Phantom Hubris destroying Dirty Bomb

(RaubRitter) #1

Dear Dirty Bomb,

Your game was such a wonderful Beta and then a dark cloud loomed over the horizon. The Phantom appeared, some say it was a result of a developer’s hubris (overwhelming pride), others say it is a virus introduced by your competitors as a pre-emptive strike by"cough" FO4.

Your refusal to admit Phantom’s game changing aspects in a timed objective has resulted in your downfall (and I so LOVE this game). The empty promises of “Wait, a new merc is coming” (= the check is in the mail) and we will Nerf him instead of just removing him has resulted in this.

http://steamcharts.com/app/333930

Look at the graph carefully, the peak is your stellar ascent and then guess when Phantom was introduced. From a high of 13,000 players (pre Phantom) to a dive bomb descent to 4,500 today.

This month’s reviews across the internet, except from a few valiant Phantom fan boys and girls, are horrible.

PLEASE, make some immediate changes or your game will be consigned to the dust bins of gamer history as having “such great potential, BUT …”.

Sincerely, Raub Ritter

P/S Yes, I have more than enough credits to buy a Phantom, have both silver, bronze, and iron loadouts (a sick joke by the computer gods) but refuse to play such an unbalanced character.

(Yes) #2

He is definitely unbalanced now, he’s pretty shit compared to every other merc.

(cornJester) #3

What do you want? A merc as visible as anyone uncloaked, with no shield, machine pistols and 80 HP? They nerfed the hell out of him. He’s unbalanced alright, because he’s terrible at a stealth role now. Dude needs to be far less visible than he is currently. Right now if you cannot see him while he’s moving then you may want to go see an eye doctor and I’m being serious.

SD pls, make him far less visible than he is currently while cloaked, less than he was before even when crouch walking and still and just remove the darn shield… I think the OP wants a scapegoat here eitherway. The pops going down aren’t just a one issue thing. People are also probably getting bored as we have played the same maps and modes to death, I wont but I know some friends have.

(watsyurdeal) #4

I would argue the Phantom nerfs are what drove players away, not the class itself, the way they are going about fixing him is affecting other classes, which it shouldn’t.

The turn speed change I think is what pissed enough people off, just my take.

(elegantRoyalty) #5

Did anyone ever see phantom do well outside of the sub level 5 servers?

i know its so easy to leap to conclusions and see causation where in fact its just correlation, but youve missed something rather majour. june-august anything special happen then?
something like the northern hemisphere all going on holiday for a few weeks? school/uni holidays?

since june ark lost 6k max concurrent
since june payday 2 lost 12k max concurrent
since june cs:go lost 70k max concurrent

HOLY FUCK that phantom had aoe!

but for what its worth i do think phantoms kit is as big a mistake as vasalines but the game survived that tedious no skill camping pos. it will survive an underpowered near useless phantom a bit easier i suspect.

(cornJester) #6

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;59144”]I would argue the Phantom nerfs are what drove players away, not the class itself, the way they are going about fixing him is affecting other classes, which it shouldn’t.

The turn speed change I think is what pissed enough people off, just my take.[/quote]

This is very likely one of the major reasons and I was considering that too. There are others though, I think a lot will return when they replace the current anti cheat measures. Even if I don’t run into that many hackers myself. (I also don’t play comp)

(Backuplight) #7

[quote=“RaubRitter;15684”]but refuse to play such an unbalanced character.[/quote]So you’ve never played Phantom. That explains everything - maybe start your post with that so we don’t have to read the whole thing next time.

(Fleshpound) #8

[quote=“RaubRitter;15684”]Dear Dirty Bomb,

Your game was such a wonderful Beta and then a dark cloud loomed over the horizon. The Phantom appeared, some say it was a result of a developer’s hubris (overwhelming pride), others say it is a virus introduced by your competitors as a pre-emptive strike by"cough" FO4.

Your refusal to admit Phantom’s game changing aspects in a timed objective has resulted in your downfall (and I so LOVE this game). The empty promises of “Wait, a new merc is coming” (= the check is in the mail) and we will Nerf him instead of just removing him has resulted in this.

http://steamcharts.com/app/333930

Look at the graph carefully, the peak is your stellar ascent and then guess when Phantom was introduced. From a high of 13,000 players (pre Phantom) to a dive bomb descent to 4,500 today.

This month’s reviews across the internet, except from a few valiant Phantom fan boys and girls, are horrible.

PLEASE, make some immediate changes or your game will be consigned to the dust bins of gamer history as having “such great potential, BUT …”.

Sincerely, Raub Ritter

P/S Yes, I have more than enough credits to buy a Phantom, have both silver, bronze, and iron loadouts (a sick joke by the computer gods) but refuse to play such an unbalanced character.[/quote]

Peak players of 13k was because of event so we do not count that.

After Phantom patch it slowly decreased but main drop off was after Fine Tune.

Main reasons for drop offs for Dirty Bomb are F2P system and updates,hotfixes and patches.

Main downfall for Phantom was his shield delay. It was on that time tanky and stealth.

By the community(so we say about all of us),we deleted both. So i do not only see the only fault of SD and Nexon here.

(Jostabeere) #9

“Blah Blah, Phantom breaks the game, blah blah. I never played him but I studied Phantomology at Hurrward so I know everything about Phantom!”
“Ehrmuhgerd, Phantom is attacking Middle Earth, too!”
http://puu.sh/jnMh3/ea9ca0f9b2.jpg

(Ardez1) #10

I like how you used the ‘Played an Hour ago’ instead of the ‘24 hour peak’ stat to determine the peak for today. Talk about misleading information!

While yes, 7,447 peak is quite low when compared to the 11-12k peaks previously seen, it isn’t the end of the world. My concern is if that trend continues to decline at this pace, which it currently appears likely to do.

Oddly enough, have a 7-7.5k daily peak still places DB well within the top 100 games on steam.

And it wasn’t an outright dive, it has been a fairly steady decline, losing a couple hundred each day from the peak.

(Gi.Am) #11

Not gonna go into the phantom discussion we already have enough of them. Just want to say a few things about the graph. Ehem.

“cum hoc ergo propter hoc -> Correlation does not imply causation”

As BanditFleshpound pointed out the all time high was most likely because of two things overlapping, several high profile youtuber/streamer did a review on DB drawing in players and Nexon gave away elitecases prompting people to lock in to claim their rewards.
After that event the player peak was already falling again (before phantom got released).
And is now roughly at what it was before those events (6k-8k peaks, nice comparing all time peaks to daily lows, btw.)

Also while it could very well be that the recent changes did drive off players.
I do like to point out, that there could be a simpler explaination for the perceived loss of players, called “summer holidays”.

Quite a few people are propably more interested in chilling at lakes and beaches with their friends and relatives instead of playing dirty in front of a hot running PC.

PS. doesn’t mean that Nexon / SD might have to look into, how to attract more players.

(Fleshpound) #12

[quote=“laudatoryLunch;59165”]“Blah Blah, Phantom breaks the game, blah blah. I never played him but I studied Phantomology at Hurrward so I know everything about Phantom!”
“Ehrmuhgerd, Phantom is attacking Middle Earth, too!”
http://puu.sh/jnMh3/ea9ca0f9b2.jpg[/quote]
The Mercs(or new update,if you want) are going to Isengard,Isengard,Isengard :I

(Amerika) #13

See, this was a double edged sword. Phantom was released and allowed players to get kills they might not have deserved and they love that playstyle. This upset many who considered DB to be a gunbased game. That drove away a lot of players. Then Phantom is nerfed and the players who left probably haven’t come back but it then drove away players who love the melee playstyle.

Phantom should have been all of one thing or all of another thing. Not a ton of both (gunplay + stealth/easy melee kills). Then you throw in the comp crowd, how MANY listen to, that were not happy with the aimpunch changes. Then the aimpunch is fixed but melee is totally screwed (for everyone).

So you can’t just say one thing contributed to player decline. There has been a series of questionable decisions made all in a row that has made some people lose confidence and go from being super hyped with the game to becoming jaded depending on your outlook and what you find important.

(beigeTackle) #14

A lot of the guys who started the dirty bomb streams pretty much quit after they saw how they were “fixing” phantom by changing a lot of the core mechanics and ruining things for every other character. And these guys were there from the beginning of the game like die hard fan status…those are the guys sd should be reaching out to in terms of feedback. Put the core group of guys who played from the beginning in a test server and take their feedback. I would rather have you listen to them than the countless whiny little shits who are killing the game. I’m all for listening to the players but as Cosby once said “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” Pick the people you want to please. And that’s the dudes that supported you in the beginning. If a dude is lvl48 I can trust that he has good feedback. I feel like currently it’s a lot of new players getting their voice heard over the OG’s and that’s not how you should do it.

(Old Man) #15

I don’t like being OHK in situations you don’t even see it coming, but this “Phantom will doom you all” idea is just silly.

The game will bleed players considering its half finished and comes with few maps, people will get bored. This is a different FPS than most, much more demanding than mainstream shooters and many players won’t like this. The F2P aspect will bleed the playerbase a bit more too, even if it’s far more favourable than many other F2P titles like Heroes and Generals. Not everyone has a patience and merc prices aren’t still silly.

Phantom is a small issue here.