This really deserves it’s own thread… Sigh. This is not me yelling at any of you, my fellow players, or Shoe (the messenger who sometimes feels too limited in what he can do, and/or he’s just incredibly lazy at doing his job), or the developers that are just doing what they’re paid to do. This is a message from me, to you, Splash Damage.
I’ve been one of your most staunch supporters in spite of all of your screw-ups, the time you guys have taken and are still taking to get your stuff together, and the incredible lack of communication throughout with both your playerbase and yourselves. I have personally brought more than 20 players both in real life and online into this game with over half of them STILL playing to this very day over the almost 3 years that I’ve been playing. That means a literal 100th of your currently active player-base I’m responsible for. I’m not saying this to brag, I’m saying this to get you to realize that I’m a dedicated player, and have been an unwavering supporter of you guys for quite a while. Yet, I am one of literally hundreds that you refuse to even listen to or respond to daily! I have stuck around because I loved the game you pitched, and had been developing! I had this nearly childlike hope that you as a company, and your game, would do well because at first it seemed you knew what you wanted to make. You had this clear direction and desire to not be another lifeless shooter that either gets spammed with flavorless characters, generic guns, abilities, and skill-less tricks. You were and for the most part still are developing this high skill shooter where every single role being played correctly on a team was the difference between win and defeat, where individual player skills shined, even if sometimes their skill was better in a different area than gun-play, like positioning, or awareness. Your game had merc abilities being used effectively to benefit a team, with each ability requiring a great deal of skill to master to truly be “elite” if you will. You designed a shooter that from the ground up you said would have a core competitive and teamwork necessary atmosphere, where players could make friends similar to how Splash Damage got started. And though I don’t think your game is failing per se in any of your initial ideas, it seems to me that the drive and creativeness is… well… fading, and falling behind for sure in some areas. It feels that overall, you’re slowly putting your original goals and direction on the sideline, and this isn’t a sudden belief or insight either. I believe, and hope, that this mainly stems from your disconnection with your playerbase. Failing to stay engaged and precise with your playerbase is a leading doom for any developer or game unless they have a big enough audience and fun enough game. Instead of going on into how you’re failing in many different areas as not only I, but many other players CONSTANTLY do, I’m going to, with the hope that I have your full attention, write an open angry critique. Because frankly Spash Damage, I am disappointed, frustrated, and very fed up with you. Alright Splash Damage… here we go:
YOU’RE NOT FUDGING MOVING FORWARD! YOU’RE BEING DOWNRIGHT STINGY WITH FREE GOODIES, AND ALLOWING PLAYERS TO REALLY FEEL REWARDED OVER TIME OR HAVING PROGRESS FOR THEM IN SOME WAY. YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS SUCK, AND YOURE KILLING YOUR FUDGING GAME. YOU’RE ALSO PUSHING OUT NEARLY POINTLESS UPDATES! WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING!? WAAAAAH
In all seriousness, I genuinely feel like you, Splash Damage, are taking steps backwards and that what you’re doing is making things WORSE, unless you have alternatives that you simply have been too lazy to mention or are for some pointless reason withholding from your player-base in your general updates. Just to make an example out of the most recent video, if you do all of the changes you’ve mentioned in your most recent video, then what’s the end goal point? I want to remind you before continuuing that you’re in beta, you’re supposed to be moving towards 1.0 with systems set up that benefit FROM the 1.0 release.
First off, if you think your upcoming update isn’t pointless, I really would love a response, (by the way, if you don’t have developers actively responding to players on a daily basis in EVERY area that you advertise or have links to, then you are absolutely failing as developers to be open to your playerbase, and engaged with them. ESPECIALLY if you’re failing to answer questions about an upcoming update before it arrives that are PERTINENT. Just take a look at the success of PoE! They barely hide ANYTHING. Players know what’s coming from an update and 90% of the time look FORWARD TO IT!) but let me share something that we in this discussion are currently failing to respond to and make my point:
Drunk said the leveling rewards are going to be reduced to be in line with the new leveling curve, so that we’re basically getting similar rewards over time compared to what we ARE CURRENTLY ALREADY GETTING. If this happens then what’s the point of REDUCING THE TIME IT TAKES TO LEVEL!? We’re getting the “same rewards” just a higher number to look at! I just don’t get why you feel you have to fix a system that is STILL somewhat lacking in the departments that matter (rewarding players, giving a feeling of constant growth, and making them feel like they’re actually achieving something over the long haul) which I thought was going to be fixed by the very simple reduction of the amount of experience it takes to level… and instead have chosen to rebalance the rewards so that your playerbase goes back to complaining about leveling not feeling rewarding. I get reducing rewards a little bit Splash Damage, but when you put out this update and have leveling rewards balanced so that they give the same END total that was the old leveling then there really is no point to do anything with levels, all you’re doing is inflating a number that has no real value. There just isn’t. Moving on.
@bgyoshi said:
It’s an update with no benefits for anyone and the removal of two unique player bases. All it will do is cause the daily average to drop faster. There’s nothing in the update to draw new players, it’s just the removal of functionality that was added because the game was losing players without it.
This is pretty sums it up, but I’ve got some personal issues I want to make known. In your update video Splash Damage: there is no reference to if you will ever bring BACK ranked or CMM. I’m truly going to miss being able to play with my brother or my friends… and if you remove ranked AND Cmm there is no way to guarantee that I’m not crushing one of them every stinking match.
Also… The whole putting ranked points into rads, makes me feel that ranked is going away completely. If that’s what’s actually happening then I think I should probably walk away from DB now… And that coming from me, Splash Damage? Ask anyone, look if you want to. I’ve never said that because I love this game so freaking much. But if you kill off the one mode in this game that provided the BEST experience that DB has to offer whenever it wasn’t a pain in the butt. If you kill off the one gamemode that was absolutely hardcore true to your original Dirty Bomb game design intentions, then all you’re doing is hurting your already dwindling playerbase, and making your game just another more casual off the block shooter. Yes, the Queues for ranked were stupid, yes CMM was dividing the playerbase. But were both of these wrong to belong in the game were it to be finished? NO! YOUR GAME IS IN BETA. AND IT FEELS LIKE YOU’RE THROWING IT BACKWARDS.
And if you’re NOT axing ranked for the long run, then you seriously need to inspect your communication skills. Especially when you don’t mention what you plan to be doing to bring back the competitive atmosphere, etc. Execution gone (personally I was glad), cmm gone (removing the only way to play with friends directly without being penalized in a ranked atmosphere because they suck) but getting rid of ranked? Without even referencing whether or not you’re going to try to fix it, balance it, or looking at a new gamemode?
What are you doing guys?
Man, it’s so incredibly ironic that the next video in the Youtube autoplay feed was ShinyWindow’s goodbye video. Lack of communication is a problem, it’s still a freaking problem, and this update literally has very few pros, to the point that I feel it has almost none. I really wish the best for you guys, but it’s quite possible that I’ve just been wearing blinders or have been thinking the best is different. The best for all of you may be money, but the game I was hyped for, excited for, and bought into? It was a competitively focused game where you played to have fun, make friends, be part of a clan/guild, while having completely different atmosphere and characters than anywhere else on the market. And… for a while, you were achieving that, and thing looked like they were going in that direction.
If you’re interesting in fixing this, and you agree that you’ve lost touch, then you need to start with the simplest thing. And that’s being open with and engaging with your playerbase. If you need to be clear about which part of your playerbase, the competitive, or the casual parts that you care about more, I don’t mind. But no matter what, you need to be up front. If you don’t have developers actively responding to players or giving an update on a daily basis in EVERY area that you advertise or have links to, then you are absolutely failing as developers to be open to your playerbase, and being engaged with them. Just take a look at the success of PoE, which isn’t just because of the game (because man that game has issues) but it’s because of the development. They let players know when leagues are ending, beginning. They host events outside of the game for their players to contribute, respond sometimes multiple times a day both on reddit and the forums, and they don’t freaking hide anything. Their playerbase knows what’s coming, and is constantly hyped and willing to buy supporter packs before the content is even IN THE GAME. You? I don’t trust that you would ever even fix the EV glitches before this game might end up dumpstered or completely without a playerbase. You wanna end up like a slow bleeding out Lawbreakers? A game who’s literal CEO was seen as a douchebag, and who failed in his communication and promises on delivery epicly? Then keep doing what you’re doing. But otherwise, put some fudging surveys out here, start engaging, and most importantly, start talking.
