The Biggest Issue with Progression and Player Retention (Long)


(SparkyShock) #1

With the recent changes made to Dirty Bomb’s progression system, there seems to have been a consistent issue with the progression. While at first leveling up took a giant amount of time and the missions were usually short, being completed in a match or two. Now the progression has changed.

Instead of leveling up taking almost 12 hours ,according to SD, it is now significantly shorter, but it still takes a long time to level up. Also, the new contracts now take way more time to complete. While the old missions refreshed every few hours and could be completed relatively fast if you played well enough, these new contracts are daily and take incredibly long to finish. Some of them require you to play (at minimum) 30 minutes to finish. While that doesn’t seem bad, as that is roughly three games (if the games are the average 10 minutes). However there are missions that require 2 hours of in-match time to complete, which is extremely long and tedious. It sucks all the fun out of playing, as now a player isn’t playing long amounts of time because of the gameplay or just having fun, they are now playing longer because the game is telling them to play longer.

This is a terrible way to increase player retention in the long run. For starters, a new player just joining the game isn’t going to earn as much EXP as a more experienced player, meaning the missions that say “Gain 36,000 COMBAT exp” will stay on their mission list for days at a time. If anything, it discourages new players from playing, as they then feel like they aren’t being rewarded for the matches they play, even with the overall increased credit earn rate. There is nothing to keep new players around.

There are no more short term goals a player can set for themselves to complete. Missions were the only real option players had, and apparently SD saw that players would do the missions and leave, which was probably due to the lack of things to do after you finished your missions. Leveling up takes a long time, getting credits for mercs takes a long time. The 2 main progression objectives were extreme time sinks. Players were not even rewarded that much for completing them either. The gameplay, while fantastic, isn’t enough to carry the game. Some players will keep playing, but others will want some sort of reward for the time they invest.

What is worse is that what is there to earn doesn’t have any real value. Loadout cards have no value, as any shmuck who unboxes a crate has a chance to get a high value card or anyone who joined during the GEN 1 even can craft a older gen card, effectively devaluing old player’s cards. Levels used to have meaning, but with the new inflated levels there is no more honor or prestige to having a triple digit level. The numbers have no meaning to them anymore. They are also so high that you can’t even judge a player on them. While yes players would single out about high levels and low levels, they at least game people a reference to a players skill so they could better prepare for an encounter. Now you can’t even tell, is the 346 level dude better than the 442? Players have no more reference for anything.

Side Complaint- The missions now are super basic and have no real distinction anymore. At least the “Have X merc in squad” pushed players to maybe consider a character they haven’t played before.

What I’m trying to say is, this recent update ruined player progression for the worse. There are no short term goals that player can play for, no sense of reward for progressing, and nothing to distinguish a player from another newbie. For a game that is going into 1.0 fairly soon, the current state of progression will greatly hurt the incoming new players and their experience with the game, and no tutorial is going to fix that.

I have my own ideas on how to solve this issue, or for the most part alleviate the blatant grind that the game is currently.

For one, I would bring back the old missions and give them a tweak here or there. I would also change up the contract system. Contracts aren’t inherently flawed, but their current implementation is. I would turn the contracts into their own entity. Every day, a player could select between 3 different contracts. The player would then choose what he wanted and have that 24 hour period to complete it. These contracts could be more specific and varied, as they wouldn’t be forcing a player to do X or Y. They could be “Get x kills as Stoker” or " Play x games on Dockyard". Since these contracts are PLAYER chosen, it will feel more rewarding as it is a goal the PLAYER set for themselves, instead of like the GAME told them to do something. You could even let them reroll their selection with the tokens. With this system, you would now have short-term missions that a player could complete in a short session, medium goals in the contracts for players willing to play longer and also catering to their preferred merc, and the long term goal of buying a new merc or leveling up.

Now my idea isn’t a fix all, as there is still the issue for the unrewarding level up rewards and the lack of prestige a player feels, but it is a step in the right direction for a new, enhanced system that would both encourage new players to stick around and older players to have more to do instead of just logging in and leaving.

Would like to hear some player feedback and ideas, I really wanted to get this off my chest as it has been something I’ve been meaning to mention in detail.


(pHine4s) #2

So another complaint about not having everything at once without any effort.
Whooo, 30 minutes for a mission, hours to level up …

As SD claims, it’s much quicker to make more credits in a shorter time as before. Old style missions didn’t refresh “every few hours” and if you didn’t have the merc or just didn’t wanted to play a certain merc, than these mission was omitted anyway, without any instant refresh.

Now you can have the first two missions done really quick, it’s mostly the third takin’ a while - but not unreasonable long - or you just reroll and boom, ready for the next missions. If it runs optimal, you make 12,800 credits within the time of the former (old) mission recycle period.

Leveling up is actually only interesting as you want to reach the min-level for any server to join.
That this takes a time in the beginning is due to the fact, that DB is a game with complex structure to understand, not just a “run-in-and-RPG-everything”-game. So a little dedication in time and labor is the least you can do to respect the work of the devs and the veteran playerbase.

And let me tell you a secret:
None of the mission/credits/rads/level-hassle is necessary at all, once you reach level 100, you don’t care anymore, if not for cosmetical reasons. None of the bling has any impact on the core fun of the game.

And if you don’t want to contribute at least time for a fully free game (i repeat: FOR FREE) than you always have the option of getting one of the merc-bundles for ultra fair prices compared to the hundreds of hours of gameplay you can have, if you are a dedicated player.

And don’t say “meh, but i have no money because i have so many games to pay for already and i just wanna play some rounds only anyway” - yeah, than it’s a good lection that the best thing’s don’t come for free in an instant and dedication - some call it “training” - is the least respect you can show for something you want.

To me that sounds like a typical gen-y/z problem …


(B_Montiel) #3

About putting back mission with specific mercs or even add mission such as " play X times on dockyard". The first one was a real hassle. I don’t want to play phantom but I bought it, and certainly won’t play him or even add him in my 3 merc deck even if the game force me to. Missions with specific classes would already be significant without too much hassle.

About maps, well, people should stay as long as they could on the same server, where you’ll have close to no leverage about map votes. So that’s a definite no in my eyes.

Most players still playing this game from the beginning are mostly not interested in the economic / grinding side of things, or at least take it as an extra. But that wont make people stay intrinsically. The recent changes made the grind awful for newcomers, which is indisputably bad, especially if they keep it for the so called release of the game, but that did not change the biggest issues for most of long time players who have significantly left during the last 6 months.

About any potential economy they’ll possibly introduce at some point, to be strictly speaking, any loadouts gained prior the trading system addition, should, at least in my view, not be tradeable. I’ve seen numerous games where this happened (best example : tf2) where they allowed trading with items gathered earlier, this virtually increased the price of those said items - as they’re in a limited numbers - and therefore put any new items pricing into the shitter before you could even say it… No one would have thought that freaking apple earbuds would sell for more in the TF2 marketplace than they actually cost in real life ahah…


(Press E) #4

SparkyShock? I think I found my long lost sibling lol

But yeah, I agree progression isn’t great. But honestly it’s not even the main issue to me. DB is a game, not a job, you should play it because you enjoy it, not to grind to a new reward tier. That’s not to say just remove rewards, but there just needs to be more of a variety on what to spend your time on. New maps and gamemodes, or even community maps would go a long way to improve DB’s replayability.
As it is stopwatch and objective are basically the same, FF on servers allow a bit of variation but there are barely any of them. All of the major merc roles have been filled, so new ones don’t add much to the game. Gamemodes and maps with new objectives, rather than another EV escort and C4 plant, would help a lot.
No one likes playing castle 3 times in a row.


(SparkyShock) #5

In my post, i said that the contracts would be completely player choice. While you would have a random selection of 3 contracts, you could pick which one you wanted or reroll them. That was what i was trying to explain.


(SparkyShock) #6

Db is hella fun, thats not what im implying. The thing is, if there is nothing to reach for then there is no reason to keep playing.

Before TF2 had levels, the weapons were the progression. Gaining new weapons that drastically change your playstyle and learning each one inside out was the progression. However, DB has nothing more to offer other than the gameplay. Even then, weapons are very samey, mercs don’t have tok many differences when it comes to loadouts and general playstyle imo, there is nothing to work for short term anymore, and the long term goal of mercs isn’t really that intriguing.

While it isn’t work, if the progression stays the way it is, it will feel like work.


(SparkyShock) #7

I’m sorry if my post sounded like a “i dont wanna do work”, but my point was the current progression is a slog. I’m an already well experienced player, having unlocked all the mercs and having almost 800 god damn hours.

I am more trying to point out and give feedback on the current state of a progression, describing how it feels for newer players but also experienced players are affected.

Even when i had all the mercs, i still had fun with the missions as they gave me a general goal to do and didn’t take too long either. Now these current contracts are a chore to get through. They don’t even attempt to convince players to try new mercs anymore. They feel like busy work, not a challenge or a goal. It also doesn’t help the game forces these upon you and you have to deal with it.

Again, i apologize if my message wasn’t clear. I didn’t mean any disrespect for the devs nor the veteran players, as i am a veteran myself.


(AlbinMatt) #8

@SparkyShock Ay fam, you can just select other people’s post and it will prompt you to quote them so you won’t have to post multiple times to reply to each person.

I would highly agree with SD having royally messed up levels. They need to reroll everything now in my opinion. I went from a “pleb lvl 15” to a “mediocre lvl 30” for no reason at all. Some of my friends who were at level 40 suddenly turned into triple digits monsters. They might as well hide the levels- and they have- because of how inaccurate and pointless levels are.

I would also disagree with your “bling isn’t part of fun” statement, because bling has been the only thing SD pushes as “fun” in this game.

Alright, apples to oranges and whatever, but look at CSGO, you have so many things to look forward to in that game, despite it really not evolving it’s gameplay since before I was even born. You got skins and a market place (Soon ™ for Dirty Bomb), ranks (even though it is meaningless in a way, and constant Ranked isn’t quite an option before DB gets uber polished), and-here’s the kicker- the pro scene, which DB once had.

Now DB just shoves trinkets and skins down our throats in hopes of retaining our fun, but we were already having fun by just playing the game. Hell, I have bought two mercs through my two years of playing, and I’m still having fun (if the netcode wasn’t so janky).

DB is beyond fun, and I believe that all it needs is some polishing, occasionally map updates or even new ones, and Ranked being on and actually working. Oh, and more community stuff.

Lastly, the one thing this game needs yet is in a vicious cycle of losing is players. Seriously, it has about 500 people playing now according to Steam. This is during holidays too. Granted, I’m in an awful part of the world to measure DB’s population because right now, any sane American and maybe some Brits should be in bed right now.


(pHine4s) #9

Ok, i admit, i might have been too harsh on you, pardon for that.
It was due to many posts on steam always complaining and dissing the devs, how dumb they are with every change they make.

To be honest, i don’t care at all for any of that in-game-economics, though i can understand that obviously that is what most “players” (and i dare to say born after mid-90ies) are focused on.
To be not just a leech and willing to contribute, i bought the first bundle as i found 19,90 to be a very fair price.
You get much better value now with the all-merc-bundle.

What i don’t support is the proposition it is too hard for newcomers to level up/grind credits.
It happens quite easy while playing the game, you don’t even have to check every time. The details about changing it from this to that are minimal and i think, one can expect, that somebody deciding playing this game is actually playing the game. It’s not a casual game you reach pro-level within couple of hours, it’s a game one should dedicate and count at least a couple of 100 hrs - having reached that, credits and stuff came to you in huge masses and you then can have your fun with that as a subsidiary matter. To me that all sound like millenial-howling not being able to focus on thing longer than 7 minutes without the strong urge to howl (not you, as i know now, speaking in general).

I’m quite conservative about that - as you sure can tell - and i believe it’s a big mistake having this in-game-economics at all, as we can see the result: ppl talking much more about how to accomplish things, which have nothing to do with the game at all, while game-mechanics, new game-content and game-fidelity - compared to former SD-games - fade from the spotlight they should be in to.

I’d rather spend 50 to 70 EUR for a retail game with all that bling-possibilities already accessible - Brink was perfect with that, leaving the game itself aside.
Of course i can understand the DEVs, as they sure have a controlling doing the math that a f2p-model with in-game-economics might have a better revenue than a retail game - especially over the time of more than 5 yrs since pre-alpha, and there is nothin wrong with that - simply modern times i think.


(binderr) #10

Honestly, this game is going no where with the current update and especially with the changes made to the mission (contracts) system. they’ve made the contract requirement higher but still offers the same rewards. Seriously who wants to grind 36k combat xp for 1000 credit where as before the update it was 10k combat xp for 1000 credit.

Its a chore the complete contracts now, you either have to device on complete contracts or have fun while your contracts take even loner to complete. I really hope they make some drastic changes to the current contract system.

Hell, I was so pissed, I even made a post…