Impressions & Feedback

(Spacetime) #1

Hello,

I’d like to start out with thanking Splash Damage for giving me many great memories while playing Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. Hundreds of games, thousands of gaming hours and 10+ years later it’s still my all-time favorite FPS even though I don’t play it anymore. It always gives me a smile on my face thinking back about these days.

I noticed that SplashDamage was working on a new game so I decided to give it a try and I’d like to share my impressions and mainly feedback with you guys. I didn’t read up much about the game, I didn’t watch any Twitch streams nor did I read forums but instead I just tried out the game.

I’m the type of person that mainly pay attention to the negative aspects of things so if I didn’t mention certain things then it should be fine unless I forgot to mention it. Some things will be more important than other things because some are taste related or have minimal influence on things.

  1. I personally don’t really like the name but it’s not really important nor can it easily be changed.

  2. The anti cheat pop-up in the right corner while booting up the game is not very professional in my opinion but it doesn’t bother me in-game so it doesn’t matter that much but it would be better if I didn’t have to see it.

  3. I’ve noticed that changing your squad/load-out in the lobby is relatively slow which should be improved.

  4. At the end of the match I don’t like to wait several seconds every time until the point / experience counting is done. Perhaps you could make it so I’m able to skip it completely remove it and make it just static.

  5. Team balancement need some improvement, sometimes it was 3 vs 6 for example. I’m not sure if there’s any voting options in the game yet but I haven’t seen it yet. Perhaps some team balance / scrambling vote option would be nice if it’s not there yet.

*6) I haven’t played long enough but some of the maps need some work I think. The lay-out feels strategically off / incorrect, I’ve seen spawnkilling a couple of times as well. Maps also feel relatively small. A map editor would be an amazing feature for the community as well.

*7) I’m wondering whether it is needed to have a squad instead of being able to switch to anything in-game through a limbo menu. I can see that it would bring some strategic choice making to the table but I can also see some balancement / rock-paper-scissor issues for high-level competitive play. I have the same doubts about the augments. It promotes personalization to the table but on the other hand it also makes it hard to balance things properly. I would rather see personalization / customization being promoted by the use of cosmetic items (weapon skins and armor skins) etc.

*8) I think the recoill and spread should be lowered. Does it make the game bad at the moment? No it doesn’t. I do however feel that the game would be a lot more fun that way for me. Throughout my gaming career I’ve played shooters with high recoil and spread that I completely love but also games with low recoil. I think that low/no recoil/spread suits this game better.

  1. The handgun / pistol that I’ve used on one of the characters felt like a machine gun how fast I was able to use it, I’m not sure if that’s intended or not.

*10) The high damage / one hit kills should be removed from the game in my opinion. The rewarding thing about W:ET is that you were stuck in extremely close duels and right now I’ve seen snipers and grenades being able to 1 hit people. I think it takes a piece away from teamplay. As much as I love Counter-strike I’ve always enjoyed the teamplay in W:ET more because to me it felt like the game depended more on team-play. The explosions are on the extreme side as well if you ask me, it’s pretty dominant in every match. Having close gun fights is way more exciting than spamming explosions on each other’s feet I personally think.

*11) One of the most addicting things in ETPRO were the hitsounds / hitbeeps. I’m very happy to see that you guys implemented that together with the old-school dot crosshair. The problem however is that the volume of the beeps is extremely low for me and I can barely hear it through all of the other sounds. It would be nice if you could implement a volume slider for that in the audio options. I’d also like to have another sound for headshots because I don’t think that’s the case right now.

  1. I was playing a bit with Nader and I saw that I could switch to her grenade launcher with Q but the problem was that when I wanted to go back to her normal weapon again I naturally pressed Q again to switch back but that will make her shoot her grenade launcher instead. I think it would be more natural if you would make it a toggle function.

*13) The sprint movement is too fast at the moment and it should be reduced a bit. I see too much people jumping and running like crazy. It would make the game a lot better I think because fights would be less chaotic and more organized where positioning would play a more dominating role. At the moment I think it’s just too much. The movement together with the damage output (one hitting) creates a chaotic atmosphere where you feel that you’re not really in control and where teamplay plays less of a value.

  1. I use to play competitively on websites like Clanbase, be active in communities like xfire.be (crossfire.nu) and play with familiar people on certain servers and I feel that’s something that is really lacking right now with all games currently being released. If you look at Counter-strike (ranked) for example, you’re basically individually climbing the ELO ladder as a team.

I rather want to see something like Clanbase or MOBA’s such as League of Legends where you have to create a team, go into the ranked match-making system with it and climb the ladder with the team you’ve created.

While we’re at it it would be nice to have something that supports community building. Maybe it would help to make things more local / regional in-stead of just having countries. Ladders for provinces or cities for example. It would be easier to get in contact with each-other, find people to play with or even cheer for a local team that is climbing up in the country ladder. Perhaps there are better ways to create a more personal community but that’s the first thing that came across my mind. If you don’t want to have multiple ladders you could also just add a filter option to sort on country or province for example.

*15) The hit detection felt somewhat off, I haven’t tested it extensively but it didn’t feel right on certain moments.

  1. Showing K/D in a game is completely fine with me but do we really need to track everything outside of the match as well? I’m quite the perfectionist so my K/D is never good enough, even if it would be 54. Perhaps you could give us the option to just disable that.

  2. Can we have things such as highest fragger, best medic and things like that at the victory / defeat screen at the end of the game? It was always a pretty fun thing for me even though it doesn’t mean much at all.

  3. I’m not a big fan of the cartoonish style but what I really miss is the darker /gritty style and environmental systems. I would love to see some maps where it’s night-time (Radar / Gold Rush) and maps with snow (Fueldump / Railgun).

  4. No disrespect to the voice actor but I don’t really like the style / voice, it feels too unreal / fake. It definitely takes a piece away from the immersion for me. I don’t like to see the map introduction every time as well. Perhaps you could give us an option to disable that?

  5. Voice command menu needs to be close-able with Escape once opened and voice commands should also display icons above players. For example when someone is calling for a medic it should display a medic sign above their character.

  6. If you want people to promote the game for free the most important thing would be in-game recording for releasing nicely edited fragmovies.

  7. I’m personally not a big fan of linking my Steam name to the game because I use many different usernames for games and right now I don’t have any freedom in choosing my own name without influencing other things.

  8. Spectate mode, not sure if it’s in yet or planned but I haven’t seen it. I could’ve missed it though.

  • = high importance

I have to say that many things look and are really smooth. The game actually feels like a large combination of many popular games I’ve played. The game feels like a mixture of games such as Enemy Territory, Brink, Counter-strike, Call of Duty and Team Fortress 2 to me. Not just gameplay wise but also monetization wise and interface wise. Which isn’t a bad thing at all, in fact I think it’s a positive thing. Absorbing all positive things from other games and adding your own flavor to the mix is the best you could do.

I’m aware of the fact that all of my points aren’t extremely specific. It would require quite a bit of time for me to address everything in detail but I’m willing to do that on specific points if requested. I really hope that my feedback or some of it will be put to use nonetheless.

Thanks for reading

(Szakalot) #2

Think you can elaborate on ‘15’ : when does this happen?

(Glottis-3D) #3

nice feedback!
i agree with most of things here.

especially

-Voice actors work (including text - more thoughtful, less cheese)
-Hit detection
-ingame clan ladder
-maps

(Nail) #4

there is NEVER enough cheese

(Glottis-3D) #5

i agree. but the quality of cheese, i mean here.
the ETQW cheese was SO tasty!!
it was hilarious.
even Tim Burton’s funny aliens in Mars Attacks were not as cheesy as Stroggs! and i am very thanful to SD for making me laugh so much at Strogg taunts.

(Spacetime) #6

I haven’t tested it intensively because I’ve played a limited amount of time but I’ve noticed similar issues to what Warrock was having back in the day. I was peeking around the corner and initiated a fight with another person. I was getting low so I moved back behind the wall and I still ended up dying by his bullets even though he wasn’t in Line of Sight anymore.

Another weird moment is when I was shooting a guy in his back and he started hitting me back right away before he was even facing me, I might have missed the fact that there was another person shooting at me but I saw no one around me except for that person when I died.

The last thing I’d like to mention is that I could swear that I was hitting a guy in the head but for some reason I didn’t hit him once. Perhaps I need to get used to the recoil and I basically missed everything but in situations before I could easily say for certain that I was just aiming badly.

These issues might be related to other things such as lag, delay, sync issues but it felt off to me. I am unsure what the exact cause of this, I need to do more testing on this specific area to find out what’s going on. Hopefully the things that I’m saying makes sense.

(Szakalot) #7

This is normal. What you see is always delayed vs. what is happening (server’s side), and there is only so many ways to address this. Basically, you either have the game try to predict what happens on the server side, or you see everything little delayed. DB follows the latter that guarantees very reliable hit detection for your shots, but also artifacts like the one you describe (you thought you were behind the wall, but in fact you weren’t yet - person who fragged you saw you die before reaching the corner)

Another weird moment is when I was shooting a guy in his back and he started hitting me back right away before he was even facing me, I might have missed the fact that there was another person shooting at me but I saw no one around me except for that person when I died.

never saw this happen so can’t comment.

The last thing I’d like to mention is that I could swear that I was hitting a guy in the head but for some reason I didn’t hit him once. Perhaps I need to get used to the recoil and I basically missed everything but in situations before I could easily say for certain that I was just aiming badly.

I’d strongly recommend activating ‘hit beeps’, you will have perfect feedback on whether you are hitting the opponent or not.

(tokamak) #8

Always good to hear more first impressions. Also, if there’s any newcomers lurking around, everyone really welcomes anything you have to say. Sometimes newcomers mention points worth discussion that nobody here has ever thought of.

(Szakalot) #9

totally agree, I actually think newcomer’s views (esp. people who didn’t play previous SD games) can be even more valuable, than hardened ET veteran’s who can’t see beyond gameplay mechanics from 2003 ; )

(Glottis-3D) #10

those “hardened ET veterans, who cant see beyond …” are long gone.
we have pretty open minded testers over here for like a half a year, or even longer.

(xdc) #11

impressions:
game needs to be updated

feedback:
update the game with larger patches, and quicker

/end thread

(Spacetime) #12

Even though Wolfenstein Enemy Territory is my all-time favorite FPS, I’ve played much more than just that game. It would be silly to be close minded and only focus on one game in my history. Every game has pros and cons and nothing is perfect in my opinion. The idea about creating a good game is trying to take all of the pros from previous things while trying to prevent cons from creeping into your project.

[QUOTE=Szakalot;520154]This is normal. What you see is always delayed vs. what is happening (server’s side), and there is only so many ways to address this. Basically, you either have the game try to predict what happens on the server side, or you see everything little delayed. DB follows the latter that guarantees very reliable hit detection for your shots, but also artifacts like the one you describe (you thought you were behind the wall, but in fact you weren’t yet - person who fragged you saw you die before reaching the corner)

never saw this happen so can’t comment.

I’d strongly recommend activating ‘hit beeps’, you will have perfect feedback on whether you are hitting the opponent or not.[/QUOTE]

I’m going to try and focus on this particular aspect more in the next beta test to see what exactly goes on, thank you.
Also, check out point 11 :slight_smile:

(Szakalot) #13

for some reason I didn’t see that point, maybe cause I totally agreed with it!

There is another sound for HS, just like in ET (ding-ding-ding)

(Spacetime) #14

Also, I forgot to mention to thank everyone for reading, commenting and the support.
It would be interesting to hear from the developers which points are being accepted / addressed, considered and/or rejected.

[QUOTE=Szakalot;520209]for some reason I didn’t see that point, maybe cause I totally agreed with it!

There is another sound for HS, just like in ET (ding-ding-ding)[/QUOTE]

Really? That’s awesome, for some reason I didn’t pick that up. Perhaps because of the low volume :slight_smile: Let’s hope they’ll give us some kind of slider for that.

(Njsfirth) #15

[QUOTE=xdc;520163]impressions:
game needs to be updated

feedback:
update the game with larger patches, and quicker

/end thread[/QUOTE]

It’s ok guys. It’s not like this is a side project with a small team. Everyone. Stop making money and work on this free to play game because we demand it.

(spookify) #16

Make the game right, polish it and make it out preform any other!

All you need to do is listen to spookify :wink:

(tokamak) #17

[QUOTE=Glottis-3D;520159]those “hardened ET veterans, who cant see beyond …” are long gone.
we have pretty open minded testers over here for like a half a year, or even longer.[/QUOTE]

I think everyone who’s been here for a while eventually develops some kind of agenda that includes fixed notions on how a game should be. That’s not bad in and of itself but it narrows the scope in which you can evaluate other parts of the game.

Newcomers simply say whether or not they like the game and what the direct reasons for it are.

(INF3RN0) #18

Reasonable feedback as far as I can tell.

Biggest thing seasoned ET players will need to adapt to is the small hitboxes, moderate recoil, and gradual spread over time, making ADS a required skill at ranges and sometimes for finishing kills. It started out pretty badly, but now I find it completely manageable and skillful enough without making it that lotto. Reg is quite solid up to around 250+ping, but if your not hitting what you aim at it’s likely an issue with spread control as not all weapons should be LMB held at all ranges. Farming newbies makes reg feel amazing ofc, so I imagine MM will put most of the net/reg feelings to ease.

(Silvanoshi) #19

Ok, this post is a bit of a beast, thanks for all of the feedback!

Let’s see if I can get some response out to most of the points in a quickfire manner.

  1. We love it, so you’re sod out of luck there :stuck_out_tongue:

  2. The design of the image for the pop-up will change, but the pop-up will continue to exist. What about it do you think feels cheap? The image of the detective?

  3. Front end performance in general will receive significant performance improvements

  4. A skip feature is certainly a possibility, and not unlikely

  5. Yup, team balance is definitely something that needs a little more love for public play. It’s not really going to be an issue for Ranked

  6. There are some tweaks to come for some of the maps, but this does take time. Spawn killing is certainly an area in which improvements can be made.

  7. From a competitive standpoint, the notion of having to make trade-offs can be an interesting one. While game updates will help to spurr on meta evolution, these kind of trade-offs can contribute to that as well :).

  8. We’ve had the recoil & spread both higher and lower than it currently is at the moment. While obviously it’s not going to be to everyone’s tastes (nothing ever will), it seem to be honing in on a balance that a larger proportion of you guys are happy with.

  9. There are some machine pistols in the game, yup. That probably wasn’t a bug.

  10. There’s still some balancing to be done, but we’re not entirely opposed to having certain 1hk’s in the game. Rewarding a Sniper Rifle headshot for example doesn’t seem entirely unfair.

  11. The options menu is set to receive more work, this doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request.

  12. It’s to think of the grenade launcher as an ability rather than a weapon…as Q is an ability button. We’re looking to have consistency with how the abilities operate. Perhaps Smooth can correct me but I believe the grenade launcher is currently working as intended in that regard.

  13. Dirty Bomb is a fast shooter (some people’ll argue it’s not…we’ve had that discussion before, if you want to raise it again, do it in another thread :P). Movement speeds have actually already been reduced before. We’re pretty happy with where they are now.

  14. We would certainly like to have Team/Clan functionality/ranking too :).

  15. Due to the nature of networking and latency, there’re always going to be instances of oddities with hit detection. With reasonable latency there shouldn’t really be any kind of consistent problem though. I do wonder if your concerns about spread and recoil are perhaps what’s leading you to believe that this is somewhat more of an issue that it is.

  16. Dirty Bomb is all about the Objectives man, who cares about your K/D :P? Nah, seriously though. There have been a few people mentioning that they’d like some way to wipe their stats. This is something that we may do at some stage, but it’s quite a low priority right now to be honest.

  17. Entirely likely further down the line, yup.

  18. While the game is set in London, different environmental conditions can certainly come into play with new maps.

  19. Dirty Bomb features MMMMAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNYYYYYYYY voice actors. I assume you’re talking about the male objective VO though. Yeah, that’s placeholder VO from one of the devs, it hasn’t had a professional pass just yet.

  20. Requests noted, a number of people have requested the option to have this too.

  21. This could be interpreted in many different ways. Not knowing which one it’s difficult for me to answer specifically what you’re looking for…what I’ll say though, is that we will be looking to support a number of ways to capture video with Dirty Bomb

  22. Such is life, try not to flame too much :P. We could take a look at detaching the display name from Steam, but there are other much higher priority items to look at first.

  23. There’s some basic spectator functionality in place at the moment, but it’s not complete by any stretch of the imagination. We’ve some ridiculously in-depth feedback on this topic, which is awesome.

Again, thanks for the feedback, it’s absolutely fantastic. Glad you’re enjoying the game so far, with any luck I’ll run across you in-game :).

(spookify) #20

“Some” aspects of the game are still lotto. :tongue:

I really dont like that fact that I cant own 2 or 3 really good players in a row if:

#1) I have the Jump on them (Possible From the Side or Corner)
#2) Backraging
#3) Straight Up Headshot Rolling

I am talking really really good players here. Rolling 2, 3 or 4 noobs is easy but still cumbersome because you feel like it should be going faster or you should have more control.

I think what I am saying is it is very hard to determine when a person is going to die. I 4 headshoted someone with stocker at close range and pulled off and they were still alive! I was like WTF! It wasnt like that person was a thunder or anything either.