Major issues i have with brink

(Teufel_Eldritch) #21

1, 2 & 3 I can agree with, when they happen to me I rage, but 4? CTF I think just doesn’t fit BRINK. Don’t get me wrong I like CTF, played TF for over a decade, but in BRINK? No thanks.

(sereNADE) #22

no amount of automation will help game balance. at the very least a game needs to have easy to use communication features for players (brink falls short) and if team games are to be played at their best then it needs actual TEAMS (organized and practicing ala clans) organizing pugs. there just is no fixing, even with the best admins, those imbalanced pub games.

(SockDog) #23

I’m not suggesting this for PUG or any kind of arranged games. They’re clearly something that SHOULD be decided on individual team skill and if one team gets totally rolled by another then so be it.

BUT

For PUB games where, as you say there isn’t much you can do unless you admin and enforce team balancing (which generally would kill a lot of servers), then why not employ some dynamic balancing. You stack your team the system makes you work harder. Again I’m not saying this happens on a whim, there should be a good deadspot where everything is even, but on the outer fringes start introducing these handicaps.

And while there would obviously need to be work on balancing such a feature, switching it off as a server setting seems to have zero implications. Honestly I’m just trying to think outside the box here to get pub games lasting longer with both teams challenged but still give the edge to the most skilled people.

Also, you speak as if you have first hand knowledge of this not working. What FPS would that be in?

(sereNADE) #24

i mentioned pugs as a scenario with more potential and ideal conditions for teamplay. i responded about the team balance in the first place because outside of spawn times changing i don’t think there are really any fair fixes. as much as it sucks to be on a team that is losing badly being punished or automatically gimped for winning would suck more. bringing up the admin solutions was to remind everybody that even the best admin is damned if he does damned if he don’t when forcing a shuffle. for every one instance where it works and improves the game for that moment there are a dozen instances where it does absolutely nothing or just flat out empties the server. while there are certainly cases of just poor map design causing imbalances the best thing to do is not change the game but encourage the player to improve but what player today will improve when he has health regen and other hand holding “mechanics” that often make him oblivious to anything other than his personal kdr. finally, i’d like to just boil my point down to there shouldn’t be much done to fix the problem, because in the nature of competition and gaming spirit; it actually isn’t a problem at all but in actuality what playing a game is all about. play your best and take your losses as well as your wins and surround yourself with good players from a good community to minimize the random noob encounters and gross team stacks.

i wasn’t trying to make my point with having first hand knowledge of it not working. i was saying i don’t like the idea itself and logical conclusions at which it could arrive.

(allure15) #25

His pip was full but decided to go the command post instead… Last but not least I would like to be able to customize my colors on my outfits instead of preset colors and on the guns would be nice to

(SockDog) #26

[QUOTE=sereNADE;376887]i mentioned pugs as a scenario with more potential and ideal conditions for teamplay. i responded about the team balance in the first place because outside of spawn times changing i don’t think there are really any fair fixes. as much as it sucks to be on a team that is losing badly being punished or automatically gimped for winning would suck more. bringing up the admin solutions was to remind everybody that even the best admin is damned if he does damned if he don’t when forcing a shuffle. for every one instance where it works and improves the game for that moment there are a dozen instances where it does absolutely nothing or just flat out empties the server. while there are certainly cases of just poor map design causing imbalances the best thing to do is not change the game but encourage the player to improve but what player today will improve when he has health regen and other hand holding “mechanics” that often make him oblivious to anything other than his personal kdr. finally, i’d like to just boil my point down to there shouldn’t be much done to fix the problem, because in the nature of competition and gaming spirit; it actually isn’t a problem at all but in actuality what playing a game is all about. play your best and take your losses as well as your wins and surround yourself with good players from a good community to minimize the random noob encounters and gross team stacks.

i wasn’t trying to make my point with having first hand knowledge of it not working. i was saying i don’t like the idea itself and logical conclusions at which it could arrive.[/QUOTE]

I can’t agree with this, it’s just so apathetic, saying that’s the way things are, put up with it. Should we do the same for hacks and griefers? We can live with it but that doesn’t mean we should stop looking for ways to minimise or rid ourselves of it completely.

If we can acknowledge these situations suck for all involved what exactly are you losing by trying something different? Again I’m not talking about situations where there is a skill gap, just those where there is a skill chasm that ultimately empties the server. I also don’t feel the “play with friends” stuff is the answer, that like a PUG or competitive game is just avoiding the situation that creates the problem in the first place, again you can say the same for cheating or griefing, just play with friends, but isn’t MP kinda neat that you can play with 1000’s of other people?

(wolfnemesis75) #27

Major Issues with Brink for me:

Needs more maps. I’d like 4-10 more maps please (18-20 total maps would be epic)
Needs some balance tweaks in terms of weapons, abilities, and body types *(Already in progress)
Needs a Clan System/Option/Support *(Already in progress)
Needs a Party System Lobby
Needs some variant game modes (not CTF or TDM please)
Needs some additional Unlocks or some kind of Ranks associated with Faction Progress and Class Progress, new Outfits etc.

(tokamak) #28

Applies to each and every game mode.

(sereNADE) #29

sockdog, you are comparing a fair and square instance of equal potential for everybody to hacking and cheating, which is quite low and stupid. ofc, i am not going to say put up with cheating! i am one of the head admins for a etqw server and have pbbans account. again, has nothing to do with this argument. my answers are fine, and how i described organization is still the same principle of playing with 1000’s of people just refined to a better level. it wasn’t the end all fix but simply 1 viable method of several.

i am saying it’s in the power of the players to have the most meaningful impact on the quality of their games by having discerning taste and organization. what you propose, the dynamic handicap system, has nothing to do with the power of the player and ironically has more in common with hacking and cheating than anything i ever mentioned. those types of fixes are guaranteed to create more problems than they solve.

afterthought - if imbalanced matches are really that much of a problem then there is probably a major flaw in the game itself. i would avoid that game and play something else or hope to goodness the devs or mods can address the underlying issue. maybe only play servers with bad maps taken from rotation (ccity/quarry)

(SockDog) #30

How exactly is it fair and square when people intentionally join a stronger team? rage quit a weaker one? want to play with their friends regardless of balance? or oops don’t realise people need to move over?

So no it’s not fair and square it’s players playing the system to beat up and dominate a weaker team because there is nothing in place to discourage them other than everyone else on the server quitting. This is something I saw first hand in ETQW and was a frequent topic on the forum so lets not pretend stacking and imbalance never happened.

My reference to hacking and griefing wasn’t to compare them like for like, it was to simply illustrate other areas of MP gaming where people shrug their shoulders and say it’s part of the territory get over it or play with friends. I just find that a pretty closed minded way to approach problems and I don’t say that to prove my suggestion has any worth.

i am saying it’s in the power of the players to have the most meaningful impact on the quality of their games by having discerning taste and organization. what you propose, the dynamic handicap system, has nothing to do with the power of the player and ironically has more in common with hacking and cheating than anything i ever mentioned. those types of fixes are guaranteed to create more problems than they solve.

How exactly does someone joining a pub server do this? How do they prevent others joining that server and stacking a team? What you seem to suggest doesn’t answer the issue I’m talking about you just seem to suggest people shouldn’t play that way or put up with it.

Also what exactly are the problems you see this creating?

afterthought - if imbalanced matches are really that much of a problem then there is probably a major flaw in the game itself. i would avoid that game and play something else or hope to goodness the devs or mods can address the underlying issue. maybe only play servers with bad maps taken from rotation (ccity/quarry)

Are we even talking about the same thing? It IS a player issue. One team is greatly superior to another. This has nothing to do with balancing the map design or the game. Swap sides and the same team would win. This is why it’s a handicap, because if a competitive clan wants to stack against a bunch of noobs then I see no harm in the noobs getting a health and damage boost to compensate. And if the clan players feel that’s unfair then maybe they should either balance the teams or play against a better matched opponent.

(sereNADE) #31

we were not talking about intentional stacks, we were talking about one team losing and one team winning in what was understood as coincidental imbalance or simply left ambigous. you propose that the game should then introduce a boost to the losing team or penalty to the winning team in addition to the already accepted on-the-fly spawn time adjustments and i thought that would be even less fair in principle than the imbalance itself. further, that if it comes to be such a common and glaring issue then there are underlying problems dynamic handicaps could not ever hope to fix. if you want to get specific then we can have a separate discussion about stacking and switching or blind luck with pub noob randoms. i will concede, though, a server setting at the outset sounds fair enough but that is yet again another can of worms. even then we venture into the philosophy of gaming itself and even more “sacred opinion” because the reasons i play games, especially team oriented, are not compatible with your suggestions.

(SockDog) #32

Intentional or not it isn’t uncommon for games to collapse because the composition of skill of one team is not comparable to the other. I also made it pretty clear several times that I was talking about extremes, spawn holds, 1st objective holds etc. Remember I suggested this in relation to maps just ending after 5 minutes because the team wasn’t winning. If 99% of games are balanced fine then the dynamic handicapping never comes into play, if you want you just switch it off totally.

I’ve not really said what should or shouldn’t be done, just that some sort of handicapping or boosting may help in those extreme situations rather than letting the game turn to **** because of random elements or uncooperative players. So many little things could be tweaked. Maybe if a team is held at spawn they’re given megahealth like boost which lasts 10 seconds from spawn so they can break the hold. Maybe you do just change the spawn rates to give them more of an advantage.

Again my goal isn’t to suggest a crappy team win over a better one. Only that both teams are challenged throughout the game, surely that should be the goal of a pub game. Surely that would be a massive accessibility tool for new players too.

Anyway, this is all theoretical stuff. I’d just like to see it tried rather than everyone just putting up with the problem or acting like it doesn’t exist to even think about.

(Tandem) #33

My only issue with Brink was it’s retail price.