Instead of complaing about Ranked and Matchmaking going away....

(watsyurdeal) #1

Let’s talk about how exactly do we solve the core issues people had?

Which are from what I can gather

  • Bad Teamwork
  • Clueless team mates
  • Mercs that lack good counter play (good meaning you don’t have to switch to another merc and play Rock Paper Scissors)
  • Matchmaking based on win and loss, rather than your own performance as an individual, in comparison with everyone else

Some of these, the devs can work on, it comes down to understanding time to react and basic knowledge of how every merc works.

For example, we keep nerfing Fragger’s health, but the problem is the nades, and the lack of countering them. A longer delay before detonating, and voice overs being played WHILE cooking the nade as opposed to after he’s thrown it, gives players plenty of time to react to him and either rush Fragger or be aware he has a nade ready to go. Vassili, aim punch needs to affect his scope, and give it more wobble so when he is shot you are actually messing up his aim.

The tutorial needs to go over Skyhammer, Aura, and Bushwacka’s abilities and roles, so everyone knows why they are here and what they do.

We need to brain storm on how we can actively improve the average skill of our player base, while also thinking of ways to make things more fair and reasonable to deal with.

Or, we can just keep complaining about things and not come to any actual solutions, your choice.

(bgyoshi) #2

@watsyurdeal said:
We need to brain storm on how we can actively improve the average skill of our player base, while also thinking of ways to make things more fair and reasonable to deal with.

That is an unfortunately impossible task. People don’t just get better because the game is more explicit with it’s instructions. People get better because they work at it.

The devs can make the best tutorial ever, and people will still ignore it. Or they’ll rush through it without paying attention because they want to get to the main game. Or they’ll finish the tutorial and stop for 3 days, then come back to the game and have forgotten everything.

The tutorial already goes over all three mercs’ abilities and roles, with examples. The obstacle course furthers Skyhammer’s role and abilities.

Mercs and tutorials aren’t the main problem.

  • People can’t easily play with their friends, either on the same team or not
  • Other people complain that friends playing together using teamwork is too strong in a teamwork-oriented game. Really? No shit
  • 7v7 is a terrible format that still exists and gives players really bad habits and expectations that DO NOT translate into 5v5 or 6v6 at all
  • Veterans are tired of the game and only play 7v7 server browser after trying to solo queue in Ranked and getting frustrated that friends playing together using teamwork is too strong in a teamwork-oriented game. Really? No shit
  • People simultaneously take the 7v7 merc trolling (See: Phantom update) as serious Ranked meta while also writing it off as a joke format that should be ignored
  • The huge disparity between what newbs learn (7v7 FF Off) and what Ranked is (5v5 FF On) was too great to overcome. Fuckaround 7v7 is more fun, less serious, and still intensive. Ranked became a bad duality of premade teams that wanted RANKED (but teamwork is too good) and a ton of solo players; who’s friends either stopped playing because there was no way to casually play together, didn’t like the game, or otherwise; who either want the Ranked experience, the Ranked swag, or both, and complain that friends playing together using teamwork is too strong in a teamwork-oriented game. Really? No shit

The developers did not provide a good way to teach or transition into Ranked, and IMO they created a much better game around 6v6 even though they intended Ranked to be 5v5. They gave an array of disjointed choices for gameplay while trying to push one God format too hard too soon.

As pessimistic as I am about this update removing key features, I like to hope that it’s a step back to redesign team play and Ranked and present it some time after 1.0 once players get used to the game. My hope is:

  • 7v7 phases out completely, and either 6v6, 5v5, or both become the only possible team size modes in server browser
  • Stopwatch in it’s current state is deleted and reintroduced as Objective mode where you switch sides after completion or failure
  • A Party system is implemented where up to a full server of players can party together and find open servers. They can select whether or not they’re on the same team and, if no server is available to meet their needs, they are put into a new lobby with other failed Quick Join parties, as well as solo queuers to fill in the blanks. It’s casual, it’s not about balanced matchmaking; it’s about getting players in a server together easily, and letting them play on the same team. People are going to ragequit anyway, so might as well do it in a low-effort environment where players browsing servers can backfill on their own, and other players in Quick Join are expecting to be backfilled at times. If you keep players interested in playing, and you allow them to play with their friends, their increased play time will naturally improve their skill.
  • Ranked is reintroduced in whatever casual mode is being played; if it’s 6v6 only, then Ranked is 6v6 only. If it’s 5v5 only, then it’s 5v5 only. If it’s both, then players can toggle if they want to play 6v6 or 5v5 Ranked when searching for a game.

We need consistency between casual and Ranked. They SHOULD be the same game, except one is tracked in your Ranked level stats and the other isn’t.

We need a way for players to easily party and play together. Literally all of my friends that I talked into playing DB quit several months later because we couldn’t party together easily. By the time CMM came out, Overwatch was already a well-established thing.

tl;dr People are whiny and suck, but in truth the developers did not provide a consistent game in having newbs start in 6v6 - 8v8 FF Off and then making ranked 5v5 FF On, as well as having no good way to party up casually. But it’s mostly people’s fault.

([ *O.C.B.* ] Wildcard) #3

As much as I’d love to when has SD ever thought their recent actions through rationally? So many things that shouldn’t have gotten past the testing phase in the development pipeline find their way into the game; maybe it’s the stress of demand for fresh content or something along those lines, I don’t know, but they need to get their priorities in order. As it stands they seem too focused on sticking, from what I can tell, to a completely inflexible development roadmap; it’s working to their detriment if this is the case, and if so they need to go back to the “drawing board” and adjust accordingly.

I’ve said for a while that we need a more comprehensive Tutorial that actually goes over more than the generic “WASD + Buttons do stuff go get 'em” but instead Splash Damage seems to think shortening the Tutorial and adding in tutorial videos is the right way to go. With such a clear disconnect with reality being there it’s understandable why people are approaching them with a cynical outlook; they’re displaying horrible communication and seem to do the opposite of every suggestion made that the community even remotely agrees on.

In honesty it’s almost mirroring what is happening in Overwatch, based on what I’ve heard about it from friends; in that anything that requires any semblance of skill is gutted and balance is based around the group that cries the loudest, as opposed to the competitive scene and long-standing veterans of the game. This is what happened with the first Phantom nerf, and it’s become a pattern Splash Damage seems all too keen to continue with their development choices to this day. So yes we could brainstorm and try to come up with actual solutions, it’s a good idea and something I support, but until Splash Damage is content to pull their “head out of the sand” so-to-speak it’ll ultimately yield us nothing but more disappointment when their next “brilliant fix” comes along.

@stayfreshshoe Don’t get me wrong I get that both the Devs and the players speaking up like this love this game, I myself enjoy it profusely despite all its faults, but sometimes the truth isn’t pretty and I’d rather be blunt and forward about it as opposed to trying to dance around the issue. I’m not a fan of trying to hide it with euphemistic language so I’ll be honest here, the game isn’t bad it’s actually got some great potential; however all plans need to have wiggle room for the sake of flexibility or they fall to pieces the minute an unexpected situation “rears its ugly head”, this is true in both real life and in development.

There are lots of things that need tweaking and fixes and I understand that the axing of Ranked and CMM may be a result of having too much to work on prior to launch, but you won’t solve the issue by simply ignoring it and denying its presence or place in the game; the problems are there and they’re not going to just disappear with the removal of a few modes. However if you’re going to axe game modes in order to allow greater focus to certain areas you need to come through with a good amount of polish, otherwise you’re welcoming community outcry via an underwhelming delivery.

(B_Montiel) #4

@bgyoshi said:

  • People can’t easily play with their friends, either on the same team or not
    …
  • 7v7 phases out completely, and either 6v6, 5v5, or both become the only possible team size modes in server browser
  • Stopwatch in it’s current state is deleted and reintroduced as Objective mode where you switch sides after completion or failure
  • Ranked is reintroduced in whatever casual mode is being played; if it’s 6v6 only, then Ranked is 6v6 only. If it’s 5v5 only, then it’s 5v5 only. If it’s both, then players can toggle if they want to play 6v6 or 5v5 Ranked when searching for a game.

We need consistency between casual and Ranked. They SHOULD be the same game, except one is tracked in your Ranked level stats and the other isn’t.

While I agree to some points, I’m quite staggered on how much you weight the fact that you can’t play with your friends on a same server. It’s totally possible, by joining an empty enough server. And guess what ? A good third of the time you might get stacked with your friends in a same team, for fairly balanced games.

On top of that, I simply can’t understand people asking for stopwatch removal. It’s the core of any team objective game, and, for pretty obvious reasons : attack will never equals defense and perfect 1 W/L ratio is impossible to reach. That’s what destroyed the most interesting map we had in dirty bomb -old dome, except some bits of it or should I say the best map design concept- and turned every other into brainless funnels. I simply don’t figure the reasoning behind this.

Either way, I totally agree on the fact that 7vs7 is far too much in this game. But in the meantime, I do think they’ve failed by focusing competitive on 5vs5. Every merc is core in this format, leaving no room for variety at all. So you’ll always end up with Arty/Nader/Fragger/2Medics/Fletcher or turtle comps with close no side steps to other mercs. And so goes map sizes, for some of which are too small for more than 5vs5 indeed. 6vs6 would have been the way to go in my view.

@watsyurdeal Fragger’s case is probably the best example of shitty nitpicking balancing they’ve done for 3 years. 130 hp for what was a tanky merc originally ? Seriously ? They had two options 1) Reduce Hp and keep the free kill capabilities at EVERY SPAWN WAVE 2) Rework the grenade massively to disable its 1 htk capabilities but instead massive AOE with guaranteed 70 hp (as an example, just make sure he can’t 1 hit even aura), keeping the original 160 hp fragger had. They’ve chose the easiest path obviously, but they’ve put fragger massively far from its original nature… Same goes for every explosive merc tbh…

(Xenithos) #5

@watsyurdeal said:
Let’s talk about how exactly do we solve the core issues people had?
Ironically, the problem Splash Damage gave wasn’t just the poor balance which can be attributed from what you listed, but rather that the queue times were too long in both gamemodes. :confused:

@bgyoshi said:

@watsyurdeal said:
We need to brain storm on how we can actively improve the average skill of our player base, while also thinking of ways to make things more fair and reasonable to deal with.
The devs can make the best tutorial ever, and people will still ignore it. Or they’ll rush through it without paying attention because they want to get to the main game. Or they’ll finish the tutorial and stop for 3 days, then come back to the game and have forgotten everything.

The tutorial already goes over all three mercs’ abilities and roles, with examples. The obstacle course furthers Skyhammer’s role and abilities.
I actually agree with most of what you said, excluding what you claimed about the tutorial and one of the fixes being possibly phasing out Stopwatch (which is my absolute preferred gamemode because of the locked timers not making the game feel as random.)

Here’s why I disagree about the tutorial. First off, have you played the tutorial recently? Yeah, it’s better than it USED to be, but lemme go over/list some problems:

  • CHARGING the pads to revive with more health is NEVER mentioned.
  • They teach you how to pick people up as Skyhammer - This disassociates the strength of ROLES in DB. You should NOT pick people up with any other role unless it’s just after long spawn, you’re safe, and 90% of the time I would only EVER pick up the medic if I myself am not a medic.
  • The strengths of listening to environment is not mentioned, and cannot even be explored because there are no other environmental examples provided.
  • Covering your team while they plant is not demonstrated in any way. I recommend that they have a Proxy/Bushwhacker trying to plant, but you have to protect her or step in front of her as she plants for the tutorial to have any real merit there.
  • Bushwhacker is still not in the tutorial.
  • Spawn timers are never mentioned, wall jumping to specific places is unpracticed unless you do the assault course, but the assault course is un-intuitive to newer players and teaching them THAT specific goal. AND players aren’t introduced to that until they’re launched into a newer match. (only one jump that actually appears obviously is provided, and it’s kind of a lousy one)
  • The pure speed of an engineer planting isn’t mentioned…
(Xenithos) #6

@watsyurdeal said:
Let’s talk about how exactly do we solve the core issues people had?

Which are from what I can gather

  • Bad Teamwork
  • Clueless team mates
  • Mercs that lack good counter play (good meaning you don’t have to switch to another merc and play Rock Paper Scissors)
  • Matchmaking based on win and loss, rather than your own performance as an individual, in comparison with everyone else

Bad Teamwork and Clueless team mates is not exactly something I want to open up atm.

However: Mercs that lack good counter play? and “good meaning you don’t have to switch to another merc and play rock paper scissors?” Could you clarify that again for me? I’m still not fully sure what you’re saying was a core issue.
I think a problem was that DB started adding mercs that their sole purpose was nearly counter play, Guardian, Phantom, etc… Both of these mercs are actually quite strong, but only if you have a team around them… However I wouldn’t have called either of these an issue, what I would call an issue is actually merc stacking, which CAUSED those mercs to be a problem. Especially with certain merc combinations, like multiple Artys or Stokers or Guardians.

You fix that, and I think you would see a lot of issues go away.

As for matchmaking based on win loss, rather than individual performance, I completely agree, but Splash Damage has to choose to change that. Nothing we can do.

(bgyoshi) #7

@B_Montiel said:
While I agree to some points, I’m quite staggered on how much you weight the fact that you can’t play with your friends on a same server. It’s totally possible, by joining an empty enough server. And guess what ? A good third of the time you might get stacked with your friends in a same team, for fairly balanced games.

Wow yeah sounds great.

1: “Hey friends join this server there’s 4 open slots”
2: “Okay joining. Oh fuck the server’s full.”
3: “I got in”
1: “Dammit okay I’m dropping out hold on.”
3: “Fuck really? Okay me too”
2: “Oh I found one hurry there’s 3 spaces left”
1: “Oh okay I made it”
3: “Fuck man server’s full!”
1 & 2: “Damnit okay let’s find a really empty server.”
3: “I got one 8 open slots”
1: “I’m in”
2: “I’m in!”
3: “Alright sweet let’s play!”
1: “Hopefully more people will join”
2: “Yeah man this 5v4 is pretty bad”
3: “Oh look that guy on your team left”
1: “5v3… I’ll switch”
3: “Yeah alright 4v4 now”
2: “Fuck man another guy left why isn’t anyone joining”
1: “Dammit this sucks we aren’t even on the same team let’s go find another server.”

i.e. Every time you try to play as a party without a way to join a server as a party

This is why you need party queuing
This is why there’s a huge weight on the fact that this functionality doesn’t exist
You know where it does exist? In pretty much every other game
And when you have quick join be 1 person at a time, servers won’t fill up fast enough. You’ll get quick joined to some empty 3v3 server, sit there for 6 minutes as people come and go, never getting enough people to play

But when you’re quick joining as a party, suddenly 5 people are joining at the same time. Or 3 parties of 2, or whatever. Servers fill up faster, players get to play full games.

On top of that, I simply can’t understand people asking for stopwatch removal.

Because counting down from 15 minutes sucks. The mode drags on forever, people get sick of playing after 10 minutes of no progress, and it doesn’t retain players. Objective timers are objectively (hur) better. So why not play objective mode, track progress and time, and then switch attackers and defenders after a round? That’s literally all that Stopwatch is, except you get a single block of time to complete the map, instead of incrementing time.

You don’t have to balance attack and defense. Both players will get a chance to attack and defend, but both teams will only get 7 minutes for the first objective, and gain time when they complete it. That’s how objective works, now just switch teams after one side completes or fails.

@Xenithos said:

  • You should NOT pick people up with any other role unless it’s just after long spawn, you’re safe, and 90% of the time I would only EVER pick up the medic if I myself am not a medic.

What a team player

In 7v7 I pick up people while not playing medic all the time, especially the medics.

You can’t teach advanced game mechanics and expect players to retain them. They can’t even retain the basics of “Push e to throw ammo” so how do you expect to explain and retain “When you hear this annoying vibrating, a Kira laser is down! Run! When you hear this clinking noise, ammo was dropped near you! Turn around! When you hear beeping, someone is planting! Go defend!”

I’ll stick with the position that the tutorial will never be good enough to reliably instruct players on how the game works. Players will do it, instantly forget it, and we’ll be back at square 1 anyway. People don’t want to be bogged down by big long tutorials anymore, they just want to play. A better way to teach them is to force them to play in servers with other low level players, max level 5, work them up to more experienced servers, max level 15, before releasing them with the rest of us.

Players learn better when they’re playing the actual game and can fail/succeed on their own. You can’t trap them in complicated tutorials for an hour and expect them to care about playing afterwards.

This is another reason why I prefer Max level servers over Min level servers. Keep low level players playing low level players. By level 15, pretty much everyone knows all the basic and complex mechanics enough to not be complete dead weight. It also helps the difficulty curve, allowing players to start on a lower curve and rising to the top of it before being thrust into the real game.

(No_Point) #8

Let me see, if this post even appears, but in a nutshell, the primary reason Ranked mode just did not work was due to the constant conflicts in player interests.

For example, here are some of the reasons why I wanted to play Ranked mode:

  • Less players, which meant far less spam in general, and far better frame rate when playing on a potato.
  • Friendly Fire was on, which meant that some newbie could not just run through me and block all of my bullets.
  • I wanted to win and see how high of a rank I could get.
  • And eventually, who wouldn’t want to get some silly trinkets and what not?

And here are some of the reasons why I eventually did not want to play Ranked mode:

  • There are people who did not want to win the match.
  • The players in the enemy team were hidden and therefore I could not pick my own mercenaries and loadouts to counter the enemy team.
  • The levels and ranks were hidden during match, which prevents accurate communication between my own team.
  • I played in the solo queue, and almost every game I got was against a group of players from the pre-made party queue.
  • Thus I found myself on a constant up-hill battle without an actual pay-off at the end.

I think it was somewhere in the end of the third ranked season that I honestly just snapped. I got a match with the following teams: Me (Gold rank), some mid silver rank, bronze master, and two unranked players - against a team of mono gold rank players. All higher rank than me. Sure, I could push at the enemy, but my team could not follow or do a single thing apart from guarding their own spawn…

The above match itself was nothing new, there were worse odds that I faced, but it was the final straw. Thus it got me thinking, if it is impossible for me to reach the highest rank, why not go for the lowest rank instead. At that point I was more than familiar with people throwing the match on my side, being constantly pitted against pre-made teams that have 2 or more cobalt ranked players, and of course the alt logins some ranked players used in order to help match making in order rank up the main logins of their friends.

Thus I started playing Thunder, with some first generation melee based loadout card and only used melee weapons. Well, I did at times shoot one bullet at some turret or healing station to get that 100% accuracy on the post match screen for giggles. But in other words, I kept losing and losing, until I started to get assigned with those pre-made teams of 3 and 4. I warned them in advance that I would only throw flashbang grenades and use melee. So many times they were confident of their own skills only to turn so, so salty when they lost and got auto-kicked. It brought a smile on my face to see those pre-made cobalt teams lose against random silver and bronze rank teams. And here is the thing, in every game I got thousands of points of combat experience from blinding the enemy team and some more from knife kills. It is not my fault people rush ahead of a melee Thunder.

Eventually I reached the Bronze Recruit rank and stopped playing. With the 4th ranked season I got my 11 losses for my Bronze Recruit rank, and eventually I got the trinket to show for it. I kind of wanted to continue playing to get those Nader Obsidians, but I didn’t.

In a way, I was looking forward to playing seriously in the 5th ranked season, you know, work my way up from the lowest rank and all that…

But I am not bummed out by the removal of Ranked mode… It just did not work. At all. It was not a satisfying experience. Currently I play on CMM, for the 6v6 teams, and it too suffers from the same Ranked mode cancer. Like earlier today, I got ‘rekt’ because the teams were 4v6… from the start.

I do wish there were ‘FF on’ servers or at least collision… But back on the topic of Ranked, you cannot fix it because the people who are or were playing it… can easily game the odds in their own favor and ruin the experience. One way or another. Perhaps 100% solo queue could work, which is basically just quick join if you look at it realistically.

So… FF on servers please. Or at least expand the collision to your own team.

(B_Montiel) #9

@bgyoshi said:
Wow yeah sounds great.
…

Well, I’ve used what is here commonly called community servers for 20 years, and you know, not that far away, you did not have access to a friends list. We still achieved to join the same servers for fun and teamwork anyhow. And this does also apply in dirty bomb. Thats why we run the AIE server in Europe.

Because counting down from 15 minutes sucks. The mode drags on forever, people get sick of playing after 10 minutes of no progress, and it doesn’t retain players. Objective timers are objectively (hur) better. So why not play objective mode, track progress and time, and then switch attackers and defenders after a round? That’s literally all that Stopwatch is, except you get a single block of time to complete the map, instead of incrementing time.

You don’t have to balance attack and defense. Both players will get a chance to attack and defend, but both teams will only get 7 minutes for the first objective, and gain time when they complete it. That’s how objective works, now just switch teams after one side completes or fails.

Then call it a stopwatch rework then. I simply dont know how SD has built their stopwatch rules. In pretty much any other similar game it works that way. But it’s called stopwatch. And I’d definitely go for that. Objective mostly means one sided map here so try to be clear on that one.

First attack team gets x minutes to complete first objective, then additional y and z for second and third. At the end of timer, games computes the overall progression, no matter if the last objective is done.
Second attacking team gets the overall time to complete as much objective as possible. Here two choices : either they complete the last objective faster / go further than the previous team and win, either they don’t and lose.
Simple, reduce the game length significantly (unless the first attack team/second defending team become god-like at defense), and, on top of that, reduces to pretty much nothing draw situations (which can also be further reduced if you take into account the previous objective completion time).

(woodchip) #10

Meh I don’t think any of the ‘issues’ that led people to want matchmaking are better served by CMM compared to what it was before. Pre CMM you could at least join a high level server to greatly mitigate playing with the truly clueless, post CMM you had to rely on the matchmaking putting you in a higher skill game which it did not reliably do no matter how good you were.

The rest of your issues aren’t really related to matchmaking vs no matchmaking.

(Xenithos) #11

@bgyoshi said:

@B_Montiel said:
While I agree to some points, I’m quite staggered on how much you weight the fact that you can’t play with your friends on a same server. It’s totally possible, by joining an empty enough server. And guess what ? A good third of the time you might get stacked with your friends in a same team, for fairly balanced games.
i.e. Every time you try to play as a party without a way to join a server as a party
10/10 representation, would read again. Agree. :stuck_out_tongue:
This is why you need party queuing
This is why there’s a huge weight on the fact that this functionality doesn’t exist
You know where it does exist? In pretty much every other game

@Xenithos said:

  • You should NOT pick people up with any other role unless it’s just after long spawn, you’re safe, and 90% of the time I would only EVER pick up the medic if I myself am not a medic.

What a team player
I’m actually an incredibly good team player. In fact My most played mercs, 2 of which are medics. And if someone else who is not a medic gets in the way and is trying to pick up the guy I’m trying to defib, and either absorbs my defibs or gets mad at me, I think you would know MY reaction back. Second of all, when not playing medic, everything I said there is usually in a competitive setting. We WERE speaking about a competitive setting, and fixing the reasoning for getting rid of two slightly more competitive gamemodes. Sure, if I’m in a pub I’ll pick people up, but I’m going back to the point that it REALLY isn’t your role to stay back and pick someone up. Especially when said person is usually a vassili or low level player that did something pretty dumb.

In 7v7 I pick up people while not playing medic all the time, especially the medics.
Yeah, pick up the medics, in 7v7 I pick people up too. Nothing new.
You can’t teach advanced game mechanics and expect players to retain them. They can’t even retain the basics of “Push e to throw ammo” so how do you expect to explain and retain “When you hear this annoying vibrating, a Kira laser is down! Run! When you hear this clinking noise, ammo was dropped near you! Turn around! When you hear beeping, someone is planting! Go defend!”
Dude, the whole push e to throw ammo? I see low level skyhammers that I tell them once in a match and I suddenly get ammo for thee rest of the match. Sure, retaining the sounds might be hard, and I’m not saying teach them that, but I do think telling them that environment sounds of PEOPLE WALKING is important! I mean, CMON. The awareness of most people is basically nada! Also, I have taught MANY newer players to just charge the healing pulse or the defibs and they go, “oh, I didn’t even know that was possible. No one’s told me before” so you can take your whole little believing all new players are idiots thing and throw it out the window. It’s not an advanced mechanic, it’s an UNEXPLAINED mechanic!

I’ll stick with the position that the tutorial will never be good enough to reliably instruct players on how the game works. Players will do it, instantly forget it, and we’ll be back at square 1 anyway. People don’t want to be bogged down by big long tutorials anymore, they just want to play.
Sure, people don’t want to be bogged down, but I’ve played games where the tutorial didn’t even seem like a tutorial. Half the time, people just want to have fun while doing the tutorial.

Players learn better when they’re playing the actual game and can fail/succeed on their own. You can’t trap them in complicated tutorials for an hour and expect them to care about playing afterwards.
Sure, I’ve been talking about a buddy tutor system since day one.

(bgyoshi) #12

@B_Montiel said:
Well, I’ve used what is here commonly called community servers for 20 years, and you know, not that far away, you did not have access to a friends list. We still achieved to join the same servers for fun and teamwork anyhow. And this does also apply in dirty bomb. Thats why we run the AIE server in Europe.

Yes I know, I’ve been around the block for a long awhile. I remember what it was and where it’s gone. Having a single party system is better than forcing players to jump server to server just to try and play together, or by forcing the community to run and manage the game for you by way of white-list community servers. Integrate the functionality like every other developer has done, and you won’t lose players that are already used to the new way to party. Evolve with the times.

Then call it a stopwatch rework then.

I did, in multiple threads

Second attacking team gets the overall time to complete as much objective as possible.

No, second attacking team gets 7 minutes for the first objective, and can’t add more time to the timer than the first team used. So if the first team did the whole map in 9 minutes, the second team gets 7 minutes to complete the first objective, and gets +2 minutes when they do. If the first team did it in 10 minutes, the second would get +3, etc. And if the first team, somehow, crushes over the defenders for a map-clear in under 7 minutes, then the second team will get that much time, and +0 after the first objective is complete.

That makes no given round last longer than 7 minutes unless the attackers push through the first objective. That’s how the game length gets reduced.

@Xenithos said:
We WERE speaking about a competitive setting, and fixing the reasoning for getting rid of two slightly more competitive gamemodes.

Perhaps you were speaking in the context of competitive settings, but the topic was tutorials for beginners, who only have access to CMM and 7v7, NON COMPETITIVE settings, until Level 7. They teach you, as a beginner, in the tutorial, that you can pick up other players without being medic. That’s good, and players should do it.

It just further points out the disparity between casual and competitive. They can’t be, shouldn’t be, and will never be, compared to each other. That’s why 7v7 needs to go away, and all modes, casual or not, need to be the same player count and FF settings… so that the experience people get in casual CAN be compared to competitive.

(Ptiloui) #13

Consistency is the master s word here.

Consistency between how the game is tested and how the game is played. Contents are private tested in a 5v5 FF-on 1 merc rule environment ? Fine. If this is how the game is meant to be played, it’s ok. But at least make this game mode IN the actual game. And I shouldn’t need to join a discord group or any external program to play the game how is meant to be played (this sentence reminds me some ads :innocent:). Even the balance tweaks that Javelin, Guardian and Phantom redux had known after their release could have been avoided if the game could be played the same way they have been tested.
As for the one merc rule, it should start with getting rid of the squad system, because it will never work with it. I understand it may be really difficult to recode the game for this, but I may say :“Well, too bad for you SD that you didn’t think of it in the beginning but this has to be done now, no matter the hundreds of work hours it requires”.

Consistency between the competitive set up and the casual one. You can’t expect players to magically know how to play in a 5v5 ff-on environment when the only set up they had known during their first hours of gameplay was set in a 7v7 (or worse, 8v8) ff-off set up. So, get rid of these modes that add nothing good to the game, so everyone can only play the way is meant to be played.

Consistency between tutorial and the game. No engineer tutorial ? Maybe I’m too naïve but I still trust SD to add this missing part with the addition of Bushwhacker as the third free merc.
But while the tutorial is a good way to learn the basics of how the game is played and what to do with the free mercs, there are still things that are lacking or could be greatly improves :

  • Merc bio’s linking to the updated merc-role-call video ;
  • Stats of each abilities : cooldown, damages, radius, efficiency bonus (for example if direct hitting), etc ;
  • Remove the “quick ability X” key. I’m sure a fair amount of players don’t know that you can aim down sight with Arty’s laser marker, because the quick ability key doesn’t allow enough time to experience how the ability works.
  • Pick up players ? Sure ! But at least know what it means : being revived with 30hp, leaving you vulnerable from at max two shots from any weapons.

But I agree that some things can’t or shouldn’t be explained, so there is still a way for players to discover from themselves or learn from others and improve. Sound is important. Spectating while dead is not just a way to see how other teammates play. Learn to play with spawn timers. Etc.

Consistency between the game and what it allows. It’s a team-based shooter. TEAM-BASED. Why can’t we play with friends ? Playing as a party is the core of a game like Dirty Bomb. Not being able to do so completely kills its purpose. Personally, I don’t really care if I play with or against my friends. But for players that want to improve as a team and who aim at the competitive part of the game, not having a party system is a killer move, because in the end, you’ll lose multiple players at one time.

Also, I’ll say it again but lvl 7 was a too low restriction for ranked mode. Lvl means nothing ? Ok, let’s restrict to something else then. Number of mercs unlocked ? Those who care more about the gameplay than the shinies (generally, those who know better how to play) will still be able to play ranked soon because they’ll spend their credits on mercs, and not on “useless” cool skins. Mercs that are on rotation and you don’t own are not available in ranked, so no more “This merc seems powerful, let’s play it in competitive environment, even if I don’t know how to play him/her.”

After that, I really like the suggestion of @bgyoshi regarding the rework of the stopwatch mode. When the CMM was introduced, SD said that it was only available with objective mode because it was the most popular one, being the quickest. SO, maybe rework the SW mode so it lasts shorter, while still offering more balanced and fair matches ? Especially since Attack will never equals Defense, and that maps such as Castle are designed with side switching in mind. Heck, even all the maps reduxes could have been avoided if SW was the only game mode.

(B_Montiel) #14

@bgyoshi said:

Second attacking team gets the overall time to complete as much objective as possible.

No, second attacking team gets 7 minutes for the first objective, and can’t add more time to the timer than the first team used. So if the first team did the whole map in 9 minutes, the second team gets 7 minutes to complete the first objective, and gets +2 minutes when they do. If the first team did it in 10 minutes, the second would get +3, etc. And if the first team, somehow, crushes over the defenders for a map-clear in under 7 minutes, then the second team will get that much time, and +0 after the first objective is complete.

That makes no given round last longer than 7 minutes unless the attackers push through the first objective. That’s how the game length gets reduced.

That’s a incredibly strong first attack bias then. You can’t give shorter duration for the second attacking team. If first attack took X minutes to complete any percentage of the map, you have to give the same amount of time for the second team overall, no matter what, even if it leads them to take more time for the first objectives.

What you basically say mean that the second attacking can’t take longer time to complete any of the objective… Which is punishing to say the least, failed attack of failed defense wave do often happen.

The first attacking team gives a percentage of completion and a time to beat. Second directly gets its objective from the first attack side, and should beat through the overall map, even if it implies taking longer on first objectives.

TBH, if first attack gets on hold on first objectives, either the map is badly constructed or the defenders are way stronger. That should happen in minimal situations. If first attackers took 15 min to complete the whole map, defenders have been pretty strong, so they also deserve a fair 15 min trying to beat them. What is implied sadly is that you can’t really limit second round 15 min spawnkill. And if it happens, one of the team was way better at defending than attacking, which is pretty rare to say the least.

Make it shorter, yes, but dont make it biased.

(bgyoshi) #15

@B_Montiel said:
Make it shorter, yes, but dont make it biased.

Both teams are given identical conditions to complete the map. If one team is good at attacking and can complete the first obj in under 7 minutes but takes 15 minutes to complete the rest of the map, it stands to reason that there is a strong bias in allowing the second attacking team to spend 12 minutes completing the first objective, just to roll the rest of the map in 2 minutes. The first team in the same conditions would have lost, so it’s not fair to give the second team a handicap of extra time.

You get 7 minutes for the first objective. Both teams do. You fail under the same conditions, you succeed under the same conditions.

If the map is defender biased, then both teams should do well on defense. If the map is attacking biased, then both teams should do well on offense. If one team is bad at attacking on a defender biased map, and loses on defense, they deserve to lose on offense too. They don’t get special treatment for being second; there’s no inherent disadvantage to going second.

Everything is equal.

I’m moving this stopwatch talk here http://forums.dirtybomb.com/discussion/39769/stopwatch-rework/p1

(watsyurdeal) #16

I think this is important video towards this topic

Ultimately people will get mad when they lose, but giving people a general idea or path in game to improve will help with this.

Whether it’d be an in game tutorial, practice maps for aiming and shooting, parkour practice, whatever it may be, if it helps develop player skills it’s a good thing.

On top of that

@Xenithos said:

However: Mercs that lack good counter play? and “good meaning you don’t have to switch to another merc and play rock paper scissors?” Could you clarify that again for me? I’m still not fully sure what you’re saying was a core issue.

To put it simply, I shouldn’t have to play Guardian to deal with Arty, or Hunter to deal with Turtle. There should be realistic counters that you can do at any time with any merc to deal with their abilities or strengths, whether it’d be rushing Fragger when he’s trying to cook his nade, cause you can hear a voice over that tells you he started cooking it. Or laying down suppressive fire against Vasilli which may not kill him, but it will force him to leave an area or position because he can’t hit anything due to aim punch. Or hell, even easier one, making the delay for proxy mines long enough that you can avoid them without taking too much damage, at least enough that would kill you instantly. Which we DID have until she got Lock On.

These are just sort of common sense things to think about, a merc should be fun to play, but also fun to play against because they have a weakness or a certain way they do things that you can exploit.

(kopyright) #17

@bgyoshi said:
You get 7 minutes for the first objective. Both teams do. You fail under the same conditions, you succeed under the same conditions.

What happens when one team only takes a minute for the first objective? Will the other team be allowed just one minute for that phase, too? That would make for some pretty short matches on Chapel.

(Mc1412013) #18

@watsyurdeal said:

There should be realistic counters that you can do at any time with any merc to deal with their abilities or strengths, whether it’d be rushing Fragger when he’s trying to cook his nade, cause you can hear a voice over that tells you he started cooking it. Or laying down suppressive fire against Vasilli which may not kill him, but it will force him to leave an area or position because he can’t hit anything due to aim punch. Or hell, even easier one, making the delay for proxy mines long enough that you can avoid them without taking too much damage, at least enough that would kill you instantly. Which we DID have until she got Lock On.

So what your saying is u want sd to be like your mommy and hold your hand playing the game???

(Ptiloui) #19

@kopyright said:

@bgyoshi said:
You get 7 minutes for the first objective. Both teams do. You fail under the same conditions, you succeed under the same conditions.

What happens when one team only takes a minute for the first objective? Will the other team be allowed just one minute for that phase, too? That would make for some pretty short matches on Chapel.

.

@bgyoshi said in http://forums.dirtybomb.com/discussion/39769/stopwatch-rework/p1:
*Team 1 completes the map in 6 minutes
Team 2 will get 6 minutes, +0, +0, and wins if they complete the map before the timer ends

Unless the Team 1 completes the whole map under 7 minutes, Team 2 will still have 7 minutes to complete first obj. If they succeed, they gain the remaining time based on first team perf to do same or more obj.

(watsyurdeal) #20

@Mc1412013 said:

@watsyurdeal said:

There should be realistic counters that you can do at any time with any merc to deal with their abilities or strengths, whether it’d be rushing Fragger when he’s trying to cook his nade, cause you can hear a voice over that tells you he started cooking it. Or laying down suppressive fire against Vasilli which may not kill him, but it will force him to leave an area or position because he can’t hit anything due to aim punch. Or hell, even easier one, making the delay for proxy mines long enough that you can avoid them without taking too much damage, at least enough that would kill you instantly. Which we DID have until she got Lock On.

So what your saying is u want sd to be like your mommy and hold your hand playing the game???

Lol are you serious?

Is asking to not have to switch to a merc that may or may not be in my squad or my team’s squads, to deal with a specific merc that much to ask?

This is a shooter first and foremost, this isn’t strictly class-based and you have to do certain things, like say Overwatch for example. Every character has the same capacity to kill other characters, there’s no hard line where Medics, for example, have to only heal and never get into 1v1s. And on top of that, not every merc is available at any given time, whereas in Overwatch or TF2, every hero or class you can switch to at any moment you need to. You can adapt and deal with just about any team composition. Dirty Bomb doesn’t have that, so any ability that exists has to have some degree of counterplay that anyone can do to deal with it.

And you wonder why this game isn’t catching on, this kind of mentality isn’t exactly welcoming to players, and more so it doesn’t make any sense.