Edge Online Looks at Balancing Brink

(badman) #1

A new story entry has been added:
[drupal=780]Edge Online Looks at Balancing Brink[/drupal]

If you’ve ever wondered just how much thinking and effort goes into balancing a multiplayer game like Brink, the folks over at Edge Online have you covered with a fascinating new interview. Aptly titled Balancing Brink, it has Creative Director Richard ‘Rahdo’ Ham and Lead Designer Neil ‘Exedore’ Alphonso shed a lot of light on what we’ve done to fine-tune Brink’s many weapons, levels, and abilities, as well as some of the things we’ll be able to do once the game is released. Here’s a slice:
We’ve inherited this very sophisticated system from Quake Wars that allows us to tweak individual things from day one. One term we use that’s extremely important to the game is ‘netvars’, text files of values that we can change locally, upload to a server and then it gets automatically dispersed through the world.
Head on over to Edge Online for the information-packed rest!

(Jess Alon) #2

Good article.

(RAAAAAAAAAAGE) #3

I liked that interview a lot. My only concern is when NA says :

We don’t use dedicated servers for consoles, it’s peer to peer. The person with the most upload bandwidth is king.

I play on PS3 and what happens if everyone in the game has a really rubbish connection? My internet isn’t all that great so now im thinking that im gonna lag like hell a lot.

Brink is still gonna be the best game ever though. Thanks for the article :smiley:

(tokamak) #4

Absolutely awesome. Shame that more magazines can’t be like Edge.

NA: That was me interpreting Richard’s design and tweaking it for overall balance. We also cut about 30 abilities. They were increased modifiers on existing abilities, which for me wasn’t all that interesting as a game choice for people. It also made the game inherently harder to balance.

Not sure I can agree on that. Instead of just increasing with you’re also increasing depth, enabling players to specialise in one particular ability. One trick ponies are just as interesting as go go gadgets.

This really is something to consider for extra content. Once you see how so many players aproach the game certain styles start to appear and you can consider which abilities deserve to be mature more.

(TiN TiN) #5

[QUOTE=RAAAAAAAAAAGE;278299]I liked that interview a lot. My only concern is when NA says :

I play on PS3 and what happens if everyone in the game has a really rubbish connection? My internet isn’t all that great so now im thinking that im gonna lag like hell a lot.

Brink is still gonna be the best game ever though. Thanks for the article :D[/QUOTE]

I’m sure the whole game would be laggy. I didn’t read through that part my first time through the article but know I know that I’ll never pull host now seeing as I have a whooping .3-.4 kb/sec upload!

(LyndonL) #6

Lag’'ll be no different to every other p2p console multiplayer

(RAAAAAAAAAAGE) #7

To be honest i don’t officially know what games are P2P for PS3. Crysis 2 is, Warhawk can be. Not sure about BFBC2 or Killzone 2 or Uncharted 2. MAG isnt. There isnt much lag on Killzone or BFBC2 for me (but Uncharted 2 has immensley rubbish lag) so if either of those is P2P it would decrease my concerns.

I’m no computer genious so forgive this stupid question. But if Brink is P2P for consoles, and the host has a good upload speed but mine isnt that great, will i still lag? Or is all relative to the host? So if he has a good connection i’ll be fine?

(St NickelStew) #8

BFBC2 does have dedicated servers.

Really, the P2P of Brink might be the only potential concern I still have. Thankfully I have a pretty good internet connection, so with a little luck I will be serve as host more than my fair share of the time.

(LyndonL) #9

Typically they say you need around about 10kb up and down speed (bandwidth) to play an FPS. What’s really important is your PING…

If you have wifi connection to your router -> fail (unless N draft rangemax style). If you have wireless internet -> fail. If your ISP has a poor setup -> fail. Check your ping online and see what you get. Typically if you get a ping of over 150ms your gaming is going to suffer imo.

(Herandar) #10

BFBC2 has servers. MW is P2P.

EDIT: Ninja’d! The Xbox wireless adapter actually works really well. Pretty sure it was N range. It should, conidering it was $100. (Original 360, not the new style).

(Mustkunstn1k) #11

Wait… there aren’t lag differences between dedicated servers and p2p…

is that what you are saying?

Edit: Nevermind, thought I was in the dedicated servers thread. :smiley:

(LyndonL) #12

No I’m saying that the lag will be equivalent to any other peer 2 peer styled multiplayer game.

(RAAAAAAAAAAGE) #13

[QUOTE=LyndonL;278325]Typically they say you need around about 10kb up and down speed (bandwidth) to play an FPS. What’s really important is your PING…

If you have wifi connection to your router -> fail (unless N draft rangemax style). If you have wireless internet -> fail. If your ISP has a poor setup -> fail. Check your ping online and see what you get. Typically if you get a ping of over 150ms your gaming is going to suffer imo.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for that man i just checked there the now.
PING :- 73ms
Download:- 6.61Mbps
Upload:- 0.32Mbps

Upload speed seems kinda low but the ping is better than i expected. Thanks for your help Lyndon. :slight_smile:

(tokamak) #14

Bloody amazing article on balance and everyone starts squabbling about lag? Stunning.

(LyndonL) #15

It sucks when people go on and on and on and on and on (and look out on the corner of 4th and main I think I’m gonna be sick - Ernie with Pie in the Sky) about something you’re not interested in and don’t relent HEY TOKAMAK…

(RAAAAAAAAAAGE) #16

Sorry tokamak thats my fault!

Concerning the article though I am looking forward to the same rank matchmaking! Too many time ive played a game online and been heavily dominated due to immensly high ranks.

(Mustkunstn1k) #17

Atm I just can’t get behind the character creation and the fact that it can’t be changed like other things can at a command post. Even this interview talks how unless you like aren’t going to play a clan… then you need to spread thin so you could play everything. And how often you need to play other classes too, so yeah no specializing or the end result might be poor.

(Whydmer) #18

The whole custimization process would be pointless to me if we were able to change characters mid match at command posts. If you could be anything you wanted at any point in the game why have character design? That is only possibly good for those who only want a “competetive” experience.
My version of FPS play is different. As long as I am doing the best that I can with the tools that I have I’ll be having fun. If I go into container city as security with a soldier specialist character, and I discover we are short on engineers I will happily switch to an engineer and work on completing the engineer objectives and I’ll be happy knowing that I am helping my team.

And because I am the only engineer when one is needed I bet my xp for the match does pretty well too.

(DouglasDanger) #19

I think not being able to change your character at a command post is a great idea. Can you imagine the line? Say you want to change to engineer to repair a crane or whatever. Some guy has been at the command post for five minutes! You just want to change your kit to engineer! You run all the way back to the other command post, and some other guy is there too! And he is just hanging out there, tweaking this and that… Maybe the guy is “respeccing.” He dropped a level, sold all of his abilities back, and is now trying to create the ideal build for a particular situation that will be over by the time he is done!

Not being able to change your character at command posts also makes your choices matter.

This interview continues the trend of showing how much time and thought SD puts into this game. It is very good to read this sort of thing. The best kind of advertising or marketing is showing how much you care about your product. :slight_smile:

(Mustkunstn1k) #20

[QUOTE=Whydmer;278346]The whole custimization process would be pointless to me if we were able to change characters mid match at command posts. If you could be anything you wanted at any point in the game why have character design? That is only possibly good for those who only want a “competetive” experience.
My version of FPS play is different. As long as I am doing the best that I can with the tools that I have I’ll be having fun. If I go into container city as security with a soldier specialist character, and I discover we are short on engineers I will happily switch to an engineer and work on completing the engineer objectives and I’ll be happy knowing that I am helping my team.

And because I am the only engineer when one is needed I bet my xp for the match does pretty well too.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=DouglasDanger;278349]I think not being able to change your character at a command post is a great idea. Can you imagine the line? Say you want to change to engineer to repair a crane or whatever. Some guy has been at the command post for five minutes! You just want to change your kit to engineer! You run all the way back to the other command post, and some other guy is there too! And he is just hanging out there, tweaking this and that… Maybe the guy is “respeccing.” He dropped a level, sold all of his abilities back, and is now trying to create the ideal build for a particular situation that will be over by the time he is done!

Not being able to change your character at command posts also makes your choices matter.

This interview continues the trend of showing how much time and thought SD puts into this game. It is very good to read this sort of thing. The best kind of advertising or marketing is showing how much you care about your product. :)[/QUOTE]

I don’t mean that you can change abilities. But your already created characters. Or even body types.