Hi,
My nickname is fishbone. I have been a Pro Quake 3/Quake Live player for almost a decade and I have played aswell back in the days when it was popular Wolf:ET, and Dirty Bomb reminds me a lot of it and that’s great !
Of course it is a beta and I think a lot of things need to be done/changed/whatever.
The core of the game is here, it is fun and well polished to my point of view so I won’t discuss (ok maybe a little bit) about that.
Here is a list of suggestions, improvements, requests that I made from my personal opinion and from my knowledge of fast paced competitive FPS.
[center][list]
[] Suggestions []
[/list][/center]
Players don’t join automatically teams when arriving on a server
When entering in a game, the new player should be outside of the battle, in spectator mode. The team should be lock until an even number of players are on the server. To make things balanced. This is an example of how to not make the pub games a nightmare and completely one-sided. I really think something along those lines should be implemented.
An alternative should be that the player is already in a team but forbidden to respawn until someone comes to balance things out with the opposing team.
Putting something on the HUD to warn the player that he has to wait a little bit before spawning.
Now the question is “what’s happening when someone leaving the server”. I think servers with uneven number of players should be highlighted in the server browser.
List of the mercs, it should have category
I think making things a bit more tidy in the list of mercs could be great to tell players on what the mercs are specialize in at first glance. Medic/Engi/Support/Attack etc…
Better skins
Gold/Cobalt/Silver : They pretty much look like the same for me… Having a 3D view of the skins could be great.
But I don’t get the point of having skins for a first person shooter other than weapons. From my point of view, all the skins are almost the same, no really big difference right off the bat. Especially when the bronze will have an equivalent of “higher tier” loadouts, what’s the point for me having Silver/Gold and Cobalt loadouts then ?
Aswell, price are too high for skins.
My suggestion is : skins for weapons instead or new visual/visual effects for abilities. What about a Hello Kitty medic pack ?
[center][list]
[] Improvements []
[/list][/center]
Visual improvement on airstrike and other bombardements
It is sometimes quite hard to spot that little grenade for the incoming airstrike. I remember in ET, there was smoke coming out of the grenade before the airstrike was coming. I think that’s a good idea to highlight the airstrike a bit more.
Skins variations between teams
For new players, it is crucial that they have to get the idea of the game or of the map without knowing anything. For now it is like having the two same teams fighting each other. Teams don’t have personality. It’s Attackers vs Defenders. The skins are almost the same, weapons aswell.
The membership that we can see in all the games (CS:GO, Wofl:ET, ET:Quake Wars…) is immediate. Here in Dirty Bomb, less so. I think the game needs some distinction between the teams. New players in that sense won’t be too lost. If you have Bad guys vs Good guys like : “Ok so the bad guys have to steal the drug samples and blow the door with a Tank, and the good guys need to defend the drug lab, ok got it”.
The visibility and membership are non-existant for now and it can be an issue.
Aswell the skins between teams are the same, some improvements need to be done there.
More visibility/new visuals when objective is picked up/has to be diffused
Good for new players, sometimes they can be lost (it was my case in my first games)
I think that’s my main concern for casual players. The sense of “what do I need to do now ? I don’t know” is a bit too strong when a new player is starting the game. Firstly because the HUD is not properly highlighting the objectives. It is in the corner but not really noticeable.
Firstly, the HUD for a resolution of 1920x1080 is too small but overall it is too discrete to tell players the right objective and secondly, the sign to indicate the spot of the objective (either defend or diffuse or whatever) is not adequate/significant to my point of view. Maybe an arrow could be better to really highlight and show to players that the interesting spot is there.
This point brings me to the next :
Making the HUD larger
As I said juste before, the HUD is too small, maybe adding a slider to increase the font/size of objects can be good !
Making entrance of a player/kill of a player more noticeable
When someone get into the game, in pubs, I would like to be warned of that. Once again it is in a corner, but I can’t notice it when I’m in game.
But more importantly, when I’m killing someone, I would like to have a “YOU FRAGGED Blahblah” or at least have a better idea of who killed who (i.e : point just before and first request).
Have a menu to callvote stuff
We can vote few things for now, but I think a more complete voting panel should be added.
[center][list]
[] Requests []
[/list][/center]
Modify the HUD
For customization, I would like to modify my HUD simply. We can already move stuff around but we have to get into the files. I would like to be able to modify the colour, add squares to highlight something. Have the possibility to remove bars/ability names and only have numbers for ammo/health.
More crosshairs (possibility to lock the animation)
I would like to have a full but fixed crosshair. I don’t really like the change of the crosshair when I sprint or full auto. It brings better visibility on the field. And it’s better for customization.
You have to know that people likes to have the same crosshair/colour/FOV as pro-players and having a large panel of customizations is I think an important part of the competitive scene. It might sounds idiotic, but it’s true 
.
Possibility to create bindable strings : different FOV/Crosshair/Crosshair colour for weapons
Usually I used to have different crosshairs (and sometimes different FOVs) depending of the weapons I’m using. With a SMG, I would like to have a simple crosshair but with something more bursty/powerful like a grenade launcher or a shotgun, I used to have a big crosshair because the spread is increased with those weapons (or splash damage).
Or even with a melee weapon, it’s great to have a higher FOV to better see the movement of your opponent.
More glowing effects
Competitive feature : Having different colours for the glowing around the skins. It is for now red for the enemies, blue for allies. I think it could be cool to change the colour to what we want.
No visual for enemy health but sounds to work with
I would like to remove the visual of the health bar from enemies, you shouldn’t have this in a shooter in the first place. It was not the case in CS, Quake, UT or even ET. Instead having sounds to indicate at what state the health of your opponent is (<80%, <50% and <25% for example).
Tricking maps
The game has tricks, it is fun and needs, to my opinion, some little tweaks here and there. It is more about verticality than horizontality like it was in Quake. But after all, for us to improve our game mechanics, I would like to see tricking maps where we can trick all day, having some parkour to do and it could a good training for new players to discover the physics of the game.
English is not my native language so I apologize for all the mistakes. I’m here for the discussion so feel free to comment !
