If you look through the forums you will quickly notice that a huge part of all threads are complaints about balance.
This makes me wonder why Stopwatch exist when we already have ranked Stopwatch, a game mode that is meant to create balanced games. To my knowledge those two game modes works exactly the same.
Let’s take a quick look at the model of the largest competitive FPS game: CS:GO.
In CS you can either play the main competitive game mode that the game was created for, or you can play one of the casual game modes like Deathmatch, Arms Race, Casual, Demolition and so on.
There is no casual competitive in CS:GO (Casual in CS is 10v10 and a completely different game then regular 5v5).
So how would this model look like in Dirty Bomb?
We would have the main game mode Stopwatch. This would be ranked matchmaking, solving a lot of the balance issues. This is the game mode you choose for longer more serious games.
Then we would have Objective and Excecution. Two shorter more casual game modes where you can come and go as you please.
It feels like SD does everything in their power to split the player base as much as possible. Not only is there ranked and unranked Stopwatch, but ranked Stopwatch is also devided into Solo/Duo and 5-man.
If SD would remove the regular Stopwatch mode and make it so you can que for ranked with how many friends you want, que times would drastically go down and games would be way more balanced then they are now. It works great for CS:GO and I don’t se why it wouldn’t work for Dirty Bomb. At least it couldn’t be worse then the situation we have right now.
That’s just my 5 cents.
Why does Stopwatch exist?
The one time I actually played ranked was enough reason for me not to touch it again afterwards, so I am all against that idea.
Stopwatch is a standard game mode in all FPS shooters. Very similar to Battlefield 4
It’s fair as each team takes a turn on offense and defense. I regularily play Stopwatch and Objective. Execution can go take a flying leap off a short pier as far as I’m concerned.
This regularly the worst of the game modes. Stacked teams happens more often, and whats worse is that games don’t restart if a game starts out 3v5 or something and they get stomped until more players arrive. By than it’s way to late to do anything. Try joining a game in progress, you won’t enjoy it.
The amount of ass I got handed to me. 
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@kopyright so that’s why you icon is Jaba…
[quote=“kopyright;171529”]
The amount of ass I got handed to me. [/quote]
I feel you brother. Those few times i played ranked it was me (unranked) with one bronze and more unranked against a team of gold and cobalts… no fun. No fun at all.
That in mind @Tannimun I don’t play ranked anymore but stick to casual servers. But on the other hand I love stopwatch. So why would that be a good thing to force me into some ranked matchmaking just because I want to play my favorite game mode, when I could just get on a casual 6v6 or 7v7 stopwatch server and have a gay old time?
@RedBeard Koonyah mahlyass koong! Ya koon tacha poonoo nee sah, gee![/quote]
@kopyright dont forget to get strangled by a slave?
@RedBeard If she’s wearing a gold bikini.[/quote]
@kopyright, sounds reasonable…
Yes I agree, move Stopwatch to Competitive only. That way I’ll have one less box to uncheck for my server browser search and more people playing Objective.
@Tannimun Because Stopwatch (SW) is this games bread and butter. If it wasn’t introduced in public environment, people would be even more lost than they are now when they try out ranked. And get the same “never touch again” experience our Jabba here has, which is definitely something that should be avoided. Unranks/bronzes vs. golds should not happen but currently there simply not enough players in ranked for the matchmaker to work with, it simply doesn’t have anyone else to team up.
Which brings us to next point. You compare small dev teams, SDs, Beta f2p game to Steam owner Valves CS that already was known world wide for its earlier versions. There must be least hundreds of thousands of players queing for cs:go matchmaking at any given time, where as you get what, maybe max. hundred of DB que’es. These are uncomparable in the sense you just did.
Also cs franchise is much, much heavily reliant on killing aspects, not objective based nor respawn- mechanic game with classes like DB. So modes like Deathmatch simply dont belong here as not all classes would have any use nor place there.
Why ques are separate? Well again: to attempt to save people from absolutely idiotic steamroll experiences. Couple patches ago we did have free-for-all-team-sizes que which resulted in full 5man teams just wrecking random solos and duos. Sure people should be able to suck up a loss but getting your face hit with a concrete wall in 8 out of 10 games makes experience so horrendous no amount of extra credits would’ve saved the mode. So trust me it could be much worse (unless you’re one of those people who do gather full5 to rek solos and enjoy it).
Not to mention to be sufficent in ranked, players need to get used to maps from both Attacker and Defender side, which works best in SW as both are played in same game. Spawns and time progression also works very differently between SW and Objective mode, so knowledge SHOULD be obtained of those too.
Balance issues in pubs do not originate from modes themselves. Bigger disbalancers are leaving/joining middle of the game, people thinking levels are absolute measure of skill, people not doing their class roles and not playing for the objective, being completely clueless how things work.
Time to wrap this up I guess. TL;DR time!
SW is what this game is all about. It’s necessary that it’s playable in public. Balance issues spawn from other factors for the most part (btw Public matchmaking is coming at some point, perhaps helping balance).
Ranked ques were separated while ago to try make experience more fair for everyone involved. Its not valid to compare, in this context, a massive triple A game to small f2p title still in Beta.