In a separate thread several points were made and many things talked about that I feel are very important not only to address, but explore in a correct thread for it. This thread hopes to bring forth some light on why I absolutely agree with Splash Damage’s claim that 1.0 and more players will fix a majority of Dirty Bomb’s problems before they continue onwards.
Some background…:
! I call this the “Beta” trend for a reason (I’ll define “beta trend shortly”) because in the past I used to play a game called MWO. That stands for Mechwarrior Online, for me the game was incredibly easy because I could put my shots exactly where I wanted them, eventually grew bored with certain mechanics and tactics and finally left when I found DB which was exactly what I wanted for a shooter. High paced, action filled combat, cool community, emphasis on aim and skill, even the abilities had high skill impacts, such as heartbeat sensor placement, direct hit bonuses from landing a nader shot or sticking someone with Fletcher, etc. All of this in a team based non TDM mode game that had wall jumping, it was AWESOME when I found it.
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! But let’s get back to MWO, what was MWO going through and why am I bothering to talk about it? See, MechWarrior online had a gamemode they were pushing for called community warfare or [“Faction Warfare”](https://mwomercs.com/game/faction-play ““Faction Warfare””). Essentially: It was the exact same thing as ranked mode in Dirty Bomb, but on a {cough} universal scale. The entire premise is that their ranked competitive mode was a clan or series of allied forces group up on comms (voip etc) in a massive 12v12 fight over a planet with several fights happening on the planet at once to take over the planet for their faction. Each pilot would bring 4 mechs, with certain tonnage total restrictions (think you can’t bring 4 auras, and you can’t bring 4 Rhinos either) to make sure that they weren’t doing something cheeky. By the end, each side has 48 mechs, versus 48 mechs, with the goal of taking over the enemy team’s command center, getting past turrets, blowing em up, etc. It was AWESOME. The problem with this? MechWarrior was at a dry period. It wasn’t well advertised, it had lost some players (crap, it lost ME, why would any game be fine losing a player who put over a thousand dollars into it?) and it had some strange balance issues because of the introduction of “clan mechs” which were supposed to be more powerful mechs that should eat normal mechs for breakfast. Emphasis on should. Also, mechs in this game were expensive, EACH mech was usually 10$ (price of a single merc in DB, or two cases) and at the time you needed THREE mechs to start mastering a mech’s proficiency blah blah blah. So I came from a game way more expensive than DB, that had even lower players, etc… Edit: (this mode would often take between 20 minutes to an hour and a half… until they added a timer :D)
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! So how did MWO survive, in fact, did it? Basically, they were still in BETA. And they needed some more advertising, more players, etc. so they pushed for a STEAM launch with a huge revamp to community warfare, balance, mech tweaks, the experience of mechs, etc. At first, it was a little shaky, but the numbers climbed steadily to about 30-40,000 players from very small numbers at MWOs lowest. As certain players realized the game wasn’t for them, it dropped down a little bit, but the game is going strong and Piranha games now has an additional two games coming out this year alone that were mainly funded from the ongoing success of MWO. For those of you doubting, and looking up steam charts, that’s not the only client people log in with, just click the link I have in this paragraph.
Beta Trend
So… that’s essentially “the beta trend” use a smaller group to make sure a game’s features are polished, that they function correctly under the right settings, and then do huge publicity acts to get a following, and maintain their niche. MWO wasn’t the first to do it, and they are just one among many who’ve been successful. I have every reason to believe this will work for Splash Damage because it worked for Piranha games:
Looking at it now, it’s very very eerily eerily similar to DB now. We’re getting a huge revamp to the loadouts system, we have weapon skins now as an honestly fun award given here and there, and we’ll likely be launching with an event and a revamped emphasis on ranked mode and fixes to CMM after 1.0. 1.0 will work, something very similar worked for MWO, and MWO is still going strong, they have the game they wanted, and we’ll likely have the game Splash Damage meant to make as soon as more players come in.
So with all that said, I think it’s also important to talk about different things that Splash Damage should do to make sure that this is huge, the most important aspects of Dirty Bomb. For MWO it was high mech customizability, team play, “competitive” if you will, etc. As well as discussing what’s necessary for Dirty Bomb’s continued success, as in how many players do we believe we actually need for DB to have no hiccups, how many for growth, etc?
