"Let's Talk Limits" - Reddit Thread Posted By Demolama

(Melinder) #1

@Demolama created a thread on /r/Dirtybomb discussing the current issues with Dirty Bomb’s “spammy” nature, and how it is going the direction of Team Fortress 2 and other spam/ability driven shooters in the market, rather than staying true to it’s RTCW/W:ET roots.

I don’t have Demolama’s permission to post this, though I hope that they don’t mind me doing so, as I believe this should be seen by all players of the game.

Let’s Talk Limits

09/09/17 - The shear amount of explosives is getting to me, I have no choice.

(Ptiloui) #2

I don’t mind Fragger’s spammy problem, especially now he can only has one nade at a time. But i remember when Nader came out, a lot of people, if not everybody, were complaining about her spammy nature. And the Javelin problem is so obvious that i don’t even need to talk about her.

The fact is, Dirty Bomb is already at a state where we will get more mercs. And with the annoucement they made during the Gamescon, we can assume the future mercs are already finished and are being tested and just need a fine polish before getting released. That means that we’re already playing a merc because of his ability and not anymore because of his role, and this state won’t change. So, all we can ask for is having a better balance with what we have now, cause SD surely won’t get back to the W:ET style but more towards Overwatch/Paladins style (even though DB was already tending to this game style before Overwatch and Paladins came out).

But i don’t think imposing a limit in any ways is a good solution. It will only frustrate players for no reason because they won’t be able to play what they want. As for me, balance tweaks in mercs abilities would be a better solution as players would still be able to play their favorite mercs, while requiring more skill to use him/her.

'Cause in the end, a lot of players ask for the game to be more skill based. As Yolim is suggesting in this reddit thread, reducing splash damage on Fletcher’s stikcies require the player to always stick on ennemies, and not just throw them blindly and hope to kill somebody.

In general, having a longer cooldown on every abilities would ask the player to be smarter instead of mondlessly spamming as soon as ready. Waiting for the best opportunity to use your abilites ask the players to think and analyze more every situation, and will tend more to a “high risk, high reward” gameplay : if you waste your ability, you will be punished and have to wait a long time before using it again, and maybe letting the perfect opprotunity go away.

(Melinder) #3

@Ptiloui said:
I don’t mind Fragger’s spammy problem, especially now he can only has one nade at a time. But i remember when Nader came out, a lot of people, if not everybody, were complaining about her spammy nature. And the Javelin problem is so obvious that i don’t even need to talk about her.

I see Fragger as a far bigger issue than Nader. Fragger is very closely related to Javelin in the way that, whenever their ability is off cooldown, they are guaranteed at least one kill, though generally more.

Nader isn’t exactly granted a free kill or more whenever her grenades are ready. Rather, she removes the requirement for tactical advances, and replaces it with “I’m not sure how to approach this setup, so i’ll just spam my nades inside and they’ll be forced to leave cover”.

(watsyurdeal) #4

And yet Nader is more annoying cause it’s so easy to abuse those nades

(Blargz) #5

While I agree with the main point (more pew pew, less boom ka-pow), I would note that DB was never true to W:ET roots when it came to dueling. HP gaps are simply too huge. Even if we took abilities out and focused entirely on hitscan aiming, 80hp Aura won’t win against 140hp Fragger no matter what (if two players got similar skill/aim). That was not the case in ET, but it’s different topic.

I won’t say explosives are ruining the game for me, but I’m really tired of them. I’m all for nerfing / lowering their potential (especially one-hit kills) but restricting mercs will only create more problems and outcry.

(jemstar) #6

There are a lot of valid points made by the initial post and the replies. One theme tho was that DB is moving away from its W:ET roots. But I don’t think so.

I played W:ET heaps and still do occasionally. Good players were able to cook grenades and run around a corner and wipe out 2-3 enemies. Shot guns could insta kill. Air strikes and artillery could wipe an entire team out or make it impossible to repair the tank/truck for an entire map. Well placed landmines were also a menace. They even had venom gun aka Rhino.

And all the same arguments made now were made then.

As the servers were privately run the server’s .weap files and .cfg’s could be modified to increase or nerf weapons and limit weapons per team. But the standard settings were generally used.

I am not the best dueler, but have my moments and wish I was better. I do enjoy Nader and Kira (In W:ET I played Eng with RNADE so Kira’s Dreis and Nader’s launcher were made for me). If a whole team wants to hide behind the rock at the end of Chapel expect to be lasered. It seems some people just want a game where everyone has the same merc and the same gun. No mines, no nades, no airstrikes, no nothing but dueling.

I get the idea of learning to be better at gunfights and not relying on abilities of mercs. But these games are mimicking war and most of the weapons in Dirty Bomb are not all that far fetched. Maybe a Kira Laser is awhile off!

Most mercs can be countered. A good sniper will kill Kira before the laser is landed. Kira’s dreis will kill a slow moving Rhino in a gunfight. It’s about teamwork…which is what W:ET was all about. Not show ponying how good you are in a 1 V 1.

There will always be times when you get insta killed by a laser or mine or rocket, as in W:ET. You should expect it and play accordingly.

It was mentioned that the big blasts are causing retention issues, maybe tho the bigger blast weapons give new players a chance against veterans until they find their feet. As in W:ET, veteran players spawn camping new players for an entire map would have a bigger influence on whether they return.

I’m not disagreeing with any of the comments made about the direction of Dirty Bomb, just pointing out that imo, all these arguments have been made before especially in W:ET. So to say SD are drifting away from their roots is not right.

When I describe this game to my W:ET buddies I say, “It’s W:ET on speed”!

(Trampolines) #7

ET wasn’t spammy? Remember when an experienced Heavy Weapons user would time mortars with your spawn time. They’d wipe out the entire team repeatedly.

I see so much less spawn camping in DB than I ever did in ET.

(Melinder) #8

Spawn killing isn’t the issue in discussion, nor is it an issue at all in Dirty Bomb.

(FalC_16) #9

@jemstar said:
Good players were able to cook grenades and run around a corner and wipe out 2-3 enemies. Shot guns could insta kill. Air strikes and artillery could wipe an entire team out or make it impossible to repair the tank/truck for an entire map. Well placed landmines were also a menace. They even had venom gun aka Rhino.

I also think that currently its not a bad balance between 1 hit kill with an ability versus longer ttk with your primary…

(GatoCommodore) #10

@Melinder said:
Spawn killing isn’t the issue in discussion, nor is it an issue at all in Dirty Bomb.

it wasnt an issue anymore since most of the players who whine about it graduated from level 10

(hawkeyeguy99) #11

I wouldn’t say it’s quite to the “spammy” stats of TF2. Majority of fights are still won by guns and there is a less reliance on abilities than Overwatch or Paladins so I’m happy. I do think Javelin sets a worrying precedent for future mercs. She has a very low skill ceiling and that’s never something I want. We need more mercs like Sparks which fill a very niche role, but if the player devotes a lot of time to learning that niche role they can be godlike. Abilities should start focusing more on skill and thought than “shoot and forget”, “throw and forget” tactics. Examples: proxy mines, Jav’s rockets, turtle’s shield (somewhat), fletcher’s stickies.

We need more opportunity for skill and knowledge of the game to shine and less opportunity to get easy kills with no effort or easy xp just by pressing “e”.

(Demolama) #12

I’ve come to the conclusion that more than two of the same mercs makes them annoying and/or overpowered to play against. There is nothing wrong with a single Javelin, or a single Nader, but when there are 3 of them, especially on maps with huge choke-points, which this game has quite a few, they are downright problematic. The same can be said with other mercs, like Proxies or Artys.

There is a reason why despite their initial rejection of hero limits overwatch went to a one hero rule. While DB has a problem with not all mercs being unlocked or having the ability to swap on the fly, something needs to be done. Constantly dying because you’ve been blown up defeats the purpose of running medics and slows down the game’s progress. Or if you are attacking, leads to the problem of fast stomps. This also seems to be one of the reasons why a lot of pub games do not have any medics.

(Demolama) #13

@Trampolines said:
ET wasn’t spammy? Remember when an experienced Heavy Weapons user would time mortars with your spawn time. They’d wipe out the entire team repeatedly.

I see so much less spawn camping in DB than I ever did in ET.

Yet, the team was limited to one mortar per team and any team worth a lick could take out a stationary mortar player from constantly setting up. One of the great benefits of W:ET that is missing in DB is the split spawn times, which made camping spawns much harder to do. In DB stopwatch mode the respawn times are synced, making it much easier to camp.

But spawncamnping isn’t the issue. The need for limits is.

(bgyoshi) #14

This game’s retention problem was never the spammy explosives and was always the lack of development.

Just look at the amount of players since release. You can see when events and mercs release, and you can see the dead zone of no development that happened in 2016 until early 2017. Then they started releasing real content and, shock and awe, players came back and the amount of players went up.

The spam is annoying but it’s not the problem. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who plays FPS’ going “Man I keep getting killed by those explosives I guess I’m just gonna quit.” They all just learn the game and continue to play.

Pure hitscan is boring. Straight up, not fun and also dull. That’s why there’s melee, flashbangs, explosives, other things to change it up.

That being said, I wouldn’t mind a universal 100% increase to all explosives cooldowns. Makes me wonder how it would change the game.

(phobiatic) #15

Me as probably 8k+ hours in W:ET player, it was nice to see that a game was in development with simular playstyle. Really enjoyed the early beta experience and surely supported the devs for this. But lately I’m playing the game a lot less even tho I do have more free time than before. Think the removal of “Execution mode” lately and the increase of mercs with very strong abilities that can 1 hit you out of nowhere makes me play the game a lot less(max 6hours a week what used to be easily 25hours).

Even in the old W:ET you had most custom servers limiting weapons like panzerfaust / sniper / granate launcher to keep the chaos under control. This was then on 32 player servers. Now with Dirty bomb being a smaller game and have smaller maps where explosions have a bigger impact, there should also be some server with limitations to merc count, like max 2 of same merc / team. As some already mentioned, a merc on his own is fine(some might still need some tweaking) but once you add 1/2 of the same merc like Javalin / nader / proxy(as you see the pattern of explosion based mercs), they can easy dominate the round since their ability can take out multiple players if not a whole team if timed and executed perfectly.

Personally for me it feels that most ability should be restocked from ammo stations if its empty and not just be given for free once it comes off cooldown. W:ET you had to go to ammo station to restock your merc specific weapon(nade launcher, rockets, mines etc). This will not only lower the chaos from explosions in the game because they have to leave the frontline to restock ammo, but also make people be more carefull with their abilities how and when to use them. I don’t want them to eliminate the merc abilities, but think they should aim more towards controlled chaos and not be total chaos as it is now.