How long does the unlock system last?

(Mustkunstn1k) #1

I heard that there are only 20 levels for charater progression. But how long does it take to reach those levels?

Because the thing is that a lot of people today like to have goals in their multiplayer games. Most people don’t “play for fun” anymore. I guess you can thank Call of Duty for that. Most people here probably don’t care about those things, but I am not gonna deny that I too like to have stuff unlock as I play.

I know that xp is also in the game. The Joystiq preview specially talks about how xp is used to reward the player. I really hope that the unlock system lasts a long time because otherwise in the end xp will be pointless.

In CoD there are something like 60 levels (which might take up to 20-30 hours of gameplay) and after that you can prestige many times. It seems to me that you get max level much quicker it Brink.

I realise that SD probably wants to level the Battlefield and make sure people get their abilities fast, but in the end… Brink should have a ton of more items and unlocks. I mean Call of Duty has basically perks, weapons and attachments.

Brink also has perks, but they are called abilities. And so far I’ve hard that Brink has like 30 of them. Which means there is more than Call of Duty.

I don’t know about weapons, but I would think that Brink would also have a lot of weapons.

And I’m pretty sure Brink has more attachments. I was just looking at the Choir of Guns trailer and there shows different scopes and sights for one weapon. Here are the different options:

  • Iron sights
  • Adjusted Iron Sights
  • COGA Scope
  • Snoop-R Scope
  • Greeneye Scope
  • D-Flex Red Dot Sight
  • C-U-Gone Red Dot Sight
  • YeoTek Red Dot Sight

That’s a lot of scopes. It would definetly be interesting for players to unlock each of those to each gun. Although I remember hearing how once you get a scope you get it for all weapons. But stilll there are silencers, muzzle breaks, grips, extra ammo and more attachments to every weapon.

Although I read how these things will all be unlocked thru a separate challenge system. Which makes the whole progression system even less impressive.

But here is the main point that could push the unlock system. CLOTHING! Unlike CoD players can customize their characters. Are all the items gonna be unlocked from start. Because that would be boring. This is something that imho could definetly push the limits.

I am just afraid that after people get to level 20 with a few different characters they are gonna get bored. It is just something that happens. There is no driving force anymore that keeps them playing.

(darthmob) #2

Did you get bored of ET or ETQW? Probably not. Did you get bored of CoD even though there where still a ****load of unlocks left? Probably yes.

Unlocks are a way of getting people slowly into the game. If the gameplay is as addicting as in previous SD titles then there should be no problem after everything has been unlocked. And to be honest I couldn’t care less for players who don’t play for fun and need arbitrary goals to achieve.

(tokamak) #3

Then again, those games didn’t have permanent unlocks unless you play on xp-save serves and I have to say, I grew bored with those rather quickly. Getting to work on your unlocks and amplifying the particular role you’re playing was part of what made the past ET games so addictive.

These goals aren’t arbitrary, they created an opportunity cost, a scarcity in ways you could play the game. It motivated you to do your best, and reap the xp so you get to be a better asset to your team.

(Mustkunstn1k) #4

I definetly loved working for the small awards in Enemy Territory for example.
Dual pistols ftw.

(Schwarzeis) #5

I’ve said it before over at the Bethesda forums, clothing and other cosmetic items should come from challenges, this will keep some percentage of the players playing, but then of course I also want guns to come from the leveling system :l

EDIT: And I don’t really like this unlock for this character > unlock for every other character you do thing, will drain some lenght of the game I think, since alot of people like playing knowing they will get something new even if they have gotten it 100 times before

(tokamak) #6

Also the notion that you start from scratch together with the rest of the players in the server creates a healthy sense of competition amongst your peers.

(Schwarzeis) #7

Yeah… Having to level up with the people of the same level, sounds good

For now that I think of it further, what the ****, you can just level one character and grind him to oblivion to make your other 15 characters to 20 without even touching them once

(Nail) #8

level up all you like, if you can’t headshot, you’ll still die

:penguin:

(Mustkunstn1k) #9

I’m watching this video atm: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2010-brink/700693

In this build there are 19 different weapons, atleast unlocked. That basically means 1 gun every level. But for me it could easily be 3 guns every level. And the levels between are clothing for example.

Do we know what exactly is unlocked by the challenges? Currently I’m not a big fan of that idea.

It just seems to me that choosing between different weapon skins for example isn’t as interesting if you haven’t worked for them.

(Humate) #10

[QUOTE=Mustkunstn1k;266444]I’m watching this video atm: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2010-brink/700693

In this build there are 19 different weapons, atleast unlocked. That basically means 1 gun every level. But for me it could easily be 3 guns every level. And the levels between are clothing for example.

Do we know what exactly is unlocked by the challenges? Currently I’m not a big fan of that idea.

It just seems to me that choosing between different weapon skins for example isn’t as interesting if you haven’t worked for them.[/QUOTE]

how exactly do you work for unlocks?

(DouglasDanger) #11

What are you referring to? Is there is an optional mode in Brink that resets everyone in a game group/lobby/server/whatever back to 1?

(Nail) #12

no, he’s talking about proper W:ET

(Mustkunstn1k) #13

What type of unlocks do you mean? Basically clothing and weapons could easily be based on levels. You get xp, you get levels. And you could get attachments and skins for different things like getting kills with that gun etc. Like most games nowadays.

(Cankor) #14

First, it doesn’t work like CoD so you can’t apply your misgivings from how that kind of system may work in Brink. In CoD, you get an unlock and then you have the choice of bringing that into Battle with you. In Brink, I believe that when you unlock an ability it becomes part of your character’s permanent abilities, more like a role playing game.

I believe there are around 50 abilities right? Any one character can have up to 20 (one for each level), but you get 16 characters.

So as far as playing for unlocks, the replayability is huge because you can end up unlocking the same ability multiple times for your other characters. Note I’m assuming here that once you have unlocked the item it’s not unlocked for every character, just the one you originally bought it for, and I’m not sure that this is correct. Assuming that it is, you will spend tons of time building your characters, and once you have your 16th guy complete, you will probably want to go back to your first guy and start over to create a different skill set.

So, in Brink it’s about creating characters with specific sets of skills. You could have a character which is a specialist in a particular role, or a jack of all trades character, or any combination (this guy I play when I want to be engineer for first half of the map and medic for second half, he works great on Container City).

To me the way they have done the unlock system with the character classes is brilliant in terms of replayability. Even if once you unlock an ability it’s automatically available for all your characters you’ll still spend tons of time building different guys with different groups of skills.

(Mustang) #15

This is how I assumed it to (and how it should) work
That’s x16 the replayability right there (discounting character recreations)

Edit:
Just found Neil Alphonso’s quote that says “when you’re level 20 you’ll keep earning experience but you can dump that on your other characters”.
To me this indicated that unlocks are indeed character specific

(DouglasDanger) #16

Do we know how unlocks work?

(Mustkunstn1k) #17

Hmm, I was wrong about the abilities.

According to this you can indeed have 20 (10 universal + 10 class). This means you could have even more. So yeah, there needs to be a lot more if each class has 10. This means you will be getting many many abilities with each level. Another reason why to have more levels. Not only that but it seems like you can also upgrade each ability.

DouglasDanger - In reality, no. Atleast I don’t really know, that’s why I made the thread. It seems to me like most are just speculating.

(Cankor) #18

[QUOTE=Mustkunstn1k;266472]Hmm, I was wrong about the abilities.

This means you will be getting many many abilities with each level. Another reason why to have more levels. Not only that but it seems like you can also upgrade each ability.
[/QUOTE]

What, 320 levels isn’t enough for you? :tongue: There’s no reason for more levels, the levels cap the number of abilities a character can have, so it makes perfect sense to limit them per character.

Good point on the upgrading of abilities. Say you unlock a turret, the next time you choose an ability it could be a more powerful turret. So these are like technology trees. An engineer might have a tree for turrets, one for mines, one for weapon buffs, etc, whereas a soldier could have a tree for ammo, one for nades, etc. I’m sure they aren’t all trees, particularly the universal abilities, but this helps explain why there are so many.

So you may have the choice to unlock level 3 gun buff or level 1 turret depending on what you already have unlocked, this is part of where you have multiple choices in what you can unlock.

(Mustkunstn1k) #19

Cankor - Do we know for sure that with each character we need to start from the beginning? I’m sure the things from challenges go for all characters. But what about the abilities.

And the main question still is… how long does it take to get those 20 levels? If skilled gamers can get to max level in 5 hours then the 16 characters isn’t really that much…

(Schwarzeis) #20

I hope Splash have given some serious thought about the unlock system and the life lenght of the game, and… Well, just thought about the whole challenges = guns thing