Sep 16, 2016

Dirty Bomb® - ColonelPanic

It's time for another Casual Matchmaking Test Event! Starting at 5pm BST (9am PDT) on Monday, September 19th, the Server Browser will be temporarily disabled and Casual Matchmaking enabled.

Casual Matchmaking is hugely important for Dirty Bomb's future - see what it's all about in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50Kh3C9v-DU

Test Event Duration

Casual Matchmaking will be enabled for the following times. The more you play during the test, the better the system will get at giving you a balanced match.

London (BST, UTC+1): 17:00 Monday, Sept. 19 - 20:00 Monday, Sept. 19
Los Angeles (PDT, UTC-7): 9:00 AM Monday, Sept. 19 - 12:00 PM Monday, Sept. 19
Sydney (AEST, UTC+10): 2:00 AM Tuesday, Sept. 20 - 5:00 AM Tuesday, Sept. 20

What is Casual Matchmaking?

In a nutshell, Casual Matchmaking is the system that looks at your performance, amount of experience and skill level, and attempts to put you into matches that will give you the best possible experience.

Casual Matchmaking is still a feature in development, so we are expecting it to have some issues. For this reason, we have a thread set up in the forums which will be unlocked as soon as the matchmaking test starts. Please let us know your thoughts.

Some of the most obvious changes will be:

You'll be able to party up with friends and play on the same team
Your matches will become more balanced
Matches may take slightly longer to find, as it will no longer be a simple server query...
...but you'll be able to move around the menu, open cases etc, while searching for them.

Casual Matchmaking will replace the Quick Join option - So ultimately the more players using Casual Matchmaking, the more balanced and easier to find your matches will be.

How Do I Use It?

While we have the Casual Matchmaking Alpha enabled, you'll find it in the Play menu. From here, you can either Create a Party, or Find a Match by yourself.

After Creating a Party or joining one you've been invited to, you'll see your Steam friends playing Dirty Bomb in the right-hand column. You can invite friends to your party, whether you're hosting it or not and you can also filter maps and game mode by hitting the Change button (the Estimated Queue Time section will adjust accordingly). When satisfied with your Party, hit the Find Match button.

While finding a match or in the end-game lobby (which is still in its early stages and will be iterated upon), you can move around the menu freely. Check out the in-game news section, hunt for specials in the store, or open a case or two!

The criteria that we use to balance matches will also be adjusted regularly based on our findings.

We'd like to thank you for your help, and happy fragging!

Sep 16, 2016

Casual Matchmaking Test #4

Dirty Bomb® - NXA-Orellien

Test Event Duration

Casual Matchmaking will be enabled for the following times. The more you play during the test, the better the system will get at giving you a balanced match.

London (BST, UTC+1): 17:00 Monday, Sept. 19 - 20:00 Monday, Sept. 19
Los Angeles (PDT, UTC-7): 9:00 AM Monday, Sept. 19 - 12:00 PM Monday, Sept. 19
Sydney (AEST, UTC+10): 2:00 AM Tuesday, Sept. 20 - 5:00 AM Tuesday, Sept. 20

What is Casual Matchmaking?

You'll be able to party up with friends and play on the same team
Your matches will become more balanced
Matches may take slightly longer to find, as it will no longer be a simple server query...
...but you'll be able to move around the menu, open cases etc, while searching for them.

Casual Matchmaking will replace the Quick Join option - So ultimately the more players using Casual Matchmaking, the more balanced and easier to find your matches will be.

How Do I Use It?

While we have the Casual Matchmaking Alpha enabled, you'll find it in the Play menu. From here, you can either Create a Party, or Find a Match by yourself.

Sep 8, 2016

Summer Squash - Part II

Dirty Bomb® - RazielWarmonic

Another update, another batch of bugs being squashed! The second part of our Summer Squash season also includes key balance tweaks to even the score a little more.

We've got one more Summer Squash update to come, which will be heavily focused on optimization. Keep your eyes out for it in the coming weeks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFHfgtYTRwU

Balance

Mercs

Aimee

While Aimee is useful, she hasn't quite been keeping up with the other snipers. We believe part of this is due to the long cooldown of her SNITCH Device once it's destroyed.

We've reduced this cooldown so Aimee can deploy SNITCH's more regularly. In doing so we've also reduced the maximum life-span of the SNITCH to match, effectively making it 'one per spawnwave' when it comes to Stopwatch play.

Reduced the SNITCH cooldown to 25s (from 30s)
Reduced the SNITCH lifespan to 25s (from 30s)

Redeye

In the right hands, Redeye has proven to be overly effective, especially when firing through Smoke, leaving his targets with little chance to fight back.

While this behavior is intended, we felt that Redeye could spend too much time in this state, so we've increased the cooldown cost of enabling IR Goggles. This not only reduces the total amount of time the IR Goggles can spend enabled, but also increases the cooldown penalty of constantly switching IR Goggles on and off.

To also provide a better counter to Redeye, we've also reduced the amount of explosive damage it takes to remove Smoke from an area, so now a single Frag Grenade will do the trick.

Reduced explosive damage required to dissipate Smoke to 170 (from 225)
Increased the initial Cooldown cost of enabled IR Goggles to 3s (from 1.2s)

Sawbonez

As the current top-dog Medic, Sawbonez needs marginally toning down. Since his healing is heavily based on quick-regeneration, we've reduced the instant 'Direct Hit' healing he provides with his Med Packs. This brings it in-line with the 'Direct Hit' bonus that Sparks' Med Packs provide.

Reduced Sawbonez Med Pack 'Direct Hit' instant heal to 10hp (from 20hp)

Sparks

The REVIVR Rifle makes Sparks a formidable reviver and the longest range Medic, however her reduced healing capacity means she's often not as effective as the others.

With that in mind, we've increased the amount of healing her Med Packs provide to others, while keeping the self-healing the same.

Increased health provided by Sparks Med Pack to teammates to 40hp (from 30hp)
Increased collision box on Sparks Med Packs to make them a little easier to pick up

Assault Rifles

Dreiss AR

The Dreiss has been seen to be the least effective Assault Rifle when it's available. Since the main issue seems to be bullet spread when fired from the hip, we've significantly reduced initial bullet spread and toned down the maximum bullet spread after sustained fire.

Reduced starting bullet spread by ~20%
Reduced maximum spread by ~4%

Timik-47

The Timik-47 has been lagging slightly behind the M4. While it is intended to be harder to control, it should be initially more accurate. We've reduced the starting bullet spread a little more to emphasise this, while also toning down the vertical kick after each shot, to make it a little more viable when ironsighting.

Reduced starting bullet spread by ~6%
Reduced vertical recoil by ~4%

Sniper Rifles

PDP-70

While The PDP-70 has been seen to be very effective on Redeye due to his ability to hunker down and fire through smoke, it's not seeing nearly the same performance when in the hands of Aimee or Vassili.

With that in mind, alongside the changes to Redeye, we've opted to increase its potential burst damage with higher damage per shot, but lowering it's damage output over time.

This should reduce the effectiveness of spamming through Smoke, while leaving the weapon itself potent.

Increased damage to 50 (from 45)
Reduced rate-of-fire to 138RPM (from 180RPM)
Reduced magazine capacity to 8 (from 9)

Grandeur SR

While it has good killing potential, the Grandeur SR requires a lot of control, often leaving the shooter as a stationary target. We decided to speed up the reload speed and make it more accurate when hip-fired to allow for a bit more mobility.

Reduced initial bullet spread by ~10%
Reduced reload time to 2.2s (from 2.6s)

SMGs

Hochfir SMG

While being the most accurate SMG, the Hochfir has been struggling in the damage department. To counter this we've marginally increased the rate of fire to bring its time-to-kill closer to the other SMG's.

Increased rate of fire to 833RPM (from 811RPM)

Machine Pistols

Compared to the semi-automatic Pistol secondaries, the MP 400 and especially the Empire-9 are both significantly over-performing.

MP 400

The MP 400 is the slowest-firing, hardest-hitting of the Machine Pistols, so we've lowered the rate of fire a little more here to tone it down while further differentiating it from the others.

Reduced rate of fire to 619RPM (from 632RPM)

Empire-9

The Empire-9 is the fastest-firing Machine Pistol and intended to fill the air with low-damaging bullets. Currently it's vastly out performing all other secondaries so we've increased the maximum bullet spread and recoil, making it harder to control over time.

Increased maximum bullet spread by ~7%
Increased recoil by ~10%

Pistols

Both the Caulden and the Simeon .357 are under-performing when compared to other secondaries.

Caulden

We've increased the number of rounds in the Caulden magazine, so it's closer to the other pistols in terms of damage-per-magazine and players will have to reload less often.

Increased rounds per magazine to 9 (from 8)

Simeon .357

The Simeon is the weaker, and thus easier-to-handle of the two revolvers. We've reduced the kick to make it easier to for players to land those devastating head-shots.

Reduced maximum bullet spread by ~7%
Reduced vertical recoil by ~6%

General

Added an audible 3-second countdown when a match is about to restart due to a Restart Map Vote
Added Team Chat to Ranked Lobbies
Added the 'Favorite star' to the Loadout Card prompt when attempting to Recycle a Favorite Loadout Card
AFK-Kicks no longer temporarily ban players from Server Browser games, they can rejoin when they are active again (if there is still space on the server)
Automatically triggered AFK-Kick Votes no longer prevent the AFK player from calling other votes
Estimated queue time is now only shown when there is enough data to predict the waiting time
Optimized Merc models by reducing the number of skeletal bones for Sawbonez, Rhino, Fragger, Thunder & Phoenix when viewed at a distance
Loadout Cards on Death Ghosts are now introduced to players who reach Level 3, when the game has had a chance to explain how Loadout Card rarities work

Bug Fixes

Fixed bug where a dropped Carryable objective was still visibly held in-hand by the incapped player
Fixed bug where C4 couldn't be planted on a Generator if it had previously been destroyed by gunfire
Fixed bug where completing C4 Objectives was not correctly granting XP
Fixed bug where completing C4 Objectives were not counting towards Objective Badges
Fixed bug where the 'One enemy remaining' voice line in Execution was counting incapacitated players as alive
Fixed bug where Loadout Cards could sometimes appear much darker that they should do in-game
Fixed bug where the primary weapon could sometimes be equipped twice on a Revive
Fixed bug where Thunder's Concussion Grenade wasn't fully blinding players
- The blinding effect is no longer full-white - it has been toned down slightly to help prevent eye strain
Fixed bug where debug text could appear when players stopped Matchmaking
Fixed bug where dying during the end of round outro would cause the player to have broken hand animations
Fixed bug on Chapel where walking on the Secondary Objective ramps could cause the client to de-sync from the server
Fixed bug where attempting to fire would not cancel a C4 plant
Fixed bug where Clan Tags would not appear in the post-game lobby of matchmade games
Fixed bug where Crafting Kits and Weapon Kits would be hidden by default in the Inventory screen
Fixed bug where the wrong weapon model could be visible when a player was Revived
Fixed bug where IR Goggles could not be deactivated when running low on energy
Fixed bug where Martyrdom was reporting as a Melee kill in player stats
Fixed bug where Molotov icons did not appear in death ghost info
Fixed bug where Molotov flames could sometimes not be extinguished by explosives
Fixed bug where player chat was not colored by team in the post-game Lobby of Ranked games
Fixed bug where players could join another game but remain in a Ranked Party
Fixed bug where players could not accept Party Invites from a Party that another player had already left
Fixed bug where players would be prompted to rejoin a Ranked Match they had been kicked & banned from
Fixed bug where sorting Loadout Cards by Date would not have any effect
Fixed bug where the background images in the main menu could start cycling quickly at random intervals
Fixed bug where the incorrect audio would play when attempting to re-activate Phantom's Refractive Armor
Fixed bug where the 'Moving on Up' Steam Achievement would not unlock when Crafting a Loadout Card
Fixed bug where the Options menu would move off-screen when changing between 21:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios
Fixed bug where the screen would flash white when switching between tabs in the Profile screen
Fixed bug where the weapon stats would overlap with the page numbers in the Profile page
Fixed bug where the wrong color could appear for player chat in lobbies
Fixed bug where thrown items would sometimes not spawn when network conditions were extremely poor
Fixed bug where weapons could constantly keep switching after planting C4
Fixed potential crash when the game is left on the front end for extended periods of time
Fixed bug where gaps were visible in the underarms of some Mercs' character models
Fixed bug where Fragger's trigger finger appeared broken when viewed in third-person
Fixed bug where the 'Ranked Mode Unlocked' post-match award had missing text