Just looking for peoples opinions about this subject, wanted to do a poll but I prefer to read peoples opinion without forcing them to chose from a list of answers.
So, for me at least I feel like the game has progressed well. There has been new stuff added on a fairly decent basis and usually the content has been successful. However, after the last few patches im starting to feel like SD are more fussed in selling the players something than actually taking our feedback into consideration, the perfect example of this is the trade in system. People havent been giving ideas out in the bucket load on how to implement it so its fair to everyone yet it was rushed out in a completely unfair state and it hasn’t been properly looked at since. SD say, ‘its not priority’ but merc releases aren’t priority and we get them pretty often. Im not going to jump in and say they’re doing for the money because I genuinely love this game and the dev team, I just think there need to be alot more transparency.
At the end of the day, I want whats best for the game and the community but the game was launched as a ‘competitive FPS’, at least thats how I as sold in the trailers and since then its been made more and more casual with every update so I dont understand whats going on there.
Before anyway starts giving me stick for speaking my mind know this. I’ve spent time, money and effort with the game and the community as well as spreading the word about DB, but the game is losing its spark fast imo.
How far has DB come since open beta?
I must agree with you. Many things got added, but many things got worse with time. I tried twice to join comp today and there was simply no game going. I had to give up. So all that effort that went into comp and balancing matchmaking there, is something that went out the window and that nobody even wants to try anymore. This is number one of DB’s mistakes.
Then, for me an open Beta is mainly a short period of time where you stress test servers before releasing a full game, game which you then keep adding content in a polished state. Now, the way that DB has been growing just reeks of closed Beta stuff, maybe even Alpha for some stuff. It would have been much more beneficial to keep all of these merc additions, new mode addition in a separate box than releasing buggy content every two weeks, with no care to it afterwards. And here we have mistake 2: releasing content at a steady pace without regards of the quality in which it is released, the community’s wish for it or after care for said released content.
It would have made much more sense to release content a week earlier to players from the closed beta time before including it to the totality of players, but that would segregate the player base, which is something that SD wants to avoid at all costs. Mistake number 3 ladies and gentlemen. Never assume that you have a standard customer and put them all in the same box. Instead, separate them in a few boxes, because they are all different and expect different things from a game. More min/max servers would have been great, as well as servers with no double mercs is something that we have been expecting for some time.
Fourth mistake: server performance has become worse and worse with time. Back in closed beta we had a smooth, almost lag free game and now we have rollbacks, throwables that don’t get thrown, teleports, bullet compression, etc. I can’t believe we still don’t have ping limited servers. Not all would need to be limited, but at least a few would help those with low pings to consistently play well.
5th and one of the biggest mistake is their improper use of the ECHO tool! It’s a great idea, and imo more games should balance with an ECHO-like tool, but SD is doing it wrong. By not having a method of separating ECHO results by player level, time played and others, they are biasing their results and we end up with an overpowered M4A1 and repeated buffs to Nader, when she already started quite good when she was released. On top of this consideration of newcomer’s results with certain mercs and weapons, they use rotation data to balance the game. What crazy person came up with that idea.
6th mistake is improper event management. Giving out Phoenix shortly after he was released, had the same feel as that big iPhone price drop shortly after it was released. Like wise, the bad CW loadout drops and other ideas, just show that they could do with better thinking ahead.
7th and last of the big mistakes is the lack of learning from their mistakes. We asked win missions away and what do we get with execution mode? Win missions. Good job, way to remember your community’s wishes.
Now there have been some good things, like a new and better anti-cheat. More ways of getting credits with the 3h missions. And I’m looking for other positive things to say, but I’m not finding any.
I guess all I’m thinking of instead are the needed changes/improvements the game needs to bring it back on the path to being a great game. Path from which it has veered off quite substantially since the closed beta if you ask me. So here is my list of needed things:
-improvement of net code/lag compensation techniques + periodic restart/maintenance of servers to keep performance in an acceptable range
-Bug fixes, lots of them
-introducing more types of servers. no repeat merc servers, more level segregation servers, especially min level 10 servers for 6vs6 and 8vs8, not juts 7vs7
-Party system for pubs
-System for balancing player imbalanced servers à la Natural Selection 2 (no respawn for the last dying player in the overcrowded team until someone switches or until someone else dies.
-removal of win based missions and rewards
-Improvement of ECHO based balancing
-etc.
I could go on, but I’m not paid to fix this game for SD/Nexon. So here is my opinion @Mister__Wiggles, hope you enjoyed reading it.
Wait, she’s better then when they released her? That’s not what I remember.
Wait, she’s better then when they released her? That’s not what I remember.
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She had just a little more speed, but she had only 100HP, 4 grenades with higher cool down time (might be wrong on the cool down change though), the martyrdom was cancelled when gibbed at that time (but that was a bug), the grenades had less range, there was a slight nerf on the fuse time and launch speed, but that was it.
PS: It also was during the time that smg’s had more recoil and spread, so smg precision got buffed to hell.
Here’s what I found.
[i]Increased health by 20
Reduced movement speed by 5%
Increased fuse time by 0.1s
Reduced velocity by 20%
Increased Nade count by 1 and reduced CD by 1s
Increased Grenade Launcher grenade explosive radius by ~7% < Not sure why this was needed and never heard people complain about it. It had to be because of smoke/fire.
Martyrdom detonation time increased by 0.2s
Martyrdom no longer always instagibs players inside the inner (maximum) damage radius
Martyrdom - Reduced inner (maximum) damage radius by half[/i]
I would say that you are right but it’s not really that drastic of an increase. Martyrdom can’t be cancelled when gibbed but they did nerf it to all hell. It doesn’t matter much though since Martyrdom was a meh situational ability anyway.
Also explosives lost a bunch of gibbing power recently.
Ah, was wrong with the cool down and forgot the martyrdom nerfs, but as you say that is not really her main ability.
In my opinion though, she hardly needed the 20 extra HP and the additional grenade. Also I’ve always found unfair that the grenades work on a best of two worlds kind of way: ricochet on walls but explosion on people. It should either be the one or the other. Also, considering she wields three very good smg’s (crotzni and blishlock being the strongest smg’s in the game right now), especially after the removal of spread and recoil, she became a killing machine. My point is that I already got tons of kills with her when she got out, but now I don’t even have to work for them, hence to me they’re unneeded buffs that just promote quick spammy playing of her nades. Anyway, I guess this is quite off-topic so let’s switch to a private conversation if you want to continue it any further.
I feel that while they say the game is geared towards comp mode, the recent changes clearly say otherwise.
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Just look at the most recent map… Dome is WAY too large for 5v5 comp and is clearly an ideally 8v8 pub map. If they want to up the team size for comp mode thats fine with me.
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The heavy insta-gib nerfs, either comp players are too sensitive or they were removed because of nade spam in larger, less diverse, pub games. I can’t recall anyone asking to remove insta-gib for explosives, only the “i gibbed an entire team from a mile away with one magazine” headshot gibs.
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Less focus on events and more on gameplay/bug fixes. Feels a bit like putting the cart before the horse.
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Stop catering to new/lesser players. They’ll either pick it up or be stuck in bronze silver rank blissfully among their peers.
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Instead of restricting the skill range in comp mode to stop 5stack cobalt teams stomping over everyone, they should have just limited it to solo/duo until the player base could support 5v5 comp. Or (less feasible) add in a time handicap for uneven matches.
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Add in a substitute system for comp mode when someone leaves so we all don’t just waste 30+ minutes.
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Less ELO W/L and more actual skills based ranking
Sounds like the perfect spot for a nice augment, ricochet by default, and an augment that adds explodes on contact of anything. Along with adding the lock on augment to buff the arm time with direct hits.