14th December Dev Round-Up [Update Info & What The Dickens?]

[Djiesse]

ranks reset is a fail idea, because after every reset there will be a month of totally unbalanced mixes with total newbs and pros.

A full reset is too much. I think dropping everyone a few ranks so they have to work to get back to where they were is fine, but mixing everybody back together will only create chaos and frustration. Comp is only truly enjoyable when the ranking system works properly and guarantees balanced matches, why break that at the end of every season?

[Faraleth]

[quote=“Glottis-3D;124530”]ranks reset is a fail idea, because after every reset there will be a month of totally unbalanced mixes with total newbs and pros.

A full reset is too much. I think dropping everyone a few ranks so they have to work to get back to where they were is fine, but mixing everybody back together will only create chaos and frustration. Comp is only truly enjoyable when the ranking system works properly and guarantees balanced matches, why break that at the end of every season?
[/quote]

Yeah, they haven’t actually stated how the resets will work yet. Needless to say, the first one won’t be until some time in 2016, but I do agree a FULL reset would be a little much. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!

[Rjsto]

I really hope the holiday cases give cards that have the mercs wearing ugly sweaters.

That would be awesome! But I think Stoker in picture has a green and white camo on, so that’s probably what it is

[KattiValk]

I want chibi trinkets. Getting x score with each merc for it or something.

[MarsRover]

[quote=“Glottis-3D;124530”]ranks reset is a fail idea, because after every reset there will be a month of totally unbalanced mixes with total newbs and pros.

A full reset is too much. I think dropping everyone a few ranks so they have to work to get back to where they were is fine, but mixing everybody back together will only create chaos and frustration. Comp is only truly enjoyable when the ranking system works properly and guarantees balanced matches, why break that at the end of every season?
[/quote]

I agree. Hearthstone does that - there are 26 ranks and after each month-long season ranks are partially reset and everyone is “compressed” into 10 bottom ranks. Works quite well. But still in the first few days you just need to win a few games to reach much better players.

[Captain_Forward]

Matchmaking changes, so exited!

…

Wait, no info about splitting to solo/duo queue and full(ish) teams? Duh

[bontsa]

[quote=“MarsRover;124549”]
I agree. Hearthstone does that - there are 26 ranks and after each month-long season ranks are partially reset and everyone is “compressed” into 10 bottom ranks. Works quite well. But still in the first few days you just need to win a few games to reach much better players.[/quote]

This sounds good. I hope we will get a system like this, or something that would somewhat “remember” your previous season rank, not placing previous Cobalts with Unranked lvl7’s who launched the game for the first time 2 days ago. Needless frustration and/or boredom for everyone involved.

We’ll have to see how this reset works before getting too pumped up about it I guess. Pretty sure this kind of change does get some careful viewing of community feedback from developer side.

[AdmiralTeddy]

please reduce that 60 hours to 40 or sth…

[Feley]

[quote=“Faraleth;124315”][quote=“Lumi;124312”]Yeay, trinkets instead of real content… Wait a minute, I didn’t mean to say yeay, I meant WTF?

@Lumi dude, there is a whole list of other things there. You’re picking out some tiny comp rewards and extra cosmetics against the rest of the large improvements? [/quote]

Talking about large improvements is stretching it…[/quote]

Some games for example use hats… I am really glad Dirty Bomb isn’t having that system, cause trinket is something that you actually can see while playing. Hat isn’t.

Also why are you mad about new content, it’s not gonna kill game or anything, and there is still same old and useful bug fixes and content improvement…

[Halosheep]

As long as “bug fixes/balance changes” includes “buffs Kira”, then I think things will all fall into place. Please don’t nerf the least played merc again…

[Lumi]

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;124510”]

All I’m trying to say is you’re being incredibly pessimist before the update even comes out, there’s a lot to get excited about, and anything that is not covered in this update will likely be taken care of in the future if people start jumping into 5v5 more.[/quote]

Again, I don’t see what the “lot to get exited about” you’re referring to is. Most of the stuff announced is a mere transfer of already existing game mechanics from private to comp, another event designed to make you play until you puke due to repetitiveness and the trinkets. And if past updates are an indication of an update trend, both bug fixes and balances will be minimal, even sometimes balancing the wrong way.

In the end, updates have disappointed me much more than they have made me enjoy the game more, so I’d rather not repeat the same mistake of getting exited for hot air. And when they’ll announce pub parties and a proper trade-in rework I’ll climb aboard the hype train.

[quote=“Feley;124592”]
Also why are you mad about new content, it’s not gonna kill game or anything, and there is still same old and useful bug fixes and content improvement…[/quote]

Because both bug fixes and content improvement, whatever you mean by it, will not be the majority. And that’s why they’re focussing our attention to trinkets. Can’t you see that’s their main update “feature” are just the trinkets? Finally, this is not what I consider “content”. Cosmetics are applied to content, they don’t make the bulk of it. Hence there is little to no content announced and the lack of content, proper balancing and bug fixing may well kill this game. Neither you nor I know that for sure, but leaving things to be fixed forever can’t be good for the game.

[Feley]

[quote=“Lumi;124599”]

[quote=“Feley;124592”]
Also why are you mad about new content, it’s not gonna kill game or anything, and there is still same old and useful bug fixes and content improvement…[/quote]

Because both bug fixes and content improvement, whatever you mean by it, will not be the majority. And that’s why they’re focussing our attention to trinkets. Can’t you see that’s their main update “feature” are just the trinkets? Finally, this is not what I consider “content”. Cosmetics are applied to content, they don’t make the bulk of it. Hence there is little to no content announced and the lack of content, proper balancing and bug fixing may well kill this game. Neither you nor I know that for sure, but leaving things to be fixed forever can’t be good for the game.[/quote]

First of all, main “feature” of update are the trinkets… Why?
Because you must be stupid to make the main update “feature” something like: Bug fix on MG on Chapel!
Main feature is something to describe excitement of update, and I don’t know why should anyone be excited for let’s say… “WOW! Bug fix on Simeon reload” (this is purely an example)…

Second, I believe that there are teams working on each sector of game… Some work on bug fixes, and others on new content…
Also, there are employees that are better at making new ideas for game, while there are employees that are good at recognizing bug fixes and repairing them… Why would you waste potential of new ideas for little help to bug fixes, and other way around.
It’s something like PPF (production possibility frontier) but with employees… (maximizing production of labour)
Anyways, how SD is managing their employees is not my problem, and I don’t know anything about it… This is just my assumption.

Finally, any game is getting boring without new content… There should be new content from time to time, and I think trinkets are good add-on.

EDIT: Oh yeah forgot to mention. Why is competetive unbalanced? Cause there are way too little players playing it, and there are lots of clans.
Fixing competitive is not that easy… Let’s say, improving matchmaking so that games are balanced isn’t just making matchmaking search for players with same skills, because there are none of players with same skills and lots of clans queueing together…
Trinkets (rank ones) is something that will make people play competitive, and therefor, improve matchmaking itself… It is a BIG “feature” if it succeed in it.

Anyways… Less players playing competetive = more competitive is broken.

[Nail]

don’t think the trinkets are borrowed, we were promised them pre-alpha, Founders get special ones

[Lumi]

[quote=“Feley;124607”][quote=“Lumi;124599”]

[quote=“Feley;124592”]
Also why are you mad about new content, it’s not gonna kill game or anything, and there is still same old and useful bug fixes and content improvement…[/quote]

Because both bug fixes and content improvement, whatever you mean by it, will not be the majority. And that’s why they’re focussing our attention to trinkets. Can’t you see that’s their main update “feature” are just the trinkets? Finally, this is not what I consider “content”. Cosmetics are applied to content, they don’t make the bulk of it. Hence there is little to no content announced and the lack of content, proper balancing and bug fixing may well kill this game. Neither you nor I know that for sure, but leaving things to be fixed forever can’t be good for the game.[/quote]

First of all, main “feature” of update are the trinkets… Why?
Because you must be stupid to make the main update “feature” something like: Bug fix on MG on Chapel!
Main feature is something to describe excitement of update, and I don’t know why should anyone be excited for let’s say… “WOW! Bug fix on Simeon reload” (this is purely an example)…

Second, I believe that there are teams working on each sector of game… Some work on bug fixes, and others on new content…
Also, there are employees that are better at making new ideas for game, while there are employees that are good at recognizing bug fixes and repairing them… Why would you waste potential of new ideas for little help to bug fixes, and other way around.
It’s something like PPF (production possibility frontier) but with employees… (maximizing production of labour)
Anyways, how SD is managing their employees is not my problem, and I don’t know anything about it… This is just my assumption.

Finally, any game is getting boring without new content… There should be new content from time to time, and I think trinkets are good add-on.

EDIT: Oh yeah forgot to mention. Why is competetive unbalanced? Cause there are way too little players playing it, and there are lots of clans.
Fixing competitive is not that easy… Let’s say, improving matchmaking so that games are balanced isn’t just making matchmaking search for players with same skills, because there are none of players with same skills and lots of clans queueing together…
Trinkets (rank ones) is something that will make people play competitive, and therefor, improve matchmaking itself… It is a BIG “feature” if it succeed in it.

Anyways… Less players playing competetive = more competitive is broken.[/quote]

Of course you wouldn’t advert a single bug fix as an update’s feature, but I would be hyped by seeing a title such as: 10 of the worst bugs effectively smashed!

Finally, both of your two last paragraphs start with a premise that I totally agree with, but then you crush them with totally wrong conclusions:
-Again, trinkets are not content. They’re cosmetics. Adding more make-up to a stupid girl doesn’t make her smarter.
-Trinkets will not be the magical tool to save comp and bring people to play it. If your comp is not good enough to keep players in it, why would mere trinkets manage to do that?

[RyePanda]

[quote=“Lumi;124676”][quote=“Feley;124607”][quote=“Lumi;124599”]

[quote=“Feley;124592”]
Also why are you mad about new content, it’s not gonna kill game or anything, and there is still same old and useful bug fixes and content improvement…[/quote]

Because both bug fixes and content improvement, whatever you mean by it, will not be the majority. And that’s why they’re focussing our attention to trinkets. Can’t you see that’s their main update “feature” are just the trinkets? Finally, this is not what I consider “content”. Cosmetics are applied to content, they don’t make the bulk of it. Hence there is little to no content announced and the lack of content, proper balancing and bug fixing may well kill this game. Neither you nor I know that for sure, but leaving things to be fixed forever can’t be good for the game.[/quote]

First of all, main “feature” of update are the trinkets… Why?
Because you must be stupid to make the main update “feature” something like: Bug fix on MG on Chapel!
Main feature is something to describe excitement of update, and I don’t know why should anyone be excited for let’s say… “WOW! Bug fix on Simeon reload” (this is purely an example)…

Second, I believe that there are teams working on each sector of game… Some work on bug fixes, and others on new content…
Also, there are employees that are better at making new ideas for game, while there are employees that are good at recognizing bug fixes and repairing them… Why would you waste potential of new ideas for little help to bug fixes, and other way around.
It’s something like PPF (production possibility frontier) but with employees… (maximizing production of labour)
Anyways, how SD is managing their employees is not my problem, and I don’t know anything about it… This is just my assumption.

Finally, any game is getting boring without new content… There should be new content from time to time, and I think trinkets are good add-on.

EDIT: Oh yeah forgot to mention. Why is competetive unbalanced? Cause there are way too little players playing it, and there are lots of clans.
Fixing competitive is not that easy… Let’s say, improving matchmaking so that games are balanced isn’t just making matchmaking search for players with same skills, because there are none of players with same skills and lots of clans queueing together…
Trinkets (rank ones) is something that will make people play competitive, and therefor, improve matchmaking itself… It is a BIG “feature” if it succeed in it.

Anyways… Less players playing competetive = more competitive is broken.[/quote]

Of course you wouldn’t advert a single bug fix as an update’s feature, but I would be hyped by seeing a title such as: 10 of the worst bugs effectively smashed!

Finally, both of your two last paragraphs start with a premise that I totally agree with, but then you crush them with totally wrong conclusions:
-Again, trinkets are not content. They’re cosmetics. Adding more make-up to a stupid girl doesn’t make her smarter.
-Trinkets will not be the magical tool to save comp and bring people to play it. If your comp is not good enough to keep players in it, why would mere trinkets manage to do that?[/quote]

Yeah, imagine if adding cosmetics completely reinvigorated something. That’d be completely insane.

[Gung-ho]

Will a solo and party MM exist like it does in dota 2?

[Feley]

[quote=“Lumi;124676”]
Of course you wouldn’t advert a single bug fix as an update’s feature, but I would be hyped by seeing a title such as: 10 of the worst bugs effectively smashed!

Finally, both of your two last paragraphs start with a premise that I totally agree with, but then you crush them with totally wrong conclusions:
-Again, trinkets are not content. They’re cosmetics. Adding more make-up to a stupid girl doesn’t make her smarter.
-Trinkets will not be the magical tool to save comp and bring people to play it. If your comp is not good enough to keep players in it, why would mere trinkets manage to do that?[/quote]

Trinkets are something that is added to game, so they are content…

Also “Adding more make-up to a stupid girl doesn’t make her smarter.”
Sooo you are saying remove cobalts, golds, silvers, CW cards, obsidians, Alienware and Logitech ones just because they are added “make-up”?

I see the trinkets and let’s say cobalt card the same, I mean their purpose is same… To show off… Why do people play with cobalt? Same reason why they will be playing with trinkets.

For your last statement… Of course it won’t save competitive. (Altough many people started playing competitive just for trinkets, including me)
There must be start to everything, and trinkets aren’t bad start for saving competitive.
Also, why are you expecting something “magical” to save the competitive?
Please, think of something that will save the comp, and won’t break the game…
(don’t write now: add guranteed cases at the end of game, cause case dropping wouldn’t serve any purpose than… Everyone would be playing competitive, but over time everyone would have big amount of loadout cards (I mean cobalts and golds too), ruining purpose of rarity…)

[Lumi]

Yeah, imagine if adding cosmetics completely reinvigorated something. That’d be completely insane.

Grabbing such a general concept to make a point doesn’t make sense. Especially since what works for one application might not work for another. Furthermore, games such as Five nights at Freddy’s lookalikes have shown that people get fed up by copy cats. If TF2 had success with cosmetics, that doesn’t mean DB will follow the same road.

To wrap this up, my grief isn’t as much with trinkets themselves as with the prioritisation of what is added/changed in the game. While I was expecting some pub parties, better pub matchmaking and especially a ton of bugs and net code improvement, we just get the announcement of yet another way for SD to make money. To me it gives a strong message as to how Nexon/SD sees the community: a source o money income that can endure all the sharpness of an unpolished game forever with the added advantage of being unpaid testers forever.

[DMaster2]

[quote=“Lumi;124793”][quote=“RyePanda;124732”]

Yeah, imagine if adding cosmetics completely reinvigorated something. That’d be completely insane.

[/quote]

Grabbing such a general concept to make a point doesn’t make sense. Especially since what works for one application might not work for another. Furthermore, games such as Five nights at Freddy’s lookalikes have shown that people get fed up by copy cats. If TF2 had success with cosmetics, that doesn’t mean DB will follow the same road.

To wrap this up, my grief isn’t as much with trinkets themselves as with the prioritisation of what is added/changed in the game. While I was expecting some pub parties, better pub matchmaking and especially a ton of bugs and net code improvement, we just get the announcement of yet another way for SD to make money. To me it gives a strong message as to how Nexon/SD sees the community: a source o money income that can endure all the sharpness of an unpolished game forever with the added advantage of being unpaid testers forever.
[/quote]
I’m afraid those two are impossible to achieve at the same time. It’s either one or the other i’m afraid. That said i don’t see the issue if SD want to make some money. The economic system is very generous so i don’t complain if the offer something COSMETIC ONLY (hopefully you don’t screw up on this part devs) for sale. On the contrary it’s a good move.
Also it’s harsh to say that to a dev team that offer two patchs per month one of the two being a bug fix only patch. That without taking into account hotfix patches. Sure they may screw up sometimes with bugs, but they try to solve things, which is something you don’t see too often.

[Lumi]

Trinkets are something that is added to game, so they are content…

Adding a sticker to your lunchbox doesn’t add more food in it. The same if you change UI or add a new menu it isn’t “content”. You might have it as too wide of a definition.

Also “Adding more make-up to a stupid girl doesn’t make her smarter.”
Sooo you are saying remove cobalts, golds, silvers, CW cards, obsidians, Alienware and Logitech ones just because they are added “make-up”?

I didn’t say that. I don’t mind trinkets in the long run, but I’m trying to point out some problems with prioritizations and as well with the concept that many here seem to have that trinkets are an awesome feature that will save competitive.

I see the trinkets and let’s say cobalt card the same, I mean their purpose is same… To show off… Why do people play with cobalt? Same reason why they will be playing with trinkets.

I agree, but just as you don’t see players spending money to buy elite cases and get cobalts, many are also not going to go through horrendous comp games to get trinkets. Many already just use cobalts if somehow they got them and they actually fit their playstyle, but they don’t actively work to get cobalts. Same will happen with trinkets.

For your last statement… Of course it won’t save competitive. (Altough many people started playing competitive just for trinkets, including me)
There must be start to everything, and trinkets aren’t bad start for saving competitive.
Also, why are you expecting something “magical” to save the competitive?
Please, think of something that will save the comp, and won’t break the game…
(don’t write now: add guranteed cases at the end of game, cause case dropping wouldn’t serve any purpose than… Everyone would be playing competitive, but over time everyone would have big amount of loadout cards (I mean cobalts and golds too), ruining purpose of rarity…)

Honestly I don’t give a rats ass about saving comp, because it’s image has already been ruined to players and I don’t care to play it anymore just as many other players do. So in my opinion, saving it is impossible. What I do think is horrible is that people believe trinkets will save comp, when any one with a brain can see it will not. Furthermore, why would you try to “fix” a game mode with almost no player base when there are other modes with most of the players that needs plenty of work?

[quote=“DMaster2;124878”]I’m afraid those two are impossible to achieve at the same time. It’s either one or the other i’m afraid. That said i don’t see the issue if SD want to make some money. The economic system is very generous so i don’t complain if the offer something COSMETIC ONLY (hopefully you don’t screw up on this part devs) for sale. On the contrary it’s a good move.
Also it’s harsh to say that to a dev team that offer two patchs per month one of the two being a bug fix only patch. That without taking into account hotfix patches. Sure they may screw up sometimes with bugs, but they try to solve things, which is something you don’t see too often.[/quote]

I don’t mind cosmetics, nor extra ways for Nexon/SD to make money. But advertising this next update as a big one and then only seeing trinkets as their major feature is just uncool.

Regarding updates, I currently own a lot of early access games and games in Beta state and from all of the different dev teams and approaches, Splash Damage is in the lower half if not close to last. Your impression might be different, but to me this game has been getting worse and worse since closed beta and whenever there is a positive patch, it’s to fix something that they previously broke or changed wrongly. There has never been a positive change right from the start, except for adding mercs and maps of course.