Please hire a dedicated game designer

[scarlet kayak]

I appreciate the transparency and dedication shown by the team via the regular dev streams, but it is pretty clear that each of the team members already has enough on their plate when it comes to the duties specific to their role as programmer/map designer/3D artist. As that's the extent of the team at this time, by necessity they've also had to make decisions for gameplay design (i.e. bandage healing), balance (i.e. LB/SMG nerfs) and usability (i.e. spotting interface).

I am aware that in some cases, the community has been tapped for volunteers, e.g. in the case of the attachment rework. But this is not a sustainable or reliable approach. We have already seen Oki express his frustration around feedback for the map lottery system, essentially telling the community to make their minds up. The hard reality is that this will simply not happen due to the range of preferences that coexist within the playerbase.

This highlights the need for a dedicated team member who, in a full-time professional capacity, analyses these complex situations to propose and iterate on solutions that can meet the community's expectations as much as possible, while ensuring that all of this is part of a consistent vision so we can avoid rushed changes that are then walked back (e.g. lottery), have unintended consequences (e.g. infinite repair choppers) or simply aren't done for fear of backlash despite being obviously necessary (e.g. C4 nerf).

[naive crane]

I personally support this post!

[frozen sigil]

Honestly, given the current predicament of the devs, it is simply not feasible enough to continue like this and to keep the game alive.
Having someone to outsource balancing to would go a long way for both the devs and players alike.

[lone loom]

Someone who would manage suggestions and balance changes would also take a big task from the devs, which in turn would have more time for actual dev stuff.

[autumn cosmos]

Not a game designer but I am a Online Entertainment Consultant. If any of the devs want help making choices with their game and want someone whos vastly knowledgeable in the entertainment space my dm's are open. Ive already voiced some small concerns about the game and how things are going with it in particular. Honestly this game really has struck me in a spot no game has in a while. I love this game and I really want this to be something to play for a long long time, im willing to do anything to help the devs out just out of pure love and enjoyment.

[wild kindle]

I disagree because

1. Designer is the most unneeded and oversaturated position in the video game industry
2. The design of the game as-is is cool.
3. The ideal would be another programmer, because that seems to be the main bottleneck, doubling on the side as a designer and otherwise freeing Oki a little to think about these complex situations.

The problems you (op) point out are real tho, especially the point about Oki's map roulette frustration, so if a designer is what's needed then...

I'd rather see this Steverec guy do a consulting gig, or keep tapping the community for stuff even if it's not fully sustainable.

The community will never agree on things, and people sometimes don't know what they want, yadda yadda. Just need a little bit of decisiveness and vision.

[scarlet kayak]

I don't know if you've ever managed a business or project of any important magnitude but "just do better without any extra resources" is a great way to ensure mediocre results and burnout.

And I don't know what your idea of a designer is, but most game designers do in fact also know how to program and for smaller projects such as these will usually help out with implementation/bugs of lower complexity.

[quick haven]

@scarlet kayak you gonna pay their salary bc I know Doki can’t afford it

[wild kindle]

I was a project manager for 5 yrs so yeah, I do know.

Are designers project managers in vg? I am relatively ignorant, I admit. Because if so then I might agree, but the team seems too small to need it.

And doing programming on the side. Mmm...

[scarlet kayak]

You can listen to the lead designer for Fallout if you want some perspective on what the position really entails.

[...] everybody thinks that they're a designer and most of them, if not all of them, think they're a good designer even though they have absolutely no idea what that process is like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XzaRlW2sio

And one key point that is highlighted above is that the very first step that needs to be clear for any given feature is what the intent is, something that everyone here has noticed is a key recurring issue compromising the game's identity (why does it have bleeding if the movement is so fast? does it want to be arcade or milsim? why does Medic have C4? if giving them access to destruction is the intent, why not just give them the sledgehammer? etc.)

[autumn cosmos]

Thats in its self is an ongoing issue but nobody is even going to be around to play the game at all if bigger issues aren't solved first.

This game is in a unique place because its indie, and second its a game type thats placed alongside AAA titles

and becasue its made with 3 people, you have so so so many other full jobs that are being held across them

[scarlet kayak]

I would say all issues are part of a hierarchical structure, where at the top we have the simple question of whether someone finds the game interesting or not. If they don't, is it because they were expecting a different kind of game, or because the gameplay that they are looking for and that this game offers does not feel satisfying? Is the lack of satisfaction coming from an implementation issue or a balance one? And so on and so forth. Asking these questions, taking the time to observe and understand the different player motivations and documenting all of it are things that require someone's undivided attention.

[autumn cosmos]

I dont want to undermine you in any way @scarlet kayak You do know what you're talking about. This is an issue for sure. Though the scope of this is too narrow and wouldn't solve the games player base from dissolving.

[quick haven]

^

[scarlet kayak]

Hmm, I agree. But design issues, aside, I think the stream of maps, gamemodes, UI improvements, etc. coming out are the kind of stuff that should help player retention. So my suggestion is mostly about shoring up one of the aspects that isn't already directly in the purview of the existing team's specialization.

Thinking about what a "unicorn" for this position could look like, it would likely also be someone who can deliver engaging live content and has a more solid grasp of English (no shade to the devs, but it does make following them a bit rough). A strong personality communicating a clear vision forward can do wonders for a game. The character of Wrel for Planetside 2 comes to mind.

(notwithstanding the fact that he took some questionable balance decisions... but at least the initial hype around having someone with a clear vision taking the reins was undeniable)

[quick haven]

Again, who’s gonna pay his salary

[scarlet kayak]

Me

[quick haven]

You couldn’t afford a Big Mac on layaway payments 🤫

[autumn cosmos]

Eh not quite. Someone like a spokesperson for the games development surely would play positive for the game. Though the biggest issue the games having is its ability to stay relevant as a whole.

You're not going to have people to retain if you have no people to begin with. They made some mistakes early on, the effects of them are just happening right now (that's nobody's fault they were doing it with the best interest of their game being successful) and there's only a few things that's going to bring it back on the map.

Again, like I said. Im willing to offer my time to helping them. Though I think this is a sensitive topic, and im not going to share what exactly id say to them on a suggestions tab viewable by the public.

[scarlet kayak]

Yeah, I was going to ask exactly what you have in mind, but fair enough.

[vivid trench]

We need more gadgetry, vehicles need a place in the game that actually take teamwork to destroy also having new ways to destroy them and more advanced vehicles having countermeasures and disable mechanics IMO

[sharp burrow]

A Game Dev may also collaborate with the devs to create a Road Map, and help direct focus on what the devs need to currently work on. A great example is Hello Games with No Man’s Sky. It’s release was a disaster because it was a relatively small dev group and had a lot of hype built up on it without a real sense of direction. Then after its dismal release, Sean Murray sat down and absorbed all the community out roar and shielded it from his dev team. He got them on a track to where NMS is top-rated and has boatloads of insane content that continues to come out

Game Devs, good game devs even, can get focused on doing a cool thing (TM) that the community may want to see, but a Game Designer might direct the dev to “hey, we need to fix this and we need to add this to keep people coming back and new players rather than having cool thing (TM)”

“Let’s get these cool weapons and skins in” vs. “hey there’s this mechanic that breaks hitboxes or the players rockets do zero damage in these situations”

[terse parrot]

Coulda saved everyone time and titled the suggestion "I know how to fix everything I am gods gift to development, hire me"

[sharp burrow]

I’m not a creation of God, I am my parent’s gift to the world and when I am dust and dirt you will all weep at my enormous vacancy left behind. Line up for my handshakes.

But in seriousness, I don’t know how to fix everything but when I see a car driving down the street dragging a wheel rim because the tire blew off, I think people would agree with me when I say “thats’a a bad thing, it needs a new wheel and tire”

Meanwhile that driver of the car is going “this car needs a new radio”

[scarlet kayak]

Hey, this is an excellent example, thanks for bringing it up. I suppose the only difference is NMS built up a lot of hype before release while BBR seems to have spontaneously generated it via word of mouth, but the end result of leaving a large part of the initial playerbase unsatisfied is there. And it does also show that putting in the work can absolutely turn things around.

[scarlet kayak]

I briefly considered it actually, but I am aready fairly busy doing a PhD and some hobbyist gamedev on the side at this time :)

[sharp burrow]

I definitely got into the BBR hype seeing it online, and I’m admittedly not a target demographic (older, not a lot of free time) so they got that part good. However I definitely would like to see certain fixes/adjustments/additions to keep me coming back to grab my limited free time for gaming

BBR tickles my brain from my young gaming years with Battlefield 1942 and Operation: Flashpoint - I’d like to see BBR continue to grow/do well if possible. It runs well on my computer compared to other milsim-ish games like Hell Let Loose and Squad or Battlefield 1

[vapid summit]

All those games where we most hated how game went, all had so called 'game designer'.

BattleBit came out because me and Vilaskis wanted outside of a game around it with additional things we wanted.

I have been developing and moving forward through direct communication for the last 7 years and plan to continue doing so.

The people who play the game most are generally more aware of the issues than we, the developers, are.

Because of this, honestly I am happy with community keeping the direction the design choices, and letting us experiment things.

[hidden sonnet]

This sums my opinions up very well.

[vivid trench]

May I ask, is there anything planned in regards to vehicles? To me personally it feels like people are just staying in their spawn on some hill, sometimes also at spawn and inside the safezone like in Zalfi or Sandy and just play as "Artillery" knowing full well that when they move inside the battlefield they will just get owned by Tandems and C4 instantly because infantry can just respawn with whatever loadout they want and because reparations and resupplies are only back at spawn, why even bother moving far away from it. In a lot of matches the bases are filled with Gas Tigers of various kinds, Rhibs nobody takes and QuadBikes/PWCs that nobody uses.

In what direction does BB plan to go to? More gadgetry like in BF? Or 1-2 Neutral Repair Stations where you can repair/resupply for Squad Points to the team that controls it? Or are vehicles fine as they are right now?

[autumn cosmos]

Im glad that the community is all wanting to push the game forward and that you're open to suggestions. Its a very powerful tool to use the community voice to build the game slowly and pull out the really good ideas and discord is a huge help, much better than reddit, twt, and other social media platforms.

Like @sharp burrow said NMS worked to funnel the concerns of the game into its roadmap. I think one big issue with battlebit right now is its long term players (high hour players) who notably should be able to accurately point out game design flaws are either not being heard or not even bothering to voice their opinion.

I look in here and I see very few people with lots recent gameplay experience posting, commenting, or interacting at all with this discord. Anyone ive asked "Why dont you post in suggestions" has come back with similar answers like " They're not going to do anything with it though" or "Its just going to get downvoted by people with like 5 hours in the game" These are the people who are your input to making game choices. These people need to be enticed to come out and say things cause QOL updates will only go so far.

I know you guys watch streams, but you should really consider making a dev team partner program to give to people with a lot of game time, who often play and keep playing almost daily. Where you can have either a discord, or calls to listen to just these types of people. They're seriously not being utilized simply by giving them an option to make a suggestion. They're not going out of their way to speak about the game in here.

[scarlet kayak]

Btw in no way would a game designer take over the communications role. Keeping with my Planetside 2 example, the lead designer would do streams with other members of the team.

And as you rightly mention, ultimately players are the people most aware of the issues. The job of a designer would simply be to work on more efficiently gathering and processing this information.

I also feel the need to point out that closed tests with a community of highly engaged supporters is different from the game post release, both in terms of the composition of the playerbase and in how viable keeping track of all of their feedback is. I already suggested this to you last week, but the lack of a roadmap and the small amount of suggestions that get dev relative to how much feedback the players write, can make some parts of the community feel a bit forgotten at times.

Anyway, I do feel an increased contact from you guys lately, I suppose it could be that high priority tasks kept y'all busy in the past few months, so if you all can manage to keep the communication flowing as it currrently is without further help, then that's great.

[autumn cosmos]

I just don't think the suggestions tab is enough. There needs to be something to get people to talk, my friends who have hundreds of hours in your game, thousands in some cases are just complaining and leaving cause they feel like the suggestions is just not it, its 'too' open for anyone to post or place their vote.

[autumn cosmos]

are you refering the 'highly engaged supporters' as the Patreon Backers, or people who activly post in these tabs?

[scarlet kayak]

I mean the Patreon backers. I only joined after the Steam release so I have a very limited knowledge of what that phase was like, but I assume those are the 7 years being alluded to.

[scarlet kayak]

And yes, you're completely right that by far the majority of players will never be seen around here, and relying on Discord or reddit to gather info is never going to be enough. If I were in such a position, I would actively spectate games, listen to voice interactions and read through chat logs to spot the high and low points in any given match.

[autumn cosmos]

@scarlet kayak My biggest issue with taking Patreon backers suggestions AFTER the initial success of the game is now you have people who are putting in 100s of hours a week in your game who have issues to talk about. These people with recent gameplay experience are much much more valuable than the people putting in very few amount of hours and handing over money. The first hand experience of this game is just not there.

IE. There is FIVE (annoying to game breaking) bugs with c4 right now that I know about and I'm the only one who posts about it. I only know about these bugs because I use the c4 a whole lot, and i play with people who use it a whole lot. Where one of these bugs happens probably 2+ times a game. People who play this game 10 hours in a week are never going to notice that trend, cause well, they dont put in the time to be able to be frankly annoyed enough to clip and report the bug.

[sharp burrow]

^ I’m one of those 10-hour (or less) gamers a week and I notice bugs and trends still pretty well. I attribute that to my gaming background, but I know there’s going to be casual game players that are going to hop in, play for 15-20 hours and then straight up leave after seeing bugs or gameplay issues rather than sticking around

[autumn cosmos]

See the issues with that is its going to take a lot of hours to gather that information @scarlet kayak . People who play the game and are making these suggestions should be coming up to the dev so they're not pulling their hair out trying to slog through hours of vods. Money is a great resource, and I think some sort of partner program would be enough to keep people talking.

You rarely see videogames scoop themselves up out of the depts of any review bomb or just the general talk that "the games dead" "the games trash now" ect.

If you look at Hunt: Showdown for example, the roadmaps and combination with their partner program had people getting paid to stream their game. When they streamed the game so often, it brought people to play/watch. Not only that the program offered exclusive privileges to talk directly to the devs about what the games issues are, and because these people are playing their game so often, they're perfect resources to tap into. Hunt: Showdown went from 6,000 active players to now its all time peak of 44,500 just a few months ago on steam.

[torpid nebula]

I'm gonna point out that fixing anything "noticed" is going to take time to develop. Easy point, C4. People all know that it's BiS, has great attributes, but addressing that without hurting anyone's enjoyment takes time

Not to mention streamers and Oki have met and discussed issues, issues which I bet you and others would disagree are issues

[autumn cosmos]

I didnt mean to throw you under the bus there Sigma, but I feel like I should correct myself for people like you who have a long history of gaming with a keen eye such as yourself. Age always comes with its wisdom one way or another.

[sharp burrow]

No need - I know I’m a small, small, % of players - I don’t consider myself an expert or anything, but I’d say I’m active for an older player haha

[autumn cosmos]

Im carious now, how old are you?

[sharp burrow]

People who do play a lot more are going to find and run into the bugs more than I would but I see gameplay issues on my side because I have limited game time so games need to keep me coming back and have a strong loop to make me want more

Just turned 40 recently, but I work full time and got a family, so my game time is when the wife is out and the kid is napping, or an hour or two when everyone is asleep and I’m able to stay awake haha

So right now wife is out on errands for 2 hours, and the kid is napping for the next 3 so I am playing BBR now

[autumn cosmos]

You're exactly right, the game has to have a big pull for you to have the thought in your head that you wanna play it when you have free time next. Its gotta stand out, and continue doing so in adulthood.

[autumn cosmos]

right on, im in my mid 20s. Free times more abundant rn without a family of my own yet. Sorry to anyone who has notifications on. Ima keep on topic lol.

[sharp burrow]

Mid-20’s for me were a great time for gaming, Halo 3 and MW2 were on rotation

But to stay on topic - a Road Map would be extremely beneficial, and even a dedicated community person that works between the devs and community. A dedicated dev maybe even more so

[autumn cosmos]

Open ended game dev has become a staple of modern gaming. Its how you stay successful.

Roadmaps, with updates always gets me so gitty cause i know the BIG updates coming soon.

Though personally im much more interested in patch notes than features.

[sharp burrow]

I’m usually here checking for patch notes but does the Steam page get utilized for that? I know discord is a popular communication system but people might just go right to Steam for the game

As in announcing upcoming patches

[autumn cosmos]

This is why I became a Online entertainment consultant. I just love games, and love helping the people who make them, and stream them.

[sharp burrow]

I hear that, I used to do gaming journalism in my younger years (went to E3 a few times and Europe) and did PR for a few devs/publishers

[autumn cosmos]

its game dependent. For battlebit they do post their updates summarized on steam every update.

from the steam community tab

[quick haven]

https://tenor.com/view/lebron-james-gif-22374416

Steve carring the community on his back

[main night]

All those games that we most love also had "so called 'game designer' ". BF3,4, TF2, Squad, older Halo's and CoD's, and the like. All those games had people with knowledge and vision in this position that made those games as good as they are. It all comes down to merit of such person and priorities of company. Greedy developer that cuts corners will not make a good game, even with the best game designer, when people with passion for their craft gave us best games we ever played.