Competitive Issues & Discussion

(Mattc0m) #1

This is a continuation of a few threads on Brink TV (and similar to the “competition changes” thread here already).

Obvious Issues
a. No Demo Support
b. First-person spectating
c. Limit Flashbang Blind for spectators
d. Editable spawn times (server set cvars)
e. Pause command
f. CVAR that prints list of all players STEAM:ID’s

Discussion Topics

1. Defensive Favored
There is the very true feeling that most of the maps are defensively favored. So far, the suggested solutions are:

  • Keep competition 5v5 (more players = easier defense)
  • Increase defensive spawn waves (thus making each death more equal to an offensive death, which has to run much further)
  • “Wait and see.” Perhaps, as strategies begin to develop and evolve, maps will grown more balanced with time.
  • Urge the developers to address various objectives imbalances, choke-points, etc.

2. Maplist
USEABLE MAPS
Aquarium - Good map. Best suited for competition so far.
Terminal - Good map. Hack objective can be hard for offense, though, if engineer keeps defusing progress. (re: issue #7)

QUESTIONABLE
Resort - Nearly impossible last objective (hack objective, see issue #7). Seems defensive biased. Would be way better if only played first 3 objectives, and last objective was “cut” (if possible).
Container City - Very difficult first objective for security. Besides that, seems good.
Shipyard - Very defensive sided, but I think it’s playable if we impose a solution to #7.
Reactor - Haven’t really played, I’m hoping that there’s two approaches / sides to each objective will help favor the attacking team.

UNUSABLE
Refuel - Seems almost impossible to set a time on, even outside the sound bug. Current not playable.
Security Tower - Huge defensive bias, especially on final “escort” objective. Other 3 objectives are good, though.
– Both of these maps would be playable if last objective was “cut” (need to see if this is possible).

3. Gun Balance
Only thing I’ve noticed is that every top team seems to favor (and in some cases, use exclusively) the CARB-9. Not if the gun is too powerful, or just the skill of top tier teams is making it seem too powerful. Assault Rifles, as for now, seem fairly useless. Everything else (besides SMG’s being a big too godly) seems okay, however. Thoughts?

4. Abilities Restrictions
Right now, there is no way to specifically limit abilities. However, there can be a “Max Rank”. In the standard competition format, I believe Rank 5 abilities are disabled.

5. Adrenaline
Currently, I feel it’s fairly overpowered. This ability can really give the offense an advantage, though. However, chained together for 2 or 3 uses (as long as a team is medic heavy) can make some objectives just impossible to defend. Do you feel Adrenaline should be less effective in future patches/comp mod? Do you feel, as it stands, Adrenaline be allowed in competition? Disallowed?

6. Team Size
I don’t know if we need to discuss this anymore, as I’m hoping the community can get behind the 5v5 bandwagon. If people feel that 6v6 is needed, I hope there’s valid explanation given for moving to a non-standard format (5v5 is standard format for most tournaments / competitive team games around the world). Please realize that Splash Damage has balanced these maps for 5v5 competition.

7. Hacktool vs Engineer
As it stands, maps with hack objectives are hugely biased to the defensive team. An already long / difficult objective as in (around a minute of uninteruppted hacking) is made impossible when engineers can easily remove all progress. To completely disarm a hack, though, takes nearly a fourth of the time to do. What imbalances it even more, is hack objectives are usually right next to the Defense spawn, and 10-20 seconds away from the offensive spawn (Resort, Shipyard, & Reactor come to mind). The only solution I can think of, unless this is completely retooled so disarming takes 4x longer (instead of 4x shorter): Disallow engineers from removing progress in competition. This would make it similar to Engineering objectives (which also cannot be un-done).

8. Body Types
I feel they are balanced. There’s been suggestions to limit Heavy and/or Light body types. I feel restrictions are unneeded, personally.

More issues will be added when brought up (sure I’m missing a few key issues)

(Panic) #2

The defensive bias is a very real issue, but not unheard of in competitive FPS regardless. Reactor’s first half is definitely viable although the second half is questionable. I feel that Shipyard is already playable, but Container City’s security spawn is absolutely terrible and it’s quite easy to lock an unorganized team into their spawn.

(longas) #3

1. Defensive Favored
This is a new game, and the major part of the people don’t know what to do. This is the reason that gives you the feeling that defend is easier, but in some time and with more organized teams, the game will become more balanced.

2. Maplist
In my honest opinion, the competitive community only needs 5 maps. I don’t know if we will see more good maps from Splash Damage in future updates or custom maps when the SDK is released. Aquarium, Terminal, Container City, Shipyard and Reactor are enough maps to play and create strategies.

3. Gun Balance
In all the games there are some weapons which are better than the others. The best example is CS, the most successful FPS game ever, and 90% of the time the people is using AK, M16, AWP and Deagle.

4. Abilities Restrictions
Too early to talk about abilities restrictions, we need to test them more.

5. Adrenaline
Only reading the short description in Brink, you can see that this ability is really overpowered and should be banned.

6. Team Size
5vs5. The game is balanced for it and it’s cheaper for the MGOs to send their teams to LANs.

7. Hacktool vs Engineer
Haven’t tested it. N/A.

8. Body Types
Each body type limited to 2

(Ragoo) #4

Nice list and I agree with most of this Mattc0m.

I feel Container City is too long tho and because it’s mostly escorting and that will always take a certain amount of time and you can’t speed this up by fixing spawn times.

edit: Also spectator modes needs further additions to make it easier especially for viewers. First of all objective progress should be visible as well as both spawn timers, then the names of the different teams should have different colors or something to distinguish between the teams. And then if you fixed these essential stuff I’d love to see more stats and information about players to be there. Right now there is nothing (but XP) and you really have not any idea what guns/abilities anyone is using.

Also spawn timers and /kill should be in.

(BMXer) #5

1. Defensive Favored
Agreed. Defensive spawns tend to be too close to the objective while the attackers seem excessively far. Spawn time adjustments seems like a logical option.
Also, moving the attacking team’s spawn forward at a certain point could help. An example is on Sectower. There is a command post that could be a spawn point once the hostage passes a certain point.

2. Maplist
With adjustment, I think most of the maps could work. Some are obviously bad as matt said above.

3. Gun Balance
I am fine with the guns. Nothing seems stupid over powered. All the guns of each type feel similar enough to each other that I dont think there needs to be much restriction/limitation.
I haven’t tried any of the “sniper” rifles and I think its fairly obvious that grenade launchers should be out.

4. Abilities Restrictions
I personally don’t see a place for any of the abilities in a competitive environment. I went down the list and none of them are needed and they only really add more spam and skillless stuff to the game. Some of them are no big deal but stuff like self revive just doesn’t seem right in competition. Are there any other serious competitive fps games that require you to grind the game to win? Is competitive Brink really going to depend on what abilities a player chose before the match even starts?

5. Adrenaline
Goes with what I said above about the abilities.

6. Team Size
5v5 seems perfect. Any more and there is too much spam IMO.

7. Hacktool vs Engineer
The hack tool needs to change for sure. Especially in a 5v5 setting. The hack takes entirely too long, even with 2 covies. Eliminating the ability for the engie to remove the hack device would be a great solution along with speeding up the time it takes to hack. We are already looking to ease the defensive bias and making the hack box semi-permanent would help in that regard.

8. Body Types
I don’t think body types matter much either way. I don’t see stacking a team with heavies being a problem but I could easily be wrong in certain situation.

(Necro-) #6

if you take away the class abilities imho, all that happens is there is no difference between classes except one is useless, one is needed for objectives and one heals.

(Cankor) #7

In regards to the defensive bias, isn’t there some kind of dynamic timer thing happening? Assume you guys been playing using the competition config where the map times are fixed?

Also, I think everything mentioned about the hack stuff is easiliy configurable by SD via netvars. I also think they are going to make an efort to collect map win/loss stats and tweak things balance them for a 50/50 win/loss in 8v8 standard format. Once this is done making additional tweaks to get an offensive bias in 5v5 mode will hopefully only require minor tweaks.

I am pretty sure the basic map and spawn times are set via netvar, but you have the option to over-ride that and set your own as well.

(BMXer) #8

Medics are always needed, thats a given. Engies for objectives and they can still buff weapons. Soldiers for ammo and objectives and Covie for Objectives. Just like the other SD games. True, the soldier and covie become less important, but thats nothing new in objective based games! Remember the covie in W:ET and ETQW?

The bad stuff introduced to competitive play buy adding all these skillless abilities greatly outweighs the problem of not using all the classes equally in competition IMO.

(Takanasi) #9

The spread of SMG’s and AR’s needs to be lowered significantly. The result of a firefight needs to be decided by the aim of the players and not a random number generator. Just add some damage drop off for SMG’s so you can’t snipe with them.

Spread this big simply does not work in a competitive game.

(chasm) #10

Classes need to be limited to 2 for each. 3+ medics just gets spammy in terms of self-revive, adrenaline and revive.

(Cankor) #11

If you only have 5 guys It should be less of an issue. 3 medics gives you two other classes left, at least one of whcih needs to be the objective class (assuming it’s not an NPC escort). In other words, you are shorting yourself in other areas.

Plus they are talking about eliminating adrenaline and self revive altogether.

In regards to the abilities. I’d like to see the operative left with things that make him more useful… it’s too bad most of those things tend to make him defensively useful, which maybe adds to the defensive bias.

(Rautakanki) #12

Defensive Favored
“Wait and See” is the best option here by far.

Map list
Only problem in maps I see is the hacking and container citys first attack phase, which I havent played in a 5on5 game yet. Just base my opinions on those few vods, problem could have been bad teams thou.

Gun Balance

I dont know what game you have been playing but obviously range plays a huge role in here, smgs are far superior close range to assault rifles. Add a little distance and you will lose most of the time yet still giving a small chance for the smg hero. The weapons for me atleast seem very balanced and accurate if you count the range, not sure what Takanasi is talking about, I have always won a 1v1 firefight when I have controlled the bursts and aimed for the head.

Abilities Restrictions & Adrenaline

Rank 5 Disabled sounds pretty decent. Adrenaline should be tweaked, wouldnt mind to see it being banned. It is very unsatisfying when you´ve played an excellent game and an invincible guy comes around the corner to kick you in the head and plant a bomb on your ass.

Team Size

5v5 just follow the norm.

Hacktool vs Engineer

Engi wins hacktool. Adrenaline engi wins the world. Operative is the weakest class out of them all, needs something to even consider having 2 of them around in a competitive game to complete an object.

Body Types & Classes

Class limit of 2 sounds good in a 5v5 match, problem we might see in the future could be medics, maybe give them few less pips? Only bodytype that might have a problem in the future is the heavy, I am not that concered as he seems to go down as fast as the other classes when you aim for the head. Would not limit atleast not on two because that would require team to field a heavytype and I for one hate it.

ps. Should the bodytypes be limited to certain classes for example; medics are required to have a lightbody, buffing class cant sustain much damage and we wouldnt see that much battlefield style “die, revive, die, revive, die, revive, win.” Which is quite a dull feature. Just an idea… any opinions?

(qft Ky) #13

Adrenaline is balanced as is. If you are getting beat by teams using adrenaline to complete objective, blame your soldiers for not using molotovs correctly.

(theAsakura) #14

I think a lot of these changes/ideas should be considered, but I would say to let the competitive games play out with no restrictions for now and see if some things begin to show up at being overpowered or in need of being changed.

The prime example I have for something like this comes from Black Ops. I think the Famas (and I think one or two other guns as well) should be restricted/banned in order to create a more interesting and diverse game. So, if the Carb 9 is getting too much use then we propose disallowing it in order to allow a more diverse set of weapons.

(Redshft) #15

As far as my team has tested you cannot be knocked down with either a slide or grenades when on adrenaline.

Just tested it, molotovs do not affect adrenaline.

(Takanasi) #16

Well me too, but the majority of bullets will miss even at close to medium range, regardless of your aim, that is the problem. I would much rather have more accurate weapons with lower damage, that would also make aim a bigger factor.

I realize my quest is an almost impossible one, the vanilla weapon mechanics will most likely not be changed in comp mods, this is just a desperate cry. : P

(Backdraft11) #17

I don’t think the changes should be too drastic at this point in time, until at least a few tournies are played and evaluated, only fix things that are really urgent.

The reason is I see it as detrimental is new competitive teams to Brink that may see this as “elite-mongering” where they feel the rules are being changed to favor the already established “top” players. IIRC that was an issue with ETQW comp where some teams were put off by the changes to the vanilla game.

At this point you want as many people to continue playing this as possible.

(v1D) #18

Put grip on your weapons and spread is almost rtcw/etqw like.

(pharaohz) #19

I completely agree with the 2 class per side restriction. Three medics is a little silly with self-rez and adren. As far as guns, the CARB-9 seems to be the most used, but I don’t see any reason it should be considered overpowered.

Most maps are defensive sided, and V1D’s idea of increasing spawn time would be a good addition.

(v1D) #20

Just played container city against a worthy opponent. It’s almost impossible to get that tank past the defense’s initial spawn as the offense once again spawns far as hell back when the defense still spawns directly on top of it.

Container City, unless it gets remade, is not suited for competition.