My suggestions for making Dirty Bomb a good tournament game

(Kl3ppy) #61

Yeah, want to know that too :slight_smile:

(Breo) #62

The most challenging is London Bridge because as soon the EV is moving the enemy can come from everywhere (street between first and second barricade).

(Ashog) #63

I thought that this was already a go with Paul? I mean how more obviously has it to be put in words that no game will survive long enough without custom maps? By enough I mean the time you will actually start shaping the real perfect game after its release. If the game isn’t released, as you said above, in a completely morphed form, by the time you will decide that the game now has shaped into what you wanted, it will already be half-dead without custom maps… A bit overexaggerated but you get the idea…

Now, where is the PESTER PAUL button here? :slight_smile:

(Ashog) #64

[QUOTE=Anti;430963]As I stated we’ve not even begun to start looking at 5v5 and 6v6 balance to the extent we expect to because of this, and when we do get around to doing that sort of testing we’ll have considerably more clans testing than we do right now.

I appreciate you guys have been playing in competition for a long time, but you don’t have a monopoly on that :slight_smile:

We have a lot of guys here who used to play in clans (personally I’ve been competing for around 15 years, including in top clans for four different FPS games) and we appreciate what a huge effort it takes to make a good comp FPS game, just as we understand what needs to happen to ensure a strong community.

We’ve not always been able to pursue that goal in the way we’d like though, but with DB’s Closed Alpha we’re getting the chance to do that, you just have to understand that this early in development balance wont change as quickly as it will in the last few months before release.[/QUOTE]

Well that all together doesn’t sound too encouraging for clans to give comp feedback now, does it? I mean, why bother now if it’s anyway too early and if anyway other late-invites clans from some other games, oblivious to the discussions in forum that we would have had until then, will give another feedback based on their own quite different views of how the game should be shaped?

Not that I mean to stop feedbacking but it sounds somewhat discouraging.

(.Chris.) #65

You can still give suggestions on features would like to see and speculate on how things could work.

It’s not as if SD have been inundated with feedback from all the training sessions, I mean matches that have occurred. /end cynicism

Also so what if they give feedback based on their different views? That’s the whole point, this game will not succeed with a few hundred ex ET players who already have a free game to play called ET.

(Anti) #66

[QUOTE=Ashog;431172]Well that all together doesn’t sound too encouraging for clans to give comp feedback now, does it? I mean, why bother now if it’s anyway too early and if anyway other late-invites clans from some other games, oblivious to the discussions in forum that we would have had until then, will give another feedback based on their own quite different views of how the game should be shaped?

Not that I mean to stop feedbacking but it sounds somewhat discouraging.[/QUOTE]

A lot of assumptions here Ashog :slight_smile:

Who said they’d be clans from ‘other’ games (every game is an ‘other’ game to DB by the way :tongue:)? Who said that even if they are they’d disagree with the current testers? Or if they did disagree with you that we’d take all that on board? Or that the different feedback they’d provide might not end up being stuff that the current testers agree with?

Feedback from clans right now is valuable to us, I didn’t say it wasn’t, but there are some issues related to it that can’t be ignored. The two obvious ones being that the balance of the game is still very much in flux and that there are a very small number of clans actually playing.

Balance a few months from now should be much more stable, meaning clan matches should be more consistent and understandable. When we have a bigger number of clans testing then we’ll have a bigger number of players innovating strategies, more variety of opponents etc. What we’ve seen from clans so far tactically I imagine is only a fraction of what is possible, but it takes time and players for the meta-game to evolve.

I think something else to consider regards the clans is that nobody is competing for anything right now. Competition is normally one of the biggest drivers for clans to commit time to discovering ways to beat opponents, that extra motivation to do whatever it takes to win is usually where the lamest gameplay starts to appear :slight_smile:

Ultimately we need comp feedback now, it helps, but we definitely need more focused and detailed feedback later if we’re going to make the game play well for competition.

(Ashog) #67

Because that most probably will not be a genuine SD game anymore. If the ET scene participation gets diluted too much by the mainstream gamers, I am afraid SD will fail to get seated on any of the two chairs (mainstream and traditional SD gamestyle), by merging the most vocal ideas from both worlds which would basically overshadow/counteract each other, so in the end what one gets is a mainstream colourless boring junk w/o custom support, if you know what I mean. That is my biggest fear. And believe me, these mainstream testers will be very vocal and very many, so not catering will be tuff. But alrite, let’s just see what happens, hope it ain’t come to such extreme.

(tokamak) #68

DB doesn’t need to appeal to the competitive ET players. DB needs to appeal to the competitive shooter players. And that mainstream shooters can be competitive is something Halo and COD have proven.

(Ashog) #69

Well, of course! :slight_smile: This is basically a thread for discussing assumptions and fears. I thought there was no need to denote the post with “Assumption Hier” tag, but oh well :wink:

Who said they’d be clans from ‘other’ games (every game is an ‘other’ game to DB by the way :tongue:)? Who said that even if they are they’d disagree with the current testers? Or if they did disagree with you that we’d take all that on board? Or that the different feedback they’d provide might not end up being stuff that the current testers agree with?

Of course they will disagree with most! Just look what kind of the mad gameplay ideas the CoD/BF players are throwing in this forum! Pffffff…
Just imagine that they will hardly even scratch the reading of the previous discussions archived in this forum before they arrive - they will lack the background of what has beed discussed and what changed already. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be invited, of course, but there is a certain danger while evaluating late influx suggestions. This relies only on your skill as devs regarding how you react to those (I am sure that you got it).

(.Chris.) #70

Nonsense, they have stated they have very clear aims with DB that they will try and stick to them, they haven’t caved into all the demands from the ET2 brigade so what makes you think they will cave into pressure from players from other games?

Again nonsense, I see far out suggestions from all players and to be honest, I’d rather hear something inventive than “copy ET”.

(Ashog) #71

Nonsense! Silence!
You remind me of Robot Elders from Futurama.

Sometimes, a good new thing is just a revamped time-proven old thing. I think, it might not be a totally bad idea to copy something from the past, especially after Brink and especially after ET was the most played SD game ever and since.

Also TF2 scene isn’t the biggest and also TF2 isn’t that far away in its essence to SD gamestyle.

(BMXer) #72

I wonder if anyone has actually said they wanted DB to be “ET2”? I sure haven’t heard it… What I have heard is a bunch of people who have invested years of their time and even some cash in something they love/d FOR A REASON. I would love to see ET2 just as much as anyone but I don’t think anyone is really asking for that here. What “everyone” wants is a new game with the stuff they loved from the games they played for so many years. Shooting style, movement, speed, objective types, etc…Not a remake of ET and not reinventing the wheel, just taking the stuff that has proven to work and be popular for many years and building off that.

(Ashog) #73

Very well put, my thoughts that I just failed to form into a post.

(BomBaKlaK) #74
  • 200 !! just what we need !
(Rex) #75

Well said again, what many oldschool players think here.

(.Chris.) #76

When people ask for certain aspects to be copy pasted from ET I take that as wanting ET2 and that is something that crops up time and time again, often with no justification or thought. I too want a game similar to ET and also ET:QW, they were great games and I’ve spent countless hours playing them and contributing to those games with custom maps and such.

You can make a game feel like the old ones whilst mixing things up and adding new ideas, whilst a lot may disagree ET:QW did this well, it was different enough yet similar enough to keep me interested, some things weren’t too great such as ridiculous spam on some maps and the inclusion of radar but overall I enjoyed that game for what it was, ET was the better game but after several years ET:QW was something fresh and managed to pull me in.

Brink was a huge let down, they went too far with the changes and new ideas with no clear target market and they lost sight of what made their previous game enjoyable, also the lack of extensive testing was clear to see. I reckon with DB they are doing things right this time, especially with this closed alpha, getting in the core fans of the sub-genre in to help shape things and so far it’s been a great journey, as with ET:QW they are trying to mix things up but actually thinking a lot more on the impact of these new ideas and actually getting real players to test them out, it’s saddening that a few testers have recently thrown a tantrum over the last patch, it’s there to test, some things may not work as well as before that’s a given, however what if some things actually turned out to be an improvement over past games? Surely that is something worth pursuing.

(INF3RN0) #77

The problem that ET/QW players will have with DB is quite simple at the core. ET/QW had a set of specific features that people became accustomed to. DB doesn’t want to import them and that’s fine. The problem here is that DB is failing to fill the holes and replace all these features with innovative alternative systems. What you end up is with a strong feeling of incompleteness, simplification, and backtracking. The biggest innovation that DB has had for me is creating a better class balance system than previous titles which seems to be very promising, but that’s the most I can say for the time being.

(ImageOmega) #78

I am not a ET/QW player, but I can understand people are resistant to change. I think DB is incredibly fun as it stands. I don’t know what “holes” or “features” DB needs to replace from ET/QW, but I understand that DB needs to stand on its own two legs and not necessarily draw from every page in the book of these previous titles.

My issues with the current iterations of DB really boil down to class/loadout balance, basic movement (including jumping), and map/level design. While I simply narrowed my assessment into three general categories the scope of the problems can really be broad and should include further discussion/expansion. These are things which I plan to divulge in detail at a later point. Look for some riveting posts from me Monday morning!

Again, for myself, it is not drawing from ET/QW, but previous engaging first person shooters in general. ET did not need to do a lot for movement because it was based off RTCW and the Quake 3 engine. Dirty Bomb, with the unreal engine, has some odd choices being implemented, which slow down gameplay, and make moving around the world feel clunky or non-responsive. Being able to quickly change directions or jump a certain height really helps the player feel as if he is in total control of his character instead of confined to the game’s instated limitations.

(Ashog) #79

I don’t know why people compare DB with ETQW. These two games have absolutely nothing in common, apart from the typical SD gameplay features that were common ever since W:ET.

My wish was always to have an ETQW2, but I understood that it is never going to happen and I got over it. As many here too. But it doesn’t mean that certain nice ideas from ETQW could not be implemented in DB. I have to see yet a single feature from ETQW implemented in this game - so please stop comparing these two games. To me obviously DB is a mix of RTCW and Brink, whereas the more it gets developed, the more it shifts towards RTCW, which makes me glad. However, regardless how good was RTCW (and I loved it), one must admit that it was a very simple game. Run shoot explode deliver rinse repeat. Very few guns/tools and no steep learning curve. Nowadays, it might be not enough to attract people. Therefore it is obvious that it is in our mutual interest that SD brings more new original ideas into gameplay, and when it is not enough, replicates the ideas from their later games.

(warbie) #80

We must have quite a different definition of learning curve - I’ve yet to play a fps with a learning curve that gets close to RTCW.