By the Power of Netvars - Brink Gets Balance Tweaks

[to_few]

An Update on Brink - Brink General Discussion

By the Power of Netvars – Brink Gets Balance Tweaks
In addition to our on-going game updates for Brink, we’ve also been working on a bundle of balance tweaks based on the feedback we’ve had now that the game is out in the wild.

These tweaks are coming to all three versions of Brink and are being rolled out via our netvars. If netvars sound entirely foreign for you, they’re part of a system we developed for Brink to allow us to tweak various aspects of the game without requiring you to download a full game update.

Let’s have a look at what we’ve got in store, shall we?

Objectives

Hackboxes are getting a significant tweak across the board to help out attacking teams. We have drastically increased the time it takes Engineers to “de-hack”, making it easier for the attackers to actually get the hack done.

In addition to the Hackbox change, we’ve got several other objective tweaks coming, as well. For starters, we’re doubling the XP received for completing Primary Objectives in the game, so if you tackle one of them, your reward will be much greater from now on.

In addition, we’ve made the following map-specific adjustments:

Aquarium: Elevator generator construction time decreased
Container City: Robot health increased
Reactor: Terminal hack time slightly increased to balance new hacking mechanic
Resort: Gate hack time slightly increased to balance new hacking mechanic
Security Tower: Passcode return time increased
Security Tower: Passcode transmit time decreased

Abilities

Somewhat unsurprisingly, we’ve also been unable to keep our hands off Brink’s player abilities. There’s a single tweak coming your way here, with the Medic’s Adrenaline ability now having a shorter duration, which’ll make timing the ability right even more important.

When Will I Get These?

These changes are already live in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Brink. If you’re on the PC, you’ll be getting the entire batch of balance changes alongside the next game update

Sorry if it posted before…but im sure its new

Cant wate

[legend123]

I will be honest here…

I heard about it but not the details.
Secondly I am surprised the source is http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php...date-on-brink/ !
And thirdly while its ‘nice’ to have these tweaks there are more important things at hand that need improving!

[Ero-Sennin]

At least its a start… Ive also heard, from a certain someone i wont mention in case i remember wrong, 2 new maps soon and fixes on bullet spread to name only those 2. Cant wait…

[Deadwalking]

Thanks for the heads up, I never check out the Bethesda site.

Would be nice of Bethesda and SD to just release this info here as it affects the Dedicated servers, and this is the only Official Dedi forum.

@SD
Why change the hack time? And not just the de-hack time. Seems counter productive. It took way to long already, now it will take at least 3 Ops to hack, when it is already difficult to get 2 Ops to do the objective. Never seen anyone ask or demand the hack time to be increased.

SecTow Transmit Time was pretty fast. Now all you gotta do is get there? Now there is no time to stop someone Transmitting. Never seen anyone ask or demand that the transmit time or the return time to be adjusted. I like the return time, but not the Transmit time.

I really hope you add some info on what has been nerfed/buffed in the weapon department. Or at least adjust the bars in game to reflect the weapon adjustments that have been made, if it dosnt do it automagically from the netVars. Which it dosnt seem to have changed any of them so far.

[riptide]

[QUOTE=legend123;331913]I will be honest here…

I heard about it but not the details.
Secondly I am surprised the source is http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php...date-on-brink/ !
And thirdly while its ‘nice’ to have these tweaks there are more important things at hand that need improving![/QUOTE]

These kind of changes only require a little bit of thought and interpreting feedback. Then it’s no different than editing your post.

[Cankor]

It’s interesting they are already live on XBox and PS3 but you have to get an actual game patch to have them go live for PC.

[BioSnark]

Netvars are underwhelming. News source is disappointing in comparison with the previous level of communication from SD. Interesting balance changes are interesting. Not sure netvars can fix CC when that map goes south. An autonadespammer on the bot might

[GingThu]

I have already played a couple games with said tweeks and i must say on Security Tower there is a noticeable difference in the amount of time it takes to return the package this makes for very different defense. Because it takes longer for it to be returned definitely need team communication to make sure as many people as possible are around to return the package.

Also i think a few more tweeks should be made on the weapon side. For example the Carb-9 needs to get nerf’d a little. Not a GODSTORM nerf, just a slight nerf on accuracy and maybe clip size.

Overall I like the tweeks made, helping the attacking teams when it comes to hackboxes is important because it was pretty difficult to get past part 1 in Reactor. Now its a little more possible, but still really tough against a competent team.

[PowZee]

It’s hard to believe that there is time being spent to perform the above listed updates to the game balance. . .? . ! How about addressing the fundamental problems with the game that are causing people to stop playing it . . . you know, the simple stuff, like decent lasting connections, smooth frame rates, no lag infested matches . . .

[shadowmike]

Added time to de-hacking and doubled exp for primary objectives. Sweet!

[Je_T_aime]

I just dont understand the adrenaline lower effect duration, for example in container city I use to adrenaline boost the player that plants the bomb and that just takes like 3/4 of time it takes to plant the bomb, adrenaline is more a offensive ability so i dont get the point of reducing it, its not op at all.
And i think planting bombs should be faster, whats the point of reducing lift construction time in aquarium if a lot of times you can´t even plant the bomb.
But im glad that the engeneers now take longer to defuse the hack box, that will make some maps less frustating.

[badman]

A new blog entry has been added:
[drupal=821]By the Power of Netvars - Brink Gets Balance Tweaks[/drupal]

In addition to our on-going game updates for Brink, we’ve also been working on an initial bundle of balance tweaks based on the feedback we’ve had now that the game is out in the wild.
These tweaks are coming to all three versions of Brink and are being rolled out via our netvars. If netvars sound entirely foreign for you, they’re part of a system we developed for Brink to allow us to tweak various aspects of the game without requiring you to download a full game update.
Let’s have a look at what we’ve got in store, shall we?

[kilL_888]

nice to see something is done…

when will the next patch roll in anyways? the balance changes sound really promising and i want to try them out live on pc.

also, let us know about weapon changes. i have the subjective feeling that some guns are nerfed while others got buffed. or has there been any changes to the body types?

yesterday i played a bot match with a light body type character and got one shoted by a buffed drognav. and it wasnt a headshot.

[dazman76]

Well, obviously with little feedback from SD themselves, I guess we can’t see exactly why some of this was changed. I’m with Deadwalking here - some of these changes would appear to be bad ones, at least on the surface. Maybe they’ve been made in response to data gathered by the stats site, rather than player feedback? I guess we’ll have to wait and see how they work out.

Also, what’s with the PC version requiring an update for changes that are supposedly made via netvar tweaks? Is there a problem with the PC version reading netvars, a bug maybe? I don’t remember any netvar discussions stating they were for console versions only, and it seems odd to have to release a patch for something that is supposedly dynamic?

Confused infiltrator is confused. :infiltrator:

EDIT: On a positive note, it’s nice to see the hack remove time change - hopefully the change in hack time itself, won’t affect the impact of that change.

[Exedore]

Why change the hack time? And not just the de-hack time. Seems counter productive. It took way to long already, now it will take at least 3 Ops to hack, when it is already difficult to get 2 Ops to do the objective. Never seen anyone ask or demand the hack time to be increased.

The change was based off of statistical data, not so much player feedback. We’ll look at tweaking it further if later stats indicate we should.

/me points at the word “slightly”

[Up_Down]

[QUOTE=Exedore;332058]The change was based off of statistical data, not so much player feedback. We’ll look at tweaking it further if later stats indicate we should.

/me points at the word “slightly”[/QUOTE]

Sorry this does not make sense…

If the de-hack time is increased BUT…

Reactor: Terminal hack time slightly increased to balance new hacking mechanic
Resort: Gate hack time slightly increased to balance new hacking mechanic

Won’t these 2 changes effectively cancel each other out and make it the same as it is now?!

[Lakuta5]

Well, its good to see those Balancing efforts!

But i am really missing a slight nerf of the CARB-9 SMG, cause literally EVERYBODY runs around with that, paired with the Light Type Character.

Is it possible to nerf the CARB-9 SMG slightly and to add different types of Recoil, so that a Heavy Char experiences light Recoil and a Light Type experiences larger recoil?

Regards!

[DarkangelUK]

[QUOTE=Up&Down;332074]
Won’t these 2 changes effectively cancel each other out and make it the same as it is now?![/QUOTE]

Only if the increase was enough to cancel the change out, which by the sounds of it it wasn’t… he did point to the word slightly.

[McAfee]

[QUOTE=Up&Down;332074]Sorry this does not make sense…

If the de-hack time is increased BUT…

Won’t these 2 changes effectively cancel each other out and make it the same as it is now?![/QUOTE]

Not exactly, cause there are more than 2 spots that can be hacked/de-hacked.

AFAIK, Making the engineer de-hack slower would apply the change everywhere. That is, any primary or secondary objective on any map.

So after they where happy with the game mechanic change, then they tweaked specific map spots. But remember there are more than 2 spots in the entire game for hacking/de-hack

[tangoliber]

Been playing with these changes for two days now I believe on PS3.

One thing I don’t believe that detailed were some of the defensive respawn changes. I noticed that during the first part of the bot escort on Container City, the Resistance’s spawn is 30 seconds. It was 20 before right?

I think hacking time should be increased on Resort, Terminal and Reactor… to the point where the Offense only needs to fend off one Defensive push once they start hacking. Security Tower seems perfect to me.
But, I’m not going to pretend as though I know what’s best…I"ll keep playing with these changes and try to see if I can get my team’s offense to work better.

I hope that you guys keep up these netvar updates long after you run out of budget for new patches and dlc. Maybe if you just have one staff member who can keep an eye on clan matches, and tweaks things for a year or two.