I am not sure what happened to dbt, but the release was pretty shallow ... compare the release trailer to the kickstarter trailer ... also when it went into open beta it had also bigger streamers playing the game, upon release it was more or less just some known quake players ... its quite weird to put so much less effort into release than into prerelease stuff, can't really believe its carelessness ... anyway dont care about dbt, just not into q3a with m&m bots and cheap maps, and lets not talk about sounds ... but those xonotic/warsow guys can play their new gaem, I just disliked those dbt guys dicking around in the qc chans trying to hurt ma gaem ...

they ignored the trends in the industry and just pretended like they could release a game, and it would be popular just because they want it to be.

first of all, releasing a game in 2020 without crossplay and aim assist for gamepad users is asinine. pc only gaming is a joke, it's not growing and the market for it has already been saturated. why the fuck would some guy who plays league of legends, or csgo, or overwatch, minecraft, crossfire, valorant, dota, pubg etc, play your game? what distinguishes your game from all of the other niche games with 500 players?

secondly, the game came to market in 2020, looking worse than overwatch. that's just disappointing, and it's inappropriate for a game like diabotical which is not an open world sandbox like minecraft. the only thing diabotical has to offer is shooty shoot gameplay, so it should at least look like something that's not 15 years behind the industry.

lastly, there is the question of whether or not to remove item pickups from the game and simply allow people to spawn with armor and weapons in all gametypes. this is a question that hasn't been answered by the quake community, they always dodge it by replying with some one liners like "lol ca' or "lol all weapons ffa". but the reality is that no one wants to play a 4v4 team game where they have to share items. it's literally designed for 30 year old losers in an irc channel who like to hoard all the items and then when they lose say "ah these fucking retards don't do anything". and for all the talk of duel, the reality is that the premier 1v1 series on pc has always been starcraft, and even then 1v1 games are not popular witth the average person. the market has changed from playing in a competitive environment to playing with friends and talking on mic.

in conclusion, people will not play a game without any redeeming qualities for the sake of "competitive integrity", especially when a 5th of the "pro" players are admitted cheaters from older games. i can tell you right now that battlefield 4 runs way better, looks better, and has far more dynamic gameplay than anything diabotical has to offer.

you cannot expect them to offer crossplay with their own engine as an indie studio ... they chose those looks because they wanted to stand out from the masses and thought they could sell the customization of those bots ... if you want to sell customization, customization needs to look cool, how you wanna make money with icons made for child games? ... I agree with 1v1, 1v1 is nice to have watching, but main mod for community should be tdm 4vs4, but here they improved actually with their mods, but still what good is a mod, if the whole cover is some ugly child game? Battlefield for sure meets the aesthetics ... anyway the success of dbt was more due to the marketing inside the quake community or the 2gd person "fame" more then anything else ... if that game would have come out with no attachment to the quake community, noone at all would play it ...

Why does it matter?

You all know that i'm smart veteran playing from 2003

I also can prove my statements with practical and mathmeatical examples.

I created a lot of post with godlike suggestions, and everyone has liked it.

Their main trick

" OoH NOOO,,, IT'S NOT MODERATORS, USERS DISLIKED YOUR POST."

QC is the much better game.

(not speaking about engine and how open the game should be for mods.)

but the gameplay on QC makes me wanna play the game.
on diabotical its just boring and the weaps are just lolcat. usually iam done after 1 map.
why would you get the battlepass on that shitgame?

too bad how QC was neglected with maps and a proper team mode. thanks to bethesda for killing it.

I kinda like Diabotical and similarity to Q3

But honestly imo it will not survive so I hope that it will die quickly and people will move to QC and have bigger population.

Feels that there is no room for 2 such a games

not gonna happen QC is dog shit imo, diabotical is much better imo

This is only my perspective, but it feels it is dying, notmuch people playing duel, less twitch viewers etc.

not saying that QC is good, just you know love or hate, but it is most popular. I would really like to have both games good and popular, but sounds impossible.

When have you checked the QC last time?

Dunno if making qc more popular would be a good thing for afps.
Sure better than dead, but meh, those games are still x10 times worse than 20yo q3 in so many aspects, this is very sad

kind of agree .
yeah, super sad.

the legendary game...

I'm not a fanboy but I've played a bit of q3 and ql recently (after long time of not playing any fps). Then I've decided to try out diabotical. Played the later just a few times, but to me it feels like q3/ql only better in almost every aspects. Can't think of a single thing thing where q3 would be superior (maybe besides of 90s horror/gore aesthetic that noone new to the game will find compelling anymore).

Perhaps they are not as good compared to other games as q3 was 20 years ago, but this is a different matter. It's because other games got so much better.

What about the netcode? I also directly compared QL and Diabotical on Frankfurt servers where I ping best.

It was almost insane how much more I hit in QL and how much less I was fragged around corners. QL players might warp here and there, but you never have rails or SGs going straight through when you were sure to hit like in deabotical.

At this point I assume it's must be an especially esoteric problem, because only a handful of players complain about this phenomena I experience on a daily basis when playing Diabotical. For everyone else constantly getting fragged behind corners, or shaft rushed without a chance to react seem no issue.

I don't know, feels good to me but I have rather low pings (20-30).
Shots going through is kinda "dog ate my homework" complaint of fps games ;) try recording if you can, maybe you'll learn that hitboxes are smaller than you thought or something else that may be useful.

QL had through rails and I DID NOT HIT THAT RAIL IT WASN'T EVEN CLOSE but it still counts.
Didn't experienced it much in eggbots.

I have similar feelings but about most of the modern games. But not sure if my feelings are accurate.

This is interesting write up https://www.pcgamer.com/a-former-rainbow-six-...is-broken/ "A former Rainbow Six Siege developer explains why players think hitreg is broken"

When for Quake and CS it works more like this:
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Sour...Networking

http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/...le987.html

I appreciate the reply, unfortunately netcode is not something open source any game can copy/paste and optimize. That would be great actually. But every game has a different implementation, so you can only transfer the obvious stuff which I already covered, or ruled out for myself.

Peakers advantage is especially prominent in dbt, it is simply way too much for my liking.
SG feels delayed and mushy on ping 18. What gives.

Rocket damage wraparound edges and uneven terrain is still wonky.

All this, but the game plays like an aim trainer with a little movement and pacman style item collect. So I find myself fighting with the weird occurrences half of the time, trying to memorize which ledges eat rocket damage going for face rockets, how to ambush instead of getting ambushed, not to trust the SG, trying to get used to the super slow weapon switch when firing....
It's not quake that's for sure, not even close. I think the main reason is the still sub-par netcode (it was much better in the betas ffs).

Yeah, for me older games feels better about correctness, smoothness, overall feeling about when I have killed someone or somebody killed me. Most people call old games as "server-side hitreg", with time, most games switched to "client-side" and they feel a little bit odd in comparison. (but it is never something only server side or only client-side anyway...)

Usually devs will tell you to check the replay carefully. In QC is not possible which is sad. I think it is possible in DBT?

I'm not an expert about netcode and stuff so I just do not know, my feelings are not enough to confirm it.

On the plus side, you can play dbt on ping 110 from Europe to Ashburn USA and have a fluid experience with surprisingly little delayed feeling.

But the fine tuning for low pings is not working correctly is my guess. I hope the devs will find the problem some of these days and fix it.

No I have had the same netcode issue since they touched about 1-2 months ago. Before then it wasn't very good but more playable for sure. Now I have opponent's shaft on my side and I'm loosing HP anyway, or even rockets that impacts even before reaching my face. They acknowledge the issue and tried something but no more news since then.

It's sad to see a game like Q3/QL which is way older then Diabotical to have a better netcode and bot AI of a 2020 game.

They should hire John Carmack to let him review their code :)

Maybe modding and graphic personalization/cfg, except for the hud (dbc uses a great editor).
qc only has modern graphic using terrible engine/netcode

Not gonna happen, the people leaving QC right now are doing so due to being tired of being assraped by 35 years old aimbotting and wallhacking like their life depended on it (their ego health sure does)

Diabotical died quicker than QC, but qc will keep dying like it did in the last 2 years. For the first time since its release, qc failed to crack 1000 concurrent players in a month. It's constantly bleeding players, and as the servers will become more and more populated with cheaters the bleeding can only continue and speed up until all itt'll be left are cheaters aimbotting each other like in current quake live servers.

Until betshesda will release quake champions 2! Yay! With a "vastly improved saber engine" and 3 more characters.

Quake will be forgotten until somebody discover that they can make Quake 5!

Let‘s not forget about the revolutionary Tetris elements because it will unite two worlds.

I was feeling a little bored and decided to check what this game is about. Went to youtube and search for "diabotical grand final". After spending 30 minutes watching Cypher vs Agent or something. Looked like a carbon copy of Q3 ffs.

So, the plan was to release almost the exact same game, only 22 years later, and on a single platform/store. Windows/Epic lame store.

This is absurd on so many levels, I am almost glad it's dead or almost dead.

Would be nice if all current and past first person shooters died together. It’s time for something new.

We need a different spin on them, that's for sure.

PUBG was fine but I'd like to see a sci-fi version with jetpacks, gravity tricks and whatnot

So how is the $1000000000 cutting edge DBT esport tournament scene shaping up for agent and like 5 other ppl? :)

i don't know what you can do about it since its both dm scene and this game in particular totally misses the point. its not about marketing, its about knowing your audience and trying to figure out how to make dm games more accessible. it's like hey our game is shit because there are those illegal immigrants who dislike dm games, it might make sense for low iq rednecks of some sort , but for anyone into gaming in general dm games are a dead genre, its not about marketing or graphics, it simply is about devs that are not willing to change with time , no one i repeat no one cares about learning strafe jumping for the sake of playing 1 single genre or a series of games. its no funny.

I think the assumption that nobody cares about learning <insert feature here> is very wrong. If that was the case no esports title would be successful.

low skill high reward yes, not high skill low reward. imagine every 6 year old investing time learning physics of a nuclear reactor, obviously not all people would see benefit learning things they see no use doing.

You overrate strafejumping a bit. I am pretty sure that there are a lot of games out there with harder physics to master.

it is more about how glitchy it is, if it was real life i think the only animals who jump like that to move are kangaroos. it's very unintuitive, and compared to all the other action fps games totally feels like a 5th wheel, hence i don't understand why esr fanatics are not understanding why its not the most popular fps. its just basic logic, people choose the path of least resistance. there is no benefit of strafing for entertainment value, its mostly a bug that was left in the game.

So what? There is a ton of games with made up, fantasy mechanics to make gameplay more interesting. What matters is - is it fun? And everyone who's learned strafe jumping loves it, this is why they didn't remove it in early quake patches. It may be more out of place in a game that takes realistic art style, but quake style is pure fantasy.

It's easy to learn and hard to master, great mechanics for a game.

If people don't like it anymore then too bad, the game has to go, but I don't think it's the case. Can't imagine a quake-type game without some form of strafe jumping.

it is what it is, i just reiterate what i feel over the years of playing. it not matters what quake community thinks of strafing, it's not a popular game mechanic among fps games today.

Quake is not popular game and no other games have strafe jumping (besides of a bunch of old id tech 3 games). You can blame it on strafe jumping but it's just a guess. Invalid imo because I've seen old and new quake players get angry over many things in the game but never strafe jumping. The fact that "only kangaroos jump like this" has nothing to do with it.
If you don't like strafe jumping and you've played the game for years then I don't know what you're doing.

i am not playing, i have other things to do. its just that quake community always tries to find superfluos things like this smm guy who blames some kind of marketing team for ddos quake community for basically a failed idea, not just some broken game. there was no succesful game in quake genre since quake 3. that was 20 years ago, there is just no way to bring it back and all efforts are just waste of money. if quake was a grassroots movement than i guess it would be much more sense, but what happens is id basically wastes developement money and then maybe even hires their fans to put the blame somewhere else. quake is like old movie star who is way beyong his golden years but still asks for big salary. i for example being part of this community tried to bring feedback and always get response like yours that quake is perfect its just people like me to blame whereas my input basically has no real decision how game would be made ultimately its just a broken idea, like trying to bring tetris over and over or smth. its a niche game and it will always fail to be mainstream.

I don't think people making threads on esr nowadays are representative of "quake community", really. I haven't made one for years, only check the page from time to time because I got back into quake a bit recently.

I don't know what's your point? That quake isn't mainstream? Everyone can see this. That devs don't move on? Oh they do, no original quake1/2/3 devs work on quake games anymore. Most had great careers making AAA games for big studios.

There is a ton of new, indie game projects, usually made by developers with no experience like this, counting on nostalgia of older gamers. Not sure if they make it even financially. Somehow doubt it but I haven't researched it.

For me it's cool, I've played enough quake games that I can quickly get into it, learn few maps, have some fun and get bored in few weeks/months if the community shrinks or game becomes stale. Then I'll probably not play any quake until something new comes up.

For pro players it's not interesting. I love pro quake circuit but there is no game to sustain it anymore. They are kinda hanging on. I'll play/support a game that continue this lineage and bring new contenders, but I can just play some games for myself too that have no chance of any mainstream success.

tbh when i scroll through esr or dbt reddit every second thread is about how to make the game better. I get sick about reading all this opinions who reach from "make this game more like quake X" up to "make this game more mainstream ... ohh i have a great idea, lets make a battle royale game mode. fortnite has battle royale so lets do that".

Thats all a big pile of bullshit and i hope the dbt team doesn't listen to anyone posting that crap.

trouble is they do. i seen quake live done this way, which means even if suggestions are good, they still do them in a way that will shrink the audience, like the time they created focus groups of veteran players that said that big prize money is all we need, so they dumped it all in marketing and prize money. i really don't understand how devs can be so oblivious that all of this has no effect on increasing player base, and battle royale is not what i suggest, i simply suggest them to take approach where they don't alienate casual and new players by simply ignoring the fact that they exist.

I think once a game gets so good it is enjoyable also when losing, it will attract certain new players. Not hordes, but a few every week.

The important aspect are the FUNDAMENTALS and the LOVE poured into the game.

Fundamentals are for example a widely bug-free experience, good game performance (fps), well working netcode, great weapon sounds, a gameflow that is enjoyable.

Love is eye for details, continuous flow of new good ideas, convenience stuff, taking new players by the hand and showing them the game before or while they get owned -3:20, because if they see the fun beforehand, the will more likely stay. Most importantly, engaging community hubs and features, where you can feel connected. If you are the lone bot warrior, only getting flamed and owned, it is a turnoff, but if you can build maps, build rules and gamemodes. meet, chat, exchange ideas in the game, maybe even have tournaments within the game, thst is all glue that glues players to the game

The most important part is the gameflow being enjoyable. Most veterans don't realize it because they've been playing Quake for so long, but a game like Diabotical basically REQUIRES 35%+ shaft, 50%+ rail, and being able to hit directs decently well, to even see a HINT of fun.

How is a newbie that's hitting 20% shaft, 25% rail, and non-stop 5 dmg rockets going to have fun even if they're playing against equal-skilled opponents? It doesn't matter how good the weapons sound if they feel like shit to use.

Even with good accuracy stats, I find the game to be a chore to play. It's relentlessly unfun to play with these weak weapons, and against an unlagged railgun in 2020, and to get so little reward for positional play.

You are right, I forgot the game is horribly aim heavy at the moment. I am a main sufferer, while being a "veteran" my aim has always sucked. In other games strategy, movement, map knowledge can make up for it, but I feel a lot less so in dbt.

Let me summarize the reasons I see why that is the case:

First the footsteps are so loud and their radius so huge, getting surprise kills is really hard. N0bs not knowing about this might get the feel of everyone is wallhacking lol

About the weapons, even projectiles require way more skill then in any afps before...
rockets are harder to hit because of low splash radius and harsh damage cut off at ledges, grenades do not explode in proximity, you have to hit directs or get lucky that someone literally steps on it.

Bots are fast, the hitboxes are tiny and and the leaning animation is deceptive, so anticipating movement is especially hard.
Plasma projectiles are so tiny, it's not even viable to spam counter rail.

Shaft damage is low with high tick rate so you have to hit very high percentages.

Even the SG, the mother of "no aim required" guns, requires a very precise aim and perfect knowledge of use distance to be viable. I like to see it as a midrange mini rail. (I think the reason is the SG spread, the "cone" shape with distance is a lot more narrow; I tend to miss almost point blank shots, maybe at close distance it is not even linear, but the spread starts at some distance from the gun)

Finally the netcode introduces lots of peaker's advantage, if you don't undertand that you get rail peaked or shafted behind corners into oblivion.

Some called Diabotical "a glorified aim trainer", I agree from a weapon usage perspective. Aimgods rule this game without any tactics, just with the mechanical skills.

The game has a lot of potential but somehow caters to a miniscule percentage of players coming from other fps with already very sophisticated aim

Isn't agent winning every duel tournament?

Of all weapons in dbt rockets are strongest and Agent has the best rocket aim of all. But his rail and shaft aim has also improved a lot, I think he lowered his pov and sensitivity for that.

Just watch him these days and you will understand his aim can compete with the best. In QC as well by the way, he could have played the pro league.

Really? I will check it out. I always thought he had potential for good overall aim if he adjusted his settings. His rail was great even back in ql.

Edit: Although he is a bit too tall to compete with best :P

That's the one counter-example that everyone points to but agent's aim is quite good and he only works as an example in one specific game mode and isn't representative of the game as a whole.

I say that Diabotical has literally everything that people theorize an AFPS game needs these days for success: matchmaking, cosmetics, battlepass, good engine, decent netcode, streams, eSports money, etc. And yet you can feel the playerbase dwindling so it MUST be the game itself causing the lack of player retention.

The core gameplay is not finetuned enough is my take.
Unfortunately I don't see that changing, the studio seems too afraid to touch it at this point.

The weapon balance and netcode will probably stay like that forever and everything around it will be worked on. Some people enjoy the game as it is, mostly the aim talents.

My weapon balance critique is above, I have complained about the netcode at low pings for month now, constructive at the beginning, but now it just pisses me off to see the wasted opportunity. I play better on ping 100 then ping 18 frankfurt server, the lagmeter is perfect on both besides the occasional hiccup, it's completely obvious to me for a long time now something is not right. But, it is ignored.

In my opinion the problem are the teamsizes/gametypes. I don't really have the q3/ql statistics to underpin it but i think a lot of players prefer gametypes with more players like 8v8 or 10v10. Having a high number of players imo helps a lot with balancing the games and it is usually not fatal if a player disconnects and gets replaced after a certain time.

Ofc i could be wrong there but i checked the tf2 statistics and people there play ctf/payload (62%) on casual servers. Almost nobody plays the "official esport mode" 6v6 (7%).[1]

As for duel... I think duel can't be big in dbt when the already small playerbase competes with QC over that mode.

So how to solve it? No idea, definitely not copy other games.

[1] https://teamwork.tf/community/statistics/valve

I actually do not remember any other game with advanced movement. (usually it is just a variation of quake engine)

Strafe jumping once learned it is quite redundant, constant clicking same keys

Titanfall has some interesting movement mechanics (wallrunning + double jump + grapple hook).

I guess the same in Apex, but not much imo

Near future of Diabotical: 2-3 converted DB maps for Q3/QL, and total neglect. (Like it happens with QC, haha)

I think actualy no one is playing... the pickup system / queue's etc are a mess.. to many modes.. wrong people joining wrong modes and then throwing games and besides all that waay to much downtime

To much hassle going on and yeah for sure to much ca only modes to be even funny.. and 2GD is only promoting the most stupid mode of the whole game as official tournament mode.

A well it was fun to think he would fix the problems that afps have but in the end not worth the wait.

Only positive is the game plays great if you are playing but everything else is crap.. same story in the end as with Champions except they needed 3 years to get it in a playable state and DBT is it kind of from day 1.

dbt playable state from day 1.. wut

so you just ignored 0dmg rockets that happened in dbt just like qc

+shots around corners

+wonky hitreg & splash damage & hitbox not matching that shitty model

+sound issues (people are still complaining getting jumped on, sounds missing, bad directional sound and overall terribad SFX)

+A plasma gun that is so bad in every way that no explanation needed tbh

+ Queues.. lots of never ending queues.

Hes saying that cuz hes still bitter that he couldnt get good in QL duel, I think.

He's probably ok in diabotical cuz the most important wep is the rocketz.

Diabotical is a fast-paced multiplayer arena FPS game developed by The GD ... except smileyblue,

omfg cliffhanger...
what about smileyblue, I need to know!!!