Though some EVE Online players are concerned that Dust 514 will function as an "intruder" in the game they know, Farrer says the degree to which Dust 514 and EVE interact demonstrates that this isn't a mash-up of two games; it's a well-considered expansion in the same sense that the just-released EVE Online: Incarna opens up space stations, and last year's EVE Online: Tyrannis first allowed players to colonize planets. He expects plenty of player overlap between the two platforms.
With modular outfits for each of the four playable races, as well as their vehicles, Dust 514 looks to have an RPG-like level of character complexity. The customization interface correlates directly to EVE Online's ship-building interface, and is "more complex than we're used to seeing" in shooters. As with EVE, though, role-playing comparisons only go so far. CCP actively resists predicting how people will decide to play.
"We didn't want to define the players' roles for them. We didn't want you to have to walk onto the battlefield as you typically would, pick a sniper or an assault guy, pick a support dude. We wanted you to create those roles yourself, to have an incredibly specific role, if you wanted to," Farrer says. If a player wants, he can sprint across the terrain armed only with a knife and a stealth field.
And the realization that lives are not quite expendable adds a nebulous new dynamic to gameplay. Corporations have to gamble a certain number of clones, literally player respawns generated from hard-earned facilities, in each battle. Perhaps all players will be driven by the bottom line, as in much of the waking world.
"On a personal level, as a guy fighting for X corporation on the battlefield, I brought all of my gear with me, and my gear is perishable. Every time I die, that's a cost to me. I spend 200 ISK buying 40 runs of this particular piece of equipment. Every time I die, I'm losing a piece of that equipment. There's certainly a very particular kind of satisfaction when you see a player wearing very fancy gear, and you take them out," Farrer says, laughing. In early playtests, some players chose inexpensive but focused outfits, while others committed to more versatile, but more expensive and thus riskier, builds.
"Obviously, we're not talking about the same sense of scale as losing a ship within EVE. Within a shooter, you're dying on a much more regular basis. You just have to make sure you're playing well enough to offset and profit, basically."
The bottom line for CCP, meanwhile, is creating the possibility of more interesting gameplay.
Feelings of actual failure don't last long in most games, in which you can simply get up and try again, and inevitably get better and further. But given the possibility of incurring losses that may not be recoverable, player relationships become more fraught and fragile. "I had this moment where the corporation totally thought we were fighting for them, and then we turned around and we absolutely weren't," Farrer says. And let's not forget the normal conflicts, like a rival corporation attacking your planet and hijacking your facilities, which you then have to take back. Sound like King of the Hill?
"Maybe they didn't take it from you," Farrer says. "Maybe they just blew it up -- in which case there's going to be a vendetta, and then an interesting story has become."
