So needless to say, competitive in DB is lacking much needed features. We’ve heard SD say that they have plans for “Seasons” etc but we haven’t had a clear statement of where we are going when it comes to basic rules and functionality. So I have a few questions that I hope gives the community something to work towards.
What is DB’s rules/format going to be?
So let’s talk competitive play from the beginning. Matchmaking is in all games intended as a “gateway drug” to tournament play. However DB currently has no competitive feel in it’s “Ranked” MM. It is literally 5v5 SW with public rules, the only time there are rules being used in MM is when both teams know the unwritten rule of the 1 merc rule used in 3rd party tournaments. Having said that MM is really not even competitive play at the moment and personally considering it a joke atm we can move on to the real problem, what are SD’s plans for competitive DB? Looking from DBNations perspective, outside of them lacking the tools to properly enforced their 1 merc ruleset, even if they had those the 1 merc rule is going to break itself soon enough. We already see teams using setups with 3 “heavies” and 2 medics on first stage Terminal, Rhino+Fragger+Nader and 2 medics. Is that really where we want comp DB to go? And what about future merc releases like Thunder/Javelin/other heavies. Or what about EV style maps with 3 Skyhammer level Fire Support mercs and 2 medics? All that said, as a competitive community we can make up all the rules we want. But we need SD to give us a clear statement on what they plan to do so we can work towards it. Are we getting drafting? 3rd party tournaments can start testing moba style draft modes. Are we getting ET-style class based restrictions, okay let’s start using those. Are we sticking with the 1 merc rule, why do we still not have such basic functionality in the Ranked mode? Short version: Does SD even have a plan already, and if so what are they? Give your community the option to experiment even if we don’t have the in-game tools yet. Right now I, and I know many others who feel the same way, feel like competitive DB is just stuck in a place where it really doesn’t matter anymore what we do unless we have SD give us something to work towards.
In-game options?
So let’s say we get to hear what SD is going to do, why have we had so many talks about things but we still don’t get basic options to test things? The long running spawnwave system has been discussed for months now, why can’t we have 2 or 3 servers with a different spawnwave system and test it in practice. As a community we can have all the ideas in the world but we can’t prove to SD that they might work because we lack the options to show it. We are so restricted in having to deal with the little DB offers us that tournaments played in your BETA phase can’t be a testing ground for the games competitive play. Without including the earlier tourneys, DirtyCups started its tournaments very early and we quickly realized public rules don’t work in 5v5 as we saw metas where we had 3 Fraggers + 2 Sawbonez or 3 Skyhammers and 2 Sawbonez for EV maps. Is that not a massive alarm going off at SD that releasing MM that allows that exact problem is probably not a good idea? And this doesn’t even apply only to 5v5, everytime we see Nader in the free week there are atleast 50 posts of people suddenly going “NADER IS OP”, not because she is but because there are more of her in play than proper balance can handle. I’m not a set admin for DBN, but I’ve been asked for my opinion many times as I have a lot of experience with running tourneys in ET, and I give my opinion but there is so much frustration internally there because they want to do a lot of things but have tied hands because the in-game functionality doesn’t allow them to do anything. We’re very thankful that we have private servers, but the reality is that we simply can’t do much with them outside of ‘on good faith rulesets’ and dealing with whatever is thrown into a patch. Let alone all the bugs we have to deal with in almost every game… Just give us full control over 2 to 4 servers where we have absolutely full control so we can experiment as a competitive community. Imagine showmatches with drafting or with different respawn systems and what value that can also have for your internal decisions.
Execution(-ing) Stopwatch?
Let me first say that I agree with the statement that Execution is easier to get into as most new players will already understand the gamemode and it’s less overwhelming so I fully support the new quickjoin level thingies. But was it really a good idea to implement this without some other things? Right now any new player comes into the game has to still find out himself that he can go to another gamemode, better yet the main gamemode is “hidden” to them. Unless SD has decided that Execution will be the main focus for Dirty Bomb, but can we then at least hear that statement directly so that players who aren’t interested in EXE can move on. Assuming DB’s main gamemode, or atleast the competitive gamemode will be SW, where are the quicktips like when you reach level 5 you get forced into the main menu and a big popup appears saying that you can now enter “the big boy gamemode Stopwatch and leave the scrubs behind”? Where is the big popup at level 7 that says “Think you can handle the real deal in Ranked? Test yourself now in MM”? Slap a nice elite case with that popup as a reward for reaching that new gamemode. Harsh truth, but the playerbase isn’t big so you need the new players but all the new players who join get into a game that doesn’t help them along at all. Even the tutorial is about the most basic FPS elements instead of merc specific tips or a short video that explains Stopwatch mode basics like spawnwaves. You have a pretty dedicated fanbase, why not ask them to make those videos if you really lack the man-power to do these things? You’ve said how much you like videos from people like LCTR or PixelTwitch :P. We all know that DB is a slap in the face game for a lot of ‘new generation FPS players’, you pride yourself on being a tough to play game but you seem to refuse to help them along atleast a little 
On top of that, once people actually stick around there is nothing there for them outside of getting a better MM rank and getting better gear(grinding mercs/cards etc). Where is the clan functionality you so bravely claimed would be a part of DB since you all have backgrounds there? Or is all the clan functionality we are getting going to be “SetClanTag and RemoveClanTag”?
Now I’m well aware that whenever these types of questions come up the main response is either “soonTM”, “remember it’s beta”, “things take time, we don’t have a huge dev team” or “its hard to prioritize things”. Which to a degree I can totally understand, but what kind of time/prioritizing are we talking about here? Some of these core issues were there when the game went closed beta on steam and are still not addressed. I feel like a dick thing to say, but I can completely get behind new players who are simply disappointed with the experience, especially when it comes to competitive play. Stop doing fancy things like Execution and Containment war cards when basic functionality is simply missing. You said yourself that one of the big reasons Brink failed was because you were trying to do to many things at once, so stop doing many things and focus on the core of the game and the needed functionality to support that core!
/walloftextrant 
ps: i know there are many more problems, but the longer core problems continue to seemingly be ignored, the more im starting to feel that we’re getting short term bandaids for nuisances instead of proper development. I really like the SD guys, whenever I talk to any they always seem great guys. But that keeps giving me hope and in my head I’m going “THEY CAN DO IT, CMON SD KICK SOME ASS” only to be disappointed by a content patch that masks the real issues at the core.
