Thoughts on the recent dev video..

[teflonlove]

@Jigstraw said:
I bet whatever matchmaking/ranking system they put together next time will be a lot better than the ones we have now.

I’d like to hope so, but so far we have no indication for that. After all, SD has been utterly incapable to noticeably improve the match making for 2 years.

Having a low playerbase is one of the biggest problems any matchmaking system to deal with.

While this is part of the issue, it does not explain why the now defunct match making thought that it’s a good idea to

• …not to try to build teams where every role is covered by a comparably competent player.
• …match unranked and bronze players with cobalts (and give no option to avoid that, even if one would be fine to trade longer queue times for a more balanced match).
• …allow players to pick mercs they so far have played for only a few minutes.
• …reset the rank on every season so the experienced players are matched with inexperienced ones, yielding games with random results independent of your actual skill.
• …use the level as a minimum requirement to enter ranked and not anything remotely related to skill. Not even something trivial like some of the achievements that indicate you at least basically got the hang of the game and its mechanics (Achieve Gold Rank on the Assault Course, deliver 25000 units of health to a team mate, …).

[Terminal_6]

I’m waiting for something exciting to happen. This isn’t it, obivously. I’m excited for the 420*8-ish rads I have coming, I guess.

SD has implemented half-solutions to most of the game’s issues (one of which is now being repealed), which has made the game’s general problems more obscure. Back in the earlier days, it seemed like a simple roadmap to full release. A few more mercs/maps, functional matchmaking for ranked at the very least, extended loadout customization, and of course several balance passes.

Seems like we’re almost there! Except the matchmaking is back to square one, the loadout system is convoluted and progresses at a snail’s pace, and a handful of mercs feel completely out of place and useless, even to a casual like myself.

And on top of that, I’m just bored of the gameplay loop. That’s inevitable, but most games find ways to alleviate the stagnation.

[boerhae]

I’ll miss Ranked. I know it was broken, but I thought it was kinda fun when it worked. I don’t see why they got rid of it instead of just… doing more to make Ranked appealing and balanced, but okay. It was broken, but not unfix-able.

…

Side note, what if they made it so playing ranked gives you RADs, instead of ranked points? I bet more people would play it then. That way you’d either have to play Ranked or buy the RADs directly. Since RADs are new and can buy a lot of stuff, it would entice people to either put money into the game or try playing ranked again. Win/win, right? But that’s none of my business.

And I feel like I MUST be missing something important here, because if I’m not, then why not do it?

[STARRYSOCK]

@boerhae said:
Side note, what if they made it so playing ranked gives you RADs, instead of ranked points? I bet more people would play it then. That way you’d either have to play Ranked or buy the RADs directly. Since RADs are new and can buy a lot of stuff, it would entice people to either put money into the game or try playing ranked again. Win/win, right? But that’s none of my business.

The player count is only a small part of ranked’s issue. DB is supposed to be a game, not a job. You should be playing it because you want to, not because there are rewards for doing so. Most people playing ranked were only there for the rewards, and hated the gamemode itself, which is completely against the serious, dedicated atmosphere ranked is about.
That’s not to say ranked shouldn’t have any rewards, but you have to be careful what types of rewards you use, because pure numbers don’t really fix everything.

And I feel like I MUST be missing something important here, because if I’m not, then why not do it?

Rads have also completely replaced real money transactions in the game though. Obviously the devs have to make a decent amount of money off DB, so adding ways to obtain Rads besides buying them generally hurts the amount of profit the devs can make.

Would be better to just significantly reduce the price of all ranked rewards if you just want raw player count. It’s not so much that ranked’s rewards are bad, it’s that a single card can potentially take up to 50 hours to obtain, not even counting time waiting for matchmaking

[B_Montiel]

@Deathi said:
Rentable servers… the same @$!# they use today? Same number of servers on the same hardware, same rates, same peering, same missing reserved specslots?
Bbbut… I bet if you buy some cases and get a rare drop, you may change maxplayers or ff-on/off!
K, thx, bye.

Yup, this sums up what they’re planning with community servers pretty well.

3 years I beg them to improve their server performance… And so far I did not have a single hint of future updates on that very field.

I already made my position clear : they gave us a server we would not rent with such small access to settings, as well as performance.

Since SD took this in charge, seems like they’re using some random dedicated server provider, totally not game oriented. Look at the routing stupidity Stockholm servers are…

[nokiII]

@B_Montiel said:
Since SD took this in charge, seems like they’re using some random dedicated server provider, totally not game oriented. Look at the routing stupidity Stockholm servers are…

They’re using multiplay and it’s also the provider you’ll be able to rent from. I hope it won’t be the only one because multiplay is pure garbage.

https://www.multiplaygameservers.com/game-servers/dirtybomb/

[nokiII]

–

[kopyright]

Ranked is the only thing I don’t really miss. Once you had reached a certain rank there was no point in trying harder since the game would put you against teams you just couldn’t compete against, so you stop playing altogether.

[frostyvampire]

I mean, why don’t they just keep the party system so you can still queue with friends?
But instead of quick play sending you into a match as quickly as possible, it will send you into a match as quickly as possible with 2 open slots (or whatever the amount of people in your party is), and if you use the server browser then it won’t let you join if there are less free slots than party members.

Sure you won’t be guaranteed to be on the same team, but at least it’s something

[B_Montiel]

@nokiII said:

@B_Montiel said:
Since SD took this in charge, seems like they’re using some random dedicated server provider, totally not game oriented. Look at the routing stupidity Stockholm servers are…

They’re using multiplay and it’s also the provider you’ll be able to rent from. I hope it won’t be the only one because multiplay is pure garbage.

https://www.multiplaygameservers.com/game-servers/dirtybomb/

That’s what I meant. I’ve had bad experiences with them in battlefield 2, 3, Team Fortress 2 and more importantly here Chivalry medieval warfare (same binaries roughly). Every single time that bad quality of service, well overpriced on top of that. Simrai provided us some nice servers on chivalry, with strong support.

That’s what I expect if I rent one.