DUST514 Interview

The assumed fellows over at dust514base.com have interviewed CCP Praetorian and CCP CmdrWang about DUST514, their play testing of the game, and what features we may see in DUST514.

The interview and transcription is here.

Some quotes from the transcript.

"CCP CmdrWang: Yes we can. Yes we will support the mouse and keyboard for DUST514 including in-game shooting. And I just want to add that you know we are aware of how critical this is to get it right because we've seen other games try to attempt this and there were some problems. But we are dedicated considerable amount of resources into this particular feature because we want to do it right and we want to make sure that our players when they use the mouse and keyboard they will have a very good experience comparable to what they're used to on the PC."

Well this may confirm what has been previously reported, it would seem the keyboard and mouse control system will be available to players of DUST514, how many PS3 owners have a keyboard and mouse connected to their console is an unknown figure though.

"CCP Praetorian: Yea, exactly. And just like my assault suit, my dropsuit, it's pretty weak on the defence side so it's good to have a friend that remote armour reps. You know, spider tanking."

Remote armour reps, spider tanking?  Sounding very Eve Online.  What I'm wondering is how effective heaps of guys all remote repping some big bastard with a huge gun will be?

"CCP Praetorian: Yes. We share EVE's passive skilling or the overall concept of passive skilling. And then that is modified with active skilling, or success in battles and other PvP can speed up your skill point accrual. There's a lot of nuance that I don't think is possible to dive into right now but we have a dev blog very soon explaining this properly."

So this essentially sounds like a reward system for doing well in a battle and other combat, to reward the player and also speed up their training somewhat so they don't languish too far behind.

"Grideris: Basically from one of the fitting screens that you released as a screenshot, there was a particular module that was a Minmatar faction module. But it also had imposed on the screen saying that there was a particular achievement or level you had to get in service for the Minmatar Republic to be able to use the module. What was the deal with that?"

This may tie in with the above in that you have to meet some sort of achievement before it will let you fit the more advanced modules?    What happens if a bunch of geared up guys go against some new players to the game?  Maybe some sort of match making system will exist?  Or can it considering this is corp based combat? Questions, questions, questions!

"CCP Praetorian: Ejyo is really good by the way,"

Well at least we now know why the quarterly economic reports stopped.

"Grideris: So you'll be able to stand on the ground in your dropsuit and basically talk to the guy in the Dreadnought up in orbit shooting at the other guys. Directly?

CCP Praetorian: Yep"

Direct communications using the in game system between the DUST514 players and Eve Online is pretty cool, of course I don't know of any alliance that actually uses the in game voice system.  I suppose we could use that in addition to Teamspeak for the occasional times we need to order a ground squad to do whatever it is they do. 

For full disclosure I have only read the transcript and not viewed the video as taking 18 minutes to watch a video when I can read the text in 2 is not a great way to use my time.

Not much new information here to be honest but all the same it is handy to have much of this in the one place.  I look forward to the various videos they say are being worked on at the moment.