[QUOTE=Exedore;504523]What impression of DB’s direction did you get from that post?
We’ve recognised that our communications with the community are not where we want them to be, and while improving, that will take time to fully address. That said, I get the impression that direction is often being inferred from isolated elements incorrectly in the absence of the vision of the big picture. I ask the above question because I can at least correct any glowing differences![/QUOTE]
In basic terms I got…
Dirty Bomb will be a skill based F2P shooter with a main focus on 5v5 stopwatch for ranked play. Cosmetics and MAYBE Mercs will be the primary way of monetising the game. The stand out feature is the Mercs and their abilities that are similar in concept to current Moba way of doing things. right now you feel like you are most of the way there and you are itching to get onto the polishing phase. We should not expect any more changes to the core game because now the drive is simply on completing systems and adding content.
You also believe on reflection that you may have over complicated things in general and you are now more tempted to remove stuff than add stuff.
You know the game has certain issues and as confident as you seem to come across to the community I really do not think you know where some of these issues really are. Its almost as if you also want to simplify the game in order to make it more accessible but you are hesitant to do so openly as you worry about sparking the current community.
Finally a total assumption is that money is tight and you have convinced yourselves you can get it out the door and improve it later. (spoiler, does not work lol)
When it comes to my personal impressions of the bigger picture…
In both public and competitive play the Stopwatch gamemode is highly flawed both due to the systems around it and the current issues with the maps.
The reason I feel this is contradictions on Goals, Balance and Diversity vs the games mechanics.
GOAL = FASTEST TIME - Yet multiple systems promote/encourage waiting… (spawn system being the main culprit)
BALANCE = OPEN MERC POOL - Yet abilities while balanced in general have not been balanced for stacks. Multiple mercs per match also reduces the number of viable strats. Meta will result in mirrored matches rendering the Merc based system as nothing but a highly restrictive class loadout.
DIVERSITY = If each match be it public or competitive was a canvas then the systems/mechanics used on it is the colour pallet. Right now, due to the open/simple nature… Dirty Bomb is painting its games in nothing more than 50 shades of gray (see what I did there…)
Due to limitations in current systems the skill ceiling on many core skills is borked.
You do not yet reward prediction, movement, timing or control. You skill requirements are simply to much focused on tracking aim… this leaves the game feeling flat.
I could continue but let me just give an example of the “bigger pictures” I see behind each and every element…
Health Regen (not saying its good or bad)
Health Regen was likely put in to reduce frustration and promote moving forward in a fight. Its also a system people are used to and in many respects expect in a modern shooter. It also means that its not instant death if nobody on your team takes a medic and this allows you to get away from the class based system and focus more in individual Mercs.
However, In adding health regen you actually increase the size of the skill gap results by allowing great players with powerful mercs to solo fight at full hp most of the time. The heath regen instead of removing frustration actually makes lower skilled players feel useless because the fights that they have vs better players are cancelled out almost instantly. This adds to be issues of balance because a poor player literally has almost 0 impact on balance (and the player will know this themselves).
While you technically reduce the number of people camping because of LOW HP you actually increase the delay on average players from attempting team based actions and stuff like objectives because after the team fight that opened the chance people want to Regen the health in a safe place.
The health Regen also allows people to go solo and not have to hunt down a medic, when people hunt down medics the medics get lots of points making them more likely to run medic in following games. This would likely keep teams closer together and make people especially like aura with the healing station more useful…
Removing the system would actually have more of a positive effect on the scores and effectiveness of the bottom 25% skilled players than it would do for the top 25%. It would also increase the skill ceiling but reduce the skill gap… (again not saying I want it removed its just an example)
), but this is kind of the impression that I was wondering about. Accessibility is not the primary driver behind the simplifications, but it’s rather that complexity in areas that we haven’t defined as the core of the game were detracting from refining those what we consider to be important. Some of these elements might very well return, but the foundation needs to be more solid first.