High Level Play Testing

(Slade05) #21

I think SD has some high profile teams playtesting, under NDA, of course.

Then again, Brink is obviously catered towards usual if not casual FPS crowd, just like any other shooter theese days.

(Paul) #22

[QUOTE=Gromit;223038]While I understand both points of view, coming from a gaming league, I think beta testing which includes experienced comp players is a helpful thing both to the development team and the leagues which will be supporting it.

Team Warfare League is in serious discussions to open leagues, ladders and a tournament for Brink upon release. Having access to the game before release can help to tailor those things for the best possible player experience which grows the competitive community and drives both the acceptance and longevity of Brink in the marketplace.

Gromit|TWL
Competition Manager: RTCW, ETQW, Wolfenstein and Brink[/QUOTE]

I know it, all people with ladders want to promote there ladder now and want to play the game earlier then others. This is only just not going to happen :wink:

The only large league where I would see it happen would be clanbase, afaik.

Anyway, everybody just should wait, is my opinion, the ladders can also be made the day they purchase the game and it’s done.

Also, maybe SD is making something secret in the back, and is making there own ranking and ladder system!

(ZaF) #23

I think coming 2nd in the world at 6v6 objective based teamplay (RTCW) gives me a valid opinion… and also doesnt make me a self proclaimed expert.

(Shiv) #24

Well done, you are good at rtcw, this is not that :slight_smile:

Many of us here are/have been high level clan players for various games so piping that off wont get you far.

Outside of your particular gaming expertise, how much do you actually know about the creation/statistics/details in game dev with reason for certain choices?
What about a good eye for little things?
Is this for modern games?

oooooo… .that would be more useful me thinks.
It doesnt matter anyway, the team itself has some pretty high caliber players of the gaming verse who actually know the games and how each peice of it was put together… i think thats the best way to test it :slight_smile:

(.Chris.) #25

I agree, only Brink players should be allowed to test the game.

(ZaF) #26

[QUOTE=Shiv;223101]Well done, you are good at rtcw, this is not that :slight_smile:

Many of us here are/have been high level clan players for various games so piping that off wont get you far.

Outside of your particular gaming expertise, how much do you actually know about the creation/statistics/details in game dev with reason for certain choices?
What about a good eye for little things?
Is this for modern games?

oooooo… .that would be more useful me thinks.
It doesnt matter anyway, the team itself has some pretty high caliber players of the gaming verse who actually know the games and how each peice of it was put together… i think thats the best way to test it :)[/QUOTE]

This isn’t about coding the game, its about getting a game to play well at a high level. The game will be fun for casual players but i think you do not want to allow competative players to sort of become a seperate community. You want the casual players be part of the scene, its how you build a succesful ip / community.

And i wasn’t piping it off, the comment was to dispel the notion that i am a self proclaimed expert. There is no point arguing if you think most people on this forum played at a high level similar to that of myself. thats not being arrogant, its just the truth.

Alot of top competative games were play tested by top players before release and they beneifted from a good tournement circuit. It was just an idea. no need to be touchy.

(tokamak) #27

high5.jpg835x774

(Senethro) #28

I think its too difficult to recruit high level players who are capable of both insight into and explaining in detail what they are doing every second of playing. If everyone is using the grenade launcher then its obvious theres a problem. If a defending team always wins because one guy shuts down a side route using a grenade launcher then what is the problem? Is it the main route, narrowness of the side route, visibility about the side route, the weapon, defenders spawning too fast?

(Qhullu) #29

So people who are good at something can’t have useful opinions at something?

Skewed selfish opinions.

of course their opinions are skewed and selfish, exactly like the opinions of people who aren’t good at that thing, you say that like it’s a bad thing. i mean of course an airplane test pilot suggests changes that make the plane handle better in their opinion, not to turn a boeing into a cessna, but to make the boeing the best it can be. for example, if i were to design an air racing plane, it would make sense to hire someone like Paul Bonhomme as a test pilot instead of someone who isn’t able to push the plane to its’ limits.

at the very least the problem becomes apparent. so even if the testers can’t provide a solution for you, you learn that something is broken and can start trying to figure out the cause. which is better than being unaware of the problem because the testers never came across it.

(Senethro) #30

Bad players won’t find the problem. Good players won’t tell you the problem or may not even speak English.

Might as well just use smart/experienced people for in-house testing and be prepared to do a load of patching.

(H0RSE) #31

i mean of course an airplane test pilot suggests changes that make the plane handle better in their opinion, not to turn a boeing into a cessna, but to make the boeing the best it can be.
but that’s just it. The “best it can be” has a much different meaning in the eyes of top lvl comp players, than it does do the general community, and that isn’t necessarily a good thing.

(INF3RN0) #32

I can only hope that a large lump of gold has been set aside for future patching. Problems will reveal themselves over time, but someone is going to have to fix them (hopefully not the community). Comp play will more than likely function differently than pub, but I still would like the pub to be just as polished. I am all for early SDK though, for a whole load of reasons.

(Qhullu) #33

i’m not suggesting SD redesigns the game based on feedback from top level comp players, but tries to make it work as well as possible in top level comp play. not by making it less fun for the casual crowd, but by tweaking things that the casual crowd would never know have been tweaked.

for example, you could change the damage each weapon does 10% either way and it wouldn’t make any difference in how the game plays for the casual player since hitting things is mostly luck anyway. whereas playing with people who have unbelievably good aim, it would change things drastically.

(INF3RN0) #34

Main reason to have very capable players test games? They are the first to find and exploit imbalances :).

(H0RSE) #35

for example, you could change the damage each weapon does 10% either way and it wouldn’t make any difference in how the game plays for the casual player since hitting things is mostly luck anyway. whereas playing with people who have unbelievably good aim, it would change things drastically.
I have pretty good aim - so do friends I play with. We also understand how games work, and play them how they are intended to be played. - we don’t however consider ourselves “competitive” players. I guess you could call us “competitive level, pub players.” And tweaking the damage of weapons is something that should be done AFTER release. See how they work in the community, this goes for casual and comp. Just because some top players think weapon damage should be at certain levels, doesn’t mean the rest of the comp community will agree. Decisions should be arrived at, not made.

(tokamak) #36

Competition isn’t synonymous to high level play.

(Senethro) #37

Some games have pro-pubs with high aim low organisation and others have pub-leagues with medium skill medium organisation.

(INF3RN0) #38

More so than anything else, but I suppose it depends on your definition of high level play. I personally like the organization more than anything.

(ZaF) #39

o_O

ok im gonna drop this as clearly this isn’t the place for such a discussion.

(tokamak) #40

I’m not saying competition doesn’t involve high level play, it clearly does. But they’re not the same thing. Not all high level is competition and not all competition is high level. They’re categorised as two different sets of preferences, like Inferno said, he likes the organisation of a comp game more than anything.

I can’t fault him on that. Games that ‘matter’ are far more tense and exciting to play than casual games. That’s why I hope for an integrated rating system in Brink (like Battle.net has). The complexity, variet and ease of pubs with the context of competition games would be amazing.