Need More Alpha Testers

(MikeyTWolf) #121

[QUOTE=Kendle;457766]…Draft games are an anomaly that mostly won’t occur when the game goes live.
Draft games are not proper clan matches, between organised teams with pre-determined strategies, so the ECHO data for them is not worth much as far as comp play is concerned…
…just trying to inject a little reality in case we start thinking that Draft games are what DB is all about.
The game needs to work on pubs, it just needs to, and if people are playing Drafts to avoid playing pub, SD are not getting the feedback on pub they should be getting.[/QUOTE]

Okay, clearly you’re out of touch with actually playing games, and how game development works.

The last few games that are based entirely on pub play off the top of my mind are TF2 and League of Legends; awful, spammy, casual grind fests that only hold an audience because they either don’t know better or for some reason cannot know better. They are also rabid and extremely loyal to that one specific game of their choice, so trying to steer DB to compete with that is a terrible idea.

The alternative is to ensure the game is fun and maybe offers something new and innovative, something we’re very far from achieving in the alpha and the update rate for us testers is so slow, the only time we can actually make good use of this early access is whenever new blood turns up and from practicing getting everyone together and to bond to find the harder to identify issues that pubbers just aren’t going to get to you.

Besides, every year pub play gets worse in every game. Part of it is how mainstream culture changed and the other part is how more kids can get into games, and all kids of all ages and nations are evil little gits guranteed, and don’t try to deny it. The 11-17 age range is second only to corrupt politicians for “Humans That Bring The Entire Race Down” contribution. Either they’ll be steadfast in the belief that I DON’T SUCK THE GAME SUCKS IT’S **** THAT IT WON’T LET ME WIN or 10/10 GOTYAY THIS GAME IS JUST LIKE HALO and stick to one, maybe two mechanics in the game out of dozens all year until the next OMG10/10 comes along. At least in the competitive scene you’ll only get people who know the game in and out and stick around because there’s an actual relationship between them and the game.

(potty200) #122

Finally have acnance to sit down and write a message.

Firstly, I am quite happy at pub stomping the new players into the ground and driving them out of the alpha. It does my ego wonders. I choose not to play vs the newer players to give them a chance to get used to the game. How fun for them do you think it’d be if you have a server full with Funks, Mao’s, Inferno’s and zilla’s? I know i’d be like **** this, gunna play a game where I don’t get fash smashed every time I spawn. But nevermind, thats just pub play with the awesome feedback from players who don’t pick the game back up.

Secondly, if it wasn’t for draft games and actually playing DB in a competitive enviroment I wouldn’t play much at all. I think I speak for a lot of the guys including Seanza, Raste and Mao when I say this. I don’t play games to play public, therefore what is my insentive to play Public on an alpha? I am here to better the compeition side of DB. I have provided plenty of feedback that has been and hopefully more that WILL be used in the future. There are a TONNE of players on the alpha who have come in here, played to get good, left no feedback and just pubstomp. What the hell is that doing for the alpha? If anything, we need keys for Aussies and NA players. The fact we even have a full up server at any point of the day is something.

Someone asked the question the other day about public players being quite. Why doesn’t someone step up and get something going for you guys? It’s all good sitting on the forums complaining there are not enogh players. Hell, when I started the draft games I remember we used to scrape 8 players, the minimum required number to start a game on the private server, every time. I stuck at it and it slowly became a thing many players looked forward to. Why doesn’t someone pull their finger out and try something new? Look at developer Friday. During WORK times and they still attract enough to fill 2 public servers up… If those stats don’t open your eyes what will? So get up off of your arse and quit complaining. I am here to test competitive and competitive only. Don’t like it? Tough ****.

Another option could be to stop doing DB and you’ll see the activity drop a F load. Which is fine by me because we are probably not contributing much to the alpha anyway… right?

(MikeyTWolf) #123

[QUOTE=potty200;457799]
Firstly, I am quite happy at pub stomping the new players into the ground and driving them out of the alpha. It does my ego wonders. I choose not to play vs the newer players to give them a chance to get used to the game…

…I don’t play games to play public, therefore what is my insentive to play Public on an alpha? I am here to better the compeition side of DB.[/QUOTE]

Now if only there were people like you in the Dota 2 beta. Seriously, Valve just took all the top teams from Dota 1 and ported them over with drinks and free accomodation. What does the rest of the community get? To continue to fester with the most unlikable obnoxious and narcissistic 13 year olds from Russia or Brazil that will fill every game you try to join. And it’s affected both the game’s UI and execution, as well as the ability to find people who are willing to team up with you to avoid the torrent of horrid players.

(ailmanki) #124

Maybe an idea would be that the better players, I guess they know it - that they are better. Either decide to only play on Veteran, or decide to support the newcomers. E.g. play a supporting objective role. Like fops or medic only - and then follow the lemmings.
Until we can have some shuffle, or skillrating boards.

In W:ET the scene is not only split up because of the mods. The skill differs extremely. I have a Omnibot server, and I can adjust the bots reaction time, there are only a few players which can handle bots with 0 reaction time. Most are around 0.5-0.7 second. Else they cannot kill them in a 1vs1 situation. These players do not pre-aim, not count deaths of enemies, having no clue of spawntimes. Have bad movement - lets just say you can shoot a slow panzer at them, and they probably walk into it. (And I can adjust my mouse settings, so that I become a bad aimer :stuck_out_tongue: and have fun with them too ).
Now if a “pro” player joins in, he kills every single one of them. Because of superior positioning, better aim, and much more thinking overall.
As a strong example fatal1ty vs PC Gamer Staff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgUEHGryOK4

Pub play is disorganized by nature. At best compare it with a dance floor. You usually you need some admins - the door bouncer at a party. There might be one or more person, who are the stars of that party - and as such attract many more.

yay 1k posts

(tokamak) #125

The aim is to -not- need any admins in pub play but to have a strong system that aut-regulates including votes and other stuff.

Admins are flawed, especially those pricks that ban you for sniping them from the wrong place.

In W:ET the scene is not only split up because of the mods. The skill differs extremely.

You can’t split up a game on skill if people don’t get through the downloading process or don’t last on all the wacky additions. Custom content broke W:ET and the game would be life and kicking right now if there was a way to protect the stock content better.

(Kendle) #126

@Potty - the last thing I wanted to do was offend you, what you’re doing is great and this game needs you, and people like you. Please don’t take anything I’ve said as a criticism of the great work you’re doing. I’m merely suggesting the pub scene could do with a little more love, that’s all.

But you’re right though, it’s up to the pubbers to do something about that. Back when I used to be involved in community sites, like etnation, we used to organise forum games, where we’d just suggest a date and time for forum regulars to jump on server, to save everyone turning up when they felt like it and there not being enough people around. I guess Block-out Wednesday and Developer Friday are the equivalents of the that but maybe we need to do more.

I’m sorry I ever raised a concern tbh, the last thing I wanted to do was offend the very people who are doing so much good work for this game already. :frowning:

(Erkin31) #127

I choose not to play vs the newer players to give them a chance to get used to the game. How fun for them do you think it’d be if you have a server full with Funks, Mao’s, Inferno’s and zilla’s?

Where is the problem ? It’s in this way we can progress. The important thing is to shuffle the teams and not groups with all “old” players in the same team .
This is still better than all public servers empty while 2 private servers are full.

(I don’t ignore your second point, it’s just I haven’t nothing to say about it, I understand it and it’s your right :slight_smile: )

(mortis) #128

I come and play when I can, get stomped by the alpha players, and come back for more. I can’t stay sharp enough to out shoot them, so i have to out-think think them. It’s my only hope as an older gamer… :slight_smile:

(Naphael) #129

I started yesterday, have played for like 2 hours. And I was proud doing a 0.5 ratio or even 1 ratio sometimes. Getting stomped can’t stop me from playing a game I really want to play. ( And at the moment, I’m trying to understand objectives, and have a good aknowledge of maps ).
Anyway, I’ll improve my skill faster with great players playing with me ^^ ( I’m not really a FFA player, I hope DB will be a good competitive game as CS and ET )

(Seiniyta) #130

I was thinking about making a seperate thread, but I suppose this goes here pretty well. Will DirtyBomb eventually appear on steam? perhaps Early access even?

(Volcano) #131

i thought it wasn’t going to steam due to FireTeam

(Seiniyta) #132

How so? What does appearing on steam change anything? Without steam you miss a gigantic amount of potential players imo.

(Dragonji) #133

I think Steam just doesn’t “host” games for free. The question is if DB on Steam would be profitable.

(MrFunkyFunk) #134

Exactly.
Don’t they get a large % of every transaction made in the f2p they host?
The problem is that so many people use Steam nowadays that Valve can ask whatever they want out of devs.

(Protekt1) #135

[QUOTE=MrFunkyFunk;459609]Exactly.
Don’t they get a large % of every transaction made in the f2p they host?
The problem is that so many people use Steam nowadays that Valve can ask whatever they want out of devs.[/QUOTE]

Not really. There are still plenty of other options for devs to release games on, even independently. Valve definitely takes a % but its probably a reasonable amount.

(MrFunkyFunk) #136

I’ve never said the contrary, don’t misinterpret my reply.
But with Steam exposure & popularity, today’s average joe doesn’t rely on GOG, GG, Amazon Games, Desura etc to buy or play his FPS titles.
He relies on the most established one and expects a library with autopatching & cloud support plus the community integrated features that he, and his friends, have been using for the better part of their online time.

It must be quite some pressure for the devs to decide to go without it and probably missing an easily larger exposure at first.
SD obviously wants to do without Steam nibbling at their profit and that’s why they have FireTeam.
I probably exagerated with the “large” term but it seems some gamers nowadays think Steam is a benevolent organization.

(Ashog) #137

Anyways, Steam is for kids :slight_smile:

Reel adults nevar have time to play the games they bought there :wink:

(Nail) #138

[QUOTE=Ashog;459900]Anyways, Steam is for kids :slight_smile:

Reel adults nevar have time to play the games they bought there ;)[/QUOTE]

lol, most of my time on Steam is updating games I don’t have time to play

(Rengenius) #139

It’ll be nice to hear some comments on that from devs.
I personally think that Steam can drastically increase popularity of DB, but I’m not sure about financial side of this. There are many F2P shooters on Steam from third party developers, and they seems doing OK.

(Bangtastic) #140

Steam follows the path of the dark side… and it isnt that big that it could really help… Even if you put it on steam, the population dilemma isnt solved because you want more players for the future. The player flood from steam will go back as drastically as it came. After some time there will be new games which overshadow DB. Better you pump it up on social media, ppl are 24/7 on there.

Magic word: Marketing. forget steam and its limitations.

F2P are rich visited anyways and easy to find (I use google for this) I expect that you wont even get mid, long term players on steam. The ones looking for such a game will play it doesnt mattter whether its on steam.
Best example for not being on steam: once again LoL
some exclusivity can be a good thing.

even if you attract millions of players you will have to find a way to make them keep playing. The longer they play, the higher is the chance that they buy stuff. And you need some whales to carry the F2P model.