Return to Dust....

Dust 514 has been more and more on my mind over the last few weeks.
Patch 1.9 had caught my interest and the changes it makes are all welcome. The 1.9 patch notes are a good read.
Even for veteran Dusters they must be excited about them.  The forums and reddit all seem to be saying yes but in a very muted way as if they were waiting for the catch.
The patch changes peeked my interest to get back into the game and I decided to give it another go.
I reconnected my PS3, started up Dust and it downloaded and installed the 1.9 patch. 

The first thing I noticed was that they removed the "stars" from the initial start screen. It had always been a cluttered eyesore, and reminded me of this, not a very good first impression. In many ways a small thing but it now has a cleaner look and feel, a bug well squashed.
The second change I noticed was that my characters selection image had changed. The patch notes say they have changed them to a higher resolution version but it looks more of a model change. That must have been some very low res images they were using before.
I only got to check some menu's, see about changing some options, collect the batch of freebies from the newsletters and have two matches. 
Both matches seemed to flow a lot better than I recall.  While playing I kept thinking that they narrowed the player view, increasing the black lines maybe, I'm not sure what was tweaked but it looks very much improved since I last played it. Frame rates, textures, it's all down to the tweaks they've done. It's added up to a lot of polish that works really well.

There seems to be a lot of work still to do on Dust. A lot of additional content to add, re-add and balance. I'm not sure that the post 2014 fanfest Dust 514 development team have it in them.  They probably haven't been given the go ahead from CCP. I wish they would be a lot more vocal as to what is next fro the game.
This interview with CCP Rouge and CCP Rattati, left me a little baffled on the direction of 514. I got a vibe that they were laxidasical caretakers that really had no motivation to push changes. I think they are marking time.

This review of the changes is of interest :)