Remove the ****ing levels already.

#1

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This picture says more than enough on this topic.

The bad:

  • People rage quitting servers or changing teams based on levels.
  • Servers going completely empty between matches because the high level player got put in the opposing team.
  • Constant hate and flame messages towards high level players. Attacks on his personal life.
  • Everyone expecting the high level to carry them and blame him for the losses.
  • High levels in pubs make newer players QUIT the game because it has ‘bad matchmaking’
  • High level players quitting the game because they can’t stand the hate.
  • High level players making smurfs to get away from it all and play in peace.
  • Constant attention towards the high level, can’t focus on the game.

The meh:

  • Somewhat of an indicator if you know how the game and maps work and how to play the game. Levels become completely irrelevant at around level 10 where everyone should be experienced enough to know how to play. Why not just cap levels at that point and have the level display show 10+?

The good:

  • nothing whatsoever.

This is not a MMORPG where levels matter. Get rid of them.

(watsyurdeal) #2

Very true, but that would actually require them to balance their mercs

Cause otherwise you’d just see 2 or 1 of a certain merc every game.

Sawbonez, Bushwacka, and Fragger are perfect examples

(DarkangelUK) #3

Ive had instances of the opposite happening! “You’re a Founder and only level 10? You must suck ass man!”

(Glottis-3D) #4

they could be right, you know… :smiley:

(DarkangelUK) #5

Cheeky git! I don’t get to play much these days, work, kids, going offshore to floating metal oilrigs of death for days and weeks at a time, drinking a lot, also drinking a lot as well… it’s a tough life for a gamer

(Szakalot) #6

[QUOTE=watsyurdeal;541171]Very true, but that would actually require them to balance their mercs

Cause otherwise you’d just see 2 or 1 of a certain merc every game.

Sawbonez, Bushwacka, and Fragger are perfect examples[/QUOTE]

its not a matter of balance. Some mercs are better than others in specific scenarios. this is the role designed with them - like rhino.

How would you balance rhino to make his pick less punishing when playing the non-closecombat parts of the map? Give him 300health?

Draft mode gets tricky, cause like Adeto pointed out: the meta would completely simplify into the most versatile mercs, and strategies would get stale.

edit: i suppose a draft mode that could work is one merc rule/objective. So you have a draft mode where your team picks up to 3 sets of 5 mercs, each set for one objective, with individual banning phases etc. But that is probably a bit too much.

(Rémy Cabresin) #7

[QUOTE=Szakalot;541178]its not a matter of balance. Some mercs are better than others in specific scenarios. this is the role designed with them - like rhino.

How would you balance rhino to make his pick less punishing when playing the non-closecombat parts of the map? Give him 300health?

Draft mode gets tricky, cause like Adeto pointed out: the meta would completely simplify into the most versatile mercs, and strategies would get stale.

edit: i suppose a draft mode that could work is one merc rule/objective. So you have a draft mode where your team picks up to 3 sets of 5 mercs, each set for one objective, with individual banning phases etc. But that is probably a bit too much.[/QUOTE]

There are plenty of solutions to this problem, but I think we can all agree that public rules will simply not work for competitive play. There are things like combining the current 1 merc rule with role restrictions. So you can have 1 Assault, 2 Firesupports, 3 Medics, 2 Engineers, 1 Covert at any time. 2 Firesupports would normally mean that 2 skyhammers are allowed but by applying the 1 of each merc rule to the role restrictions you can do 2 Firesupports and within that 1 of each merc. Meaning 2 Skyhammer isn’t allowed, Skyhammer+Stoker IS allowed but having Skyhammer+Stoker+Arty isn’t.

Or having a system where everyone is restricted to a single merc but you have a soccer like “bench” where everyone can pick a 2nd merc but once you switched to it you cannot switch back, or even where you are only allowed to substitute two mercs across your whole team. There are a lot of options, mosts if not all will feel awkward at the start. But for all of them it comes down to which one is SD goingto use and when are we getting it? Because competitive play(especially 3rd parties like DBN) is stuck unless we know what to work towards and set things up with ingame tools.

(riptide) #8

Community rented servers are the answer.

(Rémy Cabresin) #9

They aren’t, not without an SDK. If we get community rented servers now all we can do is friendly fire on/off and the rest would be exactly the same as publics are. We might be able to do some server side things but that isn’t anywhere near the amount of things we need.

(Szakalot) #10

we need a lot of things to be sure, but being able to organize high-level servers would already go a long play. Plus the friendly fire, proper map selection.

Its not enough from your competitive point of you, but for a pubber like me community rented servers would be amazing!

(riptide) #11

I’m quite certain you are only seeing the competitive aspect of community rented servers.

  1. It gives people a place to call home. Which leads to friendships.
  2. The skill level of the server will work itself out. Since most players will find a server closer to their own skill level.
  3. People won’t leave after 1 game. Which leads to better team balance.
  4. People can be permanently banned from said server for being toxic. Thus reducing the amount of toxicity.
(alphabeta) #12

I would keep Levels so that you know “roughly” what you are up against, and what your team is capable of, and how you should play. Remember that (unfortunately) people playing these games are a microcosm of real life. The same jerk who didn’t finish school, has no job or ambition, and cuts you off in traffic yelling at you for “being an idiot driver” is now playing Dirty Bomb. He will abuse you because he can, and it builds up his already absent self-esteem. You could always join a clan like ours (OCB) where high levels are respected, we enjoy playing with and against each other, and jerks get kicked. Just saying.

(Rémy Cabresin) #13

[QUOTE=riptide;541183]I’m quite certain you are only seeing the competitive aspect of community rented servers.

  1. It gives people a place to call home. Which leads to friendships.
  2. The skill level of the server will work itself out. Good players,
  3. People won’t leave after 1 game. Which leads to better team balance.
  4. People can be permanently banned from said server for being toxic. Thus reducing the amount of toxicity.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Szakalot;541182]we need a lot of things to be sure, but being able to organize high-level servers would already go a long play. Plus the friendly fire, proper map selection.

Its not enough from your competitive point of you, but for a pubber like me community rented servers would be amazing![/QUOTE]

Well its true that it might allow for more community feel that would be awesome ofcourse, and thats partially what I meant with “some server side things” like banning players for behaviour etc. But your community server would allow 7 Skyhammers on your team, it would be less likely to happen as within your community most players would be better than the average newbie but everything has to be manually enforced with ‘good faith’ rules :P.

(Szakalot) #14

SD said before they are thinking of a draft system, so they probably would like to add something of the kind, eventually. Probably will have to wait a while though.

I definitely like a draft (mostly for the ban phase) plus a limited amount of switches like you proposed.

(Glottis-3D) #15

7 skyhammers need to be a viable tax, but it should be balanced. teamcooldown.

(Mustang) #16

Teamcooldown is a poor mans “fix”.

(Glottis-3D) #17

better than no fix at all, though

(Faraleth) #18

[QUOTE=Szakalot;541188]SD said before they are thinking of a draft system, so they probably would like to add something of the kind, eventually. Probably will have to wait a while though.

I definitely like a draft (mostly for the ban phase) plus a limited amount of switches like you proposed.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I really liked this idea too that they mentioned a little while ago. I think it would work out really well, honestly. I think they said they were mainly designing it for comp only though, wasn’t it? (correct me if I’m wrong)

Regardless, it’s a nice plan and I’d sure love to see it.

(Szakalot) #19

plus, it would fix pubs rotation stacks

(shibbyuk) #20

I personally haven’t seen much of this behaviour, though I have had a few hackusations if joining a server with new players.

More importantly, the issue is the match-making. The only reason I use the server browser is because the quick join doesn’t work for me 50% of the time - I get put in an empty server. This is when I resort to the server browser and the fore-mentioned skill indifferences occur.

On a related note, when it does work, I keep getting auto-joined onto US servers recently, giving me ping ~150.