I know I'm going to get a lot of backlash for this, but Splash shouldn't be balancing for pubs

(watsyurdeal) #1

Why?

Simple answer, if they want a competitive game, then balance the game around that environment, which means

  • Balance the maps, mercs, and abilties assuming team work is at it’s optimum
  • If a merc is banned in comp, why is it? Fix it, as if it’s too strong for the 5v5 environment, it’s definetenly too strong for the others.
  • If a merc is never used, why? Find out, because if the merc is never used, it might as well not exist at all. Not saying buff it to God like, but look at it’s problems, and solve them.
  • If a weapon or loadout is used 90% of the time over others, find out why, and find out alternatives you could release in the future that make a strong contender against those loadouts.
  • And most importantly, don’t drive your comp players away by fixing things that aren’t broken. A public server is not a good way to measure balance due to the complete chaos of it, balance around a controlled environment where the game is being played as you intended to be. And that is what will lead you to making a strong competitor to other competitive shooters.
(titaniumCrouton) #2

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;15534”]Why?

Simple answer, if they want a competitive game, then balance the game around that environment, which means

[list]
[] Balance the maps, mercs, and abilties assuming team work is at it’s optimum
[] If a merc is banned in comp, why is it? Fix it, as if it’s too strong for the 5v5 environment, it’s definetenly too strong for the others.
[] If a merc is never used, why? Find out, because if the merc is never used, it might as well not exist at all. Not saying buff it to God like, but look at it’s problems, and solve them.
[] If a weapon or loadout is used 90% of the time over others, find out why, and find out alternatives you could release in the future that make a strong contender against those loadouts.
[*] And most importantly, don’t drive your comp players away by fixing things that aren’t broken. A public server is not a good way to measure balance due to the complete chaos of it, balance around a controlled environment where the game is being played as you intended to be. And that is what will lead you to making a strong competitor to other competitive shooters.
[/list][/quote]
Nicely put and I agree. This is the only way to do a competitive game.

(Harlot) #3

The issue is SD doesn’t know whether they want to balance with competitive players or casual players in mind. The nerf to Phantom was because he was a pubstomper and bad for the casual landscape. The nerf to the KEK-10 and Crotzni - increasing how quickly the spread increases, affects those with good tracking the best, as does aim punch. These changes go towards creating a more casual play style.

I honestly think that this situation is similar to Nosgoth. Psyonix had a vision for their game, and when the wheels started falling off the development team made comments along the lines of “There’s things we’d like to do but Square Enix (our publisher) has the final say and they want different things put in.” This led to them never implementing a competitive mode (TDM has glaring flaws in an asymmetrical shooter), not fixing bugs and rather releasing a broken competitive ladder and frills such as forging equipment and new skins - these things costing cash.

As the game tries more and more to be CS:GO (adding aim punch, increasing weapon spread and moving to Execution and away from Objective/Stopwatch) I wonder if this isn’t Nexon trying to make Dirty Bomb into CS:GO with SD’s flair. It appears they’re done making Objective/Stopwatch maps because it’s just easier to do Execution maps.

I hope Splash Damage and Nexon realize that if you try and mirror CS:GO too much, 95% of us will just go play CS:GO.

(Conqelson) #4

Continued development and support for DB hinges on hooking new players and you can’t even get into competitive games until level 5, let alone be prepared for them. First impressions are everything for free to play games, the is no monetary obligation to stick it out if you aren’t enjoying yourself and Nexon/Splash needs them to stick around long enough to buy something.

Competitive players are in the minority, they can’t cater to them. That’s just bad business.

(Harlot) #5

[quote=“Conqelson;57804”]Continued development and support for DB hinges on hooking new players and you can’t even get into competitive games until level 5, let alone be prepared for them. First impressions are everything for free to play games, the is no monetary obligation to stick it out if you aren’t enjoying yourself and Nexon/Splash needs them to stick around long enough to buy something.

Competitive players are in the minority, they can’t cater to them. That’s just bad business.[/quote]

The thing is, this game was originally sold to us as a competition first shooter that would have the ability to grow into an esport. They constantly talked about how they wanted to nurture the community and see it have tournaments. That’s why a lot of us began following the game in closed beta. It seems their focus has shifted, likely because of Nexon wanting larger mass appeal. However, making the game into a clone of CS:GO is going about it all wrong and will see them lose their current players - and that’s usually a death sentence.

(watsyurdeal) #6

[quote=“Conqelson;57804”]Continued development and support for DB hinges on hooking new players and you can’t even get into competitive games until level 5, let alone be prepared for them. First impressions are everything for free to play games, the is no monetary obligation to stick it out if you aren’t enjoying yourself and Nexon/Splash needs them to stick around long enough to buy something.

Competitive players are in the minority, they can’t cater to them. That’s just bad business.[/quote]

First of all, that first part is false, bringing in new players by making the game easier to play isn’t going to do any good. Because those players will get bored, and go play something else and abandon the game you worked so hard on.

New content, which is EXACTLY what Splash intends to keep adding, is what will keep bringing in a healthy steady stream of new players every time. Everytime a new merc or something is added, there is a spike of players, EVERYTIME. So I do not believe that we have to balance the game around new players to keep a steady flow of them coming in.

Second, competitive players are not in the minority, the reality is not everyone has time to play on a team or league, but they look toward pubbing and matchmaking to get at least a semi similar experience. Imo, just because you don’t play in a league, doesn’t mean you aren’t competitive, you could also be called a try hard and it’d still mean the same, you simply take the game seriously, you don’t treat the game like a job but don’t fuck around either, you get shit done.

(Conqelson) #7

Same thing happened with Brink but what ultimately did it in was money. They got so desperate they started charging people for new grenades and maps. Nexon needs that broader appeal and so do we all if want the game to last.

Keep telling yourself that :wink:

(Kroad) #8

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;15534”]
[*] If a merc is never used, why? Find out, because if the merc is never used, it might as well not exist at all. Not saying buff it to God like, but look at it’s problems, and solve them.[/quote]

or, when they see that arty isn’t used in comp, they can keep nerfing the dreiss because why not right

(watsyurdeal) #9

You completely missed my previous point

Here is the bottom line…if you care only about your k d ratio, you’re a casual player, by my definition, because you are playing for you and you alone, if you care about winning, you ARE a competitive player. Because to win, you will do whatever it takes to do so, working as team, coordinating strats, playing roles you know you aren’t great with or aren’t your idea of fun. You care about your team, where as if you care more about how many points you got, you really could care less, as if you getting the most points somehow vindicates the feeling that you are the best despite that it meant jack in the end.

(D'@athi) #10

Yep, either balance it for competetive (I say this, even if me old man probably won’t ever play it in a league, if not too drunk), or just add autoaim, and controllersupport. But i guess, the later wouldn’t help keeping the customers, too. But there even was a question why not port it to consoles, so many new customers? … :wink:

I see the same prob as one of the writers above, someone wants to make some money of it (or probably get it’s money back), and just farms the people for money, without some perspective. In the end, at first the pro/better ones will leave, and after this, the not so good/casual ones, as there is much competition in this field of games, and no real casual-community as for example in WoW.
And even WoW had it’s best times, losing many good people while declaring purple/epic pixels for everyone. And Dirty Bomb… mhm doesn’t even has this first come/first served-status neither a working ingame community-support.
So, I’d say “Don’t go chasing waterfalls…Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to” sing tralala. Or else you will depend on the future Overwatch players, and blizzard will have a diaper for every customer.

So either the manager gets some good numbers on this quarter, or all people on this project will have some money from it in the future.
Imo, and that’s as far as I can go, Nexon’s-forum’s-TermsOfService in my mind, I won’t spend my money on stuff, I am afraid, which will be lost. Sorry Splash-Damage.

Edit: Typos, typos, typos, and translations… :slight_smile:

(litheJacket) #11

balance in competitive match

i was silver and started play competitive match yesterday. 3/4 of games ending with spawnkill. 4/4 of games full with insult because im level 21 and they are 6. one russian guy tell something about my mother on my steam wall.

(D'@athi) #12

Yep, I got them from CS, too. Missing kindergardens probably.

Btw. I’ve been playing comp alone, only for the missions ( since the patch, 15 games?), now ranked to gold4, huehue. Not beeing near cobalt, still a quite big range of unranked/lower ranked ones and never been seeing someone over gold5 but me, and most of em <lvl10. Probably the main problem? To many trying people not staying with the game?

(Harlot) #13

[quote=“litheJacket;57817”]balance in competitive match

i was silver and started play competitive match yesterday. 3/4 of games ending with spawnkill. 4/4 of games full with insult because im level 21 and they are 6. one russian guy tell something about my mother on my steam wall.[/quote]

The problem is quite a few players know that Competitive gamemode just isn’t worth playing right now. Whenever you have a small amount of players to choose from, you run into the issue of having long queue times (3+ minutes) for semi-balanced matches or low queue times for a small chance of having a balanced match.

When anticheat is implemented, this may improve. Until then, the competitive game mode is a non-factor. When speaking of competitive game play, most people refer to Dirtycups and organized league play.

(litheJacket) #14

Yep, I got them from CS, too. Missing kindergardens probably.

Btw. I’ve been playing comp alone, only for the missions ( since the patch, 15 games?), now ranked to gold4, huehue. Not beeing near cobalt, still a quite big range of unranked/lower ranked ones and never been seeing someone over gold5 but me, and most of em <lvl10. Probably the main problem? To many trying people not staying with the game?[/quote]
4 guys in the ss was farming rank in party. Being cobalt should be easy when you playing with your pro gang against newbies. When i was 6 level unranked +40 level pkd clan members did same thing to me and i never play competitive match next 250 hours.

(D'@athi) #15

Yep, I got them from CS, too. Missing kindergardens probably.

Btw. I’ve been playing comp alone, only for the missions ( since the patch, 15 games?), now ranked to gold4, huehue. Not beeing near cobalt, still a quite big range of unranked/lower ranked ones and never been seeing someone over gold5 but me, and most of em <lvl10. Probably the main problem? To many trying people not staying with the game?[/quote]
4 guys in the ss was farming rank in party. Being cobalt should be easy when you playing with your pro gang against newbies. When i was 6 level unranked +40 level pkd clan members did same thing to me and i never play competitive match next 250 hours.[/quote]

Hey, stop, really no-niet-niente offense going out there. Talked about the age of 6 which seems to be getting near the average cs-age… as more and more eastern european nation’s kids are appearing in this games, and as I said … they are in need of kindergardens.
Just wanted to prove, that not theit balancing is the main fault, but that either their concept of matchmaking/competetive isn’t working, or there are simply not enough people to make it work.

(litheJacket) #16

Yep, I got them from CS, too. Missing kindergardens probably.

Btw. I’ve been playing comp alone, only for the missions ( since the patch, 15 games?), now ranked to gold4, huehue. Not beeing near cobalt, still a quite big range of unranked/lower ranked ones and never been seeing someone over gold5 but me, and most of em <lvl10. Probably the main problem? To many trying people not staying with the game?[/quote]
4 guys in the ss was farming rank in party. Being cobalt should be easy when you playing with your pro gang against newbies. When i was 6 level unranked +40 level pkd clan members did same thing to me and i never play competitive match next 250 hours.[/quote]

Hey, stop, really no-niet-niente offense going out there. Talked about the age of 6 which seems to be getting near the average cs-age… as more and more eastern european nation’s kids are appearing in this games, and as I said … they are in need of kindergardens.
Just wanted to prove, that not theit balancing is the main fault, but that either their concept of matchmaking/competetive isn’t working, or there are simply not enough people to make it work.

[/quote]
so is it o.k. doing 50 spawnkill win with your four +20 level friend against poor level 6 guys who wants to finish daily quest for buying first merc and then flaunt your cobalt rank?

(Harlot) #17

Yep, I got them from CS, too. Missing kindergardens probably.

Btw. I’ve been playing comp alone, only for the missions ( since the patch, 15 games?), now ranked to gold4, huehue. Not beeing near cobalt, still a quite big range of unranked/lower ranked ones and never been seeing someone over gold5 but me, and most of em <lvl10. Probably the main problem? To many trying people not staying with the game?[/quote]
4 guys in the ss was farming rank in party. Being cobalt should be easy when you playing with your pro gang against newbies. When i was 6 level unranked +40 level pkd clan members did same thing to me and i never play competitive match next 250 hours.[/quote]

Hey, stop, really no-niet-niente offense going out there. Talked about the age of 6 which seems to be getting near the average cs-age… as more and more eastern european nation’s kids are appearing in this games, and as I said … they are in need of kindergardens.
Just wanted to prove, that not theit balancing is the main fault, but that either their concept of matchmaking/competetive isn’t working, or there are simply not enough people to make it work.

[/quote]
so is it o.k. doing 50 spawnkill win with your four +20 level friend against poor level 6 guys who wants to finish daily quest for buying first merc and then flaunt your cobalt rank?
[/quote]

I already addressed this. Those level 20’s have to play against somebody. They could sit in queue for 30 minutes to find a match against level 20’s or the game can match them quickly. There are not many people over level 20 right now, and even fewer playing Competitive since it’s broken due to hacking. No players = a low pool of players to choose from. Low pool of players = imbalanced matches. It’s just that simple.

Stop playing competitive until anticheat is implemented.

(D'@athi) #18

It’s probably logical on this matchmaking-“rule/balancing”-set, which should be fixed, as _level_6s probably don’t even know all the maps they are queuing to.
But as I now say the at least :wink: teh third time, I thought you were talking ABOUT THE >>>>AGE 6<<<<, NOT THE LEVEL. @rest, sry for crying out loud…

and btw… my friends are lvl40+ MINIMUM

(Ghosthree3) #19

No backlash here, competition should always be balanced with potential play in mind.

(elegantRoyalty) #20

[quote=“Harlot;57850”]
Those level 20’s have to play against somebody. [/quote]

why? why is it better for 12 people to waste 15-20 mins, than the game returning a no reasonable opponent found result and recommending they split into two groups or try later?