please understand that this post isn’t supposed to be a rage fest/salt storm or anything like that. These are just my opinion/thoughts. I am simply someone who enjoys dirty bomb and is concerned about some of the directions that SD have taken this last update.
I have a few issues/concerns regarding the things that SD has done this last update. I would normally stay silent but I feel like these are some major issues and after talking with several of my friends I think I may not be the only one who is thinking about these things.
so first I feel there needs to be a discussion about the new ui. On One hand, it did take a step forward but on the other it took a leap backwards. I do like they added your current squad to the home page and that you can change your squad without going to the barracks. I think that is a great improvement. However, a major issue I am running into is that it is far harder to join matches that friends are already in. With the old system, you knew immediately what friends where playing and who you could join. Now you must search to find them in your little list, and most are in non-joinable matches. Another problem is the font. Why would you leave a ton of space all around but choose the smallest font you could find? I feel like I need to buy reading glasses just to see what’s on my screen. Why is there no font adjuster or ui zoom option? I have heard that this design is supposed to look good on high resolution screens (above 1080p). But not many people have those types of screens, at least not yet. My final issue with the ui is why is your level, steam friends, squad, and squads chat all on the bottom left side of your screen. Your eyes don’t look to the bottom left of a screen all that often. They look to the top left or right before ever looking at the bottom. This is why virtually no game (from my experience) puts super important info on the bottom left.
Matchmaking also needs to be looked at, as well as the ramifications of it. While it is broken at the moment and I have heard several things that concern me (like no vote shuffling, no backfilling, aweful balance, etc). What really concerns me is that if you live in eu/uk/us you cannot enter an objective match unless you use match making. This means that you have no control over what matches you end up in. What happens if you really dislike certain players but guess what match making wants you to play with them. Also, you cannot go with a bunch of friends and populate an empty server and play together either. I don’t know how many players you can currently squad/que with but I if I had to take a guess I don’t think it will allow a full 12. You also can’t play a 7v7 or 8v8 in objective anymore (at least to my knowledge). Stopwatch and objective have always been DB’s bread and butter. They have been the two modes that keep most of the player base active and playing the game (sorry execution). I think it is a very bad idea to limit something that a lot of your player base enjoys. Please give us at least some servers that we can access through the server browser. I personally don’t enjoy having to go to another region/continent just to play objective (side note: non-cmm regions still have 8v8 and 7v7).
It is concerning to me that SD has decided to move in this direction. While they did make a lot of progress in this update I feel like they took some major steps back. I feel as though they are trying to bring new players into the game but at the same time pushing out a lot of the old players. A strong community is important to any games success and a weak community can only lead to its failure. That’s basically all I wanted to say. I have been playing DB for over 2 years and I have seen its ups and downs since launching to open beta. For some reason, this is what really makes me nervous for DB’s future. And maybe I am wrong about all of this and things will change and get better. It certainly would not be the first time DB has bounced back and changed directions. I just hope that the plans SD have created will make the game better, and I guess we will all see in time.