DUST 514: Overview/Into

[Iron Dragoon]

Okay, so. New free-to-play FPS-MMO is coming out called DUST 514. Note: Currently this is slated for PS3 Exclusive release, but the devs have mentioned in multiple interviews that they're considering expansions into the PC side, and that they have coded in keyboard and mouse support.

The reason I'm writing this up and I have an interest is because DUST 514 will fold into EVE Online, which I play and love. Even though most of you aren't interested in it. Basically, DUST 514 works like this: Dropship, Land ship, shoot shit, capture areas, control the planet.

Now, this is going to be fairly long for a write up, but that's because the game is going to complex. Way complex. Especially for an FPS. I'm going to break it down into two sections: Character/Back end stuff and Battlefield/Game play stuff.
I'll be linking videos/screenshots and some sites inside each of the sections. Many links might be to EVE Online stuff because it's the basis of DUST 514, and it'll give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Vaguely.

Character/Back-End :

Spoiler: ShowHide

Alright, the first thing you'll do with your character is creation. This is actually a pretty important thing due to how the game works. You'll have a character, and that character will die. Many times. Your character will also have a clone. This is important because how DUST 514, and EVE Online, works is your character improves via a skill training system, which I'll go into detail with later.

Character Creation [spoiler]
So, character creation. You'll start off by picking one of four races: Minmatar, Caldari, Amarr, or Gallente. Each of these races actually do have histories and interaction. The Amarr used to enslave the Minmatar, and still do, so Minmatar and Amarr are in kind of a cold war. The Caldari were driven off their homeworld by the Gallente in a war between the two. So, story-wise, this does actually have some impact. You can read a bit more about this here: http://www.dust514.com/en/intel/races and http://community.eveonline.com/races/
As for customizing your character, here's a recent vid of the EVE Online character creator, which is the basis for what DUST 514 (and World of Darkness will use):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo9L8d-5x20. This is one of the most in-depth and customizable character generators I've ever seen.
Now, during the character creation in EVE, you'll be selecting your background and colleges which give you your base states and skill levels; I am assuming, based on what I've seen/read so far, that DUST 514 will be using the same system.

Skills

Spoiler: ShowHide

Now, after you create your character, your fist order of business will be to set skills to train. In DUST 14, you have passive skill training and active skill training. What this means is, there will be certain skills, or possible all skills, that increase by use. They will also increase by passive training. This means, you pick a skill and set it to train; when you do this, it'll give you an ETA to skill level completion. How long that is depends on your stats and the complexity of the skill indicated by a skill level multiplier. These multipliers range from x1 to x5.
In addition to these multipliers, the skill training time increases with the level of the skill; basically level 1 can take 30 minutes and level 5 can take up to 38 days or more. These skills will training even while you're offline, so you don't have to worry about accumulating 30 days of game play time. For a bit more info on this: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Skills_guide  and for a list of EVE skills: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Item_Database:Skills

Equipment

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Now, how equipment will be acquired is via a living economy based on EVE Online. For a long time there have been 'junk' items in EVE such as 'Militants' and 'Small Arms.' What role these will play, I can't say. However, from the interviews I've read, there *will* be 'crafting' of sorts, more commonly referred to as industry.
Basically, how this works is you buy or acquire a Blue Print Original (BPO) or a Blue Print Copy (BPC). BPOs can be used to make an unlimited number of the item, and BPCs are limited run copies. You also research these BPOs, and by doing so, you reduce the time and amount of resources needed to produce whatever the item is. How you come across these resources is through the market, mainly. Also, they have mentioned there will be salvaging/scavenging in DUST 514, but I can't say exactly how that will work as they refused to go into detail in any of the documentation/interviews I have seen.
Now, they mentioned they will have different classes of armor and different types inside that. They have said they will have Covert Ops, or cloaking armor, for example. They've talked about Light, Medium, and Heavy armor.
As for guns, again, they didn't go into detail about this. What I can say is, in EVE, each race has their weapon 'specialty.' Amarr use laser, Caldari use Missiles and Hybrid weapons, Gallente use Hybrid weapons and Drones, and Minmatar use Projectile, Missile, and Drone weapons. How this will fit into DUST 514, I can't say.

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Battlefield/Game Play

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Okay, so far, the best game play video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKtYqWBR7h0
This is another video, but is not game-play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzVjggarRns
This is a video from EVE Fanfest 2012 showing it off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDW-HrzBo7s
Basically, this a 'capture the flag' type of game. Basically how this fits into EVE is that a Corporation (guild) in EVE Online decides that it wants to claim sovereignty, or control, of a solar system. To do this, they must complete a series of steps: They have to set up a player owned station and, once DUST 514 comes out, must claim control of all the planets inside that system.
To do this, the EVE Corp creates a contract for DUST 514 Merc Corps to assault a planet. Once the contract is accepted, it initiates a series of capture the flag type of missions, ultimately granting control of the space elevator. A bit more about the ultimate goals and the game features here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sdbq_KeOlA
Now, in these videos, you'll see that vehicles are in the game as well. How they've chosen to do vehicles is pretty unique. Each vehicle gets inserted via dropship individually. The number of vehicles you have is limited based on how much money you have and how many 'points' you have to allocate to them. How these 'war points' work, I have no idea, they haven't put that info out yet.
Now, the unique thing about these vehicles is that they are fully customizable, just like ships in EVE: http://www.blogcdn.com/massively.joystiq.com/media/2012/03/dust514vehicle.jpg and http://img4.mmo.mmo4arab.com/news/2011/11/29/dust514/dust514_vehicle1.jpg. This means you can fit your vehicles to accomplish a vastly wide range of roles, all decided and engineered by you.
So far, not much more than that has been released by CCP or Sony, but from interviews and videos, I can also say that the Mobile Mission Command (MMC) ship can be purchased and customized just like the vehicles can. This means, inside of your ship, you can do all kinds of things. In EVE, there are leadership skills and modules. Each one gives a bonus, some to the amount of armor/shields you have, some to your targeting speed, damage, or firing speed.
Now, how this ties into EVE is DUST 514 players can request Orbital Bombardments. These come to EVE players as missions. The EVE players then have to get their Battleships into orbit, on the actual correct side of the planet, target the location, and initiate the bombardments. This will require a massive amount of coordination, which CCP plans to happen through their built in voice and text chats.
I can also imagine that they will have uses for other ships, such as Logistics and Command Ships. Logistics ships can remote repair Armor or Shields. I can see them doing this from orbit onto the MMC ships, which have their *own* battles. Additionally, the Command Ships give bonuses to Armor/Shields and Damager/Rate of Fire, and all kinds of other things.

Now, I don't have much more than the above, but if there's interest in DUST 514, I'll keep this thread updated with new info as I find it.

[Iron Dragoon]

I'll be putting questions and stuff I get in chat here, in case they can help whoever reads.

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<Onigiri> So at its most basic level... what?
<Onigiri> Land ship, get off ship, shoot shit?
Iddy> Yup.
<Onigiri> Gotcha
Iddy> FPS.
Iddy> Shoot shit, capture areas, control the planet.
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<Onigiri> While in the meantime sombody ganks your ship?
Iddy> Which one? The Dropship?
<Onigiri> Your mainship.
Iddy> Oh, no. The 'main' ship is just like a lobby area.
<Onigiri> So it's not your eve ship?
Iddy> Nope. DUST stuff is seperate. They don't interact except for sovereignty, contracts, and orbital bombardments.
Iddy> They may have some market interaction, but if there is, it's a ways away.
<Onigiri> So almost at the level if integration in name only?
<Onigiri> Anyway, two mmos for the price of one
<Onigiri> With two distinct playstyles catering to lots of people.
Iddy> Eh.. At the start, that's what it seems like. But the sovereignty thing is actually a *really* big deal inside of EVE, so it does have a major impact.
Iddy> There are corps that control dozens of solar systems. You can seriously fuck up their stuff by taking sovereignty from them via planets.
Iddy> So, it's in the EVE players interests to support planetary assualts or defenses with orbital bombardments and stuff.