Intro
Hey! I’m splodead, or Alex if you’d rather. I used to play a couple games ‘competitively’ in leagues on the PC a while back (2004-2009). I’m not a ‘pro’ or anything and never went to LANs or won any big titles, but that style of play is my background. Because of that I approach any new shooter - regardless of it’s competitive viability or not, with that mindset. Even if you are playing a game in a public server I think it’s more fun to coordinate with some buddies in vent rather than just deathmatch all day.
This feedback post got rather long, if you’d like to read it in chunks that’s fine. Most of the subheadings can be read without reading the other parts of the post.
The Launcher
In the Barracks tab I’d love a bit more information about each class. I know the stats for each may not be finalized but eventually I’d love their health, armor, sprint speed info etc. I’d also like to see the rate of fire, damage per bullet, overall DPS, clip size, and any other useful info for the weapons in their load out.
The first thing I did once in-game was go to settings to try to get it all setup. Here’s some things I wished I could have done, but weren’t available.
Video Settings:
I prefer playing my games in borderless windowed mode at full screen resolution if possible, as that allows for easy alt-tabbing. When I went to change my video settings to windowed it decreased my resolution from 1920x1080 to 1440x900. Even when I manually change the resolution back to 1920x1080 nothing actually changes. If it’s in windowed mode, it isn’t going to be full screen.
Audio Settings:
I like the feature of having a sound play when shots register. I do wish there were a few different sliders to control various audio types though. For example, I wouldn’t mind turning down some of the in-game voice comms given through the voice comms key ( v by default). I didn’t hear or notice much music in-game but if there is much I would like to mute it entirely as well.
Controls:
I turned the mouse sensitivity down and tried to find a setting that seemed comparable to other fps games i’ve played. It’s nice to see that each individual change in the settings did affect the sens. It didn’t just go up by 5 each time. Some games make it so 5,6,7,8,9 are all the same as 5 then jump up to 10 - this one didn’t, which is nice.
I wish there was a key to switch to the last weapon used. I always bind Q to that in any game, and would love to do that in this game.
Playing the game:
Friction / Strafe Speed
Right away I thought the friction felt low. It wasn’t terrible but it definitely feels like i’m on ice or an air hockey table kind of. When I tap the key to strafe I don’t get really fine movement but slide a ways to the right or left. It makes trying to shoot from in between cover (between two boxes for example) rather difficult if you need to change position at all because you keep overshooting the small gap you’re looking through.
The horizontal movement, if kept like it currently is, will be a major factor in this game. It currently reminds me of Socom and Socom II on the PS2. Those games had rather insane strafe speeds (faster than DB) and you basically just put your crosshair over the guy and moved back and forth trying to strafe it over him more than he got his over you. I’m not sure if this is the type of aiming mechanic you’re going for, and it’s definitely not as pronounced as in socom but it’s still there.
Sniper
This leads into my playing the sniper characters for a while. I’m always curious as to how the sniper will look in a game because the way the sniper is designed will seriously impact competitive play. If the sniper is a 1 shot kill to the chest or head then it’s very powerful, if it’s only a 1 shot kill to the head then it may be more of a niche weapon to be used only in certain circumstances or during certain segments of a map.
The sniper in DB isn’t a 1 shot kill to the chest, only to the head. I think this is the right decision for this game for sure - but it puts the sniper class in a tough position. Because the assault rifles in this game are so accurate at pretty much any range, the sniper is only the best choice of weapon if you can reliably hit headshots - even on moving targets. If you shoot one shot and get a body shot or miss, then an assault rifle can return fire and kill you before you can do much else - unless you can get behind cover.
Combine the necessity for headshots with the fast strafe movement and you’ve got a very tough weapon to use effectively. That being said, it’s still an incredibly powerful weapon and in the hands of a skilled user it could change the battle entirely.
It’s a bit like the TF2 sniper rifle. The TF2 sniper is incredibly overpowered (since it’s pretty much the only thing that can one shot any enemy from a distance) but is kept in check by valve sort of stumbling into solid map design that doesn’t give the sniper enough long distance sight lines - so the enemy team is usually never more than a medium distance away, or can spam the sniper when he’s spotted.
The semi-auto sniper made it a bit easier since i could just spam it for body shots and usually do ok if i missed the first headshot.
The problem I have with the sniper in DB is that I usually feel like I’ll be able to do the same job much easier using the assault class. I felt the same way in most of the call of duty games, and those games had a more powerful sniper than in DB (1 shot to chest).
I don’t think the sniper needs to be seriously changed or ‘fixed’ necessarily, because better players than I will dominate with it with headshots - it’s a seriously powerful class, it’s just that I can’t use it effectively and that makes me sad.
Assault
This feels like the easy class. I can take more damage, I have two giant assault rifles and I’ve got infinite flash grenades (or concussion) on a cooldown. I haven’t seen players utilize the flashbangs nearly enough so far in my 2 days playing (yeah, small sample size) - but I think the assault class will likely end up making up the bulk of a competitive team whenever other classes aren’t explicitly required. In a face to face firefight against anything but a skilled sniper, it seems like the assault should almost always come out on top. Whether this is a good thing or not, I don’t know yet.
Engineer:
Man, those turrets are pretty terrible. I never once got a single kill with an engineer turret - nor was I ever killed by one even when it was setup in a great spot and got the jump on me. I don’t necessarily want to be outright destroyed by an engineer turret like it’s its own automatic mounted weapon - but I think it’s health should be increased so more than 1 sniper bullet, or less than 5 bullets from most weapons, kills it.
An engineer turret should be a zoning tool. It’s meant to be an obstacle players needs to work around tackle head on before being able to move forward. Cutting off the back way to an objective with an engineer’s turret isn’t really useful except to tell you an enemy must be there, but i’d rather just have the ‘third eye’ sniper cam if i wanted that info.
I can’t really remember if it does this at the moment, but when reparing / constructing with the engineer i want to be switched immediately back to the last weapon or item i was using after the interaction is complete. So let’s say i run up to the EV and hit F to repair it while i had my primary weapon out. It does the pliers animation for a while and after it’s finished, or if i get interrupted and either press F again or walk out of range of the EV - i want it to immediately switch back to my primary.
Medic:
I haven’t yet used the medic healing station, but the med packs work well. It’s good they don’t instantly give you full health but instead speed up regen.
Medic definitely feels like the weakest out of all the classes in terms of weaponry, but that’s to be expected I suppose. This lead my playstyle while as a medic to be a bit more passive. I’d rush behind other players if they charged, but for the most part stayed back and res’d those who died up front.
Firesupport
This felt a bit like a weaker assault class. On a competitive team I’d only have one fire support probably, except at certain points in a round with an EV where you’d instantly destroy it with 3 airstrikes.
I think it works well, ammo packs are simple - intuitive.
End
I’ve only played the game for a day or two, but I like the framework it has so far. The quick movement makes it difficult and also makes full auto weapons a bit more forgiving, but I definitely want to keep playing DB.
I realize this post is a wall of text and that each subheading could probably be a thread on it’s own - but these were my first impressions after a few hours of play.
EDIT - so yeah They’re doing away with classes with this new update so this feedback may not be quite as useful as it could have been, but I think it’ll still apply to specific characters that have a similar loadout to what these classes had.
