Faction Loyalty. -Easy to implement

thrill11 · 2011-08-02 19:49:32 UTC

I know what he means. Once you create a character, you should only be able to play as the faction you chose (unless its story mode.) The story would continue to change based on which side is winning the most matches.) Inspiring new maps as well (?) When you play only as a certain faction, you may have more fun due to loyalty, a sense of belonging to the faction, and rivalry. With this, in-game guilds would have a purpose. Like for example, not only would guilds be fighting along side their faction, but they be fighting eachother over which is contributing to the faction the most. Lots of competition = a great game. I like the idea dude.

Then again, I can see wolf’s side too. People are already complaining about not being able to change characters in between matches or something. Imagine how much they’d complain if you couldn’t change factions, ya know?

Sadly, you wouldnt find that in BRINK because if it were to be included in a DLC…ppl would complain. That would’ve had to be there in the first place. You know what I mean? People wouldnt willingly adept to a change like that. It MAY be good for a sequel (definitely for a new game) but not Brink.

Apocalypse_Pony · 2011-08-02 20:02:38 UTC

As an American gamer, I’m telling you STAY THERE! I’ve always been jealous of Eurogamers, as they’ve always been more willing to try new and different things.

We may have a polarizing nature Exedore, but in general, we easily get set in our ways and don’t care much for change.

General_Techniq · 2011-08-02 20:47:07 UTC

[QUOTE=Exedore;363261]This is something that is a current point of fascination for me. I’m a Canadian/American who’s been living and working in Europe for nearly 6 years now, so I’m a bit out of touch with some of the cultural sentiments.

It was a pet theory of mine that the polarizing nature of American culture would be at odds with how ‘grey’ and equal Brink is… it’s been an issue in previous projects as well. We had some ideas early on about a faction system, but we ultimately preferred balance, and wanted to make both factions attractive to players.

If anybody has anything thoughtful (and of course, respectful) to contribute, I’d love to hear it!.[/QUOTE]

Well… I’d just like to thank you guys for deciding NOT to narrowly develop the game towards America’s lowest common denominator (polarized, intolerance, uncompromising, self-absorbed, etc etc) :rolleyes:.

I always find it to be somewhat disillusioning to discover that, in the quest for optimum “accessibility”, discussions such as those manage to rise to the forefront of developmental processes.

Sacrificing balance in order to cater more towards casuals would likely have dealt a death blow to gameplay, making Brink a catastrophic and legendary failure. The kind of which developers NEVER recover from.

–There are other ways to create a good faction lure (or whatever) without sacrificing balance. Nearly all of them would have required that the game had been designed with “neutrality” in mind on EACH and EVERY level. So, yeah, it’s kinda waaaayy too late for it at this stage.
–However the “persistent world” elements listed in the OP could very well work without the factions being locked (one character one faction).

If by some act of divine intervention, Brink sees a sequel, could you guys spend some time discussing evolving Brink into a MMOFPS (with neutral battlegrounds, or levels that exchange hands)? Brink seems like it would work well in a persistent world.

RabidAnubis · 2011-08-02 21:03:50 UTC

[QUOTE=Exedore;363261]This is something that is a current point of fascination for me. I’m a Canadian/American who’s been living and working in Europe for nearly 6 years now, so I’m a bit out of touch with some of the cultural sentiments.

It was a pet theory of mine that the polarizing nature of American culture would be at odds with how ‘grey’ and equal Brink is… it’s been an issue in previous projects as well. We had some ideas early on about a faction system, but we ultimately preferred balance, and wanted to make both factions attractive to players.

If anybody has anything thoughtful (and of course, respectful) to contribute, I’d love to hear it!.[/QUOTE]

So, If I understand you correctly, your saying you didn’t want to do this because you wanted players to sympathize with both sides? That does make sense. But I do agree with the others, in the sense that if this (Faction on one side) was how the game shipped, it would have been better. But now I see that trying to change that now would be a huge issue.

RabidAnubis · 2011-08-02 21:16:07 UTC

I think it is more or less that in America, there are two major political parties.

The Republicans and the Democrats.

The security way of thinking almost perfectly aligns with the republican way of thinking- I went to school longer, I get the money for it. I invested, I deserve the harvest.

The Resistance puts the reasonable parts of the Democrats into play, if your working, you deserve your fair share. It wasn’t our fault we didn’t invest.

So I think it is a little more along that line. Both sides have fault but both sides have valor.

In fact, several times before Brink came out I asked people the following question-

A floating city, a utopia has been a project for a while. The rich people invested THOUSANDS to MILLIONS in it. Most of them happened to be on this city, this gold structure in the middle of an ocean, when a lot of flooding happened- but the waters didn’t recede. A few thousand people ended up being lucky and found the city. But these new people were put into cramped quarters and bad living conditions.

So, the rich people say “we are lucky we let you on” and “You should be happy with what you have” and “We invested in this, you could have also” but the poor say “We do a lot of the dirty work.” and “We were born here” among other things.

So who is right.

There went three Spanish classes…

And in the end the republicans were on the security and the resistance the democrats.

RabidAnubis · 2011-08-02 21:22:55 UTC

Well, I was taking this from the point of view as a person who played and loved MAG. That is probably why I had this opinion in the first place.

I guess the best way to end this would be to put it this way-

If they had started this way, it might have worked out better.
But now that it is here, we might as well keep it this way.

@General Techniq

I don’t see how this would be casual in any ways or form. Doing something like this to a game usually makes it be MUCH more competitive. Have you ever been the person not to repair a AA battery in MAG, when you had the chance…

But I can live with it the way it is. I’m just wondering what the MAG players who played the game for more than 60 hours think.

RabidAnubis · 2011-08-02 21:25:02 UTC

[QUOTE=Stormchild;363238]The idea is interesting but it belong to the RPG genre. This is not WoW with horde against order or whatever it was. Plus, there are barely enough players in to start attaching them to a specific faction, especially in multiplayer.

Brink has already way too much from RPG’s in my opinion. If you crave faction-belonging feeling that much, why not join a clan ? After all, you said so yourself, you would play the affiliated faction unless “balance issues”, so what is the point in the end ?

I for one, value a nice struggle, fair matches where the outcome is never obvious until the very end. And for that, I throw away all allegiances, patriotistic bs, and preference between offense or defense. If one team seems to be overwhelmed, I’ll try to switch there all the time.

I feel we already have too much of this in real life, we have that also in MMO’s and such… why not leave FPS out of this frenzy of having to be in a faction of a “side” ? What’s wrong with being altogether and just having fair matches and mixing teams and putting only skill on the table and not some kind of phantasmed allegiance.

And I am not sure I understand the “egotistic middle american who doesn’t want to share” thing either. It is part of your role-playing, or is it an astonishingly discussable capitalistic and individualistic joke ?

Sorry if I didn’t get the point of the post, of if I missed some humor, but I genuinely felt a bit shocked at reading this request, especially when having one eye always on the news of the world and the damage “faction-belonging” spirit does in there.

/rant[/QUOTE]

MAG was an FPS (NOT a MMORPG), and that is what I was basing this off of. And most MAG players would agree with me on this. Perhaps it worked better because of the !Massive! battles.

WoW had NO influence in this. None.

iezza · 2011-08-02 21:34:57 UTC

Damn i wish we had MAG on xbox. is it true that there was 126 vs 126. cos that is effectivly free ro\am accomodating all those…

RabidAnubis · 2011-08-02 23:30:50 UTC

Yeah… it was 256 players on one map man. You can check their main page.

But the maps are about 6 times as big as on fuel.

But not too many people are on MAG anymore, and I think in there dev log they said the XBOX couldn’t take it because of the way the servers are set up? (Sounds like PS3 promotion BS)

General_Techniq · 2011-08-02 23:47:09 UTC

This is MAG:

MAG Gameplay - Platoon Leader Commentary

I’m “GeneralTactic” in the vid. That’s footage of MAG’s Domination gamemode (256-player mode) from the point of view of a Platoon Leader of randoms/pubs.

RabidAnubis · 2011-08-02 23:53:45 UTC

I love MAG commentaries. I will watch it!

General_Techniq · 2011-08-02 23:55:51 UTC

[QUOTE=RabidAnubis;363517]
@General Techniq

I don’t see how this would be casual in any ways or form. Doing something like this to a game usually makes it be MUCH more competitive. Have you ever been the person not to repair a AA battery in MAG, when you had the chance…

But I can live with it the way it is. I’m just wondering what the MAG players who played the game for more than 60 hours think.[/QUOTE]

LOL. You’re funny. My comments about casual catering were directed at the Dev that posted about stuff that kind of transcends your OP.

This is me:

…playing a little MAG.

RabidAnubis · 2011-08-02 23:58:08 UTC

MAG COMMENTARIES ARE LIKE DRUGS FOR ME!!!

WATCHING

By the way, how many people are on it these days? I am considering re buying it.

General_Techniq · 2011-08-03 00:16:46 UTC

[QUOTE=RabidAnubis;363684]MAG COMMENTARIES ARE LIKE DRUGS FOR ME!!!

WATCHING

By the way, how many people are on it these days? I am considering re buying it.[/QUOTE]

From the way all the guys talk over at the MAG community, it seems to have a steady base good enough to keep sabo and aqui games going most of the day, with Dom games going a good amount of time.
MAG’s getting a steady stream of warm bodies from the Demo (demo players capped at level 8 or something).

Check out the official forum community. They were organizing clan Q^s like crazy for a while. Not sure about the state of that whole thing right now, though.
Although barely, MAG has managed to become a cult hit, as far as PS3 FPS exclusives go. Might actually see a sequel of some kind.

RabidAnubis · 2011-08-03 00:26:54 UTC

No. There will be a sequel. I have to admit, MAG felt like a beta at realese. No longer. MAG will always be with me.

SVER forever!

Humate · 2011-08-03 01:02:39 UTC

[QUOTE=Exedore;363261]This is something that is a current point of fascination for me. I’m a Canadian/American who’s been living and working in Europe for nearly 6 years now, so I’m a bit out of touch with some of the cultural sentiments.

It was a pet theory of mine that the polarizing nature of American culture would be at odds with how ‘grey’ and equal Brink is… it’s been an issue in previous projects as well. We had some ideas early on about a faction system, but we ultimately preferred balance, and wanted to make both factions attractive to players.

If anybody has anything thoughtful (and of course, respectful) to contribute, I’d love to hear it!.[/QUOTE]

Personally the whole notion of “factions” are pretty useless if it doesn’t effect gameplay.
The story is merely a reason to fight, not something to identify with.

Asymmetrically balanced teams would have been preferable at least for me.
Understandably, players would need to learn each factions playstyle, or they would opt to only play one faction if it was too much

wolfnemesis75 · 2011-08-03 01:13:36 UTC

Honestly, when I first fired up Brink I thought there would be some kind of lock after you chose a faction. I like being able to play both factions. Just think more motivators are necessary to bring out the loyalty factor. Even if its Faction divided EXP rewards or something that takes a while to get grinding away, thus making it necessary to choose a side in hopes of securing the award.

RabidAnubis · 2011-08-03 02:38:09 UTC

Would have worked if it was that way when the game came out.

But not now. Now I realize that should be a brink 2 thing. If there is one.

SockDog · 2011-08-03 06:52:00 UTC

My penny’s worth.

Encouraging loyalty for a specific side would be as detrimental to play as the whole class specific builds has been to on the fly class changes (which I thought was a core aspect of the game?). My opinion, the primary focus should be on making the game mechanics work, secondarily making the wider MP toolset functional and only then start tacking on the hollow crack candy like barbie dolls. I feel SD spent a lot of Brink development time switching 3 and 1 back and forth.

bastuden · 2011-08-03 07:01:01 UTC

honestly it frustrates me when people don’t see how faction loyalty is a good idea and how much it would have improved the competitiveness of this game. Because of this I am praying MAG 2 get parkour because I am definitely going to quit this game if it does. It just pisses me off how clueless this community is on this subject, this game was meant to have faction loyalty.