If you have been around the forums for any length of time, you must have seen at least one thread proclaiming that Fraggers Nade is OP (Over Powered). Within that thread you find people that fall within one of two camps thrashing it out. One group are the people that believe the Nade is overpowered and simply needs a huge nerf and on the other side we have people that believe the Nade is fine in the grand scheme of things and should be left alone. Both can’t be right, can they? Well this is where it gets a little more complicated because in literal terms, no, the Nades are not overpowered. Fragger by his very design is supposed to be one of the heavy hitters and be topping the scoreboard in terms of kills and deaths. His punishment for this? Well, he cannot heal himself or his team, revive other players, do objectives quickly, highlight enemy players or provide ammo to himself and team members. Basically, beyond his lethality, he’s kinda useless…
So, we go by the numbers and accept that he is indeed balanced and get on with it, right? Not exactly… There is a new go to term in back seat game design called “Counter Play”. Really the words mean very little these days due to the way it has been milked dry by gamers who have very limited understanding of how it works. For those people here that have no idea what I am talking about, watch this -> HERE! In basic terms, counter play is the idea of designing mechanics that both add choices to players using a mechanic and the players on the receiving end of said mechanic. Fraggers Nades do this very poorly… At the moment, the outcome of a Nades overall effect on gameplay is too heavily dictated by the player throwing it. This may seem both obvious and the correct way of doing it and you would not be far wrong. For example, you look at your spawn timer, realise the enemy are about to spawn so you pull out your nade and start cooking. As soon as you hear the enemies footsteps from around a corner you peak out, let the nade fly and get a sexy triple kill. Sure, you earned them kills and it felt awesome to get them. However, it only felt awesome for you. Your team are likely bored and frustrated though the lack of action they are able to partake in and your enemies have just been killed with no opportunity to either fight back or realistically predict what was about to happen. So even though you have somewhat ruined the enjoyment for at least the 3 people you hit but likely more whom now have less chance of progressing or if on your team, less people to interact with, that does not mean what you just did is due to any imbalance in the game…
This is where what you as a player wants, really polarises you opinion on what is right for the game. For simplicities sake I am going to break it down into two camps. 1, the camp that believes in “Skilful Slaughter” and 2, the camp that wants “Skilful Domination”, and yes, I know both these names suck but its very late and I need sleep. Before going any further I want to make it clear that I come from the camp of “Skilful Domination”. So if you find my wording in the following biased, I do apologise.
In my eyes the camp of “Skilful Slaughter” are the people that generally are of a decent skill level and believe that fair is fair. They want to feel as powerful as possible, as often as possible and are willing to risk the same mechanics being used on themselves to achieve that. Also, extremely casual players and some of the more old school players are more willing to take on this mindset, be it for widely varying reasons. The casual players simply accept it blind with the attitude of “well this is part of the game”. On the other hand the more old school players have likely become more accustomed to this form of game design over the years due to how games were in the past. These players pride themselves on a very high skill ceiling
The camp that push for “Skilful Domination” more so believe in a few design pillars like the mythical counter play, wide skill sets catered for and tactical depth being more aligned when it comes to value with individual skill levels. Based on the popularity of games like LoL, Dota 2, Starcraft and Counter Strike, I would have to say the players that generally fall into this camp are the hardcore/avid gamers. These players are generally of a medium to high skill level and receive less support from the extremely casual due to games balanced around skilful domination generally having a much steeper learning curve that less experienced gamers can find daunting
Let me say one more time, neither camp is wrong or right in terms of their ideas and beliefs. The real question is, what camp does Splash Damage intend for Dirty Bomb to fall into? In the past it looked like skilful domination was going to be the target, however that all changed around a patch we received just before the NDA lifted. The information on what that patch changed is available over on the Splash Damage forums and I urge you to check it out if you have time. It was called “The Darwinian Update”. To cut a long story short, many of the abilities in the game received fairly substantial buffs that changed the whole feel of the game drastically and we saw individual mastery become the name of the game. Honestly, some things improved massively and I was really happy. However, the side effect of this was abilities that skated that line between tools of domination and skills of slaughter, became much simpler then many of us expected. This is around the time the questions about Fraggers Nade, Air strikes, Healing Stations and much more became hot topics of contempt for the community.
How would I like the nades to act? Well, one of the things you often hear is that if you take away their killing potential and gibbing they and by extension Fragger become underpowered. This is true. In order to keep Fragger and his nades balanced while adding that domination type feel would be by changing other aspects that would indeed support and promote counter play. Currently I believe the best way to do this would be by drastically increasing the AoE of the nade (by around 100%), doing 2x more damage to deployable objects and downed players to compensate for much less damage vs players and implementing the cancel cooldown punishment that Splash Damage recently mentioned on a livestream. Also working towards better telegraphs that a nade could be incoming soon would go some way to improving the feel for me personally. How this would change the game is simple, Fragger would use the nades, as he does now but with more of an ability to take out static defences. The wider explosion range and lower damage means that the Fragger would be required to manually kill players after the nade had been thrown if the enemy players were on max health (unless Aura, Proxy or Sawbones who would likely have died instantly when the nade explodes within a decent amount of range). This would entice more teamwork with players willing to trust in the nade and follow it into hot zones to help clean up any remaining enemies. This would feel better for them players on your team instead of just taking everything for yourself. Due to the increased blast radius there is also a chance you could effectively kill more people then you would in the current system. When it comes to the players the nade was used on, rather than dying instantly, they have choices.
They can…
[ul]
[li]Fortify the position and prepare for a fight. [/li][li]Start spamming out revives. [/li][li]heals and ammo for a fight. [/li][li]Push out of the area towards or away from the person that threw it. [/li][li]Block off the entrance with certain abilities to buy time.[/li][/ul]
Simply, rather then instantly dying they have the chance of turning around a situation that previously, would have resulted in a chunk of players being cleaned up instantly with the nade and the people that survived being heavily out numbered with only their own abilities to try and recoup. I honestly see this as the better way of doing things and what I have always hoped for in Dirty Bomb since I gained access. The reason why I have become so frustrated is not due to missing features, business model or things like that, it is simply that this game is heading in a direction that does not interest me personally. Normally that would be fine, I would have simply avoided it. However, I have been here when it seemed to be heading in a direction that I did like…
Basically, as simple as Fraggers nade really is, it has become a beacon to where we can expect future development and mechanics to be headed. A few number values over the next few weeks are going to dictate whether this is going to be a game I stick with as my “main” or if its going to be my bit of brain dead fun. Again, I personally came here for complexity and depth, something that is only really found in Counter Strike when it comes to First Person Shooters (When I say “only” I mean it as in only game with a decent following and potential). However, CS:GO does not really appeal to me when it comes to its pacing and core skill requirement. I already have plenty of fun brain dead shooters like Battlefield, Call of Duty and Black Light Retribution.
Unfortunately, I have a strong feeling this one is going to fall on the wrong side of the fence for me.
TLDR: Fraggers nade is really not OP, just designed in a way that gives very little counter play. This results in the perceived balance being very different from the balance in practice. How you feel about this in particular is likely to effect how you feel about the game in future. Right now it looks like the game is designed completely for “skill” and is void of depth and complexity because of it. I worry for the future of DB due to games like Battlefield, Call of Duty and other being in decline on the PC and following the same overarching design. Whereas games like LoL, Dota, Starcraft, Counter Strike and more are showing a GROWING trend towards more complexity in games that allows mastery from both raw skill and amazing tactics. The future of the nade is likely going to be the beacon that lights the path of future development, so if your not a fan of where it goes design wise in the coming weeks, don’t expect future mechanics and abilities to be much different to the nades final implementation. Will instant death and no chance for counter play be the soup of the day? I don’t know… but I hope not…
