Do you think DB needs more depth?

[znuund]

Hey guys,

There is TL;DR version further below.

With all these nice new obsidian cards and stuffy stuff, I would like to open a discussion about how much depth this game brings to a player.

When I put myself into a new player who starts the first time DB, what would this player have as tasks in this game?

• Get to know the mercs and maps.
• Gather credits to unlock mercs
• Gather credits to buy cards

Would you add something to that list? because for me, that is basically it. No doubt that all of these points do need time. But can this really be it? Looks boring to me.

Of course I also did it and I am still learning new things about the map. But I am not really someone who keeps the game alive I just played maybe 2-3 hours a week on average until I got all the mercs. Then I selected all the bronze cards with the perks I wanted and rngesus’d them. With turtle I even just bought directly the bronze card I wanted.

Now that I have all of this. What is next? Ranked? skins? credits? meh.

If TL;DR, read from here

What would you change to get more depth or content into the game?
Some suggestions from my side to discuss:

• mods (capture the flag, king of the hill)
• fun maps
• additional servers with different style (Rotation servers: fixed rotation with changing game modes)
• community run servers
• decouple the perks and weapons from skins
• make weapons and perks unlockable maybe with character specific tasks

[everlovestruck]

community run servers
decouple the perks and weapons from skins
make weapons and perks unlockable maybe with character specific tasks

Pretty please

[kittz0r]

i used to Play Games because they were Fun or had Comp/Rank and not for some Rewards. Maybe we can go back to it? OFC Custom Servers with different Settings would be awesome,not sure how SD thinks about it nowadays.

[Melinder]

Just do a general cleanup of the game’s bugs, and implement some Quality of Life changes to the game. Once these are done, fully release the game, and advertise wherever possible. The game is good enough at this point to grow if they get the name out there.

It’s advertised as a Competitive First-Person Shooter, taking the genre “back to it’s purest roots”. It doesn’t need depth, it needs great gunplay, which it already has.

Community servers aren’t necessary, especially after they’ve shown us that they are willing to take control and shape the game to the way they vision it by removing Execution. They want their game to be based around the Stopwatch/Objective modes, so that’s how it’s going to be. No custom/community modes, I see no reason for community servers.

A lot of people treat the game as just a casual shooter, which is completely justified - Ranked is a meme, and pub is the only alternative, which doesn’t exactly demonstrate Dirty Bomb in the way Splash Damage intended. With players, and fully functioning Casual Matchmaking, the game as a whole becomes more structured, and reflects games such as Counter-Strike (Queue for relatively balanced matches, and have a sense of commitment to these matches).

Having matches that feel like they are worth the commitment will make players feel the same way about the game itself. It’s this mentality that makes a player commit to a game long-term, and recommend the game to others.

[znuund]

@Melinder
I agree, that the general physics and gameplay is indeed already at a very good stage. It feels smooth and direct to play dirty bomb.
but like you said, the fact that dirty bomb is advertised as a competitive first-person shooter puts it competition-wise into the same category like CS-GO - games which have tens of years of fine tuning behind them; a surely tough competitor. And if you want to play in tough competition, you should be ready. And DB was not.
Of course, the game is not in full release yet, but let’s be honest: the game is out, it was on steam and only people will remember, that this is dirty bomb aka extraction etc. In my opinion just because the game gets to full release and is advertised, the people won’t stay if it has only a few things to offer. the thrill you get for playing exciting matches with your friends is awesome, but it only caters to this kind of player.
if you want to have a game with high player numbers, then treat it like that. And if you really want to do make it only for one kind of player, then make it work with the actual player base to run an effective match-making algorithm.
I don’t know any real numbers but I assume that the big percentage of players from a game come from casual/public modes, but the one’s which stay longest are the competitive players. you can have both, or just one. But just go for one option, don’t try to be half-assed.

CMM will do very good and I am really looking forward to this, but I have obviously a more pessimistic view of this. You can try to compete in a known field, but it would have been easier with something new than another competitive first-person shooter.
We will see, who is going to be right and for the sake of the game, I hope it will be you.

[Melinder]

@znuund said:
We will see, who is going to be right and for the sake of the game, I hope it will be you.

Unlikely, but i’m hopeful. If anything, it will likely remain stable as it is now for some time, whether it will grow, however, is a different story. The potential is there, they just have to make the right choices in the coming months.

I don’t think it directly competes with a game like Counter-Strike, as I feel they’re trying to create a different atmosphere that relies on old-school nostalgia rather than a strong competitive drive - the competitiveness comes naturally with these kinds of games anyway.

It’s a very niche genre, therefore the players you find within it are generally more loyal to their games than most others, which is an important aspect in the success of Dirty Bomb.

The coming months are do or die I feel. I have full confidence in Splash Damage… I think… I hope.

[GatoCommodore]

@Melinder said:
Just do a general cleanup of the game’s bugs, and implement some Quality of Life changes to the game. Once these are done, fully release the game, and advertise wherever possible. The game is good enough at this point to grow if they get the name out there.

they did this last year…

pretty horrible results…

[Melinder]

@GatoCommodore

Put the T back in PTS and perhaps we won’t have a repeat of last year.

[Eox]

@GatoCommodore said:

@Melinder said:
Just do a general cleanup of the game’s bugs, and implement some Quality of Life changes to the game. Once these are done, fully release the game, and advertise wherever possible. The game is good enough at this point to grow if they get the name out there.

they did this last year…

pretty horrible results…

Considering the fact that they took a whole four month or so to clean up their code and squash an incredible amount of bugs last year, I seriously doubt that DB’s code is such a mess.

[Melinder]

@Eox said:
Considering the fact that they took a whole four month or so to clean up their code and squash an incredible amount of bugs last year, I seriously doubt that DB’s code is such a mess.

I’ll agree they do good work, however I can’t even begin to understand why they don’t take advantage of the PTS team they have at their disposal.

I know very little of the PTS, not knowing anybody personally that is apart of it, but it seems very apparent that the “T” in “PTS” is severely lacking. The patches that address bug fixing seem very “two steps forward, one step back”. For every few bugs squashed, another will come of it, and some of them are extremely obvious and frequent, leading me to question “How does this get through both the internal and external (PTS) testing phase?”.