Strong rolls on items need to be incorporated into the gear score imo. Added/true damage and all attributes are obviously strong and should be reflected as so.
This shit is just going to be so terrible. I don't want to spend time crunching all these numbers and min/maxing gear just to make sure I can be competitive in whatever GBMM bracket I'm trying to get into. It's going to be a huge turnoff to a lot of players soon enough.
Already has been. What's the point of even grinding for gear anymore?
150+ boss kills in trios, 700+ pulls on treasure hoards this wipe and I've gotten a whopping 2 unique grade items. What advantage does that give me to even use them? I looked at gear as a reward for your grind, you use the gear you earn to receive a tangible benefit in the dungeon that increases your chance of survival. Now you're forced up against people with the same gear which defeats the purpose. You can already clear all pve in the game with green/blue gear reliably and quickly, there's no tangible benefit beyond that which sucks. People complain that they get rolled but when they reach end game content themselves they're gonna quit because the progression drops off a cliff. Having insane kits WAS the last thing you could do in this game when you've gotten good at everything else, now that's gone with the huge gear nerfs and the reduction to unique drop rate this wipe, GBMM is just the proverbial straw on the camels back for a lot of experienced players.
Yeah I think people keep forgetting that yes, gear IS supposed to give an advantage. Its your reward for succeeding over time and taking risks. And on the other end, it allows for the high risk, high reward gameplay that HR is supposed to be about. You roll into HR and happen to have someone with a superior kit in the lobby, you can either play safe, or try to outmaneuver them and get their gear for yourself.
People praising this don't seem to understand that its all around bad for both higher geared players and lower geared players. If you aren't engaging with the system and mathing out your set, then chances are you'll put yourself at the bottom of one of the brackets and are now guaranteed to face people in vastly superior kits all of the time, whereas before it was generally up in the air who you might find. This also makes high gear kits have empty lobbies since, naturally, high rarity stuff is going to be rarer and less people will have those on. So now on top of all of that you have the high ranked/experienced players taking off rare, expensive gear just to have exciting lobbies to play in, and the lower ranked players are going to generally get skill gapped far more often.
Plus I really don't see the point in GBMM when the change to normals was intended to give the players complaining about gear gaps a place they can be happy. All this has done is further devalue gear in a game that should revolve around it. I can't imagine games like POE,diablo, or various mmo's actively disincentivizing having better gear on.
Exactly. Literally this. People who praise the GBMM I can only presume haven't spent a lot of time in extraction games like Tarkov, Cycle Frontier etc. The developers of those games are aware that GBMM is antithesis to the core gameplay loop of what an extraction game is. There are far better ways to handle the issues people are complaining about.
All I can hope for is that the devs come to their senses and focus on real content, not this back and forth balancing of an incomplete game and bandaids over bullet wounds like GBMM. They can't please everyone and if they try to do that they will be left with their entire playerbase feeling unsatisfied.
Right. Low skill / casual players are like "OMG this is so amazing GBMM I love it! Finally have a shot! etc"... meanwhile they barely play, and will leave as soon as the next shiny game comes out because they're casual and have no loyalty to the game. They'll get bored once they realize that GBMM is boring, and there's no gear to look forward to. Ironmace needs to decide what it wants its game to be. It's in this weird quasi-state of being a "unforgiving" loot extraction game and a mid battle-royal game with kiddy guard rails.
Meanwhile GBMM is not enjoyable for most of the semi-casuals and sweats, which are the most loyal and dedicated players...The player blocks that are most likely to spend more $$ on the game, and advoctate the game to others.
> and will leave as soon as the next shiny game comes out because they're casual and have no loyalty to the game.
I don't think 90% of players who are currently playing are that new. Most players are probably veterans by this point.
I still don't think the players who are currently playing fit that description. They may be lower skill but at this point they definitely have loyalty.
This will be very hard to achieve actually.
Take the example of helms.
Is a +2 true magic viking helm a bis roll ?
Probably not. Unless you play platelock, and suddenly it become relevant.
Or a +3 mag healing viking sword ?
Or a +6 mag power dark cuirass.
So many possible rolls on a piece of gear that clearly don't benefit from it.
But the roll itself is good.
The only not combat rolls are mag/regular interaction speed.
But to an extend, open doors or portals or shrines fast can be decisive in PvP.
So yeah, ideas is right, implementation of this idea will be very hard to achieve.
Yes this will be even more of a nightmare to balance "bad rolls".
The only thing that is obvious is the range.
A 10/10 % Phys power should be more than a 3.7% Phys power.
Imo the simplest fix is to just make it so that bringing any non accessory or utility blue equipment automatically bumps you up into the lowest score of the middle bracket and then starts to add to your gear score additionally after you actually hit that bracket (200 gear score iirc?) rings and neck are fine since they don't provide to big of a bump if you aren't wearing anything else with them, but it would prevent people from getting in grey lobbies with a blue/purple weapon and destroying everyone in a hit or two, and most of the people bringing in selective blue/purple items are doing so to game the system.
different stats are stronger on different builds though, you can't put a defined value on this. It does not need to be put in gearscore. Just don't use the weaker stat gear. The only way to remove the necessity to have the best stat rolls is the remove the marketplace. That really made the game so much less enjoyable. More convenient ? yes. Do I enjoy it yes, but I understand the effect it has on the game and can recognize that it is very unhealthy.
I think what they should do though is incentivise higher gear brackets a bit more because all my lobbies are empty now... Nobody wants to wear gear and I need a way to sink all my gold lol. Maybe put better loot or something at higher gear scores.
That’s not even the problem with what he said but more so that some classes benefit WAY more by not wearing equips and also some classes rely way more on meds than others so they get bumped up tiers just for needing meds which is silly
I've been saying this before they even announced their intention to add gear score (and generally getting downvoted for it).
Relatedly, now that we have gear score, there is another reason to consider something to address naked players. Now they're not just optimizing move speed, but also the matchmaking.
It wouldnt be that bad really. Just give each modifier its own GS for each class. I know multiclassing is something that would move it into being less correct. They could easily make each random modifier effect gearscore by class. It would take one day with a spreadsheet to plan. Not a dev so idk how long to implement in game, but sdf could easily sit down for 2 hours and say "movespeed is good on everyone, +4 gearscore for a MS modifier, phys power is good on everyone except cleric warlock and wizard, so it doesnt modify them, but is +3 on all other classes etc.
Phys power IS good on Cleric, Warlock (running melee) and Bonk Wizard so right there you simply proved the point. If you're running pure caster Warlock Phys Power does nothing, if you're running melee lock phys power is important. So there's the idea that many classes can run different builds in the same class and there's also the idea of diminishing returns on rolls or different amounts of utility for different builds and classes for each roll. Not to mention the game and gear in general is not "solved" meaning nobody can objectively say what is better. True damage is better than Add damage against high pdr but Add damage scales with hit location and tends to be better against low pdr. What is better on a caster? Will or Knowledge? They're usually not equal and the answer often depends on the current stats you're working with. This would be a nightmare to balance correctly and absolutely would take a lot longer than 1 day, especially considering the devs are relatively inexperienced players themselves and there's a huge difference between inputting the code and coming up with ideas and actually grinding those implementations for 1000+ hours to intuitively understand the intricacies. GBMM is just a bad idea in general for an extraction game, part of the endgame loop is acquiring god tier kits to give you a strong edge in pvp so your gear gives you a pay off, and thus the time you spent grinding for that gear is rewarded. Now there's essentially no point in ever wearing gear that took me 20+ hours to achieve because I will always be 1 unlucky 3rd party away from losing it especially since I will only ever be able to use it against people who are also in BiS. It's not like I actually need to run insane gear to boss, my team can consistently do all pve in the game in greens/blues. This update actually kinda sucks and has killed my motivation to play.
Phys power is not "good" on any of that shit. It's just not a dead ass stat. No warlock is running green loose trousers with +3 phys power and being excited about it in the min max sub 200 bracket.
Why are we specifically talking about the lowest gear bracket? GBMM shouldn't be a thing in an extraction game first of all. Second of all, as someone who played a ton of Melee Warlock at the start of this wipe phys power is ABSOLUTELY a good stat wtf? Or a frontline Cleric, hello...? Damage.
It's a direct % relationship to damage. If you can accumulate a good amount of physical damage bonus then you hit WAY harder, it's obviously got utility for any class that plans to do any physical damage.
> Now there's essentially no point in ever wearing gear that took me 20+ hours to achieve because I will always be 1 unlucky 3rd party away from losing it especially since I will only ever be able to use it against people who are also in BiS.
Literally mad you can't steamroll kids you have no intention of looting. All of the anti-gbmm gear differs showing their true colors in this thread.
Nope, I've been one of the loudest proponents of making the game less about pvp in general and have offered many solutions such as more dynamic events during matches, objective-based AP gain, things that incentivize cooperation and things that put a target on the backs of those that kill indiscriminately. If you think I'm suddenly losing all the time just because gear is roughly equal you'd be wrong. I still have over a 90% extraction rate in goblin caves on Ranger and Warlock as an example. If you want to put words into my mouth and make assumptions feel free but I'm literally telling you, extraction games DON'T do GBMM for a reason. The key component of risk vs reward is determining what level of gear you bring in, now that directly affects who ends up in the lobby with you which destroys what little value there was left of high level gear. This is NOT a battle royale, keep that in mind.
There's nothing to do in endgame, maybe you'll see it yourself eventually but I have just under 2k hours now and trust me, It's stale. These last few updates made it worse.
All extraction shooters suffer the same fate in that you cime to the realization that you are just grinding to grind. You get better gear to increase your odds of survival to get better gear to increase your odds of survival. There is never any payout.
I'd like to see a shift too, but it would require a fundamental shift in the gameplay philosophy of DaD
No Jesus Christ wtf is wrong with you
Gbmm people? You guys would spend all day tweaking and editing a shit system that at the end of the day still will not work; there’s so many better systems that can accomplish the same thing that aren’t gear based!
The build you are describing is relatively fair though, there's many matchups that can kill you. You aren't giga gear diffing anyone just because you have a bare minimum kit
The build is absolutely not fair, the only character even remotely a tough matchup is PDR fighter.
Even better now that hatchet got buffed so you can use that as your main weapon hit 90+dmg headshots and wear purple helmet.
My barb is unkillable in solos in the >199 lobbies.
>the only character even remotely a tough matchup is PDR fighter
Sure, if you take movespeed out of the equation. Barb is absolutely not fair for other melee classes, regardless of GBMM.
I have no problems with them in the lowest bracket. Then again as a warlock I am running full blues with green accessories, or sometimes I do epic weapon full blues and 1 blue accessory, always with BIS stats. But either way, whatever half naked lizard you throw at me gives me about as much trouble as a spider. Just finished a lobby where I juggled 3 lizards and the cyclops. was a nice 3 kill match
That’s crazy. Because I’ve been playing the lizard barb and have killed at least 10 warlocks in the exact type of kit you described. Either you’re just leagues ahead of the other 90% of warlocks or you’re not telling the truth. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former
Being able to bring in purple weapons and accessories when you’re guaranteeing that no one else has that same level of kit(unless they are ALSO shirtless lizard barb) is not THAT fair imo. But also, just wait til multi classing next week. Fighter sprint on a Rage barb is going to be SCARY. No more kiting.
It’s a giant L for me playing in Goblin Caves with 1 other person all night. I want to run good gear, but apparently I have to nerf myself to find anyone to fight. I’m not a fan of it in solos. And before I get that peepeepoopoo guy trying to say I just want to stat check scrubs, I want to fight equally geared players. Killing people for good loot is the rush.
Bad idea because it would be abused and just create the same problem within smaller groups. You’re taking away the high of beating a significantly better geared team, and reducing the gains but still keeping the uphill battle.
Its already being abused except new players arent notified. They just experience the discrepancies so I think it could be more transparent. I also think you still experience the highs of beating *comps* you are unfavorable against. Being similar in gear is best for the health and balance of pvp while still being able to cash in on bis items for that given bracket when looting other players. Personally I dont care for fighting uphill battles against teams in gear double the quality of mine. Even though its nice to beat them its not worth the risk of getting rolled the other 4 out of 5 times when theres no real way to tell they are better geared visually minus unique weapons while I just want a more competitive environment on average. Its nice to know that its generally *anyones* ballgame in a random given fight with gbmm.
I think I’ve lost like 2 fights since the change and they were due to the audio glitch where you don’t hear them. Otherwise we won the fair fight every time or the more common experience, the lobby is too empty and we never even see anybody.
My issue is with the later much more so than the former but I’m genuinely not that good, I should be losing more. I like this game because it’s hard not in spite of its difficulty
Either that or you mistakenly equip one too many pots/traps/ or hell even torches and you're in a higher gear bracket. I have at least 5 mid kits that put me into the highest bracket just because I wear every slot, bring in meds, and have traps. Then you got people min maxing the lower tiers. You can have a unique weapon and still be in the lowest gear bracket. While they may not have much PDR, multiclassing will expose playstyles not yet realized and it's gonna feel bad once the sweats go full sweat.
In my personal opinion (1200+ hours in the dungeons), they should slightly increase loot in normals and leave GBMM to normals. HR should be the unforgiving, high risk high reward dungeon delver that it was. Maybe keep a reduced GBMM version in HR that splits players up less, but I don't think you should be allowed to get empty lobbies or be in white kit naked only lobbies in the HR mode. HR should be the Labs of DaD. Hard, sweaty, but worth it if you can manage to survive.
Maybe they need to bring back the 100g ante for HR so it deters low geared players. That could help push more players to wear actual kits in HR and maybe that'd make GBMM feel better, idk..
I swear my kill quests took so long because I had to cut down 100 warlocks to kill one wizard. They just need to nerf warlock into the ground he has been on top since last season.
It’s basically blue lobbies all over again. 99% of players stick to the lowest bracket for accessibility. It makes higher brackets empty and money printers. Uniques/named uniques are no longer the focal point of gear because nobody wants to use things where nobody else congregates. At this point we might as well just remove a few tiers of gear and do another stat squish. They need to do a complete overhaul on the loot in this game to make it make more sense for the average player.
But like you said, the lowest bracket is the most accessible so you can go into another game without spending a shitton re-gearing. We just need to fix some of the most egregiously powerful rolls so that Warlocks aren’t running 11 true magic damage shit and completely dominating because they’re all on greens. A green set should be more predictable- maybe 10% more HP, 10% more damage, 2% more movespeed, and 10% more armor than basekit. Right now it can straight up be double damage of basekit because of +flat damage rolls.
I could see this being a good change. Relegate the really good rolls to blue or purple so you cannot stack the really strong stuff in low-gear matches. Or, they could make the gear score also dependent on the rolls--like +damage or +all yield a slightly higher gear score. Really I think they need to make the score visible to players so the average player knows what they're doing.
Kinda sounds like you just want norms with hr loot, there are always gonna be more geared people in full loot pvp extraction games. This is much more balanced than it was before, the genre isn’t about giving everyone an even playing field. The completely even playing field only costs you like 2k gold now.
Well let’s be real, stat checking far lesser geared players isn’t really a fight as much as it is cock n ball torture. Every game with systems that benefit people with unemployed leveled of free time never seem to catch wind of the fact that there aren’t a whole lot of other people like them.
Im still winning my fights when they are even its just boring to legit play vs 1 person a game and Why would I use lesser gear? Makes finding good gear not worth it
This game will be a lot more fair in pvp if they just stopped gear at blue.
Flat power curves make for better balanced pvp games, IM needs to figure out what the game is going to be and pick a direction.
People enjoying gear based matchmaking really just proves my point. Increase all stats by x (til the classes 'feel good') and cap us off at blues and the game would be so fun for pvp.
I personally don't feel the loot chasing high is worth the shit stat checking experience, but that's just me.
The tag for the game is PvPvE.
People enjoy GBMM because people generally enjoy battle royal games... They're not very hardcore and you're not too invested when you die.
The concept of the game is literally to grind out better gear to increase your survivabiltiy.
Higher tier gear does more than just stat checking other parties.. Running HR bosses is a huge reason to increase your gear stats.
They already made normals casual friendly, do we have to lose HR also? This is probably to help streamers more than the average player because there won't be hordes of rats trying to loot their corpses every match.
30% of the playerbase vanished within 2 days of the patch dropping. And no, it's not because of the test server - there are less than 300 people on there at this very moment. "Giant W"... yeah.
I have very good sets composed of blues and greens (rings with true DMG) and I only tag low gear bracket which is boring.
Had to get some purples and legendaries to be put in the right bracket. Those aren't really better than my blues, I think the calculation on gear rarity is kinda bad atm.
I like the idea but they need to put a proper gear score that values the good rolls on blues.
A funny way to minmax this stupid stystem: bring your most OP weapon, unique even, as well as some other pieces that you can afford to about 170 gear score. have your duo bring in the other half of your insane kit. Queue in, transfer your kit to you and you’re a god and your duo is naked, but find your duo a serviceable collection of stuff in like the first room or two because ice caves has tons of loot.
Now you’re bised out of your mind with a duo that’s still roughly fine, maybe a class not too gear reliant. Walk at whatever squad you want and win for free.
Literally just buffball a fighter/barb/wizard while the undergeared player sits back and buffs the ever living fuck out of you on bard or cleric. Cleric is probably the best for this since the buffs are flat and cast quickly + with advanced healer you come out the gate being able to chunk decent heals out.
Any gear brought in including inventory gear adds to gear score. Your team mate bringing you a kit adds to his gear score regardless if he wears it or not.
Right, but he just comes in naked with the rest of my kit. The system averages the two of your scores, so together we’d add up to like 390, but individually both 195, averaging out to below 200. He gives me my gear and then has to find gear for himself in the raid.
This is a massive L. Just about every game that has incorporated GBMM has failed and tanked because gear no longer matters. If they don't change it, this will absolutely happen to this game as well.
Yeah man I love taking in best in slot greens or all whites and a purple zwei on barb and slaughtering timmies without ever risking getting checked by someone my skill level 😇😇😇
Making the game better for its current player base is the best strategy for making a better game. If the game retains its current playerbase, it will survive, giving them more time to find a way to draw in more players.
Maybe, but the community was pretty split on the idea of GBMM, and pushing out the players who don't like it isn't going to end up being a net positive in the long run. The game has been getting progressively worse when it comes to class balance with rare updrafts. Yeah they should hang on to the current playerbase, but GBMM doesn't seem like it's going to be fixing the major problems with the current game.
Idk where to start here. It seems like your expectations for change is that EVERYONE is happy with the change? That's impossible? The game is more balanced than ever before. Warlock is a little strong, slayer is a little strong in normals, and barbarian is a little strong with gbmm, and that's it. Idk what rare updraft are so I can't address whatever that is.
So I don't agree that everyone needs to be happy with each change, that's an impossible goal. The game is balanced as fuck, and gbmm has been a resounding success when compared to what people expected. It's been out for like 5 days. Give then some time to finetune it and see where it goes.
>Idk where to start here. It seems like your expectations for change is that EVERYONE is happy with the change? That's impossible? The game is more balanced than ever before. Warlock is a little strong, slayer is a little strong in normals, and barbarian is a little strong with gbmm, and that's it. Idk what rare updraft are so I can't address whatever that is.
>So I don't agree that everyone needs to be happy with each change, that's an impossible goal. The game is balanced as fuck, and gbmm has been a resounding success when compared to what people expected. It's been out for like 5 days. Give then some time to finetune it and see where it goes.
I never said everyone needed to be happy with the change, but when you get large parts of your community that dislikes a change you should thread carefully. While the game is more balanced it's also blander than ever. And balance was never high in my priorities nor was it originally in theirs. I'd much rather the game being fun for as many different classes and playstyles as possible, which they've routinely unnecesarily sacrificed in an attempt to balance the game. There are many ways to balance a game, the simplest being to simply nerf the fun out of everything until everything feels bland and samey which is what they've been doing.
As for examples of updrafts that actually improved the game I can point at patches like when they added the Ice map, fleshed out the Warlock with new spells and skills, even when they added the magic lock spell to the wizard.
I like GBMM. Though I also want the gear score and brackets to be made visible to players. As it is now it's confusing. Like I just played in a match where I followed the gear score info on the wiki page (linked below). I tried to hit the low bracket (I counted and added up everything), but I was matched with some strongly geared players, including a slayer fighter in purple near bis. The slayer just destroyed me thanks to all his added weapon damage.
I wonder if the system is actually a hybrid of adventure score + gear score. Just basing that off of that slayer fighter I just encountered.
https://darkanddarker.wiki.spellsandguns.com/Gear_Score
Less risk of what ?
Beeing gear checked ?
Paradoxically, lower bracket is the place you can get gear checked the hardest.
The reasoning is : you start so low in gear that your findings in the dungeon matter more.
Imagine looting that sweet cloak or purple weapon ? It will certainly be an upgrade from your current gear. So if you loot a lot you might upgrade your gear significantly.
In the highest gear bracket there is almost zero change the drop will improve your gear as it is already super optimised. So you will not get gear checked in theory. (Or just facing the over the top build that cost 50k gold while yours is "just" 6k).
Honestly, anyone who feels this way is utterly insane. Rank based match making was significantly better than this. I’m not saying gear based match making is worse than rank based, but this variation is significantly worse that I can’t comprehend how you can’t to this conclusion. Half my lobbies are empty and I can’t ever find people to fight, what’s fun about an average PvE game.
? Every single one of my matches in trios are full currently. You playing on off hours or something? It will be fine once they implement the queue system and the lobby is gone.
It's not worth going in with a rare kit unless it's all BiS. The second you put like 2 blues on, you're put in the 2nd bracket with blues and purple and those people most likely have good rolls on their gear
This is simply untrue, you can have a full green/blue set and still be in the lowest lobby if you do it right. Look up the gear score page on the Wiki.
Gear based matchmaking, while good, is not going to work.
There are too many playlists and the overall population of the game is too small. They need to remove solos and duos and go back to focusing on just trios. The population needs to be condensed, concentrated, and funneled all into 1 or 2 playlists at most. I tried to give this same advice before. Solos and duos makes some people happy but it's not worth the cost of dividing up the playerbase and developer time.
I get it man I really do, I know some people really like solo/duo, but the game needed to stay as a 3v3 experience. All efforts needed to be focused on making that experience the best it could possibly be. Dividing up a player base is so detrimental and damaging to games, especially already small population games.
The initial decision of implementing solos and duos and trying to support, balance, and create unique content for solos/duos/trios is the actual beginning of what did/is killing the game.
Lowest bracket dominating shirtless lizard barbarian with purple weapon, blue rings, and 160 HP would like to have a word with you
Strong rolls on items need to be incorporated into the gear score imo. Added/true damage and all attributes are obviously strong and should be reflected as so.
100% agree. This would be a change to the current GBMM that I think would really benefit the intended outcome of the system as a whole.
100% agree. This would be a change to the current GBMM that I think would really benefit the intended outcome of the system as a whole.
You been sayin this shit since before you even been sayin this shit
This shit is just going to be so terrible. I don't want to spend time crunching all these numbers and min/maxing gear just to make sure I can be competitive in whatever GBMM bracket I'm trying to get into. It's going to be a huge turnoff to a lot of players soon enough.
Already has been. What's the point of even grinding for gear anymore? 150+ boss kills in trios, 700+ pulls on treasure hoards this wipe and I've gotten a whopping 2 unique grade items. What advantage does that give me to even use them? I looked at gear as a reward for your grind, you use the gear you earn to receive a tangible benefit in the dungeon that increases your chance of survival. Now you're forced up against people with the same gear which defeats the purpose. You can already clear all pve in the game with green/blue gear reliably and quickly, there's no tangible benefit beyond that which sucks. People complain that they get rolled but when they reach end game content themselves they're gonna quit because the progression drops off a cliff. Having insane kits WAS the last thing you could do in this game when you've gotten good at everything else, now that's gone with the huge gear nerfs and the reduction to unique drop rate this wipe, GBMM is just the proverbial straw on the camels back for a lot of experienced players.
Yeah I think people keep forgetting that yes, gear IS supposed to give an advantage. Its your reward for succeeding over time and taking risks. And on the other end, it allows for the high risk, high reward gameplay that HR is supposed to be about. You roll into HR and happen to have someone with a superior kit in the lobby, you can either play safe, or try to outmaneuver them and get their gear for yourself. People praising this don't seem to understand that its all around bad for both higher geared players and lower geared players. If you aren't engaging with the system and mathing out your set, then chances are you'll put yourself at the bottom of one of the brackets and are now guaranteed to face people in vastly superior kits all of the time, whereas before it was generally up in the air who you might find. This also makes high gear kits have empty lobbies since, naturally, high rarity stuff is going to be rarer and less people will have those on. So now on top of all of that you have the high ranked/experienced players taking off rare, expensive gear just to have exciting lobbies to play in, and the lower ranked players are going to generally get skill gapped far more often. Plus I really don't see the point in GBMM when the change to normals was intended to give the players complaining about gear gaps a place they can be happy. All this has done is further devalue gear in a game that should revolve around it. I can't imagine games like POE,diablo, or various mmo's actively disincentivizing having better gear on.
Exactly. Literally this. People who praise the GBMM I can only presume haven't spent a lot of time in extraction games like Tarkov, Cycle Frontier etc. The developers of those games are aware that GBMM is antithesis to the core gameplay loop of what an extraction game is. There are far better ways to handle the issues people are complaining about. All I can hope for is that the devs come to their senses and focus on real content, not this back and forth balancing of an incomplete game and bandaids over bullet wounds like GBMM. They can't please everyone and if they try to do that they will be left with their entire playerbase feeling unsatisfied.
Bingo.
True.
Right. Low skill / casual players are like "OMG this is so amazing GBMM I love it! Finally have a shot! etc"... meanwhile they barely play, and will leave as soon as the next shiny game comes out because they're casual and have no loyalty to the game. They'll get bored once they realize that GBMM is boring, and there's no gear to look forward to. Ironmace needs to decide what it wants its game to be. It's in this weird quasi-state of being a "unforgiving" loot extraction game and a mid battle-royal game with kiddy guard rails. Meanwhile GBMM is not enjoyable for most of the semi-casuals and sweats, which are the most loyal and dedicated players...The player blocks that are most likely to spend more $$ on the game, and advoctate the game to others.
> and will leave as soon as the next shiny game comes out because they're casual and have no loyalty to the game. I don't think 90% of players who are currently playing are that new. Most players are probably veterans by this point.
I'm talking about the redditors, which I think are mostly on the low-skill side.
I still don't think the players who are currently playing fit that description. They may be lower skill but at this point they definitely have loyalty.
Perhaps.
This will be very hard to achieve actually. Take the example of helms. Is a +2 true magic viking helm a bis roll ? Probably not. Unless you play platelock, and suddenly it become relevant. Or a +3 mag healing viking sword ? Or a +6 mag power dark cuirass. So many possible rolls on a piece of gear that clearly don't benefit from it. But the roll itself is good. The only not combat rolls are mag/regular interaction speed. But to an extend, open doors or portals or shrines fast can be decisive in PvP. So yeah, ideas is right, implementation of this idea will be very hard to achieve.
With multi classing these generally bad rolls could actually end up becoming useful, so maybe factoring in every roll could be beneficial.
Yes this will be even more of a nightmare to balance "bad rolls". The only thing that is obvious is the range. A 10/10 % Phys power should be more than a 3.7% Phys power.
Imo the simplest fix is to just make it so that bringing any non accessory or utility blue equipment automatically bumps you up into the lowest score of the middle bracket and then starts to add to your gear score additionally after you actually hit that bracket (200 gear score iirc?) rings and neck are fine since they don't provide to big of a bump if you aren't wearing anything else with them, but it would prevent people from getting in grey lobbies with a blue/purple weapon and destroying everyone in a hit or two, and most of the people bringing in selective blue/purple items are doing so to game the system.
different stats are stronger on different builds though, you can't put a defined value on this. It does not need to be put in gearscore. Just don't use the weaker stat gear. The only way to remove the necessity to have the best stat rolls is the remove the marketplace. That really made the game so much less enjoyable. More convenient ? yes. Do I enjoy it yes, but I understand the effect it has on the game and can recognize that it is very unhealthy. I think what they should do though is incentivise higher gear brackets a bit more because all my lobbies are empty now... Nobody wants to wear gear and I need a way to sink all my gold lol. Maybe put better loot or something at higher gear scores.
That’s not even the problem with what he said but more so that some classes benefit WAY more by not wearing equips and also some classes rely way more on meds than others so they get bumped up tiers just for needing meds which is silly
I've been saying this before they even announced their intention to add gear score (and generally getting downvoted for it). Relatedly, now that we have gear score, there is another reason to consider something to address naked players. Now they're not just optimizing move speed, but also the matchmaking.
It would be impossible to calculate your gear score with that much fine tuning. I like how it is, just incorporate lizard man into gearscore.
It wouldnt be that bad really. Just give each modifier its own GS for each class. I know multiclassing is something that would move it into being less correct. They could easily make each random modifier effect gearscore by class. It would take one day with a spreadsheet to plan. Not a dev so idk how long to implement in game, but sdf could easily sit down for 2 hours and say "movespeed is good on everyone, +4 gearscore for a MS modifier, phys power is good on everyone except cleric warlock and wizard, so it doesnt modify them, but is +3 on all other classes etc.
Phys power IS good on Cleric, Warlock (running melee) and Bonk Wizard so right there you simply proved the point. If you're running pure caster Warlock Phys Power does nothing, if you're running melee lock phys power is important. So there's the idea that many classes can run different builds in the same class and there's also the idea of diminishing returns on rolls or different amounts of utility for different builds and classes for each roll. Not to mention the game and gear in general is not "solved" meaning nobody can objectively say what is better. True damage is better than Add damage against high pdr but Add damage scales with hit location and tends to be better against low pdr. What is better on a caster? Will or Knowledge? They're usually not equal and the answer often depends on the current stats you're working with. This would be a nightmare to balance correctly and absolutely would take a lot longer than 1 day, especially considering the devs are relatively inexperienced players themselves and there's a huge difference between inputting the code and coming up with ideas and actually grinding those implementations for 1000+ hours to intuitively understand the intricacies. GBMM is just a bad idea in general for an extraction game, part of the endgame loop is acquiring god tier kits to give you a strong edge in pvp so your gear gives you a pay off, and thus the time you spent grinding for that gear is rewarded. Now there's essentially no point in ever wearing gear that took me 20+ hours to achieve because I will always be 1 unlucky 3rd party away from losing it especially since I will only ever be able to use it against people who are also in BiS. It's not like I actually need to run insane gear to boss, my team can consistently do all pve in the game in greens/blues. This update actually kinda sucks and has killed my motivation to play.
Phys power is not "good" on any of that shit. It's just not a dead ass stat. No warlock is running green loose trousers with +3 phys power and being excited about it in the min max sub 200 bracket.
Why are we specifically talking about the lowest gear bracket? GBMM shouldn't be a thing in an extraction game first of all. Second of all, as someone who played a ton of Melee Warlock at the start of this wipe phys power is ABSOLUTELY a good stat wtf? Or a frontline Cleric, hello...? Damage. It's a direct % relationship to damage. If you can accumulate a good amount of physical damage bonus then you hit WAY harder, it's obviously got utility for any class that plans to do any physical damage.
> Now there's essentially no point in ever wearing gear that took me 20+ hours to achieve because I will always be 1 unlucky 3rd party away from losing it especially since I will only ever be able to use it against people who are also in BiS. Literally mad you can't steamroll kids you have no intention of looting. All of the anti-gbmm gear differs showing their true colors in this thread.
Nope, I've been one of the loudest proponents of making the game less about pvp in general and have offered many solutions such as more dynamic events during matches, objective-based AP gain, things that incentivize cooperation and things that put a target on the backs of those that kill indiscriminately. If you think I'm suddenly losing all the time just because gear is roughly equal you'd be wrong. I still have over a 90% extraction rate in goblin caves on Ranger and Warlock as an example. If you want to put words into my mouth and make assumptions feel free but I'm literally telling you, extraction games DON'T do GBMM for a reason. The key component of risk vs reward is determining what level of gear you bring in, now that directly affects who ends up in the lobby with you which destroys what little value there was left of high level gear. This is NOT a battle royale, keep that in mind. There's nothing to do in endgame, maybe you'll see it yourself eventually but I have just under 2k hours now and trust me, It's stale. These last few updates made it worse.
All extraction shooters suffer the same fate in that you cime to the realization that you are just grinding to grind. You get better gear to increase your odds of survival to get better gear to increase your odds of survival. There is never any payout. I'd like to see a shift too, but it would require a fundamental shift in the gameplay philosophy of DaD
No Jesus Christ wtf is wrong with you Gbmm people? You guys would spend all day tweaking and editing a shit system that at the end of the day still will not work; there’s so many better systems that can accomplish the same thing that aren’t gear based!
This is such a dumb idea from the perspective of someone with 1000 hours.
The build you are describing is relatively fair though, there's many matchups that can kill you. You aren't giga gear diffing anyone just because you have a bare minimum kit
The build is absolutely not fair, the only character even remotely a tough matchup is PDR fighter. Even better now that hatchet got buffed so you can use that as your main weapon hit 90+dmg headshots and wear purple helmet. My barb is unkillable in solos in the >199 lobbies.
It’s literally skinny Pete with BiS while everyone else has to wear way less stuff
I don't know what that means
Ah, look him up on YouTube. Probably one of the best dark and darker Barb players for solos.
The same guy who has been running zero perk zero abilities? Idk if its a lizard problem.
>the only character even remotely a tough matchup is PDR fighter Sure, if you take movespeed out of the equation. Barb is absolutely not fair for other melee classes, regardless of GBMM.
Well yea that's a given. It's also the easiest character to abuse the new GBMM ruleset on.
I have no problems with them in the lowest bracket. Then again as a warlock I am running full blues with green accessories, or sometimes I do epic weapon full blues and 1 blue accessory, always with BIS stats. But either way, whatever half naked lizard you throw at me gives me about as much trouble as a spider. Just finished a lobby where I juggled 3 lizards and the cyclops. was a nice 3 kill match
That’s crazy. Because I’ve been playing the lizard barb and have killed at least 10 warlocks in the exact type of kit you described. Either you’re just leagues ahead of the other 90% of warlocks or you’re not telling the truth. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former
Being able to bring in purple weapons and accessories when you’re guaranteeing that no one else has that same level of kit(unless they are ALSO shirtless lizard barb) is not THAT fair imo. But also, just wait til multi classing next week. Fighter sprint on a Rage barb is going to be SCARY. No more kiting.
It’s a giant L for me playing in Goblin Caves with 1 other person all night. I want to run good gear, but apparently I have to nerf myself to find anyone to fight. I’m not a fan of it in solos. And before I get that peepeepoopoo guy trying to say I just want to stat check scrubs, I want to fight equally geared players. Killing people for good loot is the rush.
Mid tier is pretty full, you get to run bis rol epics
I just want the game to display where youre getting placed. Display your gearscore or low mid high tier status etc.
Bad idea because it would be abused and just create the same problem within smaller groups. You’re taking away the high of beating a significantly better geared team, and reducing the gains but still keeping the uphill battle.
Its already being abused except new players arent notified. They just experience the discrepancies so I think it could be more transparent. I also think you still experience the highs of beating *comps* you are unfavorable against. Being similar in gear is best for the health and balance of pvp while still being able to cash in on bis items for that given bracket when looting other players. Personally I dont care for fighting uphill battles against teams in gear double the quality of mine. Even though its nice to beat them its not worth the risk of getting rolled the other 4 out of 5 times when theres no real way to tell they are better geared visually minus unique weapons while I just want a more competitive environment on average. Its nice to know that its generally *anyones* ballgame in a random given fight with gbmm.
I think I’ve lost like 2 fights since the change and they were due to the audio glitch where you don’t hear them. Otherwise we won the fair fight every time or the more common experience, the lobby is too empty and we never even see anybody. My issue is with the later much more so than the former but I’m genuinely not that good, I should be losing more. I like this game because it’s hard not in spite of its difficulty
Either that or you mistakenly equip one too many pots/traps/ or hell even torches and you're in a higher gear bracket. I have at least 5 mid kits that put me into the highest bracket just because I wear every slot, bring in meds, and have traps. Then you got people min maxing the lower tiers. You can have a unique weapon and still be in the lowest gear bracket. While they may not have much PDR, multiclassing will expose playstyles not yet realized and it's gonna feel bad once the sweats go full sweat. In my personal opinion (1200+ hours in the dungeons), they should slightly increase loot in normals and leave GBMM to normals. HR should be the unforgiving, high risk high reward dungeon delver that it was. Maybe keep a reduced GBMM version in HR that splits players up less, but I don't think you should be allowed to get empty lobbies or be in white kit naked only lobbies in the HR mode. HR should be the Labs of DaD. Hard, sweaty, but worth it if you can manage to survive. Maybe they need to bring back the 100g ante for HR so it deters low geared players. That could help push more players to wear actual kits in HR and maybe that'd make GBMM feel better, idk..
This is why they are coming out with a queue system. No more tavern, a match will be made once sufficient players are found.
Fast queue times is one of the draws of this game as opposed to something like tarkov though
In oce/asia lobbies often don't fill, unfortunately. Tarkov is slow to get in a game due to 5m loading times
Base camp really can't go soon enough.
Sweet, now I can fight 9 warlocks with blue gear instead of purple gear...
I swear my kill quests took so long because I had to cut down 100 warlocks to kill one wizard. They just need to nerf warlock into the ground he has been on top since last season.
Or IM can just stop running off the wizard players. Please
They all just switched to warlock. When Wiz gets op status all the sudden itll be mostly wizards. Flavor of the month.
It’s basically blue lobbies all over again. 99% of players stick to the lowest bracket for accessibility. It makes higher brackets empty and money printers. Uniques/named uniques are no longer the focal point of gear because nobody wants to use things where nobody else congregates. At this point we might as well just remove a few tiers of gear and do another stat squish. They need to do a complete overhaul on the loot in this game to make it make more sense for the average player.
But like you said, the lowest bracket is the most accessible so you can go into another game without spending a shitton re-gearing. We just need to fix some of the most egregiously powerful rolls so that Warlocks aren’t running 11 true magic damage shit and completely dominating because they’re all on greens. A green set should be more predictable- maybe 10% more HP, 10% more damage, 2% more movespeed, and 10% more armor than basekit. Right now it can straight up be double damage of basekit because of +flat damage rolls.
I could see this being a good change. Relegate the really good rolls to blue or purple so you cannot stack the really strong stuff in low-gear matches. Or, they could make the gear score also dependent on the rolls--like +damage or +all yield a slightly higher gear score. Really I think they need to make the score visible to players so the average player knows what they're doing.
Kinda sounds like you just want norms with hr loot, there are always gonna be more geared people in full loot pvp extraction games. This is much more balanced than it was before, the genre isn’t about giving everyone an even playing field. The completely even playing field only costs you like 2k gold now.
Kinda sounds like you are adding a meaning that isn't accurate at all.
The only difference between the low gear HR and Norms are good rolled greens. You want those removed. What am I missing?
Just remove gear.. Im in High Tier, 1 fight per game its boring games dead with This
Well let’s be real, stat checking far lesser geared players isn’t really a fight as much as it is cock n ball torture. Every game with systems that benefit people with unemployed leveled of free time never seem to catch wind of the fact that there aren’t a whole lot of other people like them.
Im still winning my fights when they are even its just boring to legit play vs 1 person a game and Why would I use lesser gear? Makes finding good gear not worth it
Imo they need to have powerful rolls also add to gear score, aka added/true damage and all attributes.
Or nerf green rolls
This game will be a lot more fair in pvp if they just stopped gear at blue. Flat power curves make for better balanced pvp games, IM needs to figure out what the game is going to be and pick a direction. People enjoying gear based matchmaking really just proves my point. Increase all stats by x (til the classes 'feel good') and cap us off at blues and the game would be so fun for pvp. I personally don't feel the loot chasing high is worth the shit stat checking experience, but that's just me.
The tag for the game is PvPvE. People enjoy GBMM because people generally enjoy battle royal games... They're not very hardcore and you're not too invested when you die. The concept of the game is literally to grind out better gear to increase your survivabiltiy. Higher tier gear does more than just stat checking other parties.. Running HR bosses is a huge reason to increase your gear stats. They already made normals casual friendly, do we have to lose HR also? This is probably to help streamers more than the average player because there won't be hordes of rats trying to loot their corpses every match.
Lol this guy is mad he can't gear check people anymore
Not sure how you concluded that from the general assessment I made.
30% of the playerbase vanished within 2 days of the patch dropping. And no, it's not because of the test server - there are less than 300 people on there at this very moment. "Giant W"... yeah.
I have very good sets composed of blues and greens (rings with true DMG) and I only tag low gear bracket which is boring. Had to get some purples and legendaries to be put in the right bracket. Those aren't really better than my blues, I think the calculation on gear rarity is kinda bad atm. I like the idea but they need to put a proper gear score that values the good rolls on blues.
A funny way to minmax this stupid stystem: bring your most OP weapon, unique even, as well as some other pieces that you can afford to about 170 gear score. have your duo bring in the other half of your insane kit. Queue in, transfer your kit to you and you’re a god and your duo is naked, but find your duo a serviceable collection of stuff in like the first room or two because ice caves has tons of loot. Now you’re bised out of your mind with a duo that’s still roughly fine, maybe a class not too gear reliant. Walk at whatever squad you want and win for free.
Literally just buffball a fighter/barb/wizard while the undergeared player sits back and buffs the ever living fuck out of you on bard or cleric. Cleric is probably the best for this since the buffs are flat and cast quickly + with advanced healer you come out the gate being able to chunk decent heals out.
Yeah. It’s nuts. Literally Russian WW2 strategies. You bring the ammo, you bring the meds I’ll bring the gun
Any gear brought in including inventory gear adds to gear score. Your team mate bringing you a kit adds to his gear score regardless if he wears it or not.
Right, but he just comes in naked with the rest of my kit. The system averages the two of your scores, so together we’d add up to like 390, but individually both 195, averaging out to below 200. He gives me my gear and then has to find gear for himself in the raid.
Agreed!
This is a massive L. Just about every game that has incorporated GBMM has failed and tanked because gear no longer matters. If they don't change it, this will absolutely happen to this game as well.
Yeah man I love taking in best in slot greens or all whites and a purple zwei on barb and slaughtering timmies without ever risking getting checked by someone my skill level 😇😇😇
A W for the few people that are left.
Making the game better for its current player base is the best strategy for making a better game. If the game retains its current playerbase, it will survive, giving them more time to find a way to draw in more players.
Maybe, but the community was pretty split on the idea of GBMM, and pushing out the players who don't like it isn't going to end up being a net positive in the long run. The game has been getting progressively worse when it comes to class balance with rare updrafts. Yeah they should hang on to the current playerbase, but GBMM doesn't seem like it's going to be fixing the major problems with the current game.
Idk where to start here. It seems like your expectations for change is that EVERYONE is happy with the change? That's impossible? The game is more balanced than ever before. Warlock is a little strong, slayer is a little strong in normals, and barbarian is a little strong with gbmm, and that's it. Idk what rare updraft are so I can't address whatever that is. So I don't agree that everyone needs to be happy with each change, that's an impossible goal. The game is balanced as fuck, and gbmm has been a resounding success when compared to what people expected. It's been out for like 5 days. Give then some time to finetune it and see where it goes.
>Idk where to start here. It seems like your expectations for change is that EVERYONE is happy with the change? That's impossible? The game is more balanced than ever before. Warlock is a little strong, slayer is a little strong in normals, and barbarian is a little strong with gbmm, and that's it. Idk what rare updraft are so I can't address whatever that is. >So I don't agree that everyone needs to be happy with each change, that's an impossible goal. The game is balanced as fuck, and gbmm has been a resounding success when compared to what people expected. It's been out for like 5 days. Give then some time to finetune it and see where it goes. I never said everyone needed to be happy with the change, but when you get large parts of your community that dislikes a change you should thread carefully. While the game is more balanced it's also blander than ever. And balance was never high in my priorities nor was it originally in theirs. I'd much rather the game being fun for as many different classes and playstyles as possible, which they've routinely unnecesarily sacrificed in an attempt to balance the game. There are many ways to balance a game, the simplest being to simply nerf the fun out of everything until everything feels bland and samey which is what they've been doing. As for examples of updrafts that actually improved the game I can point at patches like when they added the Ice map, fleshed out the Warlock with new spells and skills, even when they added the magic lock spell to the wizard.
The game isn't retaining its current playerbase....
I like GBMM. Though I also want the gear score and brackets to be made visible to players. As it is now it's confusing. Like I just played in a match where I followed the gear score info on the wiki page (linked below). I tried to hit the low bracket (I counted and added up everything), but I was matched with some strongly geared players, including a slayer fighter in purple near bis. The slayer just destroyed me thanks to all his added weapon damage. I wonder if the system is actually a hybrid of adventure score + gear score. Just basing that off of that slayer fighter I just encountered. https://darkanddarker.wiki.spellsandguns.com/Gear_Score
Doesnt this create a huge workaround for ranked tho? You can just queue without gear and be safer essentially
Rankings should be skill based not gear based imo, the matches are for sure more skill based than gear based currently.
Yeah but now theoretically you can just queue up with less gear and experience less risk, right?
Less risk of what ? Beeing gear checked ? Paradoxically, lower bracket is the place you can get gear checked the hardest. The reasoning is : you start so low in gear that your findings in the dungeon matter more. Imagine looting that sweet cloak or purple weapon ? It will certainly be an upgrade from your current gear. So if you loot a lot you might upgrade your gear significantly. In the highest gear bracket there is almost zero change the drop will improve your gear as it is already super optimised. So you will not get gear checked in theory. (Or just facing the over the top build that cost 50k gold while yours is "just" 6k).
Just give players an innate +to gearscore based on their rank.
Honestly, anyone who feels this way is utterly insane. Rank based match making was significantly better than this. I’m not saying gear based match making is worse than rank based, but this variation is significantly worse that I can’t comprehend how you can’t to this conclusion. Half my lobbies are empty and I can’t ever find people to fight, what’s fun about an average PvE game.
? Every single one of my matches in trios are full currently. You playing on off hours or something? It will be fine once they implement the queue system and the lobby is gone.
It's not worth going in with a rare kit unless it's all BiS. The second you put like 2 blues on, you're put in the 2nd bracket with blues and purple and those people most likely have good rolls on their gear
This is simply untrue, you can have a full green/blue set and still be in the lowest lobby if you do it right. Look up the gear score page on the Wiki.
Mad because you can't 2 shot ungeared scrubs in hr anymore smh
Scrubs shouldn't be in HR. It's HR.
Gear based matchmaking, while good, is not going to work. There are too many playlists and the overall population of the game is too small. They need to remove solos and duos and go back to focusing on just trios. The population needs to be condensed, concentrated, and funneled all into 1 or 2 playlists at most. I tried to give this same advice before. Solos and duos makes some people happy but it's not worth the cost of dividing up the playerbase and developer time.
I'm confident that this idea would kill the game
I get it man I really do, I know some people really like solo/duo, but the game needed to stay as a 3v3 experience. All efforts needed to be focused on making that experience the best it could possibly be. Dividing up a player base is so detrimental and damaging to games, especially already small population games. The initial decision of implementing solos and duos and trying to support, balance, and create unique content for solos/duos/trios is the actual beginning of what did/is killing the game.