EVE General Discussion

Well, games like CS and TF2 still pull a quite decent player count, peaking respectively as the 3rd and 5th most played game on steam today. This in spite of being 13 and 6 years old. While this is only two games, I'm fairly sure out there, a fair amount oldish FPS games are still being played actively.

Fair point...


Advertisers might disagree with you. You target a demographic and you'll find that while there are exceptions, you can usually get it right for 90%+ of the sample.

I think you're reading something into what you quoted there, that isn't actually there. Did I say success? I said there's well over a million accounts. That's just a factual statement. Those players make isk (also a fact), and I implied a question to the eve community "how do we get that ISK?".

So I guess to answer your question I would answer "an 'indicator' is exactly what that number is..."

Halo 3. Its server population is often still higher than Reach and Halo 4, and that game is old as ****.

Dust has horrible graphics and game play. Worst real beta I've ever played. They might have that many accounts but whose actually playing?

DUST is free, Eve isn't....I know the answer to this one.

True to a degree, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find an actual researched market demographic study that supports your assertion.

Do console players put time into preparing or producing things like equipement, supplies, etc. in a FPS economy? No.
Have console players ever been given the opportunity to do anything remotely like that before? Uh, well actually, No.

Kind of hard to have a demographic on something when it's really never been available before.

Are you sure that number is "accounts" and not "characters"? I mean, "X mercenaries" sounds to me like "X pilots" in EVE, not "X accounts".

I haven't played Dust, nor do I plan to because there's no way in holy hell I'll pay for a PS3 with a PS4 already on horizon (possibly even this year). But if it's anything like EVE, that is 3 characters per account, than that 1+ million mercenaries translates into less than 400k accounts. And considering the game is F2P, it means precisely...what?

Also remember, whenever something launches, especially F2P, a LOT of folks will create a LOT of accounts to grab "good names" ans such. So how many of those accounts are just dummies? Also consider that Dust supposedly has passive SP growth? So how many of those are just "mule" characters passively gaining SP for free, while player doesn't even log on with them? Similar to so many EVE accounts being created for the sole purpose of later being sold on the Character Bazaar? It nicely inflates the 'active account' numbers but means nothing for the game because the character is only logged in for a few seconds every once in a while to queue up the next skill and logs off again.

Bottom line, I really don't see this as relevant. What I DO see as relevant is how much (or how little) coverage Dust has been getting lately. Remember when games like Vindictus or Dragon's Nest came out? Both F2P Asian grinders? Though I admit Vindictus wasn't half-bad, soloing some of the bosses (like the big red gnoll with a hammer) was actually fun and challenging. Remember how much uproar there was for those? On virtually every gaming website you had coverage, previews, etc. But when Dust went into open beta, I visited a number of sites to see what the reaction was, and to my surprise I really did not find much coverage at all. Some websites had no Dust coverage at all, and the game's subforum was practically dead - many had less than a dozen posts, half of those were old "need a key" or "having a problem with". Not exactly inspiring. Does that prove anything? No, of course not, but it's interesting to observe.