Alright Splash Damage, time for an intervention

(cly) #1

Before I begin bashing the poor communication/updates/etc of SD, i would like to start by saying I enjoy this game far more than other AAA games such as CSGO and COD (both of which I feel are terrible games)

I would also like to describe my background to establish some sort of credibility with you guys before beginning my rant.
I played every Closed Beta for pretty much every battlefield game and was a decent contributor in terms of reporting bugs, cheaters, etc. I have been playing FPS games since I was 6 and I am now almost 18. I have over 4000hrs in cs1.6/go (i never played source, thank god) and was apart of the beta testing for csgo as well.

I have been a forum admin/another type of admin (ill explain if anyone wants to legitimately know) for Combat Arms leagues such as CGL and WOGL (short lived). So you could say I’ve been around in these types of games.

Anyways, I would like to state again that I find this game extremely fun. Balanced? Not so much.

  1. Phantom. I have not met one person who believes this class is balanced, besides the low leveled players that have no understanding of the game whatsoever, and play this class 24/7 because they are useless in every other aspect of the game. Why does this class have 120hp (more than vassili), a primary weapon that is decent, as well as a melee weapon that is typically a 1-2 shot kill (which also has a ridiculous range for a melee weapon), and cloaking with armor. Were you guys even thinking when you made this class?
    Solution: Well personally I would just remove the class, a class that has an ability to cloak in an fps shooter is kinda ridiculous, especially with the aforementioned attributes of said class. However, one game that I played for awhile had such a “class” and wasn’t inbalanced at all. Although that class did NOT have armor while cloaked, and definitely was not entirely invisible. https://youtu.be/eLEzqkKB1ok?t=18s <- there is a link to see what I am talking about. (skip to :17, the link fucked up for some reason :/) Either remove armor when cloaked or revamp his movement abilities.

  2. Cheaters. This is something that will kill this game extremely fast if it is not addressed in the next month or so. Today alone I played 2 games and both had blatant players running around instant headshotting everyone. Sadly, since there is no report system in place (a useful one, that is) my and my teammates option was to just leave the game and get deranked. Very broken system atm.
    Solution: Create a system that allows players to report by simply right clicking their name IN THE GAME. Basically copy cs:go’s way of reporting. No one wants to have to go OUT OF THE GAME to report a cheater. It’s far too much work, especially with the amount of cheaters that currently exist. Also, get a fucking useful anticheat already. The current system in place is not viable, especially when a cheating player is using unicode, that is just another step to take to report that i shouldnt have to take in the first place.

  3. Skyhammer’s Airstrike. This doesn’t bother me as much but I would like to address it as I think the cooldown lasts far too short of time to not be abused. Obviously this is not an issue in dirtycups, as there is a 1 merc rule, however it is extremely annoying when there is 2-3 skyhammers on the other team who get to airstrike 3 times in one minute.
    Solution: Increase cooldown time of Skyhammer’s ability to airstrike. Other than that he is balanced.

  4. Nader’s Launcher. I am a tad biased because this is one of my main classes, however the 5 nades is rather ridiculous for the kind of defense/fragging power it can provide. Certain plant situations (for example objective 2 on trainyard) can be defended quite easily (i am not saying there is no way to counter it) with 5 naders. Again, not an issue in dirty cups but for the general community I would say it’s an issue. Also, remove martyrdom that is just plain stupid.

  5. Vassili in general: Honestly this class (if you have a grasp of the game at all) is pretty easy to use. Just sit back, throw the hbs every 20 seconds, and you have a solid defense, if you can aim of course. His sidearm (again if you can aim) is decently good for the kind of impact he can have in a match. I don’t really have a solution for this, just stating that I feel he needs to be looked at.

  6. Optimization. Obviously the game is in Open Beta, but i should not be getting 40-70fps on lowest graphics, with an fps config, and 800x600. i5 2500k @ 4.3ghz, 8gb ram, gtx 660. No it is not an issue on my end, i have reformatted my PC and that did not do a thing. everything in game is turned off or set on low.

  7. Lack of communication. It’s nice that you guys run a community stream and all, but literally everytime a question is asked you guys come up with the same response, “oh we’re looking into it” “oh it’s in progress, etc etc.” I know you can’t give us info on everything all the time, but please try to be a little bit more transparent with us. AND ACTUALLY USE COMMUNITY FEEDBACK (i know you guys do, im just restating it because a lot of games ive played in the past havent, and they are all dead games afaik).

  8. Priorities. Again, I understand it’s Open Beta, but you really should consider focusing energy on a decent ac, rather than be testing some new game mode when there are myriads of cheaters running about in casual games and competitive games.

some notes

points 1-5 are listed from greatest importance to least greatest. 6-8 are just some more ideas that popped into mind while writing this post. I understand that some people are going to agree, some people are not. That’s fine, but this is a community forum where all are allowed to post their opinions, so please respect mine and I will respect yours.

Thank you,

ahju

(if i think of more stuff I will update, so stay tuned)

(watsyurdeal) #2

And cloak in that game was entirely useless…

We need full invisibility for Phantom to get within range, but still allow some way for people to defend themselves against him or counter him.

Maybe change cloak to be just like the Spy’s, but with a much faster decloak and cloak time.

The game’s speed wouldn’t allow for anything less.

But then again, Phantom only instantly kills Sparks, Aura, Proxy, Kira, and Vasilli. So that’s only 5 of the current 14 mercs. So maybe full invis but no armor would be fair, along with allowing him to attack while cloaking…but maybe instead have the lunge have a charge up or windup time, I believe I saw that suggestion elsewhere here on the forum.

(cly) #3

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;46911”]And cloak in that game was entirely useless…

We need full invisibility for Phantom to get within range, but still allow some way for people to defend themselves against him or counter him.

Maybe change cloak to be just like the Spy’s, but with a much faster decloak and cloak time.

The game’s speed wouldn’t allow for anything less.[/quote]

agreed, it was mostly useless in battlefield 2142, which is kinda the kind of update I think phantom should get :wink:

(cly) #4

I also want to add that I have not played with every class in DB , so if you have input on another class please feel free to contribute your findings here.

I wish to keep this thread as a mature base for SD to possibly derive ideas from (assuming they even see this thread, of course.)

(watsyurdeal) #5

Well for future reference

Red Eye completely crushes cloak, look him up

And making him useless is not the answer. Making him possible to deal with reasonably is. People need to stop expecting something to be nerfed to hell because they don’t know how to deal with it.

(cly) #6

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;46915”]Well for future reference

Red Eye completely crushes cloak, look him up

And making him useless is not the answer. Making him possible to deal with reasonably is. People need to stop expecting something to be nerfed to hell because they don’t know how to deal with it.[/quote]

I don’t know what to google as I have no idea what red eye is, perhaps a link so i can read?

And true, I never said I wanted him to be useless, I just think that either the cloaking w/ armor/melee range/character’s speed needs to be changed/revamped.

(prettyStake) #7

Phantom point 1) Cloak timer should be double from 6secs to 12s. Stop the spinning macro’s, and fix the right click sword jab.( When you right click the jab you can actually miss but as the animation finished if you move the target over someone you still hit them) This should nerf him enough for people to stop the crying.

Cheaters 2) Since closed beta 220 hours plus seen 3 cheaters and a ton of good payers. Yes they exist and this should be SD main priority.

  1. Skyhammer is fine So is 4)Nader and 5)Vassili

  2. I believe they stream weekly and use reddit

(cly) #8

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;46915”]Well for future reference

Red Eye completely crushes cloak, look him up

And making him useless is not the answer. Making him possible to deal with reasonably is. People need to stop expecting something to be nerfed to hell because they don’t know how to deal with it.[/quote]

and the fact is, the way to counter him is to long jump/spam headshots/out maneuver him, 2/3 require you to basically run away from him. is that necessarily balanced? definitely not.
the only class you should ever have to run away from is Rhino, and he is definitely balanced in my eyes.

(cly) #9

[quote=“prettyStake;46921”]Phantom point 1) Cloak timer should be double from 6secs to 12s. Stop the spinning macro’s, and fix the right click sword jab.( When you right click the jab you can actually miss but as the animation finished if you move the target over someone you still hit them) This should nerf him enough for people to stop the crying.

Cheaters 2) Since closed beta 220 hours plus seen 3 cheaters and a ton of good payers. Yes they exist and this should be SD main priority.

  1. Skyhammer is fine So is 4)Nader and 5)Vassili

  2. I believe they stream weekly and use reddit

[/quote]

i fully respect your opinion, and sure skyhammer, nader, and vassili are fine in retrospect, but to make this game as balanced as possible I am presenting all the possible issues with each class.

Although I still think skyhammer’s airstrike cooldown should be increased if anything. And yes, I addressed the fact that they stream, but you missed the point where I state transparency would do SD some good. Like, ETA on the anticheat? for example.

(Eox) #10

I’d be very careful with a 100% cloak. What’s working in TF2 may not work at all in DB. It’s clearly not the same pace, and not the same game. I am really afraid about it being just litterally overpowered.

(prettyStake) #11

Skyhammer is annoying but its loud and a huge red line is on the ground. If your positioning is bad and you have no self awareness it won’t help, you’ll still die. The Only thing that should change on skyhammer is the timik sucks and you should be able to throw his airstrike away with the perk pineapple juggler or block it by sitting on it like in RTCW\ ET.

(misspo) #12

I think phantom is fine as it is. Just release redeye and teach people how to use turret

  • hb sensor and you good.

ConCerning the cloack, i played myself a LOT at bf2142 until he definitly die. And the cloack stuff was pretty much useless. Firstly, it was given to the sniper and regarding the shity netcode the game had plus that sniper was not very good, it was not a danger.
Secondly he did not had armor and was very visible. Aso like phantom, he was doing lots of more noise when cloacked. And finaly to be cloak, you had to take your cloacking divise in your hand like in the video. It was mainly usefull at long range so people weren’t able to see you much.

You speak a lot about the game being more balanced in a competitive environment (1 merk rule) and i agree. But you can’t be balanced for every type of situation. Like it is in starcraft: the game is not balanced at every level and when you reach a composition army, you have likely more chance to win.

Merk are good it’s just people over abusing the number of the same merks at the same time.
Maybe just lock a merk if 4 are already on the field.

Mods are doing a very great job and dev do quite well too. By promoting event (cup, give away, spark fan art stuff, community stream…). But they don’t speak enough about the game itself.
They should do report like they do on Starcraft2 for instance before future patch where they explan their through about thr game.
Like saying on what they are working on and will be release soon. What are their through on the manner… Doing maybe some AMA (ask me any thing)…

It’s not like a big company working on the new iphone, they are not spying here. You can freely speak about what you are doing.

I know i don’t stop saying that but optimisation is getting more and more important day after days. I can’t imagine how it would feel if only the game was smooth when you got a stable framerate because even with it, you still got a shoppy gameplay 70% of the time.
Devs are players too…they are not like DICE developer level 10 playing battlefield one hour a week. It doesn’t bother you?

(noupperlobeman) #13

Trimmed the op for the sake of brevity.

1-5 are simply a lack of experience and / or awareness, I wont spend a lot
of time addressing them. They all boil down to having played enough, and
having a degree of awareness to be able to counter. Especially nader, as
anyone with any degree of awareness can outmaneuver and crush your average
nader. Your opinion is somewhat suspect because you make no mention of fragger
who is an all around stronger merc in most situations.

I’ve played in pubs and competition against phantom, and in both situations he is
shit down HARD by basic teamwork. Never be alone. This is a team oriented game,
so you never should be, right?

  1. Devs avoid concrete answers because gamers are total drama queens, and
    anything a dev promises but fails to deliver is met with total and complete community
    implosion.

For the love of god, do not beg them to use community feedback outside the most
basic bugs and balance feedback. I’ve seen games tumble down a rabbit hole of
failure and regret because they relied to heavily on community feedback.
Communities are widely diverse and they don’t ever know what they actually want,
it’s better to stick with the devs intent than to listen to an amalgamation of the
universes biggest cry babies.

EDIT: What game modes do you play? 8v8 is an absolute horrifying mess.
Never go above 7v7. The maps are too small for so many players. I guarantee
if you stick to 6v6, most of these problems melt away.

(cly) #14

[quote=“peridotLava;46930”]I think phantom is fine as it is. Just release redeye and teach people how to use turret

  • hb sensor and you good.

ConCerning the cloack, i played myself a LOT at bf2142 until he definitly die. And the cloack stuff was pretty much useless. Firstly, it was given to the sniper and regarding the shity netcode the game had plus that sniper was not very good, it was not a danger.
Secondly he did not had armor and was very visible. Aso like phantom, he was doing lots of more noise when cloacked. And finaly to be cloak, you had to take your cloacking divise in your hand like in the video. It was mainly usefull at long range so people weren’t able to see you much.

You speak a lot about the game being more balanced in a competitive environment (1 merk rule) and i agree. But you can’t be balanced for every type of situation. Like it is in starcraft: the game is not balanced at every level and when you reach a composition army, you have likely more chance to win.

Merk are good it’s just people over abusing the number of the same merks at the same time.
Maybe just lock a merk if 4 are already on the field.

Mods are doing a very great job and dev do quite well too. By promoting event (cup, give away, spark fan art stuff, community stream…). But they don’t speak enough about the game itself.
They should do report like they do on Starcraft2 for instance before future patch where they explan their through about thr game.
Like saying on what they are working on and will be release soon. What are their through on the manner… Doing maybe some AMA (ask me any thing)…

It’s not like a big company working on the new iphone, they are not spying here. You can freely speak about what you are doing.

I know i don’t stop saying that but optimisation is getting more and more important day after days. I can’t imagine how it would feel if only the game was smooth when you got a stable framerate because even with it, you still got a shoppy gameplay 70% of the time.
Devs are players too…they are not like DICE developer level 10 playing battlefield one hour a week. It doesn’t bother you?

[/quote]

[quote=“peridotLava;46930”]I think phantom is fine as it is. Just release redeye and teach people how to use turret

  • hb sensor and you good.

ConCerning the cloack, i played myself a LOT at bf2142 until he definitly die. And the cloack stuff was pretty much useless. Firstly, it was given to the sniper and regarding the shity netcode the game had plus that sniper was not very good, it was not a danger.
Secondly he did not had armor and was very visible. Aso like phantom, he was doing lots of more noise when cloacked. And finaly to be cloak, you had to take your cloacking divise in your hand like in the video. It was mainly usefull at long range so people weren’t able to see you much.

You speak a lot about the game being more balanced in a competitive environment (1 merk rule) and i agree. But you can’t be balanced for every type of situation. Like it is in starcraft: the game is not balanced at every level and when you reach a composition army, you have likely more chance to win.

Merk are good it’s just people over abusing the number of the same merks at the same time.
Maybe just lock a merk if 4 are already on the field.

Mods are doing a very great job and dev do quite well too. By promoting event (cup, give away, spark fan art stuff, community stream…). But they don’t speak enough about the game itself.
They should do report like they do on Starcraft2 for instance before future patch where they explan their through about thr game.
Like saying on what they are working on and will be release soon. What are their through on the manner… Doing maybe some AMA (ask me any thing)…

It’s not like a big company working on the new iphone, they are not spying here. You can freely speak about what you are doing.

I know i don’t stop saying that but optimisation is getting more and more important day after days. I can’t imagine how it would feel if only the game was smooth when you got a stable framerate because even with it, you still got a shoppy gameplay 70% of the time.
Devs are players too…they are not like DICE developer level 10 playing battlefield one hour a week. It doesn’t bother you?

[/quote]

thank you for the long reply! it means you read my whole post :slight_smile: I’m having a hard time deciphering what you’re trying to say (im assuming english is not your first language? no offense :D) as for bf2142, agreed the cloak was useless unless you were at long range using it (to hide from getting sniped and whatnot.) what im saying though about phantom is, if hes going to have cloak and they don’t address the other concerns (armor with cloak, etc) then the cloak should be relatively useless, or they should just fix the other things instead.

true, you can never have a perfectly balanced game, but i rarely see any diversion in competitive matches in terms of merc choice (for example, 1 medic and 4 naders/skyhammers, etc.) when phantom first came out (before the last nerf), 5 phantoms at once was quite common in my experience. I agree, the mods do an excellent job. The devs do a good job too, I just think they need to talk about the game more, be more transparent with updates/content and whatnot.

And as for the freely speaking thing, I forget what game it was but they had some sort of rule where developers were not allowed to speak about what they were working on and what not (something of that sort, i dont entirely remember as it was 5+ years ago) so i just addressed that in case that was their situation as well.

I actually welcome the fact that the devs play the game more. Have i ever seen one in game? no, but im relatively new to this game so Im sure its happened before. Playing any game is the easiest way to learn about bugs, physics, all of that jazz, rather than word of mouth or watching someone else play. Also the fastest way to get better, if anyone was wondering :wink:

(cly) #15

[quote=“noupperlobeman;46940”][quote=“cly;14360”]

  1. Phantom. I have not met one person who believes this class is balanced, besides the low leveled players that have no understanding of the game whatsoever

  2. Skyhammer’s Airstrike. This doesn’t bother me as much but I would like to address it as I think the cooldown lasts far too short of time to not be abused.

  3. Nader’s Launcher. Also, remove martyrdom that is just plain stupid.

  4. Vassili in general: Honestly this class (if you have a grasp of the game at all) is pretty easy to use. Just sit back, throw the hbs every 20 seconds, and you have a solid defense, if you can aim of course. His sidearm (again if you can aim) is decently good for the kind of impact he can have in a match. I don’t really have a solution for this, just stating that I feel he needs to be looked at.

  5. Lack of communication. It’s nice that you guys run a community stream and all, but literally everytime a question is asked you guys come up with the same response, “oh we’re looking into it” “oh it’s in progress, etc etc.” I know you can’t give us info on everything all the time, but please try to be a little bit more transparent with us. AND ACTUALLY USE COMMUNITY FEEDBACK
    [/quote]

Trimmed the op for the sake of brevity.

1-5 are simply a lack of experience and / or awareness, I wont spend a lot
of time addressing them. They all boil down to having played enough, and
having a degree of awareness to be able to counter. Especially nader, as
anyone with any degree of awareness can outmaneuver and crush your average
nader. Your opinion is somewhat suspect because you make no mention of fragger
who is an all around stronger merc in most situations.

I’ve played in pubs and competition against phantom, and in both situations he is
shit down HARD by basic teamwork. Never be alone. This is a team oriented game,
so you never should be, right?

  1. Devs avoid concrete answers because gamers are total drama queens, and
    anything a dev promises but fails to deliver is met with total and complete community
    implosion.

For the love of god, do not beg them to use community feedback outside the most
basic bugs and balance feedback. I’ve seen games tumble down a rabbit hole of
failure and regret because they relied to heavily on community feedback.
Communities are widely diverse and they don’t ever know what they actually want,
it’s better to stick with the devs intent than to listen to an amalgamation of the
universes biggest cry babies.

EDIT: What game modes do you play? 8v8 is an absolute horrifying mess.
Never go above 7v7. The maps are too small for so many players. I guarantee
if you stick to 6v6, most of these problems melt away.[/quote]

haha I only play 6v6 or 5v5, never higher than that. I actually play on a team and my job is to switch between fragger, nader and vassili (vassili and nader played more than anything). I didn’t comment on fragger because I don’t have enough experience with him yet to have an educated opinion (although one could argue 50 hrs in this game isn’t enough to have opinions about anything, and i respect that as well.) And true, phantom is shut down very easily if there is only one of them and you are playing with your mates. But the fact that he has armor while cloaked, and all those other reasons is still troubling nonetheless. And if you are soloing, with teammates who are braindead, phantom is a nuisance. period.

honestly this post is catering to the casual community, i am simply revoicing concerns that i somewhat/entirely agree with solidified into one post (which ties into the fact that I suggest SD uses some of this feedback in some way.) I am not however suggesting they should listen to everything the community says, because again, most gamers are idiots that just want it there way.

To be 100% honest, I have never been a casual player of any game, and if anything, the game is 100% fine besides the optimization and phantom factors in my opinion. again, i am just simply revoicing concerns i somewhat agree with. I guess i should’ve said that in the op.

(triteTongs) #16

[quote=“cly;14360”]Before I begin bashing the poor communication/updates/etc of SD…

…

  1. Lack of communication. It’s nice that you guys run a community stream and all, but literally everytime a question is asked you guys come up with the same response, “oh we’re looking into it” “oh it’s in progress, etc etc.” I know you can’t give us info on everything all the time, but please try to be a little bit more transparent with us. AND ACTUALLY USE COMMUNITY FEEDBACK (i know you guys do, im just restating it because a lot of games ive played in the past havent, and they are all dead games afaik).
    [/quote]

I don’t take any “lack of communication” post seriously. It makes you come across as an entitled gamer. And what you posted just makes you feel like a needy drug addict that needs to get his dirty bomb fix through nuggets of information.

The developers are developers for a reason. Let them do their jobs. They will give you information when they can. They will take community feedback into account when they can. They are essentially the directors of “Dirty Bomb”. The community doesn’t make decisions for them, they make decisions themselves.

(Conqelson) #17

Great post OP.

EDIT: And thanks for the bit of BF2142 nostalgia, awesome game.

(LANshark) #18

[quote=“triteTongs;46951”] [quote=“cly;14360”]Before I begin bashing the poor communication/updates/etc of SD…

…

  1. Lack of communication. It’s nice that you guys run a community stream and all, but literally everytime a question is asked you guys come up with the same response, “oh we’re looking into it” “oh it’s in progress, etc etc.” I know you can’t give us info on everything all the time, but please try to be a little bit more transparent with us. AND ACTUALLY USE COMMUNITY FEEDBACK (i know you guys do, im just restating it because a lot of games ive played in the past havent, and they are all dead games afaik).

  2. Priorities. Again, I understand it’s Open Beta, but you really should consider focusing energy on a decent ac, rather than be testing some new game mode when there are myriads of cheaters running about in casual games and competitive games.
    [/quote]

I don’t take any “lack of communication” post seriously. It makes you come across as an entitled gamer. And what you posted just makes you feel like a needy drug addict that needs to get his dirty bomb fix through nuggets of information.

The developers are developers for a reason. Let them do their jobs. They will give you information when they can. They will take community feedback into account when they can. They are essentially the directors of “Dirty Bomb”. The community doesn’t make decisions for them, they make decisions themselves.

[/quote]

The reason SD and other games say and do this in open beta is that there is actually a ton of stuff to do (shocking i know). When everyone on a dev team is not working, the company is getting less work done and losing money. Because everyone in the dev team is busy it is rare that a single person knows everything that is going on or knows but doesn’t want to give out incorrect information.

(Jostabeere) #19

Oh boy, a Phantom is OP thread again. Wrapped in obsolete text about other “issues” and the usual “I think things are shit in the game but still luv u, so don’t get upset with me xoxo”

For someone with “over 4000 hours of FPS experience” you have too many problems with simple things people have no problems to deal with. Skyhammer is op, Nader is op, Vassili is op, Phantom is op.
Dodge airstrikes, stop knifing downed Naders, flank Vassili and kill him in cqc. Obsolete thread imo.

P.S. I have a rig similar to yours and no problems to run the game on smooth 60 FPS at highest settings.

(singular) #20

Most of the issues you mentioned have already been addressed by the developers and are apparently working on them now. They said that AA is one of there top priorities right now which I’m glad of.