EVE General Discussion

Try to read the whole sentence next time...

"it is obvious that they tried to expand their income sources and came up with a less-than-bright result for it."

So the whole argument is: "we lack evidence for A and B, but C is evident and is compatible with proposition A"

They HAD the money and they invested it, so that disproves that hey would rather pocket it than invest it, thus if they didn't invested on DUST, that only left EVE and WoD to get the investment. Plus, investing in what gives you money is a sensible business decission.

Fact is no one knows how well Dust is doing financially except CCP. Active player numbers though, look really bad for a free to play game.

http://eve-offline.net/?server=dust

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Edit: Just for interest sake, lets do a quick Fermi estimate though.

Eve broke 500k subs a while ago and Hilmar in a recent blog referred to this '500k' roughly. So let's start here. Eve has 500k subs (accounts paying monthly), and it has 30k online active weekly average. Assuming the ratios of 'total people active' are the same between Eve and Dust (a big if) we find a figure of 50k active players on Dust (rounded up).

The problem we get now is that Eve active players all pay monthly, and Dust players don't need to at all. Now, technically speaking we should attempt to estimate the number of Dust players paying to win, but to make a point we don't even need to. If all 50k of those people are paying for constant skill boosts they would be paying roughly the same as we pay for our subs. That would put Dust at an income of 1/10th of what Eve brings in. I very much doubt it costs 1/10th of the cost to develop and maintain.

Working -
eveTotalSubs / eveActiveWeeklyAverage = 16.6 recurring
dustActiveWeeklyAverage * 16.66666 = 48900 (estimated dustTotalActive, comparible to eveTotalSubs)
passiveDustSkillBoostCost / dustAurAvailableFor$20 = 1.535
$20 / 1.535 = $13.3 recurring (rough cost of dustMonthly booster, which is roughly equal (giving people the benefit of the doubt) to Eve subs)

if eveSub == dustBoost && allDustiesPayingForConstantMonthlyBoosts && 50,000 is 1/10th of 500,000
then Dust earns 1/10th of Eve, not including extras.

if we Had WiS, they coudl have turned that eventually into DUST, they'd have their FPS, tie-in to EVE, meaningful gameplay, as well as an additional feature to try and get people subscribed.

but no, its a money-vampire F2P FPS on a system dominated by a very small number of franchises for a decade with an advertising budget not even a tenth what those franchises dish out a week to get their name out.

making DUST a separate game instead of giving US the planet/stations they promised so long ago is whats killing their little FPS toy.

sure in theory it was good fro ccp to say "well spread more features out over more mediums of play" but in reality all that does is make more markets for them to try and compete in, all the while everything they add becomes one less thing in EVE we can access with our subscription.

Dust was awful the last time I played, it didn't help that all the Clans are basically carebears and once Negative Feedback split up there just was no point in sticking around. 12 a side tops? lololol.

If you don't try new things you'll slide backwards from lack of effort.

yeah, you want to pick and choose what looks like good bets but I think seeing if they could get a foothold on another platform made sense in lots of ways.

Whether we like it or not (I'm irritated by it personally.. the switch is ruining many web sites I like) the PC is becoming a smaller and smaller portion of recreational electronic interaction.


I don't know the $ involved and it is a super fair question to ask "is a company adequately financed to try this" . It sounds like they did put out a product that was inline with other such products in quality... but it didn't quite hit the mark of gamers desires.

As 9 out of 10 new games must certainly flounder...to me it is really warped to criticize a company for being in the 90% failure segment.

These things are gambles.. if they catch on they can pay off in a huge way. There is also something in between... they likely have recouped at least a tiny bit of the cost. They're bound to have attracted at least a few new EVE players . The name recognition .... even if slight might make a future attempt easier (political canditates do it all the time.. pulling a 10% vote in their first attempt gives them name recognition that might make them look more viable as a known commodity 4 years later)

They might have learned a few things about first person shooters that could be caried back to the PC format with less investment than if they started from scratch.

And.... well, I'm not sure EVE needs to have more and more things to do in it... they definitely need to keep iterating but some of that is more about creativity than a huge financial investment in more people (they company could be generating more cash than really makes sense to put back in this game ... its a choice to pay dividends to stockholders or reinvest in new areas of business I'd imagine.)

Yes I agree with you too. That seems pretty reckless to me .

A company has human capital as well as financial capital. Even if they have the cash to invest in the mutiple projects iit is unlikely that they have a team of their best for each segment. People learn how to work together with specific coworkers.. they learn how to communicate with the various departments and the executives who might demand some creative oversight in conjunction with the marketing department. There is only so much "attention" time to go around. Even if all the employees are super there are bound to be some more super than others..... you want them all tackling something so risky as anew project while being sure not to leave some blockhead linear thinkers around to take care of your cash cow existing product.

I don't know their balance sheet or cash flow etc.. but my worry would be less about the $ being drained but more about not enough people within the organization who've had the time to develop the trust and internal knowledge to efficiently navigate the decision making trees.... on top of being super creative.

Of course.. its not my money.... but I would hope them the best... and have an element of concern for "a friend" lets say.

Yea, me too really. I am sure that the ranting I do comes out as a little conspiratorial with an air of "Eve is dying", but the reason I rant is because Eve online is something special and CCP are probably one of my favourite games developers. It is ultimately out of concern that I rant, because I want Eve to be forever as Hilmar and friends have regularly said.

I think Dust could of been great as well. I played it myself on a friends PS3. He hated it, but I thought it was good. I would play it, but I am not buying a console that will shortly be worth less than the PCB it's made of when I don't even like consoles anyway.



That's a fair point. If Sony were subsidising it, then it might be that it's covering it's losses. From some very basic estimates it doesn't seem likely but it might not be all that bad. CCP have said that they have no intention of letting it die or putting a skeleton crew on it like most companies do. Maybe it will eventually grow into something worth being a part of. It took CCP 10 years to get Eve to where it is today. It probably does need a little time. I can't say I am optimistic though. It took Youtube almost 10 years to cover their setup costs, I guess they are in it for the long haul. I just don't like the possibility that Eve will suffer for it in the mean-time.

Rem. The idea that the directors would have absorbed 4 projects worth of company profit is just stupid. No amount of discussion or arguments about evidence is going to convince anyone otherwise. Companies reinvest. If they didn't invest in new projects they would be investing in getting more out of current projects. If a business doesn't reinvest, it dies.

I am not clinging to subjective validations any more than you are. You are convinced, with no evidence, that CCP's development on Eve would not be changed by the fact they have been developing and maintaining Dust as well as other games.

Doesn't that strike you as odd? You think that if CCP weren't spending that money on Dust and other projects they wouldn't be reinvesting it into the product that generates their income? The basic estimates we made show that it would take a fairly large leap of faith to believe Dust is pulling it's weight*. If it wasn't developed, then there would have been more money available for development on other projects. Where are you suggesting that money would have gone? At the moment, your argument more or less boils down to 'No! I won't believe it!'.

Also, implying I am a vegan is not helping matters. That's just rude.

*Those estimates are in no ones minds fool proof. If you see something wrong with them, come up with a better Fermi estimate and explain your changes. Peer review is important if you want to claim your acting scientifically. I am happy to relook at anything and come to potentially more accurate results.

Edit: I skipped over the rest of your edit. Nothing relevant worth replying to.

#1 reason I want Dust to tank quickly:

I feel the potential but it's such a horror to play that I want to be able to completely quit it without fear of falling off the peak of skill and skillpoint curve. Either it has longevity or I'm wasting thought thinking of the potential.

This is about as objective reason as there is to be hating on it IMHO.