A new blog entry has been added:
[drupal=829]Brink Competition Round-up: The Right Rules and More[/drupal]
GreasedScotsman from Brink TV is back for another competitive roundup. Inside, we’ll examine the pre-DLC rule set that has taken hold in order to make Brink more competitively-friendly, touch on some of the European Brink competitions and give a rundown of the North American leagues and tournaments that have taken place to date.
I can’t speak a lot to this as I am not a PC player, but those rules seem like they would take 1/2 the fun out of the game. They almost appear to morph the title into a different game (I could be exaggerating like I said I’m not on the PC playing competitively). I mean you can’t de-hack a hack objective? Seriously? I’m sure these rules were decided on after a great deal of debate and discussion and I’m just calling this after reading a paragraph or 2, but that’s my 2 cents.
I get that the idea is to basically prevent stalemates (in stopwatch). It would take extra work, but perhaps you could just time the matches and whoever made it the farthest, completed the most objectives, etc. in the least amount of time wins. Perhaps each objective could be timed and then a final winner of each objective decided. It seems like there could be other options besides removing a ton of abilities. I know that’s outside the confines of the actual game structure and you’ve probably been discussing it to death, but just some thoughts off the top of my head.
Thanks for the writeup Greased, may the DLC bring us all much goodyness 
I agree with Nephandys. These rules make the game a very vanilla version of Brink, and far less innovative. We play Big Team matches on Xbox that are hugely competitive 8v8 where it takes very highlevel of teamwork to make progress, but there are few stalemates. We play against Tactical Gamers and Military gamers who do coordinated attacks with actual squad commands and callouts. Maybe get some opinions outside the strict competitive section like from some actual military or tactical gamers instead of pairing down the game. Operative is pointless with these rules besides as a means to complete a hack. The competitive rules should be more of a reflection of the game Brink, rather than a water-down version that is more about pure shooting. Brink in its true form is about teamwork, not gun aim.
My two cents:)
I guess I have to point our the obvious here… has a tournament been played allowing everything that ended in constant stalemates? If not, what justification do all of these restrictions have?
I too was brought up by this rule. However is, ‘At least these rules have been tested more than the actual game was.’ REALLLY a bad thing to say?
Can’t wait for the SDK to come out so you guys can make a Final Destination map…
[QUOTE=nephandys;339359]I can’t speak a lot to this as I am not a PC player, but those rules seem like they would take 1/2 the fun out of the game. They almost appear to morph the title into a different game (I could be exaggerating like I said I’m not on the PC playing competitively). I mean you can’t de-hack a hack objective? Seriously? I’m sure these rules were decided on after a great deal of debate and discussion and I’m just calling this after reading a paragraph or 2, but that’s my 2 cents.
I get that the idea is to basically prevent stalemates (in stopwatch). It would take extra work, but perhaps you could just time the matches and whoever made it the farthest, completed the most objectives, etc. in the least amount of time wins. Perhaps each objective could be timed and then a final winner of each objective decided. It seems like there could be other options besides removing a ton of abilities. I know that’s outside the confines of the actual game structure and you’ve probably been discussing it to death, but just some thoughts off the top of my head.[/QUOTE]
So put more work on the players to compensate for the game being inadequate for actual competition out of the box (even according to SD)?
Did you even watch the double full hold over and over where they were even talking about having to count how many plants or if the team that got the furthest in the plant wins? Do you realize how dumb that is that every game would be decided on the first objective? The funny thing is attrition would play a bigger role in the match than player skill and strategy.
Offense HAS to set a time no question… they should not have to play 15-20 minute halves to a map. Each map should be decided in 20 minutes or less… So absolutely anything that buffs offense or nerfs defense is more than welcomed at this point.
When maps are steamrolled because it favors offense too much. Then you can tone it down with the offensive buffs and defensive nerfs.
Always amusing to hear console players comment on competitive gaming. So what if the game is “morphed”? Are you mad that the developers didn’t give you enough access to the game to be able to change its core settings on your $200 console? Leave this up to the big boys
please cure the double full hold syndrôme !!!
or the game is definitly dead !
[QUOTE=wolfnemesis75;339371]I agree with Nephandys. These rules make the game a very vanilla version of Brink, and far less innovative. We play Big Team matches on Xbox that are hugely competitive 8v8 where it takes very highlevel of teamwork to make progress, but there are few stalemates. We play against Tactical Gamers and Military gamers who do coordinated attacks with actual squad commands and callouts. Maybe get some opinions outside the strict competitive section like from some actual military or tactical gamers instead of pairing down the game. Operative is pointless with these rules besides as a means to complete a hack. The competitive rules should be more of a reflection of the game Brink, rather than a water-down version that is more about pure shooting. Brink in its true form is about teamwork, not gun aim.
My two cents:)[/QUOTE]
The game is still about teamwork; you aren’t going to ace the other team even when things are restricted, because not only do the guns have the most random attributes ever, but the game still plays like the BRINK you know, just without all the crappy stuff that doesn’t matter.
The innovations of BRINK were lackluster, let’s be honest; SMART is a great idea, but it comes at the price of strafejumping and everything that made W:ET and ET:QW great. Strafejumping is a million times better than SMART because you have way more control, you actually move so much faster which spreads up the pace of matches, and it allows for way more fun strats and combat.
De-hacking was a horrible implementation of a great idea; in theory it sounds balanced, but it just isn’t the way SD actually put it into the game. It should have taken way longer to dehack and shouldn’t have been able to completely reset your progress. The abilities are so-so; they’re fun and all, but too many of them are unbalanced and just make the game so slow.
I can’t really think of anything else innovative that BRINK did, since SD’s previous games did the same thing and actually did it better.
Bringing in military gamers does nothing to alleviate the game’s flaws; combat experience doesn’t really correlate into being good at games and being able to pinpoint what doesn’t work. You might be able to shout “enemy on left flank” better, but that doesn’t mean you’ll out aim them, out move them, or out play them. Why not just let the people who are actually going to play the game competitively do that? It worked well for all the QUAKE, Team Fortress, and Counter-Strike games that came before BRINK.
The competitive scene is nothing but fullholds without ESL rules in place; even with these rules in place you still get way too many fullholds compared to ET:QW and W:ET. The maps are so defensive sided that one bad push can waste you minutes because you have to wait for everyone to respawn (they may be on different waves because you can’t /kill and there’s no timer to know when to make a bumrush to suicide and try to take some with you), get health/kevlar/weapon buffs out to everyone, and then try to get a pick or two again so you can move in.
Really, no matter how you play BRINK it just isn’t as fun as SD’s previous games by any means. Pubbing is too spam-filled and you rarely win on offense, unless you just steamroll the other team. Steamrolls are fun maybe one or two times every now and then, but it isn’t fun for it to be the only way teams win. Competitive play isn’t fun either because it’s dominated by buffing and that slows the pace of the game down to a crawl because the offense has to sit and wait and waste the precious time they have.
I also want to add that I agree with GS. The competitive community needs to take another look at rules… Some restrictions are completely unnecessary while some that are worthy of restriction are ignored. Now I won’t get into which ones but if you’ve ever played on crossbreeds no buff server… it’s a lot more balanced as far as O/D go. Though their rules aren’t perfect either… but in my opinion, a hybrid would fit the bill(with spawn time tweaks).
Until you have played a competitive match as part of a clan vrs another clan of a reasonable level, i really dont think people should be telling the comp scene what it should or shouldnt have.
It seems that at least 90% of teams in the esl cup are happy with the restrictions, yet 90% of public players arent.
Please get in a clan and try playing for yourself. If you dont want to get in a clan and play competitively then why even post your thoughts on the issue as it doesnt affect you.
Well, I congratulate you on a highly constructive post!
I’m watching Brink.TV’s coverage of 6V6 Rounds 1&2 where about the 50 minute mark there is a discussion of Adrenaline. The opponent of Adrenaline as a competitive skill says literally nothing more than “Adrenaline is a ‘cheesy’ ability and shouldn’t be in competition.” He articulates almost nothing else. Oh, it can help the attacking team, when the team is coordinated, to achieve an objective. And /speaking sarcastically/ objectives are achieved so often in Brink, so let’s remove Abilities that actually help coordinated teams from achieving objectives. /I don’t understand./
[QUOTE=Apoc;339453]Until you have played a competitive match as part of a clan vrs another clan of a reasonable level, i really dont think people should be telling the comp scene what it should or shouldnt have.
It seems that at least 90% of teams in the esl cup are happy with the restrictions, yet 90% of public players arent.
Please get in a clan and try playing for yourself. If you dont want to get in a clan and play competitively then why even post your thoughts on the issue as it doesnt affect you.[/QUOTE]
scrimming/pugging and a little imagination will give you a fairly accurate picture. Not to mention watching VoDs of said games. Especially if one has competed in another game.
Oh and nice statistics could you tell me where they came from and how they gain any merit?
Ok, so we dont have money for a gaming computer, and that makes us worse than you?no. why dont you go back to your bridge and defend goldilocks or something, or are you too busy running windoes explorer so you cant get full RAM out of your computer. there i said it.
[QUOTE=St NickelStew;339454]Well, I congratulate you on a highly constructive post!
I’m watching Brink.TV’s coverage of 6V6 Rounds 1&2 where about the 50 minute mark there is a discussion of Adrenaline. The opponent of Adrenaline as a competitive skill says literally nothing more than “Adrenaline is a ‘cheesy’ ability and shouldn’t be in competition.” He articulates almost nothing else. Oh, it can help the attacking team, when the team is coordinated, to achieve an objective. And /speaking sarcastically/ objectives are achieved so often in Brink, so let’s remove Abilities that actually help coordinated teams from achieving objectives. /I don’t understand./[/QUOTE]
The defense can also use adrenaline and stack it so they can get a quick, easy defuse and there’s really nothing the offense can do if their moltov grenades are on recharge (this is assuming no one has a grenade partially cooked since the defense could have the objective disarmed before the grenade actually explodes) as they have to run out into the open and melee or slide tackle the defuser.
Adrenaline tried to be like TF2’s uber and it just doesn’t work in BRINK. It has no place because someone can get a chained adrenaline (that lasts even longer than TF2’s uber), rush in, take out a lot of the team and there’s nothing the other team can do about it. At least in TF2 you can knock ubers around or your med can pop his.
In TF2 this isn’t a problem because the maps are 5CP push maps instead of trying to defend 1 room; you can fall back in TF2 (assuming you can’t stop the advancement of the uber or your med isn’t at 100%) to your next point and set up and build uber/kritz and retake your ground, but you can’t fall back in BRINK like that. Even if you try to retreat a little to get you some breathing room the maps aren’t designed for it and it lets the other team get the objective room and dominate it and we all know where that leads by now.
That’s a credit to SLUGaMNKY - he’s done a lot of work and solicited a lot of feedback to try and find a middle ground.
I had a really long post written but realized it was mostly “bitter vet” so I’ve spared you all my vitriol. I will say Thundermuffin hit the nail on the head: game’s not fun pubbing or scrimming right now and I haven’t played it all week.
