the all-muting Announcer volume

[spanax]

Latest patch made the voice of the announcer mute/fade entire game sounds except hit-beeps. “The bomb has been planted” meanwhile a whole army just walked behind you since the footsteps were muted… So you mute the announcer volume to get constant sound and then realize that playing as a medic is pretty impossible without the merc sounds when they drop, revive rate drops 50%…

Just another totally useless addition with no positive impact on the game and a lot of negative impact on any decent player relying on sounds or medics. Meanwhile let SD change the hue on some old skins and sell them to ya as awesomely tinted crap.

PS: Dear SD, we also require maximum level 20, minimum level 20, 50 and 100 servers, maybe before your playerbase gets under 1k. Please just do ONE of each, there’s tens of idle servers on any region at any given time…

[STARRYSOCK]

We had min level servers before CMM was a thing. Min level 10 servers were pretty good, but it would be a struggle to find an open one usually. There were also min level 20 servers, but those were almost ALWAYS empty. And when they weren’t, it was usually only one or two people. I think I only managed to play one match where the entire lobby was full. You’d probably have slightly better luck now since the veteran playerbase has matured a bit, but the amount of level 100 or even level 50 players on at any given time in a region usually isn’t enough to hold a proper match.
Besides, in theory CMM is supposed to eliminate the need for max/min level servers. It’s already supposed to pair players with a similar skill level together, so it has the potential to be even more balanced than basing things off levels.

TL;DR, It’s better to push the devs to work on smoothing out CMM and adding stopwatch support rather than implementing min/max level servers. According to steam, only 2.7% of players have even made it past level 10, so barring certain players from certain servers is really impractical with DB’s current population, and would just make the game feel even more dead. If DB was larger I’d say go for it, but we need to build around what we have.

[teflonlove]

@STARRYSOCK said:
Besides, in theory CMM is supposed to eliminate the need for max/min level servers. It’s already supposed to pair players with a similar skill level together, so it has the potential to be even more balanced than basing things off levels.

Emphasis on “in theory”, “is supposed to” and “has the potential”.

In reality, CMM currently guarantees an unplayable mess with insane skill spread.

And is far as I can tell SD never acknowledged that CMM needs working (e.g. a separate queue for advanced players where you can only play mercs you have 5+ hours of playtime) but seems to be hoping for the magic pixie dust of an increased player base.

[spanax]

Since August when Splash Damage left Nexon due to “a lack of support” for Dirty Bomb the active playerbase dropped to 40%

[STARRYSOCK]

@teflonlove said:

@STARRYSOCK said:
Besides, in theory CMM is supposed to eliminate the need for max/min level servers. It’s already supposed to pair players with a similar skill level together, so it has the potential to be even more balanced than basing things off levels.

Emphasis on “in theory”, “is supposed to” and “has the potential”.

In reality, CMM currently guarantees an unplayable mess with insane skill spread.

And is far as I can tell SD never acknowledged that CMM needs working (e.g. a separate queue for advanced players where you can only play mercs you have 5+ hours of playtime) but seems to be hoping for the magic pixie dust of an increased player base.

I know it’s not great, that’s why I used those words in the first place lol. My point was that adding min level servers isn’t going to magically fix the game, and that CMM could help a lot of it was more smoothed out, which is why it’s the only thing worth pushing for in regards to this issue.

@spanax said:
Since August when Splash Damage left Nexon due to “a lack of support” for Dirty Bomb the active playerbase dropped to 40%

Keep in mind that there are a LOT of factors that go into things like this. School starting for a lot of players, unfavorable updates like the recent phantom rework, etc. We all know DB isn’t doing so well, but pointing to a chart and saying “this is all because we don’t have min level 10 servers” just isn’t accurate. In reality it’s more of a minor issue that I’ve only seen a few players push for.

DB isn’t sinking because they left nexon either. If anything it’s doing far better than it would have if nexon stayed. I’m not sure if you were around back then, but development progress was so painfully slow during nexon’s time that the game likely would have completely died by now, especially with nexon’s record of killing games. Hell, dockyard was in development for what, over a year afaik? And since nexon left we’ve had two new maps and several major reworks.

Pointing to a chart doesn’t change the fact that min level servers wouldn’t really help as I already said.

[spanax]

Vet players quit when getting spanked with 4 noobs in the team while other (overstacked) team’s phantom spams EZ. I my opinion vets are looking for an environment to progress and enjoy all that DB skill and knowledge yet they get CMM, which is not even stopwatch! At least no horrific playerbase fragmentation happened, as have 2 distinct categories now: 60% already quit and 40% in a coma.

So basically you play this game to get weaponcards? Is this what they think we are doing it for? This game is awesome! There is no major development needed, EV… :), especially not if it consist of deleting 2 game modes with maps included for the sake of something that is not even stopwatch. DB is stopwatch on awesome maps, its insane aim, trickjumps and suport fire, medics and lots of teamplay. It is not blue swords, nor the repeated random lateral recoil tweaking…

[STARRYSOCK]

@spanax said:

Vet players quit when getting spanked with 4 noobs in the team while other (overstacked) team’s phantom spams EZ. I my opinion vets are looking for an environment to progress and enjoy all that DB skill and knowledge yet they get CMM, which is not even stopwatch! At least no horrific playerbase fragmentation happened, as have 2 distinct categories now: 60% already quit and 40% in a coma.

So basically you play this game to get weaponcards? Is this what they think we are doing it for? This game is awesome! There is no major development needed, EV… :), especially not if it consist of deleting 2 game modes with maps included for the sake of something that is not even stopwatch. DB is stopwatch on awesome maps, its insane aim, trickjumps and suport fire, medics and lots of teamplay. It is not blue swords, nor the repeated random lateral recoil tweaking…

A game is supposed to be fun. You should play it because you enjoy it, not because someone is paying you with rewards, even if they were better than weapon cards. I am a DB veteran and I enjoy playing CMM, even if I do get paired with new players occasionally.
Besides that, I’m not really sure what you’re arguing. Yeah SD is a bit of a meme, no one is denying that, but not all veterans just want min level 50 stopwatch servers. I don’t even really like stopwatch most of the time.

[B_Montiel]

@spanax said:
PS: Dear SD, we also require maximum level 20, minimum level 20, 50 and 100 servers, maybe before your playerbase gets under 1k. Please just do ONE of each, there’s tens of idle servers on any region at any given time…

Justify min level 50 and 100 servers. Except pure segregating, and as you mention, splitting the community into further small bits, those would have no usage at all, and i’m not mentioning the required effort to fill those in. Honestly, since level 30 I have not learned or improved by much. So if somebody is good and interested enough to get on a min 20, that should be enough.

AIE server is min 20 in Europe, and that proved way sufficient to mitigate massive skill spread. And by the way, it already takes between 15 and 30 minutes to get it at least half occupied… And as far as I can see it, most of the level 20ish getting stomped when the server is crowded with experienced players are bright enough to leave by themselves if they’re too far from the average.

[spanax]

Whats wrong with pure segregating when you are trying to balance lelvels 200+, 60 and 5’s? Has that worked for you recently in a match? Most of the time the team with the most sub-decimal levels looses or the team with the lvl 300 herro. Min. level 20/50 would maybe fix that and the min. 100 would give you an “endgame” to all this grinding a place for twitchers to stream and clannies to improve.

@B_Montiel said:
AIE server is min 20 in Europe, and that proved way sufficient to mitigate massive skill spread. And by the way, it already takes between 15 and 30 minutes to get it at least half occupied…

One small issue there, AIE server IS NOT min lvl 20, a game there got me posting this with a lvl 11 phantom teammate (1k xp end of half kind of phantom) and on the other side implosive pedo an some other lvl 100+ trashing OCB closeenough with ez teabags and trolls… and it took three maps to fill it btw.

[spanax]

@STARRYSOCK said:
I don’t even really like stopwatch most of the time.

Thread topic is the announcer volume mute thing, which everyone ignores and the post-sctript was about high tier stopwatch servers and you don’t even play stopwatch but you are pretty sure of

@STARRYSOCK said:
the fact that min level [stopwatch] servers wouldn’t really help as I already said.

…there might be different kind of players out there

[Xenithos]

Dude. > @spanax said:

Since August when Splash Damage left Nexon due to “a lack of support” for Dirty Bomb the active playerbase dropped to 40%

First off, you don’t understand how this actually works. When Splash Damage left Nexon it was a big announcement, but they still had tons they had to iron out and it wasn’t release. If you look at those numbers, we were at 3,332 players peak in June, or 2100 average players. Those people that popped in? They played for maybe a month or two, but it wasn’t really that they were going to stay, they just wanted to see what it was like again, and I’m pretty sure there was a lot of advertising simply in the news about Nexon losing 3 different IPs in about a course of two months. Within two months of the news, the average amount of players dropped back down to BELOW where we were, simply continuing the slow bleed this game has sort of have been having for years now. You don’t GAIN a playerbase unless that playerbase stays for more than 4 months, there are seasonal times for this. Just look at PoE. If the first two weeks of the league suck more than half their playerbase clocks out for a while. They just have people that pop in every so often, sometimes there’s a good league and people stay around, others there aren’t. You can’t say DB is down to 40% of their playerbase. That’s just not rational, and if we were to think in those terms then technically DB is down to 8% of it’s original 16,000 players upon open beta release.

DB is dying, sure. But your first post’s “fixes” to the solutions only improves the experience FOR the veterans, and barely. Not to mention it would likely kill of whatever is left of people coming in to this poorly explained game. I mean have you seen how many people are in this game above level 50 that just suck for no reason?

[spanax]

Those better months last year were pumped with new maps and freebees and its Vets returning to check 'em out. But then Vets quit since DB is still in noob magnet mode. With the amount of F2P games out there all it takes is a few games of spawnraping on underground for noobs to be searching for the next F2P adventure…

[Szakalot]

minlvl 10 need to be brought back though!

CMM is a joke without SW (not gonna queue for a 6min waiting time for <15min game).

Lvl20 is unnecessary, AIE server works in that way nicely. However, a few min lvl 10 would go a long way to provide a more consistent game experience for all skill ranges.

Dropping a 1000h+ vet into a game full of lvl5s is just NOT FUN for anyone involved, and makes for impossible to balance games

[Mc1412013]

@Xenithos said:
DB is dying, sure.

You shut your mouth lol. There will be none of that talk in here positivity only lol

[B_Montiel]

@spanax said:
Whats wrong with pure segregating when you are trying to balance lelvels 200+, 60 and 5’s? Has that worked for you recently in a match? Most of the time the team with the most sub-decimal levels looses or the team with the lvl 300 herro. Min. level 20/50 would maybe fix that and the min. 100 would give you an “endgame” to all this grinding a place for twitchers to stream and clannies to improve.

@B_Montiel said:
AIE server is min 20 in Europe, and that proved way sufficient to mitigate massive skill spread. And by the way, it already takes between 15 and 30 minutes to get it at least half occupied…

One small issue there, AIE server IS NOT min lvl 20, a game there got me posting this with a lvl 11 phantom teammate (1k xp end of half kind of phantom) and on the other side implosive pedo an some other lvl 100+ trashing OCB closeenough with ez teabags and trolls… and it took three maps to fill it btw.

Thanks for the info, I have not noticed this in the past, will check that.

[bgyoshi]

@Szakalot said:
minlvl 10 need to be brought back though!

CMM is a joke without SW (not gonna queue for a 6min waiting time for <15min game).

Lvl20 is unnecessary, AIE server works in that way nicely. However, a few min lvl 10 would go a long way to provide a more consistent game experience for all skill ranges.

Dropping a 1000h+ vet into a game full of lvl5s is just NOT FUN for anyone involved, and makes for impossible to balance games

I was actually thinking we need MAX Lvl 10 or MAX Lvl 15 servers, to keep all the 10 and under together

Then when they hit 10, they get to play with the big boys

[Mc1412013]

I havent noticed this only theres no music when we go in over time like before

[STARRYSOCK]

@spanax said:

@STARRYSOCK said:
I don’t even really like stopwatch most of the time.

Thread topic is the announcer volume mute thing, which everyone ignores and the post-sctript was about high tier stopwatch servers and you don’t even play stopwatch but you are pretty sure of

@STARRYSOCK said:
the fact that min level [stopwatch] servers wouldn’t really help as I already said.

…there might be different kind of players out there

If you wanna discuss something, don’t put a far more controversial topic right under it lol

But besides. You’re missing the entire point of what I said, reread some of my other comments instead of taking things out of context.
Yeah, some people like stopwatch more than I do, but that still doesn’t mean your fixes would “fix” the game. The point of me mentioning my dislike for stopwatch is that not all veteran players want the same things, and I know other DB veterans who feel the same. And even if we all did want the exact same thing, it still wouldn’t magically save the game. As I said, it’s better to improve CMM than add servers that would almost never be used.

[Kirays]

A toggle for it would be nice. I guess the goal with this addition is to help improve the awareness of new players of what’s going on but it’s not ideal for veterans who have enough experience to focus their attention elsewhere.

[spanax]

@STARRYSOCK said:
As I said, it’s better to improve CMM than add servers that would almost never be used.

Can’t improve CMM while DB is dropping players every month, it needs sufficient players in all skill ranges logged in at any given time. Adding 5 special servers would make quite the difference to some of the experienced players and it would just repurpose some of the tens of never populated servers in each region. Does CMM get the 30% bonuscredits? I agree CMM is a necessity, but going all-in on this noob-tool might not be the best approach on DBs thinning playerbase.

@Kirays said:
A toggle for it would be nice. I guess the goal with this addition is to help improve the awareness of new players of what’s going on but it’s not ideal for veterans who have enough experience to focus their attention elsewhere.

Could also move the announcer to the music channel, if you play with music you wont mind the ocasional muting; or the mercs voices on the voice channel.