I love dirty bomb, it's my favorite class based shooter, I gave up Overwatch and TF2 for it. It has the most satisfying gunplay I've seen in awhile. But it's dying, we all know it, and some of us know why, some of us dont. I'll lay out why here, and what can be changed to fix it.

Simply put, the game is a horrible experience for casual and new players. What little tutorial there is teaches you almost nothing you wouldn't have known coming into this type of game, shoot, sprint, melee makes you run faster, stand by the payload to progress through the level, you can use your abilities with Q and E, you can repair the payload. That's it. They took out barebones medic tutorial that was there and there still isn't an engy tutorial.

The only way to learn how a merc (except for skyhammer, aura, and bush eventually) and their abilities play is to first buy them without being able to try out their abilities at all unless you play them in rotation. This presents a problem, because playing them on rotation requires you to join into a public match. Public matches, however, due to the low player count, lack of matchmaking, ranked, or low level servers (most are max level 6 or 25, which is nothing under the new lvl tweak, and most are located in Asia, SA, or dead), are usually pub stomps, level 200 with hundreds or thousands of hours playing against below 30s who haven't figured out that only one person can repair. (Side note all you'd need to so is change the "faster teamate repairing" to "only one person can repair")

I have 450ish hours in the game currently, and I still don't have all the mercs unlocked, and I have yet to purchase even the coppers I want for most of my mercs. I don't have any crafted cobalts or golds, and I haven't spent much outside of just unlocking mercs and maybe dropping 10K on a few for coppers. This is with the old mission system, mind you, that could give from 1500-3000 every 3 hours, and could be boosted if I remember correctly. Currently you can only earn up to 3500 per day, and that's if you meet the exceedingly high requirements like playing for 2 hours or getting 30K exp in a specific category. Credits per match are pitiful never really going beyond 300, and that's if you played really well. The RADS help with getting 3 mercs off the bat, but the rest are still a horrendous grind, and that's even if you want to spend your Rads on Mercs.

What can be done?

Well, some of the issues are with the low player count, and that can't be solved overnight. But, some are bad design choices that can.

1. There needs to be a specific tutorial for every Merc, everyone. These tutorials need to showcase how the mercs basic abilities work, along with advanced tactics on using them. For instance, a fragger tutorial should teach you how to cook, how to throw over shields and in Windows, how to throw around corners and destroy aura or rhino nests, and dmg gens and evs, etc. An arty tutorial shows how to use walls and high up fixtures to aim the artillery behind cover or up on ledges to reach sniper spots and gens.

1. Max level servers need to be increased from 6-25 to 50-100, and be clearly presented to newer players. This will help foster new players and gradually increase player retention and lower the skill gap.

2. If their cant be detailed tutorials, add bot matches which are only offline, as not to divide the playerbase more with pve servers. All mercs can be freely selected in these matches.

4. Reduce the costs of mercs or increase mission/match credits. I get SD needs money but this effort should be focused on the skinonomy, and playing for 75-100 hours should net you all the mercs and a few coppers each. Maybe increase non copper card costs.

1. Add automatic team balance at the start of matches and bring Ranked back. Even something as simple as lvl/playtime/KPM based balance will make games seem more fair and less like stomps. And people who wants serious competitive play shouldn't be forced into casual pubs or private servers.

2. Give finished XP for suiciding and spawning while downed. I'll admit to this, I just fucking hate dying sometimes and I'm bitter and I don't want them to get that melee so fuck you kkkkkk. It should be fixed tho.

Those are my thoughts, tell me what you think. I hope this game gets fixed, it deserves better.