I believe it was Badman that posted a sort of statement-of-intent about what SD wanted to achieve with DB awhile ago, around when the alpha actually started. One of those things was to make sure that the game could translate into competitive play/use without having to be modded or restricted. One game, properly designed and intelligently balanced.
There’s stuff those of us that like to treat our games as a serious challenge of skill that we want to see in, and this is the right phase to discuss and argue what we think could work about things, and why it might not. It might sound divisive but the reality is, this is still SD’s game. We’re helping, but we’re not crossing that line in the sand and becoming fully fledged members of the development team.
The key result that we’re all aiming for is something fun and enjoyable. It might not seem like the serious stuff is fun to you if you don’t take it seriously, but those are the subtle touches that tend to make the good pub games better simply because those little features, like getting this skin thing sorted out… it leans a little bit more towards instinctual abilities, and then the matches start to feel more exciting… or at least have the potential to be more exciting amongst good players (and I emphasise just ‘good’, not ‘pro’), than to not consider them at all.
Yes some ideas about competitive play are outright restrictive, but it’s better we get those out, poke holes as to why it doesn’t suit the goals of the game (not just the design but the marketing side of building and maintaining a longterm F2P community that aren’t a bunch of trolls there simply cause it’s ‘free’)… there’s always the possibility it can spark a mutated idea from one of us or one of the SD folk that simply hearing about it triggers that chain of events that leads to a new idea.
Isn’t that the biggest problem with all these half arsed AAA titles on the market these days? We look at them and it’s so obvious nobody was involved in the development process that tried exploring the extreme limits of what’s “serious” about gaming… and in the end we feel robbed because they’re always too easy, or something just doesn’t feel quite finished.
As alpha contributors, I daresay we’ll also play a relatively decent part in promoting the game after it gets out. WE will be the word of mouth that can actually answer questions in game or in forums as to why the game is like “this” and not “that” and why it can lead to “this level of happy fun time” but “you won’t know that until you spend a week learning that map properly, then you’ll see how that tactic really pays off and makes the game seem amazing.”
And perhaps most important of all, we can’t forget our ultimate roles in this. We’re here to debate amongst each other what we want to see, what we think will work and what won’t… but we are NOT the creators of this game. Yes our needs as part of the playerbase have to be met to a certain degree, but the final decision has to be based on what the creators can live with. That fine line between making a good game and a game that will be popular enough to be profitable.
