Haven't played for over 2 years - feedback on the changes.

(TheReaper2k) #1

So, over 2 years ago (according to my last steam-purchase for a Dirty Bomb item) i played arround 100 hours of Dirty Bomb. Then - for some reason - i stopped.

Some days ago i started playing it again with a friend of mine. Here’s my point of view.

Let’s start where the game starts - the menu:
If you start the game, you’re greeted by a cluttered, unresponsive and annoying UI, which is overloaded, unnecessary complex and in comparison to the old one just feels bad.

The game:
After joining a match, i found myself on a bad version of Terminal. What did you do to one the best maps in the game?
Also, many of the “new” maps don’t play very well in my opinion.
I’m (my friend too) also experiencing many technical issues with the game. Stuttering, freezes, crashes (i7-6700, RX480).
If i’m lucky, i can play 2 or 3 rounds until the game decides to crash. Wether it’s via some Memory-error-messages or some weird DLL-message. Another point (which i think is quite annoying) is that lobbys are closed after 1 match. Why not keep everyone just in and keep the “flow” up? I don’t want to wait for a new match after every round. The balancing also feels a bit off. The molotovs for example are way to strong. While i would think they’re for area-denial, it feels more like they’re area-of-instakill.

TL;DR:
My experience from over 2 years ago is/was better then today.

While this all sounds a lot like flaming, i just want to put my point of view out there.

Oh, and also, try to do something about those playercounts, would be a shame if the game dies completely^^.

Greets

(K1X455) #2

First, welcome back.

Second, what OS are you using and what attachments do you have on your PC. You might want to update your drivers cause we found issues with Win10, peripheral drivers, network drivers and it’s compatibility with how SD wrote DB code in UE3.

(TheReaper2k) #3

Hi,

thanks for the welcome :slight_smile:

Windows version is Win10 1703. AMD driver is 17.12.2 and just now updating to latest.
Other then that, nothing too special going on with my PC. I do have a soundcard (Asus Xonar DX). Also, i’m playing on a 144 Hz FreeSync monitor (set 120 Hz in Windows).

Greetings

(K1X455) #4

See if you can set Win10 to use drivers made by you GPU manufacturer.

Also, set it to 144Hz Vertical Refresh rate in Windows for as much flicker free viewing as possible. Any higher and the monitor will just discard the data the GPU is sending because it cannot display any faster.

(blufflord) #5

@TheReaper2k said:

After joining a match, i found myself on a bad version of Terminal. What did you do to one the best maps in the game?

It can’t have been that good if it had the lowest 1st objective to 2nd obj progression out of all the maps.

(K1X455) #6

BTW, Radeon drivers are now 18.2.3.

Although the latest might not be the best for running DB, check which version you need to run DX9 for stability.

(Gire) #7

I have been on Dirty Bomb for 3 - 4 years and it has only went better

(B_Montiel) #8

Hello there,

About the lobby : just remain on the server browser system, which will allow to continue on a same server for as long as you want.

About balance : yes, things are indeed turning into a spam fest of 1 htk abilities and melee at this very moment.

Molotov is not that far off from what it was when you probably played the game, it went out of the useless state not that long ago. Probably a bit too strong but that’s the most blatant one.

More importantly, I definitely think they’re currently struggling with consistency throughout their balance iterations : obnoxious mechanics applied to niche weapons (bolt action rifles most notably), proper unreadability applied to mines and stickies (Friendlies can’t make them explode, while enemies can to return them in their favour, while leaving their deployables unarmed), the list is raising right now.

At the end, my biggest concern is that they do not seem to find a proper balance adjustment for this game : the game is waayyyyy better with FF-on, and one merc rule should be mandatory in any competitive environment (ranked, pugs, tournaments…). And they really start to struggle doing without those two KEY elements, even in public games.

Most PTS (private testing environment) playtests are made under those rules (for those who still don’t understand how they managed to release javelin, hunter and phantom in this state, now you know), with people who know how to play -which is very far from 80% of the current playerbase-. At the end, with those disputable balance choices, they currently are turning public games into proper shaïteholes by openly turning those options down as inappropriate for public games.

Edit : In the meantime, maps additions and updates were crucial to the game. This is probably where I’ll disagree with you. Terminal was a proper lockdown 90% of the games - attack or defenders no matter, skill gaps were awfully showing in this map-, this is why they changed it.

(TheReaper2k) #9

Thanks for your opinion on this.
Maybe you are right about Terminal, but still, i liked the old version better.

As for my technical issues, i’m on the latest driver and the game still crashes randomly (would have been a wonder if the driver-update would have changed anything - to be honest). Last crash was with an error-message saying my VRAM was full and that i should try to lower the texture-settings. So apparently, DB needs 8+ GB of VRAM on lowest settings :smiley: .

(K1X455) #10

I get that “Out of Video Memory” from time to time and it’s just the DB that’s getting corrupted video handles because of EAC. There’s really no solution I know for it except restarting the game.

The latest driver isn’t always the best, as you’ll have to tailor the more important changes to suit the DX9 application.