[B]Forced Team Dynamic /B
1 Medic, 1 Engineer, 1 Soldier, 1 Operative, 1 Universal
Universal is designated Team Captain*
*He cannot use a class-based ability, only universal abilities OR he is the only team member who can change class during a match.
This would potentially solve full-holds. This would better focus competitive matches on the core elements of the game, imo.
[QUOTE=riptide;339598]I think we both agree…that we want to buff offense and gimp defense… but no matter what way you cut it certain abilities will favor defense more than offense. It’s just the nature of things. Buffs are an example.
I feel that the restrictions currently aren’t necessarily there to buff offense or nerf defense and that’s the only thing that should be focused on. Getting it so that the offending team has an advantage of some sort.
For example I feel that EMP is catered more to offense than defense because defense would have to give up an engineer to get it(losing out on buffs(currently) and a mine) and you can still complete the objective while it’s under the effect of EMP. But turrets and mines are disabled by emp… so ya.
But something like adrenaline boost would be easier to utilize on defense to maximum efficiency while on offense it is significantly harder.[/QUOTE]
I’m not even trying to claim that all skill restrictions are bad, but they have banned 15 in a game with only a few dozen. Adrenaline boost? sure. But you at least seem to agree that the severe restrictions on Operative make no sense, since defense will never use the class.
To me, the simplest solution still seems to be allowing more players on offense than defense.
You’ve probably used your 3 grand uber-PC to post this utter dribble, yes?..And to make it apparent to us poor failboxers that you’re a supercillious, patronising, dribbling ****tard?
Irony, thou art truly a heartless bitch…
Your post was clearly designed to annoy, and brought nothing to the debate whatsoever - a clear indicator that financial solvency and personal development do not always go hand-in-hand.
In RL, of course, I would greatly enjoy pummeling you - and would probably have talked your chick (perhaps purchased over the net on said PC?) into blowing me before you’d finished collecting your teeth.
In closing, and having re-read your insightful post, I fear I may have been too subtle in my response. Be very clear…you’re a dick.
[QUOTE=DeeTwo;339596]Can someone explain again why downed fire and self res needed to be banned as from a spectator POV, they’re awesome.
Or was literally no thought given to people actually watching the game?[/QUOTE]
Downed fire and self resurrection are both extremely cheap in competitive play; once you kill someone that should be the end of it unless a medic comes to pick them up. They shouldn’t be able to influence the battle from a state of incapacitation. That’s why self revives and downed fire are always hated in games. It isn’t fair for them to be given a second chance unless another medic takes the risk to revive them.
[QUOTE=Shadowcat;339607]I’m not even trying to claim that all skill restrictions are bad, but they have banned 15 in a game with only a few dozen. Adrenaline boost? sure. But you at least seem to agree that the severe restrictions on Operative make no sense, since defense will never use the class.
To me, the simplest solution still seems to be allowing more players on offense than defense.[/QUOTE]
To me that just isn’t fair; I can’t think of a multiplayer game that had something like that ever. If it came down to that, that would only highlight the failure that is BRINK’s balance and you’d lose what little amount of teams you had probably. Removing abilities is a way better way to fix the game, because at least then the game isn’t a stationary thing since you can at least swap classes every now and then and try a different way of pushing.
[QUOTE=wolfnemesis75;339600][B]Forced Team Dynamic /B
1 Medic, 1 Engineer, 1 Soldier, 1 Operative, 1 Universal
Universal is designated Team Captain*
*He cannot use a class-based ability, only universal abilities OR he is the only team member who can change class during a match.
This would potentially solve full-holds. This would better focus competitive matches on the core elements of the game, imo.[/QUOTE]
It wouldn’t solve full-holds, because then you’d only have 1 objective person. Also causing people to not be able to switch teams is a bad idea because it forces people to run 1 or 2 strats and never try anything different because they don’t have the ability to run 2 or 3 engineers or medics.
Restricting the abilities is also a horrible choice; everyone should have access to everything, period. That’s one of the great things about the ESL config; everyone has all the abilities they need to have unlocked (both universal and class) right when they start no matter what, which evens the playing field instead of having to specialize in one class.
It seems kind of pointless for people who don’t play competitively, or even on the PC version, to try to tell us how to play competitively. What might work on your 360/PS3 doesn’t work on a PC in a competitive environment.
By the way, whoever said you console players will get us our SDK, that’s hilarious as heck! You aren’t the reason we would get the SDK, we’re the reason we would. Plus, we keep our games going way longer than any console community does, since you know your support for your online titles gets cut after a certain time and ours doesn’t. 
^^This, + about a gazillion.
I’d not be interested in any form of competitive mode which didn’t turn off DF or self-revving, as I find them unbleievably irritating in casual play - how many times should you be expected to drop someone? Self-revvers ‘popping back to life’ is my greatest Brink-irritant. I assume clanners and ‘serious’ players would find it equally so?
maybe make some abilities available for only the attackers? it seems funny to ban all those skills just because they could be abused by the defense. in the same way de-hacking was an unwritten rule, allow certain skills like adrenaline and emp for attackers only. just a thought. i would actually like to see a tournament fully played out with all of the skills still in play. i wonder if they would be much of a difference in the outcome. and why is it usually only 5v5 anyway? weren’t the maps built around 8v8?
You can’t enforce that because there’s no cvar to ban abilities from just one team and there’s no SDK, so no one can make a promod to do that. The honor system would be the only way to do that, but still that isn’t a really great way to do it, because accidents happen and some people just wouldn’t care.
They were built around 8v8, but can you imagine trying to get 8 people on a few times a week for 2 or 3 hours? There’s too many problems with anything above 5 or 6 people.
This seems a sound approach. As for the 5v5 with no nerfs, has this been tried, and is there any footage? Can a victory for the defender’s be safely assumed?
Sadly, very true…
The PC community have the joy of mods and player-made loveliness…we console-types are entirely dependent on ‘Dev Mercy’. The only downside to console gaming, imho. On the upside, we can buy the next gen version of our chosen machine for the same money you guys drop on a graphics card!
^^ Sadly, I’d assumed this was a given.
I’m a console convert, you see. Married with kids. Keeping an up-to-spec gaming PC was a rolling expense I couldn’t sustain and justify - the old,cheaper PCs did everything the rest of the family needed them to, it was me and my gaming that needed to find 2 grand every 6 months.
Hence, my ever-logical wifey decreed that I could have a machine that ‘just did games’. And so it came to pass.
I welcome the change, tbh, as finding that my pride and joy was out of date before i’d taken the box to the skip was beginning to massively honk me off.
My PC was $600 and it runs every game (but BRINK, hahaha) perfectly fine and at stable frames, but I like to play on ultra low because I don’t care about pretty effects, lol.
I came back from an Iraq tour with a few quid stashed and went to PC World.
When asked what spec I wanted, I told the spotty 'erbert behind the desk that I wanted a PC that would give me 90 fps on Oblivion, with everything maxed.
The quote made me faint, and I came to in the carpark, with my wife tipping water down my back.
For the money quoted i bought a new XBox, 5 games…and a road-legal, 5 Door hatchback.
At that point I surrendered to the wife and gave up PC gaming…
[QUOTE=StillBatusBrad;339649]I came back from an Iraq tour with a few quid stashed and went to PC World.
When asked what spec I wanted, I told the spotty 'erbert behind the desk that I wanted a PC that would give me 90 fps on Oblivion, with everything maxed.
The quote made me faint, and I came to in the carpark, with my wife tipping water down my back.
For the money quoted i bought a new XBox, 5 games…and a road-legal, 5 Door hatchback.
At that point I surrendered to the wife and gave up PC gaming…[/QUOTE]
And today you can build a machine that will do that for around $700. Will run BC2 on all high as well. Then you can add a screen and still be under $1000. I have heard similar prices available in the UK as well. That will likely run BF3 on at least medium if not high. Likely you won’t have any games more taxing than that for the next 3 years and then…then you might need to spend $200 on a new GPU after 3 years.
Then if you only spend $100 during one Steam summer or Christmas sale you will have a bigger backlog than you can play in 5 years.
PC gaming is incredibly affordable now. The old horror stories hardly hold. Though it is partially thanks to consoles making graphics evolutions a thing of the past with this Xbox 360, PS3 cycle going to last at least 6 years.
[QUOTE=Thundermuffin;339621]Downed fire and self resurrection are both extremely cheap in competitive play; once you kill someone that should be the end of it unless a medic comes to pick them up. They shouldn’t be able to influence the battle from a state of incapacitation. That’s why self revives and downed fire are always hated in games. It isn’t fair for them to be given a second chance unless another medic takes the risk to revive them.
To me that just isn’t fair; I can’t think of a multiplayer game that had something like that ever. If it came down to that, that would only highlight the failure that is BRINK’s balance and you’d lose what little amount of teams you had probably. Removing abilities is a way better way to fix the game, because at least then the game isn’t a stationary thing since you can at least swap classes every now and then and try a different way of pushing.
Restricting the abilities is also a horrible choice; everyone should have access to everything, period. That’s one of the great things about the ESL config; everyone has all the abilities they need to have unlocked (both universal and class) right when they start no matter what, which evens the playing field instead of having to specialize in one class.
[/QUOTE]
How is it not fair? Both teams would be at the same disadvantage for the defense half of the game. How does it show a failure of game mechanics for comp play anymore than banning a third of the abilities?
Playing the game 5v6 wouldn’t be much different than what you already have, it would be less stationary and more varied than banning abilities, and it would achieve what you are looking for; the offensive team would be more likely to set a time.
That’s what the rules are attempting to do anyway, put the defense at enough of a disadvantage that offense is able to set a time. I see no issues with finding a rule set that basically guarantees that defense loses, the question then becomes “how long did each team manage to hold-out?”
What i am suggesting isn’t that comp rules should balance gameplay, I think they just need to push the balance the other way. That’s because Stopwatch guarantees that the game is balanced no matter what the rules or objectives are.
None of this should impact Brink’s image. SD has clearly stated that they wanted the Defense to have the advantage, making offense search for an opening and push. What competitive stopwatch play needs is for Offense to have the advantage, because a good comp team shouldn’t leave many gaps to exploit. There is a difference of goals, so any changes the comp scene makes says nothing about the game itself.
[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]
“Arguments in favor of these restrictions point to the effort to keep the game focused on skill-based kills and objective completion. Further, many of the abilities, while great fun for public play, do not seem to be balanced or intended for 5v5 competition.”
if you want skill based kills require every one to quick scope or use pistols. these dont really effect “skills” at all carb noobs gonna carb which requires at least arthritic fingers and an iq of 10 to kill someone with. till the guns are TRULY BALANCED dont expect much skill as i will run around with a AR and constantly killed by an smg. where is the balance in that?
a nato round vs a 9mm who winss?? well obviously the 5.56 but is that happening? no lights have all access to the most powerful weapons in the game and the fastest movement speed? is that fair or balanced? i think not.
And both easy to counter, just put a few more bullets into them. It’s called “gibbing” and has been part of this style of game since RTCW. I’ve never yet been killed by downed fire or a medic who revived himself.
[QUOTE=Shadowcat;339607]I’m not even trying to claim that all skill restrictions are bad, but they have banned 15 in a game with only a few dozen. Adrenaline boost? sure. But you at least seem to agree that the severe restrictions on Operative make no sense, since defense will never use the class.
[/QUOTE]
Probably due to the fact that you currently cannot selectively ban specific abilities, you restrict ability ranks accross the entire game.
If you have a rank 4 ability you feel will make competition not possible, you have to ban all rank 4 abilities, because that’s the only control cvar we have atm on server configurations.
It’s not that ESL wanted to ban all those abilities, they just had no choice because the game isn’t comp ready yet. Selective cvars is part of what will make it comp ready
[QUOTE=Kalbuth;339756]Probably due to the fact that you currently cannot selectively ban specific abilities, you restrict ability ranks accross the entire game.
If you have a rank 4 ability you feel will make competition not possible, you have to ban all rank 4 abilities, because that’s the only control cvar we have atm on server configurations.
It’s not that ESL wanted to ban all those abilities, they just had no choice because the game isn’t comp ready yet. Selective cvars is part of what will make it comp ready[/QUOTE]
That’s not true at all, the rules in question (From the OP) Do not ban all rank 4 and 5 abilities (Laz nade, for example, is frequently used). They just tell players that any team seen using the banned abilities in play will be forfeit, and all games had a referee.