State of Play, Inc.: Progression Re-Revisited

(Exedore) #1

Other than Loadout Cards, we’ve been a bit quiet on our plans regarding what goals we’ll be providing to keep players striving for in Dirty Bomb, but there have been plans within plans. We’re happy with Loadout Cards as an interesting feature for committed players who want to dive deeper into experimenting with styles of play, but we felt that we needed to look at complementary features for newer and mid-use players.

UNLOCKING MERCS & THE WEEKLY FREE MERC ROTATION

After a great deal of thought and discussion we’ve decided to move back towards a scheme that allows you to unlock the Mercs of their choice as they play. This is accomplished through earning Credits for undertaking missions in the Exclusion Zone of irradiated London. Players will also be able to skip this by spending real money for those who don’t have lots of time to invest in the game. Philosophically, we’ve always been very much against pay-to-win in Dirty Bomb, and we’re applying that same approach when it comes to finding the right conversation rate between time and money.

Aura and Skyhammer will be available to all players all of the time as a reward for completing the tutorial mission… or, as a reward for skipping the tutorial! Apart from that, all players will be also able to play with three Mercs that are available globally, which will change each week… behold the “Weekly Free Merc Rotation”. This will allow players to get a chance to try out Mercs before they decide whether to permanently add them to their roster.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR PLAYER & MERC LEVELS

The levelling of individual Mercs will remain unchanged, but the overall player level system is changing fairly drastically. Since Mercs are no longer unlocked in that way, it made more sense to have a player’s level be a more prestige-like element that says how much XP a given player has accrued in Dirty Bomb. We’ll still use the first levels to gate game modes and give rewards early on, but it won’t limit anything after that.

FINDING THE SWEET SPOT

When it comes to how quickly Credits are earned and the unlock price for Mercs, the key word here is most definitely “initial”; when you all see this system go live it will still take a little while for us to get the numbers dialled-in, so please bear with us on these matters. We’re also working on things like daily and weekly reward systems that will help players earn Credits faster should they want to, but these systems won’t be going live at the same time as the Merc unlocks.

We look forward to seeing what you all think!
:stroggbanana:

(PixelTwitch) #2

Aura and Skyhammer will be available to all players all of the time as a reward for completing the tutorial mission… or, as a reward for skipping the tutorial! Apart from that, all players will be also able to play with three Mercs that are available globally, which will change each week… behold the “Weekly Free Merc Rotation”. This will allow players to get a chance to try out Mercs before they decide whether to permanently add them to their roster.

Problem being that its unlikely that a Field Ops or Medic will be placed on the free rotation due to the need to cover all bases when it comes to a team setup. Meaning we are unlikely to see Stoker, Arty, Phoenix, Kira, Sparks or Sawbones on the rotation without leaving a gap in the player requirements.

suggestion = Increase the weekly rotation to 4 mercs.

I really don’t like the idea of having a worse merc for however many games so I can unlock augments… Either move the augments unlocking into each match where you unlock based on score to add some ingame progression or simply remove the barrier to the Mercs. Just seems odd and unnecessary…

(Glottis-3D) #3

free rotations usually cripple things. (look at quakelive map rotation idiotic system - killed the game for non subscribers.)

be more gentle with players.

(MrFunkyFunk) #4

[QUOTE=Glottis-3D;516951]free rotations usually cripple things. (look at quakelive map rotation idiotic system - killed the game for non subscribers.)

be more gentle with players.[/QUOTE]

Let’s have a weekly map rotation on DB too!

“This week for the release: Underground. The fans favorite!”

(spookify) #5

So basically LOL?

I personally do not like the idea of Aura as one of the first people… UNLESS there are some major chances to shotguns and the OP heal station.

I would personally suggest the two free players are the most ET like. Switch out Aura with SAW and keep Sky that works for me… A large base of people are going to be former ET, QW, RTCW along with modern shooters like COD and BF and others. SAW will give them that Medic pack fix they have desperately been missing for years!

In order for this to work I would think SD would need at least 10 more merc’s by open beta? Hows work going on that front?

I also agree with Pix that 4 Free Mercs should be given rather then 3… With the wide variety of classes 4 should be know problem. It appears SD is set on a Free Medic and LT/FO to start which is fine. Then you give 4 free mercs… Stoker, Fletcher, Phoenix and Val…

Suggestion: For the first week of “Release” I would make the Free mercs last 2 full weeks… This would give the players a base aswell as give 2 weeks for new players to filter into the game. When I tried LOL I downloaded it on a Friday and got one day to play the mercs and then they switched I was so lost!

As long as the credits work correctly I am cool with it… Maybe more credits for Ranked play also so people arent just Boosting in Pub servers. That will be interesting how SD handles that…

Conclusion: Please make the default mercs strong or 2 of the top used players. Also have 1 of the 3/4 free mercs also be a fan favorite. People might only give this game a few hours of play and make their judgment so it has to be strong out of the gate.

Instead of a Free Shotgun player at the beginning just have them in the “Weekly Free Merc Rotation”… You could have 3 full weeks of shotguns out of the gate and that will give people a good taste.

Free:
SAW
SKY

Week One:
AURA - Shotgun!
Stoker
VAL
BUSH

Week Two:
Phoenix
RedEYE
Fragger
Fletcher - Shotgun!

Week Three:
Spark
Proxy - Shotgun!
Rhino
Arty

Week Four:
Thunder
Phantom
Kari
Nader

Week Five:
Medic
Spookify
Sniper
That Blue Guy with the Beard

I just noticed you took the AUG post down :frowning: I had a lot of good ideas on there…

(Mustang) #6

Hope you don’t mean happy, happy…

Can you explain how/why?

For me anything that lets me try before I buy is generally a positive move, although personally I’d rather a training area than a trial by fire testing scenario.

Huh?! You mean this one? Augment Feedback

(PixelTwitch) #7

[QUOTE=Mustang;516954]Can you explain how/why?

For me anything that lets me try before I buy is generally a positive move, although personally I’d rather a training area than a trial by fire testing scenario.

Huh?! You mean this one? Augment Feedback[/QUOTE]

he means rotations on maps. and I agree with that. but not normally with heros/characters

(spookify) #8

Ah they just unstuck it… Forums… HAHA!

(Glottis-3D) #9

i suggest more sophisticated system for rotation.
i call it a ‘weighted moving window system’

window is 4 mercs available (in addition to 2 default mercs)
like this:

proxy {bush stoker nader rhino} phoenix saw arty fragger

since the day one the MOST played mercs move to the right side of the window
proxy {bush stoker nader rhino} phoenix saw arty fragger

when the week ends - window moves 3 (or 2) steps right:

proxy bush stoker {nader rhino phoenix saw} arty fragger
the most-played-stats set to zero for every week.
proxy bush stoker {nader rhino phoenix saw} arty fragger

you can limit number of weeks, that any merc can remain in the window - up to 1 month.

this will allow players in general (most of the will not pay for quite some time) to play their fav mercs longer.

@Mustang:

basically some ppl (like me) do not like, when they are forced to play maps or mercs they do not like. it is natural for a lot of ppl to just say - ‘ah, screw this game with its stupid restrictions’

so i suggest system, that gives players the opportunity to play their fav mercs longer.

more importantly:
if a player like me gets Vasiliy, Rhino, Arty ill be forced to play Aura-only with a little bit of Sky for a week.
in this case what i see is that game tells me
“PAY OR PLAY UR MOST HATED MERCS, BIATCH!!!”

(DarkangelUK) #10

[QUOTE=Glottis-3D;516951]free rotations usually cripple things. (look at quakelive map rotation idiotic system - killed the game for non subscribers.)

be more gentle with players.[/QUOTE]

It crippled it because they implimented it AFTER giving everyone access to all the maps initially, they just pissed people off by removing them after they were used to having them.

(Mustang) #11

Regarding the unlock credit earning rate I hope it is fairly/quickly convergent, so rather than each progressive unlock being much harder than the previous unlock, after the first X quick unlocks the rest take a more similar length of time to earn, or perhaps just 10-20% longer.


I agree with this, which is why you’ll still be able to play with all mercs you’ve already unlocked, and the first few unlocks should be pretty quick so everyone can get their favourites. The rotation mercs would just be a bonus, or as I see it a try-before-you-buy (or grind).

(Glottis-3D) #12

[QUOTE=Mustang;516960]
I agree with this, which is why you’ll still be able to play with all mercs you’ve already unlocked, and the first few unlocks should be pretty quick so everyone can get their favourites. The rotation mercs would just be a bonus, or as I see it a try-before-you-buy (or grind).[/QUOTE]

how many mercs can i unlock before the rotation jumps in?

(prophett) #13

Agree with saw being a better choice than Aura.

(ToonBE) #14

cool, but switch aura into sawbonez

(Exedore) #15

The current build has them all unlocked as a step towards the system I’ve described… there will be have to be a wipe when this goes live.

(Exedore) #16

It is indeed all relative… we have Loadout Card crafting coming (another use for Credits!) and some other improvements, but that wasn’t really the point of the OP.

It’s worth noting that you can also recycle Loadout Cards for Credits if you want to accelerate unlocking Mercs… we liked this sort of system because it ultimately gives individual players more choice.

(Exedore) #17

I agree that the current implementation isn’t ideal, but there are other systems on the way that I think will mitigate this considerably.

(Floris) #18

I feel like I play with Sawbonez 90% of the time anyway, so once I unlock him I will not be that bothered with this system. It will be interesting to see how the mercs de semaine will affect the gameplay.

(spookify) #19

Little off-topic on this thread but PLEASE be careful with crafting! Especially with using Credits to do so…

After playing countless hours of Diablo 3 and before RoS the crafting was bad! Please Please do crafting right, right from the start…

Personally I would like 3 options of a combination of the 3…
ReRoll Card
ReRoll one of the 3 Augs
ReRoll All 3 Augs

Also Cashing in old or repeat card for Credit…

Please do not make it hard to get the combination you want!!! With so many mercs and so many cards you should be able to make enough money even by giving the player the ability to roll what they want fairly easy…

This could make or break the game! In the Darwin patch all my AUG and Cards were basically useless… I did not get any and I truly mean NONE of the combinations I wanted… This combined with useless Augs was actually very frustrating… Plus never knowing WHEN I was going to get a crate pissed me off…

(Exedore) #20

Our system has no randomness in this regard; you pick the Loadout Card you want, and craft it, providing you have the needed Credits.