My experience was that the maps were fine but many servers had their own menu mods and skinpacks as additional pk3s as well. You could disable downloads but then you wouldn’t get the maps / campaign files when connecting.
I would much prefer a small number of maps that are packed wrong than having no way to choose at all.
I posted my opinion in the topic that Rahdo posted. Quite a long post, and maybe in the wrong side of the forum. But there you go 
A lot of the stuff you’re bringing up has been discussed already, search the forums a bit there’s some great input from the SD folks.
Well, like I said in the ETQW board thread, I’m getting harder pressed to seeing a reason to have ranked servers. Am I crazy? What am I missing? :eek:
There is no reason to have ranked servers for PC gamers, thinking otherwise is flawed.
People these days are used to having their stats tracked, even if gameplay wise, they don’t change anything. I for one am really interested in seeing how much time I have played the game and how many teamkills I got. Which is where I’m getting my name from :D. I sure hope I can teamkill in Brink too.
Don’t worry, I only do it on purpose when I’m a medic, the rest of them, I think I’m too trigger happy. :rolleyes:
Nothing, ETQW treated it’s statistics with way too much veneration and the players followed with all gameplay consequences. Tracking statistics on non-official servers makes the statistics themselves less meaningful, but that’s something you actually want.
Just make sure the core of the game remains protected while allowing people 100% freedom outside it. So give it a very accessible (default?) filter for official servers, or give official servers a shiny purity seal in the server browser.
there’s a big difference between ranked servers and game stats, they’re not the same concept. Stats can be gathered and reported without ranked servers, Splatter Ladder would be one example
I really really hope there is no Rank Server in brink. It is just a waste of time to have rank server on both PC and console.
I guess the only pro is that ranked servers allow for the fairest rankings (least cheater proof), but if the game does not feature leaderboards I guess that fairness isn’t all that necessary. Ranked servers don’t protect the leaderboard from getting filled with cheaters using local hacks (aimbot, wallhack, etc) either.
See, that’s the thing. I definitely worry about the existence of global leaderboards leading to exploitative behavior in matches. It’s a shame, 'cause leaderboards are teh awesome, but it’s human nature unfortunately to boost, so I don’t know that they’re worth it.
So lately we’ve been talking internally about having leaderboards but only for friends and such. And since they’d just be “friendly”, there’s no reason to worry about ranked servers. And ipso facto everyone’s happy!
So that’s the direction we’re leaning at the moment.
I like it. That would really solve the problem of turning the game into farming sessions.
How is the clan mode coming along? I’d love to see a chess-like rating system going on in there. It’s one of the most addicting things you can add in a game.
Would there be an option for community leaderboards? For example we set up a Splash Damage leaderboard, kind of like the XBL thing we have here already, just to get some friendly community competition going as well. Fansites and other gaming websites could do the same for their communities as well.
Leaderboards for friends and communities, while not sacrificing the freedom to host your own servers (and perhaps run your own mods)? I like that idea very much!
In that way you SD guys shouldn’t forget to give tags to the servers, like in TF2.