Incompetence is ruining this game

(mpod89) #1

First of all I have to say that i think that people at SD are a great bunch of guys. You envisioned a fast paced modern arena shooter and managed to produce a pretty good great with really amazing potential. I’ve been paying Dirty Bomb for about 2 and a half years now and for the most part it was time well spent.
However, over the course of this time the game hasn’t changed one bit towards being finished, polished title. There are things to be commended, such as you guys managing to maintain free to play model without becoming an unfair pay to win game or pay to progress. In this regard Dirty Bomb is without a doubt the fairest free to play game i’ve ever played, hell you beat a lot of paid multiplayer games in that department.
The inability to resolve long lasting bugs, to push out fixes without breaking something else makes me believe this game will never become what it could be and what we all want it to be. The thing that made we write this post was my experience today, on the first day of season 4. It’s 8pm central EU time, i’ve qued up for ranked with my buddy and it took 20 minutes to get in a first match from the moment we first qued up. After first 5 minute wait, we finally got into the lobby, all 10 players in, we switch mercs, talk tatics, the moment the game should have started we get ploped out to main menu, it seems that one player failed to connect. Whatever, happens right. However on my screen our party broke up, on my buddy’s screen we’re both in the party and we already found a new match and it says for him that we’re both in the new lobby. This is not exactly a new thing when it comes to parties and failed lobbies. After that lobby fails we both restart the game and after some waiting we finally get a match going. And the matching is going great for us. We got put against total scrubs, not so lucky for them (i’ve been on the recieving end of that my fair share of times). 3 minutes until the end of first half i crash, upon restarting the game i’m not even prompted to rejoin the match. I just got directly put in the main menu like i just started my game for the first time. Though titties mpod, get rekt.
In the mean time my buddy proceeds to win that match in 4 v 5 because we were really put against bunch of dudes plaing with thumbs up their wazoo.
Season 4 day 1, 40 minutes in i haven’t been able to play one match. I’ve literally wasted 40 minutes of my unfortuantely limited free time on absolutely jack s#!t.
This leads me to the following: since the start of the open beta almost 3 years ago this game hasn’t come any closer to being a finished product that it was at the start of the beta and at this point it’s not likely it ever will. Sure, they could come out of beta tommorrow but declaring full release wouldn’t mean anything unless they actually fixed the tons of annoying bugs that they seem to be too incompetent to fix. The thing about Dirty Bomb that it provides a fun experience and it mostly works. It works about 90% times and that’s it. Good enough. Let’s make new content instead of focusing on the issues that have been bothering the community since we entered open beta. Why are Javeling and Guardian not available for season 4? Because one was released OP and they haven’t yet decided on a satisfactory nerf and the other is useless and they still haven’t decided on how to improve her. You can’t change those things mid season because serious competitive games don’t do that… But you’re not fuc*ing serious m8s. Fun and mostly works is good enough for a mod of some game, it’s not good enough for a full game. Stop being satisfied that the game “mostly works” and make it work all the way. Mostly “works” is okay when you’re dicking around in pub matches but that gets old after some time. To be a competive game that DB considers itself to be that s#!t don’t fly bruh. “Sometimes works” it too frustrating when you actually care about winning and not only goofing off with 5 rhinos in pub matches.

TL;DR
The game is fun, has great potential, the developer, athough well intentioned, is too incompetent to deliver a smooth bug free experience. There are so many good games out there that provide a better experience that it’s getting increasingly difficult to justify spending time on Dirty Bomb. Only thing keeping me playing at this point is the nostalgia for the good times I had, but offers very little in way of a purpose for long term playing instead of goofing off few times a month.

(LifeupOmega) #2

Wall

(GatoCommodore) #3

i dont mind incompetence, its free to play after all.

if you think SD is incompetent, why dont you write code for them? Im sure they are currently hiring.

(Dysfnal) #4

DB has survived this long with “incompetent” developers. I don’t think it’s killing the game.

(Nail) #5

lol, armchair coder

15 years in the game business doesn’t sound incompetent to me

(mpod89) #6

@GatoCommodore said:
i dont mind incompetence, its free to play after all.

if you think SD is incompetent, why dont you write code for them? Im sure they are currently hiring.

Ah, the age old arguement do it better if you can. Flawless logic. DB is not competing against me to make a better game, it’s competing agaist other games and studios. It’s getting increasingly difficult to find reasons not to give up on DB since there are other games that offer much better experience. I’m at the point where the potential that DB has isn’t enough anymore to keep me playing and that feels bad because i know how amazing this game could be. It has great core mechanics, it only needs just that bit of polish to make it a great game.

(Homu1124) #7

I’d say there are fair points in addressing bugs. And don’t give the “oh you try doing a better job” schtick. We pay them to make a good game, either with money or time or attention. We don’t pay them so we can fix their problems.

The game is fun, but flawed (ranked 4 day 1 is a great microcosm of DB’s state). Asking them to refocus priorities isn’t unwarranted.

(hawkeyeguy99) #8

You have some points but I don’t think it’s near as serious as you are making it out to be. I do agree though, a solid pass (like what Summer Squash was meant to be) is in definite order on cleaning up stuff. Overall, I think they’re on the right track, even with the bad mercs being released recently.

(Xenithos) #9

If you want a polish, sure, I agree. But I’m not in the mood for a “bug squashing” thing again. I LIKE the constant amount of mercs and stuff added to the game. Also, a majority of the long lasting bugs are 1) not currently worth their time and effort considering other more game breaking bugs, examples: Health patches being stuck on ground still for players on different video settings. 2) will be taken care of with their revamp to the deployables system.

I think at it’s core though, DB is a solid, SOLID shooter in both feel and style of play. Balance adjustments, and several smaller tweaks and definitely some better gameplay objective variety are in order for sure.

Besides, the only crap I hate is disconnects and bad optimization of their menus and some parts of their maps. The MOFO update was actually an incredible update imo for in-game play.

(Sorotia) #10

@Dys[fn]al said:
DB has survived this long with “incompetent” developers. I don’t think it’s killing the game.

To be honest…I’ve seen even worse managed games survive for longer than DB has been around.

#11

^ Far worse. Complaints, issues, and criticism aside, what always restores some of my loyalty to DB is the realization that it’s a free game. I have practically touched nothing else in my free time the past few years and wouldn’t even call myself a gamer anymore, but I love DB. It’s a free freaking game that I’d have easily paid a mid-range price for. They’re a relatively small development team and the core of this game is amazing. The good outweighs the bad for me and I’ll be playing until I feel otherwise. IT’S FREE. I have all the time in the world.

(ImSploosh) #12

The bugs, coupled with some decisions that I don’t like, are really killing the game for me. But I keep playing it because it’s the only FPS that’s pure, chaotic fun without any P2W elements. The decisions I mentioned include the removal of Execution, map design (killing Dome and ruining the potential of Dockyard and Vault), RNG for one-off paid content (Javelin and Guardian cases), and “Casual” Matchmaking. There are a few more things I can’t think of at the moment, but those are some of my main gripes with the game. The bugs and lag issues also make it extremely hard to keep playing at times. Melee being broken and constant annoying teleporting really hinder the experience.

With all that being said, there’s no game like it, and unfortunately, the FPS market has been ruined over the last few years. Paid games cost upward of $100 for the full experience and then they still require microtransactions for many other items. So despite Dirty Bomb being extremely rough around the edges, it’s still a great game that I’ll continue to play until some more bad decisions kill it for me. :’(

Also, the game seemed to run much better and with a lot less bugs back in late 2015-early 2016. Granted, there still were some annoying ones, but not nearly as many and the game just felt much smoother to me. I wish melee wouldn’t keep breaking after every update.

(Teflon Love) #13

@Nail said:
15 years in the game business doesn’t sound incompetent to me

Just because you’ve done something for a long time doesn’t mean you’re good at it. :wink:

Having said that I don’t think SD is incompetent. I can understand that is difficult to maintain a code that has been growing for years and uses a pretty old engine. Also several new developers have been added recently to their team. They still need to find their way around the code base and learn the hairy and baroque parts of the code that rarely can be changed without breaking something else.

Nevertheless from a player’s point of view I find it painful to watch the slow pace of DB moving towards pure greatness. It has been 95% “almost there” for 2 years. :frowning:

(dgeesio) #14

i think the game is pretty good better than most modern fps titles.id take dirtybomb over bf1 for eg anyday. so they are very good at what they do.the only thing that really does my head in about the game is people who are playing objective games for KD ratio. its a objective based game but many dont play it that way.with the right directions or helpers many more could be guided to win games instead of win at getting a higher kd ratio.

also new players mostly have no idea how to play and revert to kd ratio hunting as they not sure what to do.so think hmm kd ratio is the way to go. so guides for new players should be better and more higher inncentives given for doing objectives and wins and make kd very small reward.

(GatoCommodore) #15

@dgeesio said:
i think the game is pretty good better than most modern fps titles.id take dirtybomb over bf1 for eg anyday. so they are very good at what they do.the only thing that really does my head in about the game is people who are playing objective games for KD ratio. its a objective based game but many dont play it that way.with the right directions or helpers many more could be guided to win games instead of win at getting a higher kd ratio.

also new players mostly have no idea how to play and revert to kd ratio hunting as they not sure what to do.so think hmm kd ratio is the way to go. so guides for new players should be better and more higher inncentives given for doing objectives and wins and make kd very small reward.

the good thing in DB is that most of the time KD relates to team success on a delivery objectives.

and sometimes KD is 0/8 but having a highest score in the match, 28K playing sparks and still loses.

KD and score relation in DB is kind of a wild card.

(dgeesio) #16

i mean about people who are either new or older vets not playing objective only for kd ratio. its pretty common then they say ohh your bad or whatever because kd ratio is higher than yours yet you were playing for the objective. this is why points need to benefit people playing the game objective and new players guided better into playing the game correctly.

(Brycko) #17

Just bring back execution. It’ll distract people from all the bugs in objective and ranked.

(Nail) #18

@teflonlove said:

@Nail said:
15 years in the game business doesn’t sound incompetent to me

Just because you’ve done something for a long time doesn’t mean you’re good at it. :wink:

Having said that I don’t think SD is incompetent. I can understand that is difficult to maintain a code that has been growing for years and uses a pretty old engine. Also several new developers have been added recently to their team. They still need to find their way around the code base and learn the hairy and baroque parts of the code that rarely can be changed without breaking something else.

Nevertheless from a player’s point of view I find it painful to watch the slow pace of DB moving towards pure greatness.** It has been 95% “almost there” for 2 years**. :frowning:

it’s been more like 60 %

“Just because you’ve done something for a long time doesn’t mean you’re good at it”

in business, yes it does

(K1X455) #19

@Brycko said:
Just bring back execution. It’ll distract people from all the bugs in objective and ranked.

I guess you’ll distract 5% of the player’s playing time to that game mode.

(WatchAsILead) #20

@mpod89 said:

@GatoCommodore said:
i dont mind incompetence, its free to play after all.

if you think SD is incompetent, why dont you write code for them? Im sure they are currently hiring.

Ah, the age old arguement do it better if you can. Flawless logic. DB is not competing against me to make a better game, it’s competing agaist other games and studios. It’s getting increasingly difficult to find reasons not to give up on DB since there are other games that offer much better experience. I’m at the point where the potential that DB has isn’t enough anymore to keep me playing and that feels bad because i know how amazing this game could be. It has great core mechanics, it only needs just that bit of polish to make it a great game.

Some of your points are sort of valid, but what games do the Dirty Bomb experience better than Dirty Bomb? If it only needs a “Bit” of polish how are the developers incompetent? To me a bit means almost there, which means 90% complete in most cases. So the devs are incompetent because they have 10% to work on and finish? Maybe you should just do your job as a beta tester and report bugs instead of making “Dirty Bomb sucks and is a garbage game” Threads. By the time you finished typing this post you could of reported several bugs by now.