The real issue of Dirty Bomb (2017)

[3r5h]

Hi before I start I want to give a little background info about myself, my real username is 3rsh on these forums I was unable to access it. On Steam, I have over 500+ hours playing dirty bomb. I started playing this a few month after the open beta was release (June 2015). I was attracted by Markiplier who uploaded an episode of gameplay. I immodestly downloaded the game and started playing. At the first hours of my gameplay, I was IN LOVE with the game. Never have I experience such affection before. I loved everything about the game, mercs, card system, crafting, objective based. My main highlights of the game were when they released the containment event with the limited edition cards. I could go on and on but I want to get straight to the point now.

Yes, I know what your thinking (oh another useless and pointless rant of why dirty bomb is bad. If you don’t like it! Don’t play it!!!) But after countless hours of enjoyment playing this game, I never had a dull moment once I stopped playing after the WTD event. Mainly because I saw that the balance issue was not resolved and just getting worse (since I went back to school and wanted a break from it). (Jan 2016)

As time passed I forgot about this game the entire year. During the summer I was working and had no interest in playing the game. I had occasionally look on the updates or websites and saw that nothing was really being added to the game just some events for crafting and major bug fixes.

This summer I was looking at my steam library and notice some minor updates but most importantly saw that Turtles was going to be announced and was like, hey this is awesome! maybe I’ll give it a try again, maybe this game has gotten much better.

But no, I was wrong. In fact, I think the game has gotten worse, and I can think of many reasons why, but I was just torn that the game I used to love and preach was not the same. This part is going to be hard to explain my feelings and expressions about this experience, but for most veterans, I hope you can relate to me so please bear with me.

Dirty bomb in the past when I started playing, was much what the devs were really hoping to anticipate and (compared to most games out there) the game lived up to the e3 trailer. The community was great, a strong and rising player base, solid and consistent gameplay, etc etc. But most importantly, NOT BEING A D***

I don’t want to sound like a dictator, but I think many people and vets can agree with me on these issues today.

Issues

Big factors (no particular order

-Balance

-the changes to the game

-community

And there are so many explanations on how these issues can be addressed but here are my insights

Balance Yes, this is something they are currently fixing but here is the problem. the reason why 90% of the time we are placed in the match where the other team has like lvl 100+ players is that the player base is stagnated, don’t believe me? here is the steam chart for DB

This chart explains itself

I had countless footage of being dominated to the point of spawn camping. It is rare that there is an actually balanced match anymore, with only lvl 20s. I hope SD can somehow advertise this game so they can get the word out, like encouraging big youtube stars to play their game like Markiplier did

Changes to the game I think this has many categories, I believe some changes were a good addition to the game like introducing jkl, Phoenix, and limited edition cards. But for most times, it was unnecessary or just harmed the game significantly, like trying to focus on trying to balance mercs but nerfing the hell out of them to the point where they are not worth using or buying. Come up with new game modes instead of spending energy and time developing the current model long term. Especially, making a new crafting system more complicated (which only eliminated the RNG of crafting a new one, which is actually better for fairness so it doesn’t become play to win). Repetition, like doing the same style of events, releasing pointless mercs without any real game changing abilities. Like Thunder’s nad which with all the nerfs make it useless, Aimee with her bird eye thing, and turtle’s shield that gets destroyed after 6 Nadar’s nads.

Community This I know is a bit inevitable but I thought I might bring this up. This can intoxicate a game killing the player base and match, for example, when the opposite team is dominating you and you call a vote for shuffle, it passes, then you end up on other team and they kick for you trying to balance the match. Oh and here is a scenario I was in earlier

There you have it. This post is not a rant in any way, rather speaking directly from my heart unedited of my concerns. I hope this post helps the devs in any way. I that I could speak on behalf of most players. Becuase I do actually care for this game and hate to see it go down hill. I love SD and DB, you guys are the best and deserve the most.

-3rsh

[Szakalot]

ive been playing since 2014, and balance was always shit. there was one period in closed beta where everyone was at least decent, but since release to the public, balance was always very difficult.

im very surprised you called thunder’s nade weak, as its one of the most broken things in the game. turtle shield dies under 6 nades? so thats 20-25
sec worth of cooldown for turtle, for like 40-50
od naders? aimee snitch device is definitely difficult to use, but some hard to spot place + grandeur and you have an extremely potent merc.

these type of statements make it difficult to treat other things you say seriously.

playerbase is actually pretty healthy, rather than consistently dying off after 2 years in open beta, it stabilized; with very little in temrs of a marketing push.

full release could easily add another 1-2years of people, and game has a unique playstyle that caters to long term veterans, and who are not going anywhere

[kittz0r]

There is no Balance when people leave at level 9. period.

[BloodySin]

@3r5h said:
Especially, making a new crafting system more complicated (which only eliminated the RNG of crafting a new one, which is actually better for fairness so it doesn’t become play to win).

It’s quite possible the old crafting is coming back at some point. I say that both because the “Moving on Up” achievement was never updated to the new crafting, as well as because of the description for the “Blue Shell” one: Craft or Trade Up to a Turtle Cobalt Card. There was no point when both systems were up at the same time for you to have a choice and, unless I got it wrong, Turtle was released after trading up was gone, making it impossible to anyone to complete the “or Trade Up” requirement - unless that’s coming back in some form.

[TitaniumRapture]

Wondering why are people so much surprised with unbalanced matches. Like there are many games with balanced matches. Just make community servers and people will go where they feel best.

[LifeupOmega]

Like Thunder’s nad which with all the nerfs make it useless, Aimee with her bird eye thing, and turtle’s shield that gets destroyed after 6 Nadar’s nads.

I’m just not even going to bother.

[ThunderZsolt]

Well, my biggest issue was the low average level (or more importantly, the lack of good players) like @kittz0r said.

With the shell shock update, a lot of veterans returned, min lvl 20 servers are always up and running - so I can’t join because it is full, instead of being empty. But no problem, I’ve had a lot of fun games even on min lvl10 with average lvl60 players as well.

@3r5h maybe you should try those instead of 8v8 servers. There will be always bad players, but less.

I like the changes made so far, Turtle is very powerful. I agree that crafting needs some work, I literally only craft anything while crafting weeks (yes, I only have the default Turtle loadout, and still rock with it)

While balance is something you always need to work on, I doubt that it is the reason of people leaving. If you are a new player, a veteran can wreck you with any merc/weapon, including Rhino with a stiletto (no jokes, watch Dazz or NukePizza doing it) or Aura with a pistol only.
Even if the game has perfect balance, the noobs will tell you that “xy is OP, I got killed by it a lot”

My list of issues is (in this order):

• Ranked (both the bugs that prevent you from playing, and adjusting the rank gained/lost)
• New player experience. I mean mainly tutorials - I know that the game isn’t that complicated, but still a lot of new players are clueless, repair stacking, not giving ammo, hold F to revive with medics, etc. Advanced tutorials would be great, explaining spawn waves, strafing, how to approach a corner, how to longjump+walljump. For example Quake has a tutorial level for rocket jumping, and a different one for bunny hopping and circle jumping. Give players some credits/weapon kits/achievements/whatever if they do them.
• Balance: slight nerf on Sparks self heal, Redeye smoke/IR goggle CD, Thunder HP, and a shotgun rework would do it for me, maybe adjust burst rifles as well.
• Crafting: dunno about others, If there were 52 crafting weeks each year, I’d be OK.

Used to be on my list:
Lack of good players (on both teams. pwning noobs gets old quickly, and nobody wants bad teammates)
Lack of maps: there were only 6, but nobody played Dome and I hate Terminal, leaving me 4 maps to play - now Dockyard and Vault are out, Castle and possibly another map coming, Dome getting a rework, I expect a bright future.

[bgyoshi]

@3r5h said:
Like Thunder’s nad which with all the nerfs make it useless,

Be careful, there’s more than a few angry Ranked players that haven’t yet learned how to turn away from a Thunder nade, or how to shoot a Thunder while concussed, or how to rush a Thunder to back up a concussed teammate, yet, who think Thunder nades are OP and need to be nerfed further.

Those are fighting words.

I also didn’t notice that DB gained +1200 players in July, that’s awesome, thanks for showing it.

SD has been making lots of nice content updates and seem to have their development process almost streamlined enough to start pumping out coding and balance updates as well as new content on a regular basis. Just stick to pub matches and don’t try so hard to win. Just PTFO, get some kills in the meantime, and don’t try to lead your team around, and you’ll have fun.

There are several threads about player toxicity right now, and several suggestions about actually punishing toxic players and making the report function more robust and useful, so keep your fingers crossed.

And please, just avoid Ranked altogether. If you think pubs are bad, you’ll be really upset if you see the state Ranked is in.

The devs are pretty active with the community and on the forums, though they tend to be scattered around all social media. So don’t give up yet.

[azz_abdr]

We need more interesting and enjoyable content, more win-win situation for microtransactions cases & bundles where both party is happy, less RNG (why most of my friends stop playing this game, and move on to CSGO or Paladins), to make community grow bigger.

Sadly with current match system where players can easily leave & join the game, teams that was already balanced will be unbalanced if lower or higher levels joining in. I look forward for the matchmaking system they said already working on.
I like how Paladins’ matchmaking works (I play mostly f2p games, lol), it is balanced, and players rarely left the match. Not like this game (and maybe TF2 I think).

And also, the player who vote kick you, is pretty toxic too in steam forum.

[kittz0r]

@bgyoshi said:

@3r5h said:
Like Thunder’s nad which with all the nerfs make it useless,

Be careful, there’s more than a few angry Ranked players that haven’t yet learned how to turn away from a Thunder nade, or how to shoot a Thunder while concussed, or how to rush a Thunder to back up a concussed teammate, yet, who think Thunder nades are OP and need to be nerfed further.

Those are fighting words.

I also didn’t notice that DB gained +1200 players in July, that’s awesome, thanks for showing it.

SD has been making lots of nice content updates and seem to have their development process almost streamlined enough to start pumping out coding and balance updates as well as new content on a regular basis. Just stick to pub matches and don’t try so hard to win. Just PTFO, get some kills in the meantime, and don’t try to lead your team around, and you’ll have fun.

There are several threads about player toxicity right now, and several suggestions about actually punishing toxic players and making the report function more robust and useful, so keep your fingers crossed.

And please, just avoid Ranked altogether. If you think pubs are bad, you’ll be really upset if you see the state Ranked is in.

The devs are pretty active with the community and on the forums, though they tend to be scattered around all social media. So don’t give up yet.

be Careful there are some Level 7 nabs who don’t know that Thunders Nade is bugged and you get concussed even when turned away, so you might want to Check your Facts before Flaming People. Oh btw sometimes even if look straight into it you see no Effects, so keep Flaming and ignore Game Bugs, you are a real Hero

[TitaniumRapture]

@azz_abdr said:
We need more interesting and enjoyable content, more win-win situation for microtransactions cases & bundles where both party is happy, less RNG (why most of my friends stop playing this game, and move on to CSGO or Paladins), to make community grow bigger.

Sadly with current match system where players can easily leave & join the game, teams that was already balanced will be unbalanced if lower or higher levels joining in. I look forward for the matchmaking system they said already working on.
I like how Paladins’ matchmaking works (I play mostly f2p games, lol), it is balanced, and players rarely left the match. Not like this game (and maybe TF2 I think).

And also, the player who vote kick you, is pretty toxic too in steam forum.

Paladins matchmaking balanced? lol. I remember same stomping like here, at least in pub games.

[kittz0r]

@TitaniumRapture said:

@azz_abdr said:
We need more interesting and enjoyable content, more win-win situation for microtransactions cases & bundles where both party is happy, less RNG (why most of my friends stop playing this game, and move on to CSGO or Paladins), to make community grow bigger.

Sadly with current match system where players can easily leave & join the game, teams that was already balanced will be unbalanced if lower or higher levels joining in. I look forward for the matchmaking system they said already working on.
I like how Paladins’ matchmaking works (I play mostly f2p games, lol), it is balanced, and players rarely left the match. Not like this game (and maybe TF2 I think).

And also, the player who vote kick you, is pretty toxic too in steam forum.

Paladins matchmaking balanced? lol. I remember same stomping like here, at least in pub games.

Paladins MM is equally shit like DB: https://image.prntscr.com/image/rA51YnnZQJqEbL7ipe-_vw.png

Hi Rez is all about 50-60% Win/Lose Rating, so you stomp or your are being stomp with Players who play worse than Bots.

Even CS has crap MM with all the Smurfs, returning Cheaters and all that BS…

[azz_abdr]

Dude, I just said that I think paladins have better match system for casual game (maybe I just lived on top 10 highest playerbase so the balance is good), read my previous point where I said that this game allow player to leave & enter match easily then causing ‘more’ imbalance, that’s what I don’t like . Here a lot of player enter and then leave 30sec later if he thinks the match is bad, even left the match with 2v6 with no shuffle passed/no one change team.

Ok, I think the trigger word for DB is: balanced, lol
I’m sorry for saying that before.

[bgyoshi]

@kittz0r said:

be Careful there are some Level 7 nabs who don’t know that Thunders Nade is bugged and you get concussed even when turned away, so you might want to Check your Facts before Flaming People. Oh btw sometimes even if look straight into it you see no Effects, so keep Flaming and ignore Game Bugs, you are a real Hero

Yeah ty I’ll keep an eye out for them level 7s. I don’t remember claiming it wasn’t buggy, I do remember saying it wasn’t OP though.

Awkwarrrrrddddd

[kittz0r]

@bgyoshi said:

@kittz0r said:

be Careful there are some Level 7 nabs who don’t know that Thunders Nade is bugged and you get concussed even when turned away, so you might want to Check your Facts before Flaming People. Oh btw sometimes even if look straight into it you see no Effects, so keep Flaming and ignore Game Bugs, you are a real Hero

Yeah ty I’ll keep an eye out for them level 7s. I don’t remember claiming it wasn’t buggy, I do remember saying it wasn’t OP though.

Awkwarrrrrddddd

ok where is exactly is the Part where you say the Nade is bugged/broken? ah right, you didn’t but you turned on Players who have some Clue about Stuff…

[BloodySin]

@kittz0r said:
ok where is exactly is the Part where you say the Nade is bugged/broken? ah right, you didn’t but you turned on Players who have some Clue about Stuff…
You’re missing the point. It having erratic behavior and it being overpowered are two separate things. They can overlap, but they don’t necessarily do, as might be so in this case.

[ThunderZsolt]

@kittz0r said:
be Careful there are some Level 7 nabs who don’t know that Thunders Nade is bugged and you get concussed even when turned away, so you might want to Check your Facts before Flaming People. Oh btw sometimes even if look straight into it you see no Effects, so keep Flaming and ignore Game Bugs, you are a real Hero

Be careful, the concussion nade has 2 effects.

1. Blind: you can counter this part with turning away. This effect has very high (if not unlimited) range.
2. Slow+reduced jump height: you only get effected by this, if you get caught in the range of the “explosion”. The explodydendron augment increases this range. The duration of the effect depends on how close you are to the concussion nade when it explodes. Turning away doesn’t help.

[bgyoshi]

@ThunderZsolt said:

Be careful, the concussion nade has 2 effects.

1. Blind: you can counter this part with turning away. This effect has very high (if not unlimited) range.
2. Slow+reduced jump height: you only get effected by this, if you get caught in the range of the “explosion”. The explodydendron augment increases this range. The duration of the effect depends on how close you are to the concussion nade when it explodes. Turning away doesn’t help.

Allow me to respond by quoting myself:

@bgyoshi said:
…or how to shoot a Thunder while concussed, or how to rush a Thunder to back up a concussed teammate, yet…

[Meerkats]

What is there to understand. Dirty Bomb is supposed to be and was a skill-based, frenetic FPS. When you think CS:GO, you think economy and strategy. When you think OW, you think scrub friendly rainbow puke and twat d.Va mains. Dirty Bomb distinguished itself via highly kinetic gameplay rewarding aggression. Agility, acuity, ability, aggression. These were the lauded hallmarks of Dirty Bomb.

Concs are the very antithesis of all of that. A low skill ability applying blind and slow. Even one of those effects is already bad enough, but both? In what is supposed to be a fast-paced arena-type shooter? That is patently absurd. Who even comes up with this garbage?!

Hey, while we’re at it, let’s just add Mei into the game. We already have a mini-Blizzard implemented, might as well pull out all the stops and go all the way right?

If you’re going to make a fast game, make a fast game; that means avoid implementing mechanics that slow the game down like concs.

Redeye’s smoke obscures line of sight, allowing players to compartmentalize combat zones, creating tactical opportunities. Sure, dropping smoke on yourself works ( too ) well and it’s annoying as fuck, but if used intelligently, adds depth and there is counterplay.

What’s the counterplay to concs? Don’t get conc’d? 11 / 10 gameplay. How do concs benefit the game? Unless you think unwanted, unnecessary cheese is a good thing, concs add nothing.

[3r5h]

Wow, thank you all for all your responses and feedback.

I read everything. And you pretty much answered and told me what I need

I do want to say I was a bit heated when I wrote this and didn’t think about the details of what I was writing.

special thanks to @ThunderZsolt and @bgyoshi for the constructive criticism, and others.

Yea I know I was a bit harsh when @bgyoshi was mentioning about the way I was talking about these mercs. I was interpreting my own thoughts of merc nerfs and buffs.

@bgyoshi said:

@3r5h said:

SD has been making lots of nice content updates and seem to have their development process almost streamlined enough to start pumping out coding and balance updates as well as new content on a regular basis. Just stick to pub matches and don’t try so hard to win. Just PTFO, get some kills in the meantime, and don’t try to lead your team around, and you’ll have fun.

I started having this mindset, as I was playing the rest of the event.