Edge Online Looks at Balancing Brink

(H8tz) #21

OK, I am lost again in the new system. Can someone please clarify for me:

You earn your normal XP. Then when you earned enough you go a level up. 10 levels are one rank. For a new rank you get a new ability to choose. This ability, the levels and the rank are bound to your character, stay forever and are not changeable anymore. So you have a limited amound of abilities per character. But you can save up to 10 different characters. So you can build a generalist and some specialists.

And in the end, when most player will be at highest rank there is no more match making and all will be able/forced to play together?

Correct please if I am wrong on something…

(Mustkunstn1k) #22

Way I understand:
20 levels, one ability for each level. 4 ranks (or however many there was). And with every rank you unlock new abilities that you can later buy.

And you can sell and rebuy abilities for xp if you want to respec.

(tokamak) #23

You don’t need to spread thin if you can do your niche just so well that your awesomeness leaks out of it and turns the entire match on its head. You can make your rock so big that paper can’t wrap around it any more and never mind scissors ever standing a chance.

(JeP) #24

Mustkuns : you’re almost right. Respec happens like this : you lose one level and one ability point, so that you can rechoose all your abilities. To gain back your ability point, you have to gain back your level.

(Whydmer) #25

[QUOTE=H8tz;278352]OK, I am lost again in the new system. Can someone please clarify for me:

You earn your normal XP. Then when you earned enough you go a level up. 10 levels are one rank. For a new rank you get a new ability to choose. This ability, the levels and the rank are bound to your character, stay forever and are not changeable anymore. So you have a limited amound of abilities per character. But you can save up to 10 different characters. So you can build a generalist and some specialists.

And in the end, when most player will be at highest rank there is no more match making and all will be able/forced to play together?

Correct please if I am wrong on something…[/QUOTE]

Ranks:
Rank 1: levels 0-4
Rank 2: levels 5-9
Rank 3: levels 10-14
Rank 4: levels 15-19
Rank 5: level 20

Every level you go up you get one credit towards buying an ability. Each ability costs one credit, you can only buy abilities that are at your Rank (or below?).
You can choose to respec. You lose all your abilities and one level, but gain enough credits to buy abilities back to your new level. Example you are level 15, you decide to respec, you are now level 14 and you can buy abilities up to level 14 at the appropriate Rank. ie. at least 5 Rank 1 abilities, 5 Rank 2 abilities and so on.

All players who are in Rank 5 will be matched to play each other by default, unless they are choosing to play with friends.

(raib) #26

RH: You want players to feel powerful, but not to the detriment of other players. For us, it’s a really fine balance between giving a game that feels powerful enough to put the bad guys down, but gives the other guy a chance to respond and make evasive manoeuvres.

Faster base movement speeds might have helped with those evasive manoeuvres. Or was that considered too “hardcore”? Honestly, Brink looks slow as hell judging from the console version gameplay videos.

I’d really like to see some pc version footage to have a better idea whether it’s worth preordering.

(Jess Alon) #27

[QUOTE=raib;278363]Faster base movement speeds might have helped with those evasive manoeuvres. Or was that considered too “hardcore”? Honestly, Brink looks slow as hell judging from the console version gameplay videos.

I’d really like to see some pc version footage to have a better idea whether it’s worth preordering.[/QUOTE]

Can’t servers tweak the speed a little? If that’s your preference? It’d be funny if the PC version brink had a speed knob.

(raib) #28

I guess that would do, but then you’d have to look for the specific servers with tweaked settings.

I would just want to see a new big FPS release that doesn’t make me fall asleep in my chair. It’s not that I would not get from point A to B fast with sprint and whatever tricks they come up with, it’s about being slow when you’re actually firing at the other guy. Not having the fast, hectic and fun as hell run and gun action I miss from many old shooters.

(tokamak) #29

It would ruin the game even further. You can’t develop skills in an a random environment. On one server you might make certain jumps that are impossible on others.

It’s with those games, that don’t tend to pluck at my mental capacity that switch me off and I might as well be sleeping. Fast movement lowers the impact of your decisions, there’s less opportunity cost and you can easily correct mistakes. But I can see how this can be fun for the more mentally challenged.

(amazinglarry) #30

I’m glad the SD philosophy of playing your guy the way you want has remained. May 10th can’t come soon enough.

(Jess Alon) #31

[QUOTE=H8tz;278352]OK, I am lost again in the new system. Can someone please clarify for me:

You earn your normal XP. Then when you earned enough you go a level up. 10 levels are one rank. For a new rank you get a new ability to choose. This ability, the levels and the rank are bound to your character, stay forever and are not changeable anymore. So you have a limited amound of abilities per character. But you can save up to 10 different characters. So you can build a generalist and some specialists.

And in the end, when most player will be at highest rank there is no more match making and all will be able/forced to play together?

Correct please if I am wrong on something…[/QUOTE]

Edit: You get a “skill point” like in an RPG every time you level up. Sometimes you have something like a turret for the engineer that’s a stackable skill and you can put three skill points into it and still have the same skill but it’s stronger because you went from the standard turrent to a gatling turret. (feel free to rep me if I helped at all) End edit::

There’s five brackets of rank that players play in.
0-4 Rank 1
5-9 Rank 2
10-14 Rank 3
15-19 Rank 4
20 at Rank 5

People who are level 20 when they respec they get points back but they drop a level down to 19 and then they are back playing with all the 15-19 levelers in Rank 4 matches.

Feel free to reverse the rank numbers if that makes more sense to you.

The best way IN MY opinion. Is to specialize with each character you build. Build an engineer with THREE active engineer skills so you can dump the rest of your points into passive skills. Unless you are a PC player and then I think you can use more skills at once. But on console you only have 3 available active skills at once that are bound to your D-pad.

BUT you could also create a character to switch classes at will and build up to having active skills in each class so that you can better serve in a match where no one seems to know what the hell they are doing. Like a pub match with no friends around who are following objectives at all. Basically if you need to carry the team branching out your skills could be needed in that scenerio.

Is that helpful?

(raib) #32

Nice. I think at this point it’s fairly safe to assume that you are mad because you didn’t have the eye-hand coordination to play those games.

Intelligence is rewarded in pretty much every shooter anywhere but the very lowest level.

(tokamak) #33

My hand-eye coordination is enough to let me execute my Machiavellian schemes and manipulate both the opponent as well as my own team. That’s what makes ET games rewarding, not the three consecutive headshots which don’t require any interesting tought-patterns at all.

Currently I’m greatly enjoying World of Tanks exactly because the movement is rather limited. It means that you need to think on different spatial as well as time scales. Make the wrong turn or move a bit too fast or too slow, and you expose vital parts, give a way team movements or simply work yourself into a dead end.

Mobility is a resource that should require consideration and care. Simply being able to be anywhere at any time does not .Those who harnass that resource the best and make the best use of it should be at an advantage, not those who happen to be better at selecting moving pixels.

(INF3RN0) #34

Lets get some more articles like this one already :wink:.

(obliviondoll) #35

Seconded.

REALLY like this article.

(raib) #36

[QUOTE=tokamak;278383]
Mobility is a resource that should require consideration and care. Simply being able to be anywhere at any time does not .Those who harnass that resource the best and make the best use of it should be at an advantage, not those who happen to be better at selecting moving pixels.[/QUOTE]

I’ve never heard of a game where aim would be that important. The thing is, you can have a game that is demanding in both aspects. You’re making no sense.

Also I have been successfu enough in my studies, slow shooters and life in general. Associating limited movement with greater intelligence is the oldest excuse people make up after they have missed enough easy rockets in Quake.

(Bridger) #37

NA: The people who are pretty good in the office can hit that first rank in nearly one match.

Good to see that leveling will be rather quick. If it takes 1.5-2 matches to go from level 1 to level 5, I would hope that it would only take 2-3 matches to go from 19 to 20.

Also, it sounds like they will be able to “patch” the balance game without actually going through the QA process. They upload the new values to the server and it automatically distributes all the newly balanced numbers the next time you log in. This would rapidly speed up any balance changes because you don’t have to wait for 3 weeks for Q/A testing like in a normal patch process.

Here’s hoping it works well :slight_smile:

(tokamak) #38

Like with any rpg-like game, the length it will take to go up one level increases exponentially. So you might as well belooking at quite a few more dozens of matches to get that level 20.

(dandragon) #39

Good article. There were many good points to this. Too many to quote but I think the game is really made to structure around the gamers. not just a few but most of the spectrum of player types.

(X-Frame) #40

[QUOTE=Bridger;278406]Also, it sounds like they will be able to “patch” the balance game without actually going through the QA process. They upload the new values to the server and it automatically distributes all the newly balanced numbers the next time you log in. This would rapidly speed up any balance changes because you don’t have to wait for 3 weeks for Q/A testing like in a normal patch process.

Here’s hoping it works well :)[/QUOTE]

Can someone please elaborate on this from the article?

Or are they JUST talking about the PC version? Because why is it that no other game (at least that I know of) takes advantage of tech like this that would allow for the devs to alter balancing details on the fly without having to release a patch?

It sounds too good to be true …