5w ago - CCP Games Praetorian Creative Director Atli Mar Sveinsson announced today that Dust 514: Uprising arrives on May 6th, and has detailed the skill system upgrade below as follows:

With the help of our players, we at CCP have learned a great deal throughout last year of DUST 514's beta period, especially with regard to the system at the core of your character's advancement and progression: the skill system.

Most importantly, we've gained an understanding of how you are using the items to advance through the game. This is all thanks to the terrific amount of player feedback we've received during the beta period.

As we started work on re-aligning the progression tree for the new Uprising build of DUST 514, set for release on May 6th, we realized that trying to map the new skills, bonuses and requirements to your existing items was not only complicated on the technical side, but also likely unfair to you.

You may have committed to a certain play style, and with an overhauled layout and collection of skills, you may find yourself regretting some of your prior choices. We have thus decided that it is far better to re-spec not only the skills but items as well.

In short, you will get your skill points (SP) back and the ISK and AUR (in-game currencies) value of any...

9w ago - CCP Games Producer Thomas "CCP Wolfman" Farrer has proclaimed that equipment is your friend in Dust 514 on PlayStation 3 today.

To quote: Success on the battlegrounds of DUST 514 is about far more than who has the biggest gun. Equipment plays a vital part in defining the role you play on the battlefield. Fit a nanite injector to your assault type II dropsuit and you're a front line medic, resurrecting your fallen team mates. Fit a repair tool and you become a combat engineer, repairing damaged dropsuits and vehicles as well as giving your squad active armour repair during a firefight.

The fondly nicknamed 'logibro' logistics dropsuits are of course the kings of battlefield equipment usage. With more equipment slots than any other dropsuit class they can carry multiple equipment types making them incredible useful squad mates. A Logistics A-Series can for example, resupply his squad with nanohives, provide tactical spawn locations with drop uplinks and keep them fighting fit with a repair tool.

It's been really interesting to see what types of equipment have been the most popular during the Beta so far. In first place we have the ever-popular Nano Hive with an epic 106,537,393 units purchased for ISK!

Following this we then have repair tools, remote explosives and lastly...

24w ago - CCP's Eino Joas has outlined war and profit in DUST 514 for the PlayStation 3 entertainment system today.

Below are the details, to quote: The mercenary life is grand, but how do you put the "profit" into intergalactic warfare for fun and profit?

I mean, we all love to see new places (and blow them up) and meet new people (and blow them up), but you're not just doing this for your health. So let's talk about how DUST 514 rewards your effort.

There are three things you can come away with from a battle: money, skill points, and salvage, and here's how you get them:

Money

ISK is the primary currency in the EVE Universe and a necessity for fighting wars. You will earn ISK from each battle you fight. The size of the reward depends on your contribution and the cost of the battle. Those who contribute more are rewarded handsomely, but all mercs are guaranteed a solid income.

A portion of the reward pool for each battle depends on the value of items destroyed in the battle. If the battle saw countless vehicles and expensive prototype gear destroyed, everyone is in for bigger rewards. ISK rewards are calculated as follows for each participant:

Base rewards: Every mercenary receives basic compensation for each battle they fight....

29w ago - CCP Sentinel's Ryan Geddes has officially invited fans to join the Dust 514 double skill point weekend on PlayStation 3 today!

To quote: As an immortal mercenary in DUST 514, Skill Points are your dearest friends. They're your path to better gear, faster movement, deeper customization and even social standing. And on the war-torn planetary battlefields of New Eden, they don't come cheap.

For an extended weekend, we're doubling the number of Skill Points our bullet-scarred beta testers will gain in every battle, from 1 November through 8 November. That means every headshot, NULL Cannon hack, dropship takedown - everything you do on the battlefield - will get you twice as close to your goal of galactic dominance.

Whether you're working toward building the ultimate tank commander, striving to become a megacorporation CEO or simply trying to piece together your own unique hybrid warrior class, every single Skill Point helps.

If you're already playing the beta, you won't want to miss the DUST 514 Double Skill Point Weekend. Our latest build, Codex, introduced new environments, weapons, avatars, equipment and a lot more. And if you haven't given the beta a shot yet, now is the perfect time to step onto into New Eden.

DUST 514 is a free-to-play first-person...

38w ago - Today Community Manager CCP CmdrWang has officially introduced Dust 514's Instant Battle Matchmaker with details below.

To quote: Human beings are hunters at heart. We were hunter-gatherers well before we invented computers, after all.

And what better place to practice our ancestral instinct than in a MMO shooter where we can stalk, pounce upon and kill our prey so that we can safely and legally experience the thrills and complexities of the hunt.

This sublime experience even has a name : the ancient Greeks called this "arete" and used it to describe the excellence and beauty that can arise between combatants of equal stature.

Of course, part of this excellence comes with the assumption of a fight between two equally matched combatants; it would seem that our ancestors, too, preferred a fair fight. But in the real world, we are too often reminded that all is fair in love and war, and as many of you already know, Dust 514 is about war (okay, there is love too).

However, this does not mean that "arete" has no place in Dust 514. Like the Olympics, we want to offer players a chance to compete on a fair and equal footing where it is less about the gear and more about the skill and mental resilience to win the fight.

To this end, we are introducing...