Hey guys, I kind of don’t post here often but I do lurk a bit and figured I might post just to see the responses.
From what I understand BRINK is practically dead. I’ve owned the game since release and I was there when it dropped off of Steam’s top 100 popular games list. If SteamGraphs is to be believed, NOBODY plays this game on a daily basis. The few people I know on Steam who own this game also stopped playing it pretty much a day after release. Yeah.
Not me though. I’ve never been able to run BRINK in the first place. I’d like to be able to play the game, but my graphics card doesn’t support OpenGL beyond 2 and as a result I can’t even run it. Which sucks, because it means I basically blew a $50 preorder. I played the game for a little bit on my brother’s computer, but I don’t exactly have a lot of options here. I essentially haven’t touched the game since the month of its release, and that makes me sad. I really want to play this game, in spite of all its glaring, obvious faults. I really, really want to like BRINK, but I can’t even run it. Is anybody else in this situation? I know my only option is to go get a new computer, but I don’t really have the means to do that for now, so I’m essentially stuck. Unfortunately, the people who ARE able to play this game don’t for one reason or another (and believe me, I’m aware of what those reasons are and I understand).
Anyway, seeing the latest patch got me curious. In spite of what people are generally agreeing to be an improvement, BRINK haters still hate BRINK because it’s still flawed and people still aren’t playing it. Honestly, what does it take? I think that a lot of the maps need to be reevaluated, and we need more maps in the first place. The current map pool just isn’t large or varied enough, and from the bit of BRINK that I have played your SMART options are woefully restricted. There were a lot of places in certain maps that I thought I could jump to but actually couldn’t because of invisible walls. If you ask me, that defeats the purpose of SMART in the first place, don’t you think?
Also, do people still play ET:QW? I’m pretty sure people still play W:ET but I could never get into that because it was so hard to find a server that wasn’t modded to some ridiculous degree and my ping always sucked. I’d like to be able to call myself a Splash Damage fan but unfortunately I haven’t even played their games. I can run Wolf ET and QW so if anybody still plays those, I might be more interested in getting them. Please excuse me for being a n00b.
I’d like to be able to play BRINK in the future but right now I can’t because my computer just doesn’t support OpenGL. Otherwise, I’d probably be playing this game every day no matter how bad it is, because it was fun from the small experience I do have with it. I feel that Splash Damage isn’t committed enough to post-game support, or maybe they can’t be because of their publisher. I like that we’re receiving patches, and that SD listens to the community in some capacity. But it seems a little odd that there’s basically no DLC for this game besides the pre-order stuff (which nobody is going to buy) and Agents of Change (which was free for a while and anybody interested in BRINK already has it).
My suggestion? Redo how the weapons inventory works so that skins such as the Bulpdaun skins aren’t actually separate weapons. I know this seems a bit controversial, but hear me out. You could add skins to your weapon the same way you add attachments. If you wanted to have different customization sets for your weapons, there would be a loadout system (much like what TF2 has recently implemented) where you could select a particular configuration of skin and attachments.
Obviously, there are some problems with this – a weapon such as the Caesar revolver is essentially the same as an already existing weapon (I forget what it was called; the other badass-looking revolver). Either keep the clone as a separate weapon with the exact same stats, but I think it would be better to make them separate weapons with their own stats (this might be controversial but honestly as the game is practically dead I don’t see how it would hurt).
WHAM. All of a sudden people have a reason to buy DLC (different weapons + skins), and you’ve just opened up the potential for new DLC in the form of new, probably easy to produce skins (which probably isn’t as difficult as adding content such as maps, etc.) It’s win-win. What do you think?
Also, I know that SD is pretty adamant on NOT releasing an SDK but in all honesty what this game needs is to allow the community to contribute. I hate to say it but SD is not picking up the slack as well as we’d all hope and if the community had a way to directly expand the game by themselves I can guarantee you’d see more life. In my mind, there is absolutely no reason for a shooter like BRINK not to have a publicly available SDK. It’s almost as if they don’t want people to play and be interested in BRINK.
Thanks for reading, guys. I know it’s a bit long-winded, and I don’t actually play the game (I haven’t touched it in months since release), so I’m not exactly sure of the game’s current situation. So correct me if I’m wrong on any accounts.