Bring back Ranked. Period

#1

I love this game. I’ve played this game since a few months after its release. I stopped playing this game for a good (4-5?) months, but I came back… because I thought I still loved this game. This game has lost its identity and turned to crap.

Ranked was removed because we don’t want the development team spreading their resources too thin over a mode (the only mode that had some semblance of competitive play) that a very loud vocal minority could not handle playing. ‘Balance this, matchmaking system that.’ You just suck.

We removed Execution because resources were spread too thin and it does not coincide with the direction the developers wanted for this game. DB ain’t CS, right? But we’ll happily copy some models from similar titles if it involves CoD or CS weapon skins and more loot box shenanigans!

Fear not, however, because we’ll focus on the quirky fun and casual appeal of DB. We’ll bring a lightweight Ranked mode and slap a title of ‘Casual MM’ on it so people don’t have the same expectations. Some good ol’ casual fun - but don’t bother trying to queue up with your buddies in a party system. You still can’t do that.

Players aren’t happy? Oh, let’s pump out 3 new Mercs and brand new skins to keep 'em busy. Nevermind the hackjob crafting system that has needed work for as long as we can remember. We’ll keep 'em even busier with community servers - but outsource it to another company who’ll charge 'em for said servers with limited custom settings.

Lastly, we’ll remove player levels! Pop that pacifier in the baby’s mouth so they have nothin’ to be afraid of anymore! No more levels in a completely casual, unranked setting! Where it t-t-totally matters! No more complaints, early quits, team imbalances, and expectations of a perfect match in a freakin’ PUB. … which means no more ways to distinguish yourself as a player. No sense of accolades or achievements. Nothing. Want to be recognized or unique? Spend some money to put makeup and fancy skins on your Merc.

Dirty Bomb, you’re cute. That little identity crisis you’ve got going on is concerning, but hopefully you’ll grow out of it one day. I defended you for so long and can’t take you seriously anymore. This game is now my go-to for screwin’ around. Come home from work, drink a few Newkie Browns, load up some DB and just bs the night away. Which is fine in and of itself, this is an extremely fun game, but don’t expect me to take you for anything other than what you are right now. A casual pub game. Want to broaden your appeal or claim you’re somethin’ else? Show us some changes with substance.

Oh, and the forum changes are hysterical to me. Let’s make it just like everything else and remove the Agree/Disagree system because people are just oh-so insufferable and mean. Can’t have nice things in life if your feelings get hurt.

Hope y’all have been doing well! Toodles. (;

(B_Montiel) #2

Dirty Bomb is an identity crisis on its own.

Splash Damage doing a FPS with Nexon back then, well, this pretty much explains it all.

I could a full thorough history here. But they pretty much fucked all up even before the game arrived on steam. Their original fan playerbase, the one who made W:ET and ET:QW legendary names to anyone who played multiplayer before 2010, well, they almost all left before the steam release, because they did not get what they wanted : fully customizable community servers is very important factor here. They received a light version of this 5 years after their original request.

They added Ranked and party matchmaking, which, to some extent, worked, at least for some people. But that does not bring players in when they are proper flaws in the game : until this year, content was lacking. Some mercs have been literal game breaker and are still not fixed yet : Sparks, Fragger, and Phantom for the oldest, have been nerfed pretty much everywhere except where they should have been. Fragger does not deserve a pointy and large radius ability which allow 2 free kills at every spawn wave for anyone who uses him wisely. Hunter and Javelin are pretty much in the same stupid wagon.

The list goes on and on, and ranked cannot sustain all those issues. But yes, removing it, while I understand
and agrees with the reasoning behind it, was putting the game further down in the grave. They’ve released it way too early, with a game too weak at that point. It’s not pure hazard from Valve to have released ranked on CS:GO pretty much 2 years after its original release. The game was rock solid at that point.

(Mustang) #3

Interesting read, but mostly inaccurate information.

Even some of the things you hate on were community requests that finally got implemented after much anticipation.

(Press E) #4

Execution, ranked and CMM were primarily removed because DB’s small player size doesn’t support spreading itself out across multiple gamemodes. And considering the vast majority of players are casual players, or at the very least players who don’t mind playing casual, that’s our main mode now. SD has also specifically said it’s possible they might bring ranked back if the population increases enough to keep it.

SD hasn’t abandoned competitive either. They’re working on FaceIt integration, and although I don’t know the specifics on it, it should be enough for you.

Besides, you not liking a decision doesn’t mean the rest of the community was against it. Like @Mustang said, a lot of these changes were made specifically because the community supported them. Whether you liked ranked as it was doesn’t matter, because the vast majority of players hated it so much that they didn’t even bother playing it. You can call them noobs if you want, but that doesn’t change their complaints or make them any less valid, because while I won’t get into what was wrong with ranked, a lot of those problems could have been easily fixed while still preserving ranked’s competitive atmosphere.

Point being, I’m the last one to support some of the decisions SD has made, but what it boils down to is your opinions don’t reflect that of the majority of DB players and potential DB players, and you really can’t blame SD for following the majority’s opinions. Ranked is fun, but it’s not practical to spread out your population when it’s already so small

(Muddy Muddy Mud Nade) #5

Valid points, but I just wanna say if you felt/feel any sort of identification or uniqueness with your XP level, you need to take a good look in the mirror and find something else to feel good about yourself.

(AlbinMatt) #6

In all honesty, they really did hurt the forum experience by removing disagrees. Sure, actual posts are better at showing your thoughts, but now it’s all just a jumbled mess, especially with the “Reply” system that just adds more clutter since now you might not even know who or which part of a post that reply was meant for. I’ve seen more arguments break out over simple misunderstandings here and it’s really getting degrading.

As for the game, it’s floating on toothpicks as a raft at this point but its nonetheless fun. SD needs to make some bold changes and step up their marketing if they want to get this game cruising.

(K1X455) #7

I’d agree to this for as long as I don’t have to do all the objectives. Otherwise phuckit.

(boerhae) #8

I miss ranked a ton, and I agree that DB and competitive play are synonymous, but cmon. There admittedly were a whole bunch of issues with both the mode itself and the amount of people playing it. I don’t think it should’ve been removed entirely, but it was improperly handled, and it showed. People saw it and spoke up. The gamemode’s removal was not the greatest decision SD’s ever made, but it was also not unwarranted by any means. Besides, SD can’t please everyone. With so few active players to begin with, they probably saw it fit to focus time and effort on one {OBJ and SW modes are really similar so I count them as one here} mode until having 2+ modes made sense.

(Press E) #9

SD didn’t intentionally remove them, it’s just what happens when you move your forum server over to a different service. They were listening to feedback on how to improve the new forums, but they specifically said some things weren’t actually compatible with the new forums, disagrees being one of them.
I liked the old UI better too, but at least with things like disagrees it’s not like they really matter. People will usually tell you why they disagree anyways, and going “I disagree” and adding nothing more isn’t exactly the point of a forum

(Sairdontis) #10

Agreed. A downvote only adds nothing to a forum discussion at all. I for one would like to see ranked come back though I am not sure if we have retained the numbers for the queue times not be counted in hours.

(K1X455) #11

@anon41468043 Have a look at this. None of them even have half my score even though I came in at around 5 minutes into the first half of the match. Eighty five percent of the matches I’m in looks like this and it’s so difficult to keep telling the FNGs how to be team effective and maintain team composition and stop persisting on playing as RECON because their OSK ability is way too low.

https://i.imgur.com/oP7R66K.jpg

This is the reason why I reserve my Sawbones time for those who are worth it. This is the typical picture of a ranked season IV match which is why it’s hard for me to get convinced about the quality of game experience for both new and seasoned players.

DB is not dead but on lifesupport and we vets are responsible
(Teflon Love) #12

AFAIR Execution was removed because back then only 5% of players played it, so not much of a spread there.

I wouldn’t be surprised though if a returning Execution would be more popular this time around. The majority of the current crop of players seems to be of the pure run and gun kind, mostly disregarding the objectives. Execution should be more up their alley.

#13

All of you have fair points. Believe me, I’m not that naive or arrogant. I just needed to get an asshole rant off of my chest. It’s also nice to see some of you forum old timers still around. All of that said, to say DB is on life support is an understatement. I really did defend this game for so long and held high hopes (go back to some of my posts, I was typically always arguing in favor of this game rather than against it), but I guess it’s finally clicked that it’s a lost cause. Returning from a lengthy break has made me realize that.

Yes, I understand when and why certain changes were made - and the requests/demands that led to some of the newer implementations, but the bottom line is that very few changes have made this game better overall. Subtle steps forward, some steps back, some important issues that have lasted years are still untouched, etc. All of this is indicative by the player counts and existing problems. So yes, I get why Ranked and Exe were removed. But why should I be happy about that? It’s not a solution. Their removals were a symptom of a problem with the game, and while they may have had their fair share of issues, it has left me with yet another thing I will no longer be able to do in this limited game. Removing player options is never a good thing.

@K1X455, Yep, seen stuff like that plenty of times. It sucks, I know. But I always argued that it was nowhere near as broken as many implied. I reached Cobalt as a solo in 2 seasons. Who cares, right? All anecdote and personal opinion, sure, but I still enjoyed it. It was more fun for me. Anything beyond that isn’t worth discussing at this point, I suppose. The mode is gone. It is what it is. I exhausted so much energy months ago trying to come up with ways things could be improved.

@MuddyGrenade, made me laugh pretty hard there. I can’t deny levels were pointless, but I liked seeing them nonetheless. I do believe they stated part of their removal was due to many players quitting and team imbalances if they saw a high one and got intimidated, but that right there is just as pathetic to me.

Long story short? This game is still extremely fun. I will always like playing it. But it’s broken beyond recognition and there’s no point to it anymore. It’s a bullshit game to me now. Fun, mindless bullshit. Nothing matters. All we get to do now is join some casual matches and do the same thing over and over. But hey, at least we get server browsing back and can paint our rainbow guns, right? Give me a break…

I’ll see y’all in game! Nothing but jackassery from this guy until I feel more reasons to actually play this game as it was intended.

(K1X455) #14

I really doubt if any form of Ranked could motivate players to stay on board.

After the conversion of Ranked Points to RADs, I don’t feel like grinding for anything at all and with all the duplicates I’m getting because of poor seeding, it just doesn’t work too well for me.

(Press E) #15

Lots of people like playing competitively, so any form of it would at least bring in some people. I just wish they improved it to make it more appealing to other people. If the rewards had a realistic value and were well… actually rewarding, it wouldn’t be so bad

(K1X455) #16

@STARRYSOCK Yeah but with a system like this? That’ll burn out the veterans much faster than what SD can grow in 2 months of motivated playing.

I was with a fairly new player today and I tried so hard to be on his/her team to help guide him/her. He/She has the right stuff of what it takes to progress but because of the system of balance, we’re always on opposite sides. And after he/she was on the losing side 3 matches in a row, I feel very bad for winning. VERY VERY BAD.

Three years ago, I’m hooked to the game not because of the win. It’s about how I played in the team that gives me the kick.