Where do we go from here?

(PixelTwitch) #1

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Ignore the servers with 1 player in them (them players are bugged and the servers are actually empty.)

This is now the lowest number of players I have seen since the transition over to steam. I am sure it will pick up slightly later on tonight but I bring this up because from experience, once it becomes hard to join a game at any time of the day, the game starts dying super fast as people eventually stop trying.

What happens from here?
Do Splash Damage / Nexon start restricting time we can access the game?
Do they hand out 100,000 more keys?
Do they lower the price of the Merc Stater Pack?
Do they start paying some larger YouTubers to start covering the game?
Do they cross their fingers and hope?

I believe this is a sign of both multiple mistakes and really bad marketing…
(For instance the restricting of Mercs)

People now seeing the game for the first time, as players or as viewers of YouTubers.
Are seeing a VERY generic shooter where you push to a point, plant c4 all the time while fighting with guns and nades. I understand and agree that things will be 100x better once all the Mercs are back in and the addition features (New Maps + Mode this month according to the timeline?). I also believe once people can play a balanced match things will improve. However, I do not believe the people that have come and gone already will be willing to come back any time soon… How many more waves of players are going to come and go to never return?

Well I am worried…
What about you guys?

(Rémy Cabresin) #2

At this stage of the development there is no point talking about marketing and what mistakes/decisions were made. SD(and Nexon) just needs to get their bleep together and work on base functionality so that the scene/community can take some of the weight from them. The main 3 steps in my eyes that should have priority right now:

  1. Private servers
    This doesn’t have to be dedicated, but at least let teams allow an easier place to develop early stages of competitive play. I would sign for a (voluntary) job at SD/Nexon as Competitive Community Manager if they would give me 10 US Private servers and 10 EU Private servers and I would let people sign in on a week agenda to have team practices on them and arrange matches, we can make-do with something that isn’t nothing. At least until ranked matchmaking is more functional and a better team/ranking system is in place. This simple step(it’s really just hosting servers) will allow a competitive community to shape itself as a 3rd party and hype the game with team vs team streams and commentating.

  2. Merc regulations
    This doesn’t have to be the same for competitive and public, but I think we can all agree that some mercs shouldn’t be ‘stackable’ too much in a team. It simply stops people from having fun if a server has 6 Skyhammers and the objective becomes near impossible to do. A competitive model would be as simple as 1 Heavy, 2 Assault, 1 Sniper, unlimited medic, unlimited engi, public would be a model allowing for more freedom but not allowing 5 Fraggers/Skyhammers just killing the other teams fun.

  3. Hardware/engine optimization
    The fact that relatively modern systems need extreme tweaking for a reasonable FPS (which for first person shooters I consider at least 120+ stable) is a real player base killer. So many people install the game only to find that it’s impossible to run it at a playable level without either having input delay (onethreadframelag anyone?) or having to play the game at horrendously low resolutions and the more and more common ‘potato/minecraft’ configs. If SD wants to allow those configs that is fine with me personally(Quake has similar allowed settings) but the fact that reasonable new hardware setups need it to boost fps is a real bummer.

(4. Community content (maps))
This just seems like such a simple one to me as-well. Not even talking full steam workshop support, but SD give out a nice basic texturepack and a solid tutorial about map/model sizes so that people can play around actively(there was something with hallway sizes etc on the old forums no clue where that went). If people have a solid entry/project that is playable, have a contact where people can send in what they made, someone at level design can review if it has a hint of potential put it live for a week on a couple of servers. Offer some fresh material that you don’t have to do most of the work for. There were some really interesting projects with screenshots already made by Alpha/early beta players.

(Finko) #3

Also i add my 5 kopeek’s, spliting community was really bad idea, which cut off major player base from CIS countries.

(INF3RN0) #4

As far as I see it currently…

NOW
(1) Not enough players to enforce balanced fun games
(2) Frustrating RNG loadout card system
(3) Imbalanced Merc Mechanics (Frag/aura)
(4) Limited Mercs

LATER
(1) Lack of interesting merc meta mechanics (counter/synergy/etc)
(2) Boring OBJ types
(3) Map grinding
(4) Repetitive game play experience

(Mustang) #5

A screenshot from 8am doesn’t really bother me that much, especially when we’ve been asking for more servers all week because they are always full in the evening.

(Violator) #6

Sorry but who is playing DB at 8am on a Monday morning ;). During peak playing hours I’ve found that the reverse is true - it can be hard to get into a non full server. [EDIT: ninja’d]

All 4 of adeto’s points are valid though (especially 4 - hint hint :))

(BioSnark) #7

It’s not just 8 am but 8 am on a Monday. I’m worried that the gameplay experience will remain shallow and not retain players but definitely not worried that there aren’t players on after US is mostly asleep and Euroland is waking up.

(PixelTwitch) #8

Thats because only 2 servers running Stop Watch at peak times is out right dumb.
What I am saying is as soon as a game starts not being playable 24/7 you start to notice an increase in player falloff rate. Since this rate is already quite quick it runs the risk of turning into last year where its only playable at certain times of the day because people stop even attempting to check the other times. If we check back tomorrow at the same time it will likely be less and the day after and so on.

Most worrying for me is this is not about key availability…
You can simply go and buy in via steam. More and more big YouTube channels have covered the game in at least a small way.
Including TB with almost 400,000 views on a single video less then a week ago.

At the very least I would have expected to see a small increase but certainly not a decrease in players.
I mean don’t get me wrong, It could have something to do with GTA5 launching.
Not even seeing the same Twitch presence right now.

This is not a dig or jab, its simply me showing concern and wondering what SD/Nexon plan to do in response…

(Zenity) #9

I follow another game that is in closed beta. It was at its most active almost a year ago, and at peak times there were maybe a dozen games going on at a time (1on1s!). Never did anybody consider the beta a failure, and development is still going strong.

Granted it is a smaller game than Dirty Bomb, but Dirty Bomb isn’t the next Destiny either in terms of budget and team size. It’s doing really well so far from what I can tell, and I certainly don’t think that the devs are having panic attacks because there are only two full NA servers when it’s 8am on a Monday morning in Europe.

Good morning. :slight_smile:

(Glottis-3D) #10

Ppl leave because.
They are getting owned.

overal it is very boring to play the game. Repetitive games on unbalanced maps with spawnrapes and chokes.
Not enough mercs as Pixel said. When we had 20 there was imagination in the game.

Not climax in the OBJ mechanics.
Almost no interaction between mercs.
Very little strategy because of the desision to let all mercs do everything.

and what Finko said - separated community is a very bad thing.

but the most important is this: the game is boring. and that is from lack of depth in gameplay and maps.

(rookie1) #11

Seing one match video and I feel I saw them all…
To me its repetitive and always the same kind of TDM
I can play&watch RenegadeX for Hours but …never with DB

(PixelTwitch) #12

[QUOTE=rookie1;525494]Seing one match video and I feel I saw them all…
To me its repetitive and always the same kind of TDM
I can play&watch RenegadeX for Hours but …never with DB[/QUOTE]

Its because currently brute force > tactics.

(LiNkzr) #13

I have played in multiple closed betas or betas in general and I feel like this has been quite rough. I don’t even think DB is hard to “fix” it’s just been really hard to enjoy this game with all the stuff that has been going on. If they just manage to do what Adeto said.

Also I really think echo data mostly sucks so don’t use it to balance mercs that much.

(ToonBE) #14

[QUOTE=rookie1;525494]Seing one match video and I feel I saw them all…
To me its repetitive and always the same kind of TDM
I can play&watch RenegadeX for Hours but …never with DB[/QUOTE]

So true lol. I sometimes enjoyed playing dirty bomb, but watching it is sooo boring and repetitive… I mean like the dev stream etc… When you watch it there is zero suspense, non whatsoever! I am someone who does not like to play csgo, don’t ask me why. But watching it is awesome!! I love looking at matches from NiP, fnatic, titan, navi, envyus, vertuspro etc There is so much suspense and skill… So awesome to watch… None of that with dirty bomb… It just isnt there… So basically it is not a watchable e sport so getting an active and involved competitive scene will be difficult.

ALSO WTF DID THEY DO TO CANCELL THE EVACZONE CUP??? such a joke. It was announced 2 weeks ago or even more and they realize private servers is not possible the day the cup is played? ****ing stupid. I feel bad for potty and other evaczone members.

rip dirty bomb (or there needs to be a BIG change - starting with adeto’s point would be a good start)

(Szakalot) #15

well, no FPS with respawns every 20-30 seconds is watchable tbh.

(rookie1) #16

There not much posibilities anyway .Tactics will be Take route A instead of route B .:tongue:
RenegadeX has so much to offer it’s DB X 1000 in term of gameplay possibilities

(PixelTwitch) #17

Actually its not the time of the respawn its the mechanic of the respawn.
Right now its “drips and drabs” as in people are not often on the same wave.
This is due to long travel times and stuff like that.

You could have Respawns every 5 seconds or every 2 min and still make a watchable game if you ensure the fights are team fights and positions are focused on a single point. However, due to poor respawn mechanics in general it turns quickly into a cluster ****.

#18

Fix to help new players keep playing:

  1. Remove public
  2. Make Match Making available from level 1
  3. Make Match Making the only available play method
    Now noobs will play with noobs, mediocre with mediocre, and pros with pros.

Stats 8am monday does not represent the whole picture
However there has been a decline, and has been sort of stabilized to 300-ish from 1000 and previous 500-ish
https://steamdb.info/app/333930/graphs/

XQr1hml.png1080x1080

However good topic to talk about.
What to do to keep more people playing?

  • For me personally, I think 7 mercs or so, might be too little.
  • Also I want to play with friends easily (lobby)
  • And I wanna work on my Skill Rating (playing match making). But since everyone is playing public, then match making is not usefull. Imo SD needs to choose one, not have both equally focused.
  • Give directly credits (XP isnt an incentive enough) for doing objectives and teamplay, like support-roles.
    However, how to avoid stat-padding, I dont know. There will always be a few people who will join an empty server and just build XP or credits not trying to win
    In other games you can report in-game menu if something like that happended, and they would lose access to game, if it was obvious stat-manipulation / credit manipulation.
#19

[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;525503]Right now its “drips and drabs” as in people are not often on the same wave.
This is due to long travel times and stuff like that.
[/QUOTE]

Even when travel time is good, there will still be beginners, and mediocre players who will not “get it”, that they need to pause/wait to get full team before they can attack again.
Even pro players does it when they greed / over extend.
New players cant even see the problem with it, why going in 2 vs 6 will get you rekt, or going in 4v8 will get you rekt.
It basicly takes streamers or video-guides to tell watchers that this is how you play. Its an “invisible wall” for most people, that is super obvious those who know about it. It doesnt take aim to do this, you just need to know about the trick. With this said, skilled aimers can go in 2v6 as well and not “get it” why they died.

Classic:
1 going in vs 3, dies and then says: “Team???! FFS”
Team dynamics, map awareness is very important in team games.

(prophett) #20

Map design is the main culprit here and has been my biggest gripesince I have started playing.