Help Me Understand The Difference....

(LastGun) #1

Between Singleplayer,Multiplayer, and Stopwatch. so lets say i select SP… can nobody join my story while im playing? and is multiplayer SP but co-op so i see all the cut scenes with my freinds? and is stopwatch the full on multiplayer experience playing against others but no cut scenes? sorry i heard about this on the brink website forum and i was extremely confused.

(SockDog) #2

Regardless of what you play you’ll be doing it over a series of maps with objectives to complete.

Now depending on how you select to play you can go through the maps like in a story. If you fail to win you repeat the map etc. or you can progress through the maps like a traditional online multiplayer rotation regardless of whether you win or lose.

On top of that. :slight_smile: you can then pick whether you want to do this on your own, with a team of friends on your side or all out human players on all sides.

Stopwatch is slightly different in that it’s more of a competitive challenge where a side is timed on completing the map, and then the teams swap sides and the other team tries to beat the time. I guess this one only makes sense as a pure multiplayer mode.

(LastGun) #3

ahhh i understand now. which do you think you will be playing the most sock dog? i dont think il be playing stopwatch because it sounds like a race more than a objective based gametype.

(SockDog) #4

I’ll initially give singleplayer a go so I can learn the maps and objectives at my own pace then go for multiplayer. Not sure if the a full co-op (Human vs CPU) is going to be all that much fun in the long run but might be a good alternative to singleplayer to learn the maps if you got some buddies to join you.

As for map order. I’ll have to see how it works in the whole matchmaking. Win or lose moving onto a new map could be bad because you’d be stuck with the possibility of the same imbalanced teams. Whereas if you had to win to progress then any loss would also shift that winning team to another server. Guess I’ll play both ways for a while. :slight_smile:

Stopwatch I guess does take it to an extreme but the purpose is really to allow a fair competitive platform around the objective mode. I guess once you’re familiar with the game you should give it a try as the change of pace may be appealing once you’ve given it a chance.

(tokamak) #5

It does sounds like something in a racing game. But it’s not. It’s simply determining which team is the best attacker.

Objective maps are never truly fair. The normal limit you play in ordinary games are an approximation on how fast you should complete it. With stopwatch however, you set the time limit for the game in the first round and then the other team will try to beat it in the next round. That way you got a fair match.

It’s fun once in a while, but playing the same map twice every time quickly becomes tedious.

(LastGun) #6

so there is a time limit only if you play against other players? or does this apply to co-op and SP aswell? im not talking about stopwatch mode. that sounds boring to me now, considering i hate racing games. let alone with team work.

(SockDog) #7

Yes each map will have a time limit. If the time expires then the defending team wins. If the attacking team completes all the objectives within the time limit they win. This is probably going to be the same for SP, MP and Co-OP. I guess maps will generally run for anywhere between 15-25 minutes. If you want to put that into context of a single player game consider that each map has a time critical objective… steal and transmit plans before transmitter is jammed or gain entry and disarm bomb before it explodes.

There is another thread on here that discusses whether people will be confused by what SD is billing as a single player experience. I and other think they will, you may have proven the point. :slight_smile:

Do you have a gaming capable PC? You may want to give the some of SDs previous games a try. While Brink builds on them a great deal the underlying gameplay and structure is fairly close.

(trigg3r) #8

if im not mistaken, there will only be a time limit when you play “stopwatch” mode. You’ll still be playing the same maps as campaign, multiplayer etc. but once you complete the objective you’ll try to prevent the other team to complete the same objective in less time than you did.

Stopwatch seems very promising imo

(Cankor) #9

[QUOTE=trigg3r;261290]if im not mistaken, there will only be a time limit when you play “stopwatch” mode. You’ll still be playing the same maps as campaign, multiplayer etc. but once you complete the objective you’ll try to prevent the other team to complete the same objective in less time than you did.

Stopwatch seems very promising imo[/QUOTE]

You are mistaken, there is always a time limit.

Stopwatch is just like playing a regular map, the game play is no different. The only difference is, you first play on the attacking team, then you play on the defending team. As Tok said, what you are essentially doing is taking an asymmetrical game mode and making it symmetrical by forcing each team to play both sides.

It’s not anymore like a race that the original mode is a race, in both modes you are either trying trying to finish the map inside a set time, or stop the other team within a set time. In Stopwatch you are just doing both, and the time is set by the other team.

Also, as Sock said, you guys who haven’t tried a SD game yet should pick up ETQW on the cheap and find out why everyone here think’s there objective style gameplay is so good.

(light_sh4v0r) #10

If there’s no timelimit, how would the defending team ever win?

(Herandar) #11

Attackers have a shared life pool. (Not advocating or suggesting it would work in this game, just pointing out the obvious alternative.)

(Nail) #12

there is no defending team in stopwatch, you compete to set the fastest attacker time, the first round sets the time limit, before first round, there is no time limit

(DarkangelUK) #13

There’s the standard timelimits of the map in the 1st round, after that the attacks then have to defend their time… which could be a full hold because they weren’t successful in completing the map.

(Herandar) #14

If both sides manage a full hold, what would be the tiebreaker? Assuming they both got held on the same main objective.

(Cankor) #15

There’s different ways to score it. For instance, you could give each team 1 point (vs 2 for winning) and play another round (you give a point for the tie so that if one team actually won a round the match would eventually end with a winner).

For stopwatch, you generally want a map to be attacker biased so there is a good chance there will be a time set. You can do this by tweaking spawn times in favor of the attacker, eliminating an objective, or even modifying the map a little (several ETQW maps were modified by members of this community so they played better in stopwatch). A defensively biased map is the worst map you could have for stopwatch because you could have a lot of double full holds.

Ideally the game will come with the ability to adjust spawn timers, at least in stopwatch mode. SD has said this will be their most open customizable game, so I sort of expect to be able to do this kind of stuff with map scripts.

If anyone is more interested in seeing stopwatch in action, in particular if you are unfamiliar with Splash Damage objective style games, there are lots of VODs of ETQW comp matches available here:

http://www.bravehardt.com/TAW/Quake_Wars/DukeNukeM/Videos/

One to note is “VOD-ml_vs_hub_et.tv_041609” (pretty sure that’s the right one) which went on and on because of double full holds (and the rules didn’t allow for giving a point to each team in that case, and because of that much controversy ensued when one team had to just call it a night and go to bed).

(Seyu) #16

5-10 minutes for each level of the map.

Also, will the attacking/defending alternate between the two teams on a single map or will they be one way?

(SockDog) #17

If you mean objective then yes, I guess the total amount of objectives would take nearly the entire map time limit if a game was evenly matched. However facing a weaker team/bots would mean you could run through the map in a very small time.

In stopwatch yes it alternates. Other modes it generally doesn’t.

(Cankor) #18

[QUOTE=Seyu;261638]5-10 minutes for each level of the map.

Also, will the attacking/defending alternate between the two teams on a single map or will they be one way?[/QUOTE]

They are one way. And Sock is confusing you, they are one way on stopwatch as well, and then after the map is done you switch sides. In otherwords, you don’t attack one objective and then defend the next (unless they have totally changed things up which I suppose is possible).

(Nail) #19

yah, sorry, that was what I was trying to say, but missed