FF on and synced timers in CMM

[n-x]

Could we get the possibility to have FF on and synced timers in CMM. If I remember correctly objective mode had synced timers in the beginning and they desynced them for some reason I cant remember anymore. It hasnt to be mandatory but maybe just 2 checkboxes in your cmm setting “FF on and synced timers” “FF off and desynced timers” if you check both boxes, you can get matched for both settings.

It just bothers my already for a while that you cant really prepare for ranked, and that ranked feels so different from the other game modes, and you just cant practice/get used to some tactics.

Medics: the whole kill/revive strategie to save cool down on your healing ability/when your healing ability is on cool down is simply non existent. In the beginning of each season I sometimes keep forgetting that I can use it + I got penalized several times by players/got screamed at for doing it, because they just dont know it from casual play

Fire supports: I had it several times that players use the repaired EV as cover, even putting ammo and healing stations next to it, so I had to decide between not destroying the EV or destroying the EV and killing team mates and robbing our team of our only healing station.

Explosive abilities: Players get so used to just spam into fire fights and then suddenly in ranked they realize that doesnt work, because they will not only kill the enemy but also the 2 friendlies who are close to the enemy.

Synced timers: One of the core mechanics of ranked is playing around the spawn timer. Long spawning medics, pushing after a time wipe, spawn grenades and so on. This is a whole layer of the game which is suddenly new when you enter ranked. I know SW has synced timers, but I really cant stand the chaos on 7vs7 and 8vs8 servers anymore.

Those 2 changes would make CMM more similiar to ranked and you could test mercs and play in a environment that would be beneficial for later. It would also raise the skill level of all players since they would get used to the “proper” game by just playing casually and it wouldnt feel so alien to play ranked.

[CombatMist]

Their are a few FF servers in browser but thats not enough. Add stopwatch to CMM. Make either all server browser or CMM FF servers so we have a real place to train for ranked. We need stop watch cmm badly. This will give more data for the match making for ranked. FF servers for the above reasons are much more fun. Medics have more revive options and explosives need to worry about friendly fire nuking team. Makes all play with more consequences of actions. I can understand not having objective cmm FF for new players but thats it. The higher lvl players need a regular place with many servers to practice this.

[STARRYSOCK]

I don’t get how it takes people so long to get used to ranked really. After one match it’s pretty easy to figure out how not to step on your teammates.

I can understand wanting FF on servers because you like playing with FF, but adding ranked to CMM just to “prepare players” seems silly imo.
It’s also worth considering that FF on is actually an attraction of ranked. People who dislike ranked otherwise, but like FF matches, would suddenly abandon ranked in favour or casual FF matches.

Synchronized spawn timers are just horrible imo. I know a lot of people will hate me for saying it it, but hear me out.
The main reason people want synced spawn timers is to be able to time airstrikes or grenades with when a team will be leaving a spawn. In ranked, sure, I can understand this. It is a strategy, even if I find it cheap and kinda cowardly. But in casual, having a grenade thrown into your spawn is one of the most frustrating things imaginable for a new player. And since casual has a hell of a lot more new players than ranked, players who aren’t sure if they like the game yet, and don’t want to be burdened with all of these tactical strategies, I don’t see why making spawn fragging a thing in casual would ever be a good idea.
Casual should be a fun introduction to DB, allowing for easier spawn camping would just frustrate the hell out of new players. Yes, hand holding is bad, but this isn’t what I’d call hand holding. It’s giving players a chance to get used to the game without being blown up right out of spawn.

TL;DR, having FF on outside of ranked would give players even less of a reason to play ranked, ranked isn’t hard to get the hang of anyways, and casual shouldn’t just be a training ground for ranked. Keeping the two different is what keeps things fun.
Synced spawns in casual would allow for easy spawncamping against new players who haven’t get gotten the hang of the game. Being blown up straight out of spawn in your first match is a great way to frustrate a new player and hurt their chances of staying in DB.

[teflonlove]

@STARRYSOCK said:
Synced spawns in casual would allow for easy spawncamping against new players who haven’t get gotten the hang of the game. Being blown up straight out of spawn in your first match is a great way to frustrate a new player and hurt their chances of staying in DB.

While I agree that timed spawn nades and air strikes are cheap, I think this could be solved without removing synced spawns. As @n-x pointed out synced spawns enable valid tactics that make the game more interesting. I’d also like people to be able to already experience and practice these in CMM.

Also, spawn camping even happens in CMM (probably even more so than in ranked). Consequently synced spawns are not the only reason for that. There’s already plenty of threads discussing possible solutions. Maybe now that we have Guardian’s sky shield, the spawn areas could be protected by a permanent, indestructible variant of it.

[STARRYSOCK]

@teflonlove said:

@STARRYSOCK said:
Synced spawns in casual would allow for easy spawncamping against new players who haven’t get gotten the hang of the game. Being blown up straight out of spawn in your first match is a great way to frustrate a new player and hurt their chances of staying in DB.

While I agree that timed spawn nades and air strikes are cheap, I think this could be solved without removing synced spawns. As @n-x pointed out synced spawns enable valid tactics that make the game more interesting. I’d also like people to be able to already experience and practice these in CMM.

Also, spawn camping even happens in CMM (probably even more so than in ranked). Consequently synced spawns are not the only reason for that. There’s already plenty of threads discussing possible solutions. Maybe now that we have Guardian’s sky shield, the spawn areas could be protected by a permanent, indestructible variant of it.

Most maps only have 2 or 3 routes leading out of spawn, with one main, often closed off route, the one new players most often take. It’s not direct spawn camping, but it’s killing someone who is leaving spawn, without ever giving them a chance to fight back. Spawn camping sucks, and I believe there should be areas the opposition team simply shouldn’t be allowed into to prevent it, but I don’t see how you could realistically remove the ability to time strikes against certain routes leading away from spawn without nerfing the crap out of the mercs most known for being able to do this.

I don’t believe timing spawns is something that needs to be practiced over and over either. Learning how much time it takes to reach the action from a spawn is something you can easily pick up playing casually. Applying that as a strategy in ranked isn’t a very large step up.
Yes, knowing when to rush an objective is cool, but I just don’t believe the tradeoff is worth it. Help new players get used to something already easy to learn (we all did, right? Lol) for a game mode they might not even want to play, while at the same time encouraging players to use strategies in casual that might give new players a bad impression of the game and even help cause them to leave. Strategies are great when you’re used to a game, but not when not being used to the game could result in walking through a doorway and being instantly blown up by a frag grenade.

Besides, there’s a reason ranked has different tiers. Players who aren’t used to the game and ranked should, in theory, be placed together in matches where they can all learn together. So basically, if ranked worked as it should, casual could stay casual for the players who only want to play casual, and the low tier ranks could function as training.

Sorry for the wall of text, but as I said, casual shouldn’t just be a training ground for ranked anyways. Not everyone wants to play ranked, and making casual more like ranked will only piss off casual players, and give others even less of a reason to play ranked. Why wait for 6 minutes for a match when you can just get synced spawns and FF on in casual?

[bgyoshi]

I will never play Ranked as long as casual is different from ranked and for as long as Ranked remains not 6v6

I don’t know why FF On in casual isn’t a default in general, it should be. /F and /P help get rid of trolls and in casual mode the votekick option is very useful. Collision is a different thing altogether, but I think collision on helps avoid accidental TKing from teammates clipping into each other during a firefight.

I honestly don’t see why the two modes are different. I understand that casual should feel more casual and ranked should feel more competitive, but the only thing that having separate games for them does is make people pick a side. You either like casual, or you like ranked. Ranked players come over to casual only when ranked queues aren’t firing, and casual players don’t play Ranked because the game is not the same.

And more-over, I don’t know any other successful game that has a strictly different game for Ranked than it does for casual. Casual is almost always just Ranked without tracking rank. That’s it. And that’s what it should be.

The assumption that Ranked would die if casual employed FF On and Collision On is just… false. Players that play ranked will want to have a rank and will play for the competitive aspect. Players that don’t play Ranked will be more encouraged to play ranked because…why not? It’s the same game, except you have an ELO score of some kind.

But for now, there’s a bridge that cannot be gapped.

“7v7 is more fun”
“I like spamming explosives more”
“I don’t want to play stopwatch”
“I don’t like stopwatch”
“Objective mode is the best”
“Execution is the only way to play”
“I want 8v8 servers back”

People get into this game and learn to play casual, then they go to Ranked at level 7, get disappointed that it’s not the same game, and ignore it.

TL;DR If Ranked is the intended mode, then make the game play like Ranked. If new players come in and play unranked, their first impression, their learning curve, everything they know about the game will start with knowing that you can accidentally kill teammates and that you can’t run through each other. They won’t pick up habits that only work in casual mode, they won’t learn play styles that only work in casual mode, they won’t get an impression of the game that is only functional in casual. They’ll feel eager to get in and get Ranked when they hit level 7, and when they get into their first match, they’ll know what to expect from 7 levels of unranked training.

There should be only two ways to play:

1. Play for rank, see how you stack up.
2. Play/Practice without the stress of performing well.

Ranked, and unranked.

[STARRYSOCK]

@bgyoshi said:
I will never play Ranked as long as casual is different from ranked and for as long as Ranked remains not 6v6

I don’t know why FF On in casual isn’t a default in general, it should be. /F and /P help get rid of trolls and in casual mode the votekick option is very useful. Collision is a different thing altogether, but I think collision on helps avoid accidental TKing from teammates clipping into each other during a firefight.

I honestly don’t see why the two modes are different. I understand that casual should feel more casual and ranked should feel more competitive, but the only thing that having separate games for them does is make people pick a side. You either like casual, or you like ranked. Ranked players come over to casual only when ranked queues aren’t firing, and casual players don’t play Ranked because the game is not the same.

And more-over, I don’t know any other successful game that has a strictly different game for Ranked than it does for casual. Casual is almost always just Ranked without tracking rank. That’s it. And that’s what it should be.

The assumption that Ranked would die if casual employed FF On and Collision On is just… false. Players that play ranked will want to have a rank and will play for the competitive aspect. Players that don’t play Ranked will be more encouraged to play ranked because…why not? It’s the same game, except you have an ELO score of some kind.

But for now, there’s a bridge that cannot be gapped.

“7v7 is more fun”
“I like spamming explosives more”
“I don’t want to play stopwatch”
“I don’t like stopwatch”
“Objective mode is the best”
“Execution is the only way to play”
“I want 8v8 servers back”

People get into this game and learn to play casual, then they go to Ranked at level 7, get disappointed that it’s not the same game, and ignore it.

TL;DR If Ranked is the intended mode, then make the game play like Ranked. If new players come in and play unranked, their first impression, their learning curve, everything they know about the game will start with knowing that you can accidentally kill teammates and that you can’t run through each other. They won’t pick up habits that only work in casual mode, they won’t learn play styles that only work in casual mode, they won’t get an impression of the game that is only functional in casual. They’ll feel eager to get in and get Ranked when they hit level 7, and when they get into their first match, they’ll know what to expect from 7 levels of unranked training.

There should be only two ways to play:

1. Play for rank, see how you stack up.
2. Play/Practice without the stress of performing well.

Ranked, and unranked.

As I said though, none of comp’s different mechanics are difficult to get used to. We all did it with no issues after all. You don’t need hours and hours of practice to learn not to walk in front of someone…

But even then, as I also said in my other post, ranked practice is what the lower levels of ranked are for. If players who aren’t used to ranked are all grouped together, then there would be no reason to turn casual into ranked.

No, I’m not saying ranked would die of FF was added to casual. But I do know for certain it would lost some players. I know lots of people who like FF on, but dislike ranked as it is now. Hell, sometimes I even play ranked just for an FF match. Would it be a huge loss? Probably not. But for something that’s just so easy to get the hang of, I don’t see why you should practice it in casual. Because simply, it boils down to one statement:
Not everyone wants to play ranked.

Whether or not they have “practice” in ranked, some people only want to play casual. Forcing FF on in casual would annoy a hell of a lot of people. Yes, SD loves ranked, but they can’t force it on everyone. Some people just don’t like the stress associated with it. Hell, most people currently in ranked are only there for the skins and trinkets.

Besides, can you imagine how horrible casual would be if FF was on? It’s bad enough in ranked with a competent team sometimes, in casual being blown up by a random level 1 skyhammer trying to figure out what “Q” does would just be annoying as hell.

TL;DR,
My main point in all of my comments here is that ranked’s mechanics aren’t hard to learn. And even if they are, new players are supposed to be grouped together in ranked anyways, where they can learn how to play together.
Not everyone wants to play ranked, and alienating DB’s vast majority of casual players won’t help anything. Having the OPTION to choose between 5v5/FF on/etc in casual would be great, FORCING people into it is not.
If anything, considering the vast majority of casual players to ranked players, making ranked more like casual would be a better bet.

[Szakalot]

@STARRYSOCK said:

I don’t believe timing spawns is something that needs to be practiced over and over either. Learning how much time it takes to reach the action from a spawn is something you can easily pick up playing casually. Applying that as a strategy in ranked isn’t a very large step up.

A considerable oversimplification. You might setup the frag nade at any distance from spawn (as soon as invulnerability wears off) to the objective on any of the routes. I have thousands of hours in game, wouldn’t say I know these values by hard for all of the potential routes. For some you get a feel for it, for some you just miss a nade once in a while. If you want to get serious with Fragger, you probably need to know most of these exactly.

[bgyoshi]

@STARRYSOCK said:
TL;DR,
My main point in all of my comments here is that ranked’s mechanics aren’t hard to learn. And even if they are, new players are supposed to be grouped together in ranked anyways, where they can learn how to play together.
Not everyone wants to play ranked, and alienating DB’s vast majority of casual players won’t help anything. Having the OPTION to choose between 5v5/FF on/etc in casual would be great, FORCING people into it is not.
If anything, considering the vast majority of casual players to ranked players, making ranked more like casual would be a better bet.

And that’s not the point, though. Ranked isn’t unpopular because the mechanics are thought to be hard to learn, Ranked is unpopular because it’s not DB.

As a contrast, players are coming into the game and play, say, Solitaire, for a good 10 or 15 or 20 hours to get to level 7.

And then they go to play Ranked, and they’re given Spider Solitaire to play instead

With other players that have no idea how to play the spider version of solitaire

More than likely against enemies that have already played it three or four or 50 times.

It’s essentially the same game, but they have slightly different strategies and mechanics. But that’s not what the player learned and not what has kept them playing all this time.

So make the entire game one or the other. Making the game two different variants of essentially the same game doesn’t work for games that are trying to push a competitive scene. You have to give players a way to get IN to Ranked, and there is currently no mechanism for that. Nobody can say “I want to try out ranked without being ranked to see if I like it” and then do it. You either play Ranked, or you play the casual version of DB, which is completely different from what you play in Ranked.

[STARRYSOCK]

@bgyoshi said:

@STARRYSOCK said:
TL;DR,
My main point in all of my comments here is that ranked’s mechanics aren’t hard to learn. And even if they are, new players are supposed to be grouped together in ranked anyways, where they can learn how to play together.
Not everyone wants to play ranked, and alienating DB’s vast majority of casual players won’t help anything. Having the OPTION to choose between 5v5/FF on/etc in casual would be great, FORCING people into it is not.
If anything, considering the vast majority of casual players to ranked players, making ranked more like casual would be a better bet.

And that’s not the point, though. Ranked isn’t unpopular because the mechanics are thought to be hard to learn, Ranked is unpopular because it’s not DB.

As a contrast, players are coming into the game and play, say, Solitaire, for a good 10 or 15 or 20 hours to get to level 7.

And then they go to play Ranked, and they’re given Spider Solitaire to play instead

With other players that have no idea how to play the spider version of solitaire

More than likely against enemies that have already played it three or four or 50 times.

It’s essentially the same game, but they have slightly different strategies and mechanics. But that’s not what the player learned and not what has kept them playing all this time.

So make the entire game one or the other. Making the game two different variants of essentially the same game doesn’t work for games that are trying to push a competitive scene. You have to give players a way to get IN to Ranked, and there is currently no mechanism for that. Nobody can say “I want to try out ranked without being ranked to see if I like it” and then do it. You either play Ranked, or you play the casual version of DB, which is completely different from what you play in Ranked.

Ranked is mainly unpopular because it’s broken, not because it’s too hard to learn or it’s not “DB”, lol. Long wait times for a match absolutely filled with horrible teammates, trolls, hackers, etc. Unless you queue up with a considerable amount of friends, it’s just horrible. Trying your hardest to carry a team that either can’t or won’t play properly, only to derank in the end anyways. Just ask the majority of DB players. both new and veteran.

I just don’t see how it’s a problem with casual and not ranked itself. As I said, if new players were grouped together like they should be in ranked, there would be no reason to make any chances whatsoever to casual. Lower ranked tiers are for players getting the hang of the game, higher ones are for players who have built and apply ranked strategies.

I get some people live and breath ranked, but a vast majority of people don’t. Most people have no interest in playing ranked whatsoever, and just enjoy the casual aspects of DB. It’s not just a couple people either, it’s a hell of a lot of players. And often times they’re not even avoiding ranked because it’s “too hard to learn” or “broken”, they just don’t like ranked in any game. And because so many DB players are like this, I don’t see the point in changing everything to try to “prepare” them for a mode they have no interest in playing whatsoever.
Besides, people like variety. I get some people only ever like to play one thing and absolutely master it. That’s totally fine, but you also have to consider the people who like something different. Making the entire game the same might make some of the die-hard ranked fans happy, but what about the people who actually like FF off?

Simply put, you can’t just shun a massive part of your playerbase like that and force everyone to play the same thing.

[Melinder]

@bgyoshi said:
And that’s not the point, though. Ranked isn’t unpopular because the mechanics are thought to be hard to learn, Ranked is unpopular because it’s not DB.

You fucking what mate? Ranked is literally DB in it’s purest form.

The best way to ensure that it is commonly known as Dirty Bomb’s purest mode is to push for 8v8/7v7 being replaced with 5v5 to ensure that all players get used to the most competitive ruleset from the get go, and have CMM be a sort of “Ranked Off-Season”, offering a semi competitive environment where players can party up without the overheard of the “Ranked Feeling” that players fear for some reason. However, over the years it’s become apparent that the bad players really rely on these modes to have fun as they aren’t able to do anything on 5v5.

[Nail]

gotta agree, ranked is unpopular because it’s broken/ignored but like I said before, we need to play it, it can’t get better without data/players. We all signed on to help test/develop but most people just complain when games aren’t ideal

[STARRYSOCK]

@Melinder said:

@bgyoshi said:
And that’s not the point, though. Ranked isn’t unpopular because the mechanics are thought to be hard to learn, Ranked is unpopular because it’s not DB.

You @$!# what mate? Ranked is literally DB in it’s purest form.

The best way to ensure that it is commonly known as Dirty Bomb’s purest mode is to push for 8v8/7v7 being replaced with 5v5 to ensure that all players get used to the most competitive ruleset from the get go, and have CMM be a sort of “Ranked Off-Season”, offering a semi competitive environment where players can party up without the overheard of the “Ranked Feeling” that players fear for some reason. However, over the years it’s become apparent that the bad players really rely on these modes to have fun as they aren’t able to do anything on 5v5.

Preferring larger matches doesn’t make a player bad at smaller ones and you know it. Just because someone likes something you don’t doesn’t necessarily mean they’re inferior.

All forcing 5v5 would do is piss off the majority of DB’s population and probably end up pulling the game into a death spiral. It’s okay to be obsessed with ranked, it’s not okay to pretend you can make everyone else think the same.

[Melinder]

@STARRYSOCK said:
Preferring larger matches doesn’t make a player bad at smaller ones and you know it.

Not what I said. I said bad players, not players in general.

@STARRYSOCK said:
It’s okay to be obsessed with ranked

Definitely not what I said.

[bgyoshi]

@STARRYSOCK said:
All forcing 5v5 would do is piss off the majority of DB’s population and probably end up pulling the game into a death spiral. It’s okay to be obsessed with ranked, it’s not okay to pretend you can make everyone else think the same.

If forcing 5v5 on the entire game would put it into a death spiral, then 5v5 is probably complete trash and shouldn’t be in the game at all. I mean I agree, 5v5 is terrible, but I’ve also avoided it for 2 1/2 years because 6v6 is just more fun.

But if I never once got to play anything but 5v5 upon beta launch, I probably would have a different idea about it entirely.

The problem isn’t with casual and it’s not with ranked. The problem is that Ranked and Casual are different games and players that reach level 7 get that far because they like casual, not Ranked,

Ranked and casual need to be the same game. Doesn’t matter if casual becomes 5v5 or if Ranked becomes something else. They have to be the same exact game, with one tracking your rank, and the other not.

[STARRYSOCK]

@bgyoshi said:

@STARRYSOCK said:
All forcing 5v5 would do is piss off the majority of DB’s population and probably end up pulling the game into a death spiral. It’s okay to be obsessed with ranked, it’s not okay to pretend you can make everyone else think the same.

If forcing 5v5 on the entire game would put it into a death spiral, then 5v5 is probably complete trash and shouldn’t be in the game at all. I mean I agree, 5v5 is terrible, but I’ve also avoided it for 2 1/2 years because 6v6 is just more fun.

But if I never once got to play anything but 5v5 upon beta launch, I probably would have a different idea about it entirely.

The problem isn’t with casual and it’s not with ranked. The problem is that Ranked and Casual are different games and players that reach level 7 get that far because they like casual, not Ranked,

Ranked and casual need to be the same game. Doesn’t matter if casual becomes 5v5 or if Ranked becomes something else. They have to be the same exact game, with one tracking your rank, and the other not.

I didn’t mean 5v5 was bad, I just mean different people like different things. Considering more people seem to enjoy larger matches, making all matches 5v5 as mel said would alienate the majority of DB’s playerbase.
However, at the same time removing 5v5 would annoy people who like 5v5.
That’s why I believe the two modes are better different. If they had been the same from the start it wouldn’t matter, but now that each mode has a fanbase, each with distinct preferences, to change either mode like that would just end up harming the community. I get what you mean, but imo that’s not worth the tradeoff of having ranked be slightly more familiar to new players, in exchange for alienating a massive portion of your playerbase.

[bgyoshi]

@STARRYSOCK said:
That’s why I believe the two modes are better different. If they had been the same from the start it wouldn’t matter, but now that each mode has a fanbase, each with distinct preferences, to change either mode like that would just end up harming the community. I get what you mean, but imo that’s not worth the tradeoff of having ranked be slightly more familiar to new players, in exchange for alienating a massive portion of your playerbase.

Killing execution didn’t kill the game and neither will switching the modes around. If casual is more popular than Ranked, switch ranked function like casual, and vice versa.

You can keep custom modes in the server browser only, people have been asking for customization for a long time.

But CMM should match 5v5 FF On Collision On, no ranking
Ranked should match 5v5 FF On, Collision On, ranking

But if you ask me, including a server browser is just widening gap between players that like the game SD wants to make, versus players that like the game SD offers on the side. The longer this continues, the worse that gap will grow.

There is nothing SD can do to Ranked that will ever make it popular for as long as casual mode exists as it does. More people will always play casual mode more, Ranked queues will always be long and imbalanced due to the low amount of players because SD does not offer any possible way for players to play Ranked rules without playing ranked.

To fix the queue times, you have to encourage more players to queue
To fix the balance issue, you have to encourage more players to queue
To encourage more players to queue, players have to enjoy the game

If you want two different communities, then you will never have a 50/50 balance of players in each community. One of those modes will be the main draw of the game, and the other will suffer for it.

Casual will always be more popular than Ranked, so in the end, Ranked players will always, always be as screwed as they are now. Queue times and ranked team balance will never be a thing because there will never be enough players interested in a mode that’s so different from what grew on them from the start. The only way to get players interested in Ranked is to get them to play that same mode outside of ranked.

That’s just life. I can’t think of a single game that offers a competitive mode that’s both different from its casual mode and DOESN’T offer custom rules… at all.

[STARRYSOCK]

@bgyoshi said:

@STARRYSOCK said:
That’s why I believe the two modes are better different. If they had been the same from the start it wouldn’t matter, but now that each mode has a fanbase, each with distinct preferences, to change either mode like that would just end up harming the community. I get what you mean, but imo that’s not worth the tradeoff of having ranked be slightly more familiar to new players, in exchange for alienating a massive portion of your playerbase.

Killing execution didn’t kill the game and neither will switching the modes around. If casual is more popular than Ranked, switch ranked function like casual, and vice versa.

You can keep custom modes in the server browser only, people have been asking for customization for a long time.

But CMM should match 5v5 FF On Collision On, no ranking
Ranked should match 5v5 FF On, Collision On, ranking

But if you ask me, including a server browser is just widening gap between players that like the game SD wants to make, versus players that like the game SD offers on the side. The longer this continues, the worse that gap will grow.

There is nothing SD can do to Ranked that will ever make it popular for as long as casual mode exists as it does. More people will always play casual mode more, Ranked queues will always be long and imbalanced due to the low amount of players because SD does not offer any possible way for players to play Ranked rules without playing ranked.

To fix the queue times, you have to encourage more players to queue
To fix the balance issue, you have to encourage more players to queue
To encourage more players to queue, players have to enjoy the game

If you want two different communities, then you will never have a 50/50 balance of players in each community. One of those modes will be the main draw of the game, and the other will suffer for it.

Casual will always be more popular than Ranked, so in the end, Ranked players will always, always be as screwed as they are now. Queue times and ranked team balance will never be a thing because there will never be enough players interested in a mode that’s so different from what grew on them from the start. The only way to get players interested in Ranked is to get them to play that same mode outside of ranked.

That’s just life. I can’t think of a single game that offers a competitive mode that’s both different from its casual mode and DOESN’T offer custom rules… at all.

Killing EXE didn’t kill the game because only 5% of people played it according to SD. However, ranked and casual are a lot bigger than EXE ever was. People left the game when EXE was removed too, just not enough to make a big impact.

But the problem with ranked is that its system is built for a large playerbase, not the one we currently have. I’m not going to go in depth on it because I’ve voiced my opinions on the ranked system itself on numerous threads before, but there are lots of ways to significantly improve ranked balance without increasing its player count.

Ranked doesn’t need to be more popular than casual though. It doesn’t even need to be 50/50. Why can’t players just play what they want? Like, seriously. It’s a game, not a job. People play it to have fun. If they have fun playing casual, let them. If they have fun playing ranked, let them. If more people would rather play casual than ranked, so what? Ranked isn’t “suffering” because of casual. It’s suffering because it’s broken.

DB doesn’t have to be identical to every other game out there either. That’s part of what draws players to the game even. I actually like that DB is different in how it handles ranked differently from casual. It makes the game feel far more unique.

[l2c]

@STARRYSOCK said:
having FF on outside of ranked would give players even less of a reason to play ranked
There are tons of people who loathe FF, having it in CMM would give them all less of a reason to play DB at all.

[n-x]

@bgyoshi made a lot of good points. The thing is, just because you make casual 5vs5 ff on, doesnt make it automatically uncasual. Casual is an attitude, not a setting. Just by SD making 7vs7 and 8vs8 ff off for ages the standard settings, which were declared casual, it is that we perceive these settings automatically as casual. If SD had started right out off the box with 5vs5 ff on on 80-90% of their (casual) servers and have 10-20% super-wacky-chaos-8vs8-ff -off-servers we wouldnt have this conversation at all.

It was just a huge screw up to introduce people to the game by another format than the core format. The ranked format should be the standard format for casual and ranked. If you are in try hard mode, play ranked. If you want to mess around with friends, try out a new merc, or just had a stressful day and want to blow off some steam, play casual. I am not in favor of closing down the 7vs7 and 8vs8 ff off servers as I know that some people like those and it is not my intention at all, to take something away from someone.

But this has also something to do with the health and future of DB. It is just way better for the game, that a new player automatically starts with the settings the game was intented for and then, when he wants to go really crazy, he can try one of the “freaky” servers. At the moment, the mindset of the player is that the gamemode DB wasnt intented for, is perceived as normal, and the intented gamemode is seen as this extra step, which you cant even take without a lot of pressure because you have to take it immediately in a competitive environment.

Also the explanation for having CMM 6vs6 is not really valid. It’s 6vs6 because if someone drops a 6vs5 is more balanced than a 5vs4. Actually it is not that much more balanced and you still get players backfilling the vacated spot. Kind of strange, that 5vs4 in a casual gamemode in which there is a possibility for a backfill is not an option but in a competitive environment without the possibility of a backfill it is ok.