Noticed Dust 514 on the PS store last night. Free to play charging for Beta access and some very basic stuff. What are we fighting over, Stalingrad?!?!

Beta access for £13.99 and "...the essential items a new recruit would want." Three or four items including a hand grenade, a medi kit of some sort and some in game credit to get you going.

All hail SPOOKish the wise one! I am already starting to fear the F2P reaper.

But now that we know exactly where we stand, has anybody seen where I left my wallet?

Not exactly free to play then mate is it at £13.99,i also heard that if you get into the game it will end up costing a lot more than that.

Yes, I like the sound of that. "All hail Spook." Could get used to that.

Personally, I wouldn't go near Dust 514. Not even for free. For real free too. It's linked with Eve and they really know how to get the most out of players with all that experience of theirs. There will be loads of players with far more experience than those new recruits just joining, and you'll be pwnd for ever more. It'll likely take hundreds of pounds of investment to stop the rape. But then I don't know what I'm talking about as I never played Eve or Dust and I'm being extremely negative about it. Just they know one or two things about MMOs and in-game transactions is all.

Save the pennies and get a Google Nexus 7 instead. Lots of games for that. Got future* written all over it.

_{* Well, immediate future that is.}

Edited by deleted (Sun 01-Jul-12 15:53:21)

Tempting mate. Couldn't see a released date?

Google say orders should be shipped within 2-3 weeks, so I guess that makes it sometime in the third week of July. Ebuyer also report they're getting 500 units in 18-20 days time it seems.

You can also get the Nexus 7 from the likes of PC World, as well as Ebuyer etc but only the 16GB model as far as I know. Slightly cheaper than getting the 16GB model direct from Google with the advantage of free postage. But it seems unlikely you get the £15 Google Play voucher to spend on apps and the free Transfomers film if you go with third party retailers. Google charge you a tenner for delivery so it's only a £5 difference either way.

Looks like a good bit of kit though but only if you can live with Android. Jelly Bean (4.1) is looking pretty good though I must say and that quad core processor and gpu look well powered so it should be able to handle anything currently on the Google Play store. Good battery life too - Engadget tested it to just shy of 10 hours with wifi on and running a continuously looping video test. Only thing is there is no memory card expansion slot and no built in video out ports like HDMI. Also, no 3G but you can tether it to a mobile phone via WiFi.

Spook have a look at the Dust 514 FAQ

http://www.dust514.com/game/faq/

EVE is very different from most MMO's and in game transactions are limited to 2 things only in the EVE universe

1) A two way trade of isk and plex (game time) on the eve markets run by the players, this is unique to eve as it allows for the legal trade of in game currency, some people will say this is wrong but it does work and has little effect on EVE.

2) Plex for Aurum this allows for clothing options to be bought- ccp wanted to expand greatley on this like other mmo's but the player base said no and CCP have cut back from this.

At current both games will be seperate for a while so no trade of isk/aurum between the two for now.

Edited by deleted (Sun 01-Jul-12 23:06:00)

You play EVE ccxo?

Is it awfully complex? I know very little about it but I heard you have to be really dedicated to play it and that means learning an awful lot about it and its gaming universe (which isn't exactly small).

I had a quick look at the Dust FAQ (thanks for linking). Under the section appropriately titled 'What about money?' it says players who choose to pay real currency won't gain an unfair advantage over players who do not: no 'pay to win' structure as they say but how true is this I ask myself as surely the developers are not going to all the trouble of creating a free to play game that isn't in someway profitable or at least meet costs of development?

Just to show how little I know about EVE, is that free to play also? Does that use real currency in game too? And if so, what's the average spend I wonder? Don't mind me as I'm not anti F2P or against developers making money from their games in what ever format they choose but I definitely don't feel games publishers have altruistic purposes when choosing the F2P model. In fact, I am sure it's due to its profitability that they seem to be adopting it more and more, whether you need to pay for the first instalment (BF3, MW3 etc or not). To me, DLC, micro transactions, they can all become a little hazy if they are effectively requirements for gamers to play unimpeded (no map, you face the boot and don't have a choice in map rotation).

Well as I said all ranks are 'free'. The game mechanics just mean that with less XP and less credits earned in each fight it takes much longer to get to where you want to be. XP can only go up but as I said due to repairing and re-arming tanks you can lose credits. Without premium on your account it is more likely that you will lose money. To offset that you can either play a large number of games in lower tier tanks (tiers 5-6) to refill your coffers - it is (effectively) impossible to lose credits at those levels but then you don't earn as many as you can on good high tier games either. Or, your second option is to buy one of the premium tanks as these print credits so you don't need to play as many credit earning rounds in order to finance your bigger tanks. But, real world money is represented in game by gold and it is impossible to lose gold in game by having a bad round - you can spend gold in a round but that is different to losing it if that makes sense (feel free to tell me it doesn't and I will try and explain!)

So, onto the million dollar question! I have had 2 months premium (considering a 3rd) so 17-£25 and I have a premium tank that cost about £22. So yea, quite a bit - £40 is about the same as a new release and if you look at things like the graphics then you could question whether it is worth it - I already know what t2d would say But on the flip-side of that is the fact that you get a patch about every 1.5-2 months and these patches do things like:

- fix bugs/balancing issues (obviously)
- give new tanks - as I said there are currently 4 nations but British tanks are on the horizon and last patch expanded the french line from just mediums/heavies to also include SPGs and tank destroyers. The patch before added a second Russian heavy tank line. The next release adds tier 10 mediums/tank destroyers to all nations and so on.
- 2-3 new maps every patch
- new game modes - 2 new game modes came out with the last patch.
- the graphics got updated fairly recently (before I started) and very soon there will be a new physics engine and then eventually multi-core support probably tied in with further graphics improvements,

And everyone gets this - there is no DLC to pay for. They get their money through the channels that already exist. So there is real and consistent development in the game. You could argue that the new tank releases are an attempt to lock people into keeping premium to get them faster but for people like me I can see that is the case and I'm in no rush!

They are also developing 2 further games, World of Warplanes (don't really care about this because I suck at flying!) and World of Battleships (this I most definitely am looking forwards to!) and the credits and parts of the XP system will work across the titles.

I do admit to liking a bit of a grind in my games and this definitely relies on grinding but with 8 tanks to pick from I can mix things up how I want to (I started playing with just enough time to earn myself 2 free tank slots due to tech tree changes in 1 of the patches).

Another thing to point out is that you start a round and these have a time limit of either 10 or 15 minutes but if your tank gets destroyed you can leave that round, go to your garage and jump into 1 of the others so there is not very much sitting around going on

I do play EVE, its a very complex mmo compared to most and the learning curve, check out the picture in the link below.

This is a old image but summs up the difference between EVE and other MMO's

http://mmoreporter.com/2011/06/07/eve-online-the-soc...

The game is designed around isk the currency which you gain from winning battles and is used to buy guns/armour/tanks etc.
Aurum is bought through the PSN store and will be used to customise your soldier- like lol hero skins.
That way you have a free to play title with a store that allows for customisation.

EVE is a subscription based MMO, however if you make enough isk in game you can buy plex which you can use for game time, this makes the game effectively free.
It also works the other way in that you can use real life currency to buy plex to trade for isk, to give you more in game currency.

The average spend can be anything from say 90 pounds for a years sub or however much people want to spend on plex, but unlike other MMO's with eve you can use the in game currency to pay for the game if you work hard.

EVE is a sandbox MMO so anything goes bar a few rules imposed by CCP, with everyone in the world bar China on the single shard (one server) its a 23.40/ 7 game 365 days a year, that is driven by the players.

As for why Dust 514 is free to play, its a interesting move by CCP but to bring console players to the EVE univerise it makes sense as its a expirement to see how far you can combine two games.
If Dust 514 was a stand alone game set in the EVE universe then it would still be a Triple AAA title but with the price to go with it.

With the success of LOL and its store, alot of companies are taking note, they need to turn a profit and f2p at current looks to provide a long term revenue stream that will cover the cost of development and further development while still generating a good profit.

So a £40 or there abouts spend? Does this include ammo?

I like the sound of warplanes but like you, I'm not much good in the air. I do like flying around though. Find it quite relaxing but I wouldn't want to go flight sim as that'd be too technical and too boring I reckon.

I still remember the battleships in BF1942 (oh god, here he goes again!) Nah, I will spare you. There was always some nob running the thing into the ground or else taking off the map or something. That was crazy. You couldn't even walk properly for the thing lurching all over the place as someone went full throttle on you.

So, your experience of WoT rates as favourably then you reckon? I do feel I got the gist of what you were saying about the credits/gold points and understand where you're coming from btw. A bit of a fine line still though in some ways. Always a temptation to spend a little more and ease your way through the game though more so for some players than others.