16th November Dev Stream Round-Up [SMOOTH SPECIAL!]


(Faraleth) #1

Remember, as always, unless specifically stated as confirmed, please take everything with a grain of salt.

Were you aiming to find out something else? Was I blinded and missed something that you’re turtley dying to ask? Check out the FAQ here: http://forums.dirtybomb.nexon.net/discussion/17544/dev-nexon-stream-faq

I don’t normally post these here, due to the fact that if I did, it would kinda spam the forum discussions and I feel the SD forum is more about feedback than anything else. However this stream definitely has some fantastic information I don’t want anyone to miss!

Competitive:

[ul]
[li] Going forward, competitive mode will be more of a focus for helping to balance mercs and weapons. They want to encourage more to use competitive and use it as a valuable resource.[/li][li] Competitive will be “incentivised”, however not “forced”. (Needless to say, I think this was noted from the comp mission removal)[/li][li] Match-making algorithm is a high priority, due to noting some are taking far too long.[/li][li] There are NO Bronze rank players, due to players not moving up or down as quick as they assumed players might. This will be looked at, due to wanting to implement ranked seasons.[/li][li] Ranked seasons will also include rewards. This is one of the things they want to implement to help push for competitive.[/li][li] Possible season rewards include: Loadout cards, skins, credit bundles, and more. (Remember: These are NOT 100% confirmed, this is just initial ideas right now. They are subject to change.)[/li][li] Competitive will have friendly fire ENABLED at some-point .[/li][li] Maps are “built” around the 5v5 teams, so it’s unlikely competitive will get an increase in team sizes.[/li][li] There isn’t “enough” of a player-base to make Execution mode a competitive mode right now, however if there is an increase in demand and players, “there is no reason why not”. They simply don’t want to fragment the player-base right now.[/li][/ul]

Maps:

[ul]
[li] “Priority right now is new maps.” Old maps may still be worked on, however they feel a lot of them aren’t in a bad place.[/li][li] It’s unlikely new maps will be as big as Dome is.[/li][li] A “drafting” option in competitive is something they want to try. Private match implementation will likely come first, and then take feedback from it, THEN introduce it into competitive if players are happy with it. (Mirrors would likely be allowed)[/li][li] The “floating box” on Dome is only floating on low settings. It’s on a hook, however it was accidentally set to only render on medium or above. This will be fixed.[/li][/ul]

Weapons/Merc Abilites:

[ul]
[li] DPS is often kept similar for a lot of guns due to the nature of higher DPS killing players quicker than lower DPS, even if the gun is less accurate.[/li][li] Stoker’s molotov cooldown will NOT be reduced. - One of the main reasons for this is that 2-3 Stoker’s could “stack” and camp objectives. If the opposing team does not have a counter, they are essentially screwed.[/li][li] There is a known bug where Molotov’s do not do enough damage to the EV. This is currently being fixed.[/li][li] They are “thinking about” giving the Driess and Grandeur a red-dot sight, due to the design of the guns leading to using the iron-sight. However, SMG’s are not “supposed” to be long ranged, thus the sights on them are not currently planned to change.[/li][li] “The Grandeur is designed to be a medium to long range weapon […] which is why I feel like it would be good to add a scope or red dot sight to it.”[/li][li] Some of the guns perhaps aren’t as “fun” to use as they might like, such as the Driess (this was the given example).[/li][li] They are trying to “reduce the randomness” with some of the guns when it comes to spread, due to community dislike for it.[/li][li] Focus will continue on the Timik being debatably weaker than the M4. The recent changes will be looked at, and then further improvements can be made if needed. [/li][li] “Getting shotguns to work both at high level AND low level, without them being OP, is a tough task.” They could use a little more refinement, with the Hollunds being slightly behind the other 2 shotguns.[/li][li] “We won’t see any nerfs to shotguns any time soon.”[/li][li] Smooth thinks “we need to get some more differentiation in our guns”.[/li][li] The REVIVR is “being looked at” and some recent bug fixes such as the low charge doing more damage than intended, should bring it further in line with other weapons.[/li][li] Players have worked and/or paid for loadout cards that are already in the game, so nothing will ever be “removed” (such as weapons). There would only be tweaks to the loadouts themselves.[/li][li] “Proxy is due for a bit of love, possibly, in the next update.”[/li][/ul]

Augements:

[ul]
[li] Sneaky and Enigma augments are currently being looked at for a buff, due to many players feeling they were fairly useless.[/li][li] An idea they had for Pineapple Juggler was to make it so that melee weapons could “hit” projectiles (such as grenades) away.[/li][li] No plans right now to add more loadout cards to the game, however it’s definitely a plan for the further future.[/li][/ul]

Game:

[ul]
[li] “Hacking” objectives are unlikely to return, due to the unsatisfactory feeling of doing it. (Hacking was similar to repairing, where you could run up and hold a button until it’s done)[/li][li] They are “not too far away” from adding improvements to the trade-in system. No exact ETA however.[/li][/ul]

Technical:

[ul]
[li] Score-per-minute over your past 15 games, accounts for how casual team balancing works. This will be changed to include a longer match history, NOT include games under 7 minutes, and if you remain in a server, it will put more weight on the matches played recently.[/li][li] They want to include a “lower than lower” and “higher than higher” video setting options, so that settings people are editing in the config are also changeable in the game.[/li][li] Server-side in-game demo’s are something SD wants to implement. There is a lot of work from SD, Nexon and server hosts that will be required to make this work, however it’s definitely something that’s on the road-map for the future. “It’s definitely needed if we want competitive to take off.”[/li][li] They will trial “off-set” spawn times in private matches, meaning attackers will spawn slightly earlier, however spawn waves will always remain the same time.[/li][/ul]

Echo:

[ul]
[li] Confirmed: Echo is still being used on a constant basis to help balance the game and maps.[/li][li] Echo is currently a “very manual process” and thus, not very user friendly so it’s hard to make these results public properly as used in-house. Making some Echo stats public however is something they can do eventually.[/li][/ul]

Enjoy… Until next time!

  • Faraleth

EDIT: For those wanting to re-watch or watch the whole interview, you can see the VoD here.


(PixelTwitch) #2

While I appreciate Smooths honesty during the stream, I do believe he has basically confirmed to me why I will never enjoy this game ever again like I did back in the closed beta over a year ago.

The latest stream has put me into cash out mode and I will be basically dumping out all my information and tutorials very quickly and moving on. Very sad day for me personally but I really cannot justify putting any more time and effort into a game that I don’t believe is “going anywhere” with the current design decisions and direction that Splash Damage has decided to take. Good luck.


(watsyurdeal) #3

If it’s not too much trouble would you care to explain PixelTwitch?


(spookify) #4

Big strides need to be taken in getting performance where it needs to be. There also needs to be a focus on getting people to grind and stay on a pub server for hours on end instead of leaving after one map. I wish I knew the magic bullet as to what this was but I can not say for certain.

I will say this:

Fixing Comp and getting the season ready will be a good start. The game is made for 5v5 and comp 5v5 games are super fun to play when balanced.

Things we can look forward to for Ranked MM and from Smooth can be found here!

Once comp and semi established and season are in effect it might be time for either community servers or Rank entry servers. I really dont like the abusive admins in community servers but they do make a home for some players. I think simply changing a server name to something specific will make people come back and keep it populated but that just me.

-As for Ranked Pub servers I think this would be great. Gold Only Servers and or Cobalt and Elite Rank only servers. If you make them SW and 5v5 or 6v6 they might be good warm up servers. Once you start getting into the 7v7 and 8v8 with the current maps on SW it turns into a cluster. I think 7v7 and 8v8 works much better in Objective mode where spawn times are much harder to figure out.

Execution Mode is semi fun to play for me and a great change of passe.

There needs to be a 4th mode to really bring the game to light. Something that works with the cluster of people and where people can simply kill. Something like a hardpoint or BF game style.

I will also say that one of the things that SD should do is max 5v5 or 6v6 execution pub servers that or sort of set up around Ranked MM style.

Pop a 6v6 execution server in there and name its something cool so people favor it and keep returning to it.

Same thing for 5v5 pub SW server min level 15 or 20 and see if that stays populated. and or a 5v5 min level 10. But as I stated before I would like to see ranks rather then level…


(PixelTwitch) #5

Well some of the things that stand out to me from what was mentioned in the stream are…

[ul]
[li]Going forward, competitive mode will be more of a focus for helping to balance mercs and weapons. They want to encourage more to use competitive and use it as a valuable resource.
[/li]> [li]“Priority right now is new maps.” Old maps may still be worked on, however they feel a lot of them aren’t in a bad place.
[/li]> [li]They are “thinking about” giving the Driess and Grandeur a red-dot sight, due to the design of the guns leading to using the iron-sight. However, SMG’s are not “supposed” to be long ranged, thus the sights on them are not currently planned to change.
[/li]> [li]Players have worked and/or paid for loadout cards that are already in the game, so nothing will ever be “removed” (such as weapons). There would only be tweaks to the loadouts themselves.
[/li]> [li]No plans right now to add more loadout cards to the game, however it’s definitely a plan for the further future.
[/li]> [li]“Hacking” objectives are unlikely to return, due to the unsatisfactory feeling of doing it. (Hacking was similar to repairing, where you could run up and hold a button until it’s done)
[/li]> [/ul]

There is also a lot more that I am unable to share due to NDA and stuff.

Basically, I no longer have enough confidence that Splash Damage are capable or even willing to address many of the problems that Dirty Bomb suffers from. Serious game breaking bugs don’t even seem to be a priority. It took us over a year of complaining to get them to even fix the semi-automatic weapon bug! Other then just bugs, we have lots of issue in the design itself. Counter-Play is almost none existent in Dirty Bomb and the game can be very frustrating because of it. While I understand that Blizzard for instance do have many more people working on Overwatch, I don’t believe that excuses SD for not having thought out certain design choices properly. Having played over 100 hours of Overwatch so far I have to say its simply a smarter designed game and I don’t believe its simply down to resources most of the time. There is no excuse to not have a warning when Fragger for instance starts cooking a grenade or having better mixed audio for things like mines and turrets.

Also, when you hear that SD think that their current maps are not in such a bad place, it makes you question their ability to know what is either good or bad. The current maps are not only poorly designed in many places, their refinement is nearly none existent. Every single map (including Dome, Market and Overground) need a full collision pass to fix the horrible collision they currently suffer from, each map also needs work when it comes to line of sight and many of the objectives are either boring or just simply badly implemented. In order to make the maps “playable” we have this god awful spawn protection that should never have been allowed to make it into the public game.

Honestly, there is just too much to go into really… To be blunt and to the point, I don’t believe that there is a single aspect of the game that feels refined… Sure, everything “works” but I have been kept here by a promise and I no longer have faith that Splash Damage is going to be able to keep to it. Honestly, I pray that I am wrong I would love them to do really well with Dirty Bomb but for me progress is too slow and I can no longer sacrifice my earnings based on hope alone.


(Protekt1) #6

Very informative. Thanks for the write up.

Also holy **** splash damage must have taken a big old piss in pixel’s cereal, that or they broke their wedding vows.


(Glottis-3D) #7

“There is no excuse to not have a warning when Fragger for instance starts cooking a grenade”
Man, there is an obvious animation of him cooking a nade. if you see him - you know whats gonna happen. if you do not see him, you have to guess. and that should stay, and (thankfully) will stay. otherwise it is too much info, less risk, less interest.


(PixelTwitch) #8

Have to agree to disagree on that one, but either way does not matter. I hope the game is what you wanted :slight_smile:


(Szakalot) #9

youll be back, you’re always back : P


(Glottis-3D) #10

i kinda Hope, that he’ll be back, he is a good tester, and gives insane amount of feedback.

@Pixel
yes DB is still a game that i am having fun playing the most.


(Runeforce) #11

Old wine on new bottles. He’ll be back! :stuck_out_tongue:

Who else would be our favorite voicecaster in dbn.gg cups?


(Glottis-3D) #12

i can cast with stronk russian accent


(Faraleth) #13

I vote +1 for this.


(Runeforce) #14

If you talk perfect engrish laik stronk man Pewtin, OK!


(watsyurdeal) #15

I have to agree with a lot of what Pixeltwitch said, thankfully we’ll see what happens by this time next year.

I do hope you guys plan to fix competitive and fix the balancing problems here in the next 6 months, or all the time you spent on this game will be wasted.


(FireWorks) #16

Man, I am sure gonna miss the videos with you stomping on lv5s and the endless walls of texts that contain the same information as 2line rage posts…

BTW I’m still wondering if this Prettzl guy from closed is the same person. The endless whine and hypercritcism sure fit.