Dear Splash Damage,
I’ve already written down a lot in the “Initial Gut Feedback” thread, but I think it’s necessary to resume, since you said you are working on the gameplay right now. I’m absolutely honest about what I say, because I want Dirty Bomb to become a great game!
It seems you just need a reminder what made your former games so great and outstanding.
If you want to please your old, loyal fans you need to turn this game into another direction, unless you’re going for something completely new as you did with Brink. But this is NOT what the core of your fans want.
A few days after I joined the pre-alpha testing, I asked myself: “What would be peoples first reaction, if a screenshot gets leaked?” I came to the conclusion it would be: “This looks just like Brink!” My assumption got confirmed later, when you released the teaser trailer. Reading many comments, feedback and listening to the opinion of my mates (which are former ET and QW players/fans), almost all are afraid it will be another Brink game with a completely different gameplay.
As I already said, the problem is not the look neither the engine, but the gameplay which doesn’t feel right at the moment. It has not much in common with your former games. Five classes and objective based gameplay are simply not enough (!), as we have seen with Brink…
At the moment we got Brink movement without smart and the shooting feels a bit like CS.
I tell you, you won’t get your old fans on board neither the success as you may wished to get, if you don’t bring back the old gameplay we all love!
It is not easy to please everyone, but I think and I try to speak for the whole ET + QW community now:
[ul]
[li]Fights aren’t lasting long enough. There is no tracking, that your crosshair needs to stay at the model for a while. Hence the one who shoots first, wins. You also can’t do much if you’re on low hp and your opponent on full. In most cases the one with more HP will win. The possibility that you compensate “shooting later” by aim should be given.
[/li]There needs to be a big skill gap between “good” and “very good” aimers!
To control the spread, the best way is just to tip a few times mouse1, but never hold it. So if one opponent is in front of you and you hold mouse1, your weapon shoots randomly anywhere, but not where you aim at. You always need to single tip mouse1 to get a decent aim. Fights feel often driven by luck, due to the spread. We don’t want this, rather we would like to have a good control of our weapon like in ET or QW.
Decrease the rate of fire, increase HP, or lower the damage per shot.
Also lower the spread to make tracking possible.
Make the fights long lasting, where a good aim feels rewarding and not “spray and pray”. But don’t forget, that you can kill really fast with a few headshots just like in ET/QW.
[li]The movement is very close to the one we’ve seen in Brink. It feels clumsy, not fast, forced.
[/li]We miss the freedom we had in ET/QW where the movement was something individual. Some players strafed infight very fast, some crouched like crazy, some were duck jumping (you crouch while you are in the air) all the time and others suddenly proned. 
If you take away the shooting, you should still be able to see the difference between a pro player and a noob only by his movement. The right movement should be something you have to learn and can be improved by training.
Add strafejumping, increase jump high, add prone, make trickjumping possible, crouch should help to defend yourself better against headshots, in general: make movement skillful and useful
[li]Maps lack of the “exploration factor”. Exploring new things on the map is a nice way to keep the motivation up.
[/li]For example: "I must stand on this railing to gain an advantage with my sniper rifle" or “I must jump down here first, that I don’t lose any health”.
The current maps don’t feel like they offer much interaction in combination with the movement.
Another big issue is, that you got sometimes only one way to get to a certain point. In comparison to ET you always had at least 2-3.
I got also the feeling too long EV stages slow the attack down.
Adapt the maps for trickjumping, create interaction between fast-paced movement and the map, more ways to approach
[li]A respawn timer like in ET/QW. Timing your attacks should be important, you must be able to watch times all the time. Since time is one major factor SD games differs from other games.
[/li][/ul]
These are some majors aspects which you should get right at first.
=> Always think about the old players who should feel familiar with the gameplay on the first try of playing.
At the beginning I was surprised when I played the pre-alpha.
I will add further aspects later which come to my mind.
Greetings Rex, one of the biggest QW fans you got
