For better or worse, rewards are a primary reason people stick with a game. Some games don’t lend themselves to a compelling reward system and have to survive only on gameplay. Dirtybomb is in an unfortunate middle ground: it has a natural, strong reward system, but that reward system is so miserly that it does little to keep players engaged. So Dirtybomb competes for players with one hand behind its back.
The problem is simple: the reward to time ratio is far too low, especially for newer players. In the first 8 hours of Dirtybomb you get 1) one bronze+ loadout, 2) a gold loadout for aura/sky, 3) enough credits to almost buy 1 merc. And once you unlock that first merc, you are immediately 15-20 hours away from your next major unlock. To me, that is nuts. Keep in mind, the level 8 player isn’t doing very well. On average he’s going strongly negative, and on average he doesn’t yet have a firm grasp on the mechanics that make DB worthy of his time. He’s trying out a F2P shooter recommended by Steam, and at 8 hours in, he’s given it a thoroughly fair shake. His first impressions were that the game was pretty fun, that it was fast, and that he isn’t very good at it.
And it is at this moment that SD asks him to invest another 20 hours of grinding to unlock the next thing. Supposing he’s one of the minority that decides to bear with it, he can expect to unlock maybe 15 cases during that time. On average, these are virtually worthless: most of them are lead cards he for mercs he doesn’t own, a couple of them are ironss, and one might be a bronze, which would be pretty exciting, except most probably she/he doesn’t own that merc either. The average case opening experience ‘rewards’ him with items that are almost truly useless.
That’s so disastrous it’s almost unique to Dirtybomb. It’s like Overwatch’s lootbox system, if the odds of unlocking a legendary were reduced 10 fold. The danger of lootboxes is that once you open them they are gone, so if you don’t value their contents you are in a situation where that X amount of play you just invested to unlock them is almost literally wasted. So if you play DB for 10 hours and earn 7 boxes and the credits for 8 more, at the end of your opening there is a strong likelihood you got nothing you wanted. That is an unfortunately direct way of letting you know that the last 10 hours of gameplay were profitless, which is why most games try to avoid this situation.
Default cases need to be way, way better. Maybe some analyst told you that they needed to be this way to maximize profit. It’s hard to see it that way now. There is enormous room to improve case rewards while still incenvitizing and almost virtually requiring real payment to unlock the coolest stuff. I have about 1000 hours played, and in that time I have naturally opened 1 cobolt, and 4 golds. Doubling, or even tripling that number is hardly going to max me out. There are almost 160 different loadouts, and maybe 100 good ones. Grinding cobolts in all of them is safely impossible. It would still be safely impossible if they dropped at 10x the current rate (!). Currently, paying customers get around 80-90% of their desirable loadouts from paying. Changing this to 70-80% does not seem like an enormous risk.
Recommendations:
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Remove lead cards from cases (it might be OK to keep them in some form as new player reward fodder). Opening leads feels bad. Not just in the ‘unlucky’ way, but in the actively ‘ugh, worthless’ way. Having 65% of cases be this awful makes grinding in DB an almost negative experience. Instead, replace lead with a variety of credits and scrap (in variable amounts).
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Give new players a lot of iron. When you are new, getting iron cards feels good. And because they are virtually worthless, there’s little lost by handing them out like candy. The first game played with any merc should award you a random iron for that merc. Etc. Iron cards are already trivially cheap to craft, but having them drop would feel better.
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Further lower the barrier to entry for buying new mercs. Cut the real money cost a little bit. Perhaps add some quests/missions that facilitate unlocking (quest: the next merc costs 2k less to unlock). Players that are gradually unlocking mercs are the players who will stick around.
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Increase the drop rate of Bronze+ by 50%+. Probably, this number is still too conservative. Perhaps keep cobolt the same to preserve its unique prestige.
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Weight the probability distribution of cases in favor of mercs that the player already owns. Unlocking a silver loadout in the Merc you like is a powerful reward for newer players. It should happen more often. Cobolts should be excluded from this mechanic to avoid manipulation.
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Add a 1x crafting kit to every arsenal crate. This gives players a slowly accruing resource (which helps them stay engaged… only 3x crafting kits away!) and also engages them to the crafting system, which otherwise new players learn to avoid in favor of saving credits for mercs.
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Pity timers. They might reduce the sense of helplessness that sometimes comes from such a random process.
The loadout system is flexible and powerful. It’s a great model. There’s no reason Dirtybomb should be less rewarding than hearthstone or heroes of the storm or Paladins. But it is, enormously so, and I think that is reflected in the playerbase.
