State of Play: On Mercs, Balance and Dome

(Exedore) #1

It’s been a while, so here’s another high level look at recent Dirty Bomb dev… developments here at SD.

MERCS

It’s critically important to us that Merc abilities are integral to moment to moment gameplay, so we’ve been adjusting the balance to amplify their effect. Things like much more potent deployables, deadlier Airstrikes, the lot. This has resulted in some rough edges, but we’d rather get it out to you in what we consider a less than polished state than hold it back to try to make everything perfect. We think that this has enhanced teamplay as well as made the Mercs more characterful, but we’ll of course need your feedback!

We’ll also be removing Mercs from the overall progression curve in the future, and moving towards a more rotation-based system. Players will have more choice about which Mercs they unlock and when. There will be an interim implementation for the near future while we work on the full system; we’ll let you all know what the plan is when it’s finalised.

Regarding LoadOut Cards, we’ll be implementing a system that will allow you to craft the card that just won’t drop. We’ll also be making sure to introduce additional LoadOut Cards with each release build.

COMBAT BALANCE

Similarly to the Merc abilities, we’re increasing the min and max differentials between different gameplay elements of the Mercs. This means things like heavier weapons slowing down Mercs more when they’re equipped, some re-balancing of weapon raise and lower times, un-linking speed and health as an exact ratio, and a host of other changes. You can of course expect a detailed changelog before the changes are going into the live build. I expect a good bit of discussion around this!

Similarly to the Merc abilities balance work, there will no doubt be some rough edges. Rather than make tiny changes, we’re trying to swing things a bit more drastically to find out what works best, so it’s entirely reasonable to expect a degree of correction based on how things go and how you all feel about the changes.

GAME MODES

Expect Objective and Stopwatch modes to have an increasing number of small elements that make them different from each other. We’ll be reintroducing longer spawn times to Stopwatch Mode, and adding more tweaks to Objective Mode to further strengthen it as our more casual game mode.

We’d really like to get Execution Mode back in public testing and also get cracking on prototyping new modes as I think we have some great ideas, but that has had to take a back seat for the moment due to our other priorities.

DOME

We’ll be getting an iterated version of Dome out to you soon, along with a blog post detailing what’s happened with the previous version of the map as it’s been live and explaining why we’ve gone the way we have for the updates.

Our focus continues to be on blockout maps, and we hope when you see how much has changed with Dome you’ll understand why.

:stroggtapir:

(Szakalot) #2

Sounds good, excited about new build; esp. about dome.

(Mustang) #3

Everything there sounds good.

It’s more the stuff not mentioned that interests me, can we test more movement mechanics (slide, rampjump, wallrun, mantle, less harsh diminishing returns on walljump, less crippling from longjump), longer TTK, slower RoF, remove multiple choice objectives, BridgeAlt?, etc.

It’s also a bit cryptic “we’re going to be making some changes to X, Y, Z”, why not explain what the changes and ideas are?

(spookify) #4

I hope all mercs move at the same speed with knife out and Pistol…

Then when they switch to their main they slow like Rhino or Fragger or Thunder but thats it…

Update next week? Nov 4thish?

(Exedore) #5

You should know this by now! I’m normally vague when there’s something we’ve discussed as a design and we’re happy with it, but we don’t quite know when it’ll get into the game. Such things normally go through a bit of iteration when they first get implemented, so I try to avoid over-promising on those bits and bobs.

(spookify) #6

I like the longer spawn-times… Makes death an actually penalty…

(Glottis-3D) #7

looking forward the new DOme.
have high hopes for this mappo.

(Pytox) #8

When will battersea be back? ) or whatever the name was :smiley: ) :tongue:

Looking forward to the update!

(tokamak) #9

Really excited about the mercs now. Can’t wait to try them.

(prophett) #10

Hopefully spawn times are finally sensible after all this time :confused:

(spookify) #11

Red Dot???

(spookify) #12

Match Making?

Ranked Interface?

(chippy) #13

Can’t possibly see why red dots, match making and ranking system would be necessary at this time, but it would definately be interesting to see how match making have been improved since the last iteration was truly appauling :stuck_out_tongue:

(Glottis-3D) #14

i want to see my elo in ze profile!!

(Kl3ppy) #15

I am the only one think “whatever”?
I mean we had such posts since a couple of month and the actual impact was very minor and mostly the steps didnt improve the game.

(Sun_Sheng) #16

[QUOTE=Kl3ppy;513140]I am the only one think “whatever”?
I mean we had such posts since a couple of month and the actual impact was very minor and mostly the steps didnt improve the game.[/QUOTE]
Well, it’s not entirely a “whatever” but there’s nothing in there really that fills me with confidence as my biggest gripes don’t sound like they’ve been addressed much, if at all.

Namely: Maps, too small and restrictive once you get above 3v3. Individual airstrikes and arty of limited use due to their advanced warning markers, unless you have multiple people playing as Arty …which does seem to happen too often as the rifle is over-powered. Add to that, the whole game feels like team deathmatch with the exception of a couple of people doing the objective and getting owned by the deathmatch players i:e no real incentive for teamwork due to the classless system discussed in multiple threads elsewhere

Until those are addressed, specifically the latter, any progression will I think feel minor

(tokamak) #17

That’s an rather adequate description of the current state of the game.

(Violator) #18

[QUOTE=Sun_Sheng;513143]Well, it’s not entirely a “whatever” but there’s nothing in there really that fills me with confidence as my biggest gripes don’t sound like they’ve been addressed much, if at all.

Namely: Maps, too small and restrictive once you get above 3v3. Individual airstrikes and arty of limited use due to their advanced warning markers, unless you have multiple people playing as Arty …which does seem to happen too often as the rifle is over-powered. Add to that, the whole game feels like team deathmatch with the exception of a couple of people doing the objective and getting owned by the deathmatch players i:e no real incentive for teamwork due to the classless system discussed in multiple threads elsewhere

Until those are addressed, specifically the latter, any progression will I think feel minor[/QUOTE]

I need to spread some reps around again :). I would like to see some movement on -

Team balance beyond ‘put the top 3 shooters on the same team’ and ‘ensure attack has one more player if count is odd’ rules we seem to have.
Performance issues - getting 60-100 fps with min settings most of the time, the freeze when a new player joins, the extra lag when more than 4v4 on server. Ideally remove the dependence on the Nexon launcher…
More non-linear maps & more variety of objectives (covert doors, bring back the hack, some objectives which require multiple players to complete).
Underground needs to go or be radically changed… Its a shame as aesthetically it is one of the better maps, but gameplay wise it doesn’t work for more than 4v4 at best and is far too linear.
More teamplay encouragement - abilities which require two different mercs to use.
Bring back single-class objectives, or single-merc side-objectives might be fun to try.
Help-up should only work on medics perhaps (no medics in team = feature removed to encourage more meds to play) - ‘here, take this medkit and patch me up’. Personally I tend to only use the ability on medics anyway.

(spookify) #19

[QUOTE=Exedore;513117]It’s been a while, so here’s another high level look at recent Dirty Bomb dev… developments here at SD.

MERCS

It’s critically important to us that Merc abilities are integral to moment to moment gameplay, so we’ve been adjusting the balance to amplify their effect. Things like much more potent deployables, deadlier Airstrikes, the lot. This has resulted in some rough edges, but we’d rather get it out to you in what we consider a less than polished state than hold it back to try to make everything perfect. We think that this has enhanced teamplay as well as made the Mercs more characterful, but we’ll of course need your feedback!

We’ll also be removing Mercs from the overall progression curve in the future, and moving towards a more rotation-based system. Players will have more choice about which Mercs they unlock and when. There will be an interim implementation for the near future while we work on the full system; we’ll let you all know what the plan is when it’s finalised.

Regarding LoadOut Cards, we’ll be implementing a system that will allow you to craft the card that just won’t drop. We’ll also be making sure to introduce additional LoadOut Cards with each release build.

COMBAT BALANCE

Similarly to the Merc abilities, we’re increasing the min and max differentials between different gameplay elements of the Mercs. This means things like heavier weapons slowing down Mercs more when they’re equipped, some re-balancing of weapon raise and lower times, un-linking speed and health as an exact ratio, and a host of other changes. You can of course expect a detailed changelog before the changes are going into the live build. I expect a good bit of discussion around this!

Similarly to the Merc abilities balance work, there will no doubt be some rough edges. Rather than make tiny changes, we’re trying to swing things a bit more drastically to find out what works best, so it’s entirely reasonable to expect a degree of correction based on how things go and how you all feel about the changes.

GAME MODES

Expect Objective and Stopwatch modes to have an increasing number of small elements that make them different from each other. We’ll be reintroducing longer spawn times to Stopwatch Mode, and adding more tweaks to Objective Mode to further strengthen it as our more casual game mode.

We’d really like to get Execution Mode back in public testing and also get cracking on prototyping new modes as I think we have some great ideas, but that has had to take a back seat for the moment due to our other priorities.

DOME

We’ll be getting an iterated version of Dome out to you soon, along with a blog post detailing what’s happened with the previous version of the map as it’s been live and explaining why we’ve gone the way we have for the updates.

Our focus continues to be on blockout maps, and we hope when you see how much has changed with Dome you’ll understand why.

:stroggtapir:[/QUOTE]

In general thanks for the update and what we can expect.

(tokamak) #20

Maybe for testing but if public games are ranked then we teams have to be fixed in order for the ratings to mean anything.