Legacy servers in response to incompetence

[Meerkats]

Congratulations, this is one of the most brain dead patches ever. I’mma just go over one part of why this patch is so bad…

Why another Fragger nerf? To balance out pick rates? So now, the criteria for balance is pick rates? It’s not as if enforcing equal pick rates is a terrible way to balance a game. Hey, you know who else gets picked all the time? Proxy. Proxy must be super overpowered then. Thunder isn’t used because he either gets banned or because he doesn’t frag out as hard as Fragger because his ability requires team coordination and there’s no coordination when nobody is on comms. The answer isn’t to nerf Fragger because the issue is with Thunder’s core design. He needs a team. Fragger doesn’t. Fragger just does Fragger things regardless of the situation. Fragger was fine a long time ago and most nerfs weren’t required. Why does this need to be explained?

But while we’re talking about balancing, maybe consider changing ranked and competitive to 6v6. Why do so many mercs see so little play? Because on a five man team, each slot is so important there’s no space to flex. There’s no budget. You have to have an initiator, a primary medic, a secondary medic and an engineer. That leaves one open slot which will be taken by either a sniper or a map specific pick. It’s not that other mercs are bad, it’s that team composition is largely predetermined. Change it to 6v6 and now, you’ll see more utility mercs being played.

Guardian is a perfect example. Probably not gonna be picked in 5v5. No open slots. But in 6v6? Probably going to get picked a lot.

Also? Give us official legacy servers. Aura, Bonez, Phoenix, Fragger, Nader, Bushwhacker, Fletcher, Arty, Kira, Skyhammer and Stoker only. Maybe Guardian, Proxy and Vassili. Better yet, let the participating community handle balancing. You guys have clearly lost the plot, but this way, we can get out of your hair, and you can continue to feed your diarrhea to the public while those of us still interested in playing a good game can.

Cause here’s the thing: a lot of the people I talk to? We think Dirty Bomb has great mechanics, but is being horribly mismanaged. We all hate Turtle. We all hate Thunder. Javelin is sometimes tolerated. Guardian isn’t bad. Nobody wants Hunter. We want to play a good game, but that’s not the direction Dirty Bomb is going in. So please, legacy servers.

You made a team based game. You know what makes a 5v5 teamfight better? If that teamfight were suddenly to be 5v4 or 5v3 in your favour. A fair fight is a bad fight. Therefore characters that can imbalance a teamfight via entry frag will always have a role. This is the same in every team based game: teamfights are initiated by an initiator. Your decisions, intentional or not, created this meta. This is the game you made. Why are you suddenly surprised and upset, after four years of beta, that the game is being played as you designed it? Why am I explaining this to you? Why are you guys so incompetent?

I said I would only mention one part of the patch… but man, the arsenal crate changes. Thanks for the nerf. And why the name change? I can just imagine some dev going, “Progressive Advancement Crates! A PAC! Like a pack, but not! What a zinger! Still got it!” and giving himself a self-five. You know what else PAC is an acronym for? Progressive Anal Cancer. So now, when you level, you get progressive anal cancer! Which, you know, kinda sums up how I feel about this patch.

[GatoCommodore]

yea i was pretty surprised fragger gets a nerf…
he was in a pretty weird spot because if you nerf him hes become borderline less useful than something like skyhammer…
why would he need to get nerfed? He pretty much rely on his bigger HP pool to be able to cook nade in middle of combat…

also he now not sniper proof anymore?

[Da_Mummy]

Well I guess 10/10 triggered
I even made a joke about it yesterday that the Competetive players will be pretty upset about the fragger nerf.
I don’t really think he needed that nerf considering that he is going to be only 10 HP stronger that the average fire support.
But a pure raging text about how much the game sucks is not going to change anything and won’t make anything better.

[STARRYSOCK]

Honestly fragger is still pretty OP, and I doubt it’ll change much with 130 health.
Getting picked regularly isn’t a problem, it’s when people constantly avoid picking anyone else on favour of the assault merc with a free kill button every few seconds.
Frankly, he’s very easy to play, and one of the most basic mercs there is. I’m not sure why people act like he’s perfect and the hardest merc ever, then turn around and complain about javelin or shotguns when he’s basically just as easy, if not easier.
He needs a nerf, no way around that. He just needs one where it actually matters.

The main problem with these patches is, rather than address major issues with mercs, SD chooses to “balance” different, easier aspects of them to smooth it all out.
Fragger has an unavoidable easy-kill button? Nah, ignore the fact that cooking grenades and popping out from a corner is the problem. Lower his health!
Cooldown on the bionic pulse and no healing ability making Guardian impractical as a medic? Screw that, slightly less cooldown!
Shotguns only useful in certain situations? Nah, they have to be just as useful in every situation as every other weapon! ignore the buggy cocking animation!
Aura can help a team dig in and turn a team into a tank? Nah, ignore the idea of only starting the cooldown after it gets destroyed, nerf her 3 times in a row until the entire draw of playing her is gone!

The thing is, there’s only so much value changes can really do. And I really wish SD would listen more closely to their community on what they want. Not just “hear our suggestions”, actually act on them where it counts.

[Eox]

Fragger wasn’t nerfed for being overused : he was nerfed because telemetry system showed him outperforming everyone else. However, this can explained simply by the fact that he is a very popular pick among the best players in the community. While Proxy is widely played by casual players, Fragger is a favourite pick among scrimmers and competitive players (I’m not talking about Ranked, aka “glorified pubs”, here). No wonder why his telemetry is going through the roof.

Nerfing Fragger is a debatable move. I am myself thinking that this nerf is very likely undeserved. Nobody complained about Fragger being a core pick as far as I can recall (I mean, somebody gotta be that core pick, right ?). There’s maybe still people around complaining about that unavoidable frag nade, but it’s usually predictable to be honest (Fragger retreating behind a corner/not shooting very likely means that you will eat a pineapple up your ass, so you must retreat).

However that Fragger nerf can open some interesting meta shift that could be pleasent to see. That change is not definitive for sure, and to be honest I can clearly see SD reverting that nerf after a few weeks. Not everything is dark here.

[Da_Mummy]

@Eox said:
There’s maybe still people around complaining about that unavoidable frag nade, but it’s usually predictable to be honest (Fragger retreating behind a corner/not shooting very likely means that you will eat a pineapple up your ass).

Well we’re talking about the same type of people that complains about P2W and invincible mercs (both of which are really really big issues that SD should change in the future because it is makingthe game unplayable ahem).
But this paragraph pretty much sums up everything I could say about Fraggo.

[Meerkats]

@STARRYSOCK said:
Honestly fragger is still pretty OP, and I doubt it’ll change much with 130 health.
Getting picked regularly isn’t a problem, it’s when people constantly avoid picking anyone else on favour of the assault merc with a free kill button every few seconds.
Frankly, he’s very easy to play, and one of the most basic mercs there is. I’m not sure why people act like he’s perfect and the hardest merc ever, then turn around and complain about javelin or shotguns when he’s basically just as easy, if not easier.

@Eox said:
Fragger wasn’t nerfed for being overused : he was nerfed because telemetry system showed him outperforming everyone else. However, this can explained simply by the fact that he is a very popular pick among the best players in the community. While Proxy is widely played by casual players, Fragger is a favourite pick among scrimmers and competitive players. No wonder why his telemetry is going through the roof.
Except Fragger is “outperforming” everyone else by design. That’s his one and only job. When he was put in the game, that was his job. That’s still his job. You don’t teamfight 5v5 because that’s stupid. You might lose that fight. That’s a shitty fight. You teamfight 5v4 or 5v3, when you have advantage. That’s why you have a doorkicker to initiate. He kicks down the door with an entry frag to make sure you start the teamfight at advantage, and after he initiates, he still has to have enough presence, be enough of a threat as to not be ignored. And that’s it. He can’t do anything else. He can’t support, he can’t destroy objectives. All he does is frag. This is like saying medics are too good at reviving people.

Who are they even comparing him too when they’re saying he’s “outperforming?” Phoenix? Hell, you can’t even compare Fragger to anybody else in the entire game except Thunder cause only Thunder shares the actual same role, and Thunder is the anti-Christ whose sole purpose is to make other players immobile, i.e., unable to play Dirty Bomb, the game they thought they were going to play when they started Dirty Bomb. Oh, and he’s auto-ban.

If Splash Damage didn’t want the guy who initiates a teamfight by killing a dude on the other team to be stronger than other characters, then they shouldn’t have made a team game and shouldn’t have added Thunder, Javelin, Vassili, Aimee or Redeye.

Keep in mind Guardian is already out. You know, the lady designed to MOBA-style, straight hard counter Fragger’s singular rationale for existing.

If you want to see a real meta shift, then the game needs to be redesigned to deemphasize initiation or the format changed to 6v6 to enable more flex roles.

[STARRYSOCK]

@Meerkats said:
Except Fragger is “outperforming” everyone else because that’s what he was designed to do. That’s his one and only job. When he was put in the game, that was his job. He’s your doorkicker. He kicks down the door with an entry frag to make sure you start the teamfight at advantage because fair fights are @$!# fights, and after he initiates, he still has to have enough presence, be enough of a threat as to not be ignored. This is like saying medics are too good at reviving people. Who are they even comparing him too when they’re saying he’s “outperforming?” Phoenix? Hell, you can’t even compare Fragger to anybody else in the entire game except Thunder cause only Thunder shares the actual same role, and Thunder is the anti-Christ whose sole purpose is to make other players immobile, i.e., unable to play Dirty Bomb, the game they thought they were going to play when they started Dirty Bomb.

A merc can be powerful without being pretty much the only viable competitive choice in their category. It’s like how fletcher used to be. Of course he’s supposed to be good in combat, but he was so good that people rarely played anyone else.
And well, overpowered by intention isn’t any sort of excuse in a PVP game. It just doesn’t make sense if you think about it. You wan’t things to be fair for everyone. If you really want an “overpowered” merc in a multiplayer game, they need to have weaknesses. Look at Rhino, an “overpowered by intention” merc. He still has a lot of weaknesses and shortcomings. However, fragger doesn’t really have any.

There’s no point in comparing him to Thunder in that context, because well, matches without a fragger can still be completely balanced and enjoyable. Having a fragger or someone like fragger isn’t a requirement, so there really isn’t any reason for him to be as powerful as you say he is.

Basically my point is, having a powerful combat merc is great. Having him so powerful and easy to use in comparison to every other assault merc, that he almost always gets picked over the others is a problem. It’s just pre-nerf fletcher all over again.
But this isn’t really the point. This thread is about SD’s balance choices in general, so it’s probably best if we focus on more than one aspect.

[Guziol]

Call the waaambulance. Fragger has been terrorizing this game since the dawn of time. If 100% pickrate is really not enough of a sign for you then i’m sorry but the incompetence is clearly pinned in a wrong place here.

[B_Montiel]

They should add a low hp combat merc to see how it stands compared to fragger and co. The current issue balancing fragger in my view holds its roots in the unbalance between low and and high health pool mercs. Except very early during the alpha stage, the game has always favoured mercs with 110 and more generally mercs with at least 120 hp. And the speed gap never caught the health difference back.

So right now, with the pretty low time to kill, fragger will always have a pretty big advantage, and lowering his health pool from 140 to 130 won’t make much difference, except against fire supports.

Set abilities aside (not talking about very ability dependable mercs such as Sparks and Rhino), in a smg range, any merc should have a pretty fair chance of winning, unless that merc is specifically purposed to absorb damage. Thunder is in a pretty good spot for that, but, on the contrary, fragger, with his 1 htk button, will remain too strong whatever they do. If they wanna put back fragger as a tanky merc, they’d have to totally rebuild his grenade. A massive AOE with a guaranteed 70 hp damage in its range would still keep him as a very potent merc.

Its just a way to balance him, but so far, the grenade is too much humpfff with a health pool significantly higher than average. (it was 160 not that far away)

[K1X455]

What I can’t understand is why not just make him as soft as Skyhammer and just throw an nuclear grenade that can take out the EV?

[Meerkats]

@K1X455 said:
What I can’t understand is why not just make him as soft as Skyhammer and just throw an nuclear grenade that can take out the EV?
Because the whole point of class-based design is that every class should be reliant on other classes to do the other things needed to win. Because the role of frontline assault is killing other players, not accomplishing objectives. Because if frontline assault could accomplish objectives, then they would be less other classes which would make those classes useless.

This is why Fletcher is broken. Engineers are reliant on assault to clear objective sites. Fletcher’s combat abilities are so good, he can assault and clear objective sites while being an engineer.

Yes, Dirty Bomb is a skill based game. If you have the skills, you can top frag in almost any pub with almost any class. You can even dominate other Fraggers. Not that hard. But see, Dirty Bomb is also a team based game where every merc has a role, which, when performed, fits together into a team like pieces into a puzzle. Hell, even the assault class isn’t monolithic, it’s subdivided into three smaller subclasses, each of which having a different role.

@Guziol said:
Call the waaambulance. Fragger has been terrorizing this game since the dawn of time. If 100% pickrate is really not enough of a sign for you then i’m sorry but the incompetence is clearly pinned in a wrong place here.
Yeah. That’s why I’m saying we need legacy servers. So people who suck at the game and don’t understand how the game is designed can potato while not interfering with people who want to play the game well.

@STARRYSOCK said:
A merc can be powerful without being pretty much the only viable competitive choice in their category. It’s like how fletcher used to be. Of course he’s supposed to be good in combat, but he was so good that people rarely played anyone else.
And well, overpowered by intention isn’t any sort of excuse in a PVP game. It just doesn’t make sense if you think about it. You wan’t things to be fair for everyone. If you really want an “overpowered” merc in a multiplayer game, they need to have weaknesses. Look at Rhino, an “overpowered by intention” merc. He still has a lot of weaknesses and shortcomings. However, fragger doesn’t really have any.
Cause you’re not seeing the big picture. If you’re going to nerf Fragger with intent of diminishing specifically his role as initiator or to nerf initiation in general, you know who else needs to be nerfed into the ground?

Sparks, Vassili, Aimee, Javelin and Thunder. Then on top of that, Arty, Kira and Skyhammer should get passes as well. All of these mercs can initiate with an entry frag.

And again, the only other merc fulfilling the same role as Fragger is Thunder, who according to every competitive player I’ve ever asked, is perma-banned. That means Fragger isn’t the only viable choice, he’s the only choice.

Splash Damage is throwing a pissfit people are playing the game as they designed it, four years after the fact.

[LifeupOmega]

@Meerkats said:
Congratulations, this is one of the most brain dead patches ever. I’mma just go over one part of why this patch is so bad…

You made a team based game. You know what makes a 5v5 teamfight better? If that teamfight were suddenly to be 5v4 or 5v3 in your favour. A fair fight is a bad fight. Therefore characters that can imbalance a teamfight via entry frag will always have a role.

This especially is why I’m amazed that they continue to buff the #1 pick mercs in the game after slightly, sliiightttly nerfing them before, who can do it with ease and from far away, with zero risk to themselves, but then 180 on that and nerf a merc with an actual cooldown who has to actually get close to the action.

It’s like SD have one set of rules for some mercs and then say balls to it for the others and let them roam freely destroying anything they please.

Anyway yeah, in agreement. Too many mercs have taken away from the core action and gun play of DB over the years. Could easily prune 50% of the roster and have a much more exciting game. Remember how much fun DBPro or w/e it was called was to play? Not having to hug a corner 24/7 cause someone decided to bring a recon on the other team was a joy.

[phobiatic]

Did fragger needed a nerf? Maybe, for a lot of decent players his HP and having excess to AR’s made him top pick. Is it the merc they should focus on? Not really. Mercs like proxy / javalin have a lot bigger effect on the game by their easy instant gib abilities. Not to talk about shotguns their 110+ dmg at easy 7m+ is beyond my knowledge(now even more with the min range increased). Why would a shotgun ever need to compete in mid range fights? There’s a reason shotguns always are short range weapons in all those other shooters out there.

Same as you, most of people I know that played DB or never played it, think it isn’t worth to invest time. because of the following reasons:

1. It is still beta after close to 4 years. Yes it release early 2018 but the game is far from ready to be released.
2. They don’t have a feeling how to balance their game, they go overboard by nerfing/buffing too much or nerf mercs that were in a decent stage. Make weekly changes instead once every 3 months. After 3 years they build in a system to track player / merc data and ignore the community suggestions while the game rely on his low 2k community across multiple regions.
3. Server performance is not the greatest out there. Low ping players warping and not talking hits is no fun. Used to have 15-25ping max in like end of 2016. Now i’ve almost always 50+ ping on most EU servers. while on other games it is unchanged or lower.
4. Having client side hit detection and not a decent net code and wrong animations isn’t helping the game to attract more players.
5. Competitive having no value with constant 3vs5 and having the “being stomped or getting stomped” game play. Surely with no merc limitations per team.
6. Still having no auto system to handle high ping players.

I really hope for the best for this game and the developers. But with updates like this you only push away the community and this is not the first update that has this effect. They should be a lot more transparent with their plans Ask more feedback of the community what they would like as changes etc and stop guessing in the blank.

[jooshoyes]

Thing is, they are not saying fraggers role as entry fragger is too strong, otherwise they would have nerfed the nade again. In fact, by buffing his speed, even if it is by 5u/s, is a way of enforcing his playstyle as entry fragger, enabling him to get into combat faster, while making it more easy for two skilled players to have equal chance in a 1v1. If two players have just as good aim as eachother, fragger basically gets a free win in a 1v1 due to his health. Now this would be fine, if he didn’t have such a potent ability.

By nerfing his health you are closing the gap, and making it more difficult for fragger to survive over long periods of time.

However, I do understand the points about Thunder, and as a man who used to main him, I will be writing a post soon explaining the current problems (not fun to play with/against), and how to fix them. The speed increase was nice to make him more fun to play, but did he really need a buff?

[Eox]

@jooshoyes said:
Thing is, they are not saying fraggers role as entry fragger is too strong, otherwise they would have nerfed the nade again. In fact, by buffing his speed, even if it is by 5u/s, is a way of enforcing his playstyle as entry fragger, enabling him to get into combat faster, while making it more easy for two skilled players to have equal chance in a 1v1.

To be honest I fail to see how a 1.2%-ish movement buff really matters.

[jooshoyes]

@Eox said:

@jooshoyes said:
Thing is, they are not saying fraggers role as entry fragger is too strong, otherwise they would have nerfed the nade again. In fact, by buffing his speed, even if it is by 5u/s, is a way of enforcing his playstyle as entry fragger, enabling him to get into combat faster, while making it more easy for two skilled players to have equal chance in a 1v1.

To be honest I fail to see how a 1.2%-ish movement buff really matters.

Well, SD can’t do anymore than 2% man…

[Meerkats]

@jooshoyes said:
Thing is, they are not saying fraggers role as entry fragger is too strong, otherwise they would have nerfed the nade again. In fact, by buffing his speed, even if it is by 5u/s, is a way of enforcing his playstyle as entry fragger, enabling him to get into combat faster, while making it more easy for two skilled players to have equal chance in a 1v1. If two players have just as good aim as eachother, fragger basically gets a free win in a 1v1 due to his health.
Fragger frags. If you have utility functions, you are not supposed to be able to 50/50 against a Fragger who has zero utility functions. Dude only has one job. If he can’t even do that well, then what is his purpose?

Think about it this way. We both make a character. We both get twenty attribute points to distribute between eight traits. If I drop all twenty points into combat while you drop ten points in healing, eight points in combat and two points into speed, and you are able to 1v1 me half the time, then where did the other twelve points I dropped into combat go cause clearly, they’re useless, and I’m rolling an eight point character.

This is a class-based game. Different classes are supposed to be interdependent.

@Sorotia said:
Is a friend of Neverplayserious: Check
What can I say? Competence is an attractive quality that some people have more of than others.

[Xenithos]

@Eox said:
Fragger wasn’t nerfed for being overused : he was nerfed because telemetry system showed him outperforming everyone else. However, this can explained simply by the fact that he is a very popular pick among the best players in the community. While Proxy is widely played by casual players, Fragger is a favourite pick among scrimmers and competitive players (I’m not talking about Ranked, aka “glorified pubs”, here). No wonder why his telemetry is going through the roof.

Nerfing Fragger is a debatable move. I am myself thinking that this nerf is very likely undeserved. Nobody complained about Fragger being a core pick as far as I can recall (I mean, somebody gotta be that core pick, right ?). There’s maybe still people around complaining about that unavoidable frag nade, but it’s usually predictable to be honest (Fragger retreating behind a corner/not shooting very likely means that you will eat a pineapple up your ass, so you must retreat).

However that Fragger nerf can open some interesting meta shift that could be pleasent to see. That change is not definitive for sure, and to be honest I can clearly see SD reverting that nerf after a few weeks. Not everything is dark here.

I can’t spam the agree/like button more towards the substance of what you said because this is actually the reason Sparks is outperforming. The people that pick her are abundantly good with her and have been for a while. Also, the changes to her medpacks to discourage selfish Sparks healing isn’t going to change squat. You want to stop selfish Sparks, then you make it so she has a third ability to heal herself back to full instantly/over time like other mercs, and make her packs useless for herself. That’s how you do it. You don’t keep nerfing the healing she gives herself. That only means it takes more packs to heal her to full. You instead put a limit on the healing she can give herself in a set time frame and separate it from the healing she gives other players.

[Xenithos]

@Eox said:

@jooshoyes said:
Thing is, they are not saying fraggers role as entry fragger is too strong, otherwise they would have nerfed the nade again. In fact, by buffing his speed, even if it is by 5u/s, is a way of enforcing his playstyle as entry fragger, enabling him to get into combat faster, while making it more easy for two skilled players to have equal chance in a 1v1.

To be honest I fail to see how a 1.2%-ish movement buff really matters.

Oh bro - it’ll throw off aim/positioning even more because of broken muscle memory!