What's bad about Dirty Bomb?

[Harlot]

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;84693”][quote=“Harlot;84690”][quote=“Watsyurdeal;84672”][quote=“Harlot;84662”][quote=“Watsyurdeal;84660”]Dirty Bomb is actually pretty damn good right now compared the competition.

The problem imo, is certain classes do need to be buffed, and there needs to be as much rng removed as possible. So each gun needs recoil patterns that are predictable and easy to adjust for, and aimpunch needs to be purely visual and not affect spread.

Other than those things…more maps would be nice.[/quote]

There’s almost no competition right now. That’s why DB is still alive. There’s TF2 and CS:GO. That’s all. My buddy and I sat around last night trying to think of a game to replace DB with, at least until Overwatch, and found nothing. Overwatch and LawBreakers will likely fill that void, both being free to play and likely of higher quality.[/quote]

Then the market is ripe for the picking imo, I think once the game goes out of Beta, and we get the things I proposed I think the game will pick up.

Competitive players like games with as much focus on skill and as little randomness as possible.

Dirty Bomb is getting there, and I think it’ll be a damn good shooter once it starts getting the attention it deserves.

Not only that…but Overwatch and Lawbreakers have more in common with TF2 than Dirty Bomb. They have that distinct Quake/Unreal Tournament feel to them, whereas Dirty Bomb feels more like Counter Strike if it were fun to play. shots fired[/quote]

There’s no competition right now and the game is still bleeding players. When there’s more competition, it’ll be even worse. Dirty Bomb isn’t really getting anywhere, though. Not with the speed that they release content. And I really don’t think it being called a “beta” is keeping players away. The game is just flat-out dying.[/quote]

Dying implies it’s hard to find a game quickly, which it isn’t, competitive maybe, but it takes a couple minutes tops for me to find a match.

And no, I do not think the game will have competition with Overwatch or Lawbreakers, as those games have a radically different feel to them.

Overwatch seems to be super casual, the abilities pretty much guarantee a kill every time. Where as Lawbreakers seems to be more like Tribes or Unreal Tournament than Enemy Territory and Brink.

And again, I think once they’ve added some things that tailor towards the competitive audience the game will pick up again. It’s not like CS GO had the same problem…oh wait.[/quote]

You forget the game was originally sold as being tailored to the competitive audience and only recently has been balanced more and more towards casuals. To think they will flip their ideology again is hopeful, at best. It’s likely they continue their trend of making it more accessible to try and bring more players in.

And the game will DEFINITELY receive major competition from Overwatch. Look around at the amount of players saying “I’m only here until Overwatch.” You’re only saying this because of bias. Any major Blizzard release always steals some portion of players away, even from other genres of gaming. That’s just a fact of the industry. LawBreakers will have a 40 man development team as well as Cliffy B supporting it. It will have hype, advertising and, surely, polish, which DB lacks. Even if it isn’t that similar to DB, plenty of people will be checking it out. This is the first game Cliffy B has done since leaving Epic. It’s a big, big deal.

CS:GO is probably the worst example you could use. First, CS:GO was incredibly close to dead until their amazing skin system was introduced. The game was established with over 15 years of being well-known. To think Dirty Bomb will pull a CS:GO with a development team this piss-poor is laughable. They can’t even figure out how to balance weapons nearly 3 years in. And people who want to collect skins, bet on games, etc will already be doing it on CS:GO, where you can actually make money, not moving to Dirty Bomb to likely lose money on your investments.

[watsyurdeal]

[quote=“Harlot;84695”]
Unless Splash Damage pulls out a pretty amazing content dump that works the first time, the game is going to keep losing players. There’s no arguing that.[/quote]

Maybe, but the last time they added content that was a major game changer, ala Phantom, people seemed to have huge backlash to it. So the game is slowing down a bit to make sure whatever comes out afterward is as balanced as it can be, hence why when Red Eye and Phoneix came out, they were different yes, but not very game changing, at least not to the same magnitude as Phantom was.

And not only that but the dev team has gotten smaller since Splash is working on the Gears of War Ultimate Edition. So, it will seem bleak for a while, but losing faith in the game like you’re doing now just has the same effect on the devs. Which will inevitably cause them to drop it out of frustration or no reason to seemingly keep developing a game for a community who has zero faith in it.

So stop with the negativity, and just play and be active on the forums, that really is the best thing you can do if you want this game to survive.

[Harlot]

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;84702”][quote=“Harlot;84695”]
Unless Splash Damage pulls out a pretty amazing content dump that works the first time, the game is going to keep losing players. There’s no arguing that.[/quote]

Maybe, but the last time they added content that was a major game changer, ala Phantom, people seemed to have huge backlash to it. So the game is slowing down a bit to make sure whatever comes out afterward is as balanced as it can be, hence why when Red Eye and Phoneix came out, they were different yes, but not very game changing, at least not to the same magnitude as Phantom was.

And not only that but the dev team has gotten smaller since Splash is working on the Gears of War Ultimate Edition. So, it will seem bleak for a while, but losing faith in the game like you’re doing now just has the same effect on the devs. Which will inevitably cause them to drop it out of frustration or no reason to seemingly keep developing a game for a community who has zero faith in it.

So stop with the negativity, and just play and be active on the forums, that really is the best thing you can do if you want this game to survive.
[/quote]

The last time they added major content? They literally added Phantom and cranked up aim punch. Both showed they have no idea what the hell they are doing. They have had no less than 4 cracks at Phantom and he still isn’t in a good place. They’ve taken 3 cracks at the mission system and need another. They’ve redone Stopwatch once and need to redo it again because it isn’t working correctly. Augments break every patch. They’re taking their time and STILL doing a crappy job.

And unfortunately, nobody here cares that they’re busy working on Gears. That’s not a good excuse for the state of your game or the lack of content. Gears is guaranteed money for them, yes, but they are sacrificing Dirty Bomb to make it.

We have every right to be negative. We have every right to voice our opinion and demand higher quality. We’re the consumer and there’s options out there. SD should be thankful we’re still playing AND voicing our opinion, when many just uninstall and move on. People generally aren’t happy with Dirty Bomb right now and that’s why players are leaving in droves. Telling us “Shut up and play” isn’t good for anybody.

[Amerika]

Yeah, CS:GO has all kinds of matchmaking issues for quite some time. It might be the shining example of how to do MM[quote=“Harlot;84695”][quote=“Amerika;84692”]People are a bit too obsessed with numbers. You don’t derive enjoyment from numbers in regards to playing an FPS shooter. You get enjoyment when there is enough players to play against and support. And playerbase raises and lowers based on advertisement and reminding people the game exists which has only been done once so far.

The game is not “dying”. If DB is dying then tons of other shooters with lower pops that have been around for years now are dying/dead…but they aren’t. Get some perspective before you go all Chicken Little

[/quote]

You can say we’re obsessed with the numbers, but a lot of us are being realists. A lot of us have been through multiple F2P FPS’s dying over the years. We’ve seen normal dips and we’ve seen playerbases up and leave. Dirty Bomb is closer to the latter than the former.

Just because a game such as Hawken averages 380 players on at any given doesn’t mean it isn’t dead. Dead doesn’t mean 0 players and servers turned off. Dead implies netting a financial loss and lacking enough players to have quality matches without obscene queue times. Dead means it’s a matter of time before the development staff cuts their losses and turns off the servers or abandons the game.

Dirty Bomb has a garbage cash shop. Everything is over-priced and the cases are RNG based. Almost every single player I’ve talked to refuses to spend cash. But you look at Hawken, almost every person bought at least a few skins. Hawken likely could remain profitable with less players, given equal spending/overhead by the development teams.

With the way it’s losing players and a trash sales model, it’s a matter of time before it hits that threshold. Couple that with a slow development cycle (I’m honestly curious what they’ve been working on over the past year) a hacker infestation, and the inability to implement anything correctly the first time, it’s easy to forecast the game not being around a year.

I mean, we’re getting our first map in ~6 months. How long until the next map? Drip-feeding content is a fantastic way to kill your game off. Ask Toxikk. All 9 players on in the past 24 hours will tell you that.

Unless Splash Damage pulls out a pretty amazing content dump that works the first time, the game is going to keep losing players. There’s no arguing that.[/quote]

I am a realist which is why I look at DB’s numbers and laugh at posts that have a dire outlook. Some people tend to want to believe in doom and gloom as opposed to look at the current and even forecast numbers and understand that fiscally the game is far from dead and it’s even further from dead in regard to the playerbase.

I agree with a lot of your assessment. I hate RNG/gambling so they have gotten far fewer dollars out of me than they would have. But they have said more options will be coming eventually which I’m fine with. I will hold on to my money until then. Everything I actually need to play the game I already have and they don’t require any financial investment. I just want to have certain skins without gambling for them.

So I am a realist as opposed to a doom and gloom type or an optimist. I take the situation as it sits in front of me and I don’t try to project my feelings on to the data. And currently the data suggests that DB, despite going into open beta with disadvantages (which I noted earlier) could still be dug out and the game kept quite healthy over quite a bit of time. Hell, just doing a F2P version of CS:GO Operations would make a lot of sense and keep the game profitable while giving us all new content.

They have had no less than 4 cracks at Phantom and he still isn’t in a good place.

Exactly what ‘cracks’ are we talking about here. There was release Phantom and then there was the update that made him more visible, reduced his HP by 10 and removed the soaking of explosives from the cloak (the latter of which pretty much everyone wanted changed). There was the melee system change but that wasn’t Phantom specific.

Please, lets use facts here and not make up random numbers when referring to subjective feelings about power.

[watsyurdeal]

[quote=“Harlot;84707”][quote=“Watsyurdeal;84702”][quote=“Harlot;84695”]
Unless Splash Damage pulls out a pretty amazing content dump that works the first time, the game is going to keep losing players. There’s no arguing that.[/quote]

Maybe, but the last time they added content that was a major game changer, ala Phantom, people seemed to have huge backlash to it. So the game is slowing down a bit to make sure whatever comes out afterward is as balanced as it can be, hence why when Red Eye and Phoneix came out, they were different yes, but not very game changing, at least not to the same magnitude as Phantom was.

And not only that but the dev team has gotten smaller since Splash is working on the Gears of War Ultimate Edition. So, it will seem bleak for a while, but losing faith in the game like you’re doing now just has the same effect on the devs. Which will inevitably cause them to drop it out of frustration or no reason to seemingly keep developing a game for a community who has zero faith in it.

So stop with the negativity, and just play and be active on the forums, that really is the best thing you can do if you want this game to survive.
[/quote]

The last time they added major content? They literally added Phantom and cranked up aim punch. Both showed they have no idea what the hell they are doing. They have had no less than 4 cracks at Phantom and he still isn’t in a good place. They’ve taken 3 cracks at the mission system and need another. They’ve redone Stopwatch once and need to redo it again because it isn’t working correctly. Augments break every patch. They’re taking their time and STILL doing a crappy job.

And unfortunately, nobody here cares that they’re busy working on Gears. That’s not a good excuse for the state of your game or the lack of content. Gears is guaranteed money for them, yes, but they are sacrificing Dirty Bomb to make it.

We have every right to be negative. We have every right to voice our opinion and demand higher quality. We’re the consumer and there’s options out there. SD should be thankful we’re still playing AND voicing our opinion, when many just uninstall and move on. People generally aren’t happy with Dirty Bomb right now and that’s why players are leaving in droves. Telling us “Shut up and play” isn’t good for anybody.[/quote]

No offense but that really seems like self entitlement, you say you have a right to be negative but saying the Devs have no clue what they’re doing is a bit harsh. And not only that, but you have the right to be negative and declare the game is garbage before they can even get back on track, is a bit counter intuitive. As someone with experience in Project Development, I can guarantee you it is NOT as easy as you’d think to simply update the game with new content and patches.

They sure as fuck are doing a better job than Hi Rez, and hell even Valve as far as I am concerned. They didn’t keep adding stuff without stopping a bit to fix what’s in game like Valve did. Valve just kept adding unlocks and cosmetics to TF2 and now the game is about as balanced as the Joker (that is to say it’s freaking chaos). And Hi Rez…well, they pretty much sold a GOTY edition as a last minute crash grab and haven’t had a patch in two years.

Dirty Bomb is in a pretty good spot, most of the classes with the exception of say…4 are pretty viable, but very specialized and map dependent. Aimpunch is way better than it used to be, and the guns are getting balanced to a point where they are starting to be more defined and have distinct feel from the others.

Honestly all we really need is some better loadout cards to choose from, predicatlable recoil patterns for every gun, not just the M4, visual aimpunch that has zero affect on your spread, more maps, and more mercs are inevitably going to come along.

The game is going well for just coming out of open beta not even 3 months ago.

That is key here, 3 MONTHS AGO. The game is barely open to the public and you’re already declaring it’s going to die.

Again, give them a chance to recooperate and pick up the pieces before you start saying stuff like “the game is dead/dying”. Because that doesn’t exactly give a lot of faith in the developers, and doesn’t solve jack. You’re complaining that it’s dying but offering no solutions.

[ThatJohnS]

Wait, comparing to CoD is a thing? Seriously?

oh well…

[Harlot]

[quote=“Amerika;84708”]Yeah, CS:GO has all kinds of matchmaking issues for quite some time. It might be the shining example of how to do MM[quote=“Harlot;84695”][quote=“Amerika;84692”]People are a bit too obsessed with numbers. You don’t derive enjoyment from numbers in regards to playing an FPS shooter. You get enjoyment when there is enough players to play against and support. And playerbase raises and lowers based on advertisement and reminding people the game exists which has only been done once so far.

The game is not “dying”. If DB is dying then tons of other shooters with lower pops that have been around for years now are dying/dead…but they aren’t. Get some perspective before you go all Chicken Little

[/quote]

You can say we’re obsessed with the numbers, but a lot of us are being realists. A lot of us have been through multiple F2P FPS’s dying over the years. We’ve seen normal dips and we’ve seen playerbases up and leave. Dirty Bomb is closer to the latter than the former.

Just because a game such as Hawken averages 380 players on at any given doesn’t mean it isn’t dead. Dead doesn’t mean 0 players and servers turned off. Dead implies netting a financial loss and lacking enough players to have quality matches without obscene queue times. Dead means it’s a matter of time before the development staff cuts their losses and turns off the servers or abandons the game.

Dirty Bomb has a garbage cash shop. Everything is over-priced and the cases are RNG based. Almost every single player I’ve talked to refuses to spend cash. But you look at Hawken, almost every person bought at least a few skins. Hawken likely could remain profitable with less players, given equal spending/overhead by the development teams.

With the way it’s losing players and a trash sales model, it’s a matter of time before it hits that threshold. Couple that with a slow development cycle (I’m honestly curious what they’ve been working on over the past year) a hacker infestation, and the inability to implement anything correctly the first time, it’s easy to forecast the game not being around a year.

I mean, we’re getting our first map in ~6 months. How long until the next map? Drip-feeding content is a fantastic way to kill your game off. Ask Toxikk. All 9 players on in the past 24 hours will tell you that.

Unless Splash Damage pulls out a pretty amazing content dump that works the first time, the game is going to keep losing players. There’s no arguing that.[/quote]

I am a realist which is why I look at DB’s numbers and laugh at posts that have a dire outlook. Some people tend to want to believe in doom and gloom as opposed to look at the current and even forecast numbers and understand that fiscally the game is far from dead and it’s even further from dead in regard to the playerbase.

I agree with a lot of your assessment. I hate RNG/gambling so they have gotten far fewer dollars out of me than they would have. But they have said more options will be coming eventually which I’m fine with. I will hold on to my money until then. Everything I actually need to play the game I already have and they don’t require any financial investment. I just want to have certain skins without gambling for them.

So I am a realist as opposed to a doom and gloom type or an optimist. I take the situation as it sits in front of me and I don’t try to project my feelings on to the data. And currently the data suggests that DB, despite going into open beta with disadvantages (which I noted earlier) could still be dug out and the game kept quite healthy over quite a bit of time. Hell, just doing a F2P version of CS:GO Operations would make a lot of sense and keep the game profitable while giving us all new content.

They have had no less than 4 cracks at Phantom and he still isn’t in a good place.

Exactly what ‘cracks’ are we talking about here. There was release Phantom and then there was the update that made him more visible, reduced his HP by 10 and removed the soaking of explosives from the cloak (the latter of which pretty much everyone wanted changed). There was the melee system change but that wasn’t Phantom specific.

Please, lets use facts here and not make up random numbers when referring to subjective feelings about power.[/quote]

Phantom was in the closed beta. So his initial release. He was then nerfed. Then pulled when they decided he was too much of a challenge to balance. Then he was released with some changes. Then nerfed. Then melee reworked. So at least four attempts now.

[FilterDecay]

My 1 worry are people being scared by the skill levels needed to compete. I turned a friend on and he has maybe 2 hours in game. I gave him the alienware game codes for loadouts and he waited to join my server played for a minute then got kicked for security violations and went and made dinner (its beta so yeah) He did mention the game was “hard”. He’s more of a tf2 guy but the initial play he did enjoy the gunplay. So I dunno.

[Amerika]

[quote=“Harlot;84722”][quote=“Amerika;84708”]Yeah, CS:GO has all kinds of matchmaking issues for quite some time. It might be the shining example of how to do MM[quote=“Harlot;84695”][quote=“Amerika;84692”]People are a bit too obsessed with numbers. You don’t derive enjoyment from numbers in regards to playing an FPS shooter. You get enjoyment when there is enough players to play against and support. And playerbase raises and lowers based on advertisement and reminding people the game exists which has only been done once so far.

The game is not “dying”. If DB is dying then tons of other shooters with lower pops that have been around for years now are dying/dead…but they aren’t. Get some perspective before you go all Chicken Little

[/quote]

You can say we’re obsessed with the numbers, but a lot of us are being realists. A lot of us have been through multiple F2P FPS’s dying over the years. We’ve seen normal dips and we’ve seen playerbases up and leave. Dirty Bomb is closer to the latter than the former.

Just because a game such as Hawken averages 380 players on at any given doesn’t mean it isn’t dead. Dead doesn’t mean 0 players and servers turned off. Dead implies netting a financial loss and lacking enough players to have quality matches without obscene queue times. Dead means it’s a matter of time before the development staff cuts their losses and turns off the servers or abandons the game.

Dirty Bomb has a garbage cash shop. Everything is over-priced and the cases are RNG based. Almost every single player I’ve talked to refuses to spend cash. But you look at Hawken, almost every person bought at least a few skins. Hawken likely could remain profitable with less players, given equal spending/overhead by the development teams.

With the way it’s losing players and a trash sales model, it’s a matter of time before it hits that threshold. Couple that with a slow development cycle (I’m honestly curious what they’ve been working on over the past year) a hacker infestation, and the inability to implement anything correctly the first time, it’s easy to forecast the game not being around a year.

I mean, we’re getting our first map in ~6 months. How long until the next map? Drip-feeding content is a fantastic way to kill your game off. Ask Toxikk. All 9 players on in the past 24 hours will tell you that.

Unless Splash Damage pulls out a pretty amazing content dump that works the first time, the game is going to keep losing players. There’s no arguing that.[/quote]

I am a realist which is why I look at DB’s numbers and laugh at posts that have a dire outlook. Some people tend to want to believe in doom and gloom as opposed to look at the current and even forecast numbers and understand that fiscally the game is far from dead and it’s even further from dead in regard to the playerbase.

I agree with a lot of your assessment. I hate RNG/gambling so they have gotten far fewer dollars out of me than they would have. But they have said more options will be coming eventually which I’m fine with. I will hold on to my money until then. Everything I actually need to play the game I already have and they don’t require any financial investment. I just want to have certain skins without gambling for them.

So I am a realist as opposed to a doom and gloom type or an optimist. I take the situation as it sits in front of me and I don’t try to project my feelings on to the data. And currently the data suggests that DB, despite going into open beta with disadvantages (which I noted earlier) could still be dug out and the game kept quite healthy over quite a bit of time. Hell, just doing a F2P version of CS:GO Operations would make a lot of sense and keep the game profitable while giving us all new content.

They have had no less than 4 cracks at Phantom and he still isn’t in a good place.

Exactly what ‘cracks’ are we talking about here. There was release Phantom and then there was the update that made him more visible, reduced his HP by 10 and removed the soaking of explosives from the cloak (the latter of which pretty much everyone wanted changed). There was the melee system change but that wasn’t Phantom specific.

Please, lets use facts here and not make up random numbers when referring to subjective feelings about power.[/quote]

Phantom was in the closed beta. So his initial release. He was then nerfed. Then pulled when they decided he was too much of a challenge to balance. Then he was released with some changes. Then nerfed. Then melee reworked. So at least four attempts now.[/quote]

The closed beta does not count as released. There were many iterations of most of the mercs during that closed beta and you can’t say all of those were botched attempts. It was a closed beta for a reason. His official release was during Open Beta.

[MyRogerIsJolly]

I’ll play with you brojanga.

[immenseWalnut]

My biggest gripe with DB is the lack of diversity between the different mercs. For £7 per merc, the fact they have similar movement speeds, health, weapons and only 1 defining ability doesn’t really cut it (especially when those abilities are intended for very specific uses with little variety, i.e. Skyhammer’s Airstrike is for the EV, same with Kira’s Orbital Laser). Sure, you can unlock them without paying real cash (that isn’t the issue here), but they are still far too similar and lacking in depth to justify having so many.

Compare that to the upcoming Overwatch, where the various heroes have multiple abillities that are not only fun to use (depending on your playstyle) but can be used with the other player’s abilities to make teamwork (instead of raw aim) count for more. If anything I would rather see fewer heroes and more abilities per hero, with various uses for each and different ways to combine them. We might get there one day.

The mercs in DB just seem to be there to make extra money, not because they enhance the game or offer unique playstyles. Changing a team composition should change the way a match plays out, requiring different tactics. That isn’t really the case with DB, which is why it is very boring to watch competitive matches, and why it becomes stale to play after 100 hours or so. I can see the game’s population taking a huge drop shortly after the last merc is released, and it will probably be dead long before Overwatch goes into open beta/full launch.

As a skilled based game, it is inferior to games such as Reflex and the new UT. As a teamwork based game, it is inferior to TF2 or NS2 (one of my favourites that is both a skill based game AND requires good teamwork and communication). It just doesn’t excel or innovate in any particular area.

[Harlot]

[quote=“Amerika;84725”][quote=“Harlot;84722”][quote=“Amerika;84708”]Yeah, CS:GO has all kinds of matchmaking issues for quite some time. It might be the shining example of how to do MM[quote=“Harlot;84695”][quote=“Amerika;84692”]People are a bit too obsessed with numbers. You don’t derive enjoyment from numbers in regards to playing an FPS shooter. You get enjoyment when there is enough players to play against and support. And playerbase raises and lowers based on advertisement and reminding people the game exists which has only been done once so far.

The game is not “dying”. If DB is dying then tons of other shooters with lower pops that have been around for years now are dying/dead…but they aren’t. Get some perspective before you go all Chicken Little

[/quote]

You can say we’re obsessed with the numbers, but a lot of us are being realists. A lot of us have been through multiple F2P FPS’s dying over the years. We’ve seen normal dips and we’ve seen playerbases up and leave. Dirty Bomb is closer to the latter than the former.

Just because a game such as Hawken averages 380 players on at any given doesn’t mean it isn’t dead. Dead doesn’t mean 0 players and servers turned off. Dead implies netting a financial loss and lacking enough players to have quality matches without obscene queue times. Dead means it’s a matter of time before the development staff cuts their losses and turns off the servers or abandons the game.

Dirty Bomb has a garbage cash shop. Everything is over-priced and the cases are RNG based. Almost every single player I’ve talked to refuses to spend cash. But you look at Hawken, almost every person bought at least a few skins. Hawken likely could remain profitable with less players, given equal spending/overhead by the development teams.

With the way it’s losing players and a trash sales model, it’s a matter of time before it hits that threshold. Couple that with a slow development cycle (I’m honestly curious what they’ve been working on over the past year) a hacker infestation, and the inability to implement anything correctly the first time, it’s easy to forecast the game not being around a year.

I mean, we’re getting our first map in ~6 months. How long until the next map? Drip-feeding content is a fantastic way to kill your game off. Ask Toxikk. All 9 players on in the past 24 hours will tell you that.

Unless Splash Damage pulls out a pretty amazing content dump that works the first time, the game is going to keep losing players. There’s no arguing that.[/quote]

I am a realist which is why I look at DB’s numbers and laugh at posts that have a dire outlook. Some people tend to want to believe in doom and gloom as opposed to look at the current and even forecast numbers and understand that fiscally the game is far from dead and it’s even further from dead in regard to the playerbase.

I agree with a lot of your assessment. I hate RNG/gambling so they have gotten far fewer dollars out of me than they would have. But they have said more options will be coming eventually which I’m fine with. I will hold on to my money until then. Everything I actually need to play the game I already have and they don’t require any financial investment. I just want to have certain skins without gambling for them.

So I am a realist as opposed to a doom and gloom type or an optimist. I take the situation as it sits in front of me and I don’t try to project my feelings on to the data. And currently the data suggests that DB, despite going into open beta with disadvantages (which I noted earlier) could still be dug out and the game kept quite healthy over quite a bit of time. Hell, just doing a F2P version of CS:GO Operations would make a lot of sense and keep the game profitable while giving us all new content.

They have had no less than 4 cracks at Phantom and he still isn’t in a good place.

Exactly what ‘cracks’ are we talking about here. There was release Phantom and then there was the update that made him more visible, reduced his HP by 10 and removed the soaking of explosives from the cloak (the latter of which pretty much everyone wanted changed). There was the melee system change but that wasn’t Phantom specific.

Please, lets use facts here and not make up random numbers when referring to subjective feelings about power.[/quote]

Phantom was in the closed beta. So his initial release. He was then nerfed. Then pulled when they decided he was too much of a challenge to balance. Then he was released with some changes. Then nerfed. Then melee reworked. So at least four attempts now.[/quote]

The closed beta does not count as released. There were many iterations of most of the mercs during that closed beta and you can’t say all of those were botched attempts. It was a closed beta for a reason. His official release was during Open Beta.[/quote]

How can you write off the closed beta but not do so for the open beta? They couldn’t get him right in closed, they still can’t do it in open beta, who’s to say they’ll get him right in a non-beta environment? All said, they’ve had a year to work on him and he’s still a mess. Not exactly a good sign, is it?

[watsyurdeal]

If you’re expecting innovation it’s kinda hard to do, as it’s likely some other game has done it before.

Surprisingly, the most innovative shooter lately, purely in my opinion, was Titanfall. The Parkour, the Titans, the feel of the game honestly. If they had Dirty Bomb’s gun fight mechanics and ttk, it would have been the perfect shooter for PC.

But as it is, Dirty Bomb feels like Counter Strike and TF2 had a baby, and I am totally happy with that.

[immenseWalnut]

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;84735”]If you’re expecting innovation it’s kinda hard to do, as it’s likely some other game has done it before.

Surprisingly, the most innovative shooter lately, purely in my opinion, was Titanfall. The Parkour, the Titans, the feel of the game honestly. If they had Dirty Bomb’s gun fight mechanics and ttk, it would have been the perfect shooter for PC.

But as it is, Dirty Bomb feels like Counter Strike and TF2 had a baby, and I am totally happy with that.[/quote]

I think Forge is probably the most innovative game I have played recently (NS2 could rank up there too). It was a mixture of a 3rd person shooter combined with an MMO ability style of play. It was a lot of fun and had some really great mechanics (such as blocking, walljumping, long TTK, knockbacks, snares and roots etc), but it was let down by poor map design, and boring game modes. Not to mention a small playerbase. But overall it was a lot of fun and had a high skill ceiling for teamplay. And because the devs were making their own game instead of copying someone elses, they got many of the mechanics spot on, which made the game feel unique.

As you say, this game does seem to be a ‘Valve are raking the money in with TF2 and CS:GO, lets make a hybrid and we’ll be filthy rich forever!’ but it doesn’t beat either of those games on the strengths that make them so popular. The skill floor is too high for the average casual and the skill ceiling is too low to allow for much depth at higher levels of play. Combine that with limited gamemodes and limited maps, and after 100 hours every match starts to feel the same with little variety.

If it wasn’t for the drip feeding of the mercs, I suspect this game would have a much smaller playerbase (if all the mercs had been available from open beta etc). Once players have bought or unlocked all the mercs, there will be little to look forward to and keep people playing over the long term.

[Amerika]

[quote=“Harlot;84734”][quote=“Amerika;84725”][quote=“Harlot;84722”][quote=“Amerika;84708”]Yeah, CS:GO has all kinds of matchmaking issues for quite some time. It might be the shining example of how to do MM[quote=“Harlot;84695”][quote=“Amerika;84692”]People are a bit too obsessed with numbers. You don’t derive enjoyment from numbers in regards to playing an FPS shooter. You get enjoyment when there is enough players to play against and support. And playerbase raises and lowers based on advertisement and reminding people the game exists which has only been done once so far.

The game is not “dying”. If DB is dying then tons of other shooters with lower pops that have been around for years now are dying/dead…but they aren’t. Get some perspective before you go all Chicken Little

[/quote]

You can say we’re obsessed with the numbers, but a lot of us are being realists. A lot of us have been through multiple F2P FPS’s dying over the years. We’ve seen normal dips and we’ve seen playerbases up and leave. Dirty Bomb is closer to the latter than the former.

Just because a game such as Hawken averages 380 players on at any given doesn’t mean it isn’t dead. Dead doesn’t mean 0 players and servers turned off. Dead implies netting a financial loss and lacking enough players to have quality matches without obscene queue times. Dead means it’s a matter of time before the development staff cuts their losses and turns off the servers or abandons the game.

Dirty Bomb has a garbage cash shop. Everything is over-priced and the cases are RNG based. Almost every single player I’ve talked to refuses to spend cash. But you look at Hawken, almost every person bought at least a few skins. Hawken likely could remain profitable with less players, given equal spending/overhead by the development teams.

With the way it’s losing players and a trash sales model, it’s a matter of time before it hits that threshold. Couple that with a slow development cycle (I’m honestly curious what they’ve been working on over the past year) a hacker infestation, and the inability to implement anything correctly the first time, it’s easy to forecast the game not being around a year.

I mean, we’re getting our first map in ~6 months. How long until the next map? Drip-feeding content is a fantastic way to kill your game off. Ask Toxikk. All 9 players on in the past 24 hours will tell you that.

Unless Splash Damage pulls out a pretty amazing content dump that works the first time, the game is going to keep losing players. There’s no arguing that.[/quote]

I am a realist which is why I look at DB’s numbers and laugh at posts that have a dire outlook. Some people tend to want to believe in doom and gloom as opposed to look at the current and even forecast numbers and understand that fiscally the game is far from dead and it’s even further from dead in regard to the playerbase.

I agree with a lot of your assessment. I hate RNG/gambling so they have gotten far fewer dollars out of me than they would have. But they have said more options will be coming eventually which I’m fine with. I will hold on to my money until then. Everything I actually need to play the game I already have and they don’t require any financial investment. I just want to have certain skins without gambling for them.

So I am a realist as opposed to a doom and gloom type or an optimist. I take the situation as it sits in front of me and I don’t try to project my feelings on to the data. And currently the data suggests that DB, despite going into open beta with disadvantages (which I noted earlier) could still be dug out and the game kept quite healthy over quite a bit of time. Hell, just doing a F2P version of CS:GO Operations would make a lot of sense and keep the game profitable while giving us all new content.

They have had no less than 4 cracks at Phantom and he still isn’t in a good place.

Exactly what ‘cracks’ are we talking about here. There was release Phantom and then there was the update that made him more visible, reduced his HP by 10 and removed the soaking of explosives from the cloak (the latter of which pretty much everyone wanted changed). There was the melee system change but that wasn’t Phantom specific.

Please, lets use facts here and not make up random numbers when referring to subjective feelings about power.[/quote]

Phantom was in the closed beta. So his initial release. He was then nerfed. Then pulled when they decided he was too much of a challenge to balance. Then he was released with some changes. Then nerfed. Then melee reworked. So at least four attempts now.[/quote]

The closed beta does not count as released. There were many iterations of most of the mercs during that closed beta and you can’t say all of those were botched attempts. It was a closed beta for a reason. His official release was during Open Beta.[/quote]

How can you write off the closed beta but not do so for the open beta? They couldn’t get him right in closed, they still can’t do it in open beta, who’s to say they’ll get him right in a non-beta environment? All said, they’ve had a year to work on him and he’s still a mess. Not exactly a good sign, is it?[/quote]

Because the closed beta was NDA and is part of the development process. He was not released to the regular public and neither was any other merc. The closed beta was for figuring out which direction SD wanted to go with the game and the mercs. The open beta is, currently, the “release”. But even then, you’re right…it shouldn’t be counted. Not until the game is fully released. So technically Phantom hasn’t even had one ‘crack’ according to that logic.

[watsyurdeal]

Imo, the reason Phantom is in such a bad state as it is…is for another freaking thread that’s been done a hundred times and I still sound like the God damn town drunk…next topic please.

[frolicsomeCrane]

Imo it gets repetitive, and that’s mainly the fault of the lack of content which has nothing to do with the fact that it isn’t a great game.

It has to do with lack of content at the moment, lack of loadouts, weapons, maps, hell, even mercs. You can’t really do much except wait for new stuff but oh well.

[FilterDecay]

i dont agree. What we need is not more content (although its nice) What we need is a mature (as in experienced with the game) and large playerbase.

Look how many people play dust2 exclusively? Each match is different because of the dynamic gameplay only another human being brings.

I think we have 5 good maps. Thats pretty cool. Sure we have some slight tweaks that may be needed to some of the maps (bridge attack) but all in all they feel polished to me.

[Fap_Fap_Master]

Let’s face it, no matter how you look at it, DB is losing players. while the core game is great, there is just no new content in the game to keep it fun (to be expected though, its still a beta). I’m afriad that this might be dead island epidemic 2, I hope doesn’t end with the same fate, but it might.

[FilterDecay]

Is it losing players? We have like 4 months of data only. And its not even a released game yet.

http://steamcharts.com/app/333930#1m

the last month looks pretty steady to me.