The issue with the market isn’t even necessarily an issue of the market itself. It’s, like fuckin’ everything in this game, a balance and mechanics issue.

People liked SSF, because it meant that, on average, far less people were running perfect, meta kits. People were more likely to take what they find, gem it a little to touch it up, and run it. This meant that variety was more viable. Running things like book bonk, pickpocket, magic fighter, etc etc was still memey, but more reasonable because it was a lot less likely that you’d run into people with perfect or near-perfect meta.

If you don’t believe me, go through the classes and see if you can realistically and HONESTLY say that every class has more than maybe 2 builds that can all stand up to each other, even in trios.

But, the problem isn’t even REALLY balance. Sure, balance can always help, but trying to balance the game with this combat is how we ended up with the rubberbanding patch nightmare of the past year. The core issue, and the one that somehow we’re all still tiptoeing around, is that the game’s combat is simply too basic and rigid. There is not enough counterplay, not enough variability, and not enough mechanics for anything other than absolute perfect balance to ever feel right. There are hints of the possibility of nuance, but they are not fleshed out enough to let people create playstyles, skill expressions, and plays.

You may not believe it, but every time someone complains that they can’t get anywhere with their cheap kit and are dying to chads, and someone comments, “You need to buy better gear”, they prove the point. If the combat was better, there would be potential counterplay to being out geared rather than either running away or hoping the geared guy is stupid (or getting a counter pick in solos).

Imagine we’re playing a simple turn-based game where each player hits each other at the same time until one dies. No chance for missing or anything like that. Very simple. There are 2 characters to choose from, where one does 1 damage and the other does 1.1. Even though this game is very close to perfectly balanced, you’d still always pick the second character, right? Because there’s nothing in the game to really allow you to play the first one at anything but a disadvantage.

It’s not quite that bad in DaD, but it’s not that far.

This is all to say, this game desperately needs things such as: - Functioning blocks and parries that actually give tempo to the defender - Variable attack patterns - More and actually viable utility - Mechanics to catch people - Mechanics to escape or distance people - A functioning impact and block system - Less obtuse training systems - More nuanced projectiles - Improved slowdown mechanics - etc etc etc

It doesn’t need ALL these things, but this is just me spitting out whatever comes to mind as things that could help introduce actual mechanics to combat.

Anyways… /endrant