I watch a lot of Dirty Bomb streams, and I’ve been watching some of the new streamers play; I’ve noticed a few things that I would like to leave as feedback on casual matchmaking that perhaps those players can’t voice, but perhaps would if they had any idea what was going on anyway.
A lot of these streamers are at most lvl.8, but are playing casual matchmaking instead of playing on max lvl.5 servers or whatev when they probably should be. The problem is these players are rolling the very default loadout. I’m talking default Aura, default Skyhammer and default Bushwhacker ( free merc of the week ).
Here’s where things get a bit counterintuitive: this problem is exacerbated by team queueing. Let me explain, as I know for a lot of people, team queueing has been a longtime request. A good number of these streamers are either queueing with their friends or their viewers who are typically as new to Dirty Bomb as the streamer, and are therefore all running the same default loadout. Three / four / five / six stacks where every player is running default Aura / Skyhammer / Bushwhacker. That’s a terrible team composition, and makes them incredibly reliant on getting lucky enough to have a random veteran fill for them. In fact, one streamer was in a six stack and therefore couldn’t get a fill at all and lost pretty much every match.
As a result, these streamers and their friends are regularly getting annihilated by more veteran players who have unlocked explosives specialists like Nader and Fragger. A lot of veteran players will automatically respond, Dirty Bomb is a skill game, blah, blah, blah, but hear me out. These players are new: they don’t know anything; when you consider even veteran players would have a rough time if forced to play on a team of say all Sawbonez facing a balanced opposition team, well, these guys are getting reamed.
I’ve heard some streamers complain that they felt helpless against all the explosives and snipers, and another streamer simply say she wasn’t going to come back to Dirty Bomb because her 80 HP ass was getting lit by Javelins and Naders. They’re getting bummed out, they probably don’t know why, and this is all happening in the mode that is supposed to create a better experience.
How is this different than from before? It isn’t, and it’s supposed to be. While I agree casual matchmaking is a welcome step forward for Dirty Bomb, it seems like a lot of the problems casual matchmaking was intended to address aren’t actually being addressed for new players. In fact, casual matchmaking might actually be worse for new players.
Here are some recommendations to help alleviate these problems:
While in lobby, there should be a composition assistant like in Overwatch that will make recommendations so teams can build better compositions. As an example, the assistant might display “Inadequate explosives support” and players can click the label to get a list of recommendations.
Of course, this information is useless to players if they haven’t unlocked those mercs, so there should be a system that permits players to temporarily unlock a merc for free for perhaps a day at a time, and this lease system should be accessible via the composition assistant. Limitations might include only permitting players to lease one merc at a time, only permitting a merc to be leased once per week, only permitting use of the default loadout, etc.
Finally, for new players, max lvl.5 servers should still be the default playmode. Not the exclusive playmode, but having casual matchmaking just shoved in their face presents a false choice.
Anyway, these are just some observations I’ve made, and I thought Splash Damage might be interested.
TL;DR: New players just can’t build the compositions they need to not undergo regular involuntary, non-medical, sphincter enlarging in matchmaking and are are unsurprisingly getting wrecked. This can be addressed by perhaps by implementing a composition assistant, merc leasing and restoring max lvl.5 servers as the default playmode for new players.
