close release worries

(TJskwared) #1

well brink seems to be living up to and supassing all expectations, but there are allways things that bug us. i would love for my questions to be answered but i understand that time is valuble for SD.

  1. its great that xp is given away willy nilly but when we reach the lvl cap what is the insentive to help anyone to earn the xp?

  2. do you earn more xp the better your buff, why would you give away a skill point to others with no benefit for yourself?

  3. can we still lean?

feel free to post your worries so SD can keep track of what the hardcore audience is thinking

:stroggbanana:

(Senethro) #2

Can’t you just play the game because its fun, not to watch XP progress bars go up?

(tokamak) #3

None of those concerns affect sales.

(0xT1) #4

I’m guessing the ‘hardcore’ audience will play in XP disabled servers anyway?

(crazyfoolish) #5

Maybe because you want to win and it is a team game?

…About xp… what that one said ^^^

(SockDog) #6

Exactly. On the one hand we’re told XP is there as a learning tool to promote good play and ease in capabilities and then you see this where it’s clearly the center of why people play and exactly why it corrupts the game.

/predictable response from me

(PariahDog) #7

1: H0RSE’s compendium says something about a 24 hour trial period to swap out abilities. After that it seems like the current speculation is it will cost XP to “re-spec”. Also I’ve seen mentioned that once a character you created hits the cap he can earn XP for other characters. Lastly the scoreboard only shows XP earned. Human nature for some, especially in competitive games is to be on the top of the the scoreboard so assisting your teammates/completing the objectives gets you there faster. For everyone else that focus on the objective buffing players will make accomplishing the objective easier.

2: Not sure.

3: I believe Brink will be balanced for lean.

(Bullveyr) #8

@SadoKisT Yes, you can lean in all versions of Brink (check the Container City gameplay vid on www.brinkthegame.com to see it in action)

Source: Twitter

(Iur'Tae'Mont) #9

AFAICT, you can still buff yourself, it just costs more wossnames to do so.

If thats not enough incentive. Pretend this is PvP on an MMO like WoW or WAR. You still buff your teammates because A) They’ll be stronger B) They’ll buff you C) because this is a team based game where the teams actually help one another to achive a goal and not camp in corners with the Flamethrower and Nova gas (Guilty of this, but the nova gas was really fun and I only camped in sniping spots because I Hate Snipers)

Edit: Also, Post 42.

(trigg3r) #10

ever heard of the word “Teamplay”

PIPS!!!

(Coolaguy) #11

I’ve seen mentioned that once a character you created hits the cap he can earn XP for other characters.[/QUOTE]

Similarly, I wonder what incentive players will have to continue to behave as ‘team players’ once they have capped out at Level 20. I feel that Splash Damage’s proposed answer is some combination of the following:

  1. “You can earn xp for your other characters (up to a total of 16) even after you reach the level cap for one (or more) of your characters.”
  2. “We assume that players want to win. Team play is required for winning in Brink. These xp-reward-heavy behaviours both promote and are examples of team play. We hope that by the time a player reaches the level cap of 20 that we will have taught/guided them on a number of relevant methods to ‘be a team player’. We hope that gamers embrace the spirit of team play that we have demonstrated to them.”

Based upon these assumptions and the inferred responses, the question really becomes:

[B]What incentive is there for a player to be a team player in every single game they play, if they:

A. are already satisfied with their existing customized character classes and don’t care about additional xp rewards as a result
B. don’t care to adere to teamplay principles at a given time and aren’t extrinsically penalized for losing a match[/B]

My understanding is that, at this time, there are no incentives to motivate such a player. That is, there are no extrinsic motivators in place. There is nothing riding on the outcome of the game. Failure carries no present or future consequence of punishment. Should intrinsic player motivation take over at this point, from the perspective of the Splash Damage developers?

In my view, instrinsic motivation is usually derived from seeking pleasure (or avoiding pain), and among gamers, pleasure may be derived from a number of activities that have little to do with accomplishing the team objective.

For instance, gaming can be an outlet for players to feel powerful. What is more powerful than delighting in the frustration of others as you team-kill them? or follow stealthy team members around shooting to reveal their position? or insult them via VOIP (VOIP is turned off by default in Brink)? The feeling of power comes from the fact that your team members have little to no recourse in retaliation… certainly none that aids them in achieving the supposed team goal of winning the match. I’m not a foremost authority in psychology specializing in videogamer behaviour, so that’s as far as I’m going to go with this little example. It’s just a collection of things that I’ve experienced in my history as a gamer.

The point is, that there isn’t any punishment for failure in Brink to serve as an additional layer of motivation for gamer behaviour. Examples of punishment for failure sometimes include decreases in leaderboard statistics and/or demotion in an ELO league rankings.

Brink won’t be featuring persistent leaderboards, to the best of my knowledge. Likewise, I haven’t heard of any plans by Splash Damage to implement an ELO-based matchmaking system. So there you have it.

(Kinjal) #12

I don’t know, I just read one of the oldest Russian game magazine “Igromania”, I was so excited then I saw a Brink in description of contents, but it was only a list of games that soon be released and a awaiting raiting –

123.jpg650×657 88.6 KB

So it’s a 70%, any worst can be only FEAR 3 and Darkspore. After sum reading I found that, there are articles for all Brink rivals, even a L.A. Noire. Yea its make me worry.

(Mad Hatter) #13

Like someone said, the person with the most XP is at the top of the leaderboard at the end of the match. Being selfish will end you up at the bottom, and nobody wants to be at the bottom.

(Coolaguy) #14

[QUOTE=Mad Hatter;265666]Like someone said, the person with the most XP is at the top of the leaderboard at the end of the match. Being selfish will end you up at the bottom, and nobody wants to be at the bottom.[/QUOTE] Ahhh, true. Good point. That will probably go a long way in deterring completely selfish behaviour.

It probably won’t curb the would-be trolls of the interwebs, though… From your guys’ experience in team-based games with ELO rating systems activated, does ELO seem to reduce the number of trolls you encounter? In my experience, I’d have to say that yes it does. Similarly, preventing players from friendly fire and having “soft player collisions” also go a long way towards minimizing troll encounters.

(Wraith) #15

I can imagine the rage now. I kill X many people why is my score so low ?:mad:

(SK7109) #16

It would be good if you lost a certain % of XP for FF…(trolling) lol

(LyndonL) #17

Bad idea since FF can sometimes not be avoided. I’m colourblind to an extent and sometimes have trouble initially detecting enemies that look the same as friendlies when they have indicators above their heads in some environments.

I.e BC2 when in the snow I can’t see the blue arrows above team mates heads sometimes which does one of two things a) it’s a FF on server and I don’t shoot and it ends up being an enemy and I die b) I shoot them by mistake.

Very frustrating.

I would assume by that stage they’ve played the game enough to know how it works, and know the best tactics to win and therefore would keep playing as a team to try to win.

(PariahDog) #18

Flaw to this is instead of shooting you they jump in your line of fire during combat.

(Nail) #19

FF is off by default

(Herandar) #20

[QUOTE=LyndonL;265679]Bad idea since FF can sometimes not be avoided. I’m colourblind to an extent and sometimes have trouble initially detecting enemies that look the same as friendlies when they have indicators above their heads in some environments.

I.e BC2 when in the snow I can’t see the blue arrows above team mates heads sometimes which does one of two things a) it’s a FF on server and I don’t shoot and it ends up being an enemy and I die b) I shoot them by mistake.[/QUOTE]

One of my XBox Live Friends is color-blind, and playing BFBC2 with him is very entertaining. We don’t play on hardcore, so he will unload on teammates to no effect, and try to capture conquest flags that we are holding already. It helps that we play to have fun, I suppose.