Growing the Player Base

(blonk) #21

Maybe it’s a bit old hat in 2016, but what about the old chestnut of demo recording? Sounds lame by today’s standards, but people who hear about the game are still likely to go onto Youtube and look for gameplay vids. At the moment we’re limited to recording “live”, no demos or replay editing of any kind. Dirty Bomb is prime material for really flash frag videos as well with all the movement techniques, if I saw that, edited properly (leave your MLG airhorns and dorites at the door) it’d certainly get my attention.

(CCP115) #22

I don’t have sources, but, the devs have said before that after the game makes it out of Open Beta, a lot more money would be put towards marketing.

Right now, only hardcore Steam users and those who watch the large Youtube channels know about it, and even less of them play regularly.

(sonsofaugust5) #23

@CCP115 good to know. What would make this game not in open beta anymore? What makes it in beta? Once all the original mercs are out?

(MTLMortis) #24

Player run servers would solve this.

(RedBeard) #25

The problem is getting people to play the game and keep playing. First step first.

(sonsofaugust5) #26

@Kingsley rn i only play weekends :frowning:

(SereneFlight) #27

More maps plis and too bad it’s not expected from community to make good maps… oh wait.

(ImSploosh) #28

As others have mentioned, I think a big problem is the lack of content. Specifically with maps/gamemodes.

A solution would be to allow player-made maps. Maybe some competitions where the best map would be implemented, or the top 3 would? Something like that.

Players always make the best maps. As of now, Dirty Bomb’s maps are mediocre. Dome being a good one that never gets played. I think if old-school map designs were brought back, that would help keep some players. I mean like opening up the maps, removing the invisible walls that limit gameplay variety. Dockyard and Dome are steps in the right direction.

There are tons of gamemodes that could be added to DB. The issue with that is we need more players to sustain each gamemode.

(sonsofaugust5) #29

What DB should do is have a map making contest. That usually works out really well. And players do all the work.

(Occult) #30

nexon should allow this, hell they did in for combadarms and that map is still popular.

(CCP115) #31

It’s literally when the devs decide to take it out of Open Beta.

Chances are that’ll be after Aimee + Turtle come out, Dockyard and that other map, and at least one more gamemode.

If, and I mean If, the game survives for that long, chances are the devs will pull it out of Open Beta, into full release, continue to update and bugfix, and spend far more money into marketing the game.

(bontsa) #32

Agree on the content / playernumber dilemma. Lacking content means not many players around and not many players around means too much content would separate the playerbase too thin, or just wouldn’t simply be financially sustainable to keep “everything” up and running.

However, SD/Nexon pretty much have to start doing something about it now. Clock is ticking down and it ticks rather fast. Even if playercounts are not declining that fast, they’re still declining and one reason could be seen to be the fact new player hop in, play to lvl5-7 and drop out for months or for good. Meaning game is “burning through” it’s potential playerbase before even establishing a sustainable one.

Nexon has to take their head off the bush and allow more community involvement (I’m pretty damn sure lack of this is due their side, since SD has good history in allowing community take part, look at ET and the rest) in terms of servers. SD has to find the guts to persuade and be more pushy about allowing it, game simply just doesn’t live up if left aside. And it’s their job to give community the tools to create content for the game. Unless community is taken in, they have to keep up creating AND fleshing out content out with much faster phase, which is highly unlikely.

Adding incencitives little-by-little to things like ranked mode doesn’t live up either. There has to be real push to it, and it has to be advertised differently. For now, majority seems to think it’s the “real” competitive mode and acts like that. Even when 5man premades were in, who in their right mind could stand up straight and say with a straight face that premade team thrusting their rods into all bodily openings of a random-collected team was in any sense a competitive setting? Nah, people should be properly guided towards community driven competitive side unless Nexon/SD want to create their own, which in that case would mean guiding there. And then advertising ranked as more of a “introduction” to 5v5 enviroment, glorified pubs if you will, as it is and most propably will always be.

[spoiler]And in my opinion always should be too; low expectation, low threshold get-to-know setting for everyone with certain knowledge of the game to see how game plays out with stuff like FF on and 5v5. Only thing needed would be maybe a little more restricted class selection (teams needing X amount of medics/firesupport/engis/assault/recons in teams squads before proceeding etc.) and we’d have a place for everyone not familiar with real competitive, to get a rough picture of it. Emphasis on rough.[/spoiler]

What SD also has to start looking into, is properly guiding players to their own game’s mechanics and phase. So, tutorial. Real one, not even thinking of current run-around of WASD movement being any use for anything. Properly making new people accustomed to the games mechanics eases the frustration not only they face when the information flood hits them in-game, but also eases the frustration more experienced players face when either having to teach them (better route) or resulting in verbally bashing them (horrible route for everyone involved). Frustration like this is what makes people put the game aside and proceed to other titles. We’ve seen so many “uninstalling because of change X and Y” whines over so long period, yet seeing same people loaf around the forums after every major update that those don’t really seem the reason people quit. I feel it’s the high learning “gap” between DB and other shooters nowadays, mechanics are somewhat different and game feels different than your average shooter.

(LifeupOmega) #33

@Amerika usually sums it up better than I, but getting whatever tools the SD team use to make their maps would already be a step in the right direction. We don’t need a full blown SDK.

(FUNNYBLACKMAN) #34

Modding, community servers, more game modes , etc.Just giant changes to get those big YouTubers to launch this game again.

(Amerika) #35

@Amerika usually sums it up better than I, but getting whatever tools the SD team use to make their maps would already be a step in the right direction. We don’t need a full blown SDK.[/quote]

I was really hoping Smooth would respond to that. I saw him start typing so I am fairly certain he read it. I should making a Reddit post and tag him and Exedore to see what their responses would be.

(bontsa) #36

[quote=“Amerika;155952”]
I was really hoping Smooth would respond to that. I saw him start typing so I am fairly certain he read it. I should making a Reddit post and tag him and Exedore to see what their responses would be.[/quote]

Be the hero we don’t deserve, but the hero we need and do this! :tongue: All pressure towards this course, community involvement, is good.

(MatteMG) #37

Yeh, the DBN Temspeak should be more avertised, I never even new one existed. And on that note, can someone send me the IP to the TS xD

(Amerika) #38

[quote=“bontsa;155960”][quote=“Amerika;155952”]
I was really hoping Smooth would respond to that. I saw him start typing so I am fairly certain he read it. I should making a Reddit post and tag him and Exedore to see what their responses would be.[/quote]

Be the hero we don’t deserve, but the hero we need and do this! :tongue: All pressure towards this course, community involvement, is good.[/quote]

I’ve got the whole thing written up but I need to figure out who/how to tag on Reddit haha. It’s a dumb problem to have but I rarely get on Reddit.

(sonsofaugust5) #39

God this game is so boring now. Played a bit yesterday and today… nothing to do

(Black) #40

It’s funny because I had just came back from GuilteTV’s channel, a youtuber who played Dirty Bomb constantly in the past.

However he has stopped and moved on to Overwatch.
He just uploaded a video in which he states in the description:

Not only is this tragic but it’s probably how most players feel about Dirty Bomb now, including me.

Without a doubt DB is fun and something new to the fps genre, but I feel like this game just really isn’t going anywhere. It’s still in “beta” and there are still bugs and tech issues from pre-alpha that have yet to be fixed. I won’t even go into design decisions because we still got threads of people complaining about the jump aim nerf.