Here my thoughts collected after more time practice of the game, I try to cover basically all the questions I had and all the points I found interest in. I tried to write this using a classic partitioned scheme but as you will see (and I think its normal) many parts rely on each others, because you cant just tweak one thing in a multifactor environment and expect it to solve the problem, the game need to be thought as a whole. Note that all of the below reflect personal opinions, and not a whine to get this or that changed, and note that I said many things on different threads already, but I want to be a star and write a fatass wall’o’text for the glory and the girls…
[u]Game core : [/u]
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Movement : The general pace of the game is good to me, but its still feel clunky on jumping because of the weird momentum loss after 2-3 jumps. Still plenty of (reported) bugs where you are stuck on stuffs on the road, or stuck on doors (last spawn for attackers on LB for instance, the door in the broken wall far left I find often stuck in, same goes for the little arch to go up the bridge in the first phase attacker, you are “crouch forced” and if an enemy catch you here you are dead). Not that much interaction with your environment (see maps). What I miss movement wise tho is the reactivity of the controls, everything slow you down and you lose this “little adrenaline” drop which can enhance a game a make for some hero time, throwing grenade slow you down, sprinting and stop sprint aren’t fast enough in responsivness, etc… It’s like running and moving fast just so you can reach a point A of the maps, then stopping the fast pace and take the time to aim, plant a turret, or throw a nade. All in all I think that the base movement is ok but it’s not used to its real extent, e.g. during combat to circle your enemy or use environment and suddenly ramp jump over a guy for instance. I know trickjumping will be impossible, but a bit more freedom of movement during combat wouldn’t kill anyone.
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Shooting : Here is the big part and here is a subject that has been dividing the testers since the beginning : do we want long TTK or not? I’ll try to answer what I would like to see in DB. I’ll start by saying that I dislike the shooting at the moment, for few reasons but the obvious are : 1) the performance issues make the tracking hard and 2) Long TTK as they stands seems artificial to me. Artificial because as stated during movement, I don’t feel like I’m in control of my aim well enough to find a long firefight stimulating, I just feel wtf because half of my bullet register without causing damage and the other one register on foot while I have my crosshair on the head of the enemy. A long time to kill is rewarding when you can actually use your movement to trick the enemy and to gain an edge on the aiming part, at the moment long ttk are here because both players are shooting inaccurate ice cream balls (I speak 1V1). I understand we don’t want CoD, but here we are simply at the ultimate (quake aside) end of the spectrum because the accuracy isn’t good enough to balance the damage fall off and the general weak damage of the weapons. I’ve put quake aside because while the relative damage in quake are low, I find that the super accuracy of the guns still make the kills feeling rewarding, in DB we are in an half empty glass with relatively accurate or not weapon shooting relatively low damage bullets, then the dices can often roll and the winning of a 1V1 is not much determined by the player ability to aim / move but by many other variables. I think, that a game like DB need to reward the twitch shooters as well as the tracking shooters, and those who can do both would dominate the game, in order to do that I still think damage per bullet should be upped (a tad, not X2 before everyone yell and cry…) and the spread should be lowered again. There is no such thing as an “extreme” or hard game to manage for newbie if the killings are demanding both reflexes and tracking abilities, it’s just that your game will stand out of the crowd by itself if it is a tad more challenging than a classic dumb run’N’gun.
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Class and abilities : I currently like the different classes and abilities and really think the medics are well balanced, it removes (a bit) the “Rambo medic” effect I usually see on other games as the capacity to heal themselves is compensated by the relative weakness of the weapon, in the hand of a good player close range you are still dead meat, but I feel the medics less dominating than ETQW technician for example. The ammo drops are pretty much balanced by now and all the classes seems to have a distinct role. The only thing I would love to test is the C4 to the soldier, this way the soldier would have to do objectives and not solely be a killing machine, and it would also relieve the engi from doing all the objectives. As I said before in the state of DB, “just” kill the engies and gib them if you want to win, spreading objectives in different classes might stop this, and also might give a little extra air for those who want to do anything else as the objective while playing engi.
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Screen / sound indicators : I don’t have any problem with the hitsounds (except the broken hitsound with knife on anything) as I clearly make the difference between the two of them. I would like more indication regarding the carriables obj, correct me if I’m wrong but as it is now we have an onscreen indicator when the data is stolen, then an onscreen + sound when the data is loaded in EV or wherever it is needed, with the absence of “returning data” ability I don’t see the point in having a sound when the data is loaded (this sound is just here to say you are basically doomed, why not a “ta-dam”? ^^). I want a sound when the data is stolen and not when it is loaded, this can help the defenders to focus on the carrier and actually defend the objective before it is loaded (and therefore lost). I globally like the other indicators on screen, which I (for one) don’t find too obtrusive. The gun could be smaller, but as long as everyone play with the same “bias” I’m happy with that. What I dislike and always disliked is the bob and roll and shake of your screen when you are hit, to me it penalises the guy who is already penalised (an enemy had the drop on him and already hit him several times) by cluttering his reaction time, aiming, vision, and escaping abilities, a clear view of what’s going on is mandatory in a fast paced game, realism isn’t welcome here. Minimaps and onscreen indicators can be reworked as someone who doesn’t know the maps can have hard time finding an objective behind the maze of roads. I would like a proper static crosshair for the sake of seeing more what I’m tracking J
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Overpowered features : To me there are already several overpowered features, being overpowered by people abuse, broken mechanics of the feature or broken mechanics of the other things making it stands above. healthpack : due to the loooong TTK and relative weakness of the weapons, medpack are OP because taking down a medic standing on 3 healthpacks is near to impossible --> promote camping corner and ramboish medics, even if the patches improved greatly this, I love the fact that you can grab the medic’s Hpacks tho, it is an important balancing element. sniper rifle : maybe it has been nerfed (didn’t played recon too much lately) but if its still 2 hit to kill it is (to me) clearly a killer gun, one quick shot close + submachine silenced from the covie can be really a deal breaker if used by proper hands, and as the other guns are relatively weak, it makes the sniper rifle OP to me, remember that the game is still clunky for most of us but with more smoothness (–> increase in aiming abilities) the sniper can be a deal breaker. Artillery : It is not overpowered per se because the radius and damage are low, but it is abused because the recharge bar aren’t shared per team, and with the slooow EV it can be relatively easy to drop continuous rain of lead on it and win a map without even having to fight.
[u]Maps : [/u]
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London bridge : Kinda like it when you know the map, I would tho try to restrict certain areas to certain phases using doors that open when phase “n” is finished, this would be a resource cheap addition and would help providing the clear chokepoints that are desperately needed on this map.
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Waterloo : Nothing to add here, see slag’s post for the nice description he made on the last objective being too open. Rest of the map is good IMO, this last obj need rework, I’ll let the pro mapper talk about this as I don’t have any ideas right now.
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White Chapel: Phase 1 is still too advantageous for the defenders, they still can get the higher grounds pretty quickly and then camp the EV before its repaired by flanking the attackers. Phase 2 in the chapel is, as its stands, totally useless. Phase 3 is the most intense but too much objectives and the slooow lift makes it too much situational, get the highgrounds and camp the two arches and the defenders cant even approach the lift anymore. Phase 4 is broken also, because of many things but no space between data and delivery point and / or no returnable data are the main reasons IMO.
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Camden: Didn’t play the latest release so I wont comment too much, map was good and it was on this map I had the more “good feelings” because less flanking roads make the game reading much easier.
[u]Teamplay : [/u]
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Stacked often : I already mentioned that but during the alpha, a votable (make it 40% yes and not 50, easier to unstack) shuffle team on objective servers only at the end of each round can be a great addition, it’ll help people realise more stuffs because the teams would be more balanced.
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Teamplay is “too much” rewarded: In the actual state of the game, I feel that teamplay is “too much” rewarded because one must really rely on his team if he doesn’t want to have his butt kicked… I mean that whatever personal skill you have, if you are continuously and repeatedly shot from 3 directions each time you are trying to hold a point, you’ll never succeed. This is coming from 1) maps are too open, defence need to spread out too much, 2) Weak weapon makes it harder to pull out a sudden crazy aiming and kill the one or two that had the drop on you and 3) this is alpha so I know not everyone know the maps super well and use “tactics” in a pub environment. I think I’m just frustrated because I’m too noob for comp, but the pub mentality when no one cover his mate is getting on my nerves… But aside my clear psychological problem, I think there can be a wider problem lying in DB which, I hope, will be lost when the game will be refined.
[u]Performance : [/u]
- Issue with FPS : As many other the FPS is a real issue here and I think the dev might work hard and quick to give us proper performance for mid end spec, because all our testing and impression are deeply orientated by these performance issues.
- Smoothness: game feel not smooth, getting caught in various place of the maps, and the strafing feel a bit robotic which makes it harder (again) to aim and track properly an opponent.
[u]General conclusion : [/u]
All in all I think the game devs need to focus on performance issues and core aspects such as movement and shooting before tweaking anything else, this way you’ll have way more accurate impressions and review and you’ll be able to focus on other “details” because details are what will bring money to SD’s pockets, that’s why I didn’t put (yet) a part about selling stuffs even if I have some ideas. So far so good tho, I try to tell myself everytime I play that I’m mostly surrounded by proplayer just to avoid quick judgment on the balance and aiming and bullet damage etc… But I don’t think I’ve been too extreme in my post regarding these concern and that they are minded. Keep up the good work!
I hereby declare this as my personal wall of text ad will update it with more text when I’ll feel the need to.
Peace
