Hello Dirty Bomb community!
I have for a long time considered to write this post, but I guess I’ve been too lazy to actually do it untill now. I’m a 27 years old passionate gamer & streamer (twitch.tv/dommedag) who loves Dirty Bomb and have about 700 hours played in this game. Most people know me as the “sneakyRhino”, “CrazyRhino”, “High level profile, low level plays” guy. Over the last month, I’ve grown more and more concerned about the direction Dirty Bomb is heading and the piling up of issues that may not be very healthy for the community or the game. I will try to adress my concerns and describe exactly what makes me so worried about this and hopefully you guys can give some good input as well!
First of all, I’d like to thank Splashdamage for making this game and their involvement in the community throughout the process. I’ve both had the pleasure, to talk with some of the devs and even play with them on pub servers. Your concept of this game was rather a challenge, since alot of studios around dont dare to touch the class systems inside FPS games due to the constant balance battle. (omfg, this guy is OP!?!?). However, with some tweaking listening to the community, you have somewhat nailed it pretty well with the balance. The game is alot of fun to play and the stopwatch kind of brings something new to the competative FPS table. I can see this game become one of the bigger titles around IF the process goes into the right direction.
Let’s talk about a very important yet a VERY frustrating topic, The Loadout system.
I do understand that you guys want to make a system that symbols you and not copying someone elses ideas. However, I do believe the Loadout system is one of the things that will create alot of problems for you in the current and the future. The reasons are simple:
It creates missconceptions of Pay To Win Mechanic in this game. New players will go into the game without too much knowledge of how good those augments are on the cards. What they see is that the guy on the other team have this “Nader Augment with 10% more blast damage” and they do not. So obviously, it’s an unfair advantage? This is a topic that have been touched by so many people, my friends, new beginners and even big streamers/youtubers. I like the Augments, I like the skin idea. But I dont like the RNG of a loadout card.
How could you improve this? My answer would be; Copy the “Runes and Mastery” system of League of Legends. Let players pick 3 Augments and a weapon combination they would like to enter the game with within the Merc they are playing. This will give EVERYONE the same “advantages” instead of luck of whoever gets the nice loadout or not. About the Augments, obviously, you shouldn’t let people take all the good ones. If you make the augment system in a way where people can choose; 1 Weapon enhancement augment (reload while running, more mags, focus etc…), 1 Ability Enhancement augment (Bigger healthpack heals, higher explosive damage, bigger sensor radius etc…) and last 1 Environmental Enhancement augment (Guardian Angel, Longer time on MG, Doublejump etc…)
This system wouldn’t just eliminate the whole missconception of Pay 2 Win, but it would also give people the option to customize more themselves and maybe even make tactics out of it!
I both know and understand that Loadout cards are a part of your business model and as a Free to Play game you need your way to get income for both paying the expenses so far and for the future update of the game. I do however have a couple of better ideas for how to make money that I fully believe is going to be just as good if not even better then what you have at this very moment.
If you take a look at the other successful games around that are both Free to Play and those who requires you to buy the game (Minecraft/Counter Strike), they have found a business model that works very well for them. Ofcourse those games also got a huge playerbase, which im pretty confident you guys can reach as well if you get this game done right.
League of Legends releases new champions, very much alike your Mercenary system. but next to that, they also sells XP boost, Credit boost and SKINS. People in this gaming generation LOVES cosmetics, to look different then the rest. Me including. I’m not sure about the others, but I’d also love to buy XP boost from time to time since grinding levels are my type of thing (mmorpg noob). And I’m sure I wouldn’t be the only person who would buy the xp boost either. You already have a credit boost, so that one is settled. I know some of the loadouts gives you certain skins, proably not the best skins, but it makes you look different. Now, if you were to remove the Loadout system. This would be a just as good way to get money. I’d proably pay 5 dollar if not 10 dollar for having Alienware skins on my weapons or a weapon. They looked absolutely great, sadly my loadouts were too crappy compared to my others, so I can’t use them due to the advantage the bronze augments gives me over the AW ones. I also fully believe adding some skins to the Mercs would be pretty cool as well, just imagine if you could look like a “Space Marine Rhino!”, or a phantom in a ninja outfit or even better! Octoberfest Skyhammer with beer air drops!. Anyways, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be the only person around who would like to have some skins to choose between on my mercs.
The second game I’d like to mention with the business model is Counter Strike Global Offensive. They have proved that weapon skins are important for the players in the community. Both to wear it or trade it up. At some eSports arrangements, they had about more then a million dollar worth of skins up for betting for the matches. Now that just tells how many skins and money there is in it. However, they also have a markedplace where the players can trade and sell skins. However, there is some auction cut which the owner of the game takes from the sale. This is also a great way to get a littlebit extra of money. With the whole Dirty Bomb, Mercs doing jobs for money theme. I totally find a “Black Marked” suiting. Where else would they get their weapons?
Another thing the Counter Strike GO community have proved is how important the community kits are. Where the community can help you out with making weapon skins, maps etc… that you eventually could borrow, buy or take and use in your own game and eventually ship it out as a DLC or an update.
The third game I’d like to talk about is Minecraft. Yes I know, what the fuck can we learn about minecraft? mining? lol. Minecraft have added a service to their game where they offer their players to rent a server. Please Splashdamage, there have been so many wishes upon this topic and it’s very clear that the community wants it. Give us the option to rent a server. This could be a good income for you and you would make ALOT of people happy. Who would rent a server? I know some streamers would want their community server to play with viewers as they can controll the traffic abit more, and the same goes to alot of the game communities around who owns servers in various games. Competative teams would also want to rent servers due to the fact it gives them the option to both practice new tactics without anyone being able to watch them and the ability to invite other teams for scrims. The Dirty Cup servers are a temporary solution, but what happens when more teams are coming? People starting to fight for a spot on those servers. People want to scrim, others want to pug and there is not enough room for them all. It would just create a huge frustration.
Same can be said about skins, which again is a point I agree with. Even though it will bring all these chat-flooding “Buying: Herobluedragonbloodboilgreen Remburg // Selling: Berserkredlazordeathyellow K121” trade peeps around, ohwell, price we have to pay for if we want devs to be able to have something on their bread.