It's time to clean up the mess SD (a concerned observation by me)

(Nesodos) #1

First of all, i want to make clear this is not supposed to be a whine thread of any kind, rather some kind of feedback/discussion thread (although i’m sure the devs will never read this).

The point of this thread?

I recently came back to DB to participate in the winter event (damn, thats a lot of farm) and i can clearly see the problems that still have not been fixed. I already made a thread about some observations last month and now i want to write a resume about the biggest problems i faced in the meantime.

One last thing to add; english is not my mother language and yes, i do know levels are not equal to skill (but they are a good indicator for playtime).

  1. The Balance

Like aways before, DB fails to implement any sort of balance at the beginning of a match(exaggeration, i know, but still true on most matches i play), ranging from slight inbalances (because lack of good players to shuffle) to literal stomps (when one team got 5 lvl 60+ while the other team got not a single lvl 20).

Working shuffles are a very rare sight nowadays(especially when they are justified and not just initialised to f*ck with people) and most of them result into a similar situation (sometimes pushing the good players in the winning team and the horrible ones take their place) or a worse one(all good players in one and all bad in the other team).

On top of that, most lvl 20+ players switch to the (already) winning team when possible, making most shuffles(when they were to happen, it’s just not likely at all) while many on the losing team will leave.

With the winter event requiring playtime as currency its damn hard to farm when most stopwatch games end after 5-10 minutes(just sayin’)

We need a working [,fair] system here(we all know this already, dont we?) and punishment for leaving too often.

  1. The Lag

I see more and more server sided lag since the mofo update, some servers crashed too.
I think its time for some maintenance.

  1. The Ping

Another phenomenon i frequently saw are players with 200+ if not over 300 ping.
While i know some players don’t have acceptable connections to play with <100 ping i think something should be done about it.
Too often i(and the entire team) got killed by players before they even came around the corner, giving us no time to react while they lagged around the map.
I think we need some kind of ping restrictions (maybe test them on european servers first), auto kicking players with a ping of 400 or more for about 3 minutes (just a suggestion to improve on) to keep the servers clean from ping abusers (i saw lots of them the last few weeks)

  1. Hit Detection

This might be a server sided issue, but i experienced a lot of shots and melee swings that definitely should have hit (even with hit sounds) but did not deal any damage at all.

  1. “Beginners”

Masses of n**bs running around on the battlefield.
Wasn’t the tutorial supposed to be mandatory(i don’t know anymore)?
I can understand it takes some time to learn the basics and such but the amount of incapable medics/ammo dispensers up to lvl 20 is astronomical.
Not much SD can do here, maybe enhance the tutorial(telling people its crucial for the win) and make the assault course mandatory too, with more tutorials for recon and such.

These are just some negative things i experienced during the last month with many being unmentioned.
Anything you guys want to add or discuss?

PS: It’s time to end this drought of new content.

Edit(s):
1.Found my first typo already
2.Added Point 5

(Chilled Sanity) #2

I dont care about the first 3 but yeah 4th one is really pissing me off these days

(GatoCommodore) #3

every game suffer from balance problem, even big ones like paladins

this is me reading paladin matchmaking threads

believe me we had it easy over here.

(Nesodos) #4

i played paladins too and “big games” would mean battlefield 1 for example (its even worse there)

i’m still waiting for casual matchmaking(where is it?) altough i fear it won’t change a lot

(GatoCommodore) #5

[quote=“Nero;c-218022”]i played paladins too and “big games” would mean battlefield 1 for example (its even worse there)

i’m still waiting for casual matchmaking(where is it?) altough i fear it won’t change a lot[/quote]

matchmaking wont change balance, its just how its is, Unbalance is nature way of making people adapt. If you fail to adapt, you will perish.

its not the game that should balance the match, its you.

(Nesodos) #6

You can surely adapt to a team of enemies that will kill your team before you can even shoot.
/s
No one can adapt if the situation is too fcked up.

And i’m sick of carrying every damn game i’m in because the enemy team is full of high lvl aholes who refuse to shuffle with the noob team.

(GatoCommodore) #7

[quote=“Nero;c-218028”]You can surely adapt to a team of enemies that will kill your team before you can even shoot.
/s
No one can adapt if the situation is too fcked up.

And i’m sick of carrying every damn game i’m in because the enemy team is full of high lvl aholes who refuse to shuffle with the noob team.
[/quote]

theres always next game
theres always youtube videos to learn
theres always people to ask for tips

i joined DB around november last year, that time there are so many level 40 and 50s its almost like a chore playing the game, but then i found out about many details about the game that arent said in tutorial and i use that to my advantage.

i was still a level 10 back then but i stopped getting yelled at when i reached level 5 because i was willing to listen to what those high levels says, even mockery like “wow, thanks for staying put in the open man” made me think that i shouldnt stay in open areas
or “wheres the medic?!” made me think that a team always need medic even tho i wanted to play vasilli so bad and the rotation ends tomorrow i still strife to help my team first, listening to what they need.

so if there is people who said “its unbalanced” it means hes not willing to accept losses to learn. Losing doesnt mean you cant buy new mercs

(TheFluffyOne) #8

[quote=“Nero;c-218028”]You can surely adapt to a team of enemies that will kill your team before you can even shoot.
/s
No one can adapt if the situation is too fcked up.

And i’m sick of carrying every damn game i’m in because the enemy team is full of high lvl aholes who refuse to shuffle with the noob team.
[/quote]

So, you want forced balance, where if a match is too one-sided it would just shuffle automatically?

(Nesodos) #9

don’t tell me, tell all the lvl 10 noobs that can’t compete with lvl 50’s raping their asses
i know how to play and experienced enough stomps to learn from it

no, but there is no need to shuffle if there is some balance in the first place

(Dysfnal) #10

Once CMM is in place SD will have an easier time creating algorithms for balance, whether it will be easy enough only time can tell

(Teflon Love) #11

Agreed, though one (of the few) things Paladins does better than DB is the new user experience:

  • There is an offline training map where you can try out champions (“mercs”) and there skills. It even has a bunny hopping bot to practice aiming. And all this without having to resorting to console commands.
  • They have a couple of how to play videos for some of the champions (sadly not all), which offer far more depth than DB’s “role call” videos. They even go into basic tactics and combining your skills with other players’ skills for maximum effect.
  • The first few matches are bot matches. The allows you to get a glimpse of most maps and champions before you drag down a team of real people due utter lack of knowledge.

This makes is much easier to get into the game provided you are willing to invest a little time with these resources.

(Szakalot) #12

the main problem with balancing in DB always was the skill disparity between SD game veterans, similar-style fast-paced FPS, and everyone else.

Someone who played ET for years, has literally YEARS of experience ahead of people that came from other games. Put someone like that in a server full of noobs, there is just no way to balance it.

The stacking of players on one team is a myth, i see it maybe in 5% of games, and its probably just friends wanting to play together

(The_N00Ba) #13

I agree deliberate stacking to make the game unbalanced is rather rare in my experience. Now I have seen clans and players switch in order to play with each other. While it may unbalance a match I can not fault them for that. Some times it is more fun to play with your friends. :slight_smile:

(tominatorx) #14

I played a lot wolfenstein ET and Brink, that was often the reason I think why people on the lvl 1-10 servers thought I was hacking when I first started playing. That or they were just salty… Even though I just benefited of my experience with other SD games.

So yeah, you’ve got a point there.

(GatoCommodore) #15

don’t tell me, tell all the lvl 10 noobs that can’t compete with lvl 50’s @$!# their asses
i know how to play and experienced enough stomps to learn from it

no, but there is no need to shuffle if there is some balance in the first place
[/quote]

sure they can, i saw level 7 gets top score playing engineer and medic every day

(LifeupOmega) #16

Balancing in pubs, yeah right good luck with that. One good player fucks up a pub regardless, because the vast majority of DB players are braindead. This is why ranked needs to come back in force.

(AlphaUT) #17

Even if rank comes back, is it alive? Already give up on searching time.

(DarkMatterMatt) #18

The last time I tried ranked it searched for 30 mins then gave up :cry:

(GatoCommodore) #19

we gotta make gud Ads for Ranked fam, and post it everywhere

(doxjq) #20

Before they removed ranked for that bug where you were receiving losses for games you won, ranked was pretty popular. Quite literally before that happened I was finding games every day with “less than 5 minute” queue times during peak hours in USA. EU was the same. They removed it for way too long (from memory it was more than 3 months?) and it killed ranked, and then no one came back when it was revived.

That’s why I’m so pissed off they took ranked down AGAIN, for such a god damn long period of time. How did they not learn. I know ranked was reasonably dead so ultimately it makes little difference this time, but it sure doesn’t help things.