It's time for Dev to look at the quality of the game not the "Fanciness" of it

[sampark]

Since I started playing DB, Balancing has been issues
I am sure this kind of rant are often posted but For devs. have you at least tried to alternate the system so It wouldnt reach this kind of hell-hole as it is right now?
It’s been a month that I was not able to find a match that was balanced equally. Whether the players were on coke or not. Score was always ratio of 2:1 (14K vs 7K and stuff)
Maybe this is the time you decide to look at the quality of the game not how it looks from outside.
AS a fan(I have not lost hope for this game… at least not yet.) it’s the quality that matters to us not the skins of characters.
Thank you

[BlackboltLW]

Is this about Quickjoin or Ranked matches?

[BloodySin]

They say they have been working on balancing, and I have issues with games often being unbalanced to one side too (getting a game where both sides struggle equally to win, a victory coming almost because of a sudden strike of luck in a push that gets a good long respawn is unfortunately very rare). But then again, look at it from their side too. No, it’s no real consolation, but still… how would you go about balancing the game?

The automatic answer seems to be “by level,” but at least from my personal experiences that often is just a placebo effect. Not only high level players create smurf accounts to be seen as newbies while knowing maps and characters inside-out, the level by itself is just a representation of time spent playing the game, which can mean certain knowledge, but not necessarily the ability to put it to use. Meanwhile new players who have some gaming experience can do fine from the get-go, just taking a little time to get used to how Dirty Bomb itself plays and adjusting to it.

Balancing by level also has the shortcoming of putting a single high level player among a bunch of low levels, while the other side has a balance of low-highs or medium range levels. A single high level can’t carry a whole group of disorganized people focusing on getting kills instead of fixing that fucking last pixel on the AV, if they are against a decent group.

Skill isn’t something that can be accurately assigned so people are grouped together by it either. Too many things can influence the overall result of your skill. If the rest of the group doesn’t cooperates and doesn’t focus on the objectives, your skill won’t be effective - it’s a team-based game after all. If you have higher ping, your skill will still be trampled by getting killed when you did move behind cover with good reaction time, but lag kept you exposed that 0.1 second too long. And then you have the ESP Aimbotters - which come in ALL level ranges, not just low ones.

Many ideas are thrown around for balancing, but they all get shot down by their negative sides, like limiting character stacking (“a newbie can take the character first and be useless,” “a newbie can use skills badly and set the more competent ones in a global cooldown”) or arranging matches in level ranges (“high levels will have too few people to play with if they can’t go against newbies,” “high levels will just create smurf accounts”).

In the end, the double-edged casual matchmaking that allows you to pre-create a group might help with that, although I also see a lot of full high-level groups being created to just stomp over less experienced ones. We’ll see. Either way, balancing is easy to demand, hard to implement in any effective way when there’s so much variety and so many variables.

You also seem to be completely ignoring the fact that Art/Design is a whole separate group. They aren’t “taking away” anyone who could be working on balance and making them create skins instead, so your last complain has no relevance. Let the department responsible for skins keep their work up - and let the fanservice-y ones come out already.

[sampark]

@BlackboltLW said:
Is this about Quickjoin or Ranked matches?

No I dont use Quick join Nor Ranked since I had to wait over 20+min to find nothing… I dont have any friends who play DB and every time i tried Ranked, I can not wait 20+min for a match,

[sampark]

Just spent an hour without finishing a match out of 7
No joke I had to just drop out since there was a not a single hope to get a single obj done for god’s sake.
I really dont care if Dev. aren’t gonna deal with the balance but If they don’t this game aint gonna be in full release soon. if it does it’s gonna take a load of dump from… Every Critics in the planet

[Szakalot]

@sampark aah so youre one of those that ragequits as soon as its not going your way.

many objectives in the game feel like hitting a wall repeatedly, especially with unoptimal merc comp.

quitting games midway through is one of the PRIMARY causes for horrible balance, so congrars for being part of the problem.

as to xp: the ‘better’ team will have more xp mostly due to badges: you survive, get kills and support for team and badges start to inflate your xp. the losing team will die more and have no time to rack up badge xp

[hurgya]

I agree in that, there’s always a team with lots of XP, and one with significantly less. The team with more points is likely to win, but it’s not rare for the other team to accomplish that. I have some ideas, why that can happen, but it’s not the point right now.

About shitty matches:

1. If you don’t enjoy the game take a break! No need to die a thousand times getting saltier every time
2. Learn to enjoy lost matches! Find a merc, you enjoy playing no matter what! (I’m not encouraging trolling with Phantom, but whatever floats your boat)
3. Git Gud! Don’t expect to enjoy a game, where the avarage play is way above your level
4. They are working on Casual Matchmaking for fuck’s sake! They are expanding their team constantly since Nexon left them alone, and they are doing matchmaking tests AT THIS FUCKING MOMENT!

So yeah, have patience, the good times are coming (actually they are here since the release of Dockyard)

Ranked is not worth the wait, though

[GatoCommodore]

Quitters makes the game less balanced and make it waaay harder for SD to balance stuff

[sampark]

Lemme address a few things in this comment
I rarely quit the match as soon as shit goes down horribly. I at least stay till the half(I’m not making excuses, I know it’s dirty af) but I am not going to have 4K by the end of game. I can easily go to another match and get 4K within 2 mins of a match.
Also yea I try to enjoy, when match is shitting itself, it’s for me to try new merc.
I have become too disappointed in this game as of recent. I still love game and play it. But I thought I could state my opinion.

[sampark]

@GatoCommodore said:
Quitters makes the game less balanced and make it waaay harder for SD to balance stuff
Regarding that issues, I really want Dev to bring a way of “punishment” for the player who leaves in the middle of the match.

[blufflord]

@sampark said:

@GatoCommodore said:
Quitters makes the game less balanced and make it waaay harder for SD to balance stuff
Regarding that issues, I really want Dev to bring a way of “punishment” for the player who leaves in the middle of the match.

You can’t really do that in pubs. The whole point of pubs is that youre free to drop out if you need to or whatever. It’s not meant to be this super serious thing.

[emjot]

I think the cap of skill is sitting next to lvl 30-40 at top. What does it mean.

1. If you are new to the game it’s obvious that tutorial won’t be enough to get to know the game itself. So you are newbie.
2. Then up to lvl 8-10 you learn how to use “extra powers” Q/E.
3. Lvl 10-20 you know the drill, you are practising the timing and explore the map better to find proper spot for each merc.
4. 20 - 30, you know how to jump, do tricks and where to aim in particular situation waiting for enemies, you can think how they think.
5. 30-40 - More aiming practice, and then stop. You just reached your maximum, unless you are FPS Freak who checks https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime every single day

Good lvl 15 can be better than lvl 182. So LVL from 30-40 up to 199 means very little.

However.
There is huge difference between team with 3x 20+ lvl and low lvls against team with 3x9lvl and less.

Of course public games are public games and we cannot demand much.
I like challenge and I’m not getting mad if I know my team was playing awesome game but lost. However I don’t like being stucked with newbies only.

IMO there should be:

1. Ranked server accessible only for 15lvl+
2. Players with lvl 1-3 and 4-7 shouldn’t be allowed to join servers with lvl 40+ players. They often don’t know the map.
3. 5 minutes cooldown if player leave the ranked game (for any mode, even public), I don’t see a problem with leaving on pubs because there is replacement in very short time.
4. Unbalanced team at start of the match:
   Let’s say it’s 6v4 with more players on the team repairing the EV. They do first OBJ very fast which gives the more time to complete it whole after more players join. People on winning team very rarely vote to shuffle teams or restart the map. So the solution would be to lower the required number of YES voters based on how many players are on the server.

Ranked servers somehow feel less very little populated, waiting for party for 4 minutes and sometimes even more (6-10) is frustrating. SD should attract people more so queuing would drop to 2 min max.

[sampark]

@blufflord said:

@sampark said:

@GatoCommodore said:
Quitters makes the game less balanced and make it waaay harder for SD to balance stuff
Regarding that issues, I really want Dev to bring a way of “punishment” for the player who leaves in the middle of the match.

You can’t really do that in pubs. The whole point of pubs is that youre free to drop out if you need to or whatever. It’s not meant to be this super serious thing.

True but By the result of leaving as it is, Current status is literal Shit-hole right now tho

[Sairdontis]

@blufflord I agree with some of your points, though, not the, “It’s not meant to be this super serious thing”. In videos Shoe himself admits that Quick Match is the main part of the game. Many do that take wins and losses seriously, otherwise, why compete at all. If not serious you just play with friends in a private match afterall.

[BloodySin]

@Sairdontis said:
@blufflord I agree with some of your points, though, not the, “It’s not meant to be this super serious thing”. In videos Shoe himself admits that Quick Match is the main part of the game. Many do that take wins and losses seriously, otherwise, why compete at all. If not serious you just play with friends in a private match afterall.
Private matches don’t give xp, credits or anything. And no, the point of the game is to have fun playing it, not to take everything in it seriously. Wanting punishment for people who ditch a casual game they aren’t having fun in will just increase the amount of players getting frustrated and leaving - the game, not the match. You’re basically advocating for people to be forced to stick around “or else.”

You can usually tell from the first objective in a match if the teams are balanced and both struggling to get an edge, of if it’s all about one side curbstomping and spawncamping the other. I’ll stick all the way to the loss when both teams are organized and competent, never making it easy for each other, but I’ll ditch without any qualms a game that has no future, be it because one team stacked characters (like 3-4 Skyhammers defending against an EV escort), because one team obviously has much higher skill levels (or, at times, just much more favorable ping), or if my team shows no coordination and teamwork at all. It’s not that I get “butthurt” and “ragequit.” I just value my time. That sort of steamrolling is just no fun, whichever side of it you are in. Start wanting to punish me for not being a masochist (why the word for “person who enjoys physical/mental/psychological suffering” is censored is beyond me…) and I’ll just have my fun elsewhere after ditching a game like that - probably not just me too.

[Sairdontis]

Rallying for victory has happened in games I have played. If you can regroup and work together the game is not lost until you are out of time.

[M4st0d0n]

You are already “punished” when you leave a game early by not having credit iirc. Not having fun and leaving is totally justified, but just bear in mind you reduce your earning rate to zero and it may not be better on another server. That’s free to play by essence.

My advice is… Just dont try hard the objective when it’s lobsided, play it like a survival horror game. And of course, if you’re spawncamped, press K while asking to scramble. Dont feed them! Every tool is there for people to balance the game themselves. If noobs had the simple instinct of regrouping and denying the kills when it’s a stomp and votes are not improving the situation, everyone would get bored of lobsided matches and scramble or restart would be used not just for trolling.

[Sairdontis]

Many games have been pulled out of a “sure loss” with a quick rally of the team.

[BloodySin]

@Sairdontis said:
Rallying for victory has happened in games I have played. If you can regroup and work together the game is not lost until you are out of time.
Yes, but I’m not talking about games where both teams are capable and one just has an upper hand. And even if you’re talking about matches that are pretty much hopeless, be it for no teamwork or too much skill difference or cheesed stacked characters, perhaps there’s a chance for something like that, but, unless I managed to get in a match with a friend, I just end up preferring to not wait 15+ minutes for the odd chance of that happening. I’m not saying others should do the same, I’m just reserving myself the right to do it and seek out a match that will provide more overall fun for all playing.

@M4st0d0n said:
You are already “punished” when you leave a game early by not having credit iirc. Not having fun and leaving is totally justified, but just bear in mind you reduce your earning rate to zero and it may not be better on another server. That’s free to play by essence.

My advice is… Just dont try hard the objective when it’s lobsided, play it like a survival horror game. And of course, if you’re spawncamped, press K while asking to scramble. Dont feed them! Every tool is there for people to balance the game themselves. If noobs had the simple instinct of regrouping and denying the kills when it’s a stomp and votes are not improving the situation, everyone would get bored of lobsided matches and scramble or restart would be used not just for trolling.
Good point about the inherent “penalty” you already take for leaving. Never had thought about it from that angle.

You’re also right about a lot of the balancing tools being in the hands of players, but as you say, they are mostly used to troll or when someone is losing and wants a reshuffle in the hopes of ending in the winning team. I’ve yet to see a match where things are imbalanced and the overpowering team calls for a restart/shuffle so things are more even.

[Sairdontis]

I have seen groups of all types of comps come together and win from a near loss, yes. Many times I have seen this . It is your choice if you want to leave the group in hopes of a smoother run and no one is challenging that choice.