Old school HLDM player and community organizer sharing opinions and insight on BM:DM

[intangible]

Hello Devs and BM fans,

So last night i took the plunge and bought BM solely on the merits of the Deathmatch experience (never have been into solo stuff).

I want to first congratulate the artists involved in helping shape some very eye-candy looking maps, and models. I was definitely impressed with the looks.

So last night, i went to battle it up with some people in Deathmatch and i didn’t find even one server with 1 player for the duration of about 40 minutes I stuck around in the game. Damn, thats not a good sign but after exploring the maps and messing around, I was trying to understand why such a great looking game has such a poor playerbase?

First, i want a give a small backstory because i think this is incredibly important to give proper context and a better understanding of my perspective. I started played HLDM in 2001 and got heavily into the scene with clans and such. Eventually, i created the Deathmatch league around 2002-2004. We were having about 24+ clans back then in the league while the game was already in full death by that time. We moved the game over to Adrenaline gamer and continued on for a couple more years and then i moved on. More recently, I play matchmaking in cs:go at a fairly decent rank (badge). Its important to realize all this so that when i start laying in on your mod, you have some context that i am not a complete new player to this genre.

The Good: Again, incredible pretty landscapes, pretty gun models. The weapons feel overall pretty nice. I love the mix of recoil you added to mp5. The RPG feels super good and rewarding when firing, The gluon beam feels like I am a ghostbuster! Super cool stuff. I can tell you guys put an aweful lot of time into getting the weapons right. seriously, great job.

The bad: If i didn’t already know HLDM, finding items would be incredibly difficult and annoying. The maps are pretty but cluttered and the items seem to be lost. I can see a new player getting super frustrated within the first 5 minutes. Its like an effort to find stuff. Also, when you pick stuff up, the game doesn’t do a very good job letting you know. Getting longjump should be a rewarding experience kinda like HLDM…but i had no idea i picked up the LJ while on bounce. If you guys want super detailed maps, you have to make the pickup experience easier. Make the models bright models and even consider color codes. The subtle flashing is weak and not very helpful. Also, you wouldnt have to oversaturate the maps with additional items if it was easier to find them in the first place. It looks like you guys doubled the amount of items from the original HLDM.

The Ugly: Again, you guys put so much effort into the weapons, why was the movement ignored? I can understand if you guys feel like bunnyhopping doesn’t fit the game but you have to some how come up with a way to balance the weapons against players who have full gauss and armor. Its too easy for someone with great map knowledge to load up all the armor and gauss and just go around thrashing people. Thrashed players are frustrated players and frustrated players just stop playing. For starters the gauss charged sound versus enemies is super subtle, so by the time you have time to react, its almost too late. The gauss sound should be loud and obnoxious and heard from a distance. Also, players with charged gauss shouldn’t be able to hear as far (not sure if this was already implimented). What about penalties for fall damage? I was gaussing around and almost found it impossible to get fall damage…on bounce! I was shocked.

I feel like i was played Day of defeat source with super hightech weapons. It takes a lot of effort to find enemies especially when the other player is using the zombie model. This is really unacceptable in a deathmatch game. Make model superbright or give players the option. This is deathmatch, not single player.

I could go on, and i really hate having to come hear to bitch and complain but i thought maybe something I said might be helpful.

If you guys are selling this game for $20, you really should consider hiring a game designer with experience in multiplayer. I can tell you put a lot of time into the singleplayer. If you actually invested your time into the multiplayer aspect, you could eventually attract hardcore competitive gamers and grow this community. Multiplayers just don’t survive on the merits of the old HLDM anymore. Or do you already see the Deathmatch mode dead on arrival?

Jeremy

[intangible]

One thing i wanted to add.

I am an old school HLDM and AGHL player but I am not here trying to convince you guys to recreate that experience i loved so much back in those games. I am totally open to a new and exciting experience. Everyone wants to mold a game the way they want the experience to be for them. I know you guys know that and probably throw a lot of “i can do this idea better than you” thoughts on the backburner.

You already know there is a sinking ship with the multiplayer, that is why you should seriously consider hiring an outside source. You could seriously monetize and make the multiplayer mildly successful if you mixed up the right ingredients. Even if you managed 1/100th of csgo’s success, you would be successful.

My advice is focusing on the 1on1 style of gaming so you can make the spectating part a big part of the game. You get people spectating others, you can work in custom content such as skins or player customization. Spectating your teammates is what made CSGO skins possible. Also, adding in facial customization is just not pratical because you are never getting that close to your enemies to pay attention.

Arena/deathmatch mix might be something to think about. Jesus, people have played to death Arena in AG for years and years. Still, there are people probably in a server right now playing.

[fury]

I agree with almost everything here. Personally I think it’s more important to polish general game balance and mechanics and add a voting system so players can organize matches easier.

[FuNkeG]

I too purchased this game in order to grant me the nostalgia of playing hldm. I find the game very enjoyable, but the games balance & competitiveness is not where it needs to be as you stated.

The devs have said that they are not trying to remake hldm to the “T,” but they need to do something in order to gain the community back. Many others, including myself have already posted comments about the movement and maps being over saturated.

I think that MP has been put on the back burner in order to get Xen complete. We will see what they release in the update in December. Nevertheless, the devs really need to listen to the community a bit more about our constructive criticism on MP. <3

[fury]

I don’t like the SMG recoil. For singleplayer, yes… For multiplayer nope. I think for multiplayer you should nerf Gauss (it should not deal that much damage after very short charge time… Also it seems to deal damage when hitting the enemies bounding box instead of player hitbox… not sure… but hitreg is kinda off), nerf 357 (in my opinion you should make it 35 - 40 damage, because then you could 1 hit with headshot… or weaken your enemy with 2 hits 357 and then finish him with 2 shot pistol), nerf pistol and SMG damage (pistol and SMG should be able to kill a 100 / 0 guy with 3 headshots, but MP5 should only have spray and no recoil. SMG Clip capacity is already nerfed to 45 bullets per clip… That’s enaugh really. In HL1 the SMG primary fire was one of my favourite ways to deal damage… Now with that recoil it’s really depressing…) Also fix crossbow rapidfire bug and fix hitreg. Also add circlejump, increase LJ hight and nerf crouch to be more HL1 like make LJ range shorter. I think the game should be a lot better then.

Edit: I think it’s very important to get Longjump, crouchjump and Longjump+Crouchjump-combination as close to HL1 as possible (jump range and hight… ). In the end you should not be able to climb up crates with a hight of 64 units by using a normal crouchjump. In Half-Life you could only climb those up using Longjump+Crouchjump combination.