Brink Competition Round-up: The Right Rules and More

(Kalbuth) #81

I guess that’s sarcastic, but your quoted sentence wasn’t really clear in where you wanted to go

(tokamak) #82

[QUOTE=Anti;339780]Took the words out of my mouth. It’s alright telling people “try our rules, you might like them” but most people already playing a game don’t want to join a clan to try something different, they want to join a clan to play the game they play.

The Comp scene definitely has to be more considerate of that than it has been in the last 5 years or so and there are good examples why. The most competitive games and communities on PC right now, things like SC2, HoN and LoL, don’t deviate from the core rules much if at all. Something to think about.[/QUOTE]

Indeed. Though part of the responsibility lies with the developer to make the game suitable for comp as well as pub play.

That said, I absolutely see no reason why Brink’s official game wouldn’t suit competitive gaming, all it’s flaws lie apply to both pub as well as comp, there are no exclusive problems for competitive gaming.

I also have the feeling that most of the comp rules are just changes for the sake of changing.

Bit step forwards would be Brink integrating competition into the game. The reason why in SC2 there’s no difference between pub and competitive play is because Blizzard simply made sure the game caters to both. It balances it’s gameplay on the highest rated matches and that turns out to be good enough for the entire playerbase. At the same time they lower the bar for the casual gamers by slightly automating the gameplay (compared to SC brood war), the pro’s won’t notice any of that but it does make the game suitable to everyone.

That’s a democratic bottom up aproach, it’s also pretty elegant as it dynamically adjusts to the metagame. Comp rules are a top-down approach where a bunch of elitist geeks force their personal opinion into leagues.

(Kendle) #83

Does this mean SD are not intending to provide the tools the comp scene has said it needs ?

(tokamak) #84

How the hell did you even get that out of that quote?

(zenstar) #85

Remind me why the competative scene has to be 5v5?
The only thing I saw about it was something along the lines of “getting more than 5 people together on a regular basis is difficult” but that doesn’t really pan out to me. Look at any serious guild on something like WoW. Minimum 10 people raiding on a regular basis, often multiple times a week. Serious competition players will be able to organise 3 more people a week surely?
I think the comp scene would be healthier if it stuck with the 8v8 balance that Brink was designed around.

But then again Comp players can play however they want to. They paid just as much as I did and as long as they aren’t coming into my game forcing their rules on me I’m not going to go into their game and force them to play differently.

I just really don’t get some of the rules.

(tokamak) #86

You don’t even have to look at 10 man raids by the same guild. WoW now runs organised 10v10 and 15v15 matches. Key is that Blizzard caters to this, the game organises it for the players.

(Shadowcat) #87

Team sizes are more because organizing and directing a team of 8 people can be difficult at times. It’s much easier to plan strategies with only 5 people.

(tokamak) #88

Well that’s the argument for most comp adjustments. “It’s too difficult”

(wolfnemesis75) #89

[QUOTE=zenstar;339851]Remind me why the competative scene has to be 5v5?
The only thing I saw about it was something along the lines of “getting more than 5 people together on a regular basis is difficult” but that doesn’t really pan out to me. Look at any serious guild on something like WoW. Minimum 10 people raiding on a regular basis, often multiple times a week. Serious competition players will be able to organise 3 more people a week surely?
I think the comp scene would be healthier if it stuck with the 8v8 balance that Brink was designed around.

But then again Comp players can play however they want to. They paid just as much as I did and as long as they aren’t coming into my game forcing their rules on me I’m not going to go into their game and force them to play differently.

I just really don’t get some of the rules.[/QUOTE]

I love your posts Zen. You got the “IT” factor. I also think it should be 8v8. I also just don’t get some of the rules either. A good team would figure out how to get an objective accomplished.

(zenstar) #90

2 x fireteams of 4 people. Super easy to strategize within your fireteam, but also with the abilitiy to get 2 teams going. Assign a leader for each team who orders their team about and you have worlds of strategy open to you.

The “it’s too hard” thing may be true in practice. Has it really been tried properly (not just a couple of games but let clans actually get to grips with the new options open to them)?

If some of the people I’ve met can lead 10 or 20 player raids then I’m sure that some Comp players can lead 8 people.

(Shadowcat) #91

From what I can tell, adding more people tends to make defense even stronger, since their spawn point is always so close to the objective. It would be very hard to get in and drop all 8 guys before they started respawning, and they could get there faster than the offense will when the respawn, meaning that you end up having to drop 8 people twice before the dead members of your team can get back.

And doing 8 man strat’s really does start to get chaotic. You usually want one person to be somewhat directing the team, and its hard for one person to see everything that’s happening with 16 players on the field. I suppose you could split the team into two 4-man cells though.

Edit: I have yet to see 8v8 scrims in Brink, but I’ve done it in other games, and it just doesn’t feel as tactical as 5v5 does, it feels far more chaotic.

And raids are a lot different than comp. In MMO raids, each person has a job, and their only goal is to do that job as best as they can. FPS Scrims involve teammates rotating positions in order to adjust for the enemy tactics, filling in gaps for teammates that die, and just plain adjusting on the fly as the situation calls.

I’ve played both (WoW ate my soul once upon a time) and even as main healer, the game doesn’t call for much improvisation; just have to click people when their health was low, manage threat and mana, and run when all else failed. Nothing happened that you couldn’t expect and have a plan for. The exception being Arena, which was again limited to 5v5.

(wolfnemesis75) #92

[QUOTE=Shadowcat;339864]From what I can tell, adding more people tends to make defense even stronger, since their spawn point is always so close to the objective. It would be very hard to get in and drop all 8 guys before they started respawning, and they could get there faster than the offense will when the respawn, meaning that you end up having to drop 8 people twice before the dead members of your team can get back.

And doing 8 man strat’s really does start to get chaotic. You usually want one person to be somewhat directing the team, and its hard for one person to see everything that’s happening with 16 players on the field. I suppose you could split the team into two 4-man cells though.

Edit: I have yet to see 8v8 scrims in Brink, but I’ve done it in other games, and it just doesn’t feel as tactical as 5v5 does, it feels far more chaotic.

And raids are a lot different than comp. In MMO raids, each person has a job, and their only goal is to do that job as best as they can. FPS Scrims involve teammates rotating positions in order to adjust for the enemy tactics, filling in gaps for teammates that die, and just plain adjusting on the fly as the situation calls.[/QUOTE]

Honestly, I think like many of the ESL rules, 8v8 was “ruled out” by theory alone rather than based on practice. This is the problem that many have pointed out. Rather than ruling out stuff, it should be played. There are the same number attacking as defending! And Brink is not a typical FPS. It needs to be played like Brink.

(tokamak) #93

And why would this be an exclusive problem to competitive gaming? Really, ask yourself that with everything the comp community tries to fix, ‘why would this only apply to comp’?

(shirosae) #94

Yes, really. They wrote it up above, in text. They’re arguing that people who play PC competitions know best what works and what doesn’t work in PC competitions, because they’re been playing PC competitions and looking at what works and what doesn’t work. This is the argument. They wrote it down. This is not hard to understand.

Yes, which SD has tried, and which in practice hasn’t worked. Competition is a mass of full holds. Sometimes things don’t work like they do in the fantasy realm in your head.

Yes, you could, but the only way to test those ideas is to actually try them out. That means running PC competitions and seeing what works. Guess What?! They’ve done it. These rules are the results. You’re on the same page as these people, it’s just that they’re a few months ahead of you.

That’s kind of the idea, given that the most recognisable thing is the massive defensive bias.

If an SDK were available the stuff would be tweaked so that as much as possible could be saved (see ETQWpro, or any other promod), but it isn’t, so it can’t be. Maybe if/when an SDK arrives, the comp community can create a promod that simultaneously meets your needs whilst also being fun to play. Until then, fun to play in comp is more important than the opinions of people who don’t play in their competitions, yours or mine. Sorry.

Sure, it’s possible. It’s also not true. The people who want the same old games are still playing the same old games.

There are posts from comp players on these forums, offering feedback and advice to SD, stretching back for several years during development. Maybe you should read some of that stuff, if you want to know what the pc comp community wants.

No need to postulate, it’s actually all there waiting for you to put the effort in and read it. They did you the favour of writing it all down.

It’s out of the question because it doesn’t fix the problem.

(Shadowcat) #95

Because in pub, teams aren’t attempting to directly strategist with eachother. The teams work together reasonably well due to game design, but there is still much chaos. Its impossible to feel like a tactical unit with people you dont know.

The feeling of knowing exactly what your teammate is going to do because you have rehearsed it dozens of times does not compare to pub play, and is really what many comp players are looking to experience. This becomes harder to do with each additional member.

(zenstar) #96

Fair enough. As I said before: they can play how they want to. It’s their game too.

As an aside though: WoW now has “rated battlegrounds” which is fancy for “big arenas in battleground format” which cater for 10. (Originally 10 or 15 but I think they were overreaching with 15 and cut it back).

(wolfnemesis75) #97

[QUOTE=shirosae;339873]Yes, really. They wrote it up above, in text. They’re arguing that people who play PC competitions know best what works and what doesn’t work in PC competitions, because they’re been playing PC competitions and looking at what works and what doesn’t work. This is the argument. They wrote it down. This is not hard to understand.

Yes, which SD has tried, and which in practice hasn’t worked. Competition is a mass of full holds. Sometimes things don’t work like they do in the fantasy realm in your head.

Yes, you could, but the only way to test those ideas is to actually try them out. That means running PC competitions and seeing what works. Guess What?! They’ve done it. These rules are the results. You’re on the same page as these people, it’s just that they’re a few months ahead of you.

That’s kind of the idea, given that the most recognisable thing is the massive defensive bias.

If an SDK were available the stuff would be tweaked so that as much as possible could be saved (see ETQWpro, or any other promod), but it isn’t, so it can’t be. Maybe if/when an SDK arrives, the comp community can create a promod that simultaneously meets your needs whilst also being fun to play. Until then, fun to play in comp is more important than the opinions of people who don’t play in their competitions, yours or mine. Sorry.

Sure, it’s possible. It’s also not true. The people who want the same old games are still playing the same old games.

There are posts from comp players on these forums, offering feedback and advice to SD, stretching back for several years during development. Maybe you should read some of that stuff, if you want to know what the pc comp community wants.

No need to postulate, it’s actually all there waiting for you to put the effort in and read it. They did you the favour of writing it all down.

It’s out of the question because it doesn’t fix the problem.[/QUOTE]
All your arguments are well thought out, thanks. But not correct, imo other than PC deciding what PC players want to play. The ESL rules clearly show lack of understanding of the game, and is in no way evidence that pretty much all of your arguments are fact. Sorry, bro. In fact, the BrinkTV comp showed that there were many preconceived and misunderstood notions of Brink. Like:“Downed fire was removed because its cheesy” as one example.

(wolfnemesis75) #98

[QUOTE=Shadowcat;339874]Because in pub, teams aren’t attempting to directly strategist with eachother. The teams work together reasonably well due to game design, but there is still much chaos. Its impossible to feel like a tactical unit with people you dont know.

The feeling of knowing exactly what your teammate is going to do because you have rehearsed it dozens of times does not compare to pub play, and is really what many comp players are looking to experience. This becomes harder to do with each additional member.[/QUOTE]

Again, this is simply not true.

(itsme) #99

8vs8 is way to big lol. It’s gonna be chaotic indeed. Dont know where the number 5 is coming from but if you cut it less (to 5) more teams can be constructed and the game becomes intenser. Look at the esl page, not sooo many clans are registrated on ladder. What would this look like if every team should find 8 players?? It’s already hard to find a decent 5vs5 nowadays…

(Shadowcat) #100

I can feel like I am working together with a teammate I don’t know. We buff each other, we cover each other’s backs, we defend the objective together; heck, we might even move together from objective to objective together. This isn’t what I’m talking about when i say “tactical unit”.

When you are playing with a clan you have practiced with, you have a plan for the entire map from start to finish. You discuss multiple plans for each objectives, and at a single word might know exactly what the rest of your team is going to do, even if they are out of sight, and alter your plan of action for it. This level of familiarity and trust cant be achieved with someone you don’t know no matter how well SD designed the systems that nudge people into working together.