Welcome to the thread. As the title suggests, this poll will be based around the topic of “levels” and if SD should remove them, keep them, or find a way to better implement them.
Below you may choose a poll option to indicate if you’re “for”, “against”, or “without opinion” to levels.
If you like, you can post arguments for, against, and neutral to the level system, below.
I’m not seeing any valid reason to remove, or hide levels.
I think people who want them removed are insecure, and afraid that they can’t perform to the standard that’s expected of players of their level.
Levels, while not always accurate, will give you some kind of an idea about your opponent’s level of game knowledge etc. and are therefore useful data, when planning routes and approaches.
Of course when you look at the levels you could think you’re going to instantly win or lose but more often than not level-wise balance tells nothing because levels don’t force people to hide around the corner when you should be pushing or not playing a medic or engineer when the team needs one. It’s medic’s choice not to rez people. It’s engineer’s choice not to repair the EV. It’s assault’s choice not to be in the front.
[quote=“srswizard;93435”]I’m not seeing any valid reason to remove, or hide levels.
I think people who want them removed are insecure, and afraid that they can’t perform to the standard that’s expected of players of their level.
Levels, while not always accurate, will give you some kind of an idea about your opponent’s level of game knowledge etc. and are therefore useful data, when planning routes and approaches.[/quote]
I think levels should be redone, only reaching new levels in proportion to actual skill as opposed to XP. I’ve played about 120-30HRS over a period of 3 months (I play sparingly) and have achieved level 9. Dirty Bomb, being only my second FPS (first being TF2, whose differences warrant quite a skill confusion) I find that I can only barely compete with level 4s that have played like 7 FPS games before.
I’m not insecure about not achieving the standard of my level, I just feel that it’s unfair that people that are legitimately good are being forced into servers with lesser players and lesser players can be forced into matches with better players.
I don’t think there’s any need to redo levels. There will be always difference when it comes to the experience with the genre and similar games in every FPS and there’s not a single game that has a leveling system which would accurately indicate how skilled the player is based on the level. Expectations will be done but many times people don’t meet those expectations.
Also, Dirty Bomb isn’t really your standard FPS so a big difference between individuals’ skills is expected.
I’m pretty un-co so I always do terribly for the first 300hrs or so. I can now wreck so many teams in TF.
Keep levels to at least give other players a general idea of the other player’s skill level. And since levels don’t really do anything else, they should change up the reward system per level instead of just a case.
I don’t see any upsides in visible levels. Keep them for gating purposes (competive and min/max servers).
[quote=“srswizard;93435”]I’m not seeing any valid reason to remove, or hide levels.
I think people who want them removed are insecure, and afraid that they can’t perform to the standard that’s expected of players of their level.[/quote]
I’ll ask you this - do you want DB to have a bigger playerbase? Visible levels in my opinion are harmful. New players think that team balancing is done by levels, which is not true. Since the lobby change in Objective I’ve been in games with vast level difference that ended being very close, due to real skill and/or merc choice. Levels do nothing besides confusing and discouraging new players. People are impatient and ragequit before they can learn the game, and it’s not smart business to give them more reasons. Some will find some other excuse, but some will stay and become productive members of DB society 
Can we please refrain from any psychoanalysis? I can also make blanket statements about advocates of levels, like “you want you e-peen to be visible to everyone” etc. This adds nothing to the discussion.
Besides, level is no standard. It means nothing You can reach level 30 in 300 hours if you’re good, or in 900 if you are crap. You can only go up, and only the rate of going up gives some idea of player skill.
This knowledge is symmetrical, so if removed no one gains or looses anything.
[quote=“srswizard;93435”]I’m not seeing any valid reason to remove, or hide levels.
I think people who want them removed are insecure, and afraid that they can’t perform to the standard that’s expected of players of their level.
Levels, while not always accurate, will give you some kind of an idea about your opponent’s level of game knowledge etc. and are therefore useful data, when planning routes and approaches.[/quote]
Assumptions and expectations are bad for both parties. Some people will flat out leave the game before the second spawn, that is if auto balance puts most of the high levels into one team. These people are making poor decisions because they lack any knowledge of the system or game. They have no idea that autobalance bases things off your performance for the last 10 games.
How many players do you think give up when things look bad? The answer is the vast majority in this day in age. So anything that confirms what they originally assumed(a losing game) is going to make them give up or leave the game.
I see this in CS too. Once you hit global, people think you should be a god, that’s just not how it is. Then you get ridiculed for being better than them but missing some “ez 1v3 clutch”. This makes players do one of 4 things;
Where do you think the majority actually fall? Just looking at the options… I don’t see it being statistically beneficial to have that information there.
Someone brought up the issue with cheaters, in another thread.
The fact that it’d be harder to tell if a player is a veteran, or a low level aimbotter, and people would waste more time checking people’s steam profiles for played hours, instead of just looking at their level to have some kind of an estimate.
While cheaters are an issue of their own, I agree with this reasoning.
I know I’d be checking people’s steam accounts a lot more.
While high level shouldn’t give you immunity from hackusations, I still believe that, if levels were to be replaced with some kind of a skill index, or such, the cheaters could very easily achieve high rating, whereas they can’t fool the current level system.
@MarsRover hiding levels is not the solution imo, it’s more like a hello kitty bandage on the stump of a sawed off leg.
I’d rather they implemented a solo queue (maybe both casual and a ranked one) and incentives to play it, to lead higher level players away from stomping low level players.
I still prefer server browser systems over closed queue systems, for casual play, but since there’s no custom named/themed (private) servers, it’s very hard to find games of your skill level with the browser.
[quote=“srswizard;93466”]@MarsRover hiding levels is not the solution imo, it’s more like a hello kitty bandage on the stump of a sawed off leg.
I’d rather they implemented a solo queue (maybe both casual and a ranked one) and incentives to play it, to lead higher level players away from stomping low level players.
I still prefer server browser systems over closed queue systems, for casual play, but since there’s no custom named/themed (private) servers, it’s very hard to find games of your skill level with the browser.[/quote]
It’s not a bandage. Levels are meaningless, they do not represent skill in any way. They represent map knowledge to some extent, but it’s not like a level 40 player knows more about those 5 maps than a level 20 player, even a level 10 player. Mercs and weapons are more complicated, but all this is dwarfed by skill difference between players, which simply cannot be represented by a number that is total XP. Saying “high/low level players” is not the same as “high/low skilled players”.
What you want is a MM system. I also want that. But even if SD said “yes, we will develop a casual matchmaking system”, which as far as I’m aware they never did, this still will be an issue to an extent. Such system will match by skill, not by level. So it will still match bad high level players with new low level players. It’s just that there would be less stomps because those high level players truly are bad.
But since it looks like we’re stuck with a sever browser and a random quick join, levels will continue to cause a perception of imbalance. This is one of top problems for retaining players, along with no autobalancing team size.
Again, I see no real upsides. It won’t help cheaters in any way, and removing ability to check for high level opposing players is symmetrical.
Without levels, I’ll just spend more time looking at people’s steam profile to understand why they’re not providing any bullets or seem completely lost. Or why is that guy so good. Just gives a quick feedback. Yeah, that person has been playing forever, or that person just joined the player base. Gives an insight on your teammate’s and adversaries game knowledge. So I’d keep it visible.
Levels cause nothing but drama, flaming and ragequits. Being one of the highest levels in the game, I get called out every single time I play for being a ‘fat nolife neckbeard virgin’ and what not. You get so much mostly negative attention its not even funny. People switch teams to get on ‘the winning side’ based on purely levels, completely ruining the balance. When your team does not perform, it’s always the fault of the one high level guy on the server. Another wall of flames follows. That happens if you are lucky. Most likely, the whole server just drops empty when they see your level to go and seek for ‘balance’ (which they will never find)
I even started two completely new accounts so I can play in peace and not get judged all the time.
Public levels need to go or be capped at 10.
And no, level 80 does not perform 8 times better than level 10, you scrubs.
I havent voted since its a black and white poll again with missing options. “Other” might have been a good choice.
Agreed, people are looking for a way to judge their opponents outside of the battlefield. If they run into a private steam profile and see no level -> HAXXX0R!!
And then theres nothing more true than this:
[quote=“Kaur;93500”]Levels cause nothing but drama, flaming and ragequits. Being one of the highest levels in the game, I get called out every single time I play for being a ‘fat nolife neckbeard virgin’ and what not. You get so much mostly negative attention its not even funny. People switch teams to get on ‘the winning side’ based on purely levels, completely ruining the balance. When your team does not perform, it’s always the fault of the one high level guy on the server. Another wall of flames follows. That happens if you are lucky. Most likely, the whole server just drops empty when they see your level to go and seek for ‘balance’ (which they will never find)
[…][/quote]
I think just scratching the levels alone wont do the trick. You gotta bring some kind of player evaluation to it, as meaningless as it may be. I dont know yet, but it should not fall for the “playtime = skill” trap.
Maybe some 3 or 5 category system based on the XP/min (of the last 20matches like hidden lobby ELO). You could still see if someone was hot or not, but has enough room for interpretation to avoid the “you must carry us and im supposed to suck”. I think the tricky part is to make the categorization as relativly easy achieveable as @Kaur proposed with his level10 cap.
All levels show is how much exp you have gained over time, therefore I find it silly to have unless leveling up unlocks other stuff and what not.
Levels is always the scapegoat to why a team isn’t winning and it honestly pisses off alot of new players.
I wholeheartedly agree with MarsRover and Kaur. I’m lvl 35 at the moment and it’s just not fun to get called out or vote kicked every game just because I’m higher lvl than somebody.
Levels alone are fine - stupid people that can’t understand this is not RPG game and lvls won’t make you play good are the problem. But, since we can’t ban all idiots, something has to be done to prevent this toxicity. Either hide them, cap them, completely rework or just bring more min. 10+/20+ servers.
Personally I’ve never had an issue with playing against high lvl players when I started. Quite the opposite. I knew I might learn something new and improve.
There was a guy who added me on steam after a game where I killed him a bit too much, to proceed with trashtalk about my lvl. The best part was that the difference was not even that big. He was lvl 27 with 500+ hours and I was lvl 31 with 260 hours. So yeah, this is the kind of people we are dealing with.
I think levels should have different dependencies and be dynamic during every match. Levels should be calculated by the sum of several numbers, of which each represents your ranking in a various of categories such as:
-k/d
-score per minute
-amount support xp, game mode xp, combat xp etc.
-damage taken
-average displacement
-trick jumps
-mounting a machinegun or teammates
