What we can learn from the first Dirty Cup

[Zenity]

As expected the cup was great fun to watch, and really informative.

A few things stood out to me, none of them surprising really:

• 2 Fragger + 2 Medics combo was very common. Always one or two Fraggers and the game generally seemed to revolve around them. Occasionally 2 Fragger + 3 Medics, and even 3 Fraggers once (though I don’t think that worked out too well). Vassili seems to be his bane though, and I was surprised that sick6 stuck with two Fraggers when chickenNwaffles was gibbing them left, right and centre.

• Sawbonez was vastly preferred over Aura.

• Vassili very situational, but extremely powerful in those situations (including winning the final clutch for v586).

• No sign of Arty, of course.

• Hardly any sign of Nader. I think I saw somebody switch to her once to defend a bomb plant, but that’s about it. Seems just as ineffective as expected.

• Proxy was far more popular than Bushwhacker, but when Bushwhacker was chosen, he looked really capable to me. The turret did a lot of work at times. I don’t think there is a balance issue here and perhaps people still underestimate Bushwhacker.

• Terminal almost first stage double fullhold?! I’m sure that wasn’t played ideal by either side, but that was pretty weird to say the least. I much prefer if there is a first stage that is almost impossible to hold, unless one team is completely dominating.

Based on those observations, I think the following things should be looked at:

• Fragger still too powerful? It’s not necessarily bad to have one center grunt like this, but the question is, would the game be more interesting if competitive meta would be dominated more by utility classes (e.g. Fire Support taking his spot)? With only five per side, there is not much room for interesting mercs as long as Fragger is this dominating. I wouldn’t mind if he would be relegated to pub hero status, but others will probably feel differently about that…

• Related to this, Nader is completely overshadowed by Fragger. Even though she’s in the same class of mercs, she really doesn’t do what Fragger does and as long as Fragger is so essential, it would be really hard to justify a spot for her I guess. Her grenades don’t seem effective enough to make her a good situational pick either.

• With Fire Support being so rarely chosen, I kind of wonder if it may be worth a consideration to disable (or nerf) ammo boxes in competitive play. It’s not like ammo is as essential as being able to plant the C4, so it would not be a radical change (you can always suicide if necessary).

• In a similar vein, I wonder what would happen if doing objectives without an engineer would be much slower in competitive games? To encourage at least one full time engineer, even during carry stages.

• Arty obviously still isn’t working. I don’t think anybody is using any semi auto or burst fire rifles in competition, and I think that’s his major problem. If those guns are to enter the meta, I think they would have to become really powerful. Perhaps too powerful for this to be feasible. What about giving him an MP as sidearm? If Vassili can have one, why not him.

• Likewise, I think that Aura suffers in competition from her relatively poor choice of weapons. This isn’t necessarily a problem, although it was a bit sad not to see healing stations around. They do add some strategical and tactical depth after all. I’m not too sad though, since I do think that Sawbonez is more fun all around…

• Terminal… Perhaps something could be done to make the forward spawn easier to capture at least? I know there are a lot of criticisms regarding the maps, but this one really stood out.

Let me know if you think I’m way off about something, or add your own observations!

It should be very interesting to see what the next cup is like with a merc limitation. During the tournament I did feel like the game would benefit a lot from a highlander or even draft format, but we’ll have to try it out to see what it’s really like.

[adeto]

Don’t think one cup is enough feedback to start changing things around a lot, definitely needs a lot more playing around with setups. The reason we(dMon) stuck to our team composition is because that stage where chickenNwaffles was ‘dominating’ is just a complete meat grind and we stuck with what we are most comfortable with on that stage, we fullheld them just as much(technically we held them off better since we blew up the wall and they weren’t able to). Especially since this last week we haven’t been able to prac as consistently as we wanted to due to personal rl stuff from some players and it showed in our games, we lost the final fair and square but we know why and we can work on it.

Fire Support classes aren’t really picked a lot because they don’t offer much on non-EV maps. They are essentialy a DMG class like Fragger, just less effective at it. Other mercs that aren’t used much (arty bushwacker aura nader) are all mercs that take more ‘fine tuning’ within team strats to work effectively, mosts teams haven’t really swayed much from the safe picks (fragger sawbonez proxy setups) because there are no private servers and there is no real effective way for teams to play around with thinking out strats other than trial and error, and noone is going to a risky new strat in a cup. You could argue that INI’s Arty/Vassili balcony strat on Terminal is ‘new’ but theyve been using/fine tuning that for a bit in scrims/prac so they already knew it can work, especially on a map where its defense favored it’s easier to play around with things. Aura is simply a bad medic compared to Sawbonez atm in competitive play, there were a couple of teams that used to play with Aura’s a couple of weeks ago and I already said it back then, but I think pretty much all teams are starting to realize that Sawbonez > Aura as a medic(specially right now after the heal delay nerf thing). Only real reason to use Aura is if you’re going to dig yourself in on defense but that’s just a deathtrap with the current spam damage from f.e Fragger. Bushwacker is strong when used smart but Proxy’s SMG and mobility make her a stronger team fighter, tho Linkzr is a good example hes figured out how to effectively(<- keyword)use the turret basically as a 6th player that he constantly sets up crossfires with or uses it as a ‘detection mechanism’ similar to Vassilis heartbeat sensor and uses the sound queue from the turret to know if there are enemies in a certain area(Underground 1st stage defense, turret @ objective best example) which is really the only way to effectively use Bushwacker. Some teams took out Nader for certain stages but mostly situational to f.e defend planted C4’s.

I’m really hoping that SD/Nexon can provide active teams with private servers soon, I’m fairly certain most teams will be more than willing to pay a small monthly fee for their own private server too (i know I would for dMon np, or atleast hook up the Founders since right now we have no ‘special treatment’ :p) so that teams can be more creative with strat/setup/team comp creation. A good team practice area is simply the best tool for teams to talk about ideas while walking around the map etc.

All in all, I’d like to see more ‘test’ cups that use different merc related rules like f.e the merc limitations I propesed (1 heavy 2 assault unlimited engis unlimited medics 1 sniper) or the 1 merc rule/drafting some people opted to see if that makes gameplay more or less interesting. Some might be ‘more balanced’ but then be also extremely boring or super imbalanced but a lot of fun to play. There’s no real comparison material out there right now so different things have to be tried before we can say something is actually broken or overpowered.

[LiNkzr]

Few things I agree on

Terminal first objective is really painful to play as attacker.

Aura isn’t mobile enough when attacking, I think on defense she’s still usable but you need to commit for a spot, so you have to be extremely careful, also shotguns not that good on most maps and the bitchlock is so-so.

People use sky rather than arty because of the air-strike insta killing the EV, arty though can kill the EV in same amount of time or even lower in a sense, it takes like 3-4 arty strikes which is around 1min 10sec? and air-strike cooldown is 1:30? Not sure on the times. BR-16 is good weapon but haven’t played him that much though myself, might test it out at some time.

At the moment only thing I dislike about vassili is just the randomness, if they can come up with a mechanic you can control I would be fine to play it more as a killing class, it’s not as mobile as I would like him to be, I played it quite poorly though compared to usual which is why I played more bushwhacker.

Having two fraggers the extra HP and good weapons. I think Fragger at the moment is at good spot, but I would just like to see more mercs to mix the pool and then start balancing the heavies on the same line.

I think bushwhacker has a really good weapon and a nice chunk of HP so on his own he is quite good against medics and proxies. Turret is strong and not that strong at the same time, if you know where it is it’s useless, since you can kill it without taking damage, but if use yourself or the turret as bait you can do really good cross-fires with it and as Adeto said you can use it like a “Sensor” to guard areas while you “strengthen” the defenses somewhere else.

I think naders problem aren’t the nades in my opinion, just the fact she cannot take good gunfights because of the low HP pool and the fact she has SMG’s which means she is on equal footing with medics / engis without her nades. (Maybe faster recharge?)

All in all i really liked how the tourney played out and even though I feel like there are some problems when you look at the games in hindsight, you didn’t really feel them while you played, so the game plays out really nicely. As adeto said we shouldn’t do any big changes just based on this cup, but some things should at least be looked into or taken into consideration when thinking of next balance patches.

#2015GiveE-sportPrizeMoneyOrTShirtsKappa

[Szakalot]

good posts:

@Adeto what is the distinction between ‘heavy’ and ‘assualt’?

@Linkz what is random about vassili?

Would welcome a cup with merc limitations, perhaps since 2 cups are in plans, the second cup can have some limitations? (I’d LOOVE to see one merc type/team ( you can switch as much as you want, but only one merc of each type can be alive at any given moment))

It all comes down too what is most optimal. Regardless of whether Fragger is OP or not, the high HP, good weapon, awesome nades - he is just uncontested by any other merc type, and the reduced mobility isn’t punishing enough.

Nader is hard to play Imo cause:

• she is pretty squishy at 100hp (why not at least 110 like sawbonez? - she can get one shot by aura)
• using nades in all-out combat against good players is very dangerous. In a 5v5 server, where fights are not as crowded, you HAVE to score direct nade hits, and then still switch to the weapon (slowly, cause of bugs) to finish them off. In the meantime, you will get destroyed by the fragger’s LMG. Due to nades fly-speed you can only reasonably hope to score direct hits in close quarters, anything in the open you’ll get dodged&destroyed.
• the only other way to use nades is from cover, lob them over/around cover to flush people out of their positions. Can be very effective to whittle HP, and works even against good players (there are A LOT of things you can do with the nades). Again, only feasibly works in close quarters, as any good player will get out of harm’s way easily, if they have enough space to run to

[Humbugsen]

to aura:
I think she should get a passive aura that heals ~15hp/second, the healing station just doesn’t fit her. She should be mobile, given her speed and weapons.
Give the healing station to a heavy medic.

[Glottis-3D]

[QUOTE=Humbugsen;527287]to aura:
I think she should get a passive aura that heals ~15hp/second, the healing station just doesn’t fit her. She should be mobile, given her speed and weapons.
Give the healing station to a heavy medic.[/QUOTE]
gud ideah!!

[LiNkzr]

[QUOTE=Szakalot;527280]good posts:

@Linkz what is random about vassili?

[/QUOTE]

Scope sway while moving is bad mechanic. From what I understood it increased to make jump sniping harder but in the end what happened that you can still jump snipe while jumping pretty accurately if you jump up - down. (it still has little sway but it’s manageable)

The reason I feel added scope way is bad is that you can’t control it, it feels like a different game when you play him now. You cannot be aggressive, you have to use “camping” spots which most of the time either are “cheesy” like on terminal top of the objective you are impossible to get pushed from or really bad spots which requires you to stand still to make your shots accurate.

“The biggest thing we’re looking to control with the sway (and it is only sway that changed) is the amount of jump sniping.” - Anti

So basically the way they added sway was more crippling as they probably intended it to be, since now it affects both while moving and jumping. I understand that jump-sniping had no actual “counter-play” unless you got pushed / naded or something but now they just destroyed attacking vassili and defending Vassili is a “camping” one

If they can just remove the scope-sway while being on ground (or revert it) and do a separate scope-sway while jumping it would already solve most of my problems with the current Vassili

I hope I made any sense since I just woke up.

[INF3RN0]

Sway just makes the sniper feel awkward. You can still jump snipe and do the same stuff as before, but it feels bad (like mouse accel). If SD wants jump sniping reduced, they should focus on the movement with sniper itself. Whether that means reduced jump height or a slow down post-jump. If snipers are generally too difficult to counter, then you could also apply a speed debuff when a sniper is being shot. I would rather be tactical in terms of landing a first surprise shot and still be able to shoot while mobile. The sway is not the solution, so I really hope SD try something else.

[spookify]

Sway just makes the sniper feel awkward. You can still jump snipe and do the same stuff as before, but it feels bad (like mouse accel). If SD wants jump sniping reduced, they should focus on the movement with sniper itself. Whether that means reduced jump height or a slow down post-jump. If snipers are generally too difficult to counter, then you could also apply a speed debuff when a sniper is being shot. I would rather be tactical in terms of landing a first surprise shot and still be able to shoot while mobile. The sway is not the solution, so I really hope SD try something else.

I think you have a really good Idea here about how to handle snipers.

A) If a sniper is being hit it should greatly effect his aim.
B) I also think Jump speed, gravity an length should be looked at. (Very Minimally though)

I think “A” is going to be the best fix. One of the most annying things about going against a sniper is seeing him first but yet feel helpless.

My example is on WC last stage when a sniper always sits in the upper spawn. If I am a fragger across the map by the pump for the bridge lower ramp and I see that darn sniper I want to poke the crap out of him and have him reset. I can poke him all I want and he just sits there and takes it and then pops my head off.

Take away sway and increase fletching. Is that was it is called? Increase his default value by a lot and then decrease the perk ability to 15% or something. Problem solved.

High Reward for a Headshot
Near impossible when suppression fire is being layed down so you or you team can get for over from the sniper.

Raw Aim! No one to blame except yourself for missing especially if it is an uncontested shot.

[PixelTwitch]

your point A would actually only work if he misses the first shot. Due to the network delay and client side hit reg, the command to bounce the scope takes around 100ms to reach the snipers computer. Even more if players have high ping and stuff. Infact, if you hit me on a US west server, there would be around 200 - 400ms before I receive the bounce from when you shoot. since there is already scope bounce on being hit, I doubt making it even worse would really make much of a difference at all whilst making the gun horrible to use (kinda like the sway lol)

[spookify]

your point A would actually only work if he misses the first shot. Due to the network delay and client side hit reg, the command to bounce the scope takes around 100ms to reach the snipers computer. Even more if players have high ping and stuff. Infact, if you hit me on a US west server, there would be around 200 - 400ms before I receive the bounce from when you shoot. since there is already scope bounce on being hit, I doubt making it even worse would really make much of a difference at all whilst making the gun horrible to use (kinda like the sway lol)

High pingers need to have some advantage I guess. People are going to be warping and hard to hit anyway. Plus when the game takes off most people will stay in their region. Plus if they can react in that 100ms window they might deserve the kill.

I think this would solve rambo snipers and there flat out OPness. You might be right about the client side hit but i think it should be tested.

[PixelTwitch]

[QUOTE=spookify;527446]High pingers need to have some advantage I guess. People are going to be warping and hard to hit anyway. Plus when the game takes off most people will stay in their region. Plus if they can react in that 100ms window they might deserve the kill.

I think this would solve rambo snipers and there flat out OPness. You might be right about the client side hit but i think it should be tested.[/QUOTE]

its not that they have to react in 100ms…
They only have to react in 100ms + other players reaction time of lets say 250ms on average. So that is already up to 350ms in a good situation
What I am getting at is that this system will punish worse snipers and not the better ones.

Again, the game already has huge kick when you get hit to the point you cannot aim though it… so how much kick are you suggesting…

[prophett]

Remove the sway and forget about taking damage affecting aim (that sounds worse than sway)

[yakcyll]

Remove the sway and forget about taking damage affecting aim (that sounds worse than sway)

Why do you think flinching is bad? Somebody before mentioned that it gives an advantage to one who shoots and hits first*. I firstly found it annoying too, but grew used to it and think it’s fair and makes you think twice about taking particular engagements.

• It was Zenity’s post (hope you don’t mind me quoting you here!):

The purpose of the mechanic is to give an edge to the player who gets the first shot in. Getting the jump on players with clever positioning or strategy is much less vital in a tracking based shooter like Dirty Bomb (long TTK), but the flinch balances this out a bit.

If you remove it, you will put more emphasis on raw aim and less on positioning. Some will like it, some not. But I think it’s pretty good as it is. The flinch was much more irritating in ET IMO.

An alternative mechanic would be “tagging” which slows you down after being hit as in CSGO, but I think I would find this even more irritating. The way it is now at least you can make a quick escape and try again from a better angle.

[Szakalot]

I’d be happy if flinching was restricted to snipers only.

[Anti]

Enough about about the Sniper Rifle, more about this topic!

I was very surprised some Mercs weren’t used more for situational pushes. I expected to see Nader used in some cases because of the volume of AoE she can put down (clearing the balconies at the start of Whitechapel for example) compared to the risk of missing Fragger 'nades, or in combo with Vassili’s HBS. I also expected to see Aura used at a few defensive strong-points on defense, as well as Skyhammer at a few specific objectives because of the potential for 3-4 man clearances (end of Whitechapel).

I agree with adeto a lot of that was maybe down to a lack of practice and strat brainstorming time on servers, but I also felt some teams just seemed to have bought into the idea that nothing else was viable, which I don’t agree with. I was very surprised when certain teams got bogged down and were struggling that they didn’t really try to change up their composition at all, I half expected to see more of that just as an act of desperation.

A potential example of some of the Merc misconceptions is Bushwhacker versus Proxy. For the most part Bushwhacker out performed Proxy and yet only 5-6 players tried him, many more played as Proxy.

We’re still grabbing stats data from the cup to compare with the pub data we have. Terminal does stand out in the early results we have as having issues at objective one, most of the other maps, statistically at least played out quite well though.

Hopefully once we finish a full sweep of the data we can post a blog running over some of the findings.

[spookify]

[QUOTE=Anti;527474]Enough about about the Sniper Rifle, more about this topic!

I was very surprised some Mercs weren’t used more for situational pushes. I expected to see Nader used in some cases because of the volume of AoE she can put down (clearing the balconies at the start of Whitechapel for example) compared to the risk of missing Fragger 'nades, or in combo with Vassili’s HBS. I also expected to see Aura used at a few defensive strong-points on defense, as well as Skyhammer at a few specific objectives because of the potential for 3-4 man clearances (end of Whitechapel).[/QUOTE]
A lot of people still dont have Nader. I have been grinding since the last patch and I am still 20,000 Credits away.

As for her use on Whitechapel she has 4 nades that would poke down people NOT kill them. That combined with her lower HP then Fragger is why fragger was used. *Miss with a Fragger nade! PFFT Never!

I am a little surprised Aura wasnt used a little more on some defensive stops but the game/maps are so small and fast that an aggressive defense is sometimes better then a passive one. Plus Saws packs are constant and his smg is much strong at mid range.

The problem with Skyhammer is that he is so noob! You literally know which direction his arty is going to fall in. You can stand right next to the darn thing if you know it is going to drop the other direction. Skyhammers arty is not meant to kill. It is only used to knock out EV’s period!

[QUOTE=Anti;527474]
A potential example of some of the Merc misconceptions is Bushwhacker versus Proxy. For the most part Bushwhacker out performed Proxy and yet only 5-6 players tried him, many more played as Proxy.[/QUOTE]
I very much agree with this! I am a much better killer and player with Bush. However I can use proxys speed, shotgun and mines to F people up as well. Its really up to your play style. I am sad I dont get to play engy or medic more I actually think I am better at those classes then Fragger…

Hopefully once we finish a full sweep of the data we can post a blog running over some of the findings.

I LOVE STATS!!! Please Please Please release some

[prophett]

[QUOTE=Anti;527474]
Hopefully once we finish a full sweep of the data we can post a blog running over some of the findings.[/QUOTE]

Very interested to see this.

Also interested to see some solutions for the first stage of Terminal. Personally, I think moving the capture-able spawn out of no mans land and off to the side so it’s more of a contestable point which also forces defenders split up and rotate to defend. It can currently be defended from pretty much anywhere with minimal effort/movement from the defenders which only adds to the grind.

There have been lots of good ideas thrown around over the past 1-2 years about this. Hopefully we’ll finally see some of them implemented :]

[LiNkzr]

[QUOTE=Anti;527474]Enough about about the Sniper Rifle, more about this topic!

I was very surprised some Mercs weren’t used more for situational pushes. I expected to see Nader used in some cases because of the volume of AoE she can put down (clearing the balconies at the start of Whitechapel for example) compared to the risk of missing Fragger 'nades, or in combo with Vassili’s HBS. I also expected to see Aura used at a few defensive strong-points on defense, as well as Skyhammer at a few specific objectives because of the potential for 3-4 man clearances (end of Whitechapel).

I agree with adeto a lot of that was maybe down to a lack of practice and strat brainstorming time on servers, but I also felt some teams just seemed to have bought into the idea that nothing else was viable, which I don’t agree with. I was very surprised when certain teams got bogged down and were struggling that they didn’t really try to change up their composition at all, I half expected to see more of that just as an act of desperation.

A potential example of some of the Merc misconceptions is Bushwhacker versus Proxy. For the most part Bushwhacker out performed Proxy and yet only 5-6 players tried him, many more played as Proxy.

We’re still grabbing stats data from the cup to compare with the pub data we have. Terminal does stand out in the early results we have as having issues at objective one, most of the other maps, statistically at least played out quite well though.

Hopefully once we finish a full sweep of the data we can post a blog running over some of the findings.[/QUOTE]

I think no one has managed to practice enough to actually try anything special. Most of the teams had consensus thought that if “2 fraggers 2 medics / fragger / engi works for most teams why shouldn’t it work for us.”

To be honest I think too that nader has a place, but realistically she is too weak without her grenade launcher for example sawbonez has 110hp and same weapon, so if you are equally skilled sawbonez should win every time. I know the logic isn’t “strong” here but I think the point I try to make is clear. For example sky can reasonably win against medics in gun fight since higher hp and better weapon, not every time but even the slight chance makes it better.

I didn’t see how many people used bushwhacker, but I think he is undervalued, you can fight well solo, turret is quite strong (but can be rendered useless with ease if location is known)

I don’t like comparing any other mercs to fragger anymore since there are no real comparisons for him when it comes to weapons, ability or HP, so I just think the viability how the mercenary fairs against other than fragger and how much utility it brings to the table.

You mentioned last stage of chapel as potential Skyhammer dream, but I think it’s really hard to execute, I have tried it multiple times and I think it’s either better to use a sniper / fragger. Maybe timing the push with airstrike to flush them out or push with nader, but as I said too little practice made it close to impossible to actually verify if they are viable enough to be ran. Also the engineer player usually plays the sky / arty and I think the last merc could easily change from nader - sniper.

Hopefully in the next cup we can try to show developers some other strategies

[izraill]

I was very surprised some Mercs weren’t used more for situational pushes. I expected to see Nader used in some cases because of the volume of AoE she can put down (clearing the balconies at the start of Whitechapel for example) compared to the risk of missing Fragger 'nades, or in combo with Vassili’s HBS. I also expected to see Aura used at a few defensive strong-points on defense, as well as Skyhammer at a few specific objectives because of the potential for 3-4 man clearances (end of Whitechapel).

One strong nade > bunch of weaker ones. After getting hit with the first nader shot, people aren’t exactly going to stick around to get hit by the following barrage. I do agree with linkz, nader seems a bit too squishy, and the nades arent strong enough to warrant his lower health. That being said, I think people are still exploring possibilities with nader’s nades, and we’ll probably see more of him in future cups.

The whole “defensive medic” and fortifying a position with a med station thing is something that works better in theory then in actual practice. Aura is simply not viable in comp play after the recent nerf, unlike before where you would see 50/50 sawbonez/aura usage. The aura station is not hard enough to kill for it to be a fortification tool and the nerf ruined the station micromanagement involved in playing aura of picking it up to dodge aoe and redeploying it for heals. A 3 second deploy time is an eternity in a game this fast paced. I think a .5 deploy time would have been more then enough to stop from auras going rambo, although I don’t see why this nerf was even done in the first place when most peoples’ issue with aura was how tanky she was sitting on her station not how quickly the station deployed.