson said the PS Vita game would “give people access to more asynchronous parts of the game”.

“But now, having looked at PS Vita, I’m sure our teams will have many ideas as soon as they get hold of the device for themselves,” he said.

“By the level of commitment Sony is giving us, and how willing they are to respond to the changes in the industry, it’s really encouraging,” he added.

“We continually write information about the game on the PlayStation Blog, and Sony will be participating in [annual community event] Eve Fanfest. Sony has a huge commitment to that show, and they will be reaching out to the Eve community and showing off live demos for the first time.”

Player 2 has Entered the Game

Greetings Dust Bunnies, Podders and other assorted Internet folk. My name is Ben, but most of you will know me as either Grideris or Da Chucky. You however, can call me which ever you like. You may have seen me previously either in EVE Online heading up Live Event fleets against the Sansha; on Twitter, tweeting about DUST 514 and EVE Online (By the way, you should all follow the #tweetfleet and #DUST514 tags); or on the www.dust514.org forums where I’m an administrator.

However, I have now found myself lucky enough to have been granted permission to contribute to Broadcastorm’s awesome blog here. So from now on you will see me posting news and other articles from time to time. I will also be joining Broadcastorm on CAST 514 (a new DUST 514 podcast starting soon™) as co-host. I for one am looking forward to the mayhem we will get up to on the digital audio waves.

So I hope to see a lot more of you as we get closer to the start of the Private Trials and well beyond that. However, if you really want to get my attention before then, you can always tweet me (@Grideris). But until then: fly safe, and carry a big gun.

Two new official screenshots from PULSE video

Just a small update since CCP Cmdr Wang posted on DUST514.com article about this short gameplay video, and he also attached two screenshots from it that look a lot prettier than frozen frames directly from the source that are rather fuzzy. First one shows infantry combat with pretty little tank burning in the background and blurred out names of the players, while second one shows dropship action that we've seen and dissected before! So here they are:

DUST 514 PlayStation PULSE 1/17 video dissection

After the video, I had some fun with investigating frame by frame of it and stumbled upon some great things that we've not seen before! So.. here is the video once again (1:59):


Now, on with the dissection! The first shot that we can see is the one in the middle of a combat (as all of them are pretty much), where to the right side of the screen we can see the tank, but more importantly, the message who killed who just like in any other online shooter.

Green name is the killer, and red one seems the target. Between them is exact model of the weapon used for the kill, which can be rather informative when you have the game in which everyone is using different weapon every time, and have general idea what "specialization" he is, if you know the game well enough. The specific objectives are shown on the map (A, B, C) in your proximity and it seems that you can't see anything else beyond your line of sight and minimap that shows your closest targets and objectives.

PlayStation PULSE 1/17 features DUST 514

Brand new PlayStation PULSE 1/17 edition features DUST 514 (at 1:59)! There is no brand new amazing info, but short gameplay footage is never seen before, and may I say, it looks gorgeous!

David Reid joins CCP as DUST 514 is closing in

Brand new chief marketing officer has come to CCP! His name is David Reid and he is well known marketing guy from Trion Worlds (Rift, World of Nations), NCsoft (Guild Wars, Aion, Lineage, City of Heroes), and other major gaming companies, that has been waiting for CCP position for a long time. Congratulations David and may DUST 514 be an amazing launch with you! Now give us some gameplay footage and get us even more excited!

Hopefully there will be some more press releases in the upcoming days from London as Hilmar is there and doing business, and hopefully he did not come there just to welcome Reid but to tell a lot more things about our favorite game! Also, his CCP Name is CCP Pokethulhu, so keep an eye out for his introduction on eveonline website very soon!

Read parts of the article (where they mention DUST 514 anyway, but don't expect many new things) here, or continue reading entire thing on venturebeat:

Reid joins the Reykjavik, Iceland-based company as it prepares to launch its biggest game in years, the first-person shooter sci-fi title Dust 514. The hire gives CCP Games some veteran marketing firepower, as Reid previous served as marketing chief for Trion Worlds, GameTap and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 business. 

... 

Not only is Dust 514 an interesting marketing challenge, it’s also a big technological challenge, Pétursson said. The company has had to more than double its computing power to accommodate a single game environment and backend that is shared by both games. On top of that, CCP Games has to synchronize game play across the PlayStation 3 and PC game platforms. 

...  

Reid said he would ramp up efforts to get Dust 514 in the hands of the press and will start publicizing the game through a variety of means.

Update: Here is the official press release on CCP Games website. 

DUST 514 Mercenaries Wallpaper

The fact is that our favorite concept art so far is the one that displays variation between races with their dropsuits. To me, this image is just too perfect not to be used as a wallpaper so I just quickly made it usable as a wallpaper on both 1920x1200 and 1920x1080. You can download it by clicking the image over at deviantArt, and enjoy your mercenaries on your desktop until we get another update with hopefully a lot more fancy artwork and/or screenshots that we never seen before! Enjoy!

DUST 514 Beta Clarification

CCP Cmdr Wang recently posted clarification on some of the beta concerns over at EVE Online forums:

Dear Capsuleers,

Thank you for your interest regarding the DUST 514 Mordus’s Private Trials registration. I would like to take this opportunity to address some of the concerns raised in this thread.

With regards to the MPT availability, currently it is available In English for English speaking regions. So, if English is the official language in your country, you should be able to access DUST 514 Mordu’s Private Trials from the local PSN store in your area. We are, of course, working on localizing the client so that it becomes available in more regions for the Official Launch. So to recount, the DUST 514 Mordu's Private Trials will be in English only for English speaking regions, and our plan is to have localization for the following languages by Official Launch: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese.

And remember, the DUST 514 Mordu’s Private Trials is still in the registration phase, and that is open to all EVE Online players.

With regards to the DUST 514 Mordu’s Private Trials registration confirmation issue, we will be adding a status page to the EVE Online account management page for those who have signed up to participate in the DUST 514 Mordu’s Private Trials, so you can keep tabs on the status of your registration.

Thank you for your patience and continued support.

CCP Cmdr Wang

And the DUST 514 Team

So there you have it, MPT did not start yet, and you will be informed as soon as it starts!

@evenews24 No, the MPT is not out yet, just the registration phase.
— CCP_CmdrWang (@CCP_CmdrWang) January 11, 2012

Harpa Convention Center - Fanfest 2012

Harpa convention center looks amazing. Purchase those tickets and help CCP meet actual fans this year, and get your hands on DUST 514 over there! And remember - don't get drunk that much on the first day, you have to save some energy for the day two where you may see even more amazing things that CCP is planning for all of us.

What will I be fighting for in DUST 514?

One of the most important questions, definitely. So what DUST players will have from the capturing all those territories and controlling them until enemy decides to attack again?

In EVE, we have something called "Planetary Interaction", which is sort of a "strategy" part of the game (although some may argue it is more of a "gardening" part). In this feature you decide to deploy planetary structures, gather resources from planets and then work with those resources further and in the end make a bunch of ISK and create various things for your corporation and alliance. So how does it all look from EVE perspective?

Here is small tutorial that introduces a player to a Planetary Interactions so you can get the bigger picture:

As you can see, EVE players already have ability to interact with planets and make use of them very effectively. So what DUST players will be needed for if this can be managed on it's own as it is? Well, all these territories where EVE Player built his structures are pretty much his own now, and in DUST we expect a bit more structured territory layout (something like bunch of hexagons, as shown in E3 Trailer maybe), so you know exactly who controls what at any given time. Those parts of the planet then can be used to deploy structures by both DUST and EVE players and make bunch of ISK for future upgrades, vehicles and bigger arsenal that will lead them into Lowsec and Nullsec where real money is made all the time, but has a lot more risk involved.

With Crucible, EVE received two new filter options in the overview settings under a new category: Planetary Interaction. They are Capsuleer base and Mercenary base, which directly indicate that you will be able to view how many Mercenary bases are there - from space. We don't know though how that is going to work until CCP drops the beta on us, and we see it for ourselves. You just can be sure that we will cover all those details as soon as we get in and have NDA lifted.
I have to also mention that you should not expect all these Planetary Interaction things that you see in EVE to translate directly to DUST, but instead the video should give you idea how resource gathering and planet control should work and what you get from it. Very often you will need specific planet for a specific resources in order to make something different or more powerful. It is not all about ISK and who is the richest, but it is combination of good investments and good training for those investments that you put to use when the time is right.
You will want to cooperate with EVE players to get the most out of your controlled planets, and if your corporation controls both the system and all the planets in it, you will definitely see what benefits that brings to both EVE and DUST side. Of course, you can also decide not to have EVE players in your corporation and be mercenary corporation which gets ISK by finishing the job that EVE or other DUST corp asked you to do. I strongly believe that "Guns for hire" will be one of the most interesting corp types out there.
Hopefully you got a little bit brighter picture now. You capture a territory that yields specific resources. Resources turn into money or get refined and then transformed into a materials that can be sold or be used into making different weapons, vehicles or dropsuits, and in the end you can decide to use those produced items or sell them to other corporations via market. You can also decide to be hired and not care about who controls which planet as long as you get ISK and get out of there alive with accomplished mission.
There are many more options that you can do in order to make ISK, but this to my eyes is "default" or "normal" version that I think CCP has in mind. Although, that is CCP, and words like default and normal don't really get used that much in their vocabulary. They are bringing entire new genre to the market - do you really think they are sane!?
Brace yourselves. Beta winter is coming.

EVE: Templar One is out now

One month ago, Templar One was featured here. Today, the book is officially out and Tony Gonzales is announcing it in EVE Dev Blog:

From the mighty pen of Tony Gonzales…

Dear Friends,

It is my great honor to present the latest addition to the EVE universe: EVE: Templar One, available in bookstores near you this January 3rd. This novel unveils the backstory to DUST 514, a tale about the first immortal soldiers of New Eden. It is also a sequel to EVE: The Empyrean Age. But don’t worry: If you haven’t had the chance to read that novel, you’ll still enjoy Templar One. For those who have, you'll see some familiar faces return in a much more human, personal story.

DUST 514 Facebook Timeline Covers

Today EVE Online facebook fan page released Facebook Timeline Covers album, and I got inspired to do some DUST 514 ones for you guys to decorate your profile. You can also find album of all these cover photos on DUST 514 Base facebook page available for download there as well. Enjoy!