[QUOTE=zenstar;339963]It is possible that things will work out this way. But it’s also possible that 2 x 4man teams will train the same way the team in your example did, and then train to coordinate with the other team allowing more variation in tactics without an increase in randomness.
I think you have a better argument with “Other games already play 5v5 and it’s easier to entice them over / integrate Brink with other games” than arguing that it’ll cause a breakdown in tactics.
I’d still like to see it tried out properly at 8v8 before the dicision is final but /shrug. I don’t really lose anything from the deal personally.[/QUOTE]
I agree with Zen once again. 5v5 is what is traditional, or what people are used to. Also, it is tough to bring ET in to a conversation of Brink because although it is made by SD, it is still a completely different game other than they both are Team-based. 8v8 would be more competitive than 5v5. Also, you just have to set some kind of limit on the classes rather than the abilities. Like One Engineer per team makes better sense than restricting abilities. That’s what I think.
What if players do not respawn until everyone is dead on a team, in competitive mode?
I appreciate that it links to a blog post and is trying to disseminate information amongst the populace in general. However this is not a forum for creating comp rules. Those are (I assume) created elsewhere. This is a good interface for people to learn more about comp play and question the rules used in comp play.
Like I said: noone is forcing anyone to take part in this discussion. If you do not feel like you should defend comp play rules then simply don’t post in this thread. The general populace here seems to be interested in probing the comp rules and discussing their validity.
It is possible that some pub players will become intruged and become comp players. It’s also possible that some comp rules will be revaluated based on some insightful post from an outsider’s point of view.
To these ends I’d say that the discussion is moving forward. Pub players are learnign more about the reasoning behind the comp rules and comp players are maybe learning (hopefully) something that may be useful from pub player. Comp players are also able to get people interested in their games and maybe increase their player base.
Since this is not a comp forum the only reason for posting links here is because you want general public interest.
I personally find some of the reasoning interesting and would like my suggestions at least briefly considered since I might be one of the audience (and comp play dies with no audience).
So both sides: Be nice and help one another understand your different viewpoints. This is a discussion about comp play and it’s rules (whether you want it to be or not), but we do not need to attack the other side or be rude. If you’re getting frustrated or annoyed take a break and go have some coffee and come back when you’re calmer.
EDIT:
response to edit:
Be happy people are passionate enough to be interested. It would be far worse if this thread had 1 response and it was someone going “So what?”.
People are debating the rational of the decisions. Who knows: maybe this’ll spawn a second competition division? Or maybe it’ll come to nothing. If we keep open minds then maybe something good will happen. If we dismiss people because “it doesn’t concern them” then we may miss the oportunity to learn something we missed.
Why not let people have their say if they want it?
[QUOTE=Kendle;339967]Although in general I agree, this thread is linked to a blog post by GreasedScotsman, it wasn’t put here for “discussion of comp rules by non-comp players”, and in particular it doesn’t move the discussion forward when so many people who would not be effected by it insist on commenting on it.
There are some people in this thread who have written walls of text on something that doesn’t concern them. They may have the right, but what was the point?[/QUOTE]
I’m pretty sure it was put here for discussion by anyone. I’d imagine the non-comp/non-PC players posted because they wanted to discuss the topic. Isn’t that the point of forums? Apparently most of the comp posters in this thread don’t care about moving the discussion forward anyway because they’ve already decided on what the rules will be and aren’t open to a discussion anyway.
Many non-comp/non-PC players simply posted that to an outsider those rules seem extreme and they wanted to hear the reasoning behind the rules and the like. (BTW thanks to the many players that actually did provide this feedback as I found it interesting and informative). However instead they were treated mostly to a tirade that could be summarized at “STFU and go back to your consoles and/or non-competitive play kiddies…” Which is even more pointless and downright offensive than the non-comp/non-PC players posting in this thread.
In closing, sorry there are non-comp/non-PC players that actually like the game enough to talk about it and discuss different facets of gameplay that might be outside their own experience. I guess you’d rather see the game die.
OT: It might be worth mentioning that many clans I know on 360 (mine included) are waiting for the DLC + Clan support to hit the stats site before really throwing themselves into competitive play. Many of them are just scrimming for fun atm. Therefore, many of these types of players may be seeking feedback from the PC comp community in order to adjust there own formats of play in the future.
[QUOTE=Kendle;339967]Although in general I agree, this thread is linked to a blog post by GreasedScotsman, it wasn’t put here for “discussion of comp rules by non-comp players”, and in particular it doesn’t move the discussion forward when so many people who would not be effected by it insist on commenting on it.
There are some people in this thread who have written walls of text on something that doesn’t concern them. They may have the right, but what was the point?[/QUOTE]
Stupid decisions pique peoples interest in subjects, thus you get a lot of discussion as people try and fathom the reasoning behind the seemingly absurd decisions that make no logical sense as they flail around trying to understand the thinking.
As an aside, you probably should consider what people who don’t play competitively think even if just in some small regard, as they’ll probably be the ones watching the games - which are the ones sponsors want - because if no ones watching, there’s no point in sponsors paying?
SC2 has awesome casters and with very simple understanding can be interesting/exciting. There are cheesy things you can do, there are stunningly complicated things you can do - all of which can be seen and on a basic level understood. HALO has shouting and frantic action (this is not an endorsement of consoles competitively - **** that). QuakeLive has an obvious skill level you can see on screen.
With the ESL rules, what does Brink have? ‘OOO OPTIMAL POSITIONING’ 1 v 3’s? Stop trying to be a faster version of CS
Well yes and no, GreasedScotsman posted a blog and this website’s software uses the forum as a commenting system for blogs and news posts.
99% of people who play Brink competitively probably don’t even read these forums let alone post in them.
I’m sure that’s true to an extent, but the majority of the wall of text in this thread is non-comp players telling comp players how to play the game, isn’t that equally as pointless and offensive ?
Look at it another way, would you play Brink 3-v-3 on PC if an XBox player said you should ? Would anyone play the game a different way because someone they’re never going to play with or against says so ?
Please note that although I’m posting in this thread I’m not offering any suggestions as to how comp should be played. Why ? Because I don’t play comp.
I used to, and I may in the future, but I doubt it will be Brink because it’s fundamentally unsuitable for competition at this point IMO (at least for the long term). Note the ESL tournament is an exception because there’s a big prize involved. Don’t expect any of those teams to still be playing Brink after the event ends unless something happens in the meantime to make Brink more comp friendly.
Not understanding the reasoning behind a decision doesn’t make it stupid or illogical.
Brink is VERY long way from spectators having any sway over how the competitors compete, even massive games like CS:S and COD4 are nowhere near that yet. I wish that were not so, but that’s the reality of eSports at the moment.
Now this isn’t moving the discussion anywhere. We’ve dallied over the offtopic too much.
Summary: we’re going to discuss this whether you like it or not. Please stop telling us not to. We’d love it if you want to add something but are quite happy if you stop reading the thread too.
I don’t think we need to discuss who and what we’re allowed to discuss anymore. It’s derailing the thread and everyone has access to the forum policies.
Back on topic:
Who decides the rules for comp? How do they go about it? Is there a committee somewhere or is it one dude? Do they inherit past rules and adapt them to current games or do they play for a while and get a feel for the game before they being rulemaking?
What is the main aim of comp? I assume it’s to make for games that are exciting to watch? Is that it?
[QUOTE=Kendle;339996]Well yes and no, GreasedScotsman posted a blog and this website’s software uses the forum as a commenting system for blogs and news posts.
99% of people who play Brink competitively probably don’t even read these forums let alone post in them.
I’m sure that’s true to an extent, but the majority of the wall of text in this thread is non-comp players telling comp players how to play the game, isn’t that equally as pointless and offensive ?
Look at it another way, would you play Brink 3-v-3 on PC if an XBox player said you should ? Would anyone play the game a different way because someone they’re never going to play with or against says so ?
Please note that although I’m posting in this thread I’m not offering any suggestions as to how comp should be played. Why ? Because I don’t play comp.
I used to, and I may in the future, but I doubt it will be Brink because it’s fundamentally unsuitable for competition at this point IMO (at least for the long term). Note the ESL tournament is an exception because there’s a big prize involved. Don’t expect any of those teams to still be playing Brink after the event ends unless something happens in the meantime to make Brink more comp friendly.[/QUOTE]
All of your arguments are your perception and opinion, not in fact truth. You spelled out that you are not the voice of the community, k. Let us discuss the competitive parameters of the game please. We get what your goal here is, and generally speaking, it not cool. So, yeah. Buzz off. BZZZZZ!
This is incorrect. There are indeed CVARs that allow specific abilities to be disabled on PC dedicated servers. That fact is one of the key reasons why Brink is “relatively” playable in its current state. Sadly, even with that granular control over abilities, the game remains far too defensively biased for Stopwatch (tho I have found pub play with some minor ability tweaks is extremely fun).
In an effort to avoid historic problems that have arisen in other competitive PC games when leagues and tournaments offered their own, often very divergent rule sets, several team representatives and league administrators from multiple organizations have come together to discuss and try to come up with a unified rule set for the PC community.
This effort has been stalled, for the most part, because most agree that Brink is not quite competition-ready without some key tweaks or access to various CVARs. However, once the DLC/patch hits, assuming it offers either some greater level of control over rules, or includes requested tweaks voiced by the competitive community, the group will be revisiting and retooling the rule set until a clear format has been accepted by all.
ESL EU couldn’t wait, so they decided to do their best to make Brink as comp-friendly as possible. As the game stands, I think they succeeded. When the DLC/patch hits and if we get some tweaks for Stopwatch that make the game less defensively biased, I’m sure all leagues will revisit their rule sets.
Competitors and league administrators alike seem to understand this, thankfully. I don’t see the ESL EU rules remaining permanent.
While I’m more inclined to want less restrictions so that Brink plays as close to its vanilla counterpart as possible, I’ve played with ESL EU rules and the game is still definitely Brink and a joy to watch. Most critically, though, it is far more enjoyable to play for those involved, and quite frankly, I want the players having fun.
Note the authors of 2 of those play for Dignitas, arguably the top Brink team at the moment, as they were the top ET team and top ET:QW team.
Not really, it’s about one team beating another to decide who’s best and competing in and winning competitions. If spectators watch and enjoy watching that’s a bonus.
[QUOTE=GreasedScotsman;340022]This is incorrect. There are indeed CVARs that allow specific abilities to be disabled on PC dedicated servers. That fact is one of the key reasons why Brink is “relatively” playable in its current state. Sadly, even with that granular control over abilities, the game remains far too defensively biased for Stopwatch (tho I have found pub play with some minor ability tweaks is extremely fun).
In an effort to avoid historic problems that have arisen in other competitive PC games when leagues and tournaments offered their own, often very divergent rule sets, several team representatives and league administrators from multiple organizations have come together to discuss and try to come up with a unified rule set for the PC community.
This effort has been stalled, for the most part, because most agree that Brink is not quite competition-ready without some key tweaks or access to various CVARs. However, once the DLC/patch hits, assuming it offers either some greater level of control over rules, or includes requested tweaks voiced by the competitive community, the group will be revisiting and retooling the rule set until a clear format has been accepted by all.
ESL EU couldn’t wait, so they decided to do their best to make Brink as comp-friendly as possible. As the game stands, I think they succeeded. When the DLC/patch hits and if we get some tweaks for Stopwatch that make the game less defensively biased, I’m sure all leagues will revisit their rule sets.
Competitors and league administrators alike seem to understand this, thankfully. I don’t see the ESL EU rules remaining permanent.
While I’m more inclined to want less restrictions so that Brink plays as close to its vanilla counterpart as possible, I’ve played with ESL EU rules and the game is still definitely Brink and a joy to watch. Most critically, though, it is far more enjoyable to play for those involved, and quite frankly, I want the players having fun.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Shadowcat;339653]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.[/QUOTE]
It isn’t fair because the defense is now a man down and a man down in low player count games counts for a lot. You have to look at in in the big picture of things and see that everyone should have an equal amount of players because it allows both teams to take more risks. If I’m playing defense and we have 5 players instead of 6, why would I want to risk sending someone out to backrage when I could just have 4 medics and 1 engy? See how stale that would be? At least now you have some backrages, teams run different classes on objectives and it isn’t a team of 1 obj class + rest meds.
It shows a failure because no other competitive game has ever had you play a man down; you don’t play CS:S/CS1.6 1 man down, nor do you do a 2v1 in QUAKE. It would potentially create more camping than anything else; have you ever watched a match of, say TF2, where a team loses an important player? The game goes to a crawl as the other team waits for him to respawn and pretty much camps out.
It already takes forever to kill someone, so you’re already pretty much empty and low on health after you take someone down, and on top of that they’re shooting back at you from the ground and there’s nothing you can really do if you’ve started a reload because you’ll be dead before you can take out your pistol (assuming the other person has a sea eagle, which they do). Plus in a 2v1 situation, if you’ve already taken 1 player down and he has downed fire, you’re still in a 2v1 situation; how is that fair?
Self revive creates a horrible unbalance for the defense; let’s take a look at Aquarium first objective. You’re pushing in top blue and your team throws say a nade and takes out a medic and engineer really far back. The other medic is playing red or backraging so he isn’t able to throw a syringe right off the bat to res the medic, so he’s alone but he has self res. The medic is too far back to go actually gib with a melee because you know there’s someone playing back hall that’s fully buffed and waiting for someone to do that. You’d set up and get the room and try to gib from a distance if possible; however, you won’t be able to do that, because the medic has just self revived, gotten the revive invincibility and is now raging your team because you wasted bullets on someone in invincibility and you had no idea they were under that effect because there’s no icon.
[QUOTE=Shadowcat;339800]Nearly impossible. Devs need to design and balance games for the masses. Pub balance and Comp balance almost never overlap. Thats a big reason why you see most of the weapons in pub games but only a handful in comp; comp players will almost always grab the gun with the highest skill ceiling, which in this case is a light player with Sea Eagle/Ritchie and the CARB-9 which most agree is overpowered.
So the Comp rules attempt to balance the game for their needs with the tools available, which is fair enough, but I don’t think banning a third of the skills is the best way.[/QUOTE]
The game should actually be more balanced then upon release; I think everyone’s heard the quote “balance for the competitive scene and the pub scene will follow.” It’s worked well for Counter-Strike and even the changes the comp scene got VALVe to do for TF2 was pretty well received after everyone saw how it affected the game. QUAKE Live has also gotten a lot of great changes based upon comp players’ opinions (not so much damage wise, but cvar and UI wise, although there’s probably been a few damage changes; now if they’d just add CPMA movement, lol) and they were really well received.
You design the game for the most hardcore crowd ever, because if anyone can break your game it’s them. This creates a game with near perfect balance and even pubbers will love it, because they aren’t being killed by a tomahawk at the very beginning of a round because of luck.
There are some abilities that shouldn’t really be banned, but there’s also some that should be banned that aren’t (grenade shooting, in my opinion). The rules will be reevaluated after the DLC anyways, so for now the rules work well enough to let us scrim BRINK and actually set times.
Your game has autoaim, ours doesn’t. That right there makes our game harder to win than yours, because we have to be able to aim and not hope our mouse can snap to a head. What mindset am I displaying? I’ve played the game competitively on a PC, you haven’t. I’ve experienced these horrid fullholds that ruin the experience (been on both sides of that) and it sucks; even a crappy team should be able to at least set an 19 minute time on a good team, but that isn’t the case. Have you experienced them? Nope, so I’ll listen to what you have to say, but your ideas so far haven’t been the answer either.
The game is designed to have the right number for each objective, but the right number isn’t always 1. Unless your team has some extremely awesome strat that clears the whole room and will let you hold it against 2 or 3 spawn waves, you’ll probably want to run more than 1 objective class on stuff like hacking and constructing.
The ESL rules don’t show a lack of understanding; there’s some things that could be tweaked, sure, but there’s no reason to tweak it now and have the DLC come out 3 days later and everyone have to reupdate their configs. If you think ESL doesn’t show understanding of this game, Splash Damage really didn’t show understanding of the balance of ET games this time around, lol.
When your game has less than 2k players on for peak this soon after release you screwed up; ET:QW had way more than that on at its peak hours after it was declared “dead.”
[QUOTE=wolfnemesis75;339929]Console is just plain easier. You don’t have to have dedicated space in your house, you don’t have to break the bank to play, you don’t have to worry about System Requirements (Oh this would put me into a rage in my PC days) there are many more people to play with, and you get more bang for you buck (more games). So, those bashing them for not providing PC stuff and demanding so much doesn’t change the simple fact that there are better business decisions beyond PC.
Back on topic: I wish the COMP rules were a better reflection of Brink.[/QUOTE]
I have to have a dedicated place to store my 360, otherwise it would overheat. The bank wasn’t broken for me to have a PC and I haven’t paid attention to system requirements in forever, because the consoles hold everything back. My $600 PC was able to play Crysis 2 easily, lol. Plus I spend maybe $150 a year on games and I can get a bunch of games on Steam for that amount of money.
[QUOTE=zenstar;340002]Now this isn’t moving the discussion anywhere. We’ve dallied over the offtopic too much.
Summary: we’re going to discuss this whether you like it or not. Please stop telling us not to. We’d love it if you want to add something but are quite happy if you stop reading the thread too.
I don’t think we need to discuss who and what we’re allowed to discuss anymore. It’s derailing the thread and everyone has access to the forum policies.
Back on topic:
Who decides the rules for comp? How do they go about it? Is there a committee somewhere or is it one dude? Do they inherit past rules and adapt them to current games or do they play for a while and get a feel for the game before they being rulemaking?
What is the main aim of comp? I assume it’s to make for games that are exciting to watch? Is that it?[/QUOTE]
The main aim of comp is to have fun playing in a pure skill environment (or as close to pure skill as you can get in a game like this). The players have a lot of say in stuff usually, unless its like a sponsored tournament like QUAKECon where the developers or sponsors get to screw up the balance yet again. There’s probably a committee that is talking about things on and off and trying different things out, but there’s real no reason to push for anything when the game will change yet again when SD adds even more useless abilities.
I miss the days of pure skill games when abilities were what you were able to accomplish as a player.
Best solution would be for all PC players to plug in Xbox sticks into their computers and play that way. :eek::eek::eek:
Also, winners should be determined by how many buffs where handed out. Double full hold? Well, our engies gave out 43 weapon buffs to your 37 weapon buffs. So we win.
8vs8 is the way to go because these maps are huge!!! :stroggbanana:
There should be no restrictions because if you are truly elite gamers, you should adapt your lifestyles around 40 minute matches. Maybe if you didn’t get married and have a full time job, you would be l33t. :stroggtapir:
Self-revive, Cortext bombs and downed fire make me feel better about myself after getting face raped, so those are perfect for competition.
We need to have class restrictions so that command posts don’t interfere with comp gameplay. In an 8 vs 8, every team must have 2 of each class at all times. If you switch you lose automatically. But why just stop there, lets enforce character size distribution as well. In an 8vs8 there must be at least 3 heavies and 4 mediums. Only 1 light because they promote anorexia and poor body image. :oppressor:
Bringing up SC2 and WOW are a perfect comparison. As a matter of fact, we should play Brink in a turn based manner, so we don’t increase game play speed and cause confusion. The next DLC should also include spells and dragon mounts (non flying).
I don’t care how many years it took ET to refine it’s rules to have a balanced comp scene. This is Brink and there is no room for past lessons learned. We are S.M.A.R.T. buffers, not unskillful headshotters and strafers. :infiltrator:
There you go. I just saved Brink’s comp scene that console gamers can enjoy.
GLHF.
I, for one, have enjoyed the back-and-forth in this thread and if you weed through the PC/Console/Comp/Pub posturing there’s some actual exchange of ideas.
One other point (from a comp player’s perspective) is that these ‘leagues’ and ‘cups’ and ‘tournaments’ are organized, in most cases, by players who play the game. As GS has stated, there’s a lot of conversation that goes on between the admins of those leagues to decide on the format. The TWL tournament was designed to see if 6v6 with no restrictions was viable. You can view the VOD’s from BrinkTV and judge it yourself. Other formats and rulesets, while not necessarily ‘tested’, are discussed by folks who know the game, have pubbed and scrimmed it, and (usually) have years of competitive experience across multiple titles. I think a lot of folks tend to see these ‘leagues’ as some collection of suits sitting in an ivory tower somewhere when a large percentage are administered by the gamers who play it.
Let’s all cross our fingers that the tools and options we need to bring Brink (in a comp format) the balance it needs are on the way from SD and that they get here quickly.
Fun to a competitive player is winning because their strategy and ability was better than the other team that day.
It is not fun to win or lose because of something that is completely out of your control. I could list off dozens of things that will help determine the outcome in a game that are out of the players control.
The rules are there to try to restrict as many of those things as possible.
The thing is ultimately what half of the people in thread think won’t ever matter as far as competitive play goes.
And to Anti. Don’t compare a game that wasn’t even in working order and already stated “not balanced for competitive play” to a game like SC2, LoL, or HoN that were all known to be made with the competitive community in mind.
