A letter to the devs: Dirty Bomb's longevity

[Para]

First, I want to say that I absolutely love Dirty Bomb. The ET style of the game is right up my alley. I had the pleasure of working with Splash Damage (indirectly) when I was a QA tester at Activision working on Quake Wars for ~9 months. It was a shame that Quake Wars didn’t get as much exposure as it should have had, because it was an incredibly fun game. Dirty Bomb appears to be rising in exposure and popularity very quickly, and I hope this trend continues.

I am writing this as a letter to the devs/publishers and to the community as a whole. I know that, at the end of the day, Splash Damage and Nexon are businesses, and their number one goal is to turn a profit and remain solvent. I’m also aware that the game is currently in beta, and is subject to change at any time. That being said, I do have some concerns with the way the game is heading as of the last few patches. I have only been playing the game for about 5 weeks, (although I have about 135 hours played) so I can’t speak to what happened before the kira + rhino update.

These are my concerns:

Bugs:
I’m aware that fixing bugs can take a varying amount of time depending on the reproducibility of the issue, and how likely fixing the issue would create new bugs. Bugs like the crazy stretchy slenderman issue are very hard to reproduce and would take some time to find and fix.

I know that when publishers and devs collaborate, it can take up to a few weeks or more before a new build actually goes live. Perhaps a lot of the bugs that have been discovered over the last few months are already fixed in a new build.

I really really hope some of the more frustrating bugs (fletcher’s vanishing stickies) are already in the pipeline. However there are some more apparent, easily fixable bugs that have been neglected thus far. There are augments on cards that do not function at all, or do not even make sense any more (lock-on for fletcher, potent packs for sparks). You guys are selling these loadout cards for real money and they don’t even function 100% correctly.

There are some severe performance issues in this game for many people as well. I haven’t seen any optimization updates for this game the entire time I’ve been playing.

Balance:
Balancing a game with multiple roles and objectives is very difficult, and I really only have a few suggestions on balance. I would just wish that while this game is still in beta, you were actively trying new balance tweaks more rapidly. The Phantom update just landed, and there were only a few balance changes. Take advantage that the game is still in beta and really fine tune everything before it goes gold.

The most glaringly imbalanced thing right now to me is that Sparks’ revive gun does wayyyy too much damage to objectives. I believe a team of three sparks is better than three skyhammers when it comes to stopping the EV. I see a ton of people complaining about Phantom being OP. I haven’t been able to try him yet, so I can’t give my opinion on him other than I see no reason why his cloak should have a shield. Seems like you can just pop cloak and bum rush a guy and he’s already wasted half his clip just trying to get through your shield. I do feel that a lot of complaints about imbalances are due to player inexperience (nader and rhino complaints).

Business model:
Right now the patches seem to be focused on getting a new merc out every two weeks, with some fixes and balance changes dripped in. I’ve seen this happen in a lot of games, and it always leaves the community feeling bitter and neglected. Pushing out new content at a fast and steady rate is not always the best way to make a profit. If you put out patches with more balance and bug fixes that improve the overall quality and playability of your game, the community will be more likely to give you money.

I see people say it all the time: "I’m not going to give them a dime until they fix “x”. What you want people to say is “Wow, this game is really well made and really fun, these guys deserve my money for all hours of fun that I’ve had”.

I also think pricing on certain items should be looked at, 5 dollars for a single elite case is very silly and unreasonable for the majority of players. You should also try a 50% off sale on certain weekends (maybe in conjunction with double xp weekends).

I don’t want to make it seem like we as a community are entitled to anything, because this is a free game and you guys are working your assess off. I just want to see Dirty Bomb flourish and become huge.

Thanks for reading.

TL;DR: Prioritize bug fixes and balancing before churning out a new merc every patch, creating an even greater amount of fixes and balance changes that need to happen.

[ghostBase]

I fully agree on that. They should also play around with certain balancing changes.
This game isn’t labelled beta for no reason, you can do that! And I recommend doing that before the game’s full release goes live.

[Backuplight]

TL;DR: Prioritize bug fixes and balancing before churning out a new merc every patch, creating an even greater amount of fixes and balance changes that need to happen.

Just wanted to point out that they aren’t “churning out” mercs, but fine tuning their pre-existing selection of mercs that have been worked on throughout alpha/closed beta. There are more patches than just merc release patches, too. So long as things keep progressing as they have been I’m fine with it, the game is plenty enjoyable to me in its current state - and I’m sure it’ll be improving more and more as time goes by.

[CCP1151]

I think they are actually releasing mercs too fast. There are still numerous guns and bugs which need tweaking, and I feel that fixing the game is better than new content.

But you know, who doesn’t love content.

[stealthyBass]

[quote=“extravagentBypass;41237”]I think they are actually releasing mercs too fast. There are still numerous guns and bugs which need tweaking, and I feel that fixing the game is better than new content.

But you know, who doesn’t love content.[/quote]

I’d rather them get all the mercs they’ve shown so far out and then look at the game and see how things flow and what should be balanced on that front. But I’d love to see them fix certain perks not working, weapon adjustments, etc.

[tenderSwordfish]

[quote=“Backuplight;41043”][quote=“Para;13734”]
TL;DR: Prioritize bug fixes and balancing before churning out a new merc every patch, creating an even greater amount of fixes and balance changes that need to happen.
[/quote]

Just wanted to point out that they aren’t “churning out” mercs, but fine tuning their pre-existing selection of mercs that have been worked on throughout alpha/closed beta. There are more patches than just merc release patches, too. So long as things keep progressing as they have been I’m fine with it, the game is plenty enjoyable to me in its current state - and I’m sure it’ll be improving more and more as time goes by.[/quote]

absolute rubbish.
look towards other games for a comparison.
For example dota (significantly older and in a different stage of its life cycle, but the point still stands)
How long did it take to release techies? How long did it take to release winter wyvern?
These were both characters that were in the original dota.
How many years has it been while both heros were sitting on the sidelines because the devs were not happy with how they played and felt it would be detrimental to the core gameplay. Good things come in time.

They are absolutely releasing mercs to fast and for good reason. They need to sell their game. They need revenue which is inherently more difficult being a f2p game. They need a revenue stream and they need one now.
This comes at a cost which can be evidently seen in the current state of phantom, while the initial effects are a minor annoyance, the flow on effects caused by this will ultimately lead to an excellent game never reaching its true potential.

[Alphafox1]

[quote=“tenderSwordfish;41272”][quote=“Backuplight;41043”][quote=“Para;13734”]
TL;DR: Prioritize bug fixes and balancing before churning out a new merc every patch, creating an even greater amount of fixes and balance changes that need to happen.
[/quote]

Just wanted to point out that they aren’t “churning out” mercs, but fine tuning their pre-existing selection of mercs that have been worked on throughout alpha/closed beta. There are more patches than just merc release patches, too. So long as things keep progressing as they have been I’m fine with it, the game is plenty enjoyable to me in its current state - and I’m sure it’ll be improving more and more as time goes by.[/quote]

absolute rubbish.
look towards other games for a comparison.
For example dota (significantly older and in a different stage of its life cycle, but the point still stands)
How long did it take to release techies? How long did it take to release winter wyvern?
These were both characters that were in the original dota.
How many years has it been while both heros were sitting on the sidelines because the devs were not happy with how they played and felt it would be detrimental to the core gameplay. Good things come in time.

They are absolutely releasing mercs to fast and for good reason. They need to sell their game. They need revenue which is inherently more difficult being a f2p game. They need a revenue stream and they need one now.
This comes at a cost which can be evidently seen in the current state of phantom, while the initial effects are a minor annoyance, the flow on effects caused by this will ultimately lead to an excellent game never reaching its true potential.

[/quote]

It’s weird that you say that they are releasing mercs too fast, because some mercs that will be released are direct counter to what you are complaining about. So you want them to stop releasing mercs that change the current meta?

[DucklingJuggler]

[quote=“tenderSwordfish;41272”][quote=“Backuplight;41043”][quote=“Para;13734”]
TL;DR: Prioritize bug fixes and balancing before churning out a new merc every patch, creating an even greater amount of fixes and balance changes that need to happen.
[/quote]

Just wanted to point out that they aren’t “churning out” mercs, but fine tuning their pre-existing selection of mercs that have been worked on throughout alpha/closed beta. There are more patches than just merc release patches, too. So long as things keep progressing as they have been I’m fine with it, the game is plenty enjoyable to me in its current state - and I’m sure it’ll be improving more and more as time goes by.[/quote]

absolute rubbish.
look towards other games for a comparison.
For example dota (significantly older and in a different stage of its life cycle, but the point still stands)
How long did it take to release techies? How long did it take to release winter wyvern?
These were both characters that were in the original dota.
How many years has it been while both heros were sitting on the sidelines because the devs were not happy with how they played and felt it would be detrimental to the core gameplay. Good things come in time.

They are absolutely releasing mercs to fast and for good reason. They need to sell their game. They need revenue which is inherently more difficult being a f2p game. They need a revenue stream and they need one now.
This comes at a cost which can be evidently seen in the current state of phantom, while the initial effects are a minor annoyance, the flow on effects caused by this will ultimately lead to an excellent game never reaching its true potential.

[/quote]

Well, to be fair. When it comes to Dota 2 they still have to make new character models, animations etc. They don’t use the ones from the original Dota.

As far as I’m aware most characters being added to Dirty Bomb recently have already been in the game previously, then taken out to be added back in. Makes sense that it’s faster when a majority of the work is already done.

[Sagan_on_Roids1]

They haven’t released any mercs that weren’t in the alpha. Currently 14/20 of the original mercs have been released. The remaining mercs are: Phoenix (medic), Turtle (engineer), Thunder (soldier), Aimee (covert ops), Red Eye (covert ops), and Stoker (field ops). Once all of the original mercs are released, I’m sure we’ll see the rate of new mercs coming out decrease significantly.

SD and Nexon are committed to this game, and I’m sure we’re going to see lots of bug fixes in the future.

[Eox]

Here ! Catch my agreement !

We’re have waited for a too long time for augments being fixed, plus some other gamebreaking bugs. And we’re still waiting. I do hope it’s the next step for Splash Damage.