H0RSE's Info compendium

#41

Cheers Auzner :slight_smile:

(light_sh4v0r) #42

lol, I’m loving the names :slight_smile:
Rokstedi assault rifle ftw!

(Reanimator) #43

Didn’t know exactly where to put this question, so I’ll put it here. With death (falling after being shot) animations do they change depending on where you were shot? Say for instance I shoot someone in the leg until they fall, will it look like they’ve been shot in the leg?
It doesn’t really bother me if death animations aren’t this complex considering I don’t really aim for the legs but it would be a nice touch.

(light_sh4v0r) #44

ETQW had just 1 death animation, QWO has 2 so who knows, Brink might have 3 :slight_smile:

(tokamak) #45

In QWO you could lie death on your face. Seems quite confusing with players able to prone as well

(DouglasDanger) #46

How many “Slots” are there for character customization? One of the interviews mentioned 10 pre-made looks per side, that is a character fully dressed out. You can mix and match all of those pieces and change their colors. I know there are three or four slots for your head, how many slots are there total?

(H0RSE) #47

Your base face
Skin color
Hair type
Hair color
Head gear
Head gear textures
Face gear
Face gear textures
Facial hair
Facial hair color
Face tattoos
Face paint
Shirt
Jacket
Jacket texture
Jacket colors
Pants
Pants texture
Pants colors
Body type
Body tattoo
Voice accent

that’s what I know of.

(DouglasDanger) #48

Oh, textures too, nice! Does that mean you could have one jacket model and it have say… a leather texture and a cloth texture? Is that what that means?

(Crytiqal) #49

[QUOTE=light_sh4v0r;242707]lol, I’m loving the names :slight_smile:
Rokstedi assault rifle ftw![/QUOTE]

I think I already know who I will hate in this game.

People with the EZ-Nade AGL gun :frowning:

(H0RSE) #50

I don’t know, I haven’t played the game.

(tokamak) #51

[QUOTE=Crytiqal;243335]I think I already know who I will hate in this game.

People with the EZ-Nade AGL gun :([/QUOTE]

Only heavy bodytypes can carry it.

(H0RSE) #52

also, the nades don’t seem to detonate on impact.

(Nikto) #53

indeed, i think you can choose what they do.
normal timed, or, hit the ground+jump straight up+detonate when it hits the ground

(Auzner) #54

Which initially a lot of people might not want to play as. Heavy is unpopular for those who haven’t played. I sure hated the panzer in ET though. Rifle nades took more skill so less people used them, even though they were more versatile than the panzer and you got 9 shots.

(Nikto) #55

there are players who will use it the moment they can.
H0RSE and me are just two out of many.

(H0RSE) #56

UPDATE 2 - October 10, 2010

Let’s start things off with one of the most satisfying paragraphs I have read, concerning Brink.

From a PAX 10 hands-on preview at Gamehounds.net:
[I]“Brink was not what I was expecting it to be. Watching it from the sidelines made it seem just like another shooter with some unique changes, but after playing it myself, it was black versus white. The teamwork it offers is awesome. Nothing — and I mean nothing — can be achieved unless there is a massive amount of team effort. There’s no wandering off to get kills for yourself. Either you stand together or you die alone.

This level of critical co-op makes Battlefield Bad Company 2 look like Call of Duty.

Building a game that is based off that concept from the start — all I gotta say is CoD players beware: You won’t be winners here. This is where men come out to play and the boys return to their abandoned buildings in look-alike Afghanistan. Yeah, take that to the bank and bite me.”[/I]

  • Wedgwood stated that they have reached beta, and everything they do from now on is about game balance and polish in time for the Spring 2011 release.

Gameplay

There was another paragraph I read that in that Gamehounds preview I would like to focus on:
“I died a lot. Let me say that again — I died so much my kill-to-death ration was probably in the o.2 range. The other team had a distinct advantage that we noticed from the start based on some bad balancing within the game. Cover in the demo map was so plentiful for the the opposing team that they were able to spawn-camp our side for a minute or two.”

After reading that, It appears that the author of the preview is not familiar with SD-style team objective games. Chances are, it is not “bad balancing,” but rather it is intentional, and is used throughout SD’s previous games as well. In SD-style games, it is common for the defending team (the team he was playing against) to have “the upper hand,” like vantage points over the opposition and as he said, “plentiful cover.” It is designed to make working as a team even more effective – so if you keep attacking 1 person at a time, instead of as a group, you will fail. And it creates a sense of “against all odds,” and is quite epic in its execution. I can tell you from firsthand experience with SD’s previous games, that it works, and it is not at all “bad balance.” It may however, seem that way to some people who are not used to this formula, and instead, are used to being the 1 man hero.

As mentioned in my previous update, players will “attach” themselves to other players they are trying to buff, so they can both continue moving while doing so. It also appears players will be able to “pull to teammates” regardless if you are performing a buff or not, as explained here by an SD forum member who attended PAX:
"I could sit there and hold the action key while looking at a teammate and SMART would auto-engage and drag me along behind them automatically for a short distance. Rahdo told me that this will mainly be for console players and also people who use the “heavy class” because you get a speed-boost from auto-following people with the use button to try and action-on them.”

  • SD has chosen to give players an unlimited amount of grenades, with about a 20-30 second cooldown between throwing each one.
  • I read that when you use Command Posts, they will list how many of each class your team has, to give you more insight when deciding to switch classes.
  • .cfg files on PC, will be customizable, and in the words of a dev, they will be “the most open out of all their games.”
  • In a bid to not keep players on the field longer than they should be – you know, to stop people sticking around for 30 mins when there is no chance of winning – each leg of the multi-staged level has a timer – around 4 or 5 minutes according to Wedgwood. The additive time does not apply in Stopwatch mode.
  • You’ll be able to change weapons, pick objectives, and customize stuff during cut scenes if you don’t want to watch them.
  • Based off feedback from someone who played Brink, it appears there are 3 damage locators – headshots do the most damage, followed by body shots, and shooting in the legs do the least.
  • It was mentioned that when repairing the bot in Brink demo, you did not need to focus on the task at hand, and could look around freely. Whether this applies to most/all interactions, I do not know, but it is quite possible.
  • Just like in QW, it appears that players will be able to become familiar with the game while playing it in real-time. From some gameplay footage I saw, as you play the game, a woman’s voice with an English accent, will tell you about your HUD items and their purpose. She will also mention things as they happen, so if you choose a Medic, she will tell you things about the class and what you should be doing, if you die, she will tell you your options (wait for Medic or respawn) etc. It is a great way for new players to become familiar with the game, while being able to play it at the same time.
  • There will be a kind of a table of contents that will be available to you right from the start so you can jump into the story anywhere if you want. Plus, if you see one of your friends playing online in the 4th or 5th level, but you’ve just started the game, you can jump into their game and play co-op with them no matter how far you’ve played on your own.

An SD forum member elaborates on the [Container City] map layout from his playtime at EGE, the green/red highlights that appear around players that many people seem to dislike and players not being “locked” into anything :
[I]“From the security POV, to reach the 1st gate was quite quick, certainly within 10 seconds at sprint. There were 2 routes into the main area where the gate was, 2 ramps up which meant we wouldn’t be choked completely if they held us back from the gate and both were accessible without SMART. 1 was straight up and one slightly further back. Getting passed the gate had a route at the right side we could SMART up which took us at them from the side if they were focusing on the gate itself. I remember hearing the VO saying the soldier had blown a door to give us a new route, but I didn’t directly see where it was at the time. To get to each part of the action had a minimum of 2 routes with a combination of on foot and SMART, some had more.
Now the ones with 2 may have had more, but at the time I was more in play mode rather than explore mode, so there could have been more routes and I didn’t know. I was never too far from the action, and never felt pinned with no options other than to Rambo it. I’d say it’s hard to choke an offensive team, with multiple routes requiring attention. Turrets can help cover them, but they’re by no means powerful enough to do the job on their own. I’m also happy to say turrets are certainly not the grenade sponge that they are in ETQW… my grenades were used on the enemy where they should be.”

“There were no highlights of enemies, the only time I got any info of an enemy was when my crosshair was concentrated on them. Team mates only highlighted when they were close enough to be buffed.”

“I mentioned this before, but I never felt locked into anything. Command post, objective wheel, deploying, reloading… if I wanted to stop any of those, then I stopped. During the reload process, up to a certain point I was able to interrupt and continue to fire off the bullets I had left in the gun at the point I started to reload. This alleviated A LOT of frustration.”[/I]


Neil Alphonso sheds some light on indicators associated with damage and dying, more details on countering spawn camping and “finishing moves”:
[I]- “The blurriness doesn’t happen when you’re low on health, it happens when you die (blur+red) or are knocked down (just blur). Simple black and white desaturation happens as your health gets critically low, as we don’t want to hamper players too much when they need to survive…The blur is actually depth of field, so you can still see anything that’s close to you relatively clearly. We don’t necessarily want you to be able to see long distances and report things back to your team while you’re down.”

  • “We have this hidden invulnerability that I’ve never talked about. Basically until you fire or are in a responder’s area you’re invulnerable. We can define where and how long it lasts from when you leave the spawn area. So we can give you a couple of seconds to get around that first corner knowing that those guys are sniping. We’ve been careful to make that something we can change maybe later if there are problems when the game gets out in the wild.”

  • “There are these states of knocked over, but not dead. You can be knocked over and incapacitated which means you need a medic to come help you up, but then people can come finish you off. So we have a melee finishing move when people are like that and you get a lot of experience for that. You can also just shoot them, but you hardly get any experience doing that and it actually takes a lot of ammo to do it.”[/I]

  • He also noted that performing a “finishing move” will not cause the camera to cut back into 3rrd person mode and it doesn’t really leave you vulnerable.

Fireteams

Fireteam squads have been introduced to guarantee that users across all three platforms can experience excellent party support. Here Richard Ham explains how fireteams work:
“We want to make sure that you don’t get in any way, in any way, an inferior [product], we want you to get everything – across all three platforms. So we implemented fireteams. What that means is that when you’re in a match you can look at the scoreboard at any given time and you can see either your friend or that player who is really good, and you can click on them and issue them an invite into your fireteam. If they accept, we’re now in fireteam alpha; there are four fireteams: alpha, bravo, charlie and delta. Because we’re in a fireteam we immediately see each other’s colours differently, so I can always spot you amongst everyone else.”

  • Being in a fireteam automatically opens the voice chat channel.
  • As mentioned above, there are 4 fireteams – this would imply that fireteams are only squads of 2. (2x4 = 8)
  • Once you’re in a fireteam you cannot get split up. The system is always looking for a map which has two slots, so when you complete a map with your fireteam buddy you will always go to the next map together. This means that you can enjoy Brink all night with your mate(s) without the servers ever getting in your way.

Leaderboards

  • It appears individual matches will have leaderboards – Global leaderboards however, are still out as far as I know.

Neil Alphonso on leadrboards:
[I]“Some of you might have caught it in some of the reviews from the latest round of shows, but the final scoreboard at the end of the match does list Kills and Deaths, but it is ranked by XP. In the build we had at the shows, Medics and Engineers were always the high scorers, and by no coincidence the most important to the teams in Container City.

Further info on stats in general is one of the last things we’re holding back on releasing.”[/I]

And from a hands-on preview (not Neil):
“Then the leaderboard popped up. I had 41 kills and 12 deaths, which as I said was the best on the game. And yet, by score, I was right in the middle of the pack. Why? Because, Rahdo Ham told me, leaderboard score is determined by a variety of factors, including team support. As an engineer, I could buff my teammates weapons, but I didn’t do it enough as I should have. Ham pointed out how a medic was above me on the board because he basically spent the entire game running around healing folks who had been taken down.”

  • With the balance for the game the way it was for the recent shows, it was just easiest to score well as a Medic or Engineer. As with the weapons, this is something that is getting tuned constantly.

SMART

  • On the 360 controller, tapping the Left Bumper makes you sprint. If you hold the button down instead, the SMART system comes into play.
  • Technically, there is no limit to how many wall hops you can do, but each consecutive one gives less vertical impulse than the last - Diminishing returns, basically.
  • Although the SMART button is very intuitive, there are certain things that it will NOT let you do just by holding it down.
  1. If you choose the Light body type, it will not let you do his “advanced” stuff, like climbing really high walls and/or wallhopping – these must be performed manually.
  2. It doesn’t automatically initiate slide tackles into enemies – these must be done manually.

Chellenges

  • Challenges are how you unlock new stuff to customize your weapons. (and probably weapons in general) Each challenge has 3 levels - the 1st one is easy, the 2nd one is a bit more difficult, and the 3rd one “Is a ****in’ bitch to complete” (Rahdo’s exact words) The 3rd level is designed to be hard for the developers themselves, but after you complete level 3 then there is a leaderboard to try to work your way up as well.

Someone who attended PAX asked Richard Ham about challenges. Here is one of his responses:
[I]“Our challenges are entire scripted levels, which you can play solo or co-op. An example of one is a level we call “MEDIC!”, where you play as a medic on a team, where your only job is to keep the other team-members alive, while they complete core objectives. The trick to doing well in this challenge is being smart about who you revive, and when you revive them. If you win, you’ll unlock something cool, as well as a tougher difficulty level. And if you beat that difficulty level, you’ll unlock more cool stuff and difficulty levels.

And once you’ve truly mastered all the challenges (which are fun mini-games in their own right), you’ll have unlocked tons of great stuff, and you’ll have learned a lot of the skills you need to do well online.”[/I]

Classes
It appears that XP may not be a standard amount for all classes, meaning if you kill an enemy as a Medic you may not get as much XP as a Soldier would have gotten. This all seems to tie into encouraging team-based behavior among players.

For instance, as a Soldier, your primary role would be to kill other players, whereas as a Medic your primary role would be to heal and revive. So the medic may get lots of XP for reviving and healing and less for killing (compared to the Soldier). The Solider can of course augment his XP by handing out ammo, but that’s not necessarily his “primary” role. If the ammo awards are on a par with the health awards, the soldier will fall behind compared to the Medic in the XP awards, because the Medic gets tons for reviving, so possibly the counter to that is Soldier’s get more for kills.

Another thing this does is to help discourage rambo medics - Medics can’t get to the top of the (XP) scoreboard by shooting alone, so they are forced to do their role if they want the points.

None of this is confirmed, and is just speculation floating around the forums right now, based off some gameplay footage, but it does make sense.

  • As I mentioned previously, players will only be able to bring 3 ACTIVE abilities with them into battle. Passive abilities, that do not need to be bound to a button to use (like reloading while sprinting or shooting grenades in midair) are only limited by your level, which dictates how many abilities you can buy overall.

Soldier

  • Soldiers have access to flashbangs – The effects last nowhere near the length of time as in MW2.
  • Molotovs have returned, and the Soldier appears to be the one who gets them.
  • Soldiers will have Kevlar Armor upgrades.
  • It sounds like Soldiers can give different types of ammo to teammates. In one video, I heard Richard Ham say “the ammo Jolly’s handing out today is armor piercing.”

Engineer

  • The Engineers damage buff will boost weapon damage by 15%. Since it is likely there will be more than 1 rank in the buff, this may increase.
  • Engineers appear to be able to buff weapons from lvl 1.
  • When a player receives a damage buff, the buffed weapon will glow gold, to signal other players that they are carrying a buffed weapon.

Standard Engineer Kit – Engineers can complete Construction and Repair objectives and can boost their teammates’ weapon damage.
Light Turret – This lets you plant a light auto-turret which will detect and fire at enemies.

Medic

  • Medics will get xp for giving out a syringe AND xp if the person successfully uses it.
  • Using a syringe is not instant. Players will need to hold down the button (L stick for xbox) for around 3 secs. (while a bar fills) before they are revived.
  • It appears Medics have the ability to boost the sprint speed of players. I think the name of the skill is “Fleet of Foot.”

More info on Medic Self-Revive ability:
I saw some recorded footage from PAX, and it showed off the Medic’s self revive ability. From what I saw, anyone who is concerned about this ability being overpowered, should not have to worry too much. First off, when the player uses the ability, from what I saw, it isn’t instant – it takes about 3 seconds upon activating it, for the player to actually become revived. The current self revive cooldown for medics is set to 1 minute. Rahdo assured someone who played at PAX, that by the time Brink ships it would definitely be increased, probably doubled. Also, I read this in a preview: “You’re a medic," I was told, “You can revive yourself after death once.” So it may also be a once-per spawn skill. If that is true, then the cooldown is also there to prevent players from intentionally dying to gain immediate access to it again – In other words, it may be setup so if a player dies while the skill is in cooldown, they still have to wait for it to finish after they respawn.

Finally, someone at the SD forums had some hands-on time at EGE and had this to say:
“The cool down is very lengthy, to a point where it should be used strategically and not a whim. Don’t be thinking “ack i’ll use it now, it’ll be charged quick enough to be used again”, this won’t happen, which again alleviates the fear of the invincible one-man-army medics.”

Operative

  • Mines appear to be invisible, and can only be spotted by Operatives.
  • In a hands-on article, it was stated that Operatives can play dead.
  • Operatives appear to have a “self destruct” ability they can use when incapacitated, as Neil Alphonso touched on in a Q&A – “We have other things like with the spy character, they have the ability to blow themselves up when they’re dead so if you’re going to finish them off and you hear a beepbeepbeep**beep your reaction will be “oh ****…”

“Operatives are more of our class that goes behind enemy lines, they disguise, they sorta take out enemies that are in key positions and you can’t really call them assassins, but they have a lot of unique abilities that let them sorta approach the game more creatively.”

  • Neil Alphonso

Customization

It appears there are 10 archetypes per faction, as Olivier Leonardi explained in an interview on nxtgamer.com:
“what we did was, we defined 10 archetypes that all show a different personality in the story, so we have ten strong characters per faction, and then you can mix-and-match everything, so you can make a million different characters from these ten good-looking guys.”

  • The “Downed Fire” ability only allows you to use secondary weapons, based off of this line: “One of our abilities allows you to fire with your secondary weapon while incapacitated.”
  • I heard from someone who spoke with Richard Ham at PAX, that on top of unlocking new abilities, you will also unlock new outfits when you level up. However, I don’t know if you automatically unlock ALL of them, or if the “really cool” stuff is still unlocked through other means.
  • Once you unlock something, it’s unlocked for any future characters you create as well. You won’t have to spend time re-unlocking everything with every character.
  • I saw brief footage of someone messing with the weapon options, and for a second, he selected a pistol and cycled through the ironsight mods. The only options were regular ironsights or a red dot sight. I don’t know if this is because the playable demo at EGE had limited options, but it seems possible that you may not be able to put zoomed scopes on pistols, just like how I don’t expect to be able to put grenade launchers attachments on every weapon, which seems reasonable.
  • It’s important to note, and I should have stated this earlier but it didn’t cross my mind, that when you gain XP in Brink, It is YOUR xp, not your character’s – You can spend it how you want. So even if you hit max level on a character, the xp he earns can still be spent elsewhere.

Wedgwood and Ham on character levels and abilities:
“We have a level cap per character in alpha right now of about 20 – that might change by the time we release – but the general idea is that you can max out your combat role and augment it with a few a universal abilities.”
“But you won’t be able to have everything,” pipes in Richard Ham, Splash Damage’s Creative Director, “because there’s something like about 50 abilities.”

Levels and Ranks are 2 separate things and have 2 different purposes, as explained below, from nerdiest-kids.com:
“if you have a friend who’s just starting out and you’ve capped out at level 20 you can still play together without the lower level player getting completely slaughtered. “Screw the true skills match-ups” is how Splash Damage is thinking. Rather, match-ups will be based on player ranks (you rank up once for every 5 levels of XP you gain), allowing for more even gameplay. But what if a level 1 player wants to play with the level 18′s or 20′s? You can totally do that if you feel you’re up to the challenge, but the real point is that the high level players can’t come down to the lower levels and slaughter the noobs one by one, which will eliminate a lot of frustrations that come with randomized multiplayer gaming.”

New options I have seen:

Faces
The Geezer
The Nose
The Sensei
The Smooth
The Bruiser
The Yeung
The Sour

Hair
The Fashion
The Buzz Cut
The Corn Rows
The Cropped
The Dolph
The Bruce

Tattoos
Nedosegaem Tattoo (it seems to mean “untouchable” in Bulgarian)
Haida Tattoo

[B]Shirts /B
The Eel Shirt
Stab Vest
Muscle Shirt
Bouncer Shirt
Shirt & Sweatband
Muscle Vest

New Security Archetypes
The Bouncer
The Tank
The Unit

From a hands-on preview at ZTGD:
“I lamented that I couldn’t wear a beret on top of my gas mask, but when it comes to accessorizing, Brink is serious business. When it comes to gameplay, well then it’s just serious fun.”

From a hands-on at Rockpapershotgun
“The chap I made was a hardnut with a helmet and handlebars. Probably could have been some old school cop.”

Handlebar mustache = ****ing epic

(Reanimator) #57

Thanks once again H0RSE, as always it’s been very informative!

Here, have a tapir.

:stroggtapir:

(Wraith) #58

Thanks for the update H0RSE. Operatives can now self destruct fun. “You’ll never take me alive.”

(abrain) #59

Nice one H0RSE.

:stroggtapir:

(Mad Hatter) #60

  1. Hello H0RSE, long time no see.

  2. This new update is awesome. Nothing but good news across the board. I will surely explode if my anticipation for Brink is increased much higher…