i agree, LyndonL. i reckon brink’s map progression will have a similar as BF:BC2. hopefully more dense and fast paced. the devs were speaking of frontlines so maybe part of the map will not become unaccessible, would make much sense tho, for the same reason you mentioned, slowing the game down.
on a different page i hope the overall maps, res. & Sec. hopefully will amount to 8+ hours of gameplay and not compare to the playthru times of the BF games. fro those SP games this’ll be lousy.
You’re right to point to CCity is rather linear; at this stage you’ll just have to wait to see that not all the levels are the same way. I certainly don’t expect you to take my word for it. 
There is quite purposefully a variety in the way the the different maps work, because we know some people will favour one style more than another, and vice versa.
We did have multiple spawns in for quite a while, but ultimately we found that it was splintering the action to much, and caused people to be gaming in a menu rather than in the actual level… something we’re keen to lessen any chance that we get.
Battery and Goldrush and Railgun were equally interesting in their non-linearity. These maps totally change in nature depending on stage AND on the player’s actions themselves.
@Lyndonl: If you say “It would be pointless to go backwards” then it clearly shows how deeply entrenched you are in the linearity of the maps. In nonlinear maps you can’t go backwards, you can only reinterpret parts of the map that are already there. Does it slow the game down? Who cares? I’d say not being able to spam the same chokepoints would make the action more frantic. Players would constantly have to readjust their strategy as parts of the map open and close constantly. And I guess that’s what, based on the current maps, is happening in Brink. The spatial strategy seems to be removed, causing a gross simplification compared to the both ET’s.
The maps in BC2 are a complete joke.
Couldnt agree more with tokamaks post.
Care to elaborate? I didnt like this game but found the map in rush pretty exciting with bottlenecks and side ways to flank the enemy…
I’m all for open, but it doesn’t fit Brink. 16 players = small and you need a focussed area for the action. Having the ability to spread the action WILL cause the game to slow down, and be boring.
[QUOTE=madoule;244368]i agree, LyndonL. i reckon brink’s map progression will have a similar as BF:BC2. hopefully more dense and fast paced. the devs were speaking of frontlines so maybe part of the map will not become unaccessible, would make much sense tho, for the same reason you mentioned, slowing the game down.
on a different page i hope the overall maps, res. & Sec. hopefully will amount to 8+ hours of gameplay and not compare to the playthru times of the BF games. fro those SP games this’ll be lousy.[/QUOTE]
well each match is half an hour so if u have eight maps then that is 4 hours of gameplay for each side.
Erm not really, ET was many things but slow and boring wasn’t one of them.
Clever layout with great use of space that keeps things focused while offering a number of tactical approaches to the attack, playable at 8v8 no problems and even has an edited version for 6v6 with some tweaks.
(cant be arsed to find better image for command map)
it doesn’t, but higher runspeeds allow you to keep a lot of action on bigger maps with decreased number of players.
lower runspeed means more players or smaller more concentrated maps.
and that’s what he meant
Wrong, run speed =! intense, play the first delta force for exemple, was intense, freakingly boring slow, and still… big and intense!
[QUOTE=Nikto;244434]lower runspeed means more players or smaller more concentrated maps.
and that’s what he meant[/QUOTE]
Read up… a good map is a good map, whatever the run speed, radar on ET and on ETQW are kinda the same maps, the speed is different, still the map are good…
Meh
Sorry to say it Chris, but that map above is linear. You go from objective point, progress to objective point, then progress. There’s nothing that I can see in it that requires you to backtrack.
I term linear as something that keeps moving forwards, so no objectives requiring you to backtrack. Hence the space behind where you came from is obsolete unless the defence can push you back there.
Perhaps its semantics, and I’m maybe using the word differently to the rest of you.
What my argument was, was having multiple objectives scattered at different ends of the map. That would not be linear, and would spread the playerbase considerably since it’s only 8v8. It would make encounters few and far between and make the gameplay boring, particularly with run speeds. From everything I’ve seen and read in interviews I’m sure this won’t happen in Brink.
Good you were talking about something completely different, nobody else was talking about having multiple main objectives up simultaneously so let’s just drop that to, like you said, avoid semantics.
Goldrush is not not spatially linear while Container City is. Compare the two map lay-outs. Goldrush constantly re-uses spaces and paths in different ways depending on the stage of the map, while Container City only seems to progress to the next part of the map, making the previous parts redundant. Container City can be seen as a series of small-maps rather than one big one whilst in Goldrush no part of the map was ever completely useless.
Run-speed is a mood point as well. Like Chris said, lower run speed doesn’t require maps to be more linear.
Now, W:Et also has linear progression, like with Siwa Oasis and Fuel Dump. But even here it were the maps that developed on themselves rather than moving on to new parts. They still seem to be way more strategically demanding than Container City is. All this beside the point that Container City looks terrific.
Sure I can elaborate. 
In ETQW, you can get nailed from any angle and from pretty much anywhere.
You have to be aware of what is around you at all times, even standing in spawn
In BC2 Rush, most of the time, everything you need to worry about is dead straight in front of you. There are sections on some maps where that description isnt as cut and dry… but for the most part it is.
The lack of choice [the map gives] to approach a situation, means that when players do get the opportunity to flank - its predictable. I can think of some sections, where theres only ONE flank route.
Dont get me wrong there are some nice things about the game that I appreciate
In saying that, its a game that doesn’t require great battlesense, nor great aim.
Sure it leads to more action, but it also can lead to simple minded spam, TF2 is a great example for this. Very fun if you want quick arcady action, but every phase of the map plays out in similar ways, fun for once, but playing it over and over again the game becomes repetitive.
What made W:ET so great was that the matches played on the same map could all be widely different. That’s what made the game so incredibly addictive, the only thing you could expect during the map load was that the game will probably be unlike any other time you played on that map.
I really wouldn’t want the game to feel like a treadmill, where your only option to break the repeating patterns is to change the character set up. W:ET only had a few character options the rest relied on your own creativity within the map. Imagine what a game that combines these two could be like.
The most rewarding thing about having such ‘dynamic’ maps was that tactical insight was greatly rewarded. You take the information from when you were alive, and should you be a talented or experienced player, subconciously your brain already would extrapolate this to tell you when and where the enemy would be and what they would plan to do. All this would give you a huge edge over players who only know how to point the cursor at the enemy.
I think the fear that this layer of depth, this skillset, could be downplayed in the game is a valid concern.
I couldn’t agree more with you tokamak. The idea of the maps being more than constant run and shoot battles would simply give the game more dept and automatically also add more fun to it. What developers should strive for when creating maps, should be to make them so that the experienced and good players would always get an edge over the less experienced player. If a map is to linear it becomes boring as well as outplayed to fast and competitively the game would be locked into the same tactics, that would either result in a full hold or a quick win every time.
Has the DEVs said anything about the alternative routes, and how useful these would be?
tokamak is right, IMO.
using brain is MOST DEADLIEST tool in Every soldier arsenal.
if thats portions of gameplay eleminated from game and its become more BF/CS/TF-ish, garbage, its become [completely]unplayable[for me and most of my friends].
turning Brink into “Quake with fancy arsenal and customization inside creepy[thrilling?] storyline” is’nt way to succeed, IMO.
p.s.
to understand why this not happen with ETQW you should remind thats ETQW is not “just created by SD”, but result of synergy and joint efforts of SD with NS and iD and Activision and [last, but no least]testers and fans.
opposed by completely “in house design&testing” in “fu#@%off, we working on it!”-way.
Even ETQW maps seem pretty dynamic as compared to Container City. Most maps go into an ‘U’ shape with plenty of tracks between the main path. Which means alot of the geometry is being reused as the match progresses.
I can understand why straight maps could be chosen over dynamic maps, they’re more accessible. You ensure that players won’t be getting lost in the maps for half the match and miss all the action. But I think such a choice is taking the accessibility of the game so far that it becomes just dumbing down to pander to the masses.
Getting lost in maps at first isn’t a bad thing. I still vividly remember being lost for the first few times in both ETQW and W:ET maps, and I remember them as the more enjoyable times in the game. Back in my days of mapping for Unreal Tournament, getting people to become lost in your map was a clear indicator you’ve done a good job. Smeerkat, an UED guru was an expert in this http://www.kens.net (the site hasn’t been touched for 7 years now).
I’m just going to wait to play the actual map before I judge the mapper’s work…