What is "competitive" in this game?

(Kirel) #1

Avid DBN Pugger. I coach a team full of mediocre/amazing players who all enjoy the game and we participated in the most recent cup as a team: the DBN’s Open Cup (NA). I watch a majority of the DBN Cups and several other cups as well. I try to aim for at least 2 MM matches a day.

All of these points tell you, the reader, one thing: I genuinely like competitive Dirty Bomb. I like its atmosphere and vibe it gives to people when you mention plays that someone on your favorite team did. I treat this game like real E-Sports sometimes.

But lately, I have been thinking a lot. Our game’s peak players (daily) amount usually never goes below 4k, and we have a consistent 3k at almost all times. Yet, most of the competitive scene (which revolves around the DBN organization btw) isn’t recognized by the majority of the community. Yes, the numbers were fairly high during the DBN Open Cup streams, but they weren’t astoundingly high like when DC held their cup (I think it was 500 to 1k viewers?). Besides the obvious point of “Well, the numbers are less because people quit”, how come people aren’t stepping up to make teams and participate in competitive events?

The problem I’ve seen with this game’s competitive scene right now is that most of the players themselves are competitive in the wrong place. I’ve seen many people boast their KDRs or saying that they play a sick Rhino (Heh, I know SOME people from DBN know who I’m talking about) in pubs. There’s been pubbers who have solely believed that they were good players because they were great players when destroying the enemy team full of pre-level 10’s, only to cry and whine when they come up against me. “Oh shit a level 49, get a life loser”. They argue with me, saying that the ranked mode is the most competitive mode there is, and it’s broken?

Obviously, this is not everyone. There are also people I’ve met many people in pubs who were once selfish-minded KDR players, only to become an avid Pug player/ great MM partners. They became like this because they realized that they could finally improve as a player outside of being better than the weak, but being weaker than the strong.

That’s the kind of mentality that I want to encourage when I think of people trying to be competitive in this game.

Yes, I didn’t quite give an absolute answer the question of what’s “competitive” in this game, because that’s my definition of how this game is to me right now.

So what are my fellow Dirty Bombers’ thoughts and opinions on this subject?

(JesseKomm) #2

I identify myself as an above average player most of the time, but I avoid the competitive scene simply because I lack the set up to really be a threat over there… I play on a 3-year-old laptop and use a 5-year-old mouse that works 50% of the time(It will stop tracking movement and sometimes even halt all firing), for these reasons I avoid competitive play.

Were my hardware to be more reliable I would presume I’d be more inclined to play in the “big leagues” of this game, but for right now it’s public matches for me.

(FilterDecay) #3

i think the problem is the lack of players so for matchmaking you have some lvl 49 guy playing with lvl 6 guy and its a bit weird. I think if you tried to keep the lvvl49 guy waiting for a match with lvl 30 and over you would be waiting a long time for a match.

(Litego) #4

Don’t be foolish and mistake level for skill. I eaisly beat level 30s at level 6. But yeah, part of the problem of MM being broken is probably lack of playerbase.

(FilterDecay) #5

I consider myself a good player but you get a couple level 40 guys who play with each other all the time and they will mess a match up. But you are right, fps skill is what matters here and some guy could come over from any solid fps and start whipping butt at lvl 1.

(Harlot) #6

There’s quite a few reasons for a lack of a “healthy” competitive scene. First, the game has a number of bugs that are just frustrating as fuck to deal with. From Nader/Fragger nades following into the cracks in ammo hall on the first objective of Underground and dealing 0 damage to people directly over them, to Kira’s laser call-in timer being reset every time you sweet over the train tracks on Trainyard, making it so you can’t move while targetting, to a new set of broken augments every patch (Quick Charge now, Durable and Lock-On in the past) to Stopwatch currently being broken when overtime happens, the game is so far from polished for being 2+ years old.

Second, a good chunk of the competitive players came from ET, played in the alpha and closed beta, etc. So they have years of experience on new players. This game is very close to Brink and ET. If you played those you have a leg up. Same reason majority of CS:GO pros come from Source or 1.6.

Third, the community is small. If 10% of the playerbase cares about competitive, it’s a withering scene. If 10% of CS:GO players care about competitive, it’s a huge, healthy scene.

Fourth, the game lacks fresh content. CS:GO puts new maps in their rotation. People get excited to play on them, learn new strategies and watch pros play them for the first time. We’ve had the same 5 maps for how long? BUT WAIT WE’RE GETTING DOME TO PLAY TO DEATH! That won’t breathe new life into the game, sorry.

Fifth, the developers taking the stance of wanting to nurture a healthy competitive scene, then doing almost nothing to support DirtyCups, then deciding “Fuck it, let’s balance for casuals and add a shit-ton of aim punch and spread” which angered quite a few players and chased them off.

Sixth, the community is just recovering from seeing a hacker in nearly every match. You had players from competitive teams receiving bans for hacking. The integrity of competitive was compromised and it’s hard to care when you’re not sure who’s legit and who isn’t.

Seventh, the game just isn’t that great for spectators. The TTK is so low that the kills just aren’t that interesting. Contrast that with Nosgoth, where you have a last-second 180 degree turn, into a Bola to wrap up a Reaper about to kick your face off, he uses Shadowstep and shoots across the map and you snipe him out of the air perfectly, or you perfectly time your roll to dodge the charging Tyrant, but a Sentinel swoops in and picks you up, carrying you off only to have a teammate fire a perfect Warbow shot and knock him out of the air before he can get high enough to drop and kill you. All way more interesting than a cooked grenade or good head tracking.

(Ardez1) #7

@Harlot I would be more convinced by your last point if Nosgoth wasn’t so low in the gutter right now. Less than 2k players daily since April essentially. No flourishing competitive scene with not only so few concurrent players, but so few players(80k) over the last two weeks.

Of course this doesn’t invalidate anything else you have said. It just tells you that Nosgoth is probably a poor example of what games should try to emulate.

(Harlot) #8

[quote=“Ardez;83609”]@Harlot I would be more convinced by your last point if Nosgoth wasn’t so low in the gutter right now. Less than 2k players daily since April essentially. No flourishing competitive scene with not only so few concurrent players, but so few players(80k) over the last two weeks.

Of course this doesn’t invalidate anything else you have said. It just tells you that Nosgoth is probably a poor example of what games should try to emulate.[/quote]

Nosgoth was mismanaged in a number of ways. First, the community begged for a good, objective based game mode to base a competitive scene on and was instead given TDM and 3 very casual objective gamemodes that died off in a month. Second, they lost 55% of their playerbase in a single month when one patch reduced FPS by 60%. I’m not kidding. I went from 85 FPS to 35 FPS. It took them over a month to work out. At this point, Square Enix began taking the clamp to Psyonix, who was then forced to released rushed content for the shop to boost income. The player base revolted, and Psyonix finally said “There’s a lot we want to do but can’t because Square Enix is the publisher and has final say.”

Nosgoth, as a whole, was a fantastic. Psyonix did an amazing job of communicating with the community via State of Play(http://www.nosgoth.com/blog/nosgoth-state-of-play-august-2015) and got content out at a pace that makes Splash Damage look like a single guy working in his garage. The game was gripping whether you were a beginner or top tier player. You just can’t break your game for that long. Oh, and the patch that broke everybody’s FPS was for cases that you could buy keys for via the shop for a 90% chance at shitty items you’d never use, and a small chance at a rare skin. This likely was another Square Enix idea.

Square Enix is often considered one of the worst publishers around and I completely see why now. Unfortunately, it’s hard to bring people back after that. People move on and find a new love fairly quickly. I still regard Nosgoth to be a superior game at it’s core than Dirty Bomb, but I can’t go back now.

Dirty Bomb will likely die a slower death than Nosgoth, but it won’t be as long lived as we hope with the pace we’re getting content. Splash Damage needs to do a better job of getting whatever they’re working on right the first time. They’ve taken how many cracks at Phantom, they’re going on their fourth iteration of the mission system, Stopwatch is broken and needs to be fixed, augments are constantly broken, then fixed, then another one breaks, and the Dreiss has alternated between 300 and 360 RPM how many times.

On a side note, Splash Damage should really consider doing a State of Play, rather than streaming twice a week and wasting everybody’s time by answering every question one of two ways: “Soon” and “What a great idea! We’ll write it down.” It’s such a dog and pony show designed to make people think they’re connected to the development.

(Supa) #9

At the moment I feel that the game is plainly directed towards casual players with minimal focus on competitive. This is alright and well expected during the beta/promotional stage. However, if the dev’s are not interested in making a conscious effort into competitive play before/after the game’s full release, the only alternative is to leave it to the community.

I expect at some point that a competitive mod will be made (If modding restrictions will be lifted, that is), similar to how “etpro” was used in Wolf: ET and “Promod” in CoD4. If former ET players and competitive players in general are consulted, “dbpro” will more than likely produce the best result for competitive play.

(DONT.BRO.ME.BRO) #10

Pug stars IMO can’t get better at the game in matchmaking and move on to another level. Matchmaking isn’t the same as competitive especially in this game. At least in CS GO the matchmaking you play with your friends is VERY close to the same rules being played by the best players in the world in these tournaments.

The main difference in CS GO is the bomb timer lasts slightly longer. In Dirty Bomb competitive vs matchmaking you have a lot of differences. Class limits…friendly fire etc. That kind of stuff totally changes the meta game.

The leagues think they are playing the real game…the rest of the community thinks it’s playing the real game…really none of us are. I think the blame is mostly on dirty bomb but I’ve been around long enough not to just accept what the leagues are selling either.

As for us…we have been talking internally about making a team but nothing really happens. We have people with schedule issues and a few other problems that are probably specific to us. I don’t think sharing that information would be helpful to answer your question of why people aren’t stepping up to make teams…it probably really is just a case by case basis.

(DirtyMedal) #11

I always has something against competitive whether it’s here, CS:GO and other which I can’t remember the only times I went were when I had a mission to play competetive or when me and my friends are bored (which don’t happen a lot )