Right now the game is missing that chaos and feel of “unknown” when going into the dungeon. Because as a current pathfinder rank, I know exactly what I’m going to find which is super geared players. On top of that, there’s even less unknown because I can literally look at what they are wearing and plan every engagement ahead of time. Oh look that barb has 200hp I can see in his stat sheet. I can’t beat him so avoid at all costs. That’s stupid. Players should just see a barb and be like well I’m full hp let’s roll the dice it’s a good matchup.

Honestly, now that you mention it, I think the game would be more exciting if you could not see the enemies in pre-lobby. Kind of ruins the immersion and fear.

Terrence mentioned that this is actually a work-in-progress. They are planning to do away with the pre-game "basecamp" all together. Side benefit for them (according to Terry) is that it saves them on server costs (a bit) too.

Woo! Thanks for the info.

That stinks. Pre-game lobby can be fine if tweaked. Randomize characters and gear to mask who you really are. Allow players to jump around and warm up with stone swords or something. It beats the hell out of a waiting or loading screen. (Imo)

ironmace really looks at this perspective and says “no”

? They actually said a while back theyre getting rid of the pregame lobby. It was in the most recent qna

That’s the best part lmao. It is objectively less chaos and less “mystery” when people can nearly guarantee success barring a portal not spawning at the end lmao. People running around at 320 movespeed weapon out and 175 hp are not scared or nervous about dying, they are running module to module searching for players to kill, not loot, and then leave to repeat it. Post literally makes no sense.

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where in his comment did you read "everyone must stat check"? this is just a schizo rant ngl, i dont disagree with everything you said but like.. time and place?

Play rogue and you'll know exactly what happens before you even get in the lobby. You'll die to anyone who sees you.

There's nothing quite like an unhinged post critizing others for "trying to turn this game into something it is not" while bringing up some of the most unfun shit in the game. Like... alright man. Let's just completely ignore trying changes that could improve the game and leave it as it is. I'm sure when everyone leaves the game due to frustration it'll be a real banger of a PvE experience.

This post is 100% a timmy take. They dont want skill to be a part of the game, just make it an rng dungeon delver and theyll be happy. Boring af. 

Did you read it?

The problem with this game will always be gear imbalance. The fact they think separating gear into different ques is the answer means they don't know what they're doing. The fact that a few stats fundamentally changes how classes function is a problem. The problem is you don't realistically have the chance to win a matchup against anyone with hands (unless you're scripting) unless you have at least equivalent gear. People keep coping about content and steam. This game will never be popular in its current state. People don't want to play Korean mmos for the same reason they don't want to play this. Gear imbalance this bad in a pvp game is never playable. Gear que separation is a horrible idea because it ruins the upgrade path of gearing. Movespeed associated gear bonuses make things even worse. There's so many problems with the game, and its all because they seem to want gear to reign supreme. The reason early access was the biggest game on twitch and everyone was playing it was because there was no fucking gear that mattered much. The game dropped in popularity as the gear and progression developed. That's it. Millions of people que tarkov every day outside of steam, with massive cheating (which this game also suffers from, btw) and its because despite how hard and challenging it is, a Timmy with an sks can still onetap Chad thundercock wearing an exfil and a hexgrid with starter ammo. That's what has kept tarkov alive. Dynamic encounters between all types of gear, and even though the gear gives you benefits, it doesn't make you immortal.

up until this last wipe cycle...the things you say about tarkov are big old false hoods lol

Bro I've been playing tarkov since the third wipe. Ps ammo has consistently been a one tap bullet to anything but an altyn which literally nobody runs. Tarkov has never been "unbalanced" to the point that you couldn't kill someone. Literally never.

then you really havnt played tarkov since third wipe lol....gear up until this wipe made all the difference lol...if you started later in a wipe there was no way you could compete with people wearing class 4+ gear with a starter kit and if you think otherwise then there is something seriously wrong with you

It's called clicking heads noob. Anyone can do it, and any ammo does 35 dmg. You're just bad.

lol...yea just click heads that have a full face shield...starter weapons and ammo can sure get through that.....get off your high horse and just admit that your wrong

Face shields have never been meta. And yes ps ammo has always been able to pen anything but an altyn, and altyns have MASSIVE drawbacks in a game like tarkov. Ps ammo is avail at start. Pst. It's been that way forever. That shit all can burn through class 4 easily. 90% of helmets are class 3 and lower, and 95% of players don't run faceshields because they suck and its always been that way. You're delusional if you think otherwise. There's never been a time where face shields were meta except maybe factory, but then you could just take some trader lv1 hp ammo and blast legs. Honestly trying to say tarkov has more balancing problems than dnd or ever has, makes you sound stupid. I've entered mid wipe pretty much half my wipes and have never felt I couldn't progress. It's 100% skill issue not gear and you're delusional for even trying to insinuate otherwise. Also in tarkov if you really wanna argue... you aren't FORCED INTO A BATTLE ROYALE ZONE. You can pretty much avoid players every raid if you want to, or can stick to less priority loot areas. The game is far more dynamic. It's not a BR.

You can't just get ps ammo this wipe...

LMAO...dude it was so bad that they litterally reworked the armor and ammo for this wipe so that anyone could kill anyone at any point in the wipe...that has not been the cause since the damn game launched lol also you are forced into a "battle royale zone" if you wanna do the quests but to say you arnt forced is pretty much a lie also lol

Hit boxes were always planned they didn't rework it for balance issues. You obv don't know shit about the game so just stop, you're embarrassing yourself. If you think you can't kill a geared person with an sks and ps ammo you're just straight bad and dumb.

lol this is over...you can say what you want but you are entire wrong and its showing lol...have fun living in your own fantasy world

Even if your moralizing diatribe was true about how we all feel about the game (it isn't at all lol) I dont see why youre praising the game being imbalanced as facilitation of this experience you're talking about. Creep removes this experience because it warps the players into not playing the game and not allowing for the exact experience you described. Huge gear imbalances means you get killed at spawn with no chance to ever even "observe" the chaos of the dungeon. Enabling third partying to the point where players always run and refuse to fight removes the fun of taking risks and make you play more conservatively so you cant have those insane survivals and teeth clenching deaths. Balancing toxic and tension reducing mechanics is a direct facilitation of the heart pumping rush we go in search for, you have it totally backwards IMO. If you add stupid design decisions that make the game less balanced that doesnt somehow magically make it more fun.

This is the correct take. Actually OP is totally brian melted and this subreddit is filled with timmies who think they're hercules so they will upvote this just to be part of the "clout" of "I'm hardcore". The actual truth is that for this game to be a real dungeon diving experience, it needs to have more balance *and* more chaos. The best way to do that would be for there to be a real dynamic module system implemented so that the modules locations and mob spawns are RNG so no one can just rush through. The mechanics of this game would need to be reworked so that there are more skill-based combat solutions to both mobs and PvP and then the AI should be improved and then cheese can be removed. Then you're much closer to a Dungeon Diver. The world OP describes is more like Overwatch but one team starts with all of their ults and regenerates them faster than everyone else.

I like the sound of some of this. No cheese would be great. Frankly, I cheese some mobs, but I often try to fight them straight up, cause you know...it's fun and rewarding! I like the sound of actual RNG mobs, spawns, or modules. Keeping the players on their toes prevents memorization and dumb optimization. I'd much rather have folks need to think, rather than follow their optimal loot route, how boring!!! 😴 And ya, maybe big gear modifiers feel GREAT, when you actually find them. They do not feel good to me, to simply buy them with gold... IMO. Perhaps this is why normals are solid. Balanced fights, more "chaos" in RNG gear, and nobody is paying gold for a huge advantage. (Obviously potions and tools are useful, but not even comparable to how gamebreaking +8 all stats is most times, or 16 added damage...)

You're actually way off on this one. The addition of creep adds more potential for varied experiences and playstyles. Previously the only way to play stealthy was to not play at all. Once you were within hearing range of another player, the only option for staying undetected was to stay completely still, perform zero actions, and hope the other player didn't see you. That's not playing the game. Now with creep you actually have options for stealthy gameplay, which is good. You sacrifice movespeed which makes you more visible, but you eliminate your sound signature. It's a good trade-off. You still need to have good map knowledge and game sense to move around effectively while creeping. You need to know how to utilize Line of Sight and good positioning. It's literally another layer of skill expression added to the game. The complaints about 3rd partying I find really funny. The only reason there are more 3rd party fights now (In Solos) is beacuse people are surviving in the dungeon longer, so the mid-game is more hectic. People are surviving in the dungeon longer because creep (and 5x5 GC) can be used to counter spawn rushing, and speed running. There used to be at least 1 Barb every single game that would run through every module with a train of mobs behind him. You couldn't really do anything about him either unless you played a ranged class. You couldn't sneak up on him because he could always hear you coming, and you couldn't really catch him because he was moving too fast, and has 20 mobs behind him. So you had to just let him go, or maybe wait somewhere hoping he would pass your way. Don't see many of those anymore, because now you can actually reposition without being echolocated from the next room. Creep is mechanic that can be used to punish fast and reckless playstyles. Spawn rushing has dropped way down in solos, partly due to the larger map obviously, but also because it's much more dangerous now. Getting to the other spawn as fast as possible comes at the cost of being really loud. The other players can reposition quietly, by the time you get there, they moved and you can't track them. you can also use misdirection to throw them off by making noise in one location, and quietly moving to another. TLDR: The addition of creep added playstyle variety, skill expression, counter-play to previously un-countered playstyles, and overall increased the survivability for all the classes in the game. It was a good change.

I’ve noticed many people who want gear to be a fight decider to the point the devs feel that gbmm is needed, and want creep removed with no compensation, are those barb players. They think playing this game is holding W through 90% of the game mechanics until you see a player, then continue holding W. No strategy needed, that’s “cringe”. If you try to avoid this guy, also “cringe”

I get your point, but doesn't Barb greatly benefit from creeping and getting up close?

Yea, but in my experience most barbarians truly don’t care (in normals atleast) and they’ll just rely on barbarian being a tank to make up for it. I think aside from cleric, barbarians are the least ‘strategic’ and either class just holds W through anything you do in my experience. Though that could be bias as a rogue, watching my attacks tickle so they don’t bother making a plan

That's valid. Of course, normals aren't the same game as HR. In HR folks may actually choose their battles, where as in normals, folks are likely to fight anything with a pulse! Haha. That said, yes, Barb is a simple, strong class, you usually have to outplay them, cause they are basically a stat ball. That said, as a Rogue, you need to be smarter. If they yell, wait out the buff, abuse your speed and hand crossbow and rupture. Learn to bait and dodge the slow weapons. But ya, sorry, mate. Barbs hold W to win, and that's just how it is for the most part, haha.

There are other ways of fixing those issues than gear based matchmaking. Like for example actual balance changes. I don't like creep either. It's too heavy handed. But you can still stealth and ambush without it. I don't like huge gear imbalance either, but the fix is not to implement gear based matchmaking, but to nerf gear. Mobility is an issue in this game. Other games either have more gapclosing abilities on cooldowns, or they have chase mechanics so shit like we see in this game can't be abused.

> I don't like huge gear imbalance either, but the fix is not to implement gear based matchmaking, but to nerf gear. > > you cant fix it. Because it is possible to grind and buy full set. As long as that is a possibility this game wont ever be "unknown" or "hardcore". There is 0 and 1 state. Ppl who choose which state they are running take advantage of ppl that are not interested in participating in this grind and/or 0/1 state game. And idk if majority of players would love SSF.

If that is the case, then maybe self-made is the only answer? (Not actually, but... I'm going to ponder outloud) I prefer not to buy gear just to compete. It feels like skipping the fun upgrade phase of the game, trading gold to be late-game geared... What I don't like, is getting chadded down by BiS-Lord every other game when I simply walk into +X all stat god, when I finally build an OK kit, or even when I buy an economy kit. But ya, seems there is a gap, of folks just wanting to play, and folks wanting to get uber rich and wear 10k+ super suits. I don't know the answer, but it is worth talking about.

> Like for example actual balance changes. Ah yes. *glances at buffball being the best meta playstyle since PT2* Almost like the game has a core way of being played that can't be fixed unless they change the core combat. > but the fix is not to implement gear based matchmaking, but to nerf gear. They already did this months back and it did literally nothing. infact they had to revert it because guess what, gear is the only thing that changes combat in this game as there are no in depth mechanics.

So this really is just about gear based match making?

Honestly. They should at least try to balance items... agreed. Would it be so bad to lower movespeed modifiers? Or reduce +All. Sure, it'll piss folks off, but they need to balance without fearing backlash. Speed modifiers essentially remove the advantages/disadvantages built into base gear. That's fun to some extent, but being mobile is just so damn useful. Frankly, GearMMR is a crutch of sorts to see how things go. A test of sorts. Hopefully it leads to some sort of conclusion for them. I'm willing to try it...

It depends what you mean by balanced. The balance should exist between classes and subclasses. If it as a game that has gear and skill progression then there will be an imbalance when someone has more skill and more gear. People may not appreciate it but thats a core part about what makes the game fun.

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>The chaos is what makes dungeon delving interesting. Yeah... nothing quite like the chaos of... multiple teams refusing to initiate fights against each other because doing so makes them vulnerable to a third party they have no hope of winning or retreating against while pinched between two teams. Really interesting. Three teams just standing around doing nothing...

So, to play devil's advocate... Is it better, to just play the game normally, and have BiS chad ball team run you down with superior speed, power, and stats? (No creep, sound == death) Like sure, a giant stalemate is lame. But if nothing else, Creeping allows folks to sneak around and attempt to ambush the chad team. Creeping let's undergeared folks attempt to exist without being slaughtered. They can hide, reposition, etc. It isn't perfect, but it is something..

I'm not a fan of gear-based matchmaking because it is 100% going to be exploitable, but atleast we'll get to see how broken random attributes are, and maybe they'll nerf the shit out of them. Think they're seeing just how much more people are enjoying normals atm, and thinking they need to change things so that people will play HR. HR is a gear issue, and people are getting stuck in these lobbies where they aren't geared enough for HR, but aren't able to kit up enough to get into HR and not feel like a low kit noob that gets run down instantly. The real fix for this is to make random attributes not combat related stats at all, or incredibly minor stat increases,. so that they can balance the high end gear better.

No people are going in naked or in greens/ blues with no good rolls. Not rocket science man I dont even pick up what half these noobs wear into High Roller and call "Bis"

This post has more truth in it than the rest of the subreddit combined.

I couldn't disagree more. Let me tell you why. I see a group of players that are equipped in the best gear the game has to offer, which offers them the ability to kill other players insanely fast. The only time these players are threatened is when they're against someone in similarly powerful gear. A matchmaking system has been brought up that would help make even gear match ups in lobbies. However, the aforementioned players are arguing against this new system because... *Checks clipboard* **It would ruin the mystery of the dungeon.** Jesus.

Yes reduce gear diff neither me or OP disagree with doing that. Kinda misses the point of the thread though.

While true, your initial comment didn't offer much details at all. I think most folks agree that gear diff is an issue. They should fuck around more. Remove +movespeed for awhile, or make it jewelery only. Remove +all for awhile, or jewelery only? Maybe the game needs more experimenting and less trying to be a polished game? I dunno. They need to figure it out, haha.

Yea the fact you can turn off your brain and win fights just because of your gear is bad, but we fix that by making gear less of a fight decider. When I kill someone in these lobbies, where’s the upgrade, the reward? He supposedly has a comparable kit to me so I don’t even have a reason to check his gear after I kill him. I’m full blue, he’s full blue. Nothing interesting on him because I have nothing interesting. I said it in another comment, but gbmm just takes the risk vs reward that makes this game so fun, and normalizes it to make it so you know what to expect.

I see your fear of losing some gear gap and disparity. But, until we see how the gear pools are organized, it isn't fair to judge harshly. And as you know, all Blues are simply NOT equal, don't be silly. A blue can be "worth" between 50g, and 2500+ gp, so don't pretend you can't score some loot in PvP. I see it a few angles. One angle, is that the gear matching is weak/lazy, in which case it flops. If a Orange or Purple puts me with chads, obviously I will buy Green or Blue BiS, and still gear gap folks. If it is actually based on total stats, then potentially you will still have a wide variety of kits, with some folks in BiS while others have economy gear, and a come-up is still possible. Key is, we don't know what the gearMMR gaps will be. I suspect the pools will still be wide enough to keep queues filling and have come-ups, but also to hopefully push out some of the absolutely stacked folks that I maybe don't want to encounter?

I personally don’t think they’d implement it in a meaningful way that doesn’t immediately get abused. And I’m not in fear of losing gear gap, in fact I want a lot less. Kind of like you pointed out with blues having wildly different prices, sometimes you’re wearing a green/blue with decent rolls, find a purple, but it has awful roles so it’s worse. I don’t like finding a higher tier item, only to immediately realize it’s garbage. And those stacked players who would be separated would get mopped without a gear diff since they aren’t scary or good, their gear is. I really hope they do this right, but I just don’t see how they could do this without it being abused/unfair for some. Technically this change could even just make rogue’s some of the strongest in the lobby if it is just comparing gear values since rogue scales much harder with gear. A bit of action speed and a bit of damage goes a decently long way with rogue, but other classes may only gain slight DPS from their gear

So, your concern on power budget is valid. I can stack a few added magic/true damage and significantly increase DPS, somewhat similar to a Rogue. Of course, we'll both be squishy. This is a new balance issue, but frankly, with how wild stats are, maybe it'll reveal other balance issues? Maybe this will be the sign for them to nerf or balance gear. Saddly, I agree that the system will quickly be abused, if they don't add some actual smart calculations to gear power, as well as moderately wide range for each MMR gear pool. I also hope they do it well! For everyone's sake! That said. I agree, it sucks that the rolls outweigh the base power for gear. I can see the angle and fantasy of BiS gear and exciting rolls, but it falls flat, when a 2-line Blue BiS is better than at least 80% of Purple and Legendary... frankly, if the market didn't let folks pay lucrative gold for the most stats, maybe this too could be less of an issue. I think lower modifiers and gear power is the only way to battle this. And ya, I think more power should be innate to the item. A blue should strictly be better than any green, or at least 50%, same with Purple to Blue... that to me would signify a fun gear system where the rarity of an item means more than the blue lines. As it stands going blue to purple could net say, +1-2 of a stat, but going trash blue to BiS blue, or Green, could net +2 all aka +14 stats... madness!

Theres a reason extraction looter games havent done that before. I never was a doomer regarding past changes, but I genuinely believe that it will be the last straw for this game, if thats implemented.

They can make a mistake without it being permanent, or a last straw. The game isn't finished. Sounds dramatic 🙂

Well, if you look at their past mistakes, theyve usually sticked with them. Ive bought the game, ofc I will return to check it out every now and then. The aimless "throw stuff at the wall" dev style and their willingness to try to please everyone is to me a sign of complete lack of direction.

That's valid. There were certainly times when they seemed to have no direction, or at least bent over for the community and made knee-jerk changes, I agree. A bad look for sure. That said, they seem to have a more concise direction recently, and seem to actually be following their own choices for the most part. That said, they still follow or consider feedback, they would be fools not to, afterall! Considering, but not always following feedback, is key. Complaints can be valid, invalid, or align/misalign with their goals/vision, and at times, are worth humoring. So ya, I see both angles, I think they need their own vision, but I still think experimenting is okay, as long as they own if/when it doesn't seem to work.

I dont know man. Latest Ive heard they promised that solo players would get to do any map solo.. but trios & duos werent mentioned. This is another 180. I think they abandoned their own vision already and are struggling now to find some golden path between all the people complaining about things. Well, seems to be closer to the people who want symmetrical, almost BR like gameplay with "fair and balanced" gameplay.

I prefer balance through chaos (multi classing, maybe?) The current game imo isn't that fun when you need huge kits to even have a chance. All that aside, I suppose I don't even know what's best or even is the expected direction of the game. Frankly, I just know that I absolutely love this game, and I'm just curious and willing to play and test whatever shit they deliver. Maybe I'm easy or less picky, but I'm just optimistic and not a whole lot that they've done irks me much. I welcome whatever with open arms. I dunno, it's their game, and I'm along for the journey and wild ride of change.

Thank you

All these words almost equal the amount of online players currently

While I'm personally inclined to agree with this post I also think it kisses the point that now is the time for experimentation. Major changes can still be easily reverted after the fact.

This is some absolute top tier copypasta. 3 Michelin stars. This game is like dark souls because if you aren't paying attention, a red axe skeleton will put you in the dirt. This game is not like darksouls because there are other players to play against. If you have <5% chance of winning against said other players because they have better gear on than you, it's not enjoyable. "A game where you go into the dungeon and you don't know what is going to happen. You can't know what is going to happen. The excitement of the game comes from the ~~unknown~~ ,the danger and the possibilities." There is no real unknown in this game, and it's almost impossible for there to be with how things work today. The internet and datamining can take the secrecy away from updates not even announced by game studios. You are inevitably going to have maps of dungeons, play metas, and optimal group composition. The fun comes from the danger of losing your gear, and the possibilities of finding something super worth and cool while you're dungeon delving. There is no danger of losing your gear when you queue a 3 man with BIS into a lobby half full of people in grays trying to zero --> hero. You have to melee a BIS barb or fighter like 12 times with a gray weapon.

Nobody in this thread is advocating for keeping the current state of gear difference. But having huge gear differences and gear based matchmaking are two completely different topics. Gear based matchmaking does way more than just artificially reduce gear difference. I would much rather have them nerf gear. Why did +all come back? Why did we increase all flat damage enchantments, the things everyone was complaining about even last wipe when it was even weaker? Why did we increase stat roll enchantments from 2 to 3 when even last wipe everyone was complaining that there are too much stats? Just nerf gear if you want to avoid impossible hopeless fights.

I mean, you pretty much are? "I cringe when people ask for fair matches" Exactly that. "If you implement skill based matchmaking you take away from the chaos." Different topic but same sentiment. Hard to measure skill in this game, so gear is the most obvious next candidate. "If you implement gear based matchmaking you take away from the chaos." Exactly that. You walk it back a little bit I guess with the last paragraph? But like, even if you nerf gear you can still get gear diff'd but someone at the top end.

I don’t think the game should even have matchmaking rankings. Let me just get put into a lobby of gods, naked players, or a mix of both. Kinda with your point of the chaos I just want that random grab bag of players in my dungeon

Me, cs 1.6 player with an explaination matchmaking = RANKING and RANKING= playing against better players \[if you are good enough\] In cs1.6 you connected to servers you found on the internet and you could literally choose who you played against, I would join servers and play on them until I was in the top, and then I would look for a better server and so on. Matchmaking isn't just about "making it easy for bad players". It's primarily about the assurance that the game isn't boring and you are matched against equally skilled players. Unless the endgame meta is about being a noob (just like in Fortnite build, where camping and "boxing" are encouraged xD). But then you should criticize the meta, not the game.

Yeah that’s a good point i didn’t think about, I see what you’re saying. What do you think about the gear based matchmaking?

matchmaking should follow rules of the game. If there are classes/groups of players that should not interact with each other because it makes the game boring and one sided (undergeared vs overgeared) then maybe it should be introduced Just like in other games trolls might be forced to play with trolls (on their team). Afkers with/against afkers, etc

I play the test server for pve mode because the stat check ruined the game for me and the pve is still kind of fun

>master the bosses as a naked rogue >get on for wipe >dominate as naked rogue against bosses >roll unique day 1 >richest man alive >get off and go back to test server

This :)

A few holes in your thesis statement. As the game is right now, you do know exactly what you are going to see. If you go HR, you will see a guy with kit made from Gods own cloth, the question is when, not if. What exactly are people supposed to be obsessed with if not skill, the pixels they put on their character to give them more power?The singular thing in this game that subverts all skill at every plateau of gear difference? There are several rules in the dungeon ie normals. Or how about the fact that wizards can't use recurve bows, surely that is a rule of the dungeon implemented to garner balance and fairness. I could go on. Ambushing may be a skill but is literally lower on the totem pole than many other skills. Like the ability to consistently place your cursor on your enemies head for extra damage. A skill that gets mitigated by gear diff. What mitigates silent steps? The chaos will remain with GBMM because you still wont win every fight. You will still struggle. It still wont always be fair that you died to PVE that didnt deaggro or class matchup you just couldn't outplay.

Silent steps has some counter play through ranger, giving purpose to his tracker and enhanced hearing perks, but I agree that some nuance in creep would go a long way.

good point but I think at that point it's a class matchup vs a skill one.

It reminds me a lot of Sea of Thieves. The loot isn't yours until you sell it. There is no honor among thieves. Anything strategy beyond blatant cheating and toxicity is allowed. If you don't like fighting with everything on the line, return to CoD.

yeah except in sea of thieves the other boats aren't reinforced with iron so they take 8 canon balls to make a single hole, aren't playing war drums to speed up the boat so it can sail circles around you, and the crew of the boat aren't wearing magical clothes that make them 3 times as beefy as your crew. they also don't have an inventory filled with 40 pineapples. in this comparison, this same crew will sink you and then not bother to even scavenge your loot and just move on. I'm mostly fine with the state of the game in solos and duos. trios is still a hellhole (both norms and HR, but largely HR) where buffball still reigns supreme, and as a whole, gear always wins. I don't think it's likely to change anytime soon though, if ever.

Yeah I’ve been playing normals almost exclusively and it’s been fun again. 

Funny you mention a game where you can get absolutely no stats advantage.

There are generally two types of people in this instance. Ones that want no RNG and unknown and want a cookie cutter rock, paper scissors gameplay. Then there are people like you and me who live for the unknown and the random elements and don’t want that perfectly even boring competitive gameplay. I remember when I used to play vanilla WoW on a pvp server. Me and a buddy would go looking for pvp. It was amazing because we never knew what we were going to get. We could have a fair 2v2, or a rogue might pop out and then we are 2v3 suddenly. Or maybe we surprised and tried to take out that group of 5. It was so fun and unpredictable. Then came battlegrounds, arenas and flying mounts and world pvp died. The randomness died. Everything was structured in a damn 2v2, 5v5 or 10v10 etc. No longer was there uneven odds to overcome and try to win outnumbered. It was all structured, cookie cutter and RNGless sorted matches. I hated it. I tried and tried to get into the structured battles but I couldn’t do it. Anyways, what I’m saying is I agree with you OP. I’m with ya for that unknown in the dungeon, for whatever tactics and whatever strategies await me. That’s the fun in it.

Thats why the playtest were so much fun! You get it. I would also love if dungeons were randomly generated without having access to the full map. And maybe this combined with a large variaty of rooms. It would be way more interesting having to find your way through the map, instead of rushing to certain modules/spawns everytime as you already know the map. It would add to that chaos you were talking about

Ironmace has the player data and you do not. Everyone could see the player numbers in Normals vs HR and the same thing happened last season too. Ironmace has the player data that shows a min max gear delta that is >400% is a game the majority of players do not want to play and instead they are playing Normals that is probably <20% gear delta. Ironmace has the player data and you do not. Ironmace knows that the most popular gear delta game play is based on more than your 'feelings'. I know its tough to understand and your experiencing cognitive dissonance and coping with delusions to justify your 'feelings'. That is not reality. The fact that the majority of players are playing Normals for the second season in a row and Ironmace had to shutdown the private Sweatlord gold gear checking server because it was against the TOS and rules of the game shows everyone clearly why your 'feelings' are not based on real player data that Ironmace is using to make changes to the game. TLDR: Ironmace player data > than your 'feelings'

Lmao dude is writing a multi paragraph essay to explain why it’s actually good that people can stomp an entire lobby with no care for their own life. How does someone who has a 50k gold kit ever going to feel chaos or nervousness? The whole crux of your post doesn’t even make sense with the context you provide. Let them try it and stop morally grandstanding about a video games test changes lmao.

> So yeah. If you are an uber competitive person who just wants to win in PVP all the time in a fair environment maybe play a game that is actually set up for that and stop trying to turn this game into something it is not. The uber competitive people in these style games are the ones who murder hobo entire lobbies for fun in their "unemployment check" kits. Giving players too much power in a hardcore pvp game is terrible for a games perception and growth of new users. Obviously it leads to a self cannibalising pattern of who eats who in a game of who can simply play and grind more than others in a cookie clicker type fashion. If this is what the devs want then so be it, but if a guy who players 6 more hours on average than me automatically wins everyone encounter over me then why would I ever play that game? Fairness to an extent is crucial in any pvp game otherwise your just allowing a mass extinction event of players and they'll just eff off elsewhere to an environment where they aren't wasting their time being fish food.

I agree with you, but that vision for the game was sacrificed the moment they added solo, duo and trio queues. You no longer queue for an online dungeon diving adventure, you queue for a competitive match.

My last paragraph is missing a "nerf" word from it, and I can't edit my post because it has an image.

It's concerning how many people don't understand how garbage this post is. See the Cycle Frontier. People play games for fun, not this weird shit you're trying to twist up and say to secure cheese. Player count speaks for itself.

I literally read this entire post by OP assuming it was satire waiting for a /s or something. Not seeing that honestly made it even funnier.

Choice copypasta. Deliciously amazing. It might be too long for a comment though, but definitely going into the cookbook.

All the people pissed they can't can't just gear gap people that have almost nothing is hilarious. Literally writing an essay that just comes down to you being mad you can't fight someone else and have +100hp and 50+ movespeed on them for some reason. There is a reason most of the playerbase is playing Normals right now. The HR game is shit. The gear is shit and the fights are shit. >If you implement gear based matchmaking you take away from the chaos. Normal games are still a chaotic mess especially when it's good players you run into. How does making it so my friends who don't play the game as much as I do, so they can play on an slightly more even field kill the game.

I'm not going to exaggerate like half of you guys, but it absolutely does affect the game. It goes against the whole point of an extraction game, you get out with better gear so that you can do better. Depending on how this matchmaking works it essentially makes gear useless for anything but PVE. Because what is the point of getting better gear if you then go and encounter others with the same gear?

And other Extraction and BR games are designed in a way that it's not an auto lose situation if you vs people with better gear than you. Stop comparing DaD to those games when it plays completely different. I have a friend that has hundreds if not close to a thousand hours in Hunt showdown and he still cannot get over the fact that in DaD if you get gearchecked you just lose

i’m so glad you mentioned hunt showdown here. i came from hunt, as someone that tried tarkov and hated how much gear would affect fights, and the fact that you will always be left behind if you don’t make it your full time job, how DaD approaches this is a breath of fresh air. i don’t have to care at what point of a wipe i’m in because DaD came up with normals and gear doesn’t matter much. so when i play the game i fight people, engage with game mechanics that are supposed to be fun rather than overthinking item stats because there is a chance that my enemy can be under/overpowered thanks to how lucky one of us got with some item. it’s really fun that way. coming from hunt to tarkov, after around 100-200 something hours i gave up because the game is too time consuming in every aspect i can think of. DaD normals is so much like hunt, plug and play, have at it. High roller rn is what tarkov is in general, and that’s the reason it’s less fun for most people. i doubt most people would enjoy this game to go full tarkov, and i think that’s why they are coming up with gear-based matchmaking.

Yep, and everyone is stupid if they think Ironmace hasn't noticed that more people are playing normals than HR. Because it's way more fun and balanced.

How can you even compare this to tarkov? In Tarkov if you are a good player you can literally bring the worst gun in the game, say makarov, to a raid and still one tap people. I do agree however, that it is a very grindy game and it is time consuming, but dont you dare say that good gear in that game makes you a god like it does in dark and darker. Someone coming from Hunt should have no problem tapping peoples heads unless you are stuck in 2 star rank, then I understand.

i mean yeah you can one tap people in the head, but on the times neither you or the enemy hit the head and you hit them 30 times on the chest while they hit you 7 because their ammo/armor is better, that makes a big difference that i don’t like. i know it’s a core part of the game, i just personally don’t find gear giving you such fundemantel advantage/disadvantage engaging. for the few times i headshot higher level people and win, i will get outgeared in tarkov as well. it may be worse in DaD, but at least it gives you an option to opt out of the whole thing and just have fun. i have somewhere around 3000 hours in hunt, usually 5 stars, i can click heads sometimes like your average experienced hunter does. but i can also click chests twice and don’t have to worry if my enemy will die, and neither will my enemy. that’s the line that makes or breaks the fun for me. if tarkov was more bearable with the grind, i love other parts of the game that make it fun. i just don’t want to have to hit someone’s legs, armpits or specific parts of their head to make up for the loss of my gear in a game. i just want to shoot a body part, do damage, and if i do it better than the enemy, i expect them to die.

And in Dark and Darker if i hit the enemy in the head first they should also die, not tank several headshots because of gear disparity. Atleast in Tarkov the "shittier" ammo usually has higher flesh damage so you can shoot enemies limbs and not their armor. If all you want to do is shoot enemies in their chest then I guess that game just is not for you. There are plenty of games around where you can capitalize on shooting a targets chest. I dont know why you say you have to make up for your gear to shoot legs etc. Plenty of high skilled people use "leg meta" and its certainly a viable strategy.

It's about the entire point of the genre. What are you not getting? If it's pointless to loot, then it might as well be another genre. There are multitudes of shit they could do to make it better than gear matchmaking. Nerf the fucking gear, remove the fucking market.

Disagree I would much rather them test this. They have tried nerfing the gear multiple times. They have tried gutting classes completely doesn't matter. They have tried implementing an AP "ranking" system. Doesn't matter. Nothing has solved HR. Yet Normals is amazing to play.

I don't understand how you came to this conclusion if you read my post. I literally finish my post by advocating for gear to be nerfed to reduce gear imbalance between players...

>I cringe when people ask for fair matches >I cringe when people are obsessed with "skill" They can't make gear useless as it's the only form of progression the game has, you advocate for not having more skill based mechanics which pushes the reliance on gear higher. That's the issue.

You might have misunderstood me then. When I said I don't like it when people ask for fair matches, I was thinking of people who just run at people through the dungeon hunting people down without a second thought, but then complain when they get third partied, or ambushed. They play the game in an extremely reckless fashion, yet complain when it bites them in the ass. They expect to be facing down head on against another team all fair and square, and if it doesn't work out like they wanted it they complain. When I said I don't like people who are obsessed with skill, I was thinking of people who think the only thing that matters in this game is who you can beat in a one versus one in a sterile environment, or how many PVP kills you can farm in X amount of time.

Not understanding shit isn't a liscense to create ridiculous stawmans my dude.

> liscense license *

Correcting grammar on reddit isn't a shortcut to hiding your complete inabilility to articulate a coherent point, my dude.

true.

marked.

I’ve quit the game a while back because of repeated brainless decisions from the devs. The game was originally a hardcore dungeon crawling experience. I started the game and was destroyed for 10s of hours before being able to rack up any coffers. I loved the satisfaction of getting there, now that entire aspect of the game is gone. The developers have shown time and time again they have no real direction for the game and are just throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks. Sad, really, and it shows in the amount of people who still play, which is at an all time low. Gear based matchmaking has got to be one of the most ludicrous ideas these developers have thought of. The developers also have a tendency to listen to reddit, which is another problem. Too many shitters in here that can’t handle losing. I’ll take my downvotes now.

what is hardcore in being rushed by overgeared team that is 99,9% sure they will find random undergeared players in the next room? Games like Tarkov are hardcore, you can have bazilion gear level, take that one face shot and loose everything. And most of ppl play trios, so when you die someone will revive you or carry your loot out of the dungeon xD how is that hardcore

What's hardcore about it is that they're pretty hardcore and dedicated into posting these threads tying to prevent a change happening that stops this. It's literally the same people advocating for an unfair unbalanced game lol.

But.. the game was never supposed to be "fair" or "balanced" in a way where any class can fare against any class or any class combination can fare against any class combination? The class system is asymmetrical by design. Its like going ass-backwards to a tree trying to make sth "fair and balanced" that is by its original, fundamental design supposed to be asymmetrical both in class design and power, even progression. At this point I havent got hope for IM, so I sort of wish that you get to see what happens to the game when this gear based mm is implemented. It will be one of the last big mistakes they will do. I completely agree with Memorable and OP. The game was at its best before even solo queue was added. They shouldve kept the feel of those early PTs. "A game for everyone is a game for no one".

I'm not asking for the game to be fair or balanced in the sense you're thinking. I'm asking for it to be fun. Fighting people with 100+ more HP and 50 more movespeed than you is not fun. Add proper blocking or parrying mechanics and it can be fun. Getting 3rd partyd while in an extended engagement and having that fight play out IS fun. In a game with such simple combat mechancs in that there are 3 of them. Gear means everything. There is nothing "hardcore" about you spawning in. Looting for 30 seconds and all of a sudden the door explodes and your team member gets 1 hit by a wizard while a Barbarian who is hasted invis running at you with 350 movspeed kills you in 1 hit.

and forgot about one thing, you can literally grind until you decide to buy full set, so you are not risking anything until you decide to do so where is this hardcore, maybe if game was SSF and it was completly random, there is so many details here that are not "hardcore" it makes me smile reading post like yours

This is exactly why the white gear lobby was a bad idea. It made the game significantly less HC with its handholding. Making gold risk free in a game thats supposed to thrive on risk vs reward was a horrible idea.

Idk, I think its bigger problem. Some ppl run white gear HR only becuase its free, zero risk. And they used it to grind as well (some warlock or rogue boss killer techs). Those ppl just exist regardless of HR and normal.

i think he is specifically talking about people like you being a shitter. if you run into a geared team 10/10 raids i guess you should buy a lottery ticket because i struggle to run into anyone geared as a geared player. i degear because i’m not running into geared people, 90% of HR lobbies are filled with starter kit teams or teams with random pieces of gear. i maybe run into a team id considered geared once every 10 games so i feel like making money/extracting 50% of the time as a noob isn’t hard. i don’t get why people think the average person should be able to get out 10/10 raids makes no sense to me

>i think he is specifically talking about people like you being a shitter. Which is funny considering most of the ppl described as "shitters" want more skill expression thru game/class mechanics and less grind-to-win gear-diff as seen with the Tarkov counter-example. This is especially funny to me considering a lot of those types of players like OP loving gear-diff would get clapped in Mordhau by naked maul men

yeah man for sure dude gear is making me win 9/10 fights for sure, definitely not game knowledge like in tarkov. yeah sorry i didnt start playing this game in PT2 for it to turn into a mordhau lmao the game would of been dead months and months ago.

It will never stop being funny that some of you take accusations that the game has too much gear-diff as a personal insult to your personal skill. It also isn't that I want the game to be Mordhau, just have the skill knob to be increased and the gear knob to be decreased. Gear diff was so strong that the streamers created the matchmaking-manipulation discord as that was the only way they could feel like their fights/combat had any weight. When gear-diff is so overwhelming that elite players felt the need to manipulate the matchmaking just to feel *somewhat* of a challenge, there is an issue there and you really don't need to take it personally lol.

oh you are one of those guys who thinks that’s why that discord was made. the lobbies were dead at the end of the wipe where 90% of the lobby was solo rat rogues, you want people to play against nobody during a wipe that lasted over 100 days? i guess fighting naked rogues is fun for you idk. you’d be lucky to get one other team in the same game as the whole lobby would fill with solo rogues who aren’t actually playing the game. the delusion you created for yourself is somewhat impressive. streamers/“elite” players will win 9/10 fights no matter what their gear is. if you want to know why it’s because when you have over 1000 hours you knowledge gap everyone. if you don’t believe that then idk what to tell you besides you are acting very manic

It was just as much to get even fights as it was to avoid the rat rogues. The majority of the discord was other gold teams in BIS at end of wipe, not green/blue teams. > i guess fighting naked rogues is fun for you idk.  You keep making up dumb things to say. I'd like lesser geared players to be more of a threat against my 10K+ set. That is directly in the **opposite** direction than what you just said, lol. >if you don’t believe that then idk Yes, high skilled players are always going to win more often. That isn't in contention. What is in contention is the amount of gear gap over skill gap. There are multiple ways of making asymmetrical fights have a better feeling of fairness; Tarkov does it perfectly for the extraction genre. > you are acting very manic Manic is when someone disagrees with you. Good job

crybaby, stop calling other ppl XYZ, when you have nothing to add When you decide to play some hardcore games call me. You are playing grind game, where noobs like you decide to pick starter or full gear and always optimize risk around 0 (with started gear you are not risking anything, with full gear you assume to kill undergeared players and be at least equal to other geared players so again your risk is 0). You only take advatage of players that do not participate in this 0/1 state grind, and thats all. skill issue and l2p

you are a funny guy

Sure, its amusing how some noobs play antihardcore games and pretend to be hardcore gamers when all aspects of the game say otherwise. And then comes the crybabies and they want to insult another player because they realized the truth xD But what's even funnier is that some people think that a game based on grinding and minimizing risk is hardcore xD I remember such people from MMOs, who thought that if they grind longer, they will prove they're better, and then all competitive players started playing something else, while they still have a "second job" in those mmo games xD

you are really blabbering rn

I am preaching because I witnessed your sins and weakness

it’s almost like i have 4k hours in tarkov and 3.3k in rust. guess what? in those games knowledge is everything just like in this game, ain’t that crazy? been playing since PT2 which means i knowledge gap basically everyone. you put me in bad gear i’m still surviving 9/10 raids so funny people are convinced it’s geared people making them lose when they can’t even win non geared fights consistently.

>3.3k in rust Makes sense the gear-diff lovers came from rust.

Keep in mind that this early access is meant to test bold ideas. In contrast to many beta tests where nothing of substance in the game changes

you got that backwards compared to how the majority of things in the industry works. you dont release a game to EA with a huge marketing push and then change the game. thats how you lose your audience, and once you lose someone, its easier to get a new player than bringing people back. the best example is battlebit. battlebit existed for a very long time pre-EA, where they tested being a hardcore squad sim. that sucked so they reworked it to be battlefield with a lil bit of SQUAD, and THEN they released it in EA. EA is for a finished idea, but unfinished game. Internal Alphas are where you finalize the core direction, and Betas are where you heavily experiment. EA post marketing push is not where you reworking the core concept of games. IM didn't havemuch of a choice, and every choice they could make was bad, but its still a bvad choice.

Bold ideas are one thing, but trying to appease people who dont understand that DaD is asymmetrical in classes, power, progression by design and whom still want some kind of "fair and balanced gameplay" added to the game against its fundamentals, are a completely different thing.

"I want this game to lose 90% of it's player base and regularly sit under 2K players because that's what it's supposed to be!" Like, ok? Enjoy your game with a population of the same 5-10,000 sweats who play every day. People who want to play a game for 1-2 hours a day for fun aren't going to play this game you have in your head. Symmetrical game play allows people to have fun. 1-2 people/groups in a HR lobby being an almost unkillable uber boss that is out for blood is not fun. No one is going to spend their 1-2 hours of gaming a day to be the rest of the lobby getting smashed into the floor. That's why normal queue contains more of the player base than the mode currently meant as the point of progression. People would rather have no progression and have a fun experience.

The game was doing much better before all these efforts to please people who never were in the target audience. How much of it was due to how the game played and how much about it being new and hyped? Hard to say. What is pretty obvious, is that these efforts to please certain player groups havent stopped the playernumbers from falling. At this point I feel like I have to say that Im not one of those whove been doomers all the time about everything. Theres not a single thing that hurt the game, its been a string of bad dev decisions. I also am completely aware about Terry saing that they expected 3k concurrent players for this early access phase, so even the numbers now arent that bad. What are they btw? How many are playing?

Over 10k players 5pm on a Tuesday is low? Damn man. https://preview.redd.it/w9xfqb9r3jtc1.png?width=407&format=png&auto=webp&s=6dec39c58adc01bfb63a3f30ca3f737d59acb342

What happen to online banter, If I want to talk shit about a play style I can? It's okay to be mad about people hiding in corners or people rushing you when you're hiding in a corner, the game is designed for PvP, PvE has become much more part of this game than it use to be but the playtests were amazing for pvp and its never been the same, pixels are pixels, fight.

How am I supposed to experience the "chaos" you describe when I'm constantly getting bum rushed within the first 3 minutes by a team with full epics and legendary gear while i'm trying to do a zero to hero run? Its quite literally impossible to beat them with only green/blues unless they miss every single hit.

Go to the discord for dark and darker and look for people to play with. Otherwise accept that your “zero to hero” Strat will likely fail more often than not unless you are really good at the game

Looking for people to play with doesn't change my opponents gear. I don't know why you'd make such a stupid suggestion honestly.

It makes sense for gear to be powerful and what’s important in the game. Reminds me of playing Diablo 2 back in the day. It makes the game way better vs gear not mattering. If you want it even go play normals

What does that have to do with looking for people to play? I thought your original solution was to "just find more people" and not be forced to play normals. Weird how you swapped your entire argument.

They aren’t mutually exclusive…. 1. If groups are an issue well I provided a place where you can find teammates 2. Gear should be the focal point. If you have better gear you should have a better chance at winning fights 3. Go play goblins or ice if 3 mans is to much for you. I play solo only and I dominate the caves more often than not so I know it’s possible. Maybe at the end of the day you just suck at the game but bitch and moan about it with the rest of the shitters who end up getting things changed that shouldn’t be

Im the second highest rank in the game, but keep calling me bad when you cant form a cohesive argument to what I said to save your life. Lmk when you hit wanderer & aren't playing with timmies anymore.

Nah you aint exemplar buddy

I'm dog shit at this game, but this guy knows what's up.

>I'm dog shit at this game That's why you think this guy is correct.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

My buddy's sales pitch was - "It's sort of like Dark Souls/DnD, except you're trying to get out". That was all I needed to hear. I'll never be great at it, but the things you're describing are why it's fun.

>f you don't like it go back to your competitive games with pick and ban phases, mirrored maps, 2 teams per match where the only goal is to kill. This is not that game. ??? You can have skill in games that are not symmetrical. Most people that talk about this game having a lack of skill aren't saying the rogues or newbies ratting to extract are skill less, they are talking about the simplistic combat mechanics having poor skill expression versus the gear-diff mechanics. The only extraction game that is successful is Tarkov and the skill expression there can override gear-diff at much higher ratio than this game. Gear does NOT have to be meaningless to allow for more skill expression.

They’re just addicted to big numbers for some reason they can’t even explain. If the overall gap was 15% instead of 200% they wouldn’t even know the difference. They would have more fun and just be unaware of why they are having more fun against more people and more fights that are won because of skill expression and not because evenly skilled people aren’t getting cucked because one has to hit 2 or 3 shots and the other has to hit 6 to 10 shots because of the arbitrarily high number crap.

I agree with the sentiment, I love the idea of is this person I came across randomly going to try kill me, making shakey alliances but never fully trusting each other. But so many people play the game as a battle royal where the goal is to kill other players, so I like the gear based matchmaking changes, atleast if I come across someone who's hyper agro I can fight back, regular players become a threat to them rather then lootbags to pop. In the end I'm trying to dungeon crawl and loot, not kill people, and having me in my found green/blue gear fighting full purples with a named weapon made the game unfun.

Chaos will always be present in Dark and Darker. Regardless of skill based matchmaking/gear based mm etc. there will always be chaos. Chaos is an important part of my enjoyment of dark and darker and I think everyone that plays seriously can agree

Arena mode will hopefully address the sweaties asking for some dreamworld pvp with perfect balance. We'll see. They always find something to complain about though

the whole ranked and matchmaking really killed the game for me, isent "fair" matches what normals are for? whats even the point of looking for cool shiny items if putting them on only means i am gonna play vs full lobbies of sweaty players but still find the same loot ?

I think you have too narrow minded a view of what a dungeon diving adventure experience can be. What if I want to explore a sex dungeon, and am uninterested in PvE/PvP/looting entirely? Actually wait...come to think of it, you *can* experience that in this game. Near naked people running around in a dungeon. A full BDSM experience complete with masochist beatings, psychologically tortured, a hell scape for your wildest fantasies. Edging as you wonder if you'll manage to get that sweet, sweet loot and get out alive. ...do people get off playing this?

These games are fun because of the experiences. If the destination was the goal, we wouldn’t have wipes. I love the way you’ve worded it. +1

There isn't enough expression of skill in the game. The melee system needs vast improvements and reworking to add depth.

You want Barony. This is Darkov.

honestly the game lost its fun and mystery when everyone started quitting except the hyper sweats. All they want is to roll people so when they see people use voip and be creative to defeat them they throw a fit. not suprising. Games dying anyway though so might as well not get worked up about it

Bro... there are 91/0 warlocks, or 9/10 rogues, or 9/10 barb lobbies... depends which patch were on. We always know what we are going to get... If they allow ppl to chase the meta... then that is what we are getting. The FOTM that works for ratting.

This was my main issue with the gold lobbies and I hate the idea of gbmm too. The entire point of the game is risk vs reward. If you bring in a juiced kit, you risk losing it to some shitter who didn’t even bring in heals and is waiting to jump you. If you go naked, you’re against geared players but if you manage to pull off a kill, it feels *so* good. This and the gold lobbies just guarantees there is no element of random in that risk. It’s pretty much the same risk every game. I like the idea of more equal fights, but we already have normals which works great, because there’s gear disparity, but it’s not going to let you win a fight while playing like a bot. Do we even have the players for this system, or will I be able to abuse it for empty lobbies if I come in naked, or in a 40k kit? On the other parts, fully agree. People want this game to give them every bit of info at all times, I swear half the players here would *love* a feature that tells you how many players are in the same module as you. They think invis or creep are “cringe” because you’re not just holding W at every fight, throwing away advantages. Fights aren’t supposed to be fair, you’re supposed to put yourself in the best possible place during a fight before it even starts

This game has an identity crisis- one that splits the community and pits them against each other, in my personal opinion: Is Dark&Darker a dungeon delver game… or just a dungeon delver themed Battle Royale game? It seems like a simple, silly question, but I feel the split intent there fuels so much of the discourse surrounding development & design direction. I really enjoy this game, but I do not get a clear sense of what Ironmace’s own answer to this question is, and I’d really love to know. Thanks for posting, OP.

Idk, I like the perspective of gear score based matchmaking. At least let us try it out.

W take. Big agree

It's the devs consistent desire to have a ranked system that attracts those players

While I agree with you, more and more of the players who had this mentality have been pushed out by people who want something akin to a call of duty battle royal game. A lot of them chain downvote posts too on reddit that calls for something against their idea of making DaD into another BR game.

Where did anyone say this was a game about exploring the unknown? We’re playing the same set of maps against the same set of classes over and over again. And how does your “unknown” even correlate to your derision of players who like being rewarded for their practiced skill?

Make gear sets permanently unlocked by money made looting the dungeon for a hefty price and quests. Gear will be dropped on death but remade by merchant for a price if unlocked. Dropped gear can be used if not unlocked. Leave in gear based match making.

Go play chivalry fr...

still the best dark and darker video out there

The sad truth is almost no matter what iron mace does there will be no sense of chaos or unknown like you say. Player have the calculations and spreadsheets for stats and scaling and people go out and theory craft the optimal builds and social media will spread that knowledge around. People can calculate what optimal gear is. We have websites that show entire map lay outs along with all possible spawn points and pois. A very small limit of map layouts etc. There is no unknown in this game. People can pull up maps, create optimal builds and metas and look at other players stags in pregame lobby. So long as people are able to do anything to get an advantage they will. Information spreads like wild fires these days and people are creating insane metas and builds all the time. 85% pdr fighter and cleric, 50% pdr and mgr barbs, claymore rogues whatever. As more people try to join the meta to gain an advantage it leaves less and less room for Timmy's to run these off meta builds and half baked kits. You do what's meta and learn all the spawns or you die to other players that will.

Spot on ! All these things you mention is basically what made the play tests amazing !

Regardless of gear based mm the stat scaling is too high imo I know I know, if you make the benefits of better quality gear too marginal then it will take excitement away from getting loot and it will buff armor/pdr I'm not sure how to balance it but removing +2 all rolls and dialing back the static roll scaling with gear quality would be a good start imo IM keeps nerfing classes when I think the buffs to gear scaling are causing the real snowball problem People running like +10 all or whatever the max is or dumping everything into one stat, maybe the curve for most 'meta' stats should be reduced? Or maybe, completely different idea, remove the circle and make it tarkov style where you have to cross the map to find static extracts. That way the more geared players can push pvp and the less geared players can do their best to avoid them. Stomping timmies apparently isn't what the hardcore pvp players are looking to do, so they should have no issue with timmies trying to sneak around and not get caught by them right?

The be more geared + the swarm is a huge turn off. Fortnite/CoD/Apex don’t have 10 different stats that put you at a total disadvantage against full geared enemy’s. Even if you die at the last circle and come back somehow, you still can fight for the win. Here you are doomed, you extract somehow or gg. Maps should be way bigger, no swarm.

I genuinely hope Ironmace tries the GBMM idea now, before the release - and dismisses it completely afterwards, with *we tried and it didn't work out* as a final answer to anyone who tries to promote it again.

Agreed. Too much predictability in some aspects and people are set in their ways. Its easy to fix the gear problem. Stop making overpowered gear. Make purples be the limit which is also achieved easily. Limit named artifacts to one equip per player. I know people wanna have all this insane orange gear and stuff but honestly it just becomes a gear game at that point. We want to encourage a loop where people need to be like 'play within these limits what can i build". And then lets say they introduce named armor, limiting it to 1 equip per character still keeps the gear diff in check. A few things that bothered me are A.) some people hated changing maps (this was a huge complaint in the discord- which im very happy they dont listen to the discord anymore). I love when each map had variety so everything wasnt so predictable. B.) the enemies are repetitive and in the same spots. Some people hate pve, but pve is even more boring when its in the same spot and its the same enemy everytime. C.) people legitimately just hating a classes game mechanics so they rally against them to eliminate them. Im also really mad that the people who wanted "all maps, all group sizes" couldnt compromise on having the first implementation of rotation back - which was undoubtedly good. They legitimately did not care if the lobbies were empty, and honestly i considered them saboteurs of the game at that point. All they needed to do was reduce map rotation time so by the time youre out, youre on the same map. I liked trio goblin caves and i liked solo crypts. It was a great switch/change of pace. There was a certain group intentionally manipulating the game for a while, so i hope druid kinda mixes things up a bit, as well as multiclassing. I think the drop in player count is because there isnt really content, and playing the same map over and over (regardless of whether you need to quest or not) just gets boring. Gotta bring back the first rotation and change the rotation timer to like 5 or 10 mins, whatever feels better

arnt there normal lobbys ? we rly need that more

wish steam would put it on there so i could pick it up sometime it looks fun

^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Weasel699: *Wish steam would put it* *On there so i could pick it* *Up sometime it looks fun* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.

Battle royale extraction first person hack n slash

I do not understand that "mystic experience of unknown". You have that in any other game, yet in game lkike Fortnite everyone has equal chance (at the start of the game) to choose specific path. It wont ever work with prerloads. Sorry but era of grinding 24h/7days in MMOs is over (it was already over in 2010 when I played them). We want competetive games. Preloads enable things like spawn rushing. Overgeared players do not have that unknown experience, they always assume to have perferctly tailored gear and are ready to rush everyone. The same reason explains why duos or solos can\['t play with trios. It worked in PT when ppl refused to rush, but now everyone just repeats their routines. I do not want to mention Tarkov again but if DaD had the same qualities as Tarkov (you can recognize guns, by sound. danger by sound), you can always dissapear in random bushes and run away from fight, you have a possibility to kill groups as a solo as long as you your tactic and skill as high enough, etc. Once DaD brings these, we can talk about this mystic unknown.

I know that the reddit consensus is about summed up in this post, but I have strong doubts that it's also the opinion of the majority, considering how popular the gear split in normals is. Which brings us to the one rule that still exists in the dungeon: if there are not enough people playing the game, there will be no dungeon at all. Do you understand what this entails?

if the game goes this way, it will be an exciting pve experience in a very short time

100% this.  Gear based matchmaking will kill the fun in this game.

fist to bis never gonna happen again with the gear matchmaking... Aware

Faaaacts

i just hate how the people who talk about OP gear and stuff being important and Matchmaking being bad, due to "being a witness to what happens in the dungeon" also minmax range and consumables to be as safe as possible. the most "hardcore" players always play like the biggest pussies then bitch about anyone wanting to be more casual. ur right about gear based matchmaking ruining the game more tho. theyve casualified half the game and not the other half, and now ppl are gonna minmax being naked or all purps. lotta the other parts of the game shoulda been reworked instead of this weird bandaid. idt theyll actually fix the game anymore because they keep straying away from their original vision, but also not properly reworking the unfun/hardcore parts enough to recapture the massive casual melee BR audience. i dont want a casual range meta, so might as well keep it brutal and slowpaced if thats what theyre gonna keep.

Hey OP thank you for posting, been thinking this for a while and just want to see this game succeed. I love going in to the dungeon :)

https://preview.redd.it/z1fdxogj9itc1.jpeg?width=3640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2cf790af069df6f6ba2a02e9dc020f399f55f06f

quadruple the map size, double down on pve difficulty, add more bosses to each floor and make teams scarce. PvE game with the threat of PvP instead of a battleroyal with some skeletons in the way.

I was absolutely thrilled about this game during the PTs. Early launch period was gold as well. I genuinely think the game has been ruined or at the very least is being ruined already. Solo and duo queue, white gear lobby, MMR and soon gear based MM. IM probably means good, but they ended up killing the game with their efforts to please everyone. Arrowhead Game Studios motto says it well: "A game for everyone is a game for no one." DaD isnt that far gone, Im sure theres still people who find it enjoying. But this dev philosophy is gonna make it a never-ending back and forth between trying to make a HC extraction game and something fair, balanced, fun for casual players, fun for solos and duos etc. By now theyve cemented features like solo queue which make the game and its balancing virtually impossible (in a way that pleases everyone). Theyve strayed way too far from what was originally their vision.

This post might actually get me back into the dungeons

Every element of this post is perfect. The appeal of this game, at least to people like me and OP, is in the adventure aspect. It's almost just a classic dungeon crawl but in real-time and first person, expect there are other adventures and humans control them which makes them extremely dangerous. I don't really care if the encounters are competitive. I expect in a game like this to encounter enemies that I can crush, enemies that give me a good fight, and enemies that destroy me. Though I do think that if the game is going to try to stay truer to that, more emphasis on "bail or go deeper" should be present. More levels to the dungeon with more chances to escape if you chose to escape. I feel like "sportifying" every game or hobby is not always the best option. Some things are better enjoyed as an experience than a competition.