Where is DB going?

[nathsarahelling]

Anyone notice a massive descrease in steam numbers! I haven’t played for almost 9 months came back wow the games changes so so much. Cannot understand why numbers are declining so quickly as developments clearly on going. What gives?

[Lord_Coctus]

It’s not the 50th CoD or Tf2 rip off.

[ReXenderTzAr]

Going casual.

[Eox]

It’s still not as bad as in November 2016. The game has been stuck in an update drought for a good moment due to Hunter and Phantom’s rework : it’s not surprising to see the amount of players being low.

Hunter’s release should hit this week. Wait and see.

[n-x]

@Eox and after the release its going downwards again. The player retention of this game is just horrible and SD has no idea how to solve it. Instead they put bandaids on it or think they can solve anything with a flashy one time thing. As soon as the hunter hype died down, it will be back to normal.

[TheStrangerous]

The uncertain path, where further ahead there’s nothing but mist.

[Mc1412013]

no matter what the numbers are good or bad just remember… could be worse it could be lawbreakers almost ZERO player count. Db isnt dead not for a long while any ways once they start pumping out all those new maps they have in the works and d.b 1.0 kicks off it will go up again un like lawbreakers that just took a shit in the player count when they came out of beta.

[OCB-Wildcard]

@Mc1412013 said:
no matter what the numbers are good or bad just remember… could be worse it could be lawbreakers almost ZERO player count. Db isnt dead not for a long while any ways once they start pumping out all those new maps they have in the works and d.b 1.0 kicks off it will go up again un like lawbreakers that just took a @$!# in the player count when they came out of beta.

I have to say though DB is one of those games, that if SD got their act together, even the comp players who left would come back to; I myself will be staying here until it’s truly dead, only to come back in the rare event of a revival (however rare such things are).

[n-x]

@Mc1412013 said:
no matter what the numbers are good or bad just remember… could be worse it could be lawbreakers almost ZERO player count. Db isnt dead not for a long while any ways once they start pumping out all those new maps they have in the works and d.b 1.0 kicks off it will go up again un like lawbreakers that just took a @$!# in the player count when they came out of beta.

I don’t get how you can believe that the switch to 1.0 will magically change everything. The split from nexon was sold as this magical switch, CMM was sold as this magical switch, the enlarged staff was sold as this magical switch. Look at the state of the game after all those switches.

And yes, lawbreakers had other issues but one was that players couldn’t find games. Well, in DB you still can find games, but ones with a homogeneous skill level are far in between. And this is the beginning of a downward spiral, because vets are getting annoyed and beginners frustrated.

[STARRYSOCK]

Keep in mind part of it is likely school. Lots of people are in the middle of dealing with midterm exams or major projects.

Not saying DB doesn’t have a player retention problem, but there are other factors into it that aren’t DB’s fault.

@ReXenderTzAr said:
Going casual.

I doubt that has to do anything with it. Main reason is, DB’s competitive scene really hasn’t changed much in a while, yet the number of players are still going down. And just because the casual scene is slowly getting better, doesn’t mean it’s taking anything away from comp.

Not to mention not everyone wants comp anyways. There’s a reason why so many more people play casual after all.
DB isn’t the first of its kind, and it’s not the most well known of its kind. Most competitive gamers who find DB are usually invested in another game’s competitive scene already. And there’s only so many games you can play competitively.

Honestly I feel it would be better to push casual more. Think of it sort of like what Fallout 4 did in a way. It pissed off a lot of the hardcore fallout fans, but it sold incredibly well since it appealed to a much broader audience, not just those who wanted a hardcore experience. And considering so many PVP games like DB are trying to force competitive, going casual likely wouldn’t be bad for the game at all.
Hell, most of my long time DB veteran friends don’t even play comp, lol.

[teflonlove]

@n-x said:

@Mc1412013 said:
no matter what the numbers are good or bad just remember… could be worse it could be lawbreakers almost ZERO player count. Db isnt dead not for a long while any ways once they start pumping out all those new maps they have in the works and d.b 1.0 kicks off it will go up again un like lawbreakers that just took a @$!# in the player count when they came out of beta.

I don’t get how you can believe that the switch to 1.0 will magically change everything.

A banner on the Steam front page can work wonders to get new players.

But at the current state of the game I’m concerned that most of them will leave again soon. Being overwhelmed by a huge amount of hidden mechanics, rather complex team tactics and an insane skill spread that ensures you are going to be gang banged for the first couple of hours probably is not what many new players are looking for.

[Meerkats]

Can we stop making excuses and admit, for a lot of players who came seeking a skill-based FPS experience, Dirty Bomb is becoming less fun?

Let me tell you about an actual match I had. The other team had a PDP Vassili, a PDP Redeye, a Grandeur Aimee, a Phantom, a Thunder and a Javelin. That entire match I was debilitated, detected or dead. If I hugged a corner to avoid snipers, the fucking Phantom would be there, invis and waiting. If I somehow got into a position where I could do damage, I’d immediately get smacked by a conq or get denied by a smoke screen. This entire time, I’d be getting chunked by continual semi-auto sniper fire. How is that fun for anybody? Why is the game in this state? I don’t even want to think about how tilted I would’ve gotten if they had a Turtle as well, cause goddamn, I wanted to beat those assholes so hard.

DB is having an identity crisis, in great part resulting from lack of direction and SD’s general ineptness.

Remember, DB was initially advertised as a skill-based FPS game with fast gameplay. Yet somehow, Thunder, Guardian and Turtle all got released. All of these mercs have powerful yet incredibly easy / zero skill abilities that slow down the game’s pace, sometimes via frustrating, MOBA-like, hard counter mechanics. So if DB is becoming less skill-based and less fast while adding MOBA-like gameplay aspects, then what is DB?

Look at the design of some of the latest mercs. Why do we need a merc using a crossbow in a near future FPS about guns? He thematically doesn’t fit, but hey, I guess attracting Hanzo memetards is worth sacrificing some integrity for. Consider his kit: a ranged EMP. Why do we even need EMP abilities? Cause we actually kinda do cause there’s like a million, increasingly powerful deployables up at any given time during any match, a problem that prior didn’t exist meaning EMP is a band-aid solution to a problem that should never have existed in the first place.

Then there’s Turtle and his stupidly durable, anti-fun, one-way shield. You know what? I’m not even going to move past Turtle cause at this point, everybody should already just be slack jawed in horror and any additional trauma would be inhumane.

I don’t intend on playing competitive cause, well, lots of practical reasons. That said, I would much rather decisions affecting gameplay be made based off feedback of the best players, not regular players for the obvious reason that the best players, being actually good at the game, will have better insight. A well balanced game ( while maintaining context that DB is a squad-based game with designated roles ) is the most fun game. A game where players are given stupidly overpowered kit simply cause it’s cool or “fun” ( for the person using it, e.g. shotguns ) in order to appeal to garden variety scrubs is not. Good balance isn’t a democratic process; not everybody’s feedback should be taken into consideration with equal weight because mediocre players, barring exceptional insight, will only instruct you on creating a mediocre game.

To OP: In summary, it’s pretty hard getting anywhere when the people behind the steering wheel are drunk / busy circling the drain.

Kicker: I actually like Guardian a lot. Still think Skyshield is dumb / bad solution to problem of explosives spam.

[K1X455]

This guy has no ability except for mini ammo and medpacks. No gimicky abilities, all gunplay. Just press E

Primary: M4, Crotzni, Grandeur SR
Secondary: M9, Smjuth & Whetsman, Selbstadt .40
Melee: Kukri, Beckhil Combat Knife, Cricket Bat

Augments on Default Loadout: Extra Supplies, Unshakable, Tough

[TheStrangerous]

Oh boy, when I look back at PUBG’s 1.0 launch…

1.0 launch can be a deep sting you know…

[MuddyGrenade]

@Meerkats said:
Look at the design of some of the latest mercs. Why do we need a merc using a crossbow in a near future FPS about guns? He thematically doesn’t fit, but hey, I guess attracting Hanzo memetards is worth sacrificing some integrity for. Consider his kit: a ranged EMP. Why do we even need EMP abilities? Cause we actually kinda do cause there’s like a million, increasingly powerful deployables up at any given time during any match, a problem that prior didn’t exist meaning EMP is a band-aid solution to a problem that should never have existed in the first place.

Why do we need mercs using f*cking cricket bats in a near future FPS about guns?
Explain to me how a character having a weapon that uses arrows equals Hanzo.
So did Health Stations, Ammo Stations, Turrets, and Proximity Mines just not exist when you started playing?

[Meerkats]

@MuddyGrenade said:
Why do we need mercs using f*cking cricket bats in a near future FPS about guns?
Explain to me how a character having a weapon that uses arrows equals Hanzo.
So did Health Stations, Ammo Stations, Turrets, and Proximity Mines just not exist when you started playing?
Cricket bats are functionally equivalent of other melee alternatives, thereby having no to minimal impact on overall gameplay. Plus, SD is an UK dev and cricket bats are a very UK thing, so whatev. They’ve lost their entire Empire, we can let them have their silly sticks, which tbh, weren’t even that out of place to start.

Bows and crossbows are different, and have always been closely associated with gimmicky bullshit. Why? Cause to validate their own existence, they need to be different from a standard rifle because otherwise, they would be a standard rifle, and why would you even do something so pointlessly stupid? So bow-like attributes like projectile properties and draw times and all that good stuff will be implemented, things that will make them uncompetitive and therefore also pointless. So to counter that, the devs will need to make them hit extra hard, typically one-shot hard, but since nobody likes getting one-shot, that makes them frustrating and unfun to be on the receiving side of… and, well, you get the point.

There’s a reason why in most FPS games players only use bows and crossbows to humiliate and frustrate other players / for the lulz, i.e. to meme.

The alternative would be a rapid fire crossbow ( e.g. cho-ko-nu ), but then that just makes them a gimmicky rifle.

Don’t get me wrong, turrets and mines aren’t fun either, but Skyshield and Shield are particularly nasty deployables that can drastically alter how matches are played, and are the worst offenders of what is making DB less DB. They are hardcounter solutions symptomatic of the rot effecting DB.

STORY TIME

Last year, SD invited a bunch of dedicated DB players to their HQ for a kinda community revitalization reboot event. One of the players who went, who I won’t name, spoke to the dev, who I don’t know the name of, that was apparently in charge of Turtle. The player gave that dev feedback on Turtle to the affect of the shield being too durable and unfun to encounter while playing. The dev responded by saying the shield was fine, and that was that. From what I understand, any negative feedback on Turtle was entirely ignored and the conversation immediately shutdown every time the topic came up.

This is a common problem amongst any field involving design. The architect finds a pet and becomes overly protective, reacting irrationally and poorly to negative feedback. Their pet has become a part of them, their baby, and they’ll be damned if they let anybody hurt it.

But as a developer, you can’t do that. Your job is to make your entire product as good as possible. You can love your pet creation, but you can’t get so attached to the point you are blinded from making the right macro decisions. You can’t have a personal sacred lamb, and if you can’t accept that, you need to leave because otherwise, you might sacrifice the entire product. Individuals have a responsibility to step away and management has a responsibility to excise that rot before other parts are damaged.

In that story, it doesn’t matter who was right or wrong, because the dev was already compromised.

[Ptiloui]

@Meerkats said:

@MuddyGrenade said:
Why do we need mercs using f*cking cricket bats in a near future FPS about guns?
Explain to me how a character having a weapon that uses arrows equals Hanzo.
So did Health Stations, Ammo Stations, Turrets, and Proximity Mines just not exist when you started playing?
…The player gave that dev feedback on Turtle to the affect of the shield being too durable and unfun to encounter while playing.

You know, it makes me wonder about differences between some deployables : why some deployables are permanent (such as health station, turtle’s shield etc) while others are destroyed when the CD is replenished (like heartbeat sensor or SNITCH) ?
I think it could be an interesting tweak to automatically destroy them when CD replenished, forcing the player to actively manage it and offering enemy team a way to time their push when that said deployables are off.

[MuddyGrenade]

@Ptiloui said:

@Meerkats said:

@MuddyGrenade said:
Why do we need mercs using f*cking cricket bats in a near future FPS about guns?
Explain to me how a character having a weapon that uses arrows equals Hanzo.
So did Health Stations, Ammo Stations, Turrets, and Proximity Mines just not exist when you started playing?
…The player gave that dev feedback on Turtle to the affect of the shield being too durable and unfun to encounter while playing.

You know, it makes me wonder about differences between some deployables : why some deployables are permanent (such as health station, turtle’s shield etc) while others are destroyed when the CD is replenished (like heartbeat sensor or SNITCH) ?
I think it could be an interesting tweak to automatically destroy them when CD replenished, forcing the player to actively manage it and offering enemy team a way to time their push when that said deployables are off.

That would actually be pretty interesting. Though, it may make take a lot of balancing to get the cooldown right for Ammo and Health Stations.

[Begin2018]

There is too many mercs and too few maps. They are doing a Rock-Paper-Scissor FPS, it’s silly. CMM ruined the game too and since they worked on it they don’t care about Server Browser which is way better and need improvements/more servers. Lots of people quit since they added the stupid aim-punch mechanic too.

About the next release, most people around me don’t care about Hunter and Ranked changes (as they aren’t the Ranked changes we need to make it competitive).

Looks like they are now designing their game for 12yo audience but at the same time looks surprised there is no PGM streaming their game on Twich…

[Loki2]

Shame really…

SD of old made great games, W:ET & ET:QW (sadly QW’s was plagued by the iDTech4 engine) then came Brink, which I thought was really bad but when I compare it to DB it’s a masterpiece.

R.I.P. SD… long live Leyou???