I could make a huge post about this, but I’ll sum it up for you.
THIS is one of the major reasons Ranked and Pub play suffers, team composition.
By getting rid of squads one could play whatever his or her team needs at any given time. This way people can play however they want, WITHOUT being punished for it.
If you look at every class based shooter this is how they work, Overwatch, TF2, Enemy Territory even, you could play whoever you want at any given time. The difference is pubs do not have merc limits, while competitive tends to have a one of each merc rule at any given time.
Plus, considering balancing before the game starts, and the possibility of an auto shuffle, the squad concept actually HINDERS these because certain mercs work better for offense, defense, map, etc.
It’s about time we scrap this, the game will be better off for it.
Merc choices are a crucial factor, especially in a competitive setting. If everyone on the team could rotate through skyhammer, throw airstrike, then die, then switch to arty, use artillery, go to Kira, and stoker, Then the EV would never move for more than a few minutes. Choosing the right mercs to play as a team can decide games and prevents air support spam.
My point is that with @Watsyurdeal Suggested change, the whole team could basically have that. And every other merc. So they could play every fire support, one of each at a time, and then when they have used their abilities, They could switch off to a medic, then have someone who used to be a medic switch to a fire support.
Then wouldn’t the obvious solution be to add a cooldown when you spawn? So you can’t just rotate to Arty or Kira to get an instant strike???
I mean, think about it, take the cooldown for an ability and divide it by 2, that’s the cooldown you start with, so you have to wait for basically one whole wave before you can throw your strike down. Or just have it be the full duration.
I am kinda for a merc limit in competitive-only (even though pub kinda needs it aswell). But this requires stuff like a “choose 3 mercenaries you would like to play together with your team” window before the actual game starts. Where it, for example shows which mercs every player has unlocked, and you pick your three, and if multiple players have the same, a coin decides who can, for example play the Skyhammer, and who has to choose another merc, and so on. And this feels like a 5-players-team-thing to me since it would require coordination. Also there would be the problem if like a team of 5 players only have the same starting mercs (but on the other hand people who don’t have mercs unlocked are pretty new and shouldn’t play ranked in the first line) but the whole idea will eliminate a 3-Proxy-comp team, or multiple Vassilies and so on, so it has advantages and disadvantages.
But I’m against the “you can play all mercs if you want”-thing. This will eliminate teamplay in the most parts since a good player don’t need to rely on his team anymore. I mean, he can still play an engie, a medic and a Skyhammer/Arty, but still.
I mean, DB is still a teamplay-game, and not a “You can do everything uber-rambo-terminator-one-man-army” game, y’know.
Edit: The air-support thing doesn’t work anyways since you have to play the merc for its cooldown to go down.
I’d just like SD to finally make classes official and allow 1 merc per class.
That way I can always be prepared without panic picking a bad choice before the match.
Edit: The air-support thing doesn’t work anyways since you have to play the merc for its cooldown to go down.[/quote]
It would work for the first time each player uses the merc. So 5 immediate [air] strikes, 10 immediate artillery strikes, 5 immediate lasers, 5 molotovs, 25 of nader’s nades, and then you can settle in to a normal comp.
[quote=“Jostabeere;156854”]I am kinda for a merc limit in competitive-only (even though pub kinda needs it aswell). But this requires stuff like a “choose 3 mercenaries you would like to play together with your team” window before the actual game starts. Where it, for example shows which mercs every player has unlocked, and you pick your three, and if multiple players have the same, a coin decides who can, for example play the Skyhammer, and who has to choose another merc, and so on. And this feels like a 5-players-team-thing to me since it would require coordination. Also there would be the problem if like a team of 5 players only have the same starting mercs (but on the other hand people who don’t have mercs unlocked are pretty new and shouldn’t play ranked in the first line) but the whole idea will eliminate a 3-Proxy-comp team, or multiple Vassilies and so on, so it has advantages and disadvantages.
But I’m against the “you can play all mercs if you want”-thing. This will eliminate teamplay in the most parts since a good player don’t need to rely on his team anymore. I mean, he can still play an engie, a medic and a Skyhammer/Arty, but still.
I mean, DB is still a teamplay-game, and not a “You can do everything uber-rambo-terminator-one-man-army” game, y’know.
Edit: The air-support thing doesn’t work anyways since you have to play the merc for its cooldown to go down.[/quote]
I wasn’t aware good players could reproduce asexually at will.
You make it sound as if a good player could play all roles at once…which is full of shit.
When he’s playing Fragger some body else has to play Sawabonez, Skyhammer, or Bushwacka. If he’s playing Skyhammer, then somebody else has to play Fragger, Sawbonez, or Bushwacka, and you can see where I’m going with this.
The team play is still there, and the way the system works now is actually HURTING the balancing goals Splash has in mind for pub and ranked play. Cause not everyone is either going to have, or even use a given merc in their squad, they will play what they want no matter what anyone says. And in Ranked the worries would disappear with a Highlander ruling, there can be only one of each merc.
So, is there any actual reasons this shouldn’t be added or are we just afraid of change?
[quote=“Watsyurdeal;156865”]You make it sound as if a good player could play all roles at once…which is full of shit.
When he’s playing Fragger some body else has to play Sawabonez, Skyhammer, or Bushwacka. If he’s playing Skyhammer, then somebody else has to play Fragger, Sawbonez, or Bushwacka, and you can see where I’m going with this.
The team play is still there, and the way the system works now is actually HURTING the balancing goals Splash has in mind for pub and ranked play. Cause not everyone is either going to have, or even use a given merc in their squad, they will play what they want no matter what anyone says. And in Ranked the worries would disappear with a Highlander ruling, there can be only one of each merc.
So, is there any actual reasons this shouldn’t be added or are we just afraid of change?
[/quote]
Yes, there is still a lot of teamwork, and to switch between fire supports like I mentioned above would take a LOT of coordination. I was assuming a highlander rule was being used, so let’s say, at the start of the match:
Player 1: Sawbonez
Player 2: Sparks
Player 3: Fragger
Player 4: Skyhammer
Player 5: Arty
then, the EV gets repaired, the Skyhammer throws his strike, get’s repaired again, Arty uses his arty, fragger nades it, MG fire finishes the EV off. then at the next spawnwave
Player 1: Sawbonez
Player 2: Sparks
Player 3: Fragger
Player 4: Arty
Player 5: Skyhammer
then, the EV gets repaired, the Skyhammer throws his strike, get’s repaired again, Arty uses his arty, fragger nades it, MG fire finishes the EV off. then at the next spawnwave
Player 1: Sawbonez
Player 2: Arty
Player 3: Skyhammer
Player 4: Sparks
Player 5: Fragger
then, the EV gets repaired, the Skyhammer throws his strike, get’s repaired again, Arty uses his arty, fragger nades it, MG fire finishes the EV off. then at the next spawnwave
Player 1: Sawbonez
Player 2: Skyhammer
Player 3: Arty
Player 4: Sparks
Player 5: Fragger
then, the EV gets repaired, the Skyhammer throws his strike, get’s repaired again, Arty uses his arty, fragger nades it, MG fire finishes the EV off. then at the next spawnwave
I hope by now you get my point. Yes, this would require coordination, and a lot of K’ing out to switch. But with this the EV has been taken 8 times, and Player one still hasn’t played Skyhammer, and no one has played Kira, Stoker, or nader yet.
[quote=“RyePanda;156871”][quote=“Watsyurdeal;156865”]You make it sound as if a good player could play all roles at once…which is full of shit.
When he’s playing Fragger some body else has to play Sawabonez, Skyhammer, or Bushwacka. If he’s playing Skyhammer, then somebody else has to play Fragger, Sawbonez, or Bushwacka, and you can see where I’m going with this.
The team play is still there, and the way the system works now is actually HURTING the balancing goals Splash has in mind for pub and ranked play. Cause not everyone is either going to have, or even use a given merc in their squad, they will play what they want no matter what anyone says. And in Ranked the worries would disappear with a Highlander ruling, there can be only one of each merc.
So, is there any actual reasons this shouldn’t be added or are we just afraid of change?
[/quote]
Yes, there is still a lot of teamwork, and to switch between fire supports like I mentioned above would take a LOT of coordination. I was assuming a highlander rule was being used, so let’s say, at the start of the match:
Player 1: Sawbonez
Player 2: Sparks
Player 3: Fragger
Player 4: Skyhammer
Player 5: Arty
then, the EV gets repaired, the Skyhammer throws his strike, get’s repaired again, Arty uses his arty, fragger nades it, MG fire finishes the EV off. then at the next spawnwave
Player 1: Sawbonez
Player 2: Sparks
Player 3: Fragger
Player 4: Arty
Player 5: Skyhammer
then, the EV gets repaired, the Skyhammer throws his strike, get’s repaired again, Arty uses his arty, fragger nades it, MG fire finishes the EV off. then at the next spawnwave
Player 1: Sawbonez
Player 2: Arty
Player 3: Skyhammer
Player 4: Sparks
Player 5: Fragger
then, the EV gets repaired, the Skyhammer throws his strike, get’s repaired again, Arty uses his arty, fragger nades it, MG fire finishes the EV off. then at the next spawnwave
Player 1: Sawbonez
Player 2: Skyhammer
Player 3: Arty
Player 4: Sparks
Player 5: Fragger
then, the EV gets repaired, the Skyhammer throws his strike, get’s repaired again, Arty uses his arty, fragger nades it, MG fire finishes the EV off. then at the next spawnwave
I hope by now you get my point. Yes, this would require coordination, and a lot of K’ing out to switch. But with this the EV has been taken 8 times, and Player one still hasn’t played Skyhammer, and no one has played Kira, Stoker, or nader yet.[/quote]
I’m just going to quote an above post
Then wouldn’t the obvious solution be to add a cooldown when you spawn? So you can’t just rotate to Arty or Kira to get an instant strike???
I mean, think about it, take the cooldown for an ability and divide it by 2, that’s the cooldown you start with, so you have to wait for basically one whole wave before you can throw your strike down. Or just have it be the full duration.
[/quote]
So in other words, before the game starts, you have your ability ready to go, but after that you have to wait as if you were playing that class. This could be solved a multitude of ways, add a boolean that confirms whether the player has used a strike, and use that to force a cooldown. So no matter which merc you switch to, if they are fire support you still have that cooldown. You could even add a punishment that resets the cooldown if you try to spam it. Point is, there is a solution to the problem you described.
Neither is really worse than the other in my eyes. Limiting to three mercs gives people a meaningful choice which is important in design. It also simplifies things a bit for the playerbase as a whole. You and I might not have issues switching between all the mercs for situational plays but a lot of people would (even ones with a ton of experience). It could be a bit overwhelming for some so opening the floodgates isn’t universally the right thing to do in all cases.
However, strategy-wise it leads to more options and balance is also a bit less of an issue since you could then balanced based on counter-player (TF2/Overwatch style). Personally I’m not a huge fan of that type of a system but it’s not awful.
There is also performance issues to think about. DB was built with UE3 and it’s limitations and allowing all mercs to be selected at any time is probably an issue as SD has said as much many times in the past. OW can do it but OW was built with this in mind from the ground up in a custom engine made by a lot of very good developers. Since potato PC’s dominate the F2P scene it would be a pretty big concern for SD to allow more mercs or all mercs in an engine that wasn’t really designed for it without considerable re-writes and dev work.
I’m OK with the limits even though I’d be OK with not having limits. But the game’s balance and character abilities would need to be drastically re-worked to accommodate no limits.
I got used to it over the years, but it was a big issue for me from the start. Not being able to respond to any situation on the field, was very weird to me, because I changed class/loadout/spawnlocation very frequently in ETQW.
Just to clarify the confusion, you can’t rotate between fire support mercs and use their special abilities like that.
If you use Arty and fire both your airstrikes, die straight away and switch to Skyhammer, you will respawn with a +50 second cool down even if you haven’t used Skyhammer yet in that particular game.
Squads are what make Dirty Bomb, Dirty Bomb. If this happens we’ll have people saying
“uuuhh durty bum is coopyin ovawach uuhhhh”
I can’t handle it man, I just can’t sob :’( sob
If you abolish squads you’d have to put in a shared team cooldown on all abilities, which is fine anyway, competitive has the 1 merc rule and we should strive for that.
Eh, the way it works right now is more akin to League of Legends. You look at what the map and your team is, and you build a composition around that. If you ever watch competitive LoL, you know that a game can be decided in the pick phase in extreme cases. Except lobby times in Dirty bomb are really short, especially in competitive.
The idea is you look at the squad your team has and pick mercs that complement each other, and mercs that counter the enemy team setup.
It just doesn’t work well with Dirty Bomb because the lobby phase doesn’t support it at all.
[quote=“Amerika;156875”]Neither is really worse than the other in my eyes. Limiting to three mercs gives people a meaningful choice which is important in design. It also simplifies things a bit for the playerbase as a whole. You and I might not have issues switching between all the mercs for situational plays but a lot of people would (even ones with a ton of experience). It could be a bit overwhelming for some so opening the floodgates isn’t universally the right thing to do in all cases.
However, strategy-wise it leads to more options and balance is also a bit less of an issue since you could then balanced based on counter-player (TF2/Overwatch style). Personally I’m not a huge fan of that type of a system but it’s not awful.
There is also performance issues to think about. DB was built with UE3 and it’s limitations and allowing all mercs to be selected at any time is probably an issue as SD has said as much many times in the past. OW can do it but OW was built with this in mind from the ground up in a custom engine made by a lot of very good developers. Since potato PC’s dominate the F2P scene it would be a pretty big concern for SD to allow more mercs or all mercs in an engine that wasn’t really designed for it without considerable re-writes and dev work.
I’m OK with the limits even though I’d be OK with not having limits. But the game’s balance and character abilities would need to be drastically re-worked to accommodate no limits.[/quote]
I don’t think it has as much to do with the engine as it does them optimizing their own assets and code. I’ve worked with Unreal before, and even though my project wasn’t as big in scale, we still used textures that were WAY too deailed and models with a ton of polygons, no major problems with fps. Our code…was a mess XD
We had only 3 programmers though (myself included) so that’s to be expected, but we were basically digging deep into the engine and rewriting it a bit. I imagine that’s exactly what Splash did to make their game happen, hell they even have ShooterGame as the name of the ini files.
Guess what…ShooterGame is the name of an example project for UDK
So, while I get where you’re coming from, I don’t think the engine is the problem, it’s either they don’t have the time to add it, they’re lazy as fuck, or don’t want to listen to what players have to say, and think a 3 merc system is fine. Despite the fact that having all mercs available would barely change a thing in my honest to God opinion. It would just get rid of the annoying problems with balancing teams and auto shuffle. This way people could play offense or defense regardless of what happens, and team composition is no longer a major issue in trying to balance pubs, it’s purely up to the player at that point.
[quote=“TheVulpesFox;157055”]Squads are what make Dirty Bomb, Dirty Bomb. If this happens we’ll have people saying
“uuuhh durty bum is coopyin ovawach uuhhhh”
I can’t handle it man, I just can’t sob :’( sob
EDIT-Well not just that but it unique.[/quote]
Excuse me but picking from the whole range is nothing that a current game could have invented. We had this in class bases games 15years ago and maybe even longer!?!
