Is this game dead already?

(SockDog) #101

The key is to rename Mod to FREE DLC and then you’ll see people jump through hoops to get it.

(INF3RN0) #102

[QUOTE=ArchdemonXIII;386074]Man. That post was just dripping with elitism.

I’d say the biggest dividers between a hardcore player and a casual is that a casual is more focused on the feel of a game, whereas hardcore players care more about mechanics. A casual cares more about having a good time than winning. or to put it more succinctly, the hardcore player is the on that takes it deadly serious.[/QUOTE]

Really? The only difference between me and the hardcore players I know is that they just like to pub. Anything can be fun, but it doesn’t mean it has methodical design. Something like ET/ETQW pretty much demands it, which is why the “fun” factor is a lot different than CoD. Since when is wanting a well balanced game that has mechanics that make logical sense elitist? I have fun when the games I am playing actually make sense… lol?

(Humate) #103

I think his point was that regardless of what a mod may add, the fact is that most casual gamers will not bother delving far enough into the game to download a mod. For most of them, the game is either fun right out of the box, or they play something else.

I remember jumping on a server in UT99 and auto-downloading TTM, which back then was the equivalent of promod. As a casual player back then, it was obvious that what that mod/mutator brought was a significant improvement over vanilla. I didnt know mods officially existed, but I knew whatever that “thing” did to the game, made the game far more enjoyable.

Today SC2 has a whole freaking catalog of mods and maps you can download through their game.
NBA2K has a whole freaking catalog of stuff you can download through their game. LOL and if anything - 99% of the players who play that game are casual players. Casuals delve as much as experienced players do, they just dont know what they are delving into or dont understand the technical aspects of what is changed.

(Humate) #104

A casual cares more about having a good time than winning. or to put it more succinctly, the hardcore player is the on that takes it deadly serious.

Nope. BTW youre not the first person to actually believe that. When I play ETQW for example in pub servers, I play at about 30%, never use voip, never actually do the primary objectives only as support. And that is actually really fun and enjoyable because the level of competition doesnt warrant any real effort anyway, so its quite relaxing. In promod, it has a completely different feel, because youre using voip, you’ve planned out your attack and defense, you’re playing at 100% against people you know are playing at “their” 100%… and its a completely different experience. That aspect of it, or what Paul Wedgwood calls “Buzz”, is ridiculously intense, and theres a different type of enjoyment attached to that.

tldr; the need to win = fun… but so is playing without trying hard :wink:

(tokamak) #105

[QUOTE=SockDog;386049]Or to look at it another way, the system you’re pining for is the praise and recognition of the people you play with, to actually want them replaced with a number is pretty fecking sad.
[/QUOTE]
You’re completely glossing over the first part.

The praise and recognition from real player comes regardless but the in-game rewards do not, and in both ET games these in-game rewards have far reaching consequences for the rest of the game (consequences that in turn have effect on the praise and recognition you’re getting). That’s why the game needs a more developed system.

(ArchdemonXIII) #106

he big problem in ETQW though was that there were more “hardcore” players who were confused about what promod exactly was, rather than the game having a large player base of “casuals”. What exactly is a casual player, someone who doesn’t really play the game often and could care less about what it is really offering? I would consider a “hardcore” player someone who plays the game constantly, usually their main game, and plays the game for the actual game play. What Chris said was entirely true, and because promod was practically a requirement for the “pros” in competitive play, the hardcore pub community assumed it was different from what they were playing. The truth of the matter being that promod was there for everyone to use and dealt with common issues as well as giving more options to users. The fact of the matter is why should casuals be more significant than the dedicated player base? Shouldn’t there be something more for those who will contribute to the longevity of the game? When patch support is dropped, then it is very sensible to allow the community to continue development where the official funding was cut off. I think perhaps the term “casual” may have been melded with the group that are satisfied with the game because they are lacking too much in understanding/ability that they haven’t yet come to the same conclusions. But I am willing to bet more on that the solutions something like promod provides are in fact shared wants of the players who care about the future development of a game.

No, acting like you and people like you are the only ones whose opinion matters and that anyone who doesn’t agree obviously doesn’t “get” the game due to lack of intelligence or ability is elitist.

If a casual plays on a consistent basis but isn’t trying to master the game, then he is a part of the player base and contributing to the longevity.

I do agree with you about dev tools being made available to the public, and it does make me a bit annoyed that this isn’t as common as it used to be. Some of my favorite games of all times were mods.

@Humate:

You’re not disproving my point by bringing up exceptions to the rule. In fact it’s a bit disingenuous. Your UT 99 example may never have happened if you had not joined that server by chance.

Also, you’re going to define casual by ETQW alone? Really? A game that carries the name brand of a hardcore game franchise likely isn’t going to draw many casuals.

I’m not saying hardcore players don’t have valuable experience, nor am I saying that all games should only target casuals. I’m saying if you guys want ET type games, sign a petition or something. Prove that it’s worth the company’s time to cater to you. This idea that if you drive off people that like Brink, it will lead to another ET is ludicrous. You’re only shooting yourselves in the foot.

(zenstar) #107

Judging purely on community retention on the PC ET style games (both free and paid for) do better than Brink has done.
Does that mean SD should churn out only ET style games? No.
Does that mean SD should be doing market analysis to see if another ET style game is due? Probably. (Note: we don’t know if this has been done or what the results were if it had been done).

Is an ET style game profitable? For it to be profitable either it has to be cheap to make and single platform (note: The Brink engine has now been paid for. It’s a lot cheaper to take that existing engine and make a new game with it than to make a new engine) or it has to be multiplatform (maximise sales and audience - cheapness here helps but there’s more money to be made so more can be risked).
So: is ET cheap to make? Is ET accepted across multiple platforms?

I do not have the answers to these questions but I point out that it may be cheap to make an ET game with the paid for Brink engine now, and that the previous ET release that wasn’t on PC didn’t go down well.

Of course the engine probably belongs to Bethesda who targets multiplatform only (money grubbing who-cough ahem… excuse me) and the last ET port was apparently a rather bad port. And even if SD wanted to do another ET game it’d have to get funded by someone and if Beth isn’t playing cards then SD has to find someone else to risk the money. Lots of factors into how a game comes to be.

Would I personally like another ET? Yeah (especially if we went back to the Strogg). Does the market want a new ET? I have no idea (unless we’re talking the old Atari game… then NO! Definitely not!)

All this back and forth arguing is really fun and all, but noone here is working with enough information to be able to actually say anything consequential either way. Which means you’re just arguing opinions which is roughly like farting in the wind.

So chill out and eat some more beans. Discussion is great but this is turning into a full scale religious war.

(Humate) #108

Case in point, in W:ET and in ETQW you’re not rewarded for throwing smoke grenades even though they’re really useful. The game completely glosses over the value you bring to your team because it’s system is too rudimentary still. If the game was actually able to detect your action as well as being able to place it into the context of the rest of the match and thus able to calculate the value to the team then it is able to reward you for doing so which results in a more accurate reward distribution and thus an overall benefit of the game.

I know its only an example, but I’m trying to figure out whether ive been granted a tactical leg-up over someone, due to a smoke grenade.
Maybe its because no one used them. : / Tac Shields on the other hand, I can definitely understand. Its the swiss army knife for nearly every Strogg objective.

The easiest way the devs can create such a reward system, is to remove tac shields and smoke grenades completely. Or to say - you can only use x y and z here, here and there. As opposed to keeping the depth and creativity by designing a reward system that actually rewards everything that helps the team. Given what youve seen in Brink, which route do you think SD would take?

(Humate) #109

@Humate:

You’re not disproving my point by bringing up exceptions to the rule. In fact it’s a bit disingenuous. Your UT 99 example may never have happened if you had not joined that server by chance.

My UT example was to give you an insight b/w what used to be the case, and what is the case now.
Most “casual” players didnt have a freaking clue about that stuff.

TODAY mod databases are built into most PC games, and are used by many “casuals”. They are far more educated about that stuff, compared to what I was like when I played casually. The NBA2K scene loves that stuff.

Also, you’re going to define casual by ETQW alone? Really? A game that carries the name brand of a hardcore game franchise likely isn’t going to draw many casuals.

Really? Youre questioning me about ETQW? :slight_smile: I’m kidding btw.
ETQW was filled with all sorts of players - casuals, daddy gamers, GFX card bench-markers, females who loved the sound of their own voice in voip, pub heroes, flavour of the week rands, comp players, 10 dollar bin players, ventrillo drunks that just play the game to chat in voip… I could go on and on with the labels.:wink:

But on a more serious note. etqw had all sorts. And my example, was to demonstrate that the “hardcore” dont care about winning all the time.
I’ll put it another way - to the extent that “hardcore” players care about winning, is the extent that they dont. When its appropriate to care, they do. (comp) And when it isnt, they dont. (pub)

(tokamak) #110

[QUOTE=Humate;386085]I remember jumping on a server in UT99 and auto-downloading TTM, which back then was the equivalent of promod. As a casual player back then, it was obvious that what that mod/mutator brought was a significant improvement over vanilla. I didnt know mods officially existed, but I knew whatever that “thing” did to the game, made the game far more enjoyable.

Today SC2 has a whole freaking catalog of mods and maps you can download through their game.
NBA2K has a whole freaking catalog of stuff you can download through their game. LOL and if anything - 99% of the players who play that game are casual players. Casuals delve as much as experienced players do, they just dont know what they are delving into or dont understand the technical aspects of what is changed.[/QUOTE]

Thing with these examples is that the mods for these games are A: easy to make, and thus abundant, and thus high in quality, and B: light to distribute. No restarts of the game required, not having to wait more than a few seconds to jump in on the action. SC2 especially takes the lead in keeping the official game and the custom game completely separated AS WELL as giving the custom games a popularity filter to ensure no time is being wasted on bull****.

When the custom community has all these qualities I’ll be in favour of it. But not until then.

(deems) #111

[QUOTE=Humate;386136]
ETQW was filled with all sorts of players - casuals, daddy gamers, GFX card bench-markers, females who loved the sound of their own voice in voip, pub heroes, flavour of the week rands, comp players, 10 dollar bin players, ventrillo drunks that just play the game to chat in voip… I could go on and on with the labels.:wink: [/QUOTE]

Wow - this is a perfect description of my old ETQW clan! (This may sound like sarcasm, but it isn’t).

(Humate) #112

[QUOTE=tokamak;386138]Thing with these examples is that the mods for these games are A: easy to make, and thus abundant, and thus high in quality, and B: light to distribute. No restarts of the game required, not having to wait more than a few seconds to jump in on the action. SC2 especially takes the lead in keeping the official game and the custom game completely separated AS WELL as giving the custom games a popularity filter to ensure no time is being wasted on bull****.

When the custom community has all these qualities I’ll be in favour of it. But not until then.[/QUOTE]

I definitely understand that :slight_smile:
And I agree with you, particularly with the SC2 part.

Wow - this is a perfect description of my old ETQW clan! (This may sound like sarcasm, but it isn’t)

LOLOLLOL!

(tokamak) #113

I still think that the customisation of W:ET was it’s downfall. If only a few important mods would be sanctified and the rest kept at bay then perhaps we wouldn’t have seen some interesting things, but at least there would still be a healthy community playing now.

(DarkangelUK) #114

It wasn’t just the abundance of mods, it was the little crappy add-ons that servers could force on you as well… clan tags, sound files, skins, custom textures, splash screens… your folder flooded with nonsense over a small period of time.

(tokamak) #115

Yeah especially that. Insufferable.

(SockDog) #116

[QUOTE=tokamak;386123]You’re completely glossing over the first part.

The praise and recognition from real player comes regardless but the in-game rewards do not, and in both ET games these in-game rewards have far reaching consequences for the rest of the game (consequences that in turn have effect on the praise and recognition you’re getting). That’s why the game needs a more developed system.[/QUOTE]

What you’re glossying over is the system you’re describing doesn’t exist and likely won’t until you have some sophisitcated AI based OS. How the hell do you expect a developer to firstly predict people will do unpredictable things and then secondly be able to score those things accurately in the context of the game. Until that time the system will always promote and reward predictable outcomes.

As for such a system being necessary to allow a form of weapon/skill progression, that’s just hunkering down inside your box. A far simpler (read: open) system of rewarding the team based on measurable goals rather than a flawed complicated one based on individuals would allow people to focus on teamplay without the fear of doing something that the developer never thought of and be penalised for it.

(tokamak) #117

It’s only the most interesting aspect about game design. Rahdo once told something about him trying to incorporate line of sight and everything in calculating a smoke grenade xp reward. That’s brute-forcing your way to a solution all the while the whole thing could be much more simple and much more elegant. Give the smoke grenade a radius and give bonus xp to the thrower for all the objectives performed within that radius while the smoke grenade is active.

Just an example of striving for an accurate system without letting it become bloated.

(.Chris.) #118

Why do you need to constantly pat the player on the back for throwing a smoke nade (example) and then devise a system to gauge how much of a pat he receives?

(tokamak) #119

The same reason you pat someone on the back for killing an opponent. The example stands for an action that is beneficial to the team but isn’t accounted for.

A more subtle example would be making the rewards for the kills more context-sensitive.

(.Chris.) #120

Why should kills be rewarded? Everyone knows to do that, everyone should know when and where a smoke nade is required, when to plant mines, when to throw and airstrike and so on. The challenges in Brink if expanded could cover the basics of teamplay, specific tutorials perhaps for common situations were actions are introduced to the (new) player.

I used to be quite indifferent about the XP system but getting chuffing fed up with it been used as some bride to make folk play properly, seems like it’s used these days to mask otherwise dull games.