What's the best way to deal with Free Rotation?

(Samniss_Arandeen) #1

This way, we have a way for people to test drive the Mercs they want, without having to wait for rotations, in a real server environment rather than alone on a map. We also have the effect of increasing variety and unpredictability as more Mercs are likely to be in play by more people, reducing Merc-spam.

There are several ways. “Rent-a-Merc” could have us pay a small amount to temporarily unlock a Merc, optionally so Credits earned as those Mercs automatically go towards their purchase price, as a fun, intimately personal way to unlock that Merc you wanted.

There could also be a severe usability limit with unpurchased Mercs, such as an inability to earn Credits unless all the Mercs in your squad are already in your possession, and/or the privilege of using a Loadout Card only comes with a purchase.

And finally, the age-old Individual Rotation suggestion. Every player gets their own personalized rotation, optionally with the ability to choose one of the rotated-in Mercs.

(_Sniff_) #2

For new people delving into Dirty Bomb I think the personalized and renting system have significant problems.

If it’s personalized then otherr than random selection or having to do research on a game how does a new player know what merc to pick? Moreover can you pick the same mercs over and over again?
Will it force a player to play mercs that they don’t like? If not couldn’t you just swap between mercs you do like and never buy them?

If it’s a rental system what happens if you spend all your credits renting a new merc? Are you stuck with Aura and Skyhammer? Also how does a new player know what to pick? People are easily lead into the rental trap.

The current merc rotation certainly isn’t perfect but I think it’s better currently since there are a lot of new players (and hopefully more coming)

(Faraleth) #3

Coming from a few F2P shooters (most notably Blacklight: Retribution) I personally quite like the “rental” system. It allows new users to hop in early and try things out without having a spend a whole lot of time or money to do things more established players are.

The current free rotation is too long, in my opinion, because as I made this point in another thread the other day, some people could be waiting upwards of a month to test out a merc they are thinking of buying, simply because of the long 2 week rotation. Due to there being no offered easy refund system for a poorly-placed purchase either, it seems like there should be more options available to those who perhaps don’t have quite as much or money to spend on the game.

Having a rent-a-merc system would also push people towards using a wider variety of mercs (rather than seeing a bunch of level 5’s with the same 3 mercs every 2 weeks). I think if they did introduce a rental system, it would have to be figured out very carefully, because if as you suggested “credits paid in rental go towards the over-all purchase of the merc”, this could result in quite a bit of loss, due to destroying the idea of saving up for a merc (because someone could continually rent it until they buy it out-right) and it would be hard to correspond with real-money values.

Perhaps if you rent it for 1 week for 5,000 credits, it permanently drops the price by 5,000 credits, but if you rent it again, it won’t drop any lower? That way, the player can try it for a decent amount of time and not feel like they’ve “wasted” money if they want to save for it, and doesn’t scrap the idea of saving for mercs.

Of course, this sort of idea needs fleshing out more, it’s just an initial thought. :slight_smile:

(MarsRover) #4

Individual rotation as a base plus some form of rent-a-merc.

[quote=“Faraleth;81710”]The current free rotation is too long, in my opinion, because as I made this point in another thread the other day, some people could be waiting upwards of a month to test out a merc they are thinking of buying, simply because of the long 2 week rotation. Due to there being no offered easy refund system for a poorly-placed purchase either, it seems like there should be more options available to those who perhaps don’t have quite as much or money to spend on the game.
[/quote]
If the merc is not an engineer it’s even longer. How many mercs we will have in the near future? About 20. Two are free, 4 are engineers that always take 1 spot out of 3 in rotation. So the remaining 14 mercs have only 2 spots in rotation. So it’s 7 rotations x 2 weeks = 14 weeks free rotation intervals for most mercs.

Individual rotation fixes merc stacking. It could even shortened to 10 days or 1 week.

Rent-a-merc fixes long free rotation intervals.

(XavienX) #5

I think everyone havin their own rotation of merc will prevent merc spam as suggested a while back instead of a universal rotation.

(SteelMailbox) #6

While I do agree that free rotation is a nice idea merc diversity is being hurt hard in pubs by it.
Sure rent a merc won’t be perfect cause then every level 1 Vassili but I have a bit of an idea to fix it, rent a merc will only be available from level 5 so those Vassilis will have atleast a bit of skill before sitting in an end of a map and hardscoping and missing.
Sure you can say that idea is kind of not allowing new players to decide what merc they want to buy or something like that but considering that getting to level 5 takes about 1-3 days to get to I don’t see much of a problem in it.
I also think that you shouldn’t be able to rent more then 1 merc in the same time and also depending on how much credits/cash you payed you will be able to hire the merc from 1D to
3D to one week this way I will see more Skyhammers that will drop ammo (maybe IDK I hope probably not) so that just seems the best way to have a bit of merc diversity and yes it ain’t flawless merc diversity will still be a problem but I seriously don’t know how to have merc diversity in games like this.
I have suggested merc limitation in the past but many people didn’t liked that idea.

(kibloy) #7

nevermind, I can’t read

(Feley) #8

[quote=“Faraleth;81710”]Coming from a few F2P shooters (most notably Blacklight: Retribution) I personally quite like the “rental” system. It allows new users to hop in early and try things out without having a spend a whole lot of time or money to do things more established players are.

The current free rotation is too long, in my opinion, because as I made this point in another thread the other day, some people could be waiting upwards of a month to test out a merc they are thinking of buying, simply because of the long 2 week rotation. Due to there being no offered easy refund system for a poorly-placed purchase either, it seems like there should be more options available to those who perhaps don’t have quite as much or money to spend on the game.

Having a rent-a-merc system would also push people towards using a wider variety of mercs (rather than seeing a bunch of level 5’s with the same 3 mercs every 2 weeks). I think if they did introduce a rental system, it would have to be figured out very carefully, because if as you suggested “credits paid in rental go towards the over-all purchase of the merc”, this could result in quite a bit of loss, due to destroying the idea of saving up for a merc (because someone could continually rent it until they buy it out-right) and it would be hard to correspond with real-money values.

Perhaps if you rent it for 1 week for 5,000 credits, it permanently drops the price by 5,000 credits, but if you rent it again, it won’t drop any lower? That way, the player can try it for a decent amount of time and not feel like they’ve “wasted” money if they want to save for it, and doesn’t scrap the idea of saving for mercs.

Of course, this sort of idea needs fleshing out more, it’s just an initial thought. :)[/quote]

And also for level 1s and all new player it would be good to have 1-3 free rents at begining of the game becuase they can’t go in game with aura and skyhammer, they need third merc.

(frolicsomeCrane) #9

I personally believe that the current rotation is fine.

Like, if you look at a long-term gig, once DB has like 30-40+ mercs… No one will feel anything regarding 3 mercs being free out of the 30/40 out of the roster.

(Dirmagnos) #10

Either rent-a-merc or personalized rotation.
With current system pub games are horrible when Vassili comes out in rotation(Bushwhacker is also bad, but not as much), every1 suddenly think that team just cant live without them and teams with half of the players playing Vassili is a norm. And usually they barely contribute to objective advancement.
But with rent-a-merc system whole amount of money spent shouldnt contribute towards reduced merc price, maybe half it to carry over(eg spend 5000 on rent and reduce merc price by 2500). Otherwise it kinda makes whole buying system pointless, since player can use any merc from getgo and pay later without any point to save money for full purchase. Some kind limitation should be in place.

(FurriesAreAwesome) #11

[quote=“Dirmagnos;81756”]With current system pub games are horrible when Vassili comes out in rotation […][/quote]Or worse, Nader.

Oh god. The grenades. Constant spamming of the C4 locations. I AM BEGGING for the days of Proxy being in the rotation instead.

(Litego) #12

Current Rotation or Individual Rotation (I don’t mind either way)
Plus Rent-a-Merc (for credits or cash)
Plus access to all mercs and cards on a private server hosted on your PC (not their servers) for you alone where no one else can enter. Preferably with access to a shooting range map that has bots standing and running around (they don’t need any AI, following a path, or randomly moving is fine, or even just standing still). Tribes Ascend pretty much did what I’m asking for here.

(Kouken) #13

Release all Mercs for free to use instantly.

Add loadout cards (maybe just gold+) to steam market and give them actual monetary value and people will spend SO much more money on cases.

Nexon would easily remake the lost $ from the one time purchase of mercs through cases and this also solves the huge balance issues free rotations cause in public games.
5 Vassilis on one team anyone?

(Awesom-0) #14

How about no rotation? Every time we rotate half the people in the game are playing them. Earn the credits to buy them if you have a interest. More incentives for playing on certain days instead.

(Jurmabones) #15

Get good is always the solution.

(Samniss_Arandeen) #16

So, what happens if you have an interest and the Merc didn’t live up to your expectation? Especially with new players that need those credits, that’s 30-50k wasted. Are you really so sure about removing all form of “try before you buy” to make sure you’re comfortable with how the Merc plays and what they do?

Get good at what? And what does “getting good” have to do with the fact that only a small fraction of the game’s playable characters are in play at any one time by a large chunk of the playerbase? That hurts the game no matter the skill level.

(Jurmabones) #17

Just to clarify, it was a joke. Don’t read into it too much. I didn’t intend to offend anybody, I only said it because I find stuff like that funny since it’s a corny remark with no real substance. Maybe I should’ve typed “git gud” instead to convey it was intended as humor. :stuck_out_tongue:

Personally I don’t care about the free rotation anymore because I (a) own most mercs and (b) don’t think it ruins the game. Everyone has access to the same mercs. Everyone can spend money or their credits on the mercs they want. The free rotation is simply a way for people to have a solid week to try out something they might not own yet.

Considering everyone has access to the same mercs it’s not like one team or the other or any individuals will be particularly affected. It affects everyone equally. Either team is just as likely to have N of the free mercs being the majority of their team.

Allowing a few mercs to be played for free in addition to aura and skyhammer, there’s always a decent amount of useful mercs that can be played by anyone without spending money. I think the current system is fine.

As far as some type of free rotation goes, what would you find to be better?

(Lumi) #18

First of all, rotation mercs shouldn’t be allowed in comp.
Second, only one rotation merc can be in your trio at once.

Then, if you own the merc on rotation you’re exempt from any limits or queue system explained below.

Now if you don’t own a merc and you want to try out a merc in free rotation, then you have to enter a “use queue” in pub games. Only 2 of each rotation merc are allowed to be active at once. You get to use that merc spot if you’re first or second in queue and when you die you lose your spot and have to play something else while rejoining the queue if you so wish.

The queue order has to be made according to actual play time with merc in that game followed the time you joined the queue. In other words. If you’ve already played that rotation merc for 5m because someone kept reviving you and you didn’t get gibbed, someone who only played 1min will overtake you in the queue. Now if both or more have approximately the same time, then it’s the queue joining order that matters.

That’s my take on rotations.

(Samniss_Arandeen) #19

[quote=“Lumi;82731”]First of all, rotation mercs shouldn’t be allowed in comp.
Second, only one rotation merc can be in your trio at once…[/quote]
Those are the only two parts I agree with, and even then, a purchased Merc doesn’t count as a rotation Merc even if they’re in free-rotation. I wanna make sure of that, because I encountered someone who mained Redeye/Sparks/Fletcher and wasn’t happy with that rotation. Oh, imagine that guy’s reaction when only one of them was allowed in squad, because they’re in rotation!

(Lumi) #20

[quote=“Samniss_Arandeen;83130”][quote=“Lumi;82731”]First of all, rotation mercs shouldn’t be allowed in comp.
Second, only one rotation merc can be in your trio at once…[/quote]
Those are the only two parts I agree with, and even then, a purchased Merc doesn’t count as a rotation Merc even if they’re in free-rotation. I wanna make sure of that, because I encountered someone who mained Redeye/Sparks/Fletcher and wasn’t happy with that rotation. Oh, imagine that guy’s reaction when only one of them was allowed in squad, because they’re in rotation![/quote]

That’s what I meant with the third sentence: if you own the merc on rotation you’re exempt from any limits or queue system explained below.

Maybe I should have added: and also above.

effectively, if you own the merc, it’s not a merc on rotation for you. To make it even more specific. If you don’t see the watch icon on the merc then all of the above doesn’t apply to you. It’s an owned merc, not a rotation merc.

By now, I only get one or no merc unlocked per rotation as I own most of them. So basically someone who owned all mercs wouldn’t even be affected by this.