It'll be interesting to see

K1X455 · 2017-12-01 22:55:14 UTC

the end of year player count of Dirty Bomb…

And the consequently,

the start of year player count trend of Dirty Bomb leading up to the March 2018 out of beta release date

I really hate being a devil’s advocate, but it just feels so bad right now

STARRYSOCK · 2017-12-02 05:54:08 UTC

You have to keep in mind real world events too. A lot of the people playing DB are students, and a lot of them are dealing with exams right now.

Some people are also going to be away on holiday pretty soon, so not all of it is really DB’s fault.

Nail · 2017-12-02 07:33:00 UTC

Why, what possible difference will it make ?

GatoCommodore · 2017-12-02 17:35:50 UTC

@Nail said:
Why, what possible difference will it make ?

Making DB look bad or good

TheStrangerous · 2017-12-02 17:43:49 UTC

1st half of the 2017 was spent licking wounds, after catastrophic 2016.
2nd half of 2017 was all about reforming.

Artyrim · 2017-12-02 18:23:32 UTC

Since august the game started dying for me

They removed execution
They added Javelin(the merc I hate the most) and Guardian
No objective servers(EU)
No MIN LVL 10/20 servers
They replaced Quick Join with CMM …
And if they remove even sw server i will leave as well.

And if you look at count since august db lost players. So a count is not really a good thing for db because we all know the sad truth

K1X455 · 2017-12-05 04:34:08 UTC

I reckon it’s the best time for a marketing push.

Population stimulus is much needed.

doxjq · 2017-12-05 05:42:21 UTC

The last update was the last straw for me. Haven’t touched the game since. Pretty sure most of the Fsn guys uninstalled with me. I could count the ones still playing on one hand. That says something too, when you consider how dedicated we were last year to growing a competitive community and how much we all loved this game.

Dirty Bomb has just been like a bad marriage. You want to hold on but there’s only so much nonsense you can tolerate. Adding a whole bunch of bs RNG to gun battles (fkn lmao @ horizontal recoil) is just too much for me to take this game seriously anymore. I don’t disagree balance changes needed to happen, but this was just the wrong way to go and it seriously concerns me that so many people disagree.

Never seen so many veterans quit before. Some of the most hardcore guys clocking in 60-70+ hours a week have just gone cold turkey. That really says something about the last update. No amount of new content is going to draw back the hardcore players either, and I have a feeling that new content is all we’re going to see between now and release. The game needs balance, but it also needs to feel fun, and right now the guns feel like trash so all fun is gone.

GatoCommodore · 2017-12-05 12:52:49 UTC

@doxjq said:
The last update was the last straw for me. Haven’t touched the game since. Pretty sure most of the Fsn guys uninstalled with me. I could count the ones still playing on one hand. That says something too, when you consider how dedicated we were last year to growing a competitive community and how much we all loved this game.

Dirty Bomb has just been like a bad marriage. You want to hold on but there’s only so much nonsense you can tolerate. Adding a whole bunch of bs RNG to gun battles (fkn lmao @ horizontal recoil)

yea i also kind of upset with horizontal recoil

instead of tweaking a little they just made it more random for BRs
I just saw one of the video made before the patch.
it made me feel anger and rage

i really thought they were going to give BRs more delay and fix sniper
instead they brought more RNG elements to nerf the BRs

I THOUGHT PEOPLE IN PTS ARE PROFESSIONALS OR SOMETHING…

doxjq · 2017-12-05 17:46:51 UTC

The problem with the burst rifles was mostly the fact that they were able to do so much damage in such a short period of time. That’s always been the main complaint. All they needed to do was nerf their damage substantially - End of story. I’m really not sure why they came up with horizontal recoil and just generally making guns less accurate.

Like I say, balance needed to happen, but recoil and spread was not the right solution. That just adds randomness and inconsistency, and not to mention piss a lot of people off. I honestly don’t think anyone would have argued against the nerf if all they did was nerf damage.

Melinder · 2017-12-05 18:28:42 UTC

@GatoCommodore said:
I THOUGHT PEOPLE IN PTS ARE PROFESSIONALS OR SOMETHING…

It was established a hell of a long time ago that the PTS isn’t and never was used for properly testing updates. It was always for Content Creators to prepare content prior to the update going live. SD would never listen to anything anybody says.

Unrivaled · 2017-12-05 22:42:08 UTC

@STARRYSOCK said:
You have to keep in mind real world events too. A lot of the people playing DB are students, and a lot of them are dealing with exams right now.

Some people are also going to be away on holiday pretty soon, so not all of it is really DB’s fault.

Actually, real world events have very little impact on the player count of video games, I would even say they don’t have any. And the end of the year is definitely not a period in which the player count tends to be low, exams or not.

Last year, december was the month of the biggest rise in the player count in DB’s history (+33.46%), and november 2015 the second biggest one, while this november has been the biggest decrease in the player count (-19.54%) since september 2015. We’ll see how december goes, but for now it’s even worse than november.

The Castle update will artificially improve the numbers, but in the long run, the changes that doxjq mentioned won’t bring players back. I really couldn’t agree more with everything he said.

K1X455 · 2017-12-05 23:07:26 UTC

@doxjq said:
The last update was the last straw for me. Haven’t touched the game since. Pretty sure most of the Fsn guys uninstalled with me. I could count the ones still playing on one hand. That says something too, when you consider how dedicated we were last year to growing a competitive community and how much we all loved this game.

Dirty Bomb has just been like a bad marriage. You want to hold on but there’s only so much nonsense you can tolerate. Adding a whole bunch of bs RNG to gun battles (fkn lmao @ horizontal recoil) is just too much for me to take this game seriously anymore. I don’t disagree balance changes needed to happen, but this was just the wrong way to go and it seriously concerns me that so many people disagree.

Never seen so many veterans quit before. Some of the most hardcore guys clocking in 60-70+ hours a week have just gone cold turkey. That really says something about the last update. No amount of new content is going to draw back the hardcore players either, and I have a feeling that new content is all we’re going to see between now and release. The game needs balance, but it also needs to feel fun, and right now the guns feel like trash so all fun is gone.

This is exactly why I feel so bad about DB right now. I just feel that I don’t want it to come from me because I was in the same situation with a game I left 3 years ago. It got out of beta, but developers have sold the rights to another company and the new owners ran the game to the ground (I guess I bailed out before the ship sank). DB is coming out of beta soon, I’m still at it, and it’s that sinking feeling behind the back of my head that I’ve been ignoring and turning away from all the time if I keep seeing proof. I keep getting warned, but I’m ignoring it and in a state of denial at the moment. I guess I’m too deeply invested in it.

After the weapon skins announcement, I fear for more disappointed players.

@GatoCommodore said:

I THOUGHT PEOPLE IN PTS ARE PROFESSIONALS OR SOMETHING…

When you get invited to the PTS, NDA is mandatory. If you’re a content creator, you should be able to discern things written in the fine print. And as a content creator, you’ll need to cater to your audience and if your audience suddenly finds something not to their liking, you’ll end up in conflict and have the potential of losing your audience as an asset. This creates a dilemma and you’ll be forced to broadcasts as governed by said agreement and not as you would in an unrestricted cast.

I was a huge fan of a few DB content creators then… but they’ve gone flat as of late… there are still a few of them out there, but it just doesn’t feel the same anymore.

GatoCommodore · 2017-12-06 05:40:14 UTC

Well time to get back to warthunder until SD pick their sh*t together

ThunderZsolt · 2017-12-06 06:45:45 UTC

@K1X455 said:
This is exactly why I feel so bad about DB right now. I just feel that I don’t want it to come from me because I was in the same situation with a game I left 3 years ago. It got out of beta, but developers have sold the rights to another company and the new owners ran the game to the ground (I guess I bailed out before the ship sank).

Which game was it?

Your description fits my story with Blacklight : Retribution, and the 3 years seems about right as well…

K1X455 · 2017-12-07 07:24:59 UTC

@ThunderZsolt said:

Which game was it?

Your description fits my story with Blacklight : Retribution, and the 3 years seems about right as well…

It’s a little over three and half years now I really don’t like the idea of digging up what I left behind. A lot of my friends early in this game have moved on as well and me and McSalt found a candidate for online experience but it’s still in its infancy and it requires a bit of maturity (it’s full of bugs!).

stayfreshshoe · 2017-12-08 16:55:14 UTC

@Melinder said:

@GatoCommodore said:
I THOUGHT PEOPLE IN PTS ARE PROFESSIONALS OR SOMETHING…

It was established a hell of a long time ago that the PTS isn’t and never was used for properly testing updates. It was always for Content Creators to prepare content prior to the update going live. SD would never listen to anything anybody says.

This is just not true. The PTS are asked to test specific features or updates and contains a variety of players from different backgrounds. The whole idea that the PTS purely consists of content creators or straight up incorrect and is a mentality that is negative not only for the PTS but for the game on the whole.

The PTS does include content creators as they need access to unreleased content. If they did not have acces they would not be able to make videos ahead of time.

We listen to what our PTS players say. Often there will be disagreements and discussions then take place, we encourage this behaviour. If you’re not involved int he PTS process, you aren’t privy to the goings on and this alone makes it unfair to comment or make assumptions.

Melinder · 2017-12-09 02:07:50 UTC

@stayfreshshoe said:

@Melinder said:

@GatoCommodore said:
I THOUGHT PEOPLE IN PTS ARE PROFESSIONALS OR SOMETHING…

It was established a hell of a long time ago that the PTS isn’t and never was used for properly testing updates. It was always for Content Creators to prepare content prior to the update going live. SD would never listen to anything anybody says.

This is just not true. The PTS are asked to test specific features or updates and contains a variety of players from different backgrounds. The whole idea that the PTS purely consists of content creators or straight up incorrect and is a mentality that is negative not only for the PTS but for the game on the whole.

The PTS does include content creators as they need access to unreleased content. If they did not have acces they would not be able to make videos ahead of time.

We listen to what our PTS players say. Often there will be disagreements and discussions then take place, we encourage this behaviour. If you’re not involved int he PTS process, you aren’t privy to the goings on and this alone makes it unfair to comment or make assumptions.

There’s a lie somewhere in there, because there’s no way these terrible balance updates get through testing without you ignoring absolutely all feedback, or your test team being completely braindead. I’ll leave it to you to decide which of those is true.

K1X455 · 2017-12-09 03:52:42 UTC

@Melinder said:

@stayfreshshoe said:

This is just not true. The PTS are asked to test specific features or updates and contains a variety of players from different backgrounds. The whole idea that the PTS purely consists of content creators or straight up incorrect and is a mentality that is negative not only for the PTS but for the game on the whole.

The PTS does include content creators as they need access to unreleased content. If they did not have acces they would not be able to make videos ahead of time.

We listen to what our PTS players say. Often there will be disagreements and discussions then take place, we encourage this behaviour. If you’re not involved int he PTS process, you aren’t privy to the goings on and this alone makes it unfair to comment or make assumptions.

There’s a lie somewhere in there, because there’s no way these terrible balance updates get through testing without you ignoring absolutely all feedback, or your test team being completely braindead. I’ll leave it to you to decide which of those is true.

What I think how the PTS process goes is that devs take feedback from what they have done in as far as an update is concerned (from all possible areas of interest). When conflicts are discovered, they are noted and appropriate action is taken. If the said appropriate action will take more time/effort to effect the intended action, this is a decision what Melinder is telling. Sometimes, it’s just not a just technical decision to make where you can flip switches and see a different result. It could be operational management or some other business beyond me (I really can’t tell, I’m too deep in to technical problem solving). Sometimes, the errors are just too blatant to be missed (remember the Exit button? I sent someone in stitches when I documented that).

GatoCommodore · 2017-12-09 06:18:33 UTC

@stayfreshshoe said:

@Melinder said:

@GatoCommodore said:
I THOUGHT PEOPLE IN PTS ARE PROFESSIONALS OR SOMETHING…

It was established a hell of a long time ago that the PTS isn’t and never was used for properly testing updates. It was always for Content Creators to prepare content prior to the update going live. SD would never listen to anything anybody says.

This is just not true. The PTS are asked to test specific features or updates and contains a variety of players from different backgrounds. The whole idea that the PTS purely consists of content creators or straight up incorrect and is a mentality that is negative not only for the PTS but for the game on the whole.

The PTS does include content creators as they need access to unreleased content. If they did not have acces they would not be able to make videos ahead of time.

We listen to what our PTS players say. Often there will be disagreements and discussions then take place, we encourage this behaviour. If you’re not involved int he PTS process, you aren’t privy to the goings on and this alone makes it unfair to comment or make assumptions.

Lets put it this way shoe.

In theory the people in PTS is like Representative in our government in real life. Their job, Our Job, is to make people lives better in many aspect.

Democracy (Community Sentiment) and Plain Facts (Telemetry System, Match Data Gathering ect.) Must be balanced so the community stay happy and the game keeps being fun

Absolute Democracy is bad because lets face it, most of the people playing are either under level 10 or just plain bad but kept leveling up (like me) so you cant count on the voice of the majority to decide the game direction

Absolute Truth is also bad, its what drove companies like Activision and EA into what they are now.

Thats why we have Representative (PTS players) to discuss the laws to enact
PTS players shouldnt be elected by the majority because sometimes there will be people that dont know what they are doing but they dictate the law.

now, when a law was applied that doesnt make the community happy and the game more unpredictable, People are gonna ask questions.

WHO THE HELL MADE THIS LAW?
of course people are gonna look at youtubers because they know these guys are also doing PTS.