Turn off F2P mercs in comp.

(_retired_) #21

I suggested in another thread (that was shot down as I am rather silly bitch with ideas) that players would have to play all three mercs they take it to the match. Another option that you could pick only three people from different classes.
Then again people don’t like being forced to do something and you cannot really force people to fulfill their duties on their role even if they would pick engi/medi to their team.

I don’t think forcing people to buy more mercs in order to just get into competitive even though it ensures nothing since people will still buy other mercs you would like them to buy.

(Sir_Slam) #22

That is absolutely fine. Even if I were put on a team where everyone hated to play a certain role, I wouldn’t care. I can play any role there is myself and I have no problem switching from one to the other to cover a base.
Obviously you’re going to have people who don’t enjoy playing medic, and most likely don’t own a medic other than Aura.

But i’tll be rare that you find a match where all five people just flat out refuse to play a role to the point where they don’t have a single character in that role. And quite frankly, if you don’t own at least two other characters apart from the two starters, you shouldn’t play ranked matches anyway.

The problem is when you end up on a team with 3+ of the same character and no one doing their jobs because they’re either A: dicking around or B: totally incompetent.

(Sir_Slam) #23

[quote=“crabbyDimension;74415”]I suggested in another thread (that was shot down as I am rather silly bitch with ideas) that players would have to play all three mercs they take it to the match. Then again people don’t like being forced to do something and you cannot really force people to fulfill their duties on their role even if they would pick engi/medi to their team.

I don’t think forcing people to buy more mercs in order to just get into competitive even though it ensures nothing since people will still buy other mercs you would like them to buy.[/quote]

Listen, the point isn’t the mercs themselves. All the mercs are perfectly viable. If someone comes to a match with Fletcher/Proxy/Bush I wouldnt care because someone else is likely to see that this person is a die-hard engineer and put on a medic or assault.

The problem is when EVERYONE has the exact same mercs set up because they either don’t have any mercs unlocked, dont have the competitive sense to change their cards to suit the team, or just don’t give a shit. I’m not sure which it is anymore.

I’m not suggesting everyone just play the way I want them too, in fact ill bend over backwards to let people play the roles they excel at because the game tends to run smoother when people who specialize in roles get those roles. But when I see a team with three Sparx and a Fletcher on Chapel, what am I supposed to do with that? At that point it doesn’t matter anymore. Sure, I can switch to Arty and kill the EV every time it comes up, but it wont stay down because the 80 HP Sparx trio doesn’t have the staying power to keep the enemies off of it and fletcher is trying to sticky jump his way back to TF2.

(watsyurdeal) #24

Well in normal competitive you can’t use more than one of each merc anyhow.

So all that really is, is a complaint about merc spam, which is going to be a problem no matter what, and there isn’t jack shit the devs can do about it.

(Sir_Slam) #25

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;74431”]Well in normal competitive you can’t use more than one of each merc anyhow.

So all that really is, is a complaint about merc spam, which is going to be a problem no matter what, and there isn’t jack shit the devs can do about it.[/quote]

It won’t happen NEARLY as much if you remove the F2P from the comp ques. People are going to find what they like and stick with it. They’re more likely to walk into the que with experience on their character because they’ve invested time/money into getting them.

Where is this “normal” comp and where can I find it?

(watsyurdeal) #26

Look up Dirty Cups and DBNation and get on a team, otherwise, prepare yourself to deal with it, cause there is no way they’ll add limits to normal competitive.

It would basically fuck over the vast majority of people who are playing the game, because not everyone has more than Skyhammer, Aura, and the free rotation mercs.

The only way I’d say yes to this is if F2p’s had one of 1 each category, preferrably, if F2P’s got Proxy/Turtle, Fragger, and Aimee/Vasilli to go with the starting mercs.

So that’d give new players 5 merc to choose from, one from each category, and it’s just enough to get them started.

But even then, that’s still 5, 3 mercs per player, 5 per team. You’re still going to have repeats, and there’s no reason to punish players because that’s literally ALL THEY HAVE.

So deal with it, you’re going to run into terrible players in any game set up with competitive matchmaking que. Hell we had that problem in TF2 where even if you played 6s you’d have people going Spy, Pyro, etc for no reason at all.

(Sir_Slam) #27

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;74443”]Look up Dirty Cups and DBNation and get on a team, otherwise, prepare yourself to deal with it, cause there is no way they’ll add limits to normal competitive.

But even then, that’s still 5, 3 mercs per player, 5 per team. You’re still going to have repeats, and there’s no reason to punish players because that’s literally ALL THEY HAVE.
.[/quote]

Repeats themselves are fine. Nothing wrong with having two Fletchers on Trainyard. Its when you get two fletchers, two vassilis and a bushwhacker on Chapel that you run into problems and one person standing there wondering what the hell happened.

Will look into those, thanks for info.

(Amerika) #28

You know what would help (not solve, but help at least)? If SD brought back Mercenary levels. A while back Mercs could be leveled up to 10 or 12 (I think) and I believe you unlocked more taunts as you went. It took a pretty decent amount of time to max their levels.

So, what would be nice here is if you were at least a certain level (determined based on time) that would keep you from picking up a merc and going instantly into MM. Calling it training levels and you can only train them up to, say, level 4 (arbitrary but used for this particular example) on public servers and then after that you can finish training in MM. This would ensure that people are at least somewhat familiar with a merc before using them in MM and it could also be fun as it would be another form of “end game” per mercenary.

The downside is you’d end up with some people who are upset by this and want to use their brand new merc in MM right away. So what I propose is definitely not an everyone wins sort of solution.

(watsyurdeal) #29

Honestly, I don’t think there’s every going to be a solution that satisfies everyone, such is the way of free to play games.

It’s hard for them to be truly balanced or fair and fun to play because they gotta make profit somehow.

Counter Strike doesn’t have this problem, and TF2 didn’t either, but then went ahead and made that game way casual, not to mention the huge problems the game had already.

Dirty Bomb is definetely a game I would have payed 60 bucks for, easily. But as a free to play game there’s always going to be this issue of playing with people who aren’t invested enough to learn how to play the game. Not to mention the rampant hacking going on which should die down after this report player feature gets added.

But, honestly, I think instead of trying to impose limits, I still say the best solution is this.

Give everyone Skyhammer, Aura, Proxy, Fragger, and one of the Recon mercs free to start out with. And then, make a tutorial that pefectly explains all their roles and make it mandatory, this way it solves the problem of having people who don’t know what they’re doing, and having plenty of each class to use.

And before you say lol give the most op merc to free to plays, Fragger codes are constantly being given out…so we’re already halfway there. And Proxy is the cheapest Engineer right now.

As for Recon I really do not know, but I would think Vasilli would make a great choice if they ever decide to get rid of that gib on headshot stuff.

(RyePanda) #30

@Watsyurdeal Why not give them Phantom? He’s easier if you have worse aim than Vassili. Yet still technically a recon class.

(watsyurdeal) #31

@RyePanda

I wouldn’t mind that either, but then again people hated him when he came out. Imagine the rage if everyone had him.

Then again…might force Splash to actually make him viable.

And by viable, I mean offer more than a cloak that’s better at absorbing damage and being terrible for actually being stealthy. He’s literally just another 110 hp class with SMGs, but Bush and Sawbonez both offer so much more.

(Fiktio) #32

What does free rotation have to do with player’s “stupidity/ignorance” ?

It’s irrelevant are those mercs from free rotation or not, if they are used poorly.
(For example engineers not planting/defusing/fixing or another way around: everyone doing engineers job and engi is unable to do his/her job because of that. Or “genius” team using 4 Skyhammers. The list could be longer and continue.)

Though free rotation might help some players to use some important mercs and by that way they are able to help the team. :slight_smile:

(Fap Fap Master) #33

Make comp min lvl 10, free rotation mercs (unless purchased) cannot be used in comp, must own some other mercs. (Extactly like LoL)

(Amerika) #34

When DB gets similar playerbase numbers to LoL then that might work. Sadly, until then, other solutions have to be used. Population size is a huge factor in determining any gating to competitive matches. Gating is too high and people won’t play the mode. If it’s too low then people who shouldn’t be playing it end up playing it.

I don’t envy SD right now in trying to figure out not only that problem but also getting matches properly skill balanced…which is rather hard with the small competitive MM playerbase.

Also, LoL mostly forces everyone into 3v3 or 5v5 IIRC and there is unranked (with and without bots) and ranked. DB doesn’t do that. If it did a lot of these problems would be resolved…but then you’d end up with other problems. Bleh.

(TheDoctorHax) #35

[quote=“laudatoryLunch;74145”][quote=“Adam;74125”]
If you want to play how you want, just go into pubs.[/quote]
That’s pretty ignorant, isn’t it?
[/quote]

unfortunately that is the mindset and it pisses me off. Whenever I play db i play pubs because I need to leave because of needy parents and other random things. People in pubs who dont fulfill the role of their merc are stupid. I dont care if you want to play your way, thats fine. But if you are playing sparks YOU HAD BETTER DAMN WELL BE REVIVING PEOPLE!

(Adam) #36

[quote=“TheDoctorHax;74564”][quote=“laudatoryLunch;74145”][quote=“Adam;74125”]
If you want to play how you want, just go into pubs.[/quote]
That’s pretty ignorant, isn’t it?
[/quote]

unfortunately that is the mindset and it pisses me off. Whenever I play db i play pubs because I need to leave because of needy parents and other random things. People in pubs who dont fulfill the role of their merc are stupid. I dont care if you want to play your way, thats fine. But if you are playing sparks YOU HAD BETTER DAMN WELL BE REVIVING PEOPLE![/quote]

Comp is for people who don’t have anything to do tonight, don’t have parents who will tell them to get off the pc, and won’t kill their team by leaving. Every comp game I play, has turned into a freaking 4/5 every time. Why? Because people mix up pubs with comp. If you want to hop on, and leave when ever, go on pubs.

[quote=“Fiktio;74497”]What does free rotation have to do with player’s “stupidity/ignorance” ?/quote]

If you haven’t earned atleast 40k credits, you’re a nub. That’s how. 40k is so easy to get.

[quote=“Gi.Am;74313”]And how exactly is a team consisting of you (engineer) 2 Skyhammers, 2 Auras better? Especially considering that the enemy will consist of 3 Skyhammer and 2 Auras.

As long as we don’t get a engineer for free from day 1. excluding the free rotation is bad.

And to be honest excluding mercs, simply because some people don’t know how to play them doesn’t solve anything atleast I have seen enough 10+ players not using their abilities right to come to that conclusion.[/quote]

If people had to earn 40k before playing in comp. That leaves the door wide open for THE BEST mercs in comp. All the DPS heavy mercs cost 50k. THE LAST THING COMP NEEDS IS DPS HEAVY!

[quote=“laudatoryLunch;74145”][quote=“Adam;74125”]
If you want to play how you want, just go into pubs.[/quote]
That’s pretty ignorant, isn’t it?
[/quote]

Totally isn’t. It’s Comp for a reason.

[quote=“cannyEdition;74221”]
30k? You mean Proxy? And if i really dislike Proxy and don’t want to waste 30k on her because there are better mercs out there to buy i can’t play competitive? Assault/Skyhammer/medic (or engi) is a good enough build for comp and if you really need an engi you can do it yourself.[/quote]

Then pick another, or save up 50k. But god damn, the nubs in comp is getting really bad.